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28 also Lyncea) was a premonition of Hernández that it would be the Accademia dei Lincei that would rescue his works from oblivion (such as Bateman in his Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala ) is opposed by the much more pragmatic opinion of Jenny (1993: 5) who maintains that Hernández could have no knowledge of the Roman academy and that it was Terenzio, member of the Lincei, who invented the name. James Bateman (1811-1897) used the flower of Stanhopea hernandezii to embellish the frontispiece of his Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala (Fig. 10F) and went to the extreme of assuring that Hernández “ventured to dedicate it, as the loveliest plant of the Mexican Flora, to the Lyncean Academicians of Rome, by whom it was immediately adopted …” (Bateman, 1837-43: 7). Bateman forgot that Hernández had died when Cesi was barely two years old. We do not know if the loss of a great part of Hernández’s work was due to neglect or to the zeal of the Spanish Inquisition. But it is sad to record that a work of such value shared the same fate of the herbal of Martín de la Cruz, lost in the vaults of the Vatican, or the monumental work of Sahagún, confiscated to satisfy religious intolerance. A new dark age “Many died in the flames and it gave me so much pleasure to see them burn that, poking the fire, I said: Heretic dogs, minister I am of the Holy Inquisition!” Pedro Calderón de la Barca The siege of Breda, 1640 In the second half of the XVI century, the Spanish Empire reached its maximum expansion. Phillip II could proudly say that the sun did not set in his dominions. The American continent excited the curiosity of erudites and travelers. But the chronicles of Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Francisco López de Gómara, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo and Fray Bernardino de Sahagún gave way to a long century of silence and darkness. As religious problems exacerbated in Europe, the Spanish Inquisition unleashed its aggressiveness against the liberty of thought. “... Charles I attempts to avoid ideological corruption applying his Index of forbidden books [Index Librorum Prohibitorum] which his son Philip would extend prohibiting the importation of foreign books and the travel of students LANKESTERIANA LANKESTERIANA 9(1—2), August 2009. © Universidad de Costa Rica, 2009. to the European universities” (García de Cortázar, F., González Vesga, J. M., 1994: 336). In 1571, the Holy Office of the Inquisition was established in Mexico, to investigate and punish religious crimes. Between 1571 and 1600, 600 persons were condemned by the tribunal of the Inquisition in Mexico, 13 of them to die in the flames. (Carmack et el., 1996: 158). “The sword, the open grave to bury them alive, the stake, awaited those who sold, bought or copied heretic books; those who painted or sold defamatory images, damaged or broke the images of the saints, those who celebrated in their homes clandestine reunions or permitted them; those who discussed in public or secretly about the Holy Scripts” (Schneider, 2002: 193). From a military standpoint, the defeat of the Invincible Armada in 1588 was the first of a series of disasters that continued during the Thirty Year War (1618-1648) and marked the end of Spanish hegemony in Europe. With the treaty of Utrecht (1713), Spain said farewell to her last continental possessions. The finances of the Spanish monarchy looked even worse: the bankruptcy of 1557 repeated itself monotonously in 1575, 1607, 1627, 1647, 1662 and 1666. The peninsula suffers from depopulation (between 1575 and 1650 the Spanish population diminished by 20 per cent) and economic recession. Instead of promoting local production, the American gold finances luxury purchases in foreign markets. While the rest of Europe increased its production, Spain lied in financial chaos. The universities served as recruiting centers for the imperial bureaucracy. The crown encouraged all disciplines related to administration while the flames of the autos de fe of the Inquisition strangled humanism and religious pressures suppressed scientific investigations. “Medieval and modern at the same time, the imperial society of the XVI and XVII centuries is a society in transit... The spirit of exultation of the kingdoms of Charles I and Philip II is replaced by the prosaic reality of the smaller Hapsburgs... The bitterness of military failures, the decline in the liberty of thought, growing delinquency, hunger, bureaucratic and religious hypertrophy... chained a community which had been alive hundred years earlier” (García de Cortázar & González Vesga, 1994: 270-71). We must therefore not be surprised if, from the last third of the XVI to the latter XVII century, the history of orchids
ossenbaCh — Orchids and orchidology in Central America A B C D E Figure 10. A — The questioner. Native drawing of a Spaniard of the XVI century who asked the Indians about their traditions, plants and antiquities. It is generally assumed that it represents Francisco Hernández. In Lozoya, 1984. B — Coatzonte coxochitl (Stanhopea hernandezii). In Jenny, 1993: 1. C — Chichiltic tepetlauxochitl (Laelia speciosa). In Jenny, 1993: 3. D — Tzacuxochitll (Prosthechea vitellina). In Hágsater et al., 2006: 40-41. E — Tzacutli (Bletia jucunda). In Hágsater et al., 2006: 40-41. F — Enlarged detail from the frontispiece of the work of Bateman with the illustration of Stanhopea hernandezii. LANKESTERIANA 9(1—2), August 2009. © Universidad de Costa Rica, 2009. F 29
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