‘Des faucons’: édition et étude des quatre traductions en moyen français du ‘De falconibus’ d’Albert le Grand (review)

Cinnamon, powdered toad, and meat soaked in urine: these are just some of the ingredients listed for the veterinary care of hunting birds in Albertus Magnus’s treatise On Falcons. This thirteenth-century text first surveys the various species of birds, discusses their manning (affaitage) and daily care, and finally moves on to various remedies for ailments ranging from head colds to gouty talons and parasites. Alongside Frederick II’s Art of Hunting with Birds, it is, despite its relative brevity, one of the most significant hawking treatises of the medieval West: itself drawing on earlier sources on hunting and natural history (including Dancus Rex, Gerardus falconarius, and Thomas of Cantimpré’s De natura rerum), it was later inserted in Albertus’s scientific masterpiece De animalibus (book xiii, chapter 40) as well as anthologized by Vincent of Beauvais for his revised Speculum naturale. Of the Latin text, whether as part of De animalibus or independently, some fifty-seven manuscripts are known to survive: over a quarter of these (sixteen) are currently preserved in various French libraries (in Arras, Bourges, Dijon, and Paris); the others can be found across Europe and in the United States. However, the extent of the text’s popularity emerges just as poignantly from its multiple vernacular translations and adaptations, dating from the fourteenth century to the sixteenth, notably into French (four versions), Italian (three versions), German, and English (two versions each); a Catalan version was discovered in 2001. Des faucons is the sixth volume in the relatively new but high-quality series on historic hunting treatises, Bibliotheca Cynegetica, where it complements the authoritative modern French translation of Frederick II’s De arte venandi cum avibus by Anne Paulus and Baudouin Van den Abeele (2001), Hubert Beaufrère’s key lexicon of French hawking terminology from the Renaissance to the present (2004), and Jeremy Loncke’s edition of two medieval treatises on hunting dogs, one of which is also by Albert the Great (2007). After a very clear introduction setting out the current state of research on the complex transmission of Albertus’s text, Smets offers annotated critical editions of the four extant versions in Middle French, based on four different manuscripts (Paris, BnF, nouv. acq. fr. 18800, and fr. 2003, 25342, and 1304). Each section contains a detailed codicological analysis as well as a discussion of the translation’s relation to the source text and the particularities of each (anonymous) translator’s approach. A voluminous and meticulously compiled glossary of Middle French, Latin, and German terminology as well as of proper names allows the reader to navigate the various versions on the basis of key words in either their modern or medieval form. An annexe (pp. 533–57) with a modern French version of the most complete translation into Middle French is not just a useful touchstone for the specialists of Albertus Magnus, Middle French language and literature, or translation studies whom this scholarly work envisages as readers; it also opens up this multifaceted text to those with a more general interest in the history of science, natural history, or the age-old cultural phenomenon of hawking.