Those who are familiar with the collection of tales known as the Kalila wa Dimna, also called the Fables of Bidpai (popular in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, among other languages), might be surprised to encounter the variant in Paris BN Latin 8504. In that translation, written in 1313, Burzuya, the traveling physician, prays to the Virgin Mary, falls asleep, dreams of Christ surrounded by angels, witnesses the Annunciation, and sees himself miraculously in the company of the Virgin and her infant Son. Illustrated Islamic manuscripts of the Kalila wa Dimna have been the subject of various scholarly works, but this finely-illuminated Latin translation, executed by the physician Raymond de Beziers for the French king, has remained relatively neglected. Only one feature of Latin 8504 has provoked much discussion, and that is its two prefatory folios, which represent the earliest “historical” depiction in France, showing the French royal family participating in the events of Pentecost in 1313. The following miniatures, approximately 140, all depict the Kalila wa Dimna. What is the connection between this representation of “history,” in which the French king’s role is highlighted, and the Kalila wa Dimna? And why, of course, does Burzuya have a vision of the Virgin Mary? The current paper argues the following: that the Kalila wa Dimna as presented in Paris Latin 8504 was intended to present new material, which was considered amusing and diverting, but also to tie that new material to familiar frameworks of religion, knowledge, and religious and secular history. The manuscript’s text and images situate the exotic fables within more familiar territory in at least three ways: the Christianization of Burzuya through prayer and the gift of Christian visions, the appearance of the rituals and historical individuals of the French court in the prefatory section, and the addition of proverbs and maxims from the grammar school tradition into the main text of the Kalila wa Dimna (these additions are so numerous that their inclusion nearly doubles the length of the manuscript). In his presentation of the Kalila wa Dimna to the French court, then, Raymond repeats the actions of Burzuya, who similarly brings the tales back to his own king: thereby Raymond inscribes himself in yet another frame story, with hopes, one imagines, of securing for his own name a similar immortality as that enjoyed by the ever-changing Kalila wa Dimna.