The first large didactic poem which Jacob van Maerlant translated into the vernacular for the benefit of his fellow countrymen was De Natura Rerum by Thomas of Cantimpré (cf. no. 5). The book is one of the links in a long chain of texts in which knowledge of the existing world of Antiquity was handed down to the Middle Ages. The oldest source is Physiologus, written about AD 200 in Alexandria, in which some fifty animals, birds, legendary creatures and stones are described. In later centuries the book was continually changed and expanded, and with Thomas of Cantimpré the number of descriptions had even grown to several hundred. This extensive compendium, summarizing all knowledge of our world and the universe existing at the time, was slightly abbreviated by Maerlant. In thirteen books he successively dealt with man, quadrupeds, birds, sea monsters and fishes, reptiles and insects, trees, spices and medicinal herbs, springs, precious stones and the seven metals.

The book starts with a number of strange human races which, as had been assumed since Antiquity, lived in unknown and faraway countries such as Ethiopia and India. After credibility as to their existence had further strengthened because the Church Fathers had elaborated upon them, these ‘homines monstruosi’ were assigned a permanent place in medieval encyclopedias. The page reproduced here shows us at the top left, people with such tiny mouths that they are not able to eat; all they can do is sip through straws. Underneath there are cannibals and at the bottom, people with only one eye, the Cyclops. At the top right are people with only one leg, but a foot so large that they can use it as a sunshade. Underneath is a picture of people without heads, but with eyes and nostrils in their chests, and finally people who live on the scent of apples, which they therefore keep permanently under their noses.

The text of Der Naturen Bloeme has come down to us in eleven manuscripts, seven of them illuminated. However, no exhaustive analysis of the interrelation of the manuscripts has been made so far. It is difficult to establish the place of origin of the Hague manuscript, but it must have been made about 1350, either in Flanders or in Utrecht.