French professor and scientist Guillaume Rondelet (1507-1566) dabbled in many areas, among them anatomy, medicine, botany, and zoology. We're going to focus on a subset of that last one today, because Rondelet legacy in our collections is that of ichthyology, the study of fish. First published in 1554, our copy of Rondelet's masterwork is the 1558 translation, L'Histoire Entière des Poissons (The Complete History of Fish), which remained a standard reference work on the subject until the early 19th century. Not remotely limited to fish, the book includes cephalopods, crustaceans, marine mammals like dolphins, and even less fishy aquatic animals like beavers. And unless you're studying the history of science, the woodcuts are the real stars here. The illustrations are fantastic, and there are a lot of them.
While the "fish" of L'Histoire are all worth looking at, we'll draw your attention to one anomaly, categorized helpfully in the sea monsters section. The "sea monster in the habit of a bishop," now referred to simply as the bishop fish, was something of a hot news item in Rondelet's day. According to his description, the bishop fish has been caught and brought to the King of Poland in 1531, to whom he "made certain signs to show that he had a great desire to return to the sea." The bishop fish was brought back to the ocean, into which he promptly threw himself.To look at L'Histoire, request it online (Rare Book QL41 .R7) and then come to Rauner to see it.
