Snail Homes, Bog Bodies, and Mechanical Flies: Robert Testard’s Illustrations for Les secretz de l’histoire naturelle (ca. 1485)
Traponee
Sitting in her doorway, spinning wool as her child plays beside her, exchanging a few words with her neighbor leaning out the window across the way… The principal figure of the painting is in some ways an entirely conventional late medieval European woman — down to her headdress and veil — except for the fact that she lives on Traponee, an island somewhere near India, and makes her home inside of a giant snail shell.
This miniature painting, along with fifty-five others, illustrates the Secretz de l’histoire naturelle (Secrets of natural history), a Middle French translation of the Benedictine scholar Pierre Bersuire’s encyclopedic Reductium morale (ca. 1340). Held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Français 22971, as it is known, was created by the illuminator Robert Testard, a favorite of the southwestern French count Charles d’Angoulême (1459–96). Under Charles’ patronage, Testard produced some of the most richly decorated manuscripts of the fifteenth century — including a famous book of hours (ca. 1480), which brought a cheeky, classicizing sensibility to the medieval manuscript tradition.
The Secretz collects a wide swathe of information about the marvels of the world. As in many late medieval texts of this kind, here time and space collapse — Alexander the Great, as fictionalized in the Roman d’Alexandre, is as reliable a source on India as the contemporary missionary Odoric of Pordenone (1286–1331). Fantasy and fact swirl together, so that Terrestrial Paradise (46r) and China (58v) are each as real as they are remote. The former may even be easier to reach than the latter.
Out in the world grow the things that cost money here in France: the jewels that must be extracted from dragons’ stomachs in Ethiopia; the cinnamon trees of Arabia (6r); the mountains of gold on Ophir (45r) and pearls on Trapo (57r). And from Egypt, “celle confiture que on appelle momia, cest a dire char domme confite dont usent les medicins et les apoticayres” (the preserved material that we call mummy, that is to say, that preserved flesh that doctors and apothecaries use). As the products of these far-flung lands make their way to Europe, so too does information: there is the usual palaver about Blemmyes (20r) and centaurs (16v), but the manuscript’s reader also discovers Hindu vegetarianism, Irish bog bodies, and Chinese footbinding. Bersuire is a proto-anthropologist, reporting back about the supposed mores and lifeworlds of faraway lands — in Ethiopia, we learn, the women of the Auriges have group sex on their wedding nights. (He is also a proto-geologist, reporting that the presence of seashells in mountain caves in Macedonia proves that it was once a seashore.)
Contemporary texts like The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (ca. 1357–1371) tended to focus on the mysteries of the Orient, but Bersuire pays as close attention to Europe itself as to the wonders of the East. For the most part, the good people of Europe are simply stout and hale: the Frisians of northern Germany, for instance, love freedom and hate lustfulness (24r). Luckily, the past is a foreign country too. Naples, we are told, was once protected by some magical mathematical automata created by Virgil (11r): when not writing the Aeneid, the great poet invented a bronze fly who kept all the other flies out of the city.
Texts like these were meant to entertain as well as educate, but Bersuire’s mixing of the bizarre and the banal raises questions about what, in fact, their readers would have thought of as strange. The scholar John Block Friedman notes that Français 22971 — the youngest of the Secretz (the BNF also holds the oldest) — is notably feminine: extra women have been added to the paintings, and particular attention given to their clothing. In the picture accompanying the short entry for Media (43v), a seventh-century kingdom in western Asia, the women (unmentioned in the text) wear sumptuous gowns whose velvet texture is palpably invoked by the tiny white dots on their bodices.
Were these illuminations intended for Charles? Or were they for the women he lived with? Charles’ wife, Louise of Savoy (1476–1531), only joined his household when she was fifteen, some six years after the manuscript was produced. However, she entered a house already presided over by his mistress Antoinette de Polignac (1470–1537) and another woman named Jeanne Comte. Louise and Antoinette seem to have become friends. When Charles died only a few years later, the whole family, including both women’s children, moved to Louis XII’s court, where Louise was able to negotiate herself into power, placing her son, the future Francis I, on the throne.
How would these women have read the accounts of the upside down worlds of India and Scythia, where men performed women’s tasks and women men’s? In particular, how would they have looked at the manuscript’s second miniature, showing the female knights and female trumpeters and female queen of the Amazons (2r)?
Did Louise see herself on that throne? It would not have been impossible. After her mother’s death, she had been raised by her cousin, Anne de Beaujeu (1461–1522), the “Madame la Grande” who ruled France as regent from 1483 to 1491. In 1405, Christine de Pizan (1364–ca. 1430) had published The Book of the City of Ladies, making an argument for the political and intellectual importance of women; the following century proved her right, particularly in France. When Louise eventually became regent herself during her son’s reign, it was with another woman, Margaret of Austria, that she signed the Treaty of Cambrai. Marvels like these were no longer the preserve of far-off lands: the Amazons had come home.
Below you can explore a selection of illustrations from this manuscript. The quotations in the captions are taken from Kristen Figg and John Friedman’s translated transcription of the manuscript.
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Africa, f.1r: “And Pliny says that when any man of this country [Africa] has a newborn child and he doubts or has any suspicion regarding the mother’s fidelity, in order to determine if the child is legitimate or not, he exposes it and lays it before serpents, and if the child is truly by nature and blood the offspring of the man who delivers it to the serpents, the serpents will not harm it. But if the child was fathered by another and is put before the serpents, it is immediately eaten and devoured.”
Amazonia, f. 2r: “And they said that they would make war against all men who wished to make war on them and they would defend themselves. And thus have these women always reigned together and still reign.”
Arabia, f. 6r: In the foreground, Arabian men kill dragons and asps, whose bodies contain precious stones. In the background, a phoenix engulfs itself in flames, inaugurating the rebirth ritual, while men on ladders gather cinnamon from the nests of the Cinnamolgus bird.
Bactria, f. 8r: “In this [Central Asian] land grow and live camels that have feet that are much harder than those of camels in other countries. For the hardness of their feet exceeds the hardness of iron. For never, no matter what labor they perform or how far they travel, do they ever become lame or founder.”
Boeotia, f. 8v: This Greek region was named after the ox by Cadmus, to honour the creature after its tracks helped him recover his lost sister, Europa. In the foreground, we also see Lake Furious and Lustful. “For all men and all women, too, as soon as they have drunk of its waters, are so moved to perform lustful acts that they don't know what they will do, so overcome are they by this desire and sensuous heat.”
Bohemia, f. 9r: The Bohemian beast known as the loz, whose throat contains a giant sac filled with water that warms to a boil as it runs. When threatened by hunters and dogs, the loz vomits the boiling water — laced with poison — on its enemies, permanently melting their skin.
Campania, f. 11r: Pictured on the pole is the bronze fly that Virgil fashioned for the city of Naples to deal with its insect issues. Whenever a biological fly would enter the city, due to the abundance of rotting food in Naples, this magical automaton would spring into action and chase away the pests. In the background, we see another bronze object created by Virgil, a trumpet-playing statue. To combat the smoke and ash from Vesuvius, which was affecting farmers’ crops, Virgil designed this statue to harness the north wind and keep the air surrounding Naples clear.
Kedar, f. 13 r: “This [Eastern] lineage live in tents and not at all in houses, and they live like savages and beasts. And they go off wandering in the wilderness like lazy people who have no idea what to do in the deserts, and they flee the company of other people as often as they can. And as Methodius says, this horrible race will issue forth and overrun the earth once at the end of the world. And they will leave behind their own homes and will make war and crush by their great power all of the rest of the world, destroying and rendering uninhabitable all the regions and lands where they go.”
Crete, f. 14 v: “In this region were first invented and developed letters and a method of writing in order to record and set down in words events both past and future, so as to have them in perpetual memory. In this region were first promulgated and published laws and ordinances intended to conserve the peace and to protect individual rights, and their laws and ordinances were written on stone tablets which were erected and displayed in public places. And there were first discovered the seven arts.”
Lower Egypt, f. 15v: Various beasts said to live near the Nile, such as crocodiles, hippopotamuses, lions, leopards, panthers, basilisks, tigers, dragons, snakes, asps, and the Cathoplebas, which can kill any animal just by looking at it. Thankfully, this latter creature is so lazy and ponderous that it can barely lift up its head.
Upper Egypt, f. 16v: In the foreground, Saint Anthony encounters a gentle monster — half man, half horse — who guides him on the right path with signs and facial expressions. In the background, Saint Anthony receives dates from a small wild man, “all hairy and naked, who had nostrils almost completely turned inside out, a horned forehead, and feet like a goat.”
The Aeolians, f. 19v: The nine islands named after Aeolus, king of the winds, which are also known as the Vulcans, due to the fires that are continuously blazing on certain parts of these islands.
Ethiopia, f. 20r: In the foreground at bottom-right, we see an example of Compodes, a group of men with “bendable thighs and buttocks” who move like eels along the earth. In the background, we can observe Blemmyae: “They have no head on their shoulders, and thus have eyes and a mouth on their chests, and all the rest of their body parts are similar to those of the human body, and they are of the greatest cruelty.”
Fortunate Isles, f. 24v: Isles named after their copious supply of fruits, honey, melodious birds, and sweet flowers and herbs. The isle also abound with dairy-producing beasts and large herds of cattle. Truly a terrestrial paradise, the Fortunate Isles seem to be only sailed to by accident.
Germany, f. 28r: “Solinus says that in the said country are certain savage beasts called nesontes, which cannot be domesticated or tamed, and they are in appearance like oxen or cattle. But they have large horns above and nostrils so very long and broad that they seem like a long and capacious boot. And for this reason, when they are in the field, they cannot graze on the grass unless, when they have their heads lowered to the ground, they walk backwards, or otherwise they can neither find their feed nor eat it.”
Ibernia, f. 30r: This Irish lake has a marvellous property: anyone who thrusts a lance or shaft into it will suddenly find their staff naturally converted and changed into iron and stone.
India, f. 31v: “Pliny says that in India there are some men who are so quick and so agile that when they jump from low to high it seems as if they are flying, they leap so nimbly. And these men jump and mount elephants all in a single bound. There are other men there who are nearly savages and have no other occupation besides pursuing and hunting elephants. And when they have taken them, they tame them and teach them such labor as pulling in harness both the wagon and the plow, and carrying and bearing all sorts of things.“
Isle, f. 37r: “Isle is a portion of the habitable world that is entirely surrounded by water. Isidore speaks of it and says that although this region is surrounded by the water of the sea and is beaten on all sides by great waves and great sea tempests, yet the land is in no way diminished or made smaller. Rather it is, because of this, all the stronger and firmer and harder. And when it happens that by chance this island is all covered by the sea, by flood and storm or otherwise, then this island grows and multiplies in size and in height, because of the movement of the earth and the sands of the sea that the great waves of the sea carry and deposit there.”
Italy, f. 38r: In the background, we possibly see Stonyfield, agricultural land completely full of stones, which were rained down by Jupiter to kill a horde of giants.
Libya, f. 41r: “A country that is very little inhabited, as much for the excessive heat that rules there as for the numerous savage beasts that live there, such as lions, tigers, bears, and dragons and leopards.”
Lydonie, f. 41v: In the background, we see a pre-Christian German ritual of burning a corpse instead of burying it, which also involved burning the deceased’s servants, domestics, animals, and moveable possessions. The purpose of this ritual was to make sure the person wasn’t deprived of goods and servants in the next world.
Lytonie, f. 42r: A region in Scythia where marshes and mudflats abound in summer, making travel around the countryside difficult, but also protecting it from invasion by enemies during the warmer seasons.
Macedonia, f. 42v: The tall, straight, and pointed mountains of Macedonia, which are said to have been set up by giants in order to storm the heavens and declare war on God. At the top of central mountain, Athos, we see a pagan sacrificial alter, still preserved, because it never rains.
Medie, f. 43v: “In Media are certain great caverns whose entrances are made in the fashion of a door and are called by the inhabitants of the country cafrres. These cafrres are great and long walkways and passages and roads that go under the earth from one land to another, all the way through a great mountain called the Mount of Thanaye. These alleys and roads were built through the rock completely by hammer and chisel, and this underground passageway extends under the earth fully the extent and length of nine leagues.”
Ophir, f. 45r: This Indian region rich in gold and precious stones is uninhabitable due to the “great number and terrible oppression of savage beasts, which are cruel and horrible and poisonous.” Defying the serpents and flying dragons, merchants occasionally sail to its coasts and gather what they can with hammers and chisels.
Terrestrial Paradise, f. 46r: Here we see the gates of Terrestrial Paradise, guarded by cherubim, and its high walls of burning fire. “No one can go in or go out, neither by force nor by ingenuity.”
Pygmy, f. 47r: A province in greater Judea whose inhabitants “are no taller or fatter than little children”. Pliny describes a marvellously great war between the pigmees and the cranes and storks who make war against them.
Provence, f. 49r: “In the city of Arles there was formerly, before the time of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, a custom both marvelous and very odious. For every year, on the first day of May, they bought three young children with the money of the commonwealth, whom they killed and whose bodies they sacrificed to their idols. And all the blood that had flowed from these three young children they scattered and threw on the heads of the people of the city. And they said that the innocent blood was cast on them for the salvation of the people. And they made this sacrifice long ago in a place called The Rock that is in a suburb of this city between two very high columns of stone.”
Scotland, f. 56v: “In Scotland there is a great pool near the seashore into which the tide enters every day, which fills all valleys. And it pushes back all rivers, of which comes a great marvel. ... For if anyone stops there to see and experience the thing and, from a seated position, watches the rising of the water, he will be in peril of being drowned. And he will find himself surrounded by water and will be marvelously drenched by this water. And if he comes through without stopping and without looking at the pool, he will be able to pass safely without fear of any peril.”
Trapo, f. 57r: On this Indian island, winter and summer occur twice a year. The trees and plants here are always in bloom and the island is richer in precious stones and valuable pearls than anywhere else on earth.
China, f. 58r: This small region is “so extremely far from the habitation of men” that it is almost impossible to access and becomes an island of a kind, surrounded by “great and deep snows”, deserts “so great and so terrible and so full of ravenous, wild, venomous beasts like tigers, wolves serpents, and dragons”, and populated with Anthropophages — cannibals.
Tuscany, f. 59r: A land known as “fragrant incense” in ancient times, because, when the parents and lovers of the inhabitants were dead and prepared for burial, they put a great abundance of incense in the fire around the bodies of the dead.” There are also many beautiful rivers and sprints that are “naturally warm and curative to those who bathe in them.”
Thrace, f. 60r: “Solinus says that in the far reaches of this region there used to be people called Barbarians, who are of a very strange condition and a marvelous manner. For they live like dumb beasts, and they have no sense or reason, and they take no heed of death and kill each other gladly. And they firmly believe that when they are dead their souls are happier after death in the other world than they are in this one.”
Traponee, f. 60v: “Solinus says that among the progeny of Traponee grow the biggest snails that exist in the world, and they move so quickly that it is a marvel, and the men of the country hunt and chase them as we over here hunt wild animals. And the people of the region live on their flesh. And the shells are so big that the men and women of the country live inside them, and they have no other houses or habitations.
Feb 11, 2026
