Species

38 Species

and scientic sophistication.^28 He was greatly taken by the recent translations of
Aristotle and Averroës (Ibn Rushd, 1126–98) by Michael Scot (1175–1235) of vari-
ous natural history texts, including the Liber animalium (De animalibus historia,
De partibus animalium, De generatione animalium) of Aristotle. He wrote De arte
venandi cum avibus (The art of hunting with birds), published around 1248, and is
reputed to have replied to one of the letters of the Mongol Khans^29 demanding that
he submit to the Khan’s power, that he would gladly resign his throne if we were
allowed to be the Khan’s falconer.^30 Records of the period from 1239–1240 in his
court indicate that falconry took a close second place for him only to the affairs
of government. Inspired by Aristotle’s De animalibus, his passion was falconry,
recently adopted by the European aristocracy from the Arabs, but he was disap-
pointed in Aristotle’s lack of accuracy. He notes in the Preface to De arte:

Inter alia, we discovered by hard-won experience that the deductions of Aristotle,

whom we followed when they appealed to our reason, were not entirely to be relied

upon, more particularly in his descriptions of the characters of certain birds.

There is another reason why we do not follow implicitly the Prince of Philosophers:

he was ignorant of the practice of falconry—an art which to us has ever been a pleasing

occupation, and with the details of which we are well acquainted. In his work “Liber

Animalium” we nd many quotations from other authors whose statements he did not

verify and who, in their turn, were not speaking from experience. Entire conviction of

the truth never follows mere hearsay.^31

This statement is revolutionary, and marks the beginning of the end of the Middle

Ages mindset toward natural history, albeit for the purposes of a sport. He also

says “Our purpose is to present the facts as we nd them.” Unfortunately, due to

the author’s heterodoxy, this view was not directly widely inuential, apart from

informing Albertus Magnus. Still, it does represent an attention to the actual facts

of observation of organisms, which probably meant that such things as breeding

compatibility between types were beginning to take priority over form, or arbitrary

distinctions such as the one in [Pseudo-]Hugh’s Aviarum.

In Book I of De arte venandi, Frederick adopts Aristotle’s division of birds in On

Animals into waterfowl, “whose organs are so fashioned that they may remain for

indenite periods immersed in water,” land birds, and “neutral” birds which may

live in either habitat (chapter 2), because it suits the usage of falconry experts, and

then notes that “they may also be divided into various genera and these again into a

number of species.”^32

He notes in chapter 3 that birds “may be classied in still another manner—as

raptorial and nonraptorial species.” In the Bologna ms, he notes that the raptorial

birds “are the eagles, hawks, owls, falcons and other similar genera.” But in the

Vatican Codex, the paragraph reads thus:

(^28) But see Abulaa 1988, 252ff for a dissenting account of how “Norman” Frederick’s court really was,
defending its sophistication and culture.
(^29) Batu Khan.
(^30) Abulaa 1988, 2 67.
(^31) Wood and Fyfe 1943, 3f.
(^32) Wood and Fyfe 1943, 7.