The 13th-century vernacular bestiary known as the Libro della natura degli animali or the Tuscan Bestiary (hereinafter LdN) is now available in two very dated editions. The first, limited only to the Venetian version handed down by the manuscript PADOVA, Bibl. Comunale, CM 106 (olim CRM 248), was prepared by Max Goldstaub and Richard Wendriner in 1892; the second was edited twenty years later by Milton Garver and Kenneth McKenzie, who based the text of the LdN on a single manuscript of the seven then known – the manuscript PARIS, Bibl. Nationale de France, It. 450, from the mid-14th century, which was indeed often incorrect and full of gaps – corrected and integrated with the use of the manuscripts CITTÀ DEL VATICANA, Bibl. Apostolica Vaticana, Chig. M.IV.137 and ROMA, Bibl. of the Accademia dei Lincei, Cors. 44.G.27. The defects of this edition were highlighted by Cesare Segre and Luigina Morini, so much so that both scholars had to intervene in various points on the text established by Garver and McKenzie before publishing some chapters in the anthology Prosa del Duecento and in the volume Bestiari Medievali. Nonetheless, the LdN is an interesting text both for its high dating (last quarter of the 13th century) and for the fact that it constitutes a valid example of the European dimension of medieval Romance culture and the circulation of its texts: not only, in fact, did the compiler of the LdN draw on sources in French and Latin, but the LdN itself was then translated into Catalan around the middle of the 14th century. I therefore decided to prepare a new edition of the text, in particular of the short version, first investigating the sources used in the preparation of this bestiary.

Language: Italian