Philippe de Thaon

Philip de ThaunSometimes Philippe de Thaun, Philippe de Thaon Philip de Thaün, or Philip de Thaon

Writings Three works by Philip survive. Two are signed with his name and are thus securely in his authorship. These works are those on the calendar and the bestiary. A third work, although not signed with Philip's name, It is the first work on calendars to appear in French. Philippe's intent in creating the Comput was to improve the pastoral care provided by secular clergy, and he seems to have followed the example of earlier Old English in doing so.

The Comput deals with the calendar,

Bestiary Philip's second work is the Bestiaire, or Li Bestiaire, Philip's Bestiaire was written between 1121 and 1139 Philip may have written the Bestiarire partly because of the interest of Adeliza's husband, in wildlife as well as hunting. There are some indications that after 1154 Philip changed the dedication of this work to Eleanor of Aquitaine, the new wife and queen of the Henry's grandson King Henry II of England, who had just ascended the throne of England.

The Bestiarie is a translation of the Physiologus. Philip's work is a poem mostly in rhyming hexasyllabic couplets, with the final three hundred or so lines in octosyllabic verse. It is divided into a prologue, the main body of the work, and an epilogue. The main body consists of thirty-eight chapters, of which thirty-five are on animals and the other three are on precious stones. Although the translation is not regarded as a great literary work, it is the earliest surviving translation of the Physiologus into French and is a critical reference for Anglo-Norman French. (The other work is De naturis rerum by Alexander Nequam.) (The other writer is Pierre de Beauvais, who wrote after Philip.)

The Bestiarie has three manuscripts still surviving. It is also in hexasyllabic verse and includes some information from a work by Adso of Montier-en-Der entitled Libellus de Antichristo. The only extant manuscript of Le Livre does not have any indication that the work was by Philip, however.

Three other works have occasionally been attributed to Philip but are not considered to be definitely written by him. These are the Debat de l'ame et du corps and two lapidaries – one alphabetical and one apocalyptic.