Incendula or monedula ? An Enigmatic Bird Name in Medieval Latin-Written Sources

Abstract

The terms excerpted from Czech medieval sources that are listed and explained in Latinitatis medii aevi lexicon Bohemorum include a considerable number of names for domestic, field, forest, and exotic animals. The main source of this Latin zoological terminology is the Glossary by the 14th-century lexicographer Bartholomaeus de Solencia also known as Claretus. The author collected the names of animals mainly from the encyclopaedia De natura rerum written by the 13th-century preacher Thomas of Cantimpré. Apart from more or less well-known terms which are attested already in the Classical Latin and whose origins and meanings have been studied and traced by modern scholars, it is possible to find in Claretus and Thomas of Cantimpré other expressions that still lack a proper explanation of their etymology and meaning. One of these is the bird name incendula (incedula in Claretus) which Thomas found in a copy of Latin version of Aristotle’s Historia animalium, translated by Michael Scotus around 1220 from Arabic. In the Arabic and Latin translation of Aristotle’s treatise, the original information about the bird – the crow or the rook – and about its antagonism with the eagle owl remained basically unchanged, but the original Greek name took a circuitous route to medieval Latin. In the Arabic version the Greek term κορώνη in the relevant passage was four times translated as ġudāf. In Benedikt K. Vollmann’s edition of Scotus’ Latin translation, however, the passage contains two different equivalents of the Arabic word : firstly it is translated as incendula and in three other cases one finds its translation as corvus. The study deals with the question why Michael Scotus used two different words when translating the name of the owl’s rival, and whether the first instance of ġudāf was originally replaced by incendula which still remains to be fully explained, or by the Classical Latin term monedula, „ jackdaw“, which occurs as variant reading in later manuscripts.