The Chivalry of Judas Maccabee and His Noble Brothers, a verse novel dated 1285, repeatedly uses animals as symbolic narrative motifs. Certain animals (including the anabulla, one of the names for the giraffe in the 13th century) are borrowed from the Liber de natura rerum (LDNR) by Thomas de Cantimpré. The analysis of the text of La Chevalerie and the illustration of its only manuscript witness (Paris, BnF Fr. 15104) shows that the author was not inspired by the text of Thomas de Cantimpré, but by the illustration of the manuscript 320 of Valenciennes (witness of the LDNR), whose iconographic program (of which the instructions for the illuminator have been preserved in the marginal notes) presents deviations from the textual content – ??errors which will be transmitted in later illuminated witnesses of the LDNR. Thus, the anabulla and the aloy are represented there as elephants, whereas it is respectively a giraffe and an elk. The author of La Chevalerie describes these two animals as elephants in his novel, thereby showing that his source is not the Latin text of the LDNR, but “faulty” illustrations of a particular handwritten witness. - [Abstract]

Language: French

DOI: 10.1075/rein.00013.buq; HALId: halshs-02106597