Dissertation on Birds of Prey and the Sport - the Falconry Heritage ...

Indeed, the Sicilian tradition of falconry was very strong. Frederick 11's forbear,
King Roger I1 (1 139-54), had a falconer named Guillelmus who wrote a treatise that has
not survived, but is used extensively by many authors after him. Of course, the court of
Frederick I1 played a major role in promoting the study of falconry. Frederick kept Arab
falconers in his court, and he ordered to be translated into Latin the Arab treatises of
Moamin and Yatrib that become popular throughout Italy. He also wrote a seminal work
himself.
Frederick I1 produced a truly remarkable book, the De Arte Venandi cum Avibus,
into which he poured all of his superlative knowledge of his favorite pastime, and all that
of other authors, particularly Arab sources, and Aristotle, with whom he takes an unusual,
critical view. It is this empirical approach to falconry that makes Frederick's treatise
unique in his time, and still a valid resource today. His book was the first zoological
treatise to be written in the empirical method of modem science. He wrote it between
1244-1250, after thirty years of preparation.50 The final version, prepared by his son
Manfred, includes zoologically accurate and instructionally correct illustrations of the
text. Frederick's book is also unique in that it does not include medical advice for
treating maladies of birds of prey.s'
The treatise is divided into books, and subdivided hrther into chapters. The first
book is a noteworthy accomplishment by itself. In it he tells of the mating, migration,
feeding and living habits of all sorts of birds. In his second book he begins to concentrate
Cochrane, Adelard of Bath, the First English Scientist (London: British Museum Press, 1994), Chapter 6:
"Falconry."
For more details, see the excellent introduction by Casey Wood and Marjorie Fyfe to their translation of
the De Avibus, The Art of Falconiy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1943).
5 1 He implies however at the beginning of Book I1 that he planned to include that aspect of care as well.
Wood and Fyfe, 106.