#liber de natura rerum

[a-book-of-creatures]

Hey tumblr we need to have a talk about something I noticed.

Specifically going by tags attached to images I’ve blogged or reblogged, there seems to be a misconception that marginalia means “any quirky medieval art”.

It’s not.

Marginalia is anything in the margins of a text.

The ones that will get posted on tumblr will more often than not be quirky drawings, but they also include notes, annotations, scribbles, and whatever else. The quirky drawings just happen to get a lot of press on here because, well. They’re quirky drawings.

For instance, see this image here of a platanista (river dolphin) chomping down on an elephant’s trunk?

This is not marginalia! This is a full-fledged illustration. It’s within the text (Liber natura rerum, Thomas de Cantimpré, Librairie de Valenciennes Ms 0320). It illustrates the entry on Platanista.

This is what it looks like in context.

But you know what are marginalia? Let me circle them for convenience.

Know the difference. It won’t save your life but it will make you more popular at a medievalist conference.

[cuties-in-codices]

aquatic creatures (stella, zytiron, serra marina, equus marinus, monachus, scilla)

illustrations from a manuscript copy of thomas of cantimpré's 13th c. liber de natura rerum, bavaria, c. 1424

source: Vatican, Bibl. Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 1066, fol. 110r-125v

[maniculum]

scorpion in thomas of cantimpré's 'liber de natura rerum', bavaria, c. 1424. Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 1066, fol. 132v

[Image ID: A bipedal creature with a grayish body and a tail. It kind of looks like a chicken in silhouette, but with tail and feet like a lizard. Its head is yellow rather than gray, and looks vaguely canine. At least if you had a dog who was bald, wrinkly, yellow, 100 years old, and in a bad mood about it.]

This is so extremely not a scorpion. If there hadn't been a couple of critters with this body plan in the original post, I would be completely floored by this one's existence. Even so, I'm still just kind of staring at it in confusion.

Like, let's be clear here, this is not what Mr. Of Cantimpre is describing in the text. He includes such items as:

A scorpion is a serpent, as Solinus says, which is said to have a charming and virgin-like face.

But it certainly has a poisonous sting in its knotted tail, with which it stings and infects any that approach it.

The scorpion is the only insect that has a tail, and arms, and a spike in the tail.

(I found a translation this time instead of fighting with the Latin -- this is from https://bestiary.ca/ . They admit that this is a machine translation with a human editor, so grain of salt, though.)

None of this is represented in the illustration. Like, Tommy Boy up there can't seem to decide whether this is a serpent or an insect (I'm going to assume the overly-flexible term worm is at fault in this case), but the animal pictured seems to be neither. Its tail is neither knotted nor spiked. You could maybe argue that those are arms. Not on board with the illustrator's interpretation of "charming and virgin-like face"... okay, I guess it's kind of ugly-cute, but that's a stretch.

Anyhow, points:

Small Scuttling Beaſtie? scale unclear, not enough legs, ✘

Pincers? ✘

Exoskeleton or Shell? ✘

Visible Stinger? ✘

Limbs? 2

Vibes... eh. It has charming aspects, but it has this bad-tempered expression on a face that I'm not sure how to react to. 3/5.

Total:

3.2 / 10

I have questions about the illustrator's tastes.

[wambsgender]

succession and the worm

Succession (HBO) // Koninklijke Bibliotheek // Liber de natura rerum // Hamlet // 'The Lambton Worm' // Chrysopoea of Cleopatra // Wikipedia

[dian-and-epicurus-gods]

Praise to Venus Physica

"MOTHER of the Aeneadae, darling of men and gods, increase-giving Venus, who beneath the gliding signs of heaven fillest with thy presence the ship-carrying sea, the corn-bearing lands, since through thee every kind of living things is conceived, rises up and beholds the light of the sun."

- Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Book I

(and a pic of Venus taken by me ;))

[thelonelyme]

𝐀𝐦𝐨𝐫, 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐚 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨

1075 "[...] Nam certe purast sanis magis inde voluptas

quam miseris. Etenim potiundi tempore in ipso

fluctuant incertis erroribus ardor amantum

nec constat quid primum oculis manibusque fruantur.

Quod periere, premunt arte faciuntque dolorem

1080 corporis et dentis inlidunt saepe labellis

osculaque adfligunt, quia non est pura voluptas

et stimuli subsunt qui instigant laedere id ipsum

quodcumque est, rabies unde illaec germina surgunt.

Sed levior poenas frangit Venus inter amorem

1085 blandaque refrenat morsus admixta voluptas."

...

1075 "[...] Voluptuousness is more clear to the wise than to the foolish wretches.

In fact, right at the moment of full possession,

the ardor of lovers fluctuates in uncertain waves

who do not know what to first enjoy with their eyes and hands.

They press tight the creature they desire, inflict pain

1080 to her body, and often bite the tender lips to blood,

they nail her with kisses, for pleasure is not pure,

and there are dark impulses that push to tear the object,

whatever it is, from which the germs of that fury arise.

It hardly attenuates the torment Venus in the act of love,

1085 mitigates the bite, to which it is mixed, the joy of the senses."

Titus Lucretius Carus, vv. 1075-1085, De Rerum Natura IV liber.

[rausule]

Pre-prosa literaria prosa preletteraria:

tr. omne verbum dicitur ad hoc, gentes repetunt. communi voluntate.

Scimus in prisca aetate inter prosam et poesin plane distingui non posse, idcirco ad proprias prosas illas productiones considerandas, quae postea in soluta oratione, i.e. orationes, annales, fasti, laudationes funebres, in quibus multae notae primae oratoriae et historicae distingui possunt.

Commentarii e fasti In exercitio sui mandati politici, unicuique

Magistratu Romano negotium erat notare gravissimas eius magistratus. Notae hae originaliter naturam privatam habebant et in archivo familiae conservabantur. Postmodum publica cura, et praesertim ea quae ad collegia sacerdotalia pertinebant, a religiosis ducibus in praetorio officiali servabantur. Principio documenta haec nomen commentarii vel librorum indifferentem habuerunt, tum terminus commentarius pressius rerum gestarum memoriam designavit, dum liber normarum ritualis naturae, protocolla et statuta indicabat. Romani historici annalesque per centurias traxerunt ut res gestas in opere suo referrent, ex quibus fasti consulares appellati sunt. Hae tabulae, quae Fasti Capitolini notae sunt, ad nos pervenerunt in forma epigraphica et hodie in Campidoglio servantur. Iuxta ea quae a fontibus historicis tradita sunt, Summi Pontificis munus sunt in archivo civitatis conservandi et adaequationis officialis.

commentaria seu libri

gloria

Omnes ad familias patricias pertinentes, Romani Pontifices, in antiquissima historiae Romanae parte, statuta et praecepta de Civitatis operatione viva voce tradiderunt, constituentes vinculum inter politicam et religiosam potestatem, quae diu in historia Romana duravit. Fasti, qui fasti, sic dicti, componendis mandabantur, in quibus dies fasti, i.e. dies, quibus ius administrari poterat, rei publicae, militaris, et religiose observabant.

Calendarii romani instaurationem.

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[a-book-of-creatures]

Probably (hopefully?) one of the "almost no information about the zitiron online" is here (interpretation also included):

The name zitiron, according to Vallot (1834), is a corruption of Ketos (?).

The zitiron in the Liber de Natura Rerum looks like this.

Cantimpré's text is pretty much copy-pasted by Albertus Magnus. We are told that the Zytyron or Miles (soldier) is a large sea creature with a helmet on its head made from wrinkled, tough skin. A hollow triangular shield [scutum] hangs from its neck, attached to the neck by sinews. Its forelegs are strong bifurcated arms that it uses to fight. It is caught by fishermen and has to be bludgeoned to death with hammers. It can be found in the British sea and is a type of tortuca.

If the description wasn't clear enough that this is a sea turtle, the final note makes it explicit. In the entry for tortuca maris we are also told that "it is called the soldier in Germany" and that it "has long legs, and it has toes and claws stronger than a lion".

Fun fact: the underside of a turtle's shell - which would be the "shield" attached by sinews - is known as a plastron, which is another name for a breastplate. Knight imagery abounds!

Zitiron- a creature with the bottom half of a fish and the top half of a knight.

The zitiron only shows up in three sources that I can find- the Ortus Sanitatis (published in Germany 1491, author unknown), Van der Naturen Bloeme (early 14th c) by Flemish poet Jacob van Maerlant, and De natura rerum (1244 CE) by Flemish writer Thomas of Cantimpré. Van der Naturen Bloeme is actually just a Dutch translation of the Latin De natura rerum, so technically there's only two original sources. The only reason I mention both is that the original De natura rerum- which is sourced from a large number of works by philosophers and writers such as Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, St. Ambrose, Jacques de Vitry, and too many others to explore them all as original sources- doesn't have any illustrations and is in Latin, which I can't read, making it a personally useless source. But Van der Naturen Bloeme does have illustrations- the third image in this post is Jacob van Maerlant's interpretation of the zitiron I assume to be outlined in De natura rerum.

The only other original place that a zitiron can be found, according to the internet, is in the Ortus Sanitatis, a Latin natural history encyclopedia with no known author published in 1491 in Mainz, Germany. It has illustrations, the second image in this post is the author's interpretation. But again, I can't read Latin and it's hard to read the stylized text to put into google translate.

There is almost no information about the zitiron online, which is a shame because it's a really interesting figure. If you can read Latin or medieval Dutch I would LOVE to work together to place the origin of this mythological creature and learn more about it!

For the drawing, I wanted to honor Jacob van Maerlant and Thomas of Cantimpré's Flemish heritage. The helmet, chainmail, shield, and goedendag on the zitiron are representative of what the Flemish forces wore and used at the Battle of the Golden Spurs, a 1302 victory of the French that is a source of pride and celebrated every July 11th by the Flemish today.

TLDR: The zitiron is a little known creature from the Middle Ages or perhaps antiquity, with the bottom half of a fish and the top half of a knight. My drawing is inspired by the Flemish culture of two of the only writers to leave any information about the zitiron.

If you've got the time and can read Latin, could you take a look at the two Latin texts I mentioned? For the Ortus Sanitatis, I was able to flip through the whole thing and find the page that has the info on zitirons. It's on page 730 here- (x). But for De natura rerum, which you can access here (x), I have no idea where it could be. There's a translation project for it ongoing through Kalamazoo College, but I don't see anything relating to zitirons or relevant mythology on their page so far. And if you can miraculously read medieval Dutch, here's the link to the page on zitirons in Van der Naturen Bloeme (x).

[a-book-of-creatures]

You put your left foot in, you put your left foot out...

A blemmy from the Liber de Natura Rerum (Valenciennes Ms 0320).

[cuties-in-codices]

blemmyes et al.

illustrations of legendary peoples from a manuscript of thomas of cantimpré's liber de natura rerum, flanders, c. 1492

source: Ghent, St. Bavo's Cathedral, MS No. 15, fol. 2r and 2v

[girlcatullus]

what ancient poetry book/anthology should i get into next

[mynnthia]

check out this lyric video collab i did with my good friend jaz!

(also shout out to the blog @discardingimages for their brilliant collection of historical art!)

heres the sources for the video's component images, in case anyone is curious :) theyre all from actual medieval art

werewolf: Thomas of Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum. France (ca. 1290) Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 320, fol. 56v

swordswoman: Detail of Medieval Royal Armouries Ms. I.33, fol. 32r (p. 63)

tree and hill: British Library, Royal MS 12 F XIII (Rochester Bestiary), folio 11r

stars: celestial bodies. Hebrew miscellany. France (ca. 1277-1286) BL, Additional 11639, fol. 517r

frame: the Sun and the Moon. Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur. France (ca. 1450-1470) Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 134, fol. 49v

My voice is on a rest rn but heres something I recorded a while back, the Ballad of the Sulfur Swamp is a fantasy piece written by my good friend Ross P.M. that I thought looked fun to turn into a full song. Usually my songwriting process is to go from the bottom up, so to start with someone else's lyrics and in a different style than my usual work was incredibly rewarding to piece together! This arrangement was heavily inspired by creators like Hildegard von Blingin', stantough, and the entire Bardcore genre in general. Special thanks to my other good friend @mynnthia for creating this stunning lyric video, be sure to check out their edits!

[youtube link]

[burberrycanary]

The end notes for The Probable Stars are too long to makes sense having on AO3, so I’m including them here.

NB:

• Claudius Ptolemy: 2nd-century Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, geographer and astrologer. Tetrabiblos was a foundational text on astrology for more than a thousand years.

• Robert Grosseteste: a 13th-century English scholastic philosopher, theologian and scientist who wrote De sphera on astronomy and De luce on cosmogony.

• Robert of Chester: a 12th-century Arabist who translated the first book on alchemy to reach Europe, Liber de compositione alchimiae.

• Jabir ibn Hayyan: a 8th-century Islamic chemist and alchemist, astronomer and astrologer, among many other things. Matthew is apparently unconcerned with the pseudo-Geber controversy. (Does he have the inside scoop?)

• Sidereus Nuncius: Starry Messenger by Galileo. The first published scientific work based on observations made through a telescope. It's a lovely design artifact, as well.

• On the Nature of Things: De rerum natura by the 1st-century BC Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius. Alma Venus, caeli subter labentia signa. The manuscript was rediscovery in a German monastery by Poggio Bracciolini in 1417. (I assume Matthew was team Valla in the very public Bracciolini-Valla feud. Did Niccolo de Niccoli hook Matthew up with De rerum natura during his decade-and-a-half “borrowing” of the manuscript from Bracciolini? And, wow, Matthew would have fit in so well amongst this bunch of early renaissance obsessive drama queens.)

• ni muer ni viu ni no guaris: from Quant l'aura doussa s'amarzis by Cercamon, a 12th-century troubadour who composed in Old Occitan and is credited with inventing the Provençal dirge.

• The title of this fic comes from You are tired, (I think) by E. E. Cummings, which includes this amazing stanza:

You have played,

(I think)

And broke the toys you were fondest of,

And are a little tired now;

Tired of things that break, and—

Just tired.

[dian-and-epicurus-gods]

Praise to Epicurus

"For if we must speak as the acknowledged grandeur of the things itself demands, a god he was, a god, most noble Memmius, who first found out that plan of life which is now termed wisdom, and who by trained skill rescued life from such great billows and such thick darkness and moored it in so perfect a calm and in so brilliant a light.

13 Compare the godlike discoveries of others in old times: Ceres is famed to have pointed out to mortals corn, and Liber the vine-born juice of the grape; though life might well have subsisted without these things, as we are told some nations even now live without them.

18 But a happy life was not possible without a clean breast; wherefore with more reason this man is deemed by us a god, from whom come those sweet solaces of existence which even now are distributed over great nations and gently soothe men’s minds.

But unless the breast is cleared, what battles and dangers must then find their way into us in our own despite! What poignant cares inspired by lust then rend the distressful man, and then also what mighty fears! And pride, filthy lust and wantonness? What disasters they occasion! And luxury and all sorts of sloth?

49 He therefore who shall have subdued all these and banished them from the mind by words, not arms, shall he not have a just title to be ranked among the gods?

52 And all the more so that he was wont to deliver many precepts in beautiful and god-like phrase about the immortal gods themselves and to open up by his teachings all the nature of things."

From Book V of De Rerum Natura by Lucretius

[discardingimages]

wild unicorn

Thomas of Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum, France ca. 1290

Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 320, fol. 71r

[a-book-of-creatures]

Here’s some more vintage squids! (sticking to squids, octopuses are a different kettle of cephalopods)

The squid from Thomas de Cantimpré’s Liber de Natura Rerum. It flies like an arrow, so it has avian features!

The squid from the Ortus Sanitatis is… Literally A Fish.

The nameless “horrible monster” described by Olaus Magnus, with its profusion of horns, is believed to an early description of the kraken, and thus a giant squid!

As for the sea monk? Steenstrup popularized the “giant squid” interpretation, but on the balance of the evidence it is more likely that it was an angel shark (aka… monkfish). The weird appearance came about by a game of telephone and artists who took descriptions rather literally.

Different representations of the sea monk and possible suspects from Paxton and Holland (2005) Was Steenstrup Right? A New Interpretation of the 16th Century Sea Monk of the Øresund, which summarizes the facts.

I know that medieval art has some fun depictions of various animals. Are there any fun depictions of squid (or similar creatures) in old-timey art that you know of and would like to share (either from medieval art or another time period)?

YES, I have a couple

One is the depiction of a Sea Monk , there's a squid in there (but it looks pretty damn good honestly!)

and then my other favorite is from a drawing of a "giant squid" that washed up on an Irish beach

 Illustration of “monster” washed ashore in Dingle Bay, 1672