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The Book of the Hunt
by Gaston Phoebus
Written between 1387 and 1388 and dedicated to Philip the Bold, duke of
Burgundy, a high-ranking member of the royal family and a keen huntsman, the Book of the Hunt
by Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix, is divided into five
parts that deal in turn with different types of game, the care and training of
hounds, methods of hunting stags ( Stag Hunt)
and other wild animals, and a
closing section on traps and snares (Rabbit Hunt)
. Except for a few passages
excerpted from The Book of King Modus and Queen Ratio, another hunting
treatise written some years earlier by Henri de Ferrières, Gaston's work is
wholly original and based on the author's personal experience. He displays an
acute sense of observation in his description of various types of animal
behavior. From the first, the book was probably meant to be illustrated. The two
oldest extant copies from Avignon include an elaborate cycle of illustrations
that correspond to the treatise's 85 chapters, a cycle that appears in almost
identical form in nearly all later copies. An exceptionally beautiful manuscript
of the book was produced early in the fifteenth century and illuminated under
the direction of an artist related to the Bedford Master . At the end of
the fifteenth century this manuscript belonged to the Saint-Vallier family of
Poitiers, then turned up in the library of Louis XIV. The animal imagery in this
manuscript is outstanding ; it brings vividly to life the way hunting and
related activities were practiced in the Middle Ages.
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