Prickly pear
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
- GRM 14.1: "The scenary is broken by the monstrous conglomerations of cacti, with thick leaves like palettes, spiked with stings and decorated with the huge granades of their peculiar fruits, grown without stem on the top of the leaves."
- GRM 147.1: "Jesus is walking ahead of the apostles, alone, close to a hedge of prickly cactus, the thick leaves of which are shining in the sun and seem to be deriding all the other bare plants. One can see on them a few surviving fruits which age has coloured brick-red and an odd early flower pleasantly bright in its yellow-cinnebar hue."
- GRM 217.4: "They find at last a hedge of Indian figs, on the top leaves of which, bristling with thorns, is some fruit which is beginning to ripen. Anything is good when one is hungry. And stinging themselves, they pick the ripest ones"
- GRM 221.1: "Day by day the cacti on the plain or lower hill sides are becoming a brighter sight with magnificent coloration on the seed clusters contained within and held skywards and ripened within the protection of the strong thorny leaves."
- GRM 254.4: "an embankment of Indian figs, growing farther back with their leaves, which are as rigid as the climbing branches are flexible. [...] I have lived in that thicket for five days, picking blackberries and Indian figs at night."
- GRM 335.1: "Also the thick leaves of cacti are green, a mellow green of freshly painted ceramic.."
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.
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.
Louis 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 on mariavaltorta.online.
- Read the work online on wordthatgiveslife.com.
- Concordance table between the two translations.
- Search in the Valtorta Index.
- Discuss on the Maria Valtorta Forum.