By Serafim da Silva Neto / Pedro de Azevedo

1. Textos medievais portugueses e seus problemas (Neto), Ministério da Educação e Cultura - Casa de Rui Barbosa, page 40-45.
[Source]

2. “Uma versão portuguesa da Historia natural das aves do sec. XIV” (Azeveo), Revista Lusitana, Volume 25, page 128-147. [Source]

3. Universidade de Brasilia Biblioteca Central, Ms.02

Available Text Formats

Compilation (48 MB PDF file)

About this Text

The Livro des aves or “Book of birds” is a Portuguese translation of the De avibus, a twelfth century Latin moralized treatise on birds by Hugh of Fouilloy. The name of the translator is unknown. The text is found in a fourteenth century manuscript (Universidade de Brasilia Biblioteca Central, Ms.02) now at the Universidade de Brasilia in Brazil.

This document is a compilation of two editions of the text of the manuscript, and a facsimile of the manuscript itself.

1. An article on the manuscript with a partial transcription of the text was produced in 1956 by Serafim da Silva Neto, who owned the manuscript before it was donated to the library. The article is a chapter in the book Textos medievais portugueses e seus problemas by Neto, available from the DSpace Repository. The chapter included here is titled “Fragmento de uma tradução medieval portuguêsa de um Livro das Aves” (page 40-45).
2. An edition and transcription of the Portuguese text was produced in 1925 by Pedro de Azevedo, with the title “Uma versão portuguesa da Historia natural das aves do sec. XIV”. It was published in the journal Revista Lusitana, Volume 25. The original journal article is available from the Internet Archive. The text included here is an extract from the journal (page 128-147).
3. The original digital facsimile of the manuscript Universidade de Brasilia Biblioteca Central, Ms.02 was produced by the library in 2025, and released as a PDF file. The manuscript pages are unbound, and during the assembly of the PDF file the folios were placed in the wrong order. The facsimile included here has been modified as follows:
   • The folios have been arranged in the correct order
   • The page images have been slightly enlarged, trimmed, color corrected, and sharpened (the content has not been modified in any way)
   • The folio numbers have been added at the bottom of each page (the original pagination numbers are not always legible)

Copyright

The original print edition edited by Serafim da Silva Neto (1956) and the edition edited by Pedro de Azevedo (1925) are believed to be in the public domain in most countries. The facsimile of the manuscript digitized by the Universidade de Brasilia Biblioteca Central (2025) was declared by the library to be in the public domain. This digital edition was assembled in 2025 by David Badke, and is released under a Creative Commons license.

This work is made available under a
Creative Commons Licence