A book solely concerned with birds, the Aviary was written by Hugh of Fouilloy, a French cleric from Amiens, in the first half of the twelfth century. Consisting of sixty chapters divided into two parts, his work contains twenty-seven birds allegorically discussed. The Bible constitutes the main bulk of Hugh’s sources that include St. Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job, St. Isidore’s Etymologiae and Hrabanus Maurus’s De rerum naturis (also known as De universo). An unillustrated manuscript from the thirteenth century, British Library, Additional MS 24097, contains Latin moral treatises, the Aviary and bestiary extracts. As Clark notes, it is not at all uncommon to find texts of theological nature (and bestiary material) accompanying the Aviary.

Language: English