Medieval Bestiaries: Illuminated Creatures Between Nature and Symbol
In the libraries and monasteries of medieval Europe, between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, scribes and illuminators produced one of the most extraordinary genres in the history of books: the bestiary . Part natural history, part moral theology, part symbolic encyclopedia, the bestiary described the animals of the known world — and many beyond it — not primarily to inform the reader about nature, but to reveal the spiritual meaning encrypted in every creature by divine design. God, the medieval mind held, had written two books: Scripture and Creation. The bestiary was a key to reading the second. The tradition descended from the Physiologus — a Greek text of uncertain authorship, probably composed in Alexandria between the second and fourth centuries CE, that described some fifty animals, plants, and stones, each accompanied by a moral allegory. The Physiologus was translated into Latin, Ethiopian, Armenian, Syriac, Arabic, and eventually every major European vernacular, becomi...