Abstract
Giovanni da San Gimignano was a Dominican preacher born between 1260 and 1270, who died after 1333. He mainly wrote sermons, four collections of which can certainly be attributed to him: Sermones de mortuis, Sermones de tempore, Sermones de Sanctis and a Quadragesimale. However, his most widely distributed work was the Liber de exemplis et similitudinibus rerum, a moralizing encyclopedia in ten books. The Liber de exemplis et similitudinibus rerum was written in about 1300 and spread widely across Europe, as can be seen from the huge number of extant manuscripts, altogether 72 specimens. Each book deals with a different aspect of the Creation. Two entire books, the fourth and the fifth, are dedicated to animals. In particular, the first book deals with fish and birds, while the second one with a variety of species not included in book IV. In this chapter, I will try to show the way Giovanni da San Gimignano uses the zoological material to build similitudines and exempla, which are conceived to illustrate what constitutes the characteristics of a good preacher.
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Amelotti, B. (2021). Animals Between Authors and the Natural World in Giovanni da San Gimignano’s Liber de exemplis et similitudinibus rerum. In: Bartosiewicz, L., Choyke, A.M. (eds) Medieval Animals on the Move. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63888-7_5
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