Sightings of monsters and zoological pharmacopoeia: Gerónimo de Huerta's renovative notes about fauna for his translation of Pliny the Elder's Natural History

Abstract

This article analyzes a series of the annotations on sea monsters and magical animals that Gerónimo de Huerta penned in his Spanish translation, published in 1624, of Pliny the Elder's Natural History. Based on this analysis, I show how the notes contributed significantly to the dissemination of faunal knowledge in the 17th century. On the one hand, the Spanish version diffused the information collected by the Roman naturalist; on the other, the annotations incorporated and spread new knowledge, thereby establishing a sapiential dialogue between authors and eras. My study contrasts the information from Pliny the Elder's original text with the translator's extensive notes in order to assess the translation's groundbreaking contribution. Therefore, the aim of this article is to study the annotations incorporated by Gerónimo Huerta in his translation of Natural History, in order to demonstrate how these interventions, update classical faunal knowledge. In particular, de Huerta´s text first narrated monstrous sightings in various parts of the known world and the barely known seas of the Nordic lands. Likewise, the annotations describe magical remedies from the zoological pharmacopoeia present in the recently-discovered Americas, derived from unicorn horn and de bezoar stone. Both topics are expanded or incorporated to continue the encyclopedic tradition initiated by Natural History, facilitating the dissemination of both classical and contemporary knowledge of animals.