Plantes, remeis i apotecaris. El jardí medieval del monestir de Pedralbes

The exhibition offers an approach to a complex and elaborate science that developed over the medieval centuries from the basic principles of Greek and Roman medicine and the contributions of Arab-Islamic culture, and which took nature as the starting point of its practice. This knowledge was transmitted thanks to various books and treatises that were continually copied, translated into different languages and commented upon for centuries. In medieval Barcelona, physicians and apothecaries knew very well not only the healing properties of the different animal and plant products, but also the medicinal compositions suitable for each disease, which could be purchased at the city's apothecaries.The exhibition is displayed in a part of the cloister garden. It is a recreation of a medieval medicinal garden featuring fifty-one plant species with healing properties, according to the knowledge drawn from the treatises of the Llibre de simples medicinals by the German abbess, mystic, composer and naturalist Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), and from a Catalan translation of the Llibre dels medicaments simples by the Andalusian physician Ibn Wāfid (1007-1067). They represent many of the plants that the nuns must have cultivated or acquired to prepare remedies for the sick sisters, as recorded in the oldest account books (14th century) that the community keeps in its historical archive.