Zitiron- a creature with the bottom half of a fish and the top half of a knight.
The zitiron only shows up in three sources that I can find- the Ortus Sanitatis (published in Germany 1491, author unknown), Van der Naturen Bloeme (early 14th c) by Flemish poet Jacob van Maerlant, and De natura rerum (1244 CE) by Flemish writer Thomas of Cantimpré. Van der Naturen Bloeme is actually just a Dutch translation of the Latin De natura rerum, so technically there's only two original sources. The only reason I mention both is that the original De natura rerum- which is sourced from a large number of works by philosophers and writers such as Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, St. Ambrose, Jacques de Vitry, and too many others to explore them all as original sources- doesn't have any illustrations and is in Latin, which I can't read, making it a personally useless source. But Van der Naturen Bloeme does have illustrations- the third image in this post is Jacob van Maerlant's interpretation of the zitiron I assume to be outlined in De natura rerum.
The only other original place that a zitiron can be found, according to the internet, is in the Ortus Sanitatis, a Latin natural history encyclopedia with no known author published in 1491 in Mainz, Germany. It has illustrations, the second image in this post is the author's interpretation. But again, I can't read Latin and it's hard to read the stylized text to put into google translate.
There is almost no information about the zitiron online, which is a shame because it's a really interesting figure. If you can read Latin or medieval Dutch I would LOVE to work together to place the origin of this mythological creature and learn more about it!
For the drawing, I wanted to honor Jacob van Maerlant and Thomas of Cantimpré's Flemish heritage. The helmet, chainmail, shield, and goedendag on the zitiron are representative of what the Flemish forces wore and used at the Battle of the Golden Spurs, a 1302 victory of the French that is a source of pride and celebrated every July 11th by the Flemish today.
TLDR: The zitiron is a little known creature from the Middle Ages or perhaps antiquity, with the bottom half of a fish and the top half of a knight. My drawing is inspired by the Flemish culture of two of the only writers to leave any information about the zitiron.
If you've got the time and can read Latin, could you take a look at the two Latin texts I mentioned? For the Ortus Sanitatis, I was able to flip through the whole thing and find the page that has the info on zitirons. It's on page 730 here- (x). But for De natura rerum, which you can access here (x), I have no idea where it could be. There's a translation project for it ongoing through Kalamazoo College, but I don't see anything relating to zitirons or relevant mythology on their page so far. And if you can miraculously read medieval Dutch, here's the link to the page on zitirons in Van der Naturen Bloeme (x).
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