From Sources to Compilations: Portraying the Ostrich in the 13th-Century Compilations about Nature of the Mendicant Orders

Most of the time, the study of encyclopaedic sources tends to start with the compilations to lead to the authorities which are quoted. This article, focusing on the ostrich, proposes the opposite approach. As a first step, we establish a typology of the zoological knowledge available in the 13th century on this animal. We do this, considering a wide range of sources in various disciplines: works of natural history in the Antiquity with Aristotle and Pliny, moral literature, encyclopedic syntheses, alphabetical series of properties, and medical treatises. The second step is to analyse the reception and assimilation of these contents in the main compendia of natural science produced by the mendicant orders in the middle of the thirteenth century, focusing on the Liber de natura rerum of Thomas of Cantimpré, the De proprietatibus rerum of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, the Speculum naturale of Vincent de Beauvais, and the De animalibus of Albert the Great. With this article we wish to contribute to the question of the criteria underlying the selection made by these authors, paying specific attention to the transmitted knowledge as well as to what is rejected or introduced in an original way. - [Abstract]

Language: French

2557-8839; DOI: 10.4000/rursuspicae.1486