The Bestiary of Philippe de Thaon

edited by Thomas Wright, Esq., M.A., F.S.A.

originally published as part of
Popular Treatises on Science Written During the Middle Ages,
in Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and English
London: The Historical Society, 1841

This text is a transcription and translation of The Bestiary of Philippe de Thaon, based on the British Library manuscript Cotton Nero A V in folios 41r to 82v. The Bestiary (or Bestiaire) is a poem of some 1570 lines, written in the Anglo-Norman dialect, and dated to around 1120. Another manuscript containing the poem is Gl. kgl. S. 3466 8º in the Kongelige Bibliotek in Copenhagen. Philippe de Thaon lived in Normandy during the reign of Henri I, in the early twelfth century.

This digital edition is not a complete copy of the print edition of Wright's book, which contains three other texts besides the Bestiary: Anglo-Saxon Manual of Astronomy; Livre de Creatures; and Fragments from Science, from the Early English Metrical Lives of Saints. Only the Preface and the Bestiary of Philippe de Thaon are included the digital edition; the other three texts have been omitted.

Parallel text edition (Anglo-Norman and English translation in parallel columns - 358 KB file)

Sequential text edition (Anglo-Norman and English translation separately - 436 KB file)

Plain text edition (no formatting, text only, Unicode UTF-8 character set - 193 KB file)

The print edition of this text was published in London in 1841; the digital edition was created from the original in 2003 by David Badke. The original print edition by Thomas Wright (1810-1877) is believed to be in the public domain. The digital edition is copyright 2003 by David Badke, but can be used for any non-commercial purpose without further permission. See the copyright notice in the digital edition for more information.

The digital edition has been published as a PDF (Portable Document Format) file. To read it, you will need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader (version 4+), available from the Adobe Web site.