This update is all about Jacob van Maerlant and his Middle Dutch encyclopedia of strange animals.

I can’t read Middle Dutch – or modern Dutch – which made working with Jacob’s encyclopedia, Der Naturen Bloeme, something of a challenge. Fortunately Jacob used the Latin name for the animals, so I could at least figure out what the sometimes utterly weird illustrations were supposed to be.

The marine monster Zifius, a beast unlike any other
The marine monster called Zifius, a beast unlike any other. From Lippische Landesbibliothek, Ms. 70, folio 87r.

Jacob’s encyclopedia is a free translation into Middle Dutch of the Latin encyclopedia Liber de Natura Rerum written by Thomas de Cantimpré. Jacob didn’t change much, though he did leave out some of the “unimportant” chapters. Middle Dutch has similarities to modern Dutch, in much the same way the Middle English has similarities to modern English. In both cases someone who can read the modern version of the language can relatively easily learn to read the Middle version. While Thomas’s encyclopedia is written in Latin prose, Jacob’s Middle Dutch translation is written in rhyming verse, many thousands of lines of it.

There are eleven mostly complete manuscript copies of Der Naturen Bloeme, some of them fully illustrated. There are also several fragments of the text that range in size from a couple of thin strips of parchment to multi-page sections, with most being a few often tattered and partial pages. I used three of the illustrated complete manuscripts, plus an illustrated substantial fragment, for images and animal chapter names and order.

Like Thomas’s encyclopedia, Jacob’s version has hundreds of animal chapters; the fully illustrated manuscripts usually have over 400 images each. The four manuscripts I used have over 1500 images, which have all been added to the site (bringing the total number of images online to almost 7000!).

That’s about it for this update, except for the usual corrections. No more encyclopedias for a while; they are just too time consuming. The next update will be whenever I get enough new work done, and will probably involve more information on the beasts.