Anselmus de Boodt

De Boodt was a draughtsman who made many natural history illustrations and developed a natural history taxonomy.

Life

De Boodt was born in Bruges in 1550, to an aristocratic family originating in 13th-century Dordrecht. His father, Anselmus de Boodt (1519-1587), was a renowned broker who also provided overseas insurance coverage.

Education

De Boodt studied the Liberal Arts at the University of Louvain from 1567. In 1573 he was at the University of Douai, and on 28 November 1575 he graduated licentiate of canon and civil law at the University of Orléans. He then went on a tour of Italy, briefly studying in Padua in 1576, and visiting Venice, Rome, Florence, Milan and Bologna. In January 1579 he matriculated at the University of Heidelberg, where Thomas Erastus, whom he later named as one of his teachers, was lecturing on medicine and pharmacology.

De Boodt returned to Bruges in the course of 1579 and was appointed pensionary to the city council, but after only a few months had to flee the city when rebel forces in the Dutch Revolt seized power.

At the imperial court

De Boodt went to Bohemia, where in 1583 he was appointed the personal physician of William of Rosenberg, a holder of high office who was an important patron of the arts and sciences. Rosenberg, who ran the government of Bohemia on behalf of Emperor Rudolf II, divided his time between Prague Castle and his own estate of Český Krumlov Castle in southern Bohemia.

From 1584 to 1595 De Boodt held a canonry of St. Donat's Church in Bruges, but was an absentee throughout his tenure. In 1586 he returned to Padua to continue his study of medicine, obtaining a doctorate in medicine the next year. In 1587, when the Flemish doctor and pioneering botanist Carolus Clusius left the imperial botanical garden in Prague, de Boodt took over his position, and was also appointed physician to the imperial court.

De Boodt thenceforward directed his studies towards the medical field, in which he gained pre-eminence. In Le Parfaict Joaillier, the word illness is used nearly sixty times, ills twenty times, ill twenty-five times; the word "physician", always in capital letters, whether singular or plural, is used twenty-five times for the purposes of certification of medical facts.

In January 1604, De Boodt, was appointed advisor and personal physician to the emperor, with a stipend of 40 florins. Aegidius Sadeler's portrait of him gives his title as Rodolphi II Roman. Imperatoris cubicularius medicus (medic to the bedchamber of Roman Emperor Rudolf II). He retained this title and this function until Rudolf's death, as evidenced by all the title pages of his works.

The publication of the Gemmarum et Lapidum Historia ensured de Boodt's European reputation and he could afford to live in luxury. He decided to leave the imperial court after the death of Rudolf II in 1612.

Return to Bruges

He returned to Bruges in 1614. Here he remained active as a physician, painted, and performed songs from his own Luteboec (Book of the Lute) on string instruments. He composed various literary works in his native Dutch as a member of the local Chamber of Rhetoric. He translated the Consolatione Philosophiae of Boethius into Dutch verse and for the youth he composed "spiritual songs", prayers and medications in teh collections De Baene des Deugds ("The Way of Virtue"), published in Antwerp in 1624, and De Baene des Hemels ende der Deughden ("The Way of Heaven and the Virtues"), published in Bruges by Nicolaes Breyghel in 1628.

He compiled the first herbal book in Bruges with sixty plates, published posthumously by his young friend Olivier de Wree in 1640 under the title Anselmi Boëtii de Boot I.C. Brugensis & Rodolphi II. imp. Roman. medici a cubiculis florum, herbarum, ac fructuum selectiorum icones, & vires pleraeq. hactenus ignotae.

De Boodt died in Bruges on 21 June 1632.