Abstract
Six of the twenty books of Thomas of Cantimpré’s thirteenth-century Liber de natura rerum are devoted to zoology, and two of them contain descriptions of strange sea animals whose names are often hard to make sense of, both etymologically and semantically. Illuminators had to work with textual descriptions lacking essential information, and in many cases the encyplopedist himself made matters worse by focussing on the most bizarre and peculiar traits of animals encountered in his antique and medieval sources. Consequently, some of the illuminators produced images fanciful enough to make it look like they got carried away by their own imagination. However, a detailed comparison between text and image reveals that artists did their best to follow textual descriptions – it is the literal interpretation of their sources that often strikes us as unexpected and perplexing.
About the author
HANA ŠEDINOVA, PH.D. , is a senior scholar of the Centre for Classical Studies at the Institute of Philosophy (Czech Academy of Sciences) in Prague and a member of the lexicographical team compiling the Dictionary of Medieval Latin in the Czech Lands (Latinitatis medii aevi lexicon Bohemorum). In addition to this project, she specializes in ancient and medieval mineralogy, teratology and zoology and in the symbolism of precious stones, human monsters and animals in the Middle Ages.
Photo Credits: 1, 11, 15 University Library, Cambridge. — 2, 17, 19 Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, Leiden (URL: https://digitalcollections.universiteitleiden.nl/view/item/1602789 [last accessed 26 November 2021]). — 3, 6, 9, 16, 20 Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague. — 4, 5, 8, 13, 14, 18, 22, 23 Národní knihovna, Prague. — 7, 12, 21 British Library, London (URL: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_11390_fs001r [last accessed 26 November 2021]). — 10 Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Kraców.
© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
