Reference edition:

Physiologus latinus: editions preliminaires versio B, F. J. Carmody, Paris 1939.

The Physiologus is one of the few ancient works defined as Gebrauchstexts, texts used and reused which have survived in different versions: four Greek editions, three Latin ones, other oriental ones, one of which is Armenian, from which further numerous translations and reworkings derive in the centuries of the Middle Ages, all witnesses of the great success of the work.

It is an anonymous bestiary in which descriptions of animals, plants and some minerals follow one another, often imaginative and without a clear order. The Christian approach of this look at nature intends to finalize these descriptions to moral teaching on various themes - among others chastity, abstinence, obedience - by connecting them to quotations from sacred texts. A minority part of modern criticism believes that the functionality of the work for religious preaching is not to be considered exclusive and the specific interest in the natural sciences is also relevant.

The Latin translation, which had a strong influence in particular on the western area of Europe and was the basis of numerous further translations into Romance languages, has arrived in two late antique editions, b and y, which are traditionally considered to be based on two different Greek models, but this has been questioned in recent studies (Boodts and Macé). A third edition, x, without title and handed down in two mss. one of which has beautiful illustrations (Physiologus Bernensis, Bern, Burgerbibliothek 318) is expressed in a poor Latin and disfigured by copying errors. For this reason it is not currently included in this library.

Carmody's edition of version b (1939) is today the reference text, but is presented by Carmody himself, in consideration of the complex tradition, as an 'édition préliminaire', that is to say as a starting point for new editions. Carmody did not know the ms. that today is considered the best one (O, Montecassino, Bibl. Abb., lat. 323) and his edition is based on very heterogeneous manuscripts, including the indirect tradition and that of the bestiaries. Shari Boodts and Caroline Macé (2021) judge the edition “entirely unreliable”.

This version was widely disseminated and converges with other sources (in particular the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville) at the origin of the successful genre of medieval bestiaries. Its relationships with the version y are complex and debated, as marked differences are highlighted in some chapters: Giovanni Orlandi (1985) considered version b an augmented reworking of the y. Boots and Macé hypothesize that “Phys. Lat. b may be a further development of an older, archetypal Latin translation, the ancestor of the versions we now know as Phys. Lat. y and b” (2021 p. 137). [R. Tabacco]