Bestiary
|
"The Leopard" from the 13th-century bestiary entitled "Rochester Bestiary." |
A
bestiary, or
Bestiarum vocabulum is a compendium of beasts. Bestiaries were made popular in the
Middle Ages in illustrated volumes that described various animals, birds and even rocks. The
natural history and illustration of each beast were usually accompanied by a moral lesson. This reflected the belief that the world itself was literally the
Word of God, and that every living thing had its own special meaning. For example, the
pelican, which was believed to tear open its breast to bring its young to life with its own blood, was a living representation of
Jesus. The bestiary, then, is also a reference to the
symbolic language of animals in Western Christian art and literature.
Bestiaries were particularly popular in
England and
France around the
12th century and were mainly compilations of earlier texts. The earliest bestiary in the form in which it was later popularized was an anonymous
2nd century Greek volume called
the Physiologus, which itself summarized ancient knowledge and wisdom about animals in the writings of
classical authors such as
Aristotle's
Historia Animalium and various works by
Herodotus,
Pliny the Elder,
Solinus,
Aelian and other naturalists.
Following the
Physiologus, Saint
Isidore of Seville (Book XII of the
Etymologiae) and
Saint Ambrose expanded the religious message with reference to passages from the
Bible and the
Septuagint. They and other authors freely expanded or modified pre-existing models, constantly refining the moral content without interest or access to much more detail regarding the factual content. Nevertheless, the often fanciful accounts of these beasts were widely read and generally believed to be true. A few observations found in bestiaries, such as the
migration of birds, were discounted by the natural philosophers of later centuries, only to be rediscovered in the modern scientific era.
The most well-known bestiary of that time is the
Aberdeen Bestiary. There are many others and over 50 manuscripts survive today.
In modern times, artists such as
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and
Saul Steinberg have produced their own bestiaries.
Jorge Luis Borges wrote a contemporary bestiary of sorts, the
Book of Imaginary Beings, which collects imaginary beasts from bestiaries and fiction. Writers of
Fantasy fiction draw heavily from the fanciful beasts described in
mythology,
fairy tales, and bestiaries. The "worlds" created in Fantasy fiction can be said to have their own bestiaries. Similarly, authors of fantasy
role-playing games sometimes compile bestiaries as references, such as the
Monster Manual for
Dungeons & Dragons. It is not uncommon for video games with a large variety of enemies (especially
RPGs) to include a beastery of sorts (this usually takes the form of a list of enemies and a short description (e.g. the
Metroid Prime and
Castlevania games).
*
Allegory in the Middle Ages*
List of mediæval bestiaries* "
The Medieval Bestiary", by James Grout, part of the
Encyclopædia Romana.
* Payne, Ann. (1990) "Mediaval Beasts.
* Hassig, Debra (1995) Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology.
* Hassig, Debra, ed. (1999) The Mark of the Beast: The Medieval Bestiary in Art, Life, and Literature
.
* Benton, Janetta Rebold. (1992) The Medieval Menagerie: Animals in the Art of the Middle Ages
.
* George, Wilma and Brunsdon Yapp. (1991) The Naming of the Beasts: Natural History in the Medieval Bestiary
.
* Clark, Willene B. and Meradith T. McMunn. (1989) The Bestiary and its Legacy.''
*
The Bestiary: The Book of Beasts, T.H. White's translation of a medieval bestiary in the
Cambridge University library; digitized by the
University of Wisconsin libraries.
*
The Medieval Bestiary online, edited by David Badke.
*
The Bestiaire of Philippe de Thaon at the National Library of Denmark.
*
The Bestiary of Anne Walshe at the National Library of Denmark.
*
The Aberdeen Bestiary at the University of Aberdeen.
