Clean and Unclean Animals: Isidore's Book XII from theEtymologiaeand the Structure of Eusebius's Zoological Riddles

Abstract

In the past decades, critics have only occasionally looked at Eusebius's zoological riddles (nos. 37–60) in search for analogues or parallels of the more popular Exeter Book Riddles. Eusebius's animal sequence no doubt lacks originality and basically draws on the contents of Isidore's Book XII of the Etymologiae , the authority on medieval zoological lore. But these texts imitate this source in a subtler way than has been suspected by scholars. Far from being disorganized, as has traditionally been assumed, their arrangement seems to comply with Isidorean compilation criteria, the study of which can provide us with an interesting insight into the ways animal taxonomy was handled by an Anglo-Saxon author from the eighth century.

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