u n i v e rs i t y o f c h i c a g o p r e s s chicago & london

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London 1979 Michael J. Curley Note to the Paperback Edition 2009 Michael J. Curley All rights reserved. Originally published 1979 University of Chicago Press edition 2009 Printed in the United States of America 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 234567

isbn-13: 978-0-226-12870-2 (paper) isbn-10: 0-226-12870-9 (paper) The woodcuts in this edition are reproduced from the 1587 G. Ponce de Leon edition of Physiologus, courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago. The initial research of this work was made possible in part through grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency whose mission is to award grants to support education, scholarship, media programming, libraries, and museums in order to bring the results of cultural activities to the general public. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Physiologus. English. Physiologus / translated by Michael J. Curley. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. isbn-13: 978-0-226-12870-2 (alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-226-12870-9 (alk. paper) 1. Bestiaries. I. Curley, Michael J., 1942 II. Title. PA4273.P8E5 2009 883.01dc22 2009013135 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1992.

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he reprinting of my book thirty years after it rst appeared is a tribute to the richness of the tradition to which Physiologus belongs and the diversity of scholarly approaches that it encourages. A new complexity entered into the history of Physiologus with the appearance of the earliest surviving illustrations to the text in the ninth-century Bern manuscript (Burgerbibliothek Codex Bongarsianus 318). The interaction between text and image, particularly in the amply illustrated manuscripts of the bestiary tradition of the later Middle Ages, has been a topic of keen interest for over a century. Scholars interested in recent discussions of this interaction, with all its complexities and contradictions, can turn to publications such as Janetta Rebold Bentons Medieval Menagerie: Animals in the Art of the Middle Ages (New York, 1992) and Debra Hassigs Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology (Cambridge, 1995). Hassig takes a semiotic approach to the subject in an effort to link the bestiary content to contemporary medieval life and to show the multiplicity of interpretations that readers brought to the text. She studies twenty-eight English manuscripts from the twelfth through the fourteenth century. Both Bentons and Hassigs books are richly illustrated. Interdisciplinary approaches that examine the literary, historical, social, and political uses to which Physiologus and the bestiary were summoned can be found in Beasts and Birds of the Middle Ages: The Bestiary and Its Legacy, edited by Willene B. Clarke and Meradith T. McMunn (Philadelphia, 1989), and in The Mark of the Beast: The Medieval Bestiary in Art, Life, and Literature (New York, 1999), a collection of essays edited by Debra Hassig. Similarly, Malcolm Souths Mythical and Fabulous Creatures (Westport, Connecticut, 1987) is a useful reference guide to a wide variety of fabulous creaturesmany of which made their debut in

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Physiologusand their deployment in art, literature, and history. Important for explaining the heightened interest in the bestiary tradition during the High Middle Ages is Joyce E. Salisburys book The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages (New York, 1994), which argues that a paradigm shift in Western attitudes toward animals occurred in the twelfth century, and marked a breakdown in the rigid conceptual separation of mankind and animals. The appearance of medieval vernacular translations of Physiologus signaled an important stage in the transmission of the text. Some recent editions of the English versions can be found in The Old English Physiologus, edited by Ann Squires (Durham, England, 1988), and in The Middle English Physiologus, edited for the Early English Text Society by Hanneke Wirtjes (Oxford, 1991), the latter of which presents a new edition of BL MS Arundel 292, the only surviving manuscript of this Middle English poetic version of Physiologus. For the Old High German version, see Christian Schrders Der Millsttter Physiologus: Text, bersetzung, Kommentar (Wrzburg, 2005). The inuence of Physiologus on the ancient genre of the animal fable is well established and can be seen in The Fables of Odo of Cheriton (Syracuse, NY, 1985), translated and with an introduction by John C. Jacobs. Jacobss translation is accompanied by drawings of animals from the pen of the thirteenth-century architect Villard de Honnecourt. Jeanette Beers translation of Richard de Fournivals bestiary (Master Richards Bestiary of Love and Response [Berkeley, 1986]), one of the most popular of all French bestiaries, was followed by her recent study (Beasts of Love: Richard de Fournivals Bestiaire damour and a Womans Response [Toronto, 2003]), an analysis of the rhetoric or casuistry of love that Richard grafted onto traditional bestiary lore. Another wellknown Old French prose bestiary of the early thirteenth century has been translated by Guy R. Mermier (A Medieval Book of Beasts: Pierre de Beauvais Bestiary [Lewiston, NY, 1992]).

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Scholars with an interest in the Greek versions of Physiologus and the traditions it inspired will want to consult recent work on the Greek texts, particularly Physiologus: The Greek and Armenian Versions with a Study of Translation Technique, by Gohar Muradyan (Leuven, Belgium, 2005), and Physiologos: Le bestiaire des bestiaries: texte traduit du grec, introduit et comment, by Arnaud Zucker (Grenoble, 2004). Finally, Simona Cohens recent discussion of the bestiary (Animals as Disguised Symbols in Renaissance Art [Leiden, Netherlands, 2008]) has opened a new chapter in the discussion of the topic by demonstrating the continued vitality of the bestiary well into the Renaissance. Michael J. Curley Tacoma, Washington 2009