De Arte Venandi cum Avibus, literally On The Art of Hunting with Birds, is a Latin treatise on ornithology and falconry written in the 1240s by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. One of the surviving manuscripts is dedicated to his son Manfred. Manuscripts of De arte venandi cum avibus exist in a two-book version and in a six-book version.
Surviving manuscripts fall into two groups: those that include all six books and those that include only the first two. All of the manuscripts containing the six books derive from a 13th-century codex now in the library of the University of Bologna. It is possible that this was one of the manuscripts produced during Frederick's lifetime. The 144 parchment folios measure. The text is split in two columns each containing 47 lines. The two prologues and each of the six books begin with a miniature initial. On the first page there is a dedication to "M. E." Several names have been proposed for the identity of M. E. including Malik El-Kamil, a Sultan of Egypt who died in 1238 and "magister Encius", a master falconer of Frederick's court. There are five copies of the Bologna manuscript, all of which have sections omitted. They are held by libraries in Paris, Nantes, Valencia, Rennes and Oxford. Frederick II may have lost an illuminated copy of the De arte venandi cum avibus at the Battle of Parma in 1248. In a letter dating from 1264–1265 addressed to Charles I of Anjou, the Milanese merchant Guilielmus Bottatus offered to sell two large volumes that had once belonged to Frederick II. The volumes are described as containing text discussing dogs, falcons and their diseases. This description only partially matches the contents of the surviving copies of the De arte venandi cum avibus and some scholars have suggested that the letter may have been referring to other manuscripts.
Manuscripts containing two books
There are about seven copies of the Latin manuscript with the most famous copy being an illuminated manuscript commissioned by his son Manfred, a two-column parchment codex of 111 s which is now in the Vatican Library in the Bibliotheca Palatina. The manuscript belongs to the two book version and is illustrated with brilliantly coloured, extraordinarily lifelike, accurate and minute images of birds, their attendants, and the instruments of the art. This manuscript contains additions made by Manfred, which are all clearly marked in the beginning by notations such as "Rex", "Rex Manfredus" or "addidit Rex". A 1596 Latin edition was published in Augsburg by Marcus Welser and reprinted in Leipzig in 1788–89 with commentary by the naturalist Johann Gottlob Schneider. The first translation of this work was into French and was commissioned around 1300 by Jean II, Lord of Dampierre. The first translation into English was by Casey A. Wood and F. Marjorie Fyfe, as The Art of Falconry by Frederick II of Hohenstaufen which was published in 1943.
Content and analysis
This work is notable for the fact that Frederick II mainly confides in his own observations and experiments: he experimented with eggs to see if they would hatch only by the warmth of the sun; he tried to find out if birds used their sense of smell while hunting by covering the eyes of vultures. The author keeps to his intention, formulated in the preface, to describe the things as they are. It is a scientific book, approaching the subject from Aristotle, whom he likes to contradict. At the same time it is a scholastic book, minute and almost mechanical in its divisions and subdivisions. Frederick II was familiar with Aristotle's treatises on animals in Latin translation: Liber Animalum, a translation by Michael Scot from the Arabic translation Kitāb al-Hayawān. He was also familiar with De Scientia Venandi per Aves, a treatise by the Arab falconer Moamyn which was translated into Latin at his court by Master Theodore of Antioch, and much copied. The Vatican edition includes illuminations and has nearly 900 images of birds. It also includes figures of Frederick in a Byzantine pose and another, possibly of Manfred. While the historian Charles Haskins wrote approvingly of the bird illustrations and their lifelike appearance, the zoologist William Yapp found them largely inaccurate.
