Van den Vos Reynaerde - Het Comburgse handschrift

Janssens e.a. 1991

Van den Vos Reynaerde – Het Comburgse handschrift (Jozef Janssens, Rik Van Daele, Veerle Uyttersprot and Jo De Vos) 1991

[Davidsfonds, Louvain, 1991 (2nd edition)]

On page 196 of this publication Rik Van Daele interprets the diabolical priest in the central panel of Bosch’s Temptations of St Anthony triptych (Lisbon) as a fox: ‘In the foreground, in the water we see three clergymen. The left one is a fox, similar to the type of the preaching fox. His coat is torn open and his body already shows signs of decomposition’. The caption of the accompanying illustration reads: ‘The fox (identified as such by its pointed snout) among misshapen monsters as the false teacher with torn clothes and decomposing body, a symbol of sin’.

Reactions

• Jan Goosens, “De handschriften van de Reinaert”, in: Dietsche Warande & Belfort, vol. 137, nr. 4 (August 1992), pp. 487-497 (in particular p. 492): ‘That the monk in Bosch’s Lisbon Temptation of St. Anthony is a fox, has not convinced me’.

[explicit]