On the Diffusion of Zoological Knowledge in Late Antiquity and the Byzantine Period

The “Diffusion of Zoological Knowledge in Late Antiquity and the Byzantine Period” is characterized by an adaption of a long zoological tradition starting with the biological works of Aristotle. In various ways, the authors of these periods take up, transform, and supplement the traditional data and adapt it to new social, politic, and cultural contexts. Ancient knowledge , in zoology as in other sciences, becomes the subject of Christian discourse , which mainly develops a hermeneutic of this tradition (more than of the natural world directly) especially attentive to its moral and symbolic implications. The present volume brings together eight case studies on this process originally presented at an international conference of the Zoomathia research network held at University of Trier in October 2019. The papers discuss Greek, Latin, and Arabic texts that cover a timespan that starts with the Physiologus (2nd century CE) and Solinus (3rd century CE) and ends with al-Marwaz (12th century CE) and Bartholomew of Messina (13th century).


Contents


Abbreviations 6


Preface 7


Álvaro Pires
A Fiction of Nature and the Nature of Fiction: The Role of Fictionality in the Allegorical Hermeneutics of the Greek Physiologus 13


Diego De Brasi
Basil of Caesarea’s Homilies on the Six Days of Creation : Scientific Transfer and Moral Education between Aristotle and the Bible 37


Caroline Bélanger
Marvellous, Exotic, and Strange: Zoological Knowledge in Solinus’ Collectanea rerum memorabilium 59


Steven D. Smith
Theophylaktos Simokattes: Zoological Knowledge and Sophistic Culture at the End of Antiquity 83


Daniil Pleshak
Animals and Ideology in George of Pisidia’s Hexameron 103


Cristiana Franco
Quorum postremo naturae est extra homines esse non posse. Appraisals of Canine Ethology in Early Christian Writers 117


Pieter Beullens
Bartholomew of Messina’s Role in the Transmission of the Greek Hippiatrica 135
Jean-Charles Ducène


Parmi les sources d’al-Marwazī (XIIe s.): Ptolémée, Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Munaǧǧim (IXe s.) et al-Ǧayhānī (Xe s.) 161


Contributors 177


Indices 179