Dinâmica civilizacional e diversidade gastronómica: algumas aportações do Livro II das Enarrationes de Amato Lusitano

Throughout the ages, the geographic space that currently corresponds to Portugal found itself under the influence of various civilizations. The most significant ones have been, in the centuries incorporating the beginning of the Christian era, the Roman civilization, and in the ones that frame the genesis of Portugal, the Islamic civilization. Then it would be the turn of Portugal to leave its mark, through the Discoveries, in the identity of the Western civilization. Each of these three moments provided a forum for the exchange of cultural goods, among which there are, of course, food products, that, in general, did not disappear from the gastronomic habits of the populations. Food heritage of the West of the Iberian Peninsula is therefore characterized by a progressive gastronomic diversity which survives, unscathed, through the passage of time. While commenting on the work by Dioscorides of Anazarbo, the Portuguese medical doctor Amatus Lusitanus consigns some contributions related to this issue. The current essay aims to explore it and illustrate it with actual examples taken from the final entries of Book II of In Dioscoridis Anazarbei De Materia Medica Libros Quinque Enarrationes Eruditissimae, printed in 1553, in which there is even some reference to the new products that were then brought to Lisbon, capital of the kingdom, from the distant Madeira Island.