Draak en dolfijn - Een onbekend veertiende-eeuws fragment van Der naturen bloeme van Jacob van Maerlant (Brussel, Centrale Bibliotheek HUB)

Abstract

Around 1270 the Flemish author Jacob van Maerlant made an adaptation of Thomas of Cantimpré’s De natura rerum, called Der naturen bloeme. To date, 27 manuscripts of this text were known to scholars, both complete manuscripts and fragments. This article introduces a 28th witness, the fragmentary remains of a fourteenth-century manuscript. It consists of two snippets, with text from the fourth book (which is about ‘sea monsters’). Further analysis of the fragment shows that it derives from an illustrated manuscript in two columns, probably written in the duchy of Brabant in the second half of the fourteenth century. As small as it is, the fragment contains some unique variants.