Prickly pear

Prickly pear or Barbary fig, paddle cactus

Maria Valtorta mentions the prickly pear (fichi d’India in Italian) seven times, which we also know as the Barbary fig, paddle cactus. Its botanical name is Opuntia ficus indica. It is an emblematic plant of Mediterranean landscapes.

What Maria Valtorta says

• EMV 14.1: "huge groups of cacti with thick and flat paddles, all bristling with spines and adorned with huge clusters of strange fruits growing in no particular order at the tips of the paddles."
• EMV 147.1: "a hedge of cacti that, mocking all other defoliated plants, shines in the sun with its large spiny pads on which remain some fruits that time has turned brick red or on which already laughs some early yellow flower tinged with cinnabar."
• EMV 217.4: "They finally find a hedge of prickly pears on the tops of which, bristling with spines, there are figs beginning to ripen. But everything is good for those who are hungry, and, pricking their fingers, they pick the ripest."
• EMV 221.1: "the cacti of the plain or the low hills don brighter colors day by day, the bizarre coral ovules oddly placed by a joyful decorator at the top of the fleshy paddles that resemble hands that, when closing, form spiny sheaths that stretch towards the sky the fruits they have grown and ripened."
• EMV 254.4: "a hedge of prickly pears, which are further back with their pads as hard as other plants’ branches are flexible [...] I have been living for five days in these bushes picking blackberries and prickly pears at night."
• EMV 335.1: "show their green color, a pale green of ceramics barely tinted, the fleshy paddles of the cacti."

Points in debate

Cacti, originally from Mexico where they proliferated, were brought to Europe by Christopher Columbus. Therefore, it would be a gross and repeated anachronism by Maria Valtorta.

A recent and evasive truth

The hypothesis that Opuntia ficus indica, like all cacti, is native to Mexico is relatively recent. It was formulated at the very beginning of the 19th century by a renowned Swiss botanist, Augustin de Candolle (1778-1841). Since then the explanation was taken up as is. But Christopher Columbus never went to Mexico! So the correction is made: the plant comes from the Antilles. But the Caribbean Sea is not Mexico! Eventually, it is answered more vaguely that it was imported "by Spaniards."

Candolle himself relativizes in 1829 in the Review of the Cactus Family

"some botanists believed they recognized in them the plant mentioned by Theophrastus in chapter XII of his first book"

and confirms that this opinion is adopted without hesitation by Mr. Sprengel (Hist. rei herb. 1, p. 92).

The conquistadors would have filled their galleons with precious woods, spices, tobacco, coffee, cocoa, precious stones, gold, … and cacti. They were believed brutal and greedy, but they turn out to be sensitive to nature. The plant would have been so popular that within a few decades it was reported throughout the Mediterranean basin, then in India (hence one of its names), and soon even in South Africa, thanks to the progress of explorers. But the least that can be said is that this invasive plant is in no way appreciated by the Spaniards: Cervantes (1547-1616) calls it "pigs’ chestnuts," and Lope de Vega (1562-1635) speaks of "the devil's fig."

How to justify then its proliferation? The explanation is quite straightforward: the prickly pear spread like wildfire due to two agents: sailors, whose fruit treated scurvy, and birds that sowed the seeds. Thus, imagine the Ottomans, masters of two-thirds of the Mediterranean in the 16th century, concerned about the health of Christian sailors by planting for them the karthous nozura (the Christians' fig), a contemptuous term proving that for them too it was not an appreciated plant. One sees the fragility of such asserted truths. Especially since multiple sources attest to the existence of prickly pear in the Mediterranean well before Christopher Columbus.

A plant known since Antiquity

The word cactus comes from the Greek Kaktos, a name given by the botanist Theophrastus (371-287 BC) in his Historia plantarum to a spiny edible plant growing abundantly in Greece and Sicily. Similarly, the botanical name of the prickly pear or Barbary fig (Opuntia ficus indica) comes from a name, Herba opuntia, used both by Theophrastus and by the naturalist Pliny (23-79).

To avoid contradicting the American origin, some wanted to conclude that this ancient name was just another name for the common fig (ficus). But opuntia translates well to the Barbary fig, a country that then designates North Africa (Barbary). One wonders why they would take a name derived from Oponte, a city of Locris, a desert region of Greece, to rename a plant as common in the Mediterranean basin as the fig.

Il fico indiano - Pierandrea Mattioli (1500-1577)

Pierandrea Mattioli (1500-1577), an Italian botanist contemporary with the conquistadors, mentions in his work Di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo (1544) "Pliny's and Theophrastus’ Opuntia," not that of Christopher Columbus. The illustration he provides leaves no doubt: it is the plant described by Maria Valtorta.

In 1724, the Trévoux Dictionary, a historical work synthesizing French dictionaries of the 17th century compiled under the direction of the Jesuits between 1704 and 1771, also confirms that this plant was known "by Pliny, Theophrastus, and Strabo."

Candolle, in his Review of the Cactus Family, counts four types of cacti that appear native to Africa and the Mediterranean basin, two of which are found in the wild in Arabia. Nevertheless, he concludes, "These are all questions to be recommended to travelers," and maintains his thesis.

LYess de Jaucourt (1704-1779), the principal editor of Diderot's Encyclopedia, cites a few years before Augustin de Candolle, under the entry Opuntia, the work of two botanists: Philip Miller (1691-1771) and Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708). Tournefort distinguishes nine varieties of Opuntia that he knew as familiar with the Mediterranean and ancient history. Miller distinguishes eleven "among which ten are foreign, and native to the West Indies (Central America)." One of those he cites was therefore not.

Today, 250 varieties of Opuntia are recorded. As for Mexico, a tourist agency of that country boasts the 700 species of cacti found there, of which only 518 are originally Mexican. We are therefore far from the narrow-minded view wanting to forbid the prickly pear from having proliferated along the Mediterranean shores at the time of Jesus, well before the discovery of Mexico.

For more information

• Read the work online in the 1985 translation.
• Read the work online in the 2016 translation.
• Concordance table between the two translations.
• Search in the Valtorta Index.
• Discuss on the Maria Valtorta Forum.

The Gospel as it was revealed to me (Maria Valtorta).