Zacuto, Abraham
Abraham bar Samuel bar Abraham Zacuto was one of the most prominent astronomers of the late Middle Ages in the Iberian Peninsula. He was born around 1450 in the Castilian city of Salamanca, the university of which had a renowned chair of astrology. He studied medicine and astrology at that university. His scientific work began in the 1470s, and continued in exile in Portugal, North Africa, and ultimately Jerusalem.
Zacuto’s most outstanding work is Ha-Hibbur ha-Gadol (The Great Treatise), completed in Hebrew in 1478. It is composed of sixty-five astronomical tables and the canons explaining their use. The tables have the year 1473 as radix and are arranged for the Christian calendar and the meridian of Salamanca. They give the positions of the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets, presented in the form of an almanac. Zacuto computed his entries according to the Alfonsine Tables. To do this work by hand required enormous effort, and the level of accuracy Zacuto attained required a high level of skill and careful attention to detail.
Together with the Alfonsine Tables we may find the influence of other astronomers, including Jacob ben David Bonjorn, the Catalan author of astronomical tables for Perpignan (1361) and a follower of Levi ben Gerson (1288–1344), *Ptolemy (second century C.E.), *Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (1126–1198), and *Alfonso X the Wise (1252–1284).
In 1481, three years after Zacuto finished the Hibbur, it was translated from Hebrew into Castilian, with the help of Zacuto himself, by Juan de Salaya, who held the chair of astrology at Salamanca.
Zacuto was one of the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. He moved to Portugal, where he entered the service of King João II as an astronomer. After João’s death in 1495, Zacuto performed the same service for King Manuel I.
In 1496 a Latin adaptation of Zacuto’s Hibbur was published in Leiria (Portugal) under the title Tabulae tabularum coelestium motuum sive Almanach Perpetuum (Book of Tables on the Celestial Motions, that is, the Perpetual Almanac). Some copies have the canons in Latin, and others have them in Castilian. The author was Joseph Vizinus (Vizinho), a Portuguese disciple of Zacuto, who is mentioned in the colophon to the Castilian version as having translated the text from Hebrew into Latin, and then from Latin into Castilian.
The Latin version of the Almanach included a dedication, absent in the Castilian, to an unnamed dignitary of the Church of Salamanca. That could be Gonzalo de Vivero, Bishop of Salamanca, with whom Zacuto had some kind of relationship, although this dedication could also have been added by Vizinus as a tribute to *Johannes Regiomontanus, who had included a similar dedication to János Vítez (d. 1472), archbishop in Hungary, in his 1467 work Tabulae Directionem (Tables of the Directions).
The canons in the Almanach are different from those in the Hibbur, and it seems that Vizinus made a free adaptation rather than a translation. The tables, on the other hand, were largely taken from the Hibbur. From the contents it is clear that these works were addressed to two completely different audiences: the Hibbur to the Jewish community, the Almanach to the Christians. The Almanach is thus a distinct work, not merely a translation of the Hibbur.
An almanac consists of a set of positions for a given planet (including the Sun and the Moon), arranged at intervals of a day or a few days over the period of the planet’s motion (ranging up to one hundred twenty-five years, in the case of Mercury). The advantage of an almanac is that it is “user-friendly,” requiring only linear interpolation between adjacent entries. The first almanac in the Iberian peninsula was that compiled by *Ibn al-Zarqalluh (d. 1100), an astronomer from Toledo. The work influenced several later astronomers such as *Abraham Ibn Ezra (c. 1089–1167) and Ibn al-Banna (1256–1321). This tradition of almanacs in Iberia culminates with Zacuto. There were other almanacs compiled outside the Iberian Peninsula and its area of influence, for instance the tables drawn up in Paris in almanac form in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries by John of Lignères and *John of Saxony among others. But it is unlikely that any of them was the basis for Zacuto’s Almanach.
In 1496 the practice of Judaism was declared illegal in Portugal, and Zacuto was again forced into exile, this time in North Africa. He lived in Fez, Tlemcen, and Tunis where he wrote his Sefer Yuhasin (Book of Genealogies) and adapted the tables of the Hibbur for the year 1501. In 1505 he traveled to Damascus and Jerusalem where he compiled another set of astronomical tables, beginning with the year 1513, arranged for the Jewish calendar and the meridian of that city. Zacuto died around 1515, probably in Jerusalem.
As for the rest of his output, Zacuto wrote in 1486 a work on medical astrology entitled Tratado de las influencias del cielo (Treatise on the Influence of the Heavens), followed by a short text on eclipses: Juicio de los eclipses (Judgment on Eclipses), at the request of his protector at that time, Juan de Zúñiga y Pimentel, Master of the Order of Alcántara. Two other works on astronomy have been attributed to Zacuto: ‘Osar hayyim (Treasure of Life), and Mishpetei ha-‘istagnin (Judgments of the Astrologer), a short astrological work concerning the years 1518–1524. Although Zacuto is mainly known for this astronomical activity, he also wrote on other subjects including lexicography and history.
Zacuto’s work was highly influential, and made an immediate impact in Salamanca where we find texts in Latin and Castilian that are based on the Hibbur (independently of the Almanach). There were also several editions of the Almanach in Latin in the sixteenth century, attesting to its popularity, and there were at least two translations into Arabic. Zacuto’s influence on Jewish scholars was most notable in the Eastern Islamic world, based in large measure on the work he did in Jerusalem shortly before his death.
Zacuto stands as an outstanding intellectual figure in the Spanish Jewish community of his time. He benefited from contact with Christian astronomers in Salamanca who, in turn, depended on a vast corpus produced by astronomers all over northern Europe. He also took advantage of the Jewish tradition in astronomy that developed mainly in southern France and Spain in the late Middle Ages.
See also Almanacs; Calendar
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Albuquerque, Luis de. Facsimile edition of Abraham Zacuto’s Almanach Perpetuum (Leiria, 1496). Lisbon, 1986.
Secondary Sources
Cantera Burgos, Francisco. Abraham Zacut. Madrid: M. Aguilar, 1935.
Chabás, José and Bernard R. Goldstein. “Astronomy in the Iberian Peninsula: Abraham Zacuto and the Transition from Manuscript to Print.” In Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. 90, Pt. 2, Philadelphia, 2000.
———. An Occultation of Venus Observed by Abraham Zacuto in 1476, Journal for the History of Astronomy (1999) 30: 187–200.
Goldstein, Bernard R. The Hebrew Astronomical Tradition: New Sources. Isis (1981) 72: 237–251.
Samsó, J. “La difusión del Almanach Perpetuum de Abraham Zacuto en el Magrib: Un ejemplo de cooperación intercultural e interreligiosa.” In La Civilización Islámica en al-Andalus y los aspectos de tolerancia (Rabat, 2003), 57–70.
———. Abraham Zacuto and Jose Vizinho’s Almanach Perpetuum in Arabic (16th–19th c.), Centaurus (2004) 46: 82–102.
———. In Pursuit of Zacuto’s Almanach Perpetuum in the Eastern Islamic World. Zeitschrift fiir Geschichte der Arabisch-lslamischen Wissenschaften (2002/2003) 15: 67–93.
Vernet, J. “Una versión árabe resumida del Almanach Perpetuum de Zacuto.” In Estudios sobre Historia de la Ciencia Medieval (Barcelona-Bellaterra, 1979), 333–351.
EMILIA CALVO
Zahrawi, Al-
Al-Zahrawi (Abu l-Qasim Khalaf ibn al-‘Abbas) was known variously as Abulcasis, Albucasis, and Alzaharavius in the Latin medical tradition. In contrast to the subsequent impact of his medical work in Western Europe, medieval Islamic sources provide virtually no biographical information about him. Born in the first half of the tenth century, he is said to have died after the year 1009, and according to one source he died in 1013 at the improbable age of 101. His patronymic, al-Zahrawi, indicates that his native city was Madinat al-Zahra’, the governmental center and cultural metropolis established in 936 near Córdoba, southern Spain, by the Umayyad caliph ‘Abd al-Rahman III al-Nasir (r. 912–961). Al-Zahrawi’s life spanned the government of three rulers—‘Abd al-Rahman III, his son al-Hakam II (r. 961–976), and the dictatorial vizier al-Mansur (978–1002)—but whether he worked as court physician to any of them is a subject of speculation.
Physician, pharmacist, and surgeon, al-Zahrawi is credited with the first description of aural polyps, lithotomy with the aid of a special scoop and lancets, what is today known as the Walcher position in obstetrics, and the earliest recorded case of hemophilia, as well as with the pioneering use of animal gut for sutures. These and other medical procedures—some of which were already known in antiquity while the remainder still need to be fully evaluated historically—are described in his only preserved work, Kitab al-Tasrif li-man ‘ajiza ‘an al-ta’lif (the Tasrif). The title of this large medical treatise can be translated as “Arrangement of Medical Knowledge for One Who is Unable to Compile a Manual for Himself,” although the final section has also been rendered in English as “For One Who Wants to Do Without Other Medical Works” or “For One Who Cannot Cope with Compilations.” The compendium, written over a period of forty years, is divided into thirty sections or books of varying length, dealing with general principles of medicine (Book I), diseases, symptoms, and their treatments (Book II), and pharmacology (Books III–XXIX). The pharmacological section is presented in a variety of ways and includes simple and compound drugs, synonyms, substitutes, pharmaceutical manufacturing and techniques, weights and measures, and hygienic and dietary regulations. The thirtieth book, devoted to surgery, is thought to be the first to be illustrated with drawings of surgical instruments. Al-Zahrawi certainly devised a number of surgical instruments, such as a concealed knife for opening abscesses without alarming the patient, hooks of various shapes and sizes, cauteries, pincers, cannulas, probes, a scissor-like instrument for tonsillectomy, wooden instruments for bone-setting, a variety of obstetrical forceps, dilators, and vaginal specula. While the extent to which al-Zahrawi’s writings were known to the medieval Islamic world has yet to be determined, claims regarding al-Zahrawi’s surgical originality have been exaggerated, for he drew heavily on the Greco-Roman literary tradition, mainly Paul of Aegina. It is difficult to assess whether al-Zahrawi actually performed any of the major surgical operations he advocated. Given the author’s comments accompanying some descriptions of surgical techniques and personal experiences, it seems unlikely that he did. None of the surgical instruments he designed has been preserved, although at the end of the twentieth century a number of them were reconstructed from manuscript illustrations.
The Tasrif, especially the surgical treatise, had an enormous influence in Western Europe, and helped to establish the high regard in which modern scholars hold medieval Islamic surgical methods. In the mid-thirteenth century, the first and second books of al-Zahrawi’s treatise were translated twice into Hebrew, and then into a Latin version which was printed at Augsburg in 1519 under the title Liber theoricae nec non practicae Alsaharavii. The twenty-eighth book, devoted to the elaboration of simple drugs, was translated into Latin at the end of the thirteenth century by Abraham Judaeus of Tortosa and Simon of Genoa, and circulated separately as Liber Servitoris, which was printed for the first time at Venice in 1417. The thirtieth book on surgery was translated by *Gerard of Cremona, and also circulated by itself. Its influence is to be found in numerous medieval surgical writings, particularly *Guy de Chauliac’s Chirurgia Magna written in 1363, printed editions of which (Venice, 1497, 1499, 1500) were bound with Gerard’s translation. The reputation of al-Zahrawi’s surgical treatise inspired a Turkish manuscript version, illustrated with human figures, in the mid-fifteenth century for the library of Mehmed II. In the eighteenth century, the surgical chapter of al-Zahrawi also became the subject of an edition with Latin translation by John Channing (Albucasis de chirurgia Arabice et Latine, Oxford, 1778). Some other parts of the Tasrif were transmitted to the West in vernacular languages.
See also Medicine, practical; Medicine, theoretical; Surgery
Bibliography
Abu’l-Qasim al-Zahrawi. Texts and Studies. Collected and reprinted by Fuat Sezgin, et al. 2 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science, 1996 (Islamic Medicine v. 37–38).
Castells, M. “Medicine in al-Andalus until the Fall of the Caliphate.” In The Formation of al-Andalus. Part 2: Language, Religion Culture and the Sciences. M. Fierro and J. Samsó, eds. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998 (The Formation of the Classical Islamic World, 47).
Engeser, M. Der “Liber servitoris” des Abulcasis (936–1013). Übersetzung, Kommentar und Nachdruck der Textfassung von 1471. Stuttgart: Kommision Deutscher Apotheker Verlag, 1986.
Hamarneh, Sami Kh. and Glenn Sonnedecker. A Pharmaceutical View of Abulcasis al-Zahrawi in Moorish Spain: With Special Reference to the “Adhan.” Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1963.
Leclerc, Lucien. La Chirurgie d’Abulcasis. Paris: J.B. Bailliére, 1861 (repr. ed, Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science, 1996 (Islamic Medicine v. 36).
Llavero Ruiz, Eloísa. “Estudio farmacológico de la Maqala XXI del Kitab al-Tasrif de al-Zahrawi.” In Ciencias de la Naturaleza en al-Andalus. Textos y Estudios. IV. C. Álvarez de Morales, ed. Granada: CSIC, 1996: 235–255.
Savage-Smith, Emilie. Some Sources and Procedures for Editing a Medieval Arabic Surgical Tract. History of Science (1976) 14: 245–264.
———. John Channing, Eighteenth-Century Apothecary and Arabist. Pharmacy in History (1988) 30: 63–80.
———. “Europe and Islam.” In Western Medicine: An Illustrated History. I. Loudon, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997: 40–53.
———. “The Exchange of Medical and Surgical Ideas Between Europe and Islam.” In The Diffusion of Greco-Roman Medicine into the Middle East and the Caucasus. J.A.C. Greppin, E. Savage-Smith and J.L. Gueriguian, eds. Delmar and New York: Caravan Books, 1999: 27–55.
This woodcut from the 1516 Valladolid edition of Al-Zahrawi’s Tasrif (Book XXVIII) shows physicians holding a urine flask. (National Library of Medicine)
———. “The Practice of Surgery in Islamic Lands: Myth and Reality.” In The Year 1000: Medical Practice at the End of the First Millennium. E. Savage-Smith and P. Horden, eds. Special volume of Social History of Medicine (2000) 13: 307–332.
Spink, M.S. and G. L. Lewis. Albucasis on Surgery and Instruments. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.
Ullmann, M. Die Medizin im Islam. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1970: 149 –151.
CRISTINA ÁLVAREZ MILLÁN
Zoology
Strictly speaking, there is little reason for including an article on “zoology” in an encyclopedia of medieval science. The term is unknown to medieval Latin and vernacular languages, and there are nearly no texts which might be considered as strictly zoological. Yet there is no doubt that most medieval people had a sound knowledge of the animal world, owing to their continuous contact with it in transportation, animal husbandry, medical use, hunting, and fishing. Many didactic texts devoted to animals were written during the Middle Ages, and they can be classified into four different groups, corresponding to different ways of looking at the animal world.
A first type of knowledge is biblical. The Bible mentions more than one hundred birds and quadrupeds, and the very fact of being quoted in the Vulgate confers on an animal the status of a commonplace for churchmen. As a consequence most biblical commentaries devote some attention to these animals, reflecting on their names and properties, and in some cases their symbolism. Particularly rich texts, such as the Book of Genesis, have been subject to special commentaries: the sermons on the Hexaemeron of St. Basil and St. Ambrose devote considerable attention to various animals, encouraged by the prominent place of the animal world in the story of the Creation. There are even texts especially devoted to biblical animals, but most of them are still unedited.
A second type of knowledge is reflected in *bestiaries. A selection of some forty animals, mainly of Biblical origin, was treated by the anonymous Alexandrian Physiologus. This Greek text, written in the second century C.E., was rapidly translated into Latin and circulated in many versions throughout the Latin West. From the eleventh century onward it developed into larger Latin bestiaries, finally including as many as one hundred twenty species of animals, often lavishly illustrated in de luxe manuscripts. In these texts, each animal is briefly described and some of its properties are evoked as a preliminary to a short allegorical explanation. The aim of these texts is in fact to give keys to animal symbolism, and they have provided a basic source of knowledge about animals to generations of churchmen and artists. A particular representative of this genre is the Aviarium (Book of Birds) of the Augustinian canon Hugo de Folieto (c. 1130–1140), describing the allegorical signification of some twenty-seven birds; his work combines text and illustration in many of the surviving manuscripts. But the expanded Latin bestiaries of the thirteenth century tend to reduce the allegorical comments, which causes them to be more informative and less symbolic. Vernacular translations or adaptations appear at first in Anglo-Norman during the twelfth century, then in continental French and other languages. In this way, the Physiologus and the bestiaries built one of the most successful literary traditions about animals in medieval Europe.
Encyclopedic Works
A third type to be considered is *encyclopedias. This genre, the medieval foundation of which was laid by the Etymologiae of *Isidore of Seville, developed mainly in the thirteenth century. The books on quadrupeds, birds, serpents, and fishes included in these works provide an extensive catalogue of animals: about two hundred twenty-five in Isidore, one hundred fourteen in *Alexander Nequam’s De naturis rerum (c. 1200), one hundred forty-seven in *Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s Liber de proprietatibus rerum (c. 1235–1245), four hundred sixty-three in *Thomas of Cantimpré’s Liber de natura rerum (c. 1240), and more than five hundred in the monumental Speculum Naturale (c. 1250–1260) of *Vincent of Beauvais. The increase in the latter two works is due less to a discovery of new species than to an enlarged access to written sources. It was during the 1220s that Aristotle’s books on animals, translated in Toledo from the Arabic by *Michael Scot, became known in the Latin world. Hence his extensive nomenclature of animals poured into encyclopedic compilations and the Aristotelian corpus produced a variety of secondary texts. The most eminent scholarly treatment of Aristotle’s zoology is the De animalibus (c. 1260-1270) of *Albertus Magnus. This huge summa zoologica, as its modern English translators have termed it, offers a thorough commentary on the nineteen books on animals, interspersed with glosses, personal comments, local information, cross-references. and quotations from other sources. To this Albert added a revised catalogue of animals based on the encyclopedia of his former pupil Thomas of Cantimpré. The De animalibus is the largest medieval text devoted to animals, and it stands out as the most interesting zoological work of the period.
Another class of texts is the technical literature, which encompasses various genres. The largest and most rewarding of these, from the modern point of view, is the treatises on hunting. Medieval falconry has given rise to numerous technical texts, at first in Latin, the oldest one dating back to the tenth century. There are no fewer than eight treatises for the twelfth century, and their number increases over the next two hundred years. From the thirteenth century onwards there was a tendency to translate these Latin texts into the vernacular, followed soon by new treatises written directly in Spanish, Provençal, French, Italian, English, and German. They have a strong link with veterinary art: as a rule, the Latin treatises on falconry are mainly concerned with the manner of curing illnesses of falcons and hawks. Descriptions of the birds are brief, and technical data on how to train them are rare, but their various external and internal illnesses are treated in great detail, large numbers of recipes being written down in order to cure them. There are some longer and more descriptive texts, the most famous being De arte venandi cum avibus by the emperor *Frederick II of Hohenstaufen (c. 1240–1250). This text deserves a major place in the history of zoology. Its six books are concerned with ornithology (I), the method of manning and training falcons (II–III), and the special techniques for hunting cranes, herons, and ducks with gerfalcons, saker falcons, and peregrines (IV–VI). The first book is a totally new analysis of birdlife: the emperor elaborates a classification of birds according to their habitat, studies their nourishment, their migration during spring and fall, their reproduction, anatomy and plumage, their way of flying, their many forms of self-defense, and the annual mew. His method is very Aristotelian, although the information itself is not largely indebted to the antique zoologist. Occasionally, Frederick does not refrain from criticizing Aristotle on the basis of his own experience. Many new insights have been identified in his text about migration and about bird anatomy. Another eminent representative is again Albertus Magnus: in Book XXIII of his De animalibus, he includes a proper treatise De falconibus in twenty-four chapters, which is particularly rich for the description of falcons used in hunting. Other Latin treatises are less pertinent to zoology, but some vernacular texts provided important descriptive information. One of the earliest and richiest of these was the Libro de la caza of the Castilian prince Don Juan Manuel (c. 1320). The treatment of the species of game and of the various dogs used in hunting in the Livre de chasse of Gaston Fébus (written 1384–1391) is largely original, although other parts of the text draw on the Livres du roi Modus et de la reine Ratio of Henri de Ferrières, a major representative of the French cynegetical tradition. While mentioning Gaston Fébus, it is worth noting that there are far fewer treatises on venery, archery, and the cure of dogs than on falconry and the care of falcons and hawks. The anonymous Practica canum, which might be dated to the twelfth century, is the only Latin treatise dealing exclusively with the management and cure of dogs, and the situation does not differ much in the vernacular languages. Finally, one should note the absence of treatises on fishing until the very end of the Middle Ages, when they appear in southern Germany. On the whole, medieval hunting treatises deserve a place in the history of zoology, because their authors had a close knowledge of the animal world, both as game and as auxiliaries. Whereas the churchmen who wrote Biblical commentaries, bestiaries, and encyclopedias most often drew their information from preexistent written sources, the authors of hunting treatises could rely on their experience to expand earlier material.
Technical Literature
“How to go in search of high forests.” Illumination from a medieval text of the Livre de chasse. (Topham/Collection Roger-Viollet)
Technical literature on animals comprises other branches in medieval times, the most prominent being the hippiatric tradition. The antique Greek Hippiatrica were not
known before the Arabic-Latin translations of the thirteenth century, but some Latin texts were available during the early Middle Ages, including those of Vegetius and the Mulomedicina Chironis. A new start was the Marescalcia equorum of Jordanus Ruffus (before 1260), who had been responsible for the stables of Frederick II in Sicily. His text was tremendously popular and was frequently translated into vernacular languages. Other major texts on horse medicine were those of Laurentius Ruzius and of Theodoricus Cerviensis (T. dei Borgognoni) in Latin, Juan Alvarez de Salamiella and Manuel Diaz de Calatayud in Spanish, and the Rossarznei of Meister Albrant, which was the source of many enlarged versions in Germany. These texts often include some descriptive information about horses, their anatomy, and their management. The amplitude and diffusion of this tradition are explained by the prominent place of horses in economic and military terms. Conversely, cattle were not subject to much technical literature; nor were oxen, sheep or swine. It is only through the bias of anatomical study that swine have a place in the history of medieval zoology. Due to the long-lasting lacuna in the dissection of the human body, a substitute was built by the dissection of swine, whose anatomy was considered—not without reason—as most comparable with that of the human. Hence there are several texts devoted to the anatomy of swine (Anatomia porci), which emerged during the twelfth century in the schools of medicine at *Salerno and Naples. Some information on animal husbandry can however be traced in larger works on domestic organization, such as the Housebondrie of Walter of Henley (c. 1250) and the Liber ruralium commodorum of Petrus de Crescentiis (beginning of the fourteenth century). Ultimately, one might also consult the pharmacological works in order to gather some zoological information: animals were part of the materia medica, many recipes in human medicine including some extracts from the body of animals (blood, fat, ground bones, excrement, etc.). Therefore, didactic works on the many available simplicia, or natural products with pharmaceutical effects, include sections on animals, often illustrated in miniatures. There were even specific texts on the Medicinae ex animalibus, going back to a model written in late antiquity by Sextus Placitus Papyriensis.
Representations of animals pervade all genres of medieval art. Iconographical documents can therefore also be included in this rapid panorama of medieval zoological sources. The best depictions appear in miniatures, but not necessarily in the illustrations of works as bestiaries or encyclopedias. Here the figures are very dependent on iconographic traditions, going back sometimes to antiquity. Rather, it is in marginal depictions of birds, quadrupeds, and insects that one will find the most adequate rendering of nature: birds in the margins of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century English manuscripts such as the Alphonso Psalter (London, British Library), the Peterborough Psalter (Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale), and the so-called Bird Psalter (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum) have an astonishing level of naturalism. The same is true for manuscripts produced for Jean de Berry around 1400, or in some fifteenth-century Flemish books of hours. Very spectacular also are the forty-eight large images of birds painted at the very beginning of the fifteenth century in the margins of the Sherborne Missal (British Library). Some treatises on falconry also have accurate depictions: examples include the Vatican manuscript of Frederick II’s De arte venandi or the Moamin of the Musée Condé at Chantilly, painted in Milan and dated 1459. The same is true of medical works, such as the four major illustrated copies of the *Tacuinum Sanitatis (Vienna, Liège, Paris, Rome). Sketchbooks of the fifteenth century often include excellent drawings of animals, such as the famous Taccuino of Giovannino de’ Grassi (Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica) or the albums of Pisanello (Paris, Musée du Louvre). Of course these examples have not been created with a scientific viewpoint, but they nevertheless have more than an artistic interest and deserve a scientific analysis.
See also Aristotelianism
Bibliography
Backhouse, Janet. Medieval Birds in the Sherborne Missal. London: The British Library, 2001.
Brunori-Cianti, Lia and Luca Cianti. La pratica della veterinaria nei codici medievali di mascalcia. Bologna: Edagricola, 1993.
Capponi, Filippo. Per uno studio sulle fonti naturalistiche dell’omiletica ambrosiana. Rivista di cultura classica e medioevale (1992) 34: 81–103.
Clark, Willene B. and Meradith McMunn, eds. Beasts and Birds of the Middle Ages. The Bestiary and its Legacy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989.
De Clerq, Charles. “La nature et le sens du ‘De avibus’ d’Hugues de Fouilloy.” In Methoden in Wissenschaft und Kunst des Mittelalters. Edited by Albert Zimmermann. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990, pp. 279–302.
Delort, Robert. Les animaux ont une histoire. Paris: Seuil, 1984.
Gaulin, Jean-Louis. “Tradition et pratiques de la littérature agronomique pendant le haut Moyen Age.” In L’ambiente vegetale nell’Alto Medioevo. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1990, pp. 103–136.
George, Wilma and Brunsdon Yapp. The Naming of the Beast. Natural History in the Medieval Bestiary. London: Duckworth, 1991.
Gerhardt, Mia. “Zoologie médiévale. Préoccupations et procédés.” In Methoden in Wissenschaft und Kunst des Mittelalters. Edited by Albert Zimmermann. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1970, pp. 231–248.
Hicks, Carola. Animals in Early Medieval Art. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993.
Loncke, Jérémy and Baudouin Van den Abeele. “Les traités médiévaux sur le soin des chiens: une littérature technique méconnue.” In Inquirens subtilia et diversa. Dietrich Lohrmann zum 65. Geburtstag. Edited by Horst Kranz and Ludwig Falkenstein. Aachen: Shaker Verlag, 2002, pp. 281–296.
McCulloch, Florence. Mediaeval Latin and French Bestiaries. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960.
O’Neill, Ynez. Another Look at Anatomia Porci. Viator 1 (1970), pp. 115–124.
Pastoureau, Michel. “L’animal et l’historien du Moyen Age.” In L’animal exemplaire au Moyen Age (Ve–XVe siècles). Edited by Jacques Berlioz, Marie-Anne Polo de Beaulieu and Pascal Collomb. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1999, pp. 13–26.
Poulle-Drieux, Yvonne. L’hippiatrie dans l’Occident latin du XIIIe au XVe siècle. In Médecine humaine et vétérinaire à la fin du Moyen Age. Edited by Guy Beajouan, Yvonne Poulle-Drieux and Jean-Marie Dureau-Lapeysonnie. Genève: Droz, pp. 10–167.
Schäffer, Jürgen and Klaus-Dietrich Fischer. “Tierheilkunde.” In Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. 8, 1996.
Simonetta, Alberto. “La conoscenza del mondo animale dalla Romanità al medioevo.” In L’uomo di fronte al mondo animale nell’alto medioevo. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1985, vol. 1, pp. 107–126.
Thorndike, Lynn. Early Christianity and Natural Science. Basil, Epiphanius and the Physiologus. Biblical Review (1922) 7: 332–356.
Van den Abeele, Baudouin. La fauconnerie au Moyen Age: connaissance, affaitage et médecine des oiseaux de chasse d’après les traités latins. Paris: Klincksieck, 1994 (Collection Sapience, 10).
———. Le “De animalibus” d’Aristote dans le monde latin: modalités de sa réception médiévale. Frühmittelalterliche Studien 33 (1999): 287–318.
———. “Quelques pas de grue dans l’histoire naturelle médiévale.” In Le réalisme. Contributions au séminaire d’histoire des sciences. Edited by Jean-François Stoffel. Louvain-la-Neuve: Centre Interfacultaire d’Etude en Histoire des Sciences, 1996 (Collection Réminisciences, 2), pp. 71–98.
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