Elephants, Drugs and the Inquisition. Garcia de Orta, from the Iberian Peninsula to Goa

KWIATKOWSKI, NICOLÁS

Bologna

Simposio; Empire of Role Models? Championing and Challenging Global Ideals in the Early Modern Iberian Worlds; 2025

Università di Bologna

In 1563, the German printer Johannes von Emden published in Goa the Colóquios dos simples e drogas e cousas medicinais da India, a pharmacopeia in dialogue form, written by the Portuguese physician Garcia de Orta. It was the third book printed by Europeans in India and the first to deal with secular subjects. Officially sanctioned by the Inquisition and by the Viceroyalty, it included a laudatory poem by Luís de Camões. The text integrates Eastern materia medica into European knowledge, but also digresses into Indian politics, the role of China, the rivalry between Portugal and Spain, and anecdotes about elephants, cobras, and mongooses. The aim of this presentation is to examine the production of knowledge in the global context of the Iberian empires in the sixteenth century, in relation to other contemporary phenomena: religious persecution, individual migration, cultural translation and exchange. I will explore Garcia de Orta’s biography, discuss the main characteristics of the Colóquios, and analyze the context in which it was produced. The legal proceedings carried out by the Inquisition against Garcia de Orta and his family after his death will allow me to introduce the issue of the author’s religion, the networks of patronage and solidarity that explain his success up to that point, and the book’s accidental survival. Finally, I will discuss the intellectual and political interpretations of Garcia de Orta and his work during the twentieth century, highlighting some peculiarities in the construction of Portugal’s imperial memory.