A Brill Calendar: June 29

Few Viennese entertained the possibility that the aged physician Rembert Dodoens would ever "leave town" in 1582.

‘Rembertus Dodonaeus’ – the Latinized name of Rembert Dodoens, born in Malines (‘Mechelen’) June 29, 1517, or perhaps 1516 – had been a high official at the Habsburg Court.

Mechelen, his town-of-birth, was an illustrious city in the Low Countries, a seat of government, especially during Dodoens’ early years as learned botanist and healer. When he moved to Vienna, the second Charles to be called ‘Father of Europe’ (after Pipin’s son Charlemagne, Charles V of Habsburg) still ruled the Low Countries of his Empire. And when old Dodoens returned to the European delta, as Professor of Medicine of a young university at Leyden, 35 years later, he embodied an era in learning.

No doubt, Leyden University and its Board were bent on increasing the prestige of the ‘Praesidium Libertatis’ with all possible means. Now the institute could bask in the fame of Dodoens’ ‘Cruydeboeck’ (1554; ‘Book of Herbs’), an ever-seller since its year of publication, (printed and published by Plantijn’s publishing empire). But Dodoens was more than a botanist: a sage and ‘uomo universale’, with a range of learning from the vast star-spangled cosmos to specimens of small plants.

It is seldom – or so it would seem – that two ‘brain-drains’ of the 20th century – one preceding, the other following the Second World War – are seen in a long European tradition. Yet, they fit earlier migrations, those of the tormented 15th and 16th centuries, like a glove: the first one, in 1453, following the Fall of Constantinople, the next the ousting of Jews and Jewry from the Iberian peninsula, subcontinent of a subcontinent, after January 1, 1492. Rembert Dodoens’ biography fits a large picture.