Bestiary
Encyclopedia
Compendium
A compendium is a concise, yet comprehensive compilation of a body of knowledge. A compendium may summarize a larger work. In most cases the body of knowledge will concern some delimited field of human interest or endeavour , while a "universal" encyclopedia can be referred to as a compendium of...
of beasts. Bestiaries were made popular in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
in illustrated volumes that described various animals, birds and even rocks. The natural history
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
and illustration of each beast was usually accompanied by a moral lesson. This reflected the belief that the world itself was the Word of God, and that every living thing had its own special meaning. For example, the pelican
Pelican
A pelican, derived from the Greek word πελεκυς pelekys is a large water bird with a large throat pouch, belonging to the bird family Pelecanidae....
, which was believed to tear open its breast to bring its young to life with its own blood, was a living representation of Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
. The bestiary, then, is also a reference to the symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...
ic language of animals in Western Christian art
Animals in Christian art
In Christian art, animal forms have at times occupied a place of importance. With the Renaissance, animals were nearly banished, except as an accessory to the human figure...
and literature.
The Middle Ages
Bestiaries were particularly popular in EnglandEngland
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan 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
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
volume called the Physiologus, which itself summarized ancient knowledge and wisdom about animals in the writings of classical
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
authors such as Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
's Historia Animalium
History of Animals
History of Animals is a zoological natural history text by Aristotle.-Arabic translation:The Arabic translation of Historia Animalium comprises treatises 1-10 of the Kitāb al-Hayawān .-See also:...
and various works by Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
, Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
, Solinus, Aelian
Claudius Aelianus
Claudius Aelianus , often seen as just Aelian, born at Praeneste, was a Roman author and teacher of rhetoric who flourished under Septimius Severus and probably outlived Elagabalus, who died in 222...
and other naturalists.
Following the Physiologus, Saint Isidore of Seville
Isidore of Seville
Saint Isidore of Seville served as Archbishop of Seville for more than three decades and is considered, as the historian Montalembert put it in an oft-quoted phrase, "le dernier savant du monde ancien"...
(Book XII of the Etymologiae
Etymologiae
Etymologiae is an encyclopedia compiled by Isidore of Seville towards the end of his life. It forms a bridge between a condensed epitome of classical learning at the close of Late Antiquity and the inheritance received, in large part through Isidore's work, by the early Middle Ages...
) and Saint Ambrose expanded the religious message with reference to passages from the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
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
Bird migration
Bird migration is the regular seasonal journey undertaken by many species of birds. Bird movements include those made in response to changes in food availability, habitat or weather. Sometimes, journeys are not termed "true migration" because they are irregular or in only one direction...
of birds, were discounted by the natural philosophers of later centuries, only to be rediscovered in the modern scientific era.
Two illuminated Psalter
Psalter
A psalter is a volume containing the Book of Psalms, often with other devotional material bound in as well, such as a liturgical calendar and litany of the Saints. Until the later medieval emergence of the book of hours, psalters were the books most widely owned by wealthy lay persons and were...
s, the Queen Mary Psalter
Queen Mary Psalter
The Queen Mary Psalter is a fourteenth-century psalter named for Mary I of England, who received it in 1553. Besides devotional texts, the illuminated manuscript contains a bestiary. The psalter is an important devotional text and is noted for its beauty, and is called "one ofthe choicest...
(British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
Ms. Royal 2B, vii) and the Isabella Psalter
Isabella Psalter
The Isabella Psalter , also called the Psalter of Queen Isabella or Psalter of Isabella of England, is a fourteenth-century psalter named for Isabella of France, who is herself depicted in it; it was likely a gift upon her betrothal or marriage...
(State Library, Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
), contain full Bestiary cycles. The bestiary in the Queen Mary Psalter is found in the "marginal" decorations that occupy about the bottom quarter of the page, and are unusually extensive and coherent in this work. In fact the bestiary has been expanded beyond the source in the Norman bestiary of Guillaume le Clerc to ninety animals. Some are placed in the text to make correspondences with the psalm they are illustrating.
The Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
also made his own bestiary.
The Aberdeen Bestiary
Aberdeen Bestiary
The Aberdeen Bestiary is a 12th century English illuminated manuscript bestiary that was first listed in 1542 in the inventory of the Old Royal Library at the Palace of Westminster....
is one of the best known of over 50 manuscript bestiaries surviving today.
Mediaeval bestiaries are remarkably similar in sequence of the animals of which they treat.
Modern Bestiaries
In modern times, artists such as Henri de Toulouse-LautrecHenri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or simply Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, and illustrator, whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of fin de siècle Paris yielded an œuvre of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern...
and Saul Steinberg
Saul Steinberg
Saul Steinberg was a Romanian-born American cartoonist and illustrator, best known for his work for The New Yorker.-Biography:...
have produced their own bestiaries. Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
wrote a contemporary bestiary of sorts, the Book of Imaginary Beings
Book of Imaginary Beings
Jorge Luis Borges wrote and edited the Book of Imaginary Beings in 1957 as the original Spanish Manual de zoología fantástica, or Handbook of Fantastic Zoology, expanding it in 1967 and 1969 to the final El libro de los seres imaginarios...
, which collects imaginary beasts from bestiaries and fiction. Nicholas Christopher wrote a literary novel called "The Bestiary" (Dial, 2007) that describes a lonely young man's efforts to track down the world's most complete bestiary. John Henry Fleming's Fearsome Creatures of Florida (Pocol Press, 2009) borrows from the medieval bestiary tradition to impart moral lessons about the environment. Writers of Fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
fiction draw heavily from the fanciful beasts described in mythology
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
, fairy tales, and bestiaries. The "worlds" created in Fantasy fiction can be said to have their own bestiaries. Similarly, authors of fantasy role-playing game
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
s sometimes compile bestiaries as references, such as the Monster Manual
Monster Manual
The Monster Manual is the primary bestiary sourcebook for monsters in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. It includes monsters derived from mythology, and folklore, as well as creatures created for D&D specifically...
for Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. . The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997...
. It is not uncommon for video games with a large variety of enemies (especially role-playing video game
Role-playing video game
Role-playing video games are a video game genre with origins in pen-and-paper role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, using much of the same terminology, settings and game mechanics. The player in RPGs controls one character, or several adventuring party members, fulfilling one or many quests...
s) to include a bestiary of sorts. This usually takes the form of a list of enemies and a short description (e.g. the Metroid Prime
Metroid Prime
Metroid Prime is a video game developed by Retro Studios and Nintendo for the Nintendo GameCube, released in North America on November 17, 2002...
and Castlevania
Castlevania
Castlevania, known as in Japan, is a video game series created and developed by Konami. The series debuted in Japan on September 26, 1986, with the release of for the Family Computer Disk System , followed by an alternate version for the MSX 2 platform on October 30...
games, as well as Dark Cloud
Dark Cloud
is a role-playing video game for the PlayStation 2 video game console. It was developed by Level-5 and published by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2000 and 2001 in Japan and American/PAL regions respectively. The gameplay of Dark Cloud combines action role-playing with elements of city-building...
and Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy
is a media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi, and is developed and owned by Square Enix . The franchise centers on a series of fantasy and science-fantasy role-playing video games , but includes motion pictures, anime, printed media, and other merchandise...
).
See also
- Allegory in the Middle AgesAllegory in the Middle AgesAllegory in the Middle Ages was a vital element in the synthesis of Biblical and Classical traditions into what would become recognizable as Medieval culture...
- List of mediæval bestiaries
- Marine counterparts of land creaturesMarine counterparts of land creaturesThe idea that there are specific marine counterparts to land creatures, inherited from the writers on natural history in Antiquity, was firmly believed in Islam and in Medieval Europe, and is exemplified by the creatures represented in the medieval animal encyclopedias called bestiaries and in the...
External links
- The Bestiary: The Book of Beasts, T.H. White's translation of a medieval bestiary in the Cambridge UniversityUniversity of CambridgeThe University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
library; digitized by the University of Wisconsin–MadisonUniversity of Wisconsin–MadisonThe University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
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.
- Exhibition (in English, but French version is fuller) at the Bibliothèque nationale de France
- Christian Symbolology Animals and their meanings in Christian texts.
- Bestiairy - Monsters & Fabulous Creatures of Greek Myth & Legend with pictures