Species

The Medieval Bridge 37

the Physiologus, which remained widely read until the late Middle Ages, and had
been translated into Latin in the fourth century, into French in the thirteenth century,
and Middle English shortly before that. The work was a deliberately theological
Christian work, in which each animal illustrated vices or virtues.
Another source was Isidore of Seville’s (560–636) Etymologiae (c. 630),^18 which
purported to give the linguistic origins of the names of beasts and all other matters, to
make a theological point. As Wirtjes, the translator of the Middle English edition of the
Bestiary, says, bestiaries were intended to show Nature as a second Book of God along-
side the Bible, to show the Christian how to live morally.^19 As such, they do not express
much of a view about the nature of biological species. A medieval bestiary, known in
fact as The Bestiary, simply refers to “kindes,”^20 a nd Hug h of Fou i l loy’s (1111?–1172?;
probably not the author anyway) The Aviary (Aviarum),^21 written between 1132 and
1152, refers to “species” of hawks: “There are two forms [species] of the hawk, namely,
the tame and the wild.” Clearly there is no generative or biological conception in play
here. Species are just sorts of things. In an anonymous contemporary work, The Book of
Beasts,^22 that was itself based on the ever-present Physiologus and Pliny via the work of
Solinus (fl third century),^23 the author several times does exhibit the notion of “species”
as being a kind of beast that breeds true, such as stags, birds in general, and shellsh.^24
However, he also includes hyenas as a kind of animal, even though it appears he thought
of the animal as a hybrid.^25 In the century following the early twelfth century, colloquial
bestiaries became common and popular.
There are two major, and a number of minor, exceptions to the moral form of
bestiaries in this period. Minor exceptions include Thomas van Campitré (Thomas
Cantimpratensis; 1210?–1293) in his compilation entitled Liber de natura rerum^26
and Konrad von Megenberg (1309?–1374) in a colloquial text Puch der natur (Book
of Nature).^27 The two major exceptions are the emperor Frederick II and his acquain-
tance, Albertus Magnus.

FREDERICK II, THE HERETIC FALCONER

Frederick II of Hohenstaufen (1194–1250) was, to say the least, an interesting man.

Excommunicated twice, although he was the Holy Roman Emperor (and King of

Sicily and Jerusalem), for challenging the supremacy of the Pope over secular power,

he nevertheless deviated from the Norman tradition and installed a court of cultural

(^18) Isidore of Seville 2005.
(^19) Wir tjes 1991, lxviii–lxxix.
(^20) White 1954.
(^21) Fouilloy 1992.
(^22) Clark 2006.
(^23) Solinus 1895.
(^24) Clark 2006, 39, 107, 214.
(^25) Walter Raleigh, in his 1614 History of the World [Ra leigh 1614], denies that the hyena is a true species
[White 1954, 31n], because it was a hybrid form of cat and dog, and so would not have been on Noah’s
Ark.
(^26) Cantimpratensis 1973.
(^27) Puch is an archaic spelling of Buch. The critical edition is von Megenberg 1861; cf. Stresemann
1975 , 8.