The Aberdeen Bestiary Project (Aberdeen University, 1996) [Web page]

A description of the project to digitize Aberdeen University Library, Univ. Lib. MS 24.

The Aberdeen Bestiary (Aberdeen University Library MS 24) is considered to be one of the best examples of its type. The manuscript, written and illuminated in England around 1200, is of added interest since it contains notes, sketches and other evidence of the way it was designed and executed.

The entire manuscript has been digitised using Photo-CD technology, thus creating a surrogate, while allowing greater access to the text itself. The digitised version, offering the display of full-page images and of detailed views of illustrations and other significant features, is complemented by a series of commentaries, and a transcription and translation of the original Latin.

The first and still the most comprehensive online edition of a Bestiary.

Language: English

'Liber de naturis rerum' von Pseudo-John Folsham - eine moralisierende lateinische Enzyklopädie aus dem 13. Jahrhundert (Hamburg: University of Hamburg, 2003) [Dissertation]

Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Hamburg.

Language: German

Die moralisierende Enzyklopädie 'Liber de naturis rerum' von Pseudo-John Folsham (in Christel Meier, ed., Die Enzyklopädie im Wandel vom Hochmittelalter bis zur frühen Neuzeit, München: Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften 78, 2002, 123-154) [Book article]

A description of a natural-science encyclopaedia 'Liber de naturis rerum' which was written 1230-40 in England. The author is anonymous, probably an English Dominican. The encyclopaedia was sometimes falsely ascribed to John Folsham, an English Carmelite, died 1348. The work is found in Trinity College Library, R.15.13.

Language: German

The Bird and Animal Captions in the Pepysian Sketchbook (Colorado: English Language Notes, 2000; Series: Volume 38, Issue 2)

Pepys Library, Pepys MS 1916, otherwise known as the "Pepysian Sketchbook" ... is well known for its drawings and paintings of draped hum figures, grotesques, animals and especially birds. ... Many of the captions are badly rubbed and difficult to make out clearly. By examining the manuscript under ultra-violet light, I was able to read and transcribe tj the captions more reliably; furthermore, ultra-violet light revealed and additional eight captions... I offer here a new transcription of all the captions and a few lexicographical notes on some of the bird and animal names. - [Author]

Language: English
DOI: 10.1215/00138282-38.2.1

Animales e imaginario: la zoología maravillosa medieval (Caracas: Dirección de Cultura, Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1995; Series: Colección Letras de Venezuela 125; Serie Ensayo) [Book]

376 pp., illustrations, bibliography.

Language: Spanish
ISBN: 980-00-0875-6; LCCN: 96193653; LC: GR825.A651995; DDC: 398/.469

Aelian’s On the Nature of Animals (Trinity University Press, 2011)

De Natura Animalium (On the Nature of Animals) has a similar patchwork quality, but it was esteemed enough in his time to survive more or less whole, and it is about all that we know of Aelian’s work today. A mostly randomly ordered collection of stories that he found interesting enough to relate about animals—whether or not he believed them—Aelian’s book constitutes an early encyclopedia of animal behavior, affording unparalleled insight into what ancient Romans knew about and thought about animals—and, of particular interest to modern scholars, about animal minds. ... That he is not better known is simply an accident: he has not been widely translated into English, or indeed any European language. This selection from his work will introduce readers to a lively mind and a witty writer who has much to tell us. - [Author]

Language: English

On the Nature of Animals (London: Harvard University Press, 1958-59; Series: Loeb classical library) [Book]

Aelian's On the Characteristics of Animals, in 17 books, is a collection of facts and beliefs concerning the habits of animals drawn from Greek authors and some personal observation. Fact, fancy, legend, stories and gossip all play their part in a narrative which is meant to entertain readers. If there is any ethical motive, it is that the virtues of untaught yet reasoning animals can be a lesson to thoughtless and selfish mankind. The Loeb Classical Library edition of the work is in three volumes. - [Publisher]

Language: English
978-0674994911; OCLC: 221187132

Caxton’s Aesop (Harvard University Press, 1967)

Aesop’s fables, along with a body of other folktales that became attached to them, were traditional popular lore in the Middle Ages and a natural choice for early printing. William Caxton, who established his press in Westminster in 1476, printed his English translation of the fables in 1483–84 from the largest collection then available. The complete Caxton’s Aesop is presented here in an attractively illustrated scholarly edition. Robert Lenaghan’s introduction gives the known historical background of the Caxton fables and their sources, and discusses the Aesopic fable in the Middle Ages. - [Publisher]

Language: English
ISBN: 978-0-674-73084-7

The Fables of Aesop (New York: Macmillan & Co., 1922)

The Fables of Aesop selected, told anew and their history traced by Joseph Jacobs. done into pictures by Richard Heihway.

Much has been learnt during the present century about the history of the various apologues that walk abroad under the name of "Æsop." I have attempted to bring these various lines of research together in the somewhat elaborate introductory volume which I wrote to accompany my edition of Caxton's Æsop, published by Mr. Nutt in his Bibliothèque de Carabas. I have placed in front of the present version of the "Fables," by kind permission of Mr. Nutt, the short abstract of my researches in which I there summed up the results of that volume. I must accompany it, here as there, by a warning to the reader, that for a large proportion of the results thus reached I am myself responsible; but I am happy to say that many of them have been accepted by the experts in America, France, and Germany, who have done me the honour to consider my researches. Here, in England, there does not seem to be much interest in this class of work, and English scholars, for the most part, are content to remain in ignorance of the methods and results of literary history. I have attached to the "Fables" in the obscurity of small print at the end a series of notes, summing up what is known as to the provenance of each fable. Here, again, I have tried to put in shorter and more readable form the results of my researches in the volume to which I have already referred. - [Preface]

Language: English

Aesop's Fables; a new translation (New York: Avenel Books, 1912)

An English translation of Aesop's Fables. Illustrations by Arthur Rackham.

Language: English

Æsop's Fables in English and Latin, interlineary (A. & J. Churchil, 1703)

Aesop's Fables in English translation with Latin text below.

Language: English/Latin

Aesop's Fables Online Collection (John R. Long, 1997)

An online collection of over 650 Aesop's Fables in English.

Language: English

Aesopica: A Series of Texts Relating to Aesop or Ascribed to Him (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007)

Ben Edwin Perry's Aesopica remains the definitive edition of all fables reputed to be by Aesop. The volume begins traditionally with a life of Aesop, but in two different and previously unedited Greek versions, with collations that record variations in the major recensions. It includes 179 proverbs attributed to Aesop and 725 carefully organized fables, for which Perry also provides their eldest known sources. To better evaluate the place of Aesop in literary history, Perry includes testimonies about Aesop made by Greek and Latin authors, from Herodotus to Maximus Planudes. - [Publisher]

Language: English
978-0252031922

Aesop: The Complete Fables (London: Penguin Books, 1998) [Book]

The complete corpus of 358 fables ascribed to Aesop. This translation is based on the earlier work by Emile Chambray (Esope Fables, text Etabli et Traduit par Emile Chambray, Paris, 1927), who established the numbering system.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-14-044649-4

Aesop's Fables (Chicago: Belford, Clarke & Co., 1887)

An English translation of the fables of Aesop.

Language: English

Three Hundred Æsop's Fables (G. Routledge and Sons, 1867)

Three hundred Aesop's Fables translated from Gree to English. Online source has the full text of the book.

Language: English
OCLC: 50382934

Buch der Naturgegenstände (Kiel: C.F. Haeseler, 1892) [Book]

A Syriac version of the Physiologus, with German translation. The source manuscript is probably a 19th century copy.

In addition to previously published editions of Physiologus, the Syrian Buch der Naturgegenstände [BNG, Book of Natural Things] published and translated below, written by the philosopher Aristotle, provides a new one. According to its content, it is divided into four main divisions: land animals, birds, reptiles and aquatic animals; Of these, the sections on land animals and on aquatic animals are each introduced by a larger section in which general remarks on the peculiarities of the animal class in question are compiled; The comments about the birds are broken up into several sections; they are missing about the reptiles. What is now offered in the individual sections goes far beyond the content of the traditional Physiologus, both in terms of the number of chapters and the scope of the narrative in individual chapters; on the other hand, the theories that are otherwise attached are missing. For these reasons I concluded in my treatise "On the history of the so-called Physiologus" published in 1885 that not only the basic form of the Physiologus was present in the Book of Natural Objects, but also the source Basilius the Great for the animal stories in his Homilies on the Hexaemeron. However, I have to withdraw this assumption as untenable; because, what is particularly important, the unity of the BNG cannot be proven; rather, it must be admitted that it is a collective work. First of all, the geographical chapters (80-89) should perhaps be excluded, as they insert themselves between reptiles and fish and completely interrupt the content; then the writing is also characterized as a collective work by the fact that the same animal is mentioned repeatedly a few times (Siren 38 and 110, Seleucis 56 and 63). In the BNG we obviously have to distinguish between different parts, one of which corresponds to the stories of Physiologus, while another refers back to Basilius, so that our book is related to the Phys. Syr. Land as well as the section in Pseudo-Eustathius dealing with the creation of animals, both of which also show a union of Physiologus and certain sections from Basil. Our task will now be to subject the relationship of the BNG to the writings mentioned to a new examination; We start with those sections that are common to the BNG and the Physiologus. - [Author]

Language: German
LCCN: 44-25036; LC: PJ5671.P54; DDC: 381.45; OCLC: 6892892

Zur Geschichte des sogenannten Physiologus (Ploen: 1885) [Book]

On the History of the Physiologus. Includes a table of beasts.

Language: German
OCLC: 785870867

The Animal History of Albertus Magnus and Thomas of Cantimpré (Speculum, 22 (April), 1947, 205-225) [Journal article]

The problem of the relationship between the last five books of Albertus Magnus' De Animalibus and the corresponding books of the De Natura Rerum of Thomas of Cantimpre was first raised nearly a century ago and has not yet been conclusively solved. ... The present paper attempts to show that Albertus borrowed extensively from Thomas. Certain restrictions as to the kinds of evidence valid for such an argument are immediately obvious. Since Thomas' statements are nearly all taken from earlier writings, which were also available to Albertus, material common to the De Natura Rerum and the De Animalibus does not necessarily constitute evidence of influence. Moreover, since Albertus usually rephrases borrowed material, it is difficult to establish conclusively by parallel phrasing alone the sources upon which he drew. It is necessary, therefore, to find in Thomas' work statements not included in his sources and to show that Albertus reproduced these passages. The obvious approach to such a purpose is a study of Thomas' errors. If it can be shown that Albertus consistently reproduces errors original with Thomas, we have, it seems to me, unmistakable evidence of borrowing. - [Author]

Language: English
DOI: 10.2307/2854727

De animalibus (Catholic Library)

An online transcription of the De animalibus of Albertus Magnus. The source of the transcription is not stated. The Latin name of the animals are presented as a link list with the (partial?) text displayed on click.

Language: Latin

De animalibus (Johannes und Gregorius de Gregoriis, 1495)

An early printed edition of De animalibus, an encyclopedia by Albertus Magnus. Includes a table of contents and an index of animal names.

Language: Latin

Diui Alberti Magni de Animalibus Libri vigintisex Nouissime impressi (Venice: Joannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, de Forlivio / Octauiani Scoti, 1495, 1519)

An early printed edition of De animalibus by Albertus Magnus.

Language: Latin
LCCN: 76516279; OCLC: 159902963

Incipit liber Alberti magni animalium ... (per Paulum Johan[n]is de Butschbach alamanum Paul von Butzbach, 1479)

An early printed edition of De animalibus by Albertus Magnus.

Language: Latin

The secrets of Albertus Magnus : of the vertues of herbs, stones, and certain beasts. (London: Printed by M.H. and J.M. and are to be sold by J. Wright, J. Clarke, W. Thackeray, & T. Passinger, 1691)

Full title: The secrets of Albertus Magnus : of the vertues of herbs, stones, and certain beasts. Whereunto is newly added, a short discourse of the seven planets, governing the nativities of children. Also a book of the same author, of the marvellous things of the world, and of certain things, caused of certain beasts

An English translation of pseudo-Albertus Magnus's De virtutibus herbarum, lapidum, & animalium quorundam libellus, and his De mirabilibus mundi, ac de quibusdam effectibus causatis à quibusdam animalibus. Commonly attributed to but probably not actually by Albertus Magnus.

Language: English

Albertus Magnus, on Animals: A Medieval Summa Zoologica (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2018)

An English translation of Albertus Magnus

In this translated and annotated edition, Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr. and Irven Michael Resnick illuminate the importance of this work, allowing Albert’s magnum opus to be better understood and more widely appreciated than ever before. Broken into two volumes (Books 1–10 and 11–26), Albertus Magnus On Animals is a veritable medieval scientific encyclopedia, ranging in topics from medicine, embryology, and comparative anatomy to women, hunting and everyday life, commerce, and much more—an essential work for historians, medievalists, scientists, and philosophers alike. - [Publisher]

Language: English
978-0-8142-1359-9; OCLC: 40575321

Questions concerning Aristotle's on Animals (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2008; Series: The Fathers of the Church : A New Translation)

An English translation of Quaestiones super De animalibus by Albertus Magnus, a commentary on Aristotle's De animalibus.

This text, the Questions concerning Aristotle's On Animals [Quaestiones super de animalibus], recovered only at the beginning of the twentieth century and never before translated in its entirety, represents Conrad of Austria's report on a series of disputed questions that Albert the Great addressed in Cologne ca. 1258. The Questions, in nineteen books, mixes two distinct genres: the scholastic quaestio, with arguments pro et contra, a determination, and answers to the objections; and the straightforward question-and-response. - [Publisher]

Language: English
978-0813215198; DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt285073

Man and the Beasts (de Animalibus, Books 22-26) (New York: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies (SUNY), 1987; Series: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, Volume 47) [Book]

The intent of this translation is to introduce the modern reader to the zoological researches of Albertus Magnus. Though revered as a saint and doctor of the Church and remembered as the mentor of Thomas Aquinas, Albert is less known for his accomplishments in the natural sciences, despite the fact that prominent historians have acclaimed him as the most noted naturalist of Latin Europe in the Middle Ages. ... The present translation of Books 22 to 26 .. is based on [Hermann] Stadler's edition. ... In these final five books of De Animalibus Albert doffed the cap of a scholastic philosopher and assumed the role of a naturalist, a scientist giving free rein to his powers of observation, calling upon an abundant store zoological knowledge accumulated during his travels and citing a number of authorities for animals that lay beyond the ken of his own experience." - [Author]

Stadler based his edition on the manuscript copy of De Animalibus in the municipal archives of Cologne (Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln, W 258A).

Scanlan includes a biography of Albert, a discussion of his sources and methods, and an extensive biography.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-86698-032-6

De animalibus libri XXVI (Munich: Beitäge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, 1916-20; Series: Volumes 15 & 16) [Book]

An edition of the De animalibus of Albertus Magnus Books 1-26.

Volume 15 of the series includes Books 1-12; volume 16 includes Books 13-26.

German introduction and notes; Latin transcription. With an index of books, chapters and animal names in volume 16.

Language: Latin

L'agnello e la colomba: gli animali più simbolici e il loro contesto nell’arte catalana medievale (IKON: Journal of Iconographic Studies, 2009; Series: Volume 2)

By examining Catalan art of the medieval period as a reference context, it is possible to analyze the inclusion of the lamb and the dove in a series of important iconographic programs that take us from monuments to illustrated books, from the 11th and 12th centuries to 15th century. Logically, it is not possible to examine all the examples that have come to us nor all the nuances of the case, but I will try to offer a representative list here. The distance that separates these animals from the represented being places them among the most profoundly symbolic beings of Christian religiosity. In any case, and in general terms, the triumphant Agnus lacks a narrative perspective equivalent to that of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we must consider the similarities and differences that separate both symbols, dove and lamb, as projections and symbols of the complex situations that require the metaphorical visualization of the divine being. - [Abstract]

Language: Italian
1846-8551; DOI: 10.1484/J.IKON.3.34

The Evolution of the Basilisk (Greece & Rome, Second series, 10:2 (October), 1963, 170-181) [Journal article]

The author traces the evolution of the basilisk story from ancient Latin works, concluding that it is based on the Egyptian cobra. The story is then followed through to the middle ages, with examples from medieval authors, showing how it changed because of misunderstandings.

Language: English

Bestiaire chretien: Mort, renovation, resurrection dans le Physiologus; Actes du Colloque de Poitiers, 13-14 mai 1983 (in Francois Jouan, ed., Mort et fecondite dans les mythologies: Travaux et memoires, Paris: Belles Lettres, 1986, 119-137) [Book article]

Language: French

Animal descriptions in Andrea da Barberino's Guerrino meschino (Romance Philology, 56:1, 2002, 23-39) [Journal article]

Aims to identify Andrea da Barberino's sources for the descriptions of exotic beasts found in his Guerrino meschino and to analyse his use of these sources.

Language: English
ISSN: 0035-8002

New Evidence Toward Identifying Dante's Enigmatic Lonza (Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America, 1997) [Digital article]

"Of the three beasts in Inferno 1, the lonza's puzzling nature is triple, comprising its etymology, its naturalistic counterpart, and its allegorical significance. Dante described it as swift, slender, and spotted. For centuries, scholars have grappled with unsatisfactory zoological identifications. The lynx, panther, leopard(ess), pard, cheetah, hyena, and even lioness have been proposed or rejected in turn." - Allaire

The author refers to Pliny and the Tuscan Bestiary in an attempt to identify the beast called the lonza.

The Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America Web site can be found at http://www.princeton.edu/~dante/ebdsa/.

Language: English

Early Christian Symbolism in Great Britain and Ireland before the Thirteenth Century (London: Whiting & Co., 1887; Series: The Rhind Lectures in Archeology) [Book]

The Rhind Lectures in Archaeology for 1885.

Lecture 5 (Norman Sculpture in the Architectural Details of Churches) deals with the changes in sculptural style brought to Britain by the Normans after 1066. There is some reference to animals on stone sculptures and carvings in churches.

Lecture 6 (The Medieval Bestiaries) deals in general with bestiary subjects, and in particular with bestiary images found in the sculptures and carvings in Norman churches and on pre-Norman sculpted stones. It also discusses the various version of the Physiologus.

Language: English
LCCN: 62-2407; LC: BR133.G6; OCLC: 14453521

On the Norman Doorway at Alne in Yorkshire (London: Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 1886; Series: Volume XLII)

A description of the bestiary subjects carved on the Norman doorway of Alne Church in Yorkshire. Illustrated.

Language: English

Norman Sculpture and the Medieval Bestiaries (Dyfed, Wales: Llanerch Publishers, 1990; Series: Rhind lectures in archaeology for 1885) [Book]

Facsimile edition of Lectures 5 and 6 (pages 236 - 395) of Allen's Early Christian Symbolism in Great Britain and Ireland Before the Thirteenth Century (the Rhind Lectures in Archeology for 1885). Originally published by Whiting & Co., London in 1887.

Lecture 5 (Norman Sculpture in the Architechtural Details of Churches) deals with the changes in sculptural style brought to Britain by the Normans after 1066. There is some reference to animals on stone sculptures and carvings in churches.

Lecture 6 (The Medieval Bestiaries) deals in general with bestiary subjects, and in particulr with beastiary images found in the sculptures and carvings in Norman churches and on pre-Norman sculpted stones.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-947992-96-0; LCCN: 94119128; LC: NB1280.A451990z; DDC: 730/.941/090220; OCLC: 27768920

The Book of the Dragon (Secaus, NJ: Chartwell Books, 1979) [Book]

"...this ilustrated history of the dragon ... includes stories, quotations, speculations and tentative suggestions which show the dragon through the differing interpretations from ancient Greece to Mexico, from Hinduism to the pagan cults, in classical art and stonemasonary." - cover copy

128 pp., 140 color and black and white illustrations, bibliography, index.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-89009-241-9; LCCN: 79-51123

An analysis of the medieval French bestiaries (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1935) [Dissertation]

MA dissertation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Language: English
OCLC: 39362109

Bestiary (Winnipeg: St. John's College Press, University of Manitoba, 1984) [Book]

A loose verse translation by Margaret Allen of the Middle English Bestiary (British Library Arundel MS 292), with and introduction and bibliography by Beryl Rowland and line drawings by Arthur Adamson.

53 p., 4 p. introduction, bibliography.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-920291-00-7; LC: PR1836.A241984; DDC: 821'.1

Turteltaube (Modern Language Notes, 19:6 (June), 1904, 175-177) [Journal article]

Some notes on the use of the tutledove theme in German poetry, and its sources.

Language: English

Three early Christian interpretations of nature and scripture: the Physiologus, Origen, and Basil (Princeton: Princeton Theological Seminary, 1984) [Dissertation]

M. Div. dissertation at Princeton Theological Seminary.

88 p.

Language: English
OCLC: 22782229

Waterhorse Legends (MLSIT 4086 & 4086B): The Case for and against a Connection between Irish and Nordic Tradition (An Cumann Le Béaloideas Éireann/Folklore of Ireland Society, 1991; Series: Iml. 59, The Fairy Hill Is on Fire! Proceedings of the Symposium on the Supernatural in Irish and Scottish Migratory Legends)

The belief that certain lakes and rivers are inhabited by supernatural horses is age-old and widespread. Not least frequently it is met with in Ireland, Scotland and the Nordic countries. Such waterhorses, or eachanna uisce as they are called in Irish, also figure in many narratives, some of which are in the form of short but fairly close-knit and well- constructed tales of the type folklorists term fabulates or migratory legends. Two such legends in particular - the one which has often been referred to as respectively The Waterhorse as Riding Horse and The Waterhorse as Work- Horse (or alternatively The Waterhorse as Plough Horse) - have been considered by several scholars - notably C.W. von Sydow and Brita Egardt - to be of ‘Celtic’ origin.’ This assumption rests mainly on certain similarities between Nordic and Scottish forms of the respective legend types, while, until recently, little attention has been paid to the Irish material. This is understandable, since but a fraction of the Irish source material had appeared in print and since the manuscript material was inaccessible at the time the above- mentioned studies were undertaken. - [Author]

Language: English
DOI: 10.2307/20522380

Untersuchungen zum griechischen Physiologus und den Kyraniden (Hamburg: Friedrich Wittig Verlag, 1984) [Book]

"Sonderdruck aus 'All Geschopf ist Zung' und Mund' : Vestigia Bibliae 6."

92 p., bibliography.

Language: German
DDC: 881A; OCLC: 16931513

Hexameron, Paradise, and Cain and Abel (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1961; Series: The Fathers of the Church, 42) [Book]

An English translation of the Hexameron by Ambrose, homilies on the first six days of the Genesis story of creation. The homilies for the fifth and sixth day describe many beasts which are found in the bestiary.

Language: English
LC: BR60F3A56

Hexaemeron (Vienna: Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 1937; Series: Vol XXXII, Part 1) [Book]

Language: Latin

Los bestiarios en la predicacion castellana medieval (in Actas del III Congreso de la Asociacion Hispanica de Literatura Medieval, I II., Salamanca, Spain: Biblioteca Espanola del Siglo XV, Departamento de Literatura Espanola e Hispanoamericana, 1994, 915-921) [Book article]

Language: Spanish
ISBN: 84-920305-0-X

Miniature sacre e profane dell'anno 1023, illustranti l'enciclopedia medioevale di Rabano Mauro, riprodotte in 133 tavole cromolitografiche da un codice di Montecassino [no 132] (Montecassino: Tipo-litografia di Montecassino, 1896; Series: Documenti per la storia della miniatura e dell'iconografia) [Book]

The manuscript of De rerum naturis or De universo of Hrababus Mauris at Montecassino (Cod. 132).

2 p. introduction, 133 color plates.

Language: Italian
LCCN: 03-6649; LC: ND3399.H8; DDC: 745; OCLC: 10186313

Note su una fonte minore del Liber de exemplis et similitudinibus rerum di Giovanni da San Gimignano: il Physiologus (RursuSpicae, 2019; Series: Volume 2)

{p> The Dominican preacher Giovanni da San Gimignano was born between 1260 and 1270 and died after 1333. He wrote mainly sermons. Four collections are attributed to him without doubt: Sermones de mortuis, Sermones de tempore, Sermones de Sanctis and a Quadragesimale. However, the Liber de exemplis et similitudinibus rerum, a moralized encyclopedia in 10 books, reached the largest diffusion. The aim of this paper is to identify the quotations of the Physiologus B in this work and to point out the intermediary source through which they were probably quoted in the De proprietatibus rerum by Bartholomaeus Anglicus. Books IV and V are dedicated to the zoological matters, but only Book v presents some quotations from the Physiologus ; therefore, it is the only one considered here. - [Abstract]

Language: Italian
DOI: 10.4000/rursuspicae.423

A Fox Is Not Always a Fox! Or How Not to Be a Renart in Marie de France's "Fables" (Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, 51:1, 1997, 9-20) [Journal article]

In her fable collection known as the Esope, the first French female poet departs from the typological literature of her contemporaries and rejects the univocal and fixed animal symbolism of her period in order to create something new. I have chosen to focus on the representation of the fox since he, perhaps more than any other animal in the twelfth century, had a well established and well known symbolism, both in the vernacular and in the more didactic literatures. A study of the portrayal of the fox in Marie de France's Fables will thereby allow us to understand more fully the poet's innovation and her daring subversion of available models. However, the example of the fox is but one among many in Marie's recueil, and my conclusions apply to other animals and other aspects of the Esope. In other words, the example of the fox serves only as a prolegomenon to a more extended study of the representation of characters in Marie's Fables, as well as of the symbol-ism in her text, and of Marie's poetic craft in general. - [Author]

Language: English

Le bestiaire des sceaux de l'ancien Orient (in Pierre Dehaye, ed., Le bestiaire: des monnaies des sceaux et des médailles, Paris, 1974, 1-11) [Book article]

Language: French

In search of traces of the mandrake myth: the historical, and ethnobotanical roots of its vernacular names (Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, 2021; Series: 17:68)

Mandrake (Mandragora spp.) is one of the most famous medicinal plant in western cultures since Biblical times and throughout written history. In many cultures, mandrake is related to magic and witchcraft, which is said to have a psychosomatic effect (especially when mandrake contains narcotic compounds) in addition to the pharmacological influence, as occurs with other narcotic magical plants. Due to its unique properties and related myths, it is not surprising that this plant has many names in many languages.This paper presents an attempt to reconstruct the historical, ethnobotanical, and folkloristic roots of 292 vernacular names of Mandragora spp. in forty-one languages. We used the plant’s morphological data, philology, myths and legends, medicinal properties and uses, as well as historical evidence and folkloric data, to explain meaning, origin, migration, and history of the plant’s names.

Language: English
DOI: 10.1186/s13002-021-00494-5

Animal Carvings in British Churches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938) [Book]

99 pp. bibliography, illustrations, index.

Language: English
LCCN: 39027575; LC: NA3680.A6; OCLC: 640043

History and Imagery in British Churches (London: John Murray, 1971) [Book]

308 p., 49 plates (1 fold), illustrations, map.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-7195-2232-3; LCCN: 70873898; LC: BR744.A58; DDC: 247

The Imagery of British Churches (London: John Murray, 1955) [Book]

An extensive survey of the symbols, emblems and attributes depicted in the sculpture and woodwork of medieval British churches. There are many animal references, and one chapter entirely on "The Mirror of Nature". An appendix gives a "List of Animals Identifiable in Churches" with references to the text.

It is therefore the popular understanding of medieval imagery, rather than its doctrinal or aesthetic aspects, that forms the theme of this book which aims at helping its readers to look at the structure and decoraion of medieval churches through the eyes of people like themselves who lived when these churches were being built; to become in imagination those for whom the the picture books of the ecclesiatical arts were designed. ... Since, even if we disregard extremes, we cannot see the whole picture through one pair of eyes, let us attempt a sythesis of three points of view: those of the parson who served an ordinary parish church, the craftsman who built or adorned it, and the parishioner who general paid for the work. I will first try to show the ways in which such men were likely to have affected church-building and the design of religious imagery. Then we must consider the choice and arrangement of subjects according to principles evolved by scholarly theologians... Finally, I will describe the individual subjects included in a normal cycle of illustrations to this Picture Book... - [Author]

240 p., 24 p. of black & white photographs, illustrations, bibliography, index.

Language: English
LCCN: 55002979; LC: BR133.G6A56; OCLC: 3330793

The Medieval Carver (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935) [Book]

A discussion of stone and wood carving in Britain, mostly in churches. Chapter 7 deals specifically with beast and bestiary-related carvings, though there are scattered references to bestiary themes throughout. Chapters: The Masons; Contemporary Scenes; The Bible; Life of the Virgin, Saints and Angels; Allegory, Romance and Satire; Bestiaries and Beasts; Folliage Sculpture.

187 pp., bibliography, general index, index of place names, a few black and white photographic plates.

Language: English
LCCN: 35017483; LC: NB463.A5; DDC: 734.0942; OCLC: 1223271

Misericords: Medieval Life in English Woodcarving (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1954) [Book]

Services were long and frequent in the Middle Ages, and monks and canons had to stand upright longer than they liked. So, comiserating with them, the carpenters made small seats on the underside of the tip-up seats in chancell stalls on which one could sit, or against which at least one could lean while apparently standing. The function and position being what it was, no strict control seems to have been kept over what the carver wished to represent to decorate these miserere or misericord seats. The author of this book tells illuminatingly and entertainingly of the many types of subjects which appear on these seats, from saints and biblical scenes to the romances of Alexander the Great and tristram and Iseult, and from the records of everyday life: boat building, football, and so on, to birds and beasts and monsters. - [Cver copy]

Includes a discussion of the craftsmen who did the carving, dating of the works, stylistic development and sources.

30 pp. of text, 48 pages of black and white photographic plates.

Language: English
LCCN: 55004523; LC: NA5075.A5; OCLC: 648854

Mirrors and Fears: Humans in the Bestiary (Arizona State University, 2004)

The medieval bestiary is often simply described as a moralized "encyclopedia of animals," however, these so-called "books of beasts" were made for humans, by humans, about humans. It is therefore surprising that one common pictorial subject of the bestiary has been left unexamined: humans. By viewing bestiary images through this lens, one may easily see man's underlying and unresolved struggle to maintain dominance over the beasts, and the Others projected onto them, thereby ensuring that "the (hu)man" remains a discrete definition. ... Just as in life, the human figures in the bestiary struggle to establish unquestioned dominion, only to be constantly undercut by the abject. By using a psychoanalytic approach to the human bodies of the bestiary, this study will explore how this imagery reflects the ambiguous position and definition of the human. - [Publisher]

Language: English

The noble lyfe & nature of man, Of bestes, serpentys, fowles & fisshes y be moste knowen (1894; Series: The Boke of Nurture) [Book]

A very rare black-letter book, without date, and hitherto undescribed, except perhaps incorrectly by Ames (vol. 1, p. 412, and vol. 3, p. 1531), has been lent to me by Mr. Algernon Swinburne. Its title is given above: 'The noble lyfe and natures of man' is in large red letters, and the rest in smaller black ones, all surrounded by woodcuts of the wonderul animals, mermaids, serpents, birds, quadrupeds with men's and women's heads, a stork with its neck tied in a knot, and each other beatss 'y be most knowen.' The illustrations to each chapter are wonderfully quaint. The author of it says in his Prologus: 'In the name of ower sauiour criste Iesu, maker & redemour of al mankynd, I Lawrens Andrewe of the towne of Calis haue translated for Johannes does-borrowe, booke prenter in the cite of Andwarpe, this present volume deuyded in thre partes, which were neuer before in no maternall langage prentyd tyl now .'

As it is doubtful whether another copy of the book is known, I extract from from the Third Part of this incomplete one such notices of the fish mentioned by Russell or Wynkyn de Worde, as it contains, with a few others for curiousity's sake. - [Review]

Language: English

Fantastic Fish of the Middle Ages (Godecookery.com) [Web page]

A translation of Lawrens Andrewe's "The noble lyfe & nature of man, Of bestes, serpentys, fowles & fisshes y be moste knowen". A late-medieval manuscript translated into modern English, with period illustrations. Here are the fantastic and incredible fish of the Middle Ages, which populated both the waters and the imagination of the Medieval world. Real creatures still familar to us, such as the salmon and the crayfish will be found here, but you will also read of such fabulous specimens as the Abremon, which propagated without intercourse, the Ezox, so large that a four-horsed cart could not carry one away, and the Nereydes, sea monsters that cried whenever one of them died.

Fantastic Fish of the Middle Ages is from Lawrens Andrewe's "The noble lyfe & nature of man, Of bestes, serpentys, fowles & fisshes y be moste knowen" as reprinted in The Boke of Nurture by Frederick J. Furnivall, 1894. Andrewe's original work was printed sometime between 1400 & 1550.

The modern English translations of Andrewe's text are by James L. Matterer.

Language: English

Beasts in Heraldry: Twenty Heraldic Creatures in Full Color (USA: The Stephen Greene Press, 1974) [Book]

Twenty heraldic creatures in full color, introduced by the Richmond Herald of Arms.

Language: English

Le combat du guerrier contre un animal fantastique: a propos de trois chapiteaux de Vezelay (Bulletin monumental, 152:3, 1994, 245-256) [Journal article]

Romanesque sculpture on capitals in Vezelay, France.

Language: French

A Book of Creatures (A Book of Creatures, 2023)

This web site appears to be the work of one (unnamed) person. It is a blog with numerous articles on real, mythical and fabulous creatures. The articles seem to be carefully researched and include references. The creatures come from all over the world.

Our imagination has always been our greatest ally, and our worst enemy. In the face of the unknown, we populated it with creatures of all shapes and sizes, from minuscule spirits to gigantic cosmic monsters. These entities have shared our world ever since we earned the capacity to wonder. Their stories are told here. - [Author]

Language: English

Liber Amaratis : Physiologus (Liber Amaratis)

The Armenian Physiologus from the edition by Marr with an English translation by Bedrosian.

Language: English/Armenian

Dialogus creaturarum moralizatus (in J.G.Th. Grässe, L.A.J.R. Houwen. ed., Die beiden ältesten lateinischen Fabelbücher des Mittelalters, Tübingen, 1880, 125-280) [Book article]

A series of moralized dialogs between pairs of natural beings and/or objects, in Latin. The beings and objects include astronomical objects, the four elements, geographical features of the Earth, plants, stones and animals.

A digital edition published by Onderzoekschool Medievistiek (Netherlands Research School for Medieval Studies), 1998.

Facsimile (a printed edition with colored drawings) is available from the Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent.

Language: Latin
LCCN: 49030818

Simbolikata na 'Fiziologot' i naseto narodno tvorestvo (Midwest Folklore, 4 (7-8), 1971, 47-67) [Journal article]

Symbols in the Physiologus and Macedonian folklore.

Language: Macedonian

Bestiár: bájná zvírata, zivlové bytosti, monstra, obludy a nestvury v knizní ilustraci konce stredoveké Evropy (Praha: Pudorys, 2003; Series: Tsurah) [Book]

Mythical animals in art.

372 p., illustrations, bibliography.

Language: Czech
ISBN: 80-86018-17-2; LCCN: 2003477689; LC: N7745.A5; OCLC: 52972846

Provenzalische Chrestomathie (Leipzig: 1895) [Book]

Language: German

The Image of Evil in Romanesque Art of the Way of Saint James in Navarra (Navarra: Universidad de Navarra, 1994) [Dissertation]

PhD dissertation at the Universidad de Navarra, Spain.

"This Ph.D. dissertation is a study of the images of evil in the Way of Saint James of Navarra and the Romanesque period (XI and XII centuries). These representations are compared with those located in other points of the Romanesque style in Navarra, in Spanish and European churches: especially Romanesque churches in France located in the Pilgrim's Road to Santiago. Some representations are compared with images that belong to other artistic periods; for example, pre-Romanesque images from Beatos and illuminated books from X and XII centuries or Gothic images from Spanish or French churches, are included. This study is organized in five chapters, which include in a thematic way the group of evil images in Navarra. The first one is dedicated to the devil's image in Biblical scenes: the devil in the Old Testament, New Testament and Apocalypse. We also try to study the devil in the hagiographic scenes: Saint Michael and Saint George slaying the dragon and the devil in Saint Andrew's life. Finally we discuss isolated images of the devil located in corbels of religious buildings. The second chapter refers to the image of Hell in the Romanesque art, sculpted as the cauldron and the mouth of Leviathan or a monster's mouth. Third chapter is about the deadly sins Lust, Avarice, Gluttony, Sloth, Pride and Wrath. We have not found any representations of Envy. In the fourth chapter we refer to the negative bestiaries that include beasts with evil significance, not only fantastic but also real animals. Finally, in the fifth chapter we study profane music and its negative significance. In the conclusion we summarize the main characteristics of the dissertation and we expose influences of classical art, and Jewish and Islamic scatology influences on the Way of Saint James in Navarra. Finally we prove that those artistic forms are influenced by the customs, folklore and popular culture." - abstract

450 p.

Language: Spanish

Dal "Fisiologo" al "Bestiario" di Leonardo (Rivista di storia della miniatura, 1:2 (1996-97), 1998, 239-248) [Journal article]

Language: French

Fonti figurative del Bestiario di Leonardo (Arte lombarda: Rivista di storia dell'arte, n.s.62, 1982, 151-160) [Journal article]

Language: Italian

Der bunte Söller von Schloss Streversdorp/Château Graaf : Überlegungen zu einem spätmittelalterlichen Raumprogramm (in Burg- und Schlosskapellen, Stuttgart: K. Theiss, 1995, 109-117) [Book article]

Research on the iconographic program of the murals of the principal room of the Graaf Castle in Montzen: the mixture of Christian scenes and allegorical representations related to the text of Physiologus, the symbols of the love and the virtues. A certain number of scenes are accompanied by inscriptions.

Language: German

Aristotle's History of Animals in Ten Books (London: George Bell, 1887)

An English translation of De animalibus by Aristotle.

The following Translation of Aristotle's History of Animals has been made from the text of Schneider. In a work of considerable difficulty it is hardly possible entirely to avoid errors; but it is hoped that those which have escaped are neither numerous nor important. The notes of Schneider have been consulted throughout; and in places of difficulty the English translation by Taylor, the French of Camus, and the German of Strack, have been severally referred to. - [Translator's preface]

Language: English

The History of Animals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910)

An English translation of Aristotle's De animalibus.

Language: English

El bestiario medieval: Una clave para la interpretacion del Libro de los gatos (in Lillian von der Walde, Concepcion Company & Aurelio Gonzalez, ed., Caballeros, monjas y maestros en la Edad Media: Actas de las V Jornadas Medievales, Mexico City: Medievalia 13: Colegio de Mexico, University Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 1996, 205-219) [Book article]

Language: Spanish
ISBN: 968-36-5374-X

The Middle English Physiologus: A Critical Translation and Commentary (Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and University, 2001) [Dissertation]

Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English Literature, April 12, 2001, Blacksburg, Virginia.

"Considering the vast importance of the Physiologus tradition in the Middle Ages, one would expect to find that scholars have edited, translated, and studied all of the various versions of the Physiologus. While most of the Latin bestiaries and versions of the Physiologus have been edited, translated, studied, and glossed, the Middle English (ME) Physiologusthe only surviving version of the Physiologus in Middle Englishhas neither been translated nor strictly studied as a literary text. In light of the Physiologus traditions importance, it would seem that the only version of the Physiologus that was translated into Middle English would be quite significant to the study of medieval literature and to the study of English literature as a whole. Thus, in light of this discovery, the current edition attempts to spotlight this frequently overlooked text by providing an accurate translation of the ME Physiologus, critical commentary, and historical background. Such efforts are put forth with the sincere hope that such a critical translation may win this significant version of the Physiologus its due critical and literary attention." - Armistead

Language: English

Griffins (in John Cherry, ed., Mythical Beasts, London: British Museum Press/Pomegranite Artbooks, 1995, 72-103) [Book article]

A discussion of the griffin from antiquity through the Middle Ages. Illustrated in color and black & white.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-87654-606-8

The Illustration of Pliny's Historia naturalis: Manuscripts before 1430 (Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 46, 1983, 19-39) [Journal article]

The Historia naturalis of Pliny the Elder has been characterized by one historian of science as 'perhaps the most important single source extant for the history of ancient civilization'. That it was also important for the history of the later Middle Ages can now be gathered from three hitherto unpublished illuminated manuscripts of the Historia naturalis from the Gothic period which are the subject of the following discussion. The sources and nature of the iconographic cycle in their miniatures are the primary concern of this study, but the historical and artistic characteristics of the manuscripts must also be explored in order to appreciate fully their significance. - [Author]

The manuscripts described are:

• Madrid, Biblioteca Real de San Lorenzo del Escorial, MS R.I.5
• Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, MSS 1.1.24-1.1.25
• Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, MS Parm. 1278 (H. H. 1.62)
• Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS E. 24 inf.

The article includes 10 pages of plates illustrating the manuscripts.

Language: English

Die Encyklopädie des Arnoldus Saxo, zum ersten Mal nach einem Erfurter Codex herausgegeben von Professor Dr. Emil Stange (Erfurt, Germany: Druck von Fr. Bartholomäus, 1907)

An edition of De floribus rerum naturalium, an encyclopedia by Arnoldus Saxo, with a Latin transcription and notes in German, based on manuscript Universitätsbibliothek Erfurt, Dep. Erf. CA. 8° 77.

Language: Latin, German

The Aberdeen Bestiary: an Online Medieval Text (Computers & Texts [CTI Textual Studies Newsletter], 11, 1996) [Journal article]

"The prime objectives of the project (now well underway) are to mount the Aberdeen Bestiary (text and images) on the WWW, at the same time providing a surrogate for use by a wider, though still broadly academic, constituency. This is being achieved by supplying accompanying sets of commentaries, a transcription and a translation of the Latin text."

A description of an early stage of the project and its methodology.

Language: English

Birds in the Ancient World from A to Z (New York: Routledge, 2012)

Birds in the Ancient World from A to Z gathers together the ancient information available, listing all the names that ancient Greeks gave their birds and all their descriptions and analyses. W. Geoffrey Arnott identifies as many of them as possible in the light of modern ornithological studies. The ancient Greek bird names are transliterated into English script, and all that the ancients said about birds is presented in English. This book is accordingly the first complete discussion of ancient bird names that will be accessible to readers without ancient Greek. The only large-scale examination of ancient birds for seventy years, the book has an exhaustive bibliography (partly classical scholarship and partly ornithological) to encourage further study, and provides students and ornithologists with the definitive study of ancient birds. - [Publisher]

Language: English
ISBN: 978-0-415-54088-9

El Physiologus como fuente gráfico-textual de la emblemática animalística de la Edad Moderna (Janus, 2014; Series: Volume 3)

The Physiologus, a collection of Christian allegories drawn from the natural properties attributed to certain animals and plants, real or fantastic, composed in Greek language somewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean -Alexandria or Syria- between the second and fourth centuries of our era, has generated a vast literature since the late 19th century around its origin, authorship and versions in different languages. However, except for a few honorable exceptions, had not yet been addressed in depth the influence that this booklet was able to exert on the literary-visual genre of books of emblems from the 16th century on. Usually considered by critics as major source of the bookish Emblematics animalistic side, in this paper we aim to address in detail the true impact of the Physiologus reached both in pictures and allegorical interpretations of the emblems which, a priori, seem to keep some kind of thematic relationship with the primitive Christian text. - [Abstract]

Language: Spanish

L'Acerba (Intangible Press, 2010)

This is a transcription of L'Acerba, a fourteenth century compendium of natural science in Italian by Cecco d’Ascoli.

Language: Italian

L'Acerba (Wentworth Press, 2016)

This is a transcription of L'Acerba, a fourteenth century compendium of natural science in Italian by Cecco d’Ascoli.

Language: Italian
978-1363907410

L'Acerba (Biblioteca dei Classici Italiani di Giuseppe Bonghi, 1996)

An online edition of L'Acerba by Cecco d’Ascoli. Note: The original site hosting the edition seems to no longer exist; the linked site is on Web Archive.

Language: Italian

Acerba età (La Finestra editrice, 2002)

An edition of L'Acerba by Cecco d’Ascoli, with commentary.

Language: Italian
ISBN: 978-88-88097-21-3

L'Acerba (La Vita Felice, 2011)

Considered the masterpiece of Cecco d’Ascoli, "L'Acerba" is a poem in sixth rhyme, left unfinished at the beginning of the fifth canto after Cecco was condemned to the stake "for errors against the faith". It brings together astronomical, astrological, alchemical and naturalistic data, mostly of Arab origin, which Cecco contrasts with the "false" science of Dante's Commedia and above all with the totalizing need of Thomistic derivation, which that work animates and pervades. - [Publisher]

Language: Italian
ISBN: 978-88-7799-383-0

L'Acerba (Un Passo avanti, 2019)

The poem L'Acerba together with Dante's Commedia is the best-known work of the Middle Ages. However, unlike Dante's work, it has had very contrasting and controversial opinions. There were those who praised it, recognizing in it the precursor seeds of scientific disciplines, which then had their full development in the modern era, and those who outraged it by even condemning it to the stake together with its author. This is the edition that was read in its entirety on 27 April in Piazza del Popolo in Ascoli Piceno as part of the events Ascoli celebrates Cecco for the 750th anniversary of the birth of the illustrious fellow citizen. Francesco Stabili - Cecco d’Ascoli was convicted of heresy and burned alive in Florence on 16 September 1327. - [Publisher]

Language: Italian
ISBN: 978-88-942631-2-1

The Bitter Age (Ascoli Piceno, Italy: Capponi Editore, 2015)

An English translation of Cecco d’Ascoli's L'Acerba with commentary.

Language: English/Italian
ISBN: 978-88-970666-8-2

L'Acerba etas (Lanciano, 1916)

An edition of L'Acera etas with introduction, notes and bibliography.

Language: Italian

The Role of Zooarchaeology in the Intepretation of Socioeconomic Status: A Discussion with Reference to Medieval Europe (in A. Pluskowski, ed., Medieval Animals, Cambridge: Archaeological Review from Cambridge 18, 2002, 37-59) [Book article]

Language: English

Les Fables de Marie de France: Essai de Grammaire Narrative (in Gabriel Bianciotto & Michel Salvat, ed., Epopee Animale, Fable, Fabliau: Actes du IVe Colloque de la Societe Internationale Renardienne, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984, 13-28) [Book article]

"Dans les recherches sur la narration, [A. J.] Greimas essaie de decouvrir les regles qui sous-tendent divers genres litteraires et populaires, et par la, les regles de tout recit. Nous nous proposons d'appliquer ses theories de la grammaire narrative a l'Esope de Marie de France. Par une serie d'exercices pratiques nous esperons decouvrir les regles qui regissent quelques fables de Marie. Une telle grammaire, quand elle sera complete, nous appredra non seulement comment fonctionne la fable de Marie mais egalement comment fonctionne la fable comme genre. Puisque le present travail n'est qu'un premier pas vers la formulation d'une grammaire narrative des Fables de Marie, quatre fables seulement retiendront notre attention: "De Cane et umbra" (V), "De Vulpe et umbra lunae" (LVIII), "De Lupo et agno" (II), et "De Cane et ove" (IV). Nous passons sous silence la question de savoir s'il existe une grammaire de base de toutes les Fables de Marie." - Ashby-Beach

Language: French

Curious Creatures in Zoology (New York: Cassel Publishing, 1890) [Book]

"Our ancestors were content with what was given them, and being, as a rule, a stay-athome race, they could not confute the stories they read in books. That age of faith must have had its comforts, for no man could deny the truth of what he was told. But now that modern travel has subdued the globe, and inquisitive strangers have poked their noses into every portion of the world, the old order changeth, giving place to new, and, gradually, the old stories are forgotten. It is to rescue some of them from the oblivion into which they were fast falling, that I have written, or compiled, this book. It is not given to every one to be able to consult the old Naturalists; and, besides, most of them are written in Latin, and to read them through is partly unprofitable work, as they copy so largely one from another. But, for the general reader, selections can be made, and, if assisted by accurate reproductions of the very quaint wood engravings, a book may be produced which, I venture to think, will not prove tiring, even to a superficial reader. ... All the old Naturalists copied from one another, and thus compiled their writings. Pliny took from Aristotle, others quote Pliny, and so on; but it was reserved for the age of printing to render their writings available to the many, as well as to represent the creatures they describe by pictures (the books of the unlearned), which add so much piquancy to the text. Mine is not a learned disquisition. It is simply a collection of zoological curiosities, put together to suit the popular taste of to-day, and as such only should it be critically judged." - introduction

Contents include: Amazons; Pygmies; Giants; Wild Men; The Sphynx; Animal Lore; The Manticora; The Centaur; The Gorgon; The Unicorn; Were-Wolves; The Leontophonus; Cattle Feeding Backwards; Animal Medicine; The Hoopoe; The Halcyon; Woolly Hens; Four-Footed Duck Fish; Senses of Fishes; Wormes and Dragons; etc.

Language: English

Early English Translation (Cambrideg: Cambridge University Press, 1907; Series: Cambridge History of English Literature, Volume 1)

Includes some information on the Middle English Bestiary in British Library, Arundel MS 292.

Language: English

Theoi Project: a Guide to the Ancient Greek Pantheon of Gods (Aaron Atsma, 2000-03) [Web page]

"Here you will find individual entries the various divinities & monsters containing quotes sourced from a wide and growing variety of Classical Texts. Many are also illustrated with pictures from C5th BC Greek Vase Painting."

On the Bestiary page: "Greek mythology was filled with a wide variety of monsters ranging from Dragons, Giants, Demons and Ghosts, to the multiformed Centaurs, Sphinxes and Griffins. There were also fabulous wild beasts - such as the Nemean Lion, the golden-fleeced Ram and the winged horse Pegasus. Even mankind was not exempt with fabulous tribes like the Libyan Umbrella-Foots, one-eyed Arimaspians, African Dog-Heads, and puny African Pygmies."

Language: English

St. Augustine's City of God and Christian Doctrine (Buffalo, NY: The Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1897; Series: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Volume 2) [Book]

Augustine's City of God was highly regarded and influential in the Middle Ages. This is an English translation, combined with Augustine's On Christian Doctrine. Augustine's discussion of animals in several chapters on City of God were quoted in some of the bestiaries.

Language: English

The Syriac Tradition of the Physiologus (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021; Series: The Multilingual Physiologus. Studies in the Oldest Greek Recension and Its Translations)

Presentation of the Syriac versions of the Physiologus, description of the extant manuscripts, and the reception of the Physiologus in the Syriac tradition. Edition and translation of the chapters on pelican and panther. - [Abstract]

Language: English

El fisiologo; bestiario medieval (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Beunos Aires, 1971; Series: Coleccion los fundamentales) [Book]

"Para realizar la presente edicion se ha utilizado: Physiologus latinus. Versio Y. Editado por Francis J. Carmody." Traducido por Marino Ayerra Redin y Nilda Guglielmi. Introduccion y notas de Nilda Guglielmi.

107 p. illustrations, bibliography.

Language: Spanish
LC: PA4273.P8; OCLC: 26271932

Medieval English Figurative Roundels (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003; Series: Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi, Great Britain, Summary Catalogue) [Book]

This is a comprehensive catalogue of the large numbers of stained glass roundels produced in England between the late thirteenth century and the mid sixteenth centuries. The majority are decorated with religious images. However, roundels were commonly used in medieval homes and many of the designs provide glimpses of contemporary life and humour - including hybrid creatures.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-19-726251-1

The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting in the British Library (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997) [Book]

"In this new, lavishly illustrated survey drawn from the collections of the British Library, Janet Backhouse provides a comprehensive introduction to an exciting and colourful subject, ranging from the breathtaking intricacies of the 7th-century Lindifarne Gospels to the virtuoso pages of Renaissance and later artists." - publisher

Includes images from and descriptions of several bestiary-related manuscripts.

Janet Backhouse is Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts at the British Library.

240 pp., 215 colour plates, bibliography, manuscript index.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-8020-4346-1

Medieval Birds in the Sherborne Missal (Toronto / London: University of Toronto Press / British Library, 2001) [Book]

The Sherborne Missal [early 15th century, British Library Additional MS 74326], one of the most important surviving medieval English manuscripts, contains a wealth of marginal illustrations of wild birds, painted with skill and vivacity. Some of the birds are imaginary creations of the artist but the majority are evidently real birds, although not all of these can be identified with certainty. All forty-eight are reproduced here and most are well observed and readily recognizable. The majority are accompanied by their names, written out in middle English, offering and almost unparalleled source of vernacular bird names in common use during the generation after Chaucer wrote his Canterbury Tales. This is the first time that all birds from the Sherborne Missal have been reproduced together in sequence and this beautifully illustrated book provides an insight into a fascinating aspect of England's natural history in the middle ages." - [Publisher]

Language: English
ISBN: 0-8020-8434-6; LC: ND3375.S44B2952001; DDC: 745.6'7'0942

The Bestiary of Anne Walshe (David Badke, 2001) [Web page]

A discussion of the codicology, paleography and imagery of the Bestiary of Anne Walshe, Copenhagen Gl. kgl. S. 1633 4*.

Language: English

The Old English Physiologus in the Exeter Book (David Badke, 2002) [Digital article]

A discussion of the three-episode Phyiologus poem found in the Exeter Book manuscript (Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501).

Language: English

Animal passions: animal behavior and human sexual morality in medieval bestiaries and mid-nineteenth-century periodicals (Baltimore: University of Maryland, 1996) [Dissertation]

MA dissertation at the University of Maryland.

268 p.

Language: English
OCLC: 47901168

Christus gallinaceus: A Chaucerian Enigma; or the Cock as Symbol for Christ in the Middle Ages (Studies in Iconography, 9, 1983, 19-39) [Journal article]

Language: English

The Role of the Cock in Fertility and Eroticism in Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages" (Studies in Iconography, 7-8, 1981-2, 81-112) [Journal article]

Language: English

The Aviary and British Library, MS Additional 24097 (Academia, 2017)

A book solely concerned with birds, the Aviary was written by Hugh of Fouilloy, a French cleric from Amiens, in the first half of the twelfth century. Consisting of sixty chapters divided into two parts, his work contains twenty-seven birds allegorically discussed. The Bible constitutes the main bulk of Hugh’s sources that include St. Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job, St. Isidore’s Etymologiae and Hrabanus Maurus’s De rerum naturis (also known as De universo). An unillustrated manuscript from the thirteenth century, British Library, Additional MS 24097, contains Latin moral treatises, the Aviary and bestiary extracts. As Clark notes, it is not at all uncommon to find texts of theological nature (and bestiary material) accompanying the Aviary.

Language: English

Le Bestiaire, Version longue attribuée à Pierre de Beauvais (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 2010; Series: Classiques français du Moyen Age, N°163.1 vol.)

An edition of the of Pierre de Beauvais (long version).

Language: French

Etude et edition critique de la version longue du 'Bestiaire' attribuee a Pierre de Beauvais (Paris: Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2004) [Dissertation]

According to its prologue, the Long Version of the Bestiary is the work of Pierre de Beauvais. Through the study of texts that can be surely attributed to Pierre, one may determine his period of activity with relative precision (1180-1218) and identify certain characteristic work habits. Chronological indications and the relationship between the two versions of the Bestiary indicate that the Short Version dates from before 1206 and is surely by Pierre. A careful examination of the sources of the Long Version (Le Lucidaire, The Letter of Priester John, and Gossouin de Metz's Image du monde) and the manner in which they are treated, on the other hand, leads to conclude that the second redaction dates from 1246-1260 and is not by Pierre. This conclusion is confirmed by the comparative study of the two works, which reveals important differences. While focusing on the two versions of the Bestiary, I have also sought to situate the bestiary with regards to the other branches of medieval learning, especially the encyclopedia and biblical exegesis. Although close to these two genres, the bestiary possesses its own specificity and cannot be assimilated to either. The present edition constitutes the first critical edition of this version of the text. It is based on the five known and accessible manuscript witnesses, as well as on an indepth study of the manuscript tradition, from the Physiologus and the Short Version to the Bestiary of Love by Richard de Fournival. The edition is followed by copious textual notes, indices of animals and proper names, and a glossary. A transcription of the Malines manuscript, the best witness of the Short Version, is provided in an appendix. My new edition and study of the text are intended to allow for a better understanding of this important work and of its place in the intellectual and artistic evolutions that marked the 13th century. - [Abstract]

PhD dissertation, 2004. 816 p.

Language: French
PQDD: AAT3117592

De la paternité de la Version longue du Bestiaire attribué à Pierre de Beauvais (in Bestiaires médiévaux. Nouvelles perspectives sur les manuscrits et les traditions textuelles, Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut d’études médiévales, 2005, 1-29) [Book article]

Language: French

Retour sur la Filiation des Bestiaires de Richard de Fournival et eu Pseudo-Pierre de Beauvais (Romania, 2009; Series: Vol. 127, No. 505/506 (1/2))

Sans doute le plus original des bestiaires médiévaux de langue française, le Bestiaire d'amour de Richard de Fournival reprend la tradition issue du Physiologus, dont il détourne l’allégorie spirituelle pour en faire le véhicule d’une requéte amoureuse qu'il adresse a sa Dame. Si, au milieu du 13th siécle, un tel mélange d’érudition et de galanterie n’était pas absolument inédit — des poétes lyriques comme Rigaut de Barbezieux et Thibaut de Champagne avaient déja emprunteé cette voie en intégrant dans leurs poémes des images animales et une démarche symbolique qui renvoient au bestiaire traditionnel —, la nouveauté de Richard de Fournival consiste a abandonner le chant pour la prose et a donner a son ceuvre allure d’un véritable traité, la rapprochant ainsi davantage du discours savant qui lui sert de modéle. Cette proximité avec la tradition du bestiaire moralisé parait d’autant plus remarquable que, selon la critique moderne, Pauteur ne s'est pas contenté d’adapter la démarche herméneutique qui caractérise le genre dans son ensemble, mais se serait directement inspiré, en de nombreux passages, d’un texte précis : la version longue du Bestiaire attribuée a Pierre de Beauvais. - [Author]

Language: French

De la Version courte à la Version longue du Bestiaire de Pierre de Beauvais: Nature et rôle de la citation (Le Moyen Français, 2005; Series: Volume 55-56)

Any reworking of an earlier literary text with a view to augmenting it — whether it is a continuation, a sequel or a revamp — necessarily involves two opposing practices: |imitation and |innovation. If it did not create a sense of continuity, relying on a unity of tone, style or subject, the text of the second author would seem completely foreign to the original work instead of forming its complement. But by the very nature of the intervention, and whatever its fidelity to the spirit of the original, the reworker necessarily modifies the work in a way more or less profound and imparts to it a structure, an orientation, a new sense. The relationship between a hypertext and its hypotext is characterized by a tension between resemblance and difference, between continuity and rupture. It is the tension between these two poles—or at least one of the manifestations of this tension — which we would like to examine here in both versions of the Bestiaire of Pierre de Beauvais. - [Author]

Language: French
0226-0174; DOI: 10.1484/J.LMFR.2.303050

Le Developement des Structures Narratives du Fabliau a la Nouvelle (Presses Universitaires de France, Epopee Animale, Fable, Fabliau: Actes du IVe Colloque de la Societe Internationale Renardienne, 1984, 29-37) [Journal article]

"Dans ce bref expose, on procede a une comparison differenciatrice de quelques structures narratives des fabliaux et des plus anciennes nouvelles parues a l'origine du genre, structures liees a tel ou tel sujet. On n'etudie pas l'histoire du developpement des sujets avec toutes les circonstances concretes possibles, mais on confronte seulement deux niveaux: celui du fabliau et celui de la nouvelle a ses debuts." - Balachov

Language: French

Genre and Meaning in the Old English Phoenix (The Bulletin of the West Virginia Association of College English Teachers, Spring; 6:1-2, 1981, 2-12) [Journal article]

Language: English
ISSN: 0887-4409

Fictions of Judaism in England before 1290 (in The Jews in Medieval Britain: Historical, Literary and Archaeological Perspectives, 2003, 129-144) [Book article]

Discusses the fictionalisation of medieval Anglo-Jewry by examining blood libel allegations and their use in hagiography (such as Thomas of Monmouth's life of Wiliam of Norwich) and historiography (such as Matthew Paris's Cronica Majora) as well as the portrayal of Jews in bestiaries.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-85115-931-1

The Outer Limits: Border Characters In Medieval Manuscript Illuminations And Middle English Mystery Plays (Cincinnati: University Of Cincinnati, 1989) [Dissertation]

PhD dissertation at the University Of Cincinnati.

"Marginal figures of medieval manuscript pages and border characters in Middle English mystery plays are similar in that they provide a frame for their respective centers, which usually profess or emphasize Christianity. Border characters of manuscripts, drawn in minute detail in the margins, are usually found in overtly devotional texts such as Psalters and Books of Hours; the marginal figures border the text and/or central miniature visually and metaphorically. Border characters in mystery plays, that is to say, characters who are peripheral in terms of the central action of the biblical story, or who do not appear in Scripture or Apocrypha but are created by the dramatist, also frame in some way the central action. These border characters, then, do have a purpose beyond that of mere comic relief or mindless doodling: they enhance devotion and meditation on that which is central. Marginal figures in manuscripts fit into three main categories, according to art historian Lilian Randall: sacred themes, bestiary themes, and drolleries. Border figures of sacred themes point the reader back to the message of the central text or miniature by reflecting and/or reinforcing it. Bestiary themes figures are revelatory of God in that they are His creations or subcreations; they are also used symbolically to reinforce the message of the text. Marginal characters designated as drolleries either extend the message of the central text, contrast with it, or provide delectatio through mental and spiritual recreation. Border characters in mystery plays function similarly. Most, such as Lightbourne, Pikeharnes, Mrs. Noah, the detractors, the midwives, and the Jews, provide recreation through comedy while at the same time presenting a negative example. Thus they provide an effective contrast for the holy characters in the play, and emphasize right action through their wrong action. Christian devotion, then, is at the center of devotional manuscripts and mystery plays. The center is always God; His creatures border Him, but they must choose whether to direct their attention toward Him and serve Him, or turn away and serve themselves. The example which the border characters provide helps the viewer to make his/her own choice." - abstract

292 p.

Language: English
PQDD: AAT9019873

Encyclopedia of Beasts and Monsters in Myth, Legend and Folklore (McFarland, 2016)

"Here there be dragons"--this notation was often made on ancient maps to indicate the edges of the known world and what lay beyond. Heroes who ventured there were only as great as the beasts they encountered. This encyclopedia contains more than 2,200 monsters of myth and folklore, who both made life difficult for humans and fought by their side. Entries describe the appearance, behavior, and cultural origin of mythic creatures well-known and obscure, collected from traditions around the world. - [Publisher]

Language: English
ISBN: 978-1-4766-2268-2

Birds and Magic: 1. The Eagle-Stone; 2. The Vulture Epistle (Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 13, 1950, 316-322) [Journal article]

A discussion of two beast-related items used in medieval medicine: the eagle-stone, said to be kept by eagles in their nests, and used to treat problems of pregnancy; and the 'Epistula Vulturis", containing medical recipes using parts of the vulture. The origin and history of both items is traced from Antiquity.

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0075-4390%281950%2913%3A3%2F4%3C318%3ATVE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M

Language: English

The Aslake World Map (Imago Mundi, 44, 1992, 24-44) [Journal article]

Language: English

Bestiary: Being an English Version of the Bodleian Library, Oxford MS Bodley 764 (London: Folio Society, 1992) [Book]

An English translation of Bodleian Library, Oxford MS Bodley 764 with all of the illustrations.

"From the outset, it was intended that this edition should use the layout of the original manuscript; the miniatures are reproduced to their original size and in their original positions on the page, so that what appears in the following pages was designed by a thirteenth-century scribe and his illuminator, the only change being that the text is in a modern typeface rather than a highly abbreviated formal Gothic book-hand. As a result, and because the English equivalent comes out longer than the Latin text, discreet cutting of the text has been necessary... In identifying the beasts, which is often very difficult, I have in general followed the modern equivalents set out by Wilma George and Brunsdon Yapp in ... The Naming of the Beasts. ... I have settled for a [style] which is straightforward, with perhaps an echo of the language of the Authorised Version, rather than a colloquial rendering, because this seems closer to the spirit of the work." - introduction

Also published: Woodbridge [England] : Boydell Press, 1993.

205 p., color illustrations, bibliography.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-85115-329-1; LCCN: 93002466; LC: PA8275.B4E51993; DDC: 878/.0308083620

A Dictionary of Fabulous Beasts (London: Boydell Press, 1996) [Book]

A glossary of beast names drawn from nature, literature and the mythology of many cultures. There are over 600 entries, most a paragraph or two, though some are much longer. Line drawings by Rosalind Dease.

Reprint of the 1971 Macmillan London, Ltd. edition.

167 pp., bibliography.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-85115-685-1

Fragments d'un Phisiologus du XII siécle, à Monza (Le manuscrit, II, 1895, 181-184) [Journal article]

Language: French

Cecco d'Ascoli e l'Acerba. Saggio (Florence: Tipographia della Gazzetta d'Italia, 1879)

A description and analysis of the text of L'Acerba, an encyclopedia by Cecco d’Ascoli, with a biography of Ascoli.

Language: Italian

Two East Anglian Picture Books: A Facsimile of the Helmingham Herbal and Bestiary and Bodleian MS Ashmole 1504 (London: Roxburghe Club, 1988) [Book]

The two manuscripts discussed are twin works of East Anglian origin. The Helmingham herbal and bestiary, formerly housed at Helmingham Hall, Suffolk, is in Paul Mellon's collection now at the Yale Center for British Art. The other is Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1504.

Printed for presentation to the members of the Roxburghe Club.

100 p., 132 p. of colour plates, genealogical table, map, bibliography, index.

Language: English
OCLC: 22225329

Le Bestiaire vieil-anglais : étude et traduction de textes animaliers dans la poésie vieil-anglaise (Paris: Association des médiévistes anglicistes de l'enseignement supérieur, 2001; Series: Publications de l'Association des médiévistes anglicistes de l'enseignement supérieur; Hors série 7) [Book]

Critical material in French; includes Old English texts with translation and notes in French.

2 v. (405 p.)

Language: French
ISBN: 2-901198-30-9; LC: PR203; DDC: 809; OCLC: 56200103

The Bunyip And Other Mythical Monsters And Legends (Melbourne: Reed & Harris, 1946) [Book]

With material on the Myndie Snake, the Seal Theory, and ancient & modern dragons.

120 pp. Illustrated with black & white photographic plates.

Language: English

Walruses on the Dnieper: new evidence for the intercontinental trade of Greenlandic ivory in the Middle Ages (Proceedings of the Royal Society, 2022; Series: Volume 289, Issue 1972)

Mediaeval walrus hunting in Iceland and Greenland—driven by Western European demand for ivory and walrus hide ropes—has been identified as an important pre-modern example of ecological globalization. By contrast, the main origin of walrus ivory destined for eastern European markets, and then onward trade to Asia, is assumed to have been Arctic Russia. Here, we investigate the geographical origin of nine twelfth-century CE walrus specimens discovered in Kyiv, Ukraine—combining archaeological typology (based on chaîne opératoire assessment), ancient DNA (aDNA) and stable isotope analysis. We show that five of seven specimens tested using aDNA can be genetically assigned to a western Greenland origin. Moreover, six of the Kyiv rostra had been sculpted in a way typical of Greenlandic imports to Western Europe, and seven are tentatively consistent with a Greenland origin based on stable isotope analysis. Our results suggest that demand for the products of Norse Greenland's walrus hunt stretched not only to Western Europe but included Ukraine and, by implication given linked trade routes, also Russia, Byzantium and Asia. These observations illuminate the surprising scale of mediaeval ecological globalization and help explain the pressure this process exerted on distant wildlife populations and those who harvested. - [Abstract]

Language: English
1471-2954; DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2021.2773

Bartholomaei Anglici De genuinis rerum coelestium, terrestrium et inferarum proprietatibus: libri XVIII (Frankfort: W. Richter for N. Stein, 1601, 1609)

Full title: Bartholomaei Anglici De genuinis rerum coelestium, terrestrium et inferarum proprietatibus: libri XVIII. ; opus incomparabile, theologis, iureconsultis, medicis, omniumque disciplinarum & artium alumnis, utilissimum futurum ; cui accessit liber XIX de variarum rerum accidentibus

An early printed edition of the Latin version of De proprietatibus rerum by Bartholomaeus Anglicus. Includes the full text, plus an introduction and notes. Scanned page images.

Language: Latin

Liber de propriatibus rerum Bartholomei Anglici Ordinis Minorum (Strasbourg: Georg Husner, 1491, 1505)

An early Latin printed edition of the Liber de proprietatibus rerum by Bartholomaeus Anglicus. The text in this copy is quite readable. Includes a table of contents listing the topics of each book and chapter. Scanned page images.

Language: Latin

Liber de proprietatibus rerum Bartholomei anglici (Drucker des Jordanus de Quedlinburg, 1483)

An early printed edition of the Latin De proprietatibus rerum by Bartholomaeus Anglicus. Includes a table listing the content of each book and chapter. Scanned page images.

Language: Latin

Proprietates rerum domini bartholomei anglici (Heinrich Knoblochtzer, 1488)

An early printed edition of the Latin De proprietatibus rerum by Bartholomaeus Anglicus. Includes a table listing the content of each book and chapter. Scanned page images.

Language: Latin

De proprietatibus rerum (Lugduni: Nicolaus Philippi (Pistoris) et Marcus Reinhardi, 1482)

An early printed edition of the De proprietatibus rerum, an encyclopedia by Bartholomaeus Anglicus.

Language: Latin

De proprietatibus rerum (Antonius Koberger, 1492)

An early printed edition of the Latin De proprietatibus rerum by Bartholomaeus Anglicus. Includes a table listing the content of each book and chapter. Scanned page images.

Language: Latin

De proprietatibus rerum (Basel: Berthold Ruppel, 1470)

An early printed edition of the Latin De proprietatibus rerum by Bartholomaeus Anglicus. Scanned page images.

Language: Latin

Van den proprieteyten der dinghen (Haarlem: Jacob Bellaert, 1485)

An early printed edition of De proprietatibus rerum by Bartholomaeus Anglicus, in a Middle Dutch translation. The translator is unknown. Scanned page images.There is also a modern edition and trascription of the book; see Digital Resource 2 and 3 above.

Language: Middle Dutch
OCLC: 644305038

Tractatus de proprietatibus rerum (Lyon: Nicolaus Philippi; Markus Reinhart, 1480)

An early printed edition of the De proprietatibus rerum, an encyclopedia by Bartholomaeus Anglicus.

Language: Latin

Tractatus de proprietatibus rerum (Köln: Johann Koelhoff, 1481)

An early printed edition of the De proprietatibus rerum, an encyclopedia by Bartholomaeus Anglicus.

Language: Latin

Batman uppon Bartholome, his booke, De proprietatibus rerum, newly corrected, enlarged and ammended: with such additions as are requisite (London: Thomas East, 1582)

Full title: Batman uppon Bartholome, his booke, De proprietatibus rerum, newly corrected, enlarged and ammended: with such additions as are requisite, unto every severall booke: taken foorth of the most approved authors, the like heretofore not translated in English. Profitable for all estates, as well for the benefite of the mind as the bodie

An edition of the English translation of De proprietatibus rerum, a thirteenth-century encyclopedia by Bartholomaeus Anglicus. This is probably based on the English translation by John Trevisa, though this is not explicitly stated. With notes and additions by Batman.

There are digital scans of various edition of the book; there is also a full transcription online from Early English Books.

Language: English

El libro de proprietatibus rerum (Heirich Meyer, 1494)

A printed translation of De proprietatibus rerum by Bartholomaeus Anglicus. Late fifteenth century Spanish translation by Vinçente de Burgos. Scanned page images.

Language: Spanish

Livre de proprietes des choses (Lyon, France: Guillaume Le Roy, 1487)

The De proprietatibus rerum, an encyclopedia by Bartholomaeus Anglicus, in the French translation by Jean Corbechon (Livre de proprietes des choses). Scanned page images. With engraved illustrations.

Language: Middle French

Le proprietaire des choses (Lyon: Matthias Huss, 1485)

An early printed edition of the De proprietatibus rerum, an encyclopedia by Bartholomaeus Anglicus in the French translation by Jean Corbechon. With engraved illustrations.

Language: French

Le propriétaire des choses (Jean Siber, 1495)

The Le Propriétaire des choses, the De proprietatibus rerum by Bartholomaeus Anglicus in the French translation by Jean Corbechon. Scanned page images of the printed edition. With 19 engravings, one for the prologue and one for each book. The book on birds starts on page 244, fish on page 271, and animals on page 410.

Language: French

Le Propriétaire des choses, tresutile et prouffitable aux corps humains... (Paris: Jehan Petit et Michel Le Noir, 1518)

Full title: Le Propriétaire des choses , tresutile et prouffitable aux corps humains, avec aucunes additions nouvellement adjoustées, c'est assavoir : les vertus et propriétez des eaues artificielles et des herbes, les nativitez des hommes et des femmes selon les douze signes, et plusieurs receptes contre aulcunes maladies. Item ung remède tres-utile contre fièvre pestilentieuse et autre manière.

An early printed edition of the De proprietatibus rerum, an encyclopedia by Bartholomaeus Anglicus in the French translation by Jean Corbechon. With engraved illustrations.

Language: French

Le propriétaire en françoys (Paris: Antoine Vérard, 1493, 1499)

An early printed edition of the De proprietatibus rerum, an encyclopedia by Bartholomaeus Anglicus in the French translation by Jean Corbechon. With engraved illustrations.

Language: French

Le livre des propriétés des choses: une encyclopédie au XIVe siècle (Stock, 1999)

In 1372, on the orders of King Charles V, the monk Jean Corbechon of the order of Saint Augustine translated into French the encyclopedic work written a century earlier by the Franciscan Barthélemy the Englishman, De proprietatibus rerum. A sum of knowledge on nature and science, it is very successful, at a time when the desire to understand the universe is spreading among an increasingly wide audience. We learn that angels are always represented with long curly hair because their desires arise from the root of thought as hair arises from the head; we also discover there all the properties of the sky and those of the articular drop, and we know everything about the intelligence of the elephant as well as the perfections of divine persons. Following Jean Corbechon, Bernard Ribémont offers us here, put in modern French, a series of extracts from the Livre des propriétés des choses, which plunge us not only into the heart of medieval scientific thought but also into the heart of the imagination of the time, a source of wonderful images. - [Publisher]

Language: French
ISBN: 978-2-234-05189-8

On the properties of things : John Trevisa's translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus De proprietatibus rerum : a critical text (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975-1988) [Book]

A critical edition of John Trevisa's English translation of the De proprietatibus rerum of Bartholomaeus Anglicus. Volume 1 contains an introduction and notes on the text and its author and translator, plus Books 1 to 13 of the encyclopedia; Volume 2 contains Books 14 to 19 of the encyclopedia; Volume 3 contains an introduction, descriptions of the manuscripts used in the edition, textual commentary, a glossary, an index of authorities, and an index of persons.

687 p. (v. 1); 1397 p. (v. 2); 332 p. (v. 3).

Language: English
LC: AE2B2931975

Medieval Animals On The Move: Between Body And Mind (Springer Nature (Palgrave Macmillan), 2021)

The volume offers a review of Medieval and Early Modern Age cultural attitudes toward animals, reflecting diversity in social life. It is aimed, not only at researchers and students exploring the history of animals, but also at a broader readership interested in how our attitudes toward the animal world have evolved over centuries in a variety of cultural contexts. The chapters included contribute to integrating three basic branches in medieval studies: archaeology, history (comprising both documentary and literary sources), as well as iconography. These differing sources have traditionally been studied using different paradigms. The integrated approach in this book is meant to strengthen awareness of the complex interplay between the histories of nature and culture in scholarship. In addition to being multi-disciplinary, the volume is emphatically international, with authors representing research in Austria, China, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Serbia, Sweden, and Switzerland. - [Editors] >/p>

Language: English
ISBN: 978-3-030-63888-7; DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-63888-7

Provenzalisches Lesebuch / Chrestomathie provençale (Eberfeld: R. L. Frederichs, 1855, 1868)

Texts in the Provençale dialect of Old French, including on column 326-330 an abridged version of Richard de Fournival's Bestiaire d'amour, titled Aiso son las naturas d'alcus auzels e d'alcunas bestias.

Chrestomathie provençale is the French edition of the original German Provenzalisches Lesebuch.

Language: French (Provençale)

Hexaemeron (Christian Literature Publishing Co, 1895; Series: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Volume 8)

A Translation into English of the Hexaemeron of Basil the Great. The Hexaemeron is a series of homilies, some of which describe animals.

Language: English

Animalite et Typologie Sociale: Quelques Paralleles Medievaux (in Gabriel Bianciotto & Michel Salvat, ed., Epopee Animale, Fable, Fabliau: Actes du IVe Colloque de la Societe Internationale Renardienne, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984, 39-54) [Book article]

"Totem, totemisme: voila les mots qui viennent a l'esprit quand on pense a un classement des hommes mis en rapport avec le classement des especes animals. Mais ces termes designent, dans le modele assez artificiel dresse par l'anthropologie traditionnelle, un syseme de division des hommes en "clans", definis par leur parente reelle ou mythique, en non par leur fonction sociale, les differences de vie entre ces groupes etant plutot d'ordre rituel que socio-professionel. ... A priori, on pourrait esper trouver, dans ces images animales symboliques, des ensembles structures correspondant aux riches typologies de l'ordre ecclesiologique et socio-professionel qu'a elaborees le Moyen Ages." Batany

Language: French

The Serpent-Eating Stag in the Renaissance (in Gabriel Bianciotto & Michel Salvat, ed., Épopée Animale, Fable, Fabliau: Actes du IVe Colloque de la Société Internationale Renardienne, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984, 55-69) [Book article]

"My purpose in this paper is to show something of what happens to a particular piece of medieval animal symbolism when it is taken up by the writers and emblematists of the Renaissance. The belief that stags eat snakes was sanctioned by classical writers on natural history such as Pliny, Aelian and Oppian. ... Physiologus was among the earliest writers to give this process an allegorical explanation, in which he was followed by the early fathers and by Psalm commentaries throughout the Middle Ages... Thus allegorized it found its way into monumental art ... and we find it regularly in encyclopaedias and Bestiaries. ... In the Renaissance it was perpetuated in three different types of source: firstly by writers of natural history, who are the continuators of the medieval Bestiaries and encyclopaedias; secondly in emblem books; and thirdly in association with a number of literary tropoi featuring the stag which at first sight look quite unconnected." - Bath

10 illustrations.

Language: English

How Medieval Bestiary Images promoted Theological, Social and Political Messages in The Queen Mary Psalter (1310-1320) (Academia Letters, 2021)

The Medieval Bestiary linked the everyday activities of animals with aspects of Christian life, reflecting the belief that all of creation was made to instruct humankind.1 Bestiary illustrations also adorned other medieval manuscripts, in particular the fourteenth century Psalter. The Queen Mary Psalter (QMP) [British Library, Royal MS 2 B VII] of 1310 contains a complete bestiary cycle on every page of the psalms. In this essay I use the example of the QMP to, firstly, explain why bestiary images were highly effective in the psalter at conveying meaning and then to elucidate some specific theological, social and political messages that were promoted to the contemporary reader through the bestiary images. - [Author]

Language: English
DOI: 10.20935/AL2575

Bestiarium Humanum: Mensch-Tier-Vergleich in Kunst u. Karikatur (Munich: Heinz Moos Verlag, 1974) [Book]

A revision of the author's thesis, Cologne, 1973, which was presented under the title: Der Mensch-Tier-Vergleich und die Mensch-Tier-Karikatur.

164 p., numerous illustrations, bibliography, index.

Language: English
LCCN: 75555972; LC: N7745.A5B381974

The Lark in Chaucer and Some Later Poets (Yearbook of English Studies, 2, 1972, 5-12) [Journal article]

Language: English

A baronial bestiary. Heraldic evidence for the patronage of MS. Bodley 764 (Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 50, 1987, 196-200) [Journal article]

Heraldic images in the bestiary. Roger de Monhaut, the Clares and the Berkeleys in relation to Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 764.

"...Bodley 764 appears to be the only surviving English bestiary to show genuine, recognizable shields of arms. If these coats can be read as evidence of patronage, then Bodley 764 is among the earliest extant English manuscripts in which heraldry is used as a mark of ownership. ... Evidence of wide-spread baronial book patronage has not been found before the end of the [13th] century... the books concerned are chiefly psalters. No other English Latin bestiary can be unequivocally ascribed to lay patronage, and no indication at all of original ownership has been found on any English bestiary as costly as this one. Other luxury bestiaries of the thirteenth century - the Ashmole Bestiary, the Aberdeen Bestiary... and British Library MS Royal 12.C.XIX - remain tantalisingly empty of any indication of patronage, but the evidence of Roger de Monhaut's Bestiary at least admits the possibility that such books were made for aristocratic lay patrons." - Baxter

Language: English
http: //links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0075-4390%281987%2950%3C196%3AABBHEF%3E2.0.CO%3

Bestiaries and their Users in the Middle Ages (Phoenix Mill, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1998) [Book]

"Previous studies on Bestiaries have centred on these luxury books, with their colourful illustrations and diverting stories of animal behavious, and Bestiaries have been represented either as keys to the iconography of medieval animal sculpture in stone and wood, or as early and inept attempts at zoology. Ron Baxter's exhaustive research has shown these conclusions to be at best simplistic and at worst quite wrong. This book enables to closer than ever before to the true purpose, use and meaning of the Bestiary. Dr. Baxter, employing a completely fresh and comprehensive approach, has undertaken extensive new research into a large corpus of Bestiaries, applying modern narrative theory to their texts and images to reveal the messages encoded in them... By applying the results of this analysis to medieval library records he has been able to identify important centres of Bestiary use, and to present a radically different picture of what Bestiaries were to their medieval users." - cover copy

Includes tables of chapter orders and surviving Latin bestiaries, as well as a revision to the established system of Bestiary Families, building on the work of M. R. James and Florence McCulloch. A very valuable book.

242 pp., color and black & white plates, glossary, bibliography, index.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-7509-1853-5; LCCN: 98211645; LC: PA8275.B4Z541998; DDC: 809/.9336221; OCLC: 39718250

Learning from Nature: Lessons in Virtue and Vice in the Physiologus and Bestiaries (in Colum Hourihane, ed., Virtue & vice: the personifications in the Index of Christian art, Prionceton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000, 29-41) [Book article]

A discussion of the virtues and vices in the Physiologus, with a list of the animals associated with them. "The Physiologus is not an allegorical treatise on virture and vice; nowhere do virtues and vices actually appear appear as personifications either in the text or in the miniatures of any illustrated Physiologus or bestiary. ...the Physiologus uses examples from the natural world to convey lessons in Christian behaviour. The point, of course, is not that birds, beasts, and stones are more virtuous than humans, but that God has provided them as lessons and as warnings for the attentive human to read. ... Of the thirty-six chapters of the Physiologus B-text, most deal, some broadly, some more specifically, with virtue and vice." - Baxter

Language: English
ISBN: 0-691-05036-8

A study of the Latin bestiary in England: structure and use (London: University of London, 1990; Series: PhD thesis)

Language: English
OCLC: 940326560

The Nature of the Beast; or, The Digitisation of the Aberdeen Bestiary (Library Hi Tech, 15 no. 3-4, 1997, 50-55) [Journal article]

This paper considers the choice of the medieval Aberdeen Bestiary as the first project in Aberdeen University Library's digitisation programme, and discusses some of the unusual features of the manuscript itself. Discusses the transfer of the Aberdeen Bestiary (a 13th century manuscript) into digital format for access on the World Wide Web. Briefly covers the background to the project before outlining the reasons for choosing photoCD as the method of digitization. Considers some of the problems encountered during the project including design and delivery issues and future developments.

Language: English
ISSN: 0737-8831

The Online Bestiary Project in Electronic Library and Visual Information Research (ELVIRA) 3 Conference, De Montfort University, [Proceedings], ed. by M. Collier and K. Arnold (Aslib, 1996) [Journal article]

Language: Dutch

Secretary Thomas Reid and the early listing of his manuscripts (Northern Scotland, 16, 1996, p. 175-85) [Journal article]

Language: English

Text and illustration: the Digitisation of a Mediaeval Manuscript (Computers and the Humanities, 31, 1997, 61-67) [Journal article]

"This paper considers the choice of the medieval Aberdeen Bestiary as the first project in Aberdeen University Librarys digitisation programme, and discusses some of the unusual features of the manuscript itself. Attention is given to the content and depth of the accompanying commentaries, and particular notice is paid to the nature and extent of the textual apparatus (translation and transcription). The factors influencing the choice of (a) PhotoCD as the image capture method, and (b) JPEG as the image format for transmission of the page images across the World Wide Web are examined. The importance of the Web design to the effectiveness of the overall resource is emphasised." - publisher

Language: English

Beasts on the Screen: the Digitisation of the Aberdeen Bestiary - a Case Study in Preservation and Digitisation: Principles, Practice, Problems (British Library/NPO, Proceedings of the National Preservation Office Conference, 1998) [Journal article]

Language: English

Medieval Bestiaries and the Birth of Zoology (The Antlion Pit, 1996) [Web page]

"Although bestiaries and zoological treatises shared a common interest and subject matter, they did not appear to have any real effect on one another beyond what general influences are common to all who share a same environment and mentality. The similarities they shared in dealing with animals is due to a common outlook on nature. Furthermore, while zoology showed an interest in acquiring scientific knowledge, the bestiary showed no such inclination since it was more concerned with moral education than natural history... Fundamentally, zoological treatises and bestiaries were different. Whereas the bestiary fed upon man's dependence on religon, zoology depended on his break with it..." - Aura Beckhofer-Fialho

Bibliography.

Language: English

Physiologus for Grownups (RobertBedrosian, 2018)

The work known as Physiologus is a collection of tales taken from various sources. The stories, which are usually very short, describe the supposed characteristics of real and imaginary animals, precious stones, plants, and unusual places. Originally Physiologus was compiled in Greek, probably in the second century A.D. Some time in the early fifth century it was translated into Ethiopic, Classical Armenian, Syriac, and Latin — and, subsequently, from Latin into all the major languages of Europe. Elements of some of these tales are known from the works of much earlier writers, such as Herodotus and Aristotle. Others probably were written by Church Fathers (or at least attributed to them). ... The present English translation omits the morals. This circumstance arose from my initial interest in the stories, which was solely for their Classical Armenian vocabulary. At the time, I translated only a few of the tales, never intending to publish them. Years later, rereading the translation, I was struck by the delightful strangeness of the stories minus their protective garments, and thus the present edition was born. My interest is in the animals themselves—just the naked animals, if I may put it that way. As for the morals, quite a few did not seem to fit the tales, and even amounted to distractions, at least to this reader. Nonetheless, without a doubt, these morals — apt or not — are what saved Physiologus and got this unusual text copied repeatedly by monks in the Middle Ages. ... The present translation was made from the Classical Armenian text published by N. Marr in Sborniki pritch Vardana [Collections of Fables by Vardan], vol. 3 (Saint Petersburg, 1894), pp. 131-175. - [Author]

Language: English

Beasts of Love: Richard de Fournival's Bestiaire d'amour and a Woman's Response (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003) [Book]

The first gendered prose debate in a European vernacular, Le Bestiaire d'amour and subsequent Response constitute a clash of opposites: a medieval chancellor's erotic bestiary to a woman is countered by the woman's passionate protest against the cleric's misogynistic presuppositions. Jeanette Beer presents a close, linear reading of the two literary texts, examining the context that led to the love-bestiary's production in the thirteenth century, especially an influential version of the Physiologus by Pierre de Beauvais, the suggestiveness of the animal symbolism, and the aftermath of the debate. In her exploration of Le Bestiaire d'amour and the Response, Beer analyzes the disparity of their sexual, philosophical, and theological orientations, and considers, animal by animal, this gendered duelling of the two bestiaries, the symbolism of the one calqued upon the symbolism of the other. - [publisher]

240 p., 8 halftones, bibliography, index, index of animals

Language: English
ISBN: 0-8020-3612-0; LC: PQ1461.F64B432003; DDC: 844'.1

Le Bestiaire d'amour en vers (in Medieval Translators and Their Craft, Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, Medieval Institute Publications, 1989, 285-296) [Book article]

"Translation of verse into prose was not unusual in the Middle Ages. ... The reverse process, prose to verse, was more unusual. ... A conversion of Richard de Fournival's Le Bestiaire d'amour to rhyming octosyllabic couplets has survived on folios 89-92 of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, fr. 25545 ... the fragment, now entitled Le Bestiaire d'amour en vers, states in both title and text that it is Richard's own translation... Le Bestiaire en vers courts those of Richard's contemporaries who prefer the entertainment of love literature to Aristotelian exposes. In imagery that is curiously modern Richard compares his bestiary to a consumer product whose presentation is variable. His main concern is, of course the content, which cannot fail to please when its different packaging caters to all tastes. Thus the determining factor in all formal aspects of the work is the translator's public." - [Author]

Language: English

Le Bestiaire d'amour in Lombardy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007; Series: Florilegium Volume 24, Number 1)

In the early fourteenth century, a time when enthusiasm for French epics, lyricpoetry, and romance was at its peak in Italy, Richard's bestiary was “translated” (in thegeographical sense) to Lombardy. The manuscript to be examined here is Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.459.The manuscript, on vellum, was written and illuminated in northern Italy in the first half of the fourteenth century. The 32 folios contain 115 miniatures and 3 historiated initials. ... “The scribe” took it upon himself to make available on hisside of the Alps a work that had proved popular on the other. To this end he used theprerogatives that any scribe might exercise over “his” manuscript — and more, as will be seen! - [Author]

Language: English
0709-5201; DOI: 10.3138/flor.24.004

Duel of bestiaries. On Le Bestiaire d'amour by Richard de Fournival, and the anonymous Response appended to it in several manuscripts (in Willene B. Clark & Meradith T. McMunn, ed., Beasts and Birds of the Middle Ages. The Bestiary and its Legacy, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989, 96-105) [Book article]

"...explores the transformation of the bestiary into a work with secular symbolism in the Bestiaire d'amour and Reponse de la Dame of Richard de Fournival, using the cock to illustrate her arguments." - [Introduction]

"The traditions of the bestiary underwent unexpected transformation in Richard de Fournival's Le Bestiaire d'amour. A genre that had been devoted to Christian moralizing now became affiliated with the profane literature of love. The process involved more than a mere transposition of metaphors. The juxtaposition of the two known traditions was a provocation to both, for Le Bestiaire d'amour transcended all conventions by its ambivalence." - [Author]

With one illustration from Bodleian Library , MS. Douce 308.

Language: English

A Fourteenth Century Bestiaire d'Amour (Reinardus: Yearbook of the International Reynard Society, 4, 1991, 19-26) [Journal article]

New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.459, written and illuminated in northern Italy, probably Lombardy.

The manuscript to be examined here is Pierpont Morgan 459 which was written and iJluminatecd in Northern Italy, most probably in Lombardy. Because it postdates Richard de Fournival’s original Bestiatre d’amour by about one hundred years* and represents a deviant development whose archetype has been lost, it might seem of less interest than the bestiary’s more conventional derivatives. There are, however, interesting conclusions to be drawn from the modifications of a seribe who brought to his task uo knowledge of the context which produced the work and, it would seem, no knowledge of its original author. - [Author]

Language: English
0925-4757; DOI: 10.1075/rein.4.03bee

A Gendered Debate from the Thirteenth Century (New Zealand Journal of French Studies, 23: 2 (November), 2002, 34-39) [Journal article]

Language: English
ISSN: 0110-7380

Gendered discourse in two thirteenth-century bestiary texts (Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies, 3 for 1994-1995, 1995, 119-128) [Journal article]

Discusses the exchange between Richard de Fournival (in Le Bestiaire d'amour) and his lady (in La Response de la dame au bestiaire de Ricard de Fournival).

Language: English

Medieval Translators and Their Craft (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, 1989; Series: Studies in Medieval Culture 25) [Book]

A series of essays on translation in the Middle Ages, including Le Bestiaire d'Amour en Vers (Beer) and The Old English Phoenix (Shaw).

Language: English
ISBN: 0-918720-95-8; LCCN: 89-2535; LC: CB351.S83v.25; DDC: 940.1'7s-dc19

The New Naturalism of Le Bestiaire d'Amour (Reinardus. Yearbook of the International Reynard Society, 1988; Series: Volume 1, Issue 1)

Richard de Fourniva'sl Le Bestiaire d'amour appeared shortly after the middle of the thirteenth century. It was no ordinary bestiary, and its radical manipulation of two established traditions marked the beginning of a new naturalism that would eventually receive full expression in Jean de Meun's Le Roman de la rose. The iconoclastic nature of Le Bestiaire d'amour is, however, frequently overlooked, perhaps because of the blandness of its original editor. His description of it as "ces fleurs de l'histoire naturelle rassemblées en bouquets a Chloris" [p. 4] is even less apt than it would have been as a description of Le Roman de le rose. Conversely, it is to Le Bestiaire d'amour before Le Roman de la rose that Paré’s description of "une composition systématiquement ordonnée a ridiculiser les théories de l'amour coutois" is most appropriate. - [Author]

Language: English
DOI: 10.1075/rein.1.04bee

The Response to Richard de Fournival's Bestiaire d'amour (Teaching Language through Literature, 25 (1), 1985, 3-11) [Journal article]

Language: English
ISSN: 0362-2746

Richard de Fournival’s Anonymous Lady: The Character of the Response to the Bestiaire d’amour (Romance Philology, 1989; Series: 42:3)

An anonymous response is appended to Richard de Fournival's Bestiaire d'amour in four of the extant MSS. The hypothesis that Richard himself might have been its author is unacceptable. Major stylistic differences and the neglect of all but one theme from Richard’s contrapuntal bestiary would be sufficient evidence even without the Response’s specific criticisms of Richard, which at times verge upon insult.

The MSS provide little information. While several name “maistre Richart/ Ricars de Fourniual” as the author of the Bestiatre d’amour (some, e.g., Bibl. mun. Dijon 526, adding the further title “canceliers d’ Amiens”), none contains any other designation than “la dame” for the author of the Response. The dating of the MSS, at best imprecise, is of little help. A terminus ante quem of 1252 can be posited for the Bestiaire d’amour since a version of the Miroir des dames (dedicated to Blanche of Castile, who died in 1252) contains a citation from it. The Response poses more problems, but it is established that the extant MSS which first contained it originated in the last two decades of the 13th century, and that they are merely derivatives of a lost original. - [Author]

Language: English
0035-8002

Woman, authority and the book in the Middle Ages (in Women, the Book and the Worldly: Selected Proceedings of the St Hilda's Conference, 1993, Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1995, 61-69) [Book article]

Discusses the Response produced by a woman to counter Richard de Fournival's Bestiaire d'amour.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-85991-479-8

Unicorn: Myth and Reality (New York: Mason/Charter, 1977) [Book]

The author traces the unicorn's first appearances in Europe, centuries before the birth of Christ... Its image is brought to life in references to the literature of East and West, through the use of ancient illustrated manuscripts, tapestries, sculptures, woodcuts, engravings, church decorations and architectural bas-reliefs. - [Cover copy]

Originally published in German as Einhorn: Fabelwelt und Wirklichkeit, 1972 (Callwey, Munchen).

215pp. 161 black & white illustrations with commentary, dating from the second century BC to the 18th century AD. Bibliography, index.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-88405-583-3

Els bestiaris medievals : llibres d'animals i símbols (Barcelona: Rafael Dalmau, 2004; Series: Episodis de la història) [Book]

70 p., illustrations, bibiliography

Language: Catalan
ISBN: 84-232-0662-9; LC: PA8275.B4; OCLC: 55060634

Il Physiologus : L'ermetismo attraverso i simboli degli animali (Milano: Edizione Kemi, 1991) [Book]

Language: Italian

La Parodie Epique dans les Premieres Branches du Roman de Renart (in Epopee Animale, Fable, Fabliau: Actes du IVe Colloque de la Societe Internationale Renardienne, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984, 71-94) [Book article]

"S'il est un point sur lequel les critiques sont unanimes, c'est pour reconnaiatre que les differents auteurs du Roman de Renart se livrent frequement a la parodie des genres litteraires en vogue a leur epoque, la Chanson de Geste et le Roman Courtois. Vouloir determiner la place que tient la parodie epique dans l'ensemble du Roman de Renart, ce serait ouvrir une longue et minutieuse enquate; c'est pourquoi la presente etude s'inscrit necessairement dans un cadre plus limite: nous ne nous interessons qu'au "premier poeme en francais de Renart et d'Isengrin" selon l'expression de Foulet, c'est-a-dire les branches II et Va telles que les editees Martin." - Bellon

Language: French

Trickery as an Element of the Character of Renart (Forum for Modern Language Studies, January; 22:1, 1986, 34-52) [Journal article]

"If trickery is defined as a 'means of obtaining from others that which cannot be obtained by force, work or right', it clearly emerges from the full text of the Roman de Renart that trickery is vitally important to Renart, both as animal and man... It should be noted that the Old French term enging has two senses: it is both a trick, wile or dodge, and in a more abstract sense an attitude of mind, a rule of conduct, and an approach to life. A detailed moral and intellectual portrait of Renart can therefore be drawn; in P. Jonin's study Renart is described as cruel, knavish and perverse from a moral viewpoint, but his intellectual qualities can be summed up in one word: Renart is a trickster. The distinction between moral and intellectual characteristics surely fades into insignificance when set against one essential truth: like other heroes of medieval literature, Renart pocesses a teche (l'enging), and all Renart's other characteristics are subordinated to his inate and unfailing trickery." - Bellon

Language: English
ISSN: 0015-8518

Slavianskii bestiarii: slovar’ nazvanii i simvoliki (Moscow: Izd-vo "Indrik", 2000) [Book]

Russian with a summary in English. At head of title: Rossiiskaia akademiia nauk. Institut slavianovedeniia. Slavic bestiary--dictionary of appelations and symbolism.

318 pp., illustrations, bibliography.

Language: Russian
ISBN: 5-85759-100-7; LCCN: 2001425448; LC: GR825.B452000; OCLC: 44618162

Cambridge University Library L1 1 14, F. 46r-v: A Late Medieval Natural Scientist at Work (Neophilologus, 86:2 (April), 2002, 171-177) [Journal article]

"Many catalogues of animals and sounds exist in medieval glossaries, poems, or other types of text. Most descend from a list associated with Polemius Silvius, one associated with Phocas, one associated with Aldhelm, or one associated with the poem De Philomela. Some are mixtures, editions even, of lists from multiple sources. One such text in Cambridge University Library shows a 'scientist' using scientific methods to classify and organize linguistic material." - abstract

Language: English
ISSN: 0028-2677

Some Doctrinal Implications of the Comput and Bestiaire of Philippe de Thaun (in Gabriel Bianciotto & Michel Salvat, ed., Épopée Animale, Fable, Fabliau: Actes du IVe Colloque de la Société Internationale Renardienne, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984, 95-105) [Book article]

"While investigating Robert Biket's use of the hexasyllable, I was inevitably led to analyse Philippe de Thaun's handling of the same medium. I soon became struck by certain features of the Norman's allegorical expositions, particularly in those excurses which he makes beyond the traditional allegorical explanations into the formulation of doctrine concerning the person of Christ, his birth and death, baptism and the importance of the Church as a corporate body. I wish to return here to consider in more detail the nature of Philippe's formulations and their possible import. ...as we will see, some of the most extended expositions in Philippe's work have no counterpart, either in the most immediately adduceable Latin sources, or in later vernacular authors. It will therefore be appropriate to consider Philippe's relationship to his sources, and to try to determine the extent of his personal contribution, in terms of style and rhetoric as well as content, before considering the implications of that content." - Bennett

Language: English

Survivances païennes à Hildesheim autour de l'an Mil (Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 110:1427, 1987, 191-202) [Journal article]

Etude mettant en evidence la persistance de themes iconographiques appartenant a la mythologie germanique dans les oeuvres executees entre 993 et 1022 sous l'episcopat de Bernward a la cathedrale d'Hildesheim, en particulier dans le bestiaire developpe, tant dans la sculpture, que dans les pieces d'orfevrerie : persistance directement liee aux efforts de l'evaque pour christianiser la Saxe.

Language: French

Man and nature in the Middle Ages (Sewanee, Tenn.: University of the South Press, 1995; Series: Sewanee mediaeval studies no. 6) [Book]

Contents: Natura ridens ; Natura lachrymosa / John V. Fleming -- Nature as light in Eriugena and Grosseteste ; Nature and finality in Aquinas / James McEvoy -- The Bifurcation of creation : Augustine's attitudes toward nature / Frederick H. Russell -- Some effects of the Judeo-Christian concept of Deity on medieval treatments of classical problems / Richard C. Dales -- Necessity, fate and a science of experience in Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon / Jeremiah Hackett -- Nature's moral eye : Peter of Limoges' Tractatus moralis de Oculo / Richard Newhauser. The materialization of nature and of quaternary man in the early twelfth century / Paul Edward Dutton -- Celestial reason : the development of Latin planetary astronomy to the twelfth century / Bruce S. Eastwood -- The subjugation of nature in the development of the medieval hunt and tourney / Everett U. Crosby -- Chaucer's "Kynde nature" / William Provost -- Gawain in the wilderness / Edward Vasta -- Zoology in the medieval Latin bestiary / Willene B. Clark.

245 p., illustrations, bibliography.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-918769-37-X; LCCN: 82-50575; LC: CB351/BD581; OCLC: 35778979

Gargoyles: Animal Imagery and Artistic Individuality in Medieval Art (in Nona C. Flores, ed., Animals in the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays, New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1996, 147-165) [Book article]

"Animals, like so many other subjects in the art of the Middle Ages, were often used as didactic devices in the teaching of Christianity. ... The need for readily intelligible imagery fostered, understandably, conformity and convention rather than individuality and invention -- open expression of personal artistic style cannot be considered a characteristic of medieval art. ... But eqo, and the need for its visual assertion, seem to be innate components of the human animal. Certain types of animal imagery offered medieval artists rare opportunities for individual expression -- opportunities that seem to have been seized and relished. This eassay is not concerned with readily recognized animals that play well-understood and conspicuous roles in Christian art, such as the lion, lamb, or fish. Rather, the focus is on the unusual or imaginary animals that play questionable roles, often in inconspicuous locations, specifically, as gargoyles." - Benton

Language: English

Medieval Menagerie: Animals in the Art of the Middle Ages (New York: Abbeville Press, 1992) [Book]

An examination of how images of animals were used in the Middle Ages. The book is in three sections: Ancestors - Fantastic Fauna and the Medieval Attitude Toward the Past; Science - Information and Imagery in the Medieval Bestiary; and Symbolism - The Meaning of Animals in Medieval Art. Illustrated with hundreds of examples of animal imagery from manuscripts, carvings and sculpture, paintings, and tapestries. The illustrations are of very high quality.

191 pp., color and black & white illustrations, index.

Language: English
ISBN: 1-55859-133-8

La part du lion (in Pierre Dehaye, ed., Le bestiaire: des monnaies des sceaux et des médailles, Paris, 1974, 25-34) [Book article]

Language: French

Konrad von Megenbergs "Buch der Natur" (1350) : schriftsprachliche Varianten im Deutsch des 14. Jahrhunderts als Ausdruck für regionales Sprachbewußtsein und dessen Reflexion (Das Frühneuhochdeutsche als sprachgeschichtliche Epoche : Werner Besch zum 70. Geburtstag, 1999)

Konrad von Megenberg's “Book of Nature” (1350): Written language variants in 14th century German as an expression of regional language awareness and its Reflection

The topic is of course particularly important in the context of the German language history of the late Middle Ages in the transition to the early New High German period. Important questions include, for example, how the dialect situation should be assessed at this time, whether there are tendencies to expand language use beyond dialect boundaries, what these tendencies look like, and how they should be assessed from today's linguistic-historical perspective. Are there already clear indications of nationwide standardization of language use, and how should these indications be interpreted? When dealing with such questions, one must of course stick to the written tradition of the time; We know almost nothing from the sources about how people actually spoke in the late Middle Ages. I would like to address Konrad von Megenberg's “Book of Nature” and deal with this text under the guiding questions that I have suggested. - [Author]

Language: German

Sur la filiation entre le Bestiaire d’amour de Richard de Fournival et la version longue du bestiaire de Pierre de Beauvais (Academia)

Critics have long defended the hypothesis that Richard de Fournival copied word for word entire passages from the long version of Pierre de Beauvais's Bestiaire... - [Author]

Language: French

Pierre de Beauvais: An Introduction to His Works (Romance Philology, 1965; Series: Vol. 18, No. 4)

A short introduction the works of Pierre de Beauvais, including but not limited to the Bestiaire. With a history of the scholarly study of Pierre's text, from the mid-nineteenth century.

Language: English

Le convers et les oiseaux. Monde animal, morale et milieu monastique: le De avibus d'Hugues de Fouilloy (XIIe siecle) (in Rémy Cordonnier, L'homme-animal, histoire d'un face à face, Strasbourg: Adam Biro / Musées de Strasbourg, 2004) [Book article]

Catalogue de l'exposition des musées de Strasbourg (Galerie Heitz, Musée Archéologique - Palais Rohan -, Musée de l'œuvre Notre-Dame, Musée d'Art moderne et contemporain, 8 avril - 4 juillet 2004).

Language: French

L'animal exemplaire au Moyen Âge (Ve - XVe siècles) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1999) [Book]

Language: French

Il fisiologo di Smirne: le miniature del perduto codice B. 8 della Biblioteca della Scuola evangelica di Smirne (Tavarnuzze-Firenze: SISMEL edizioni del Galluzzo, 1998; Series: Millennio medievale 7 (Società internazionale per lo studio del Medioevo latino)) [Book]

Of the precious codex of Smyrna, reduced to ashes in the fire that devastated the city in 1922 and witness, among other works, of the Physiologus, the author reconstructs the surviving iconographic material (dating to the 14th century) by publishing 89 photographs of the miniatures, taken between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century and now found in various archives around the world. The careful study of the manuscript, which constitutes the only illuminated oriental testimony of the Physiologus, explains the importance of such a recovery for the history of both Byzantine illumination and the naturalistic and exegetical knowledge of the Eastern Middle Ages. The miniatures reproduced here in fact depict the physical nature of the animals described in the text, as well as the moral hermeneia that follows from the parallel established between the behaviors of animals and those of men, interpreted in the light of the Scriptures. The Physiologist's investigation of zoological sources places emphasis on naturalistic treatises and other works of antiquity. Other depictions were instead introduced into the illuminated cycle from different iconographic sources, probably in the Palaeologan era. - [Abstract]

128 pp., 54 pp. of plates, illustrations, bibliography, index.

Language: Italian
ISBN: 88-87027-24-2; LC: PA4273.P9; OCLC: 40624656

Bestiario en pedra : animais fabulosos na arte medieval galega (Vigo: Nigra Trea, 2004) [Book]

Relief sculpture of bestiary subjects in the Galicia region of Spain.

249 p., illustrations (some color), bibliography.

Language: Spanish (Galician)
ISBN: 84-95364-27-1; LCCN: 2005-420824; LC: N7745.A5; OCLC: 60543179

Wild Men in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass.: 1952) [Book]

Language: English

Sancti Geronis columna. Zu Ysengrimus II 179 ff. un IV 25f. (in Aspects of the Medieval Animal Epic, Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1975, 105-112) [Book article]

Der besondere Reiz der Satire besteht in der Genauigkeit und Scharfe, mit der der Satiriker das Detail erfast, in der Keckheit, mit der er Realitaten aufgreift, die sonst weithin nicht literaturfahig sind. Auf ein solches Detail mochte ich mit einigen Bemerkungen zu zwei Stellen im Ysengrimus eingehen, in denen der Verfasser des Ysengrimus - eine Handschrift nennt ihn Nivardus magister - die "Saule des heiligen Gereon" zu Koln beschwort.

(Der Fuchs uberredet den Wolf dazu, mit dem Schwanz in einem vereisenden Gewasser zu fischen. Da der Wolf festgefroren ist, lockt er durch einen Hahnraub einen Pfarrer und seine Gemeinde von der Messe weg zu der Stelle, wo Ysengrimus festsitzt. Der Wolf mus von den Verfolgern des Fuchses Schlimmes erdulden, bis Aldrada, die alte Magd des Pfarrers, die den Wolf am argsten schindet, mit einem ungeschickten Axthieb dem Wolf den Schwanz abtrennt und ihn so befreit. Ysengrimus schwort dem Fuchs ewige ache.)

Language: German

Jacob van Maerlant, Der Naturen Bloeme: Introduction to the literary history and description (Codices illuminati medii aevi (CIMA), 1999; Series: CIMA 56)

This article is the introduction and notes that accompanied a microfiche facsimile of manuscript Lippische Landesbibliothek, Ms. 70 (designated D), the Der Naturen Bloeme of Jacob van Maerlant. It includes:

• biography of Jacob
• notes on his works
• description of the text of the Der Naturen Bloeme
• annotated list of surviving manuscripts (with the standard letter designations)
• extensive codicological descriptions of Ms. 70
• list of editions
• complete list of all of the illustrations with notes explaining them and corrected annimal names
• bibliography

Language: German
ISBN: 3-89219-056-9

Jacob van Maerlant's 'Der naturen bloeme' und das Umfeld: Vorläufer, Redaktionen, Rezeption (Münster; New York: Waxmann, 2001; Series: Niederlande-Studien 23) [Book]

Papers presented at an international colloquium held by the Lippische Landesbibliothek, Oct. 29-30, 1999. Articles in German and Dutch.

The manuscript Detmold, Lippische Landesbibliothek, Mscr 70 is the oldest completely preserved source of Jacob van Maerlant's natural encyclopedia Der naturen bloeme. In 1999, the unique importance of this precious manuscript was recognized in two ways. After the text had already been published in an exemplary manner by Maurits Gysseling in 1981, the appearance of a color microfiche edition - a pioneer in Dutch philology - made the text, together with its unique pictorial decoration, accessible to the public for the first time. In addition, on October 29th and 30th, 1999, in the Lippe State Library, under the title "The blossoms of nature and the environment. Forerunner - Editorials - Reception" held an international colloquium in which the Detmold manuscript was the focus of interest. The present volume in the Netherlands Studies series, the first to be published jointly by the Center for Dutch Studies and the Institute for Dutch Philology at the Westphalian Wilhelms University, bears the same title as the Detmold Colloquium and brings together all the lectures that held by the German, Dutch and Flemish participants. - [Foreword]

311 p., illustrations, bibliography.

Language: German
ISBN: 3-8309-1034-7; LCCN: 2001-422252; LC: PT5570.D48J332001; OCLC: 48847572

A környezo táj állatvilágának megjelenése a középkori magyar címerekben" (in Táj és történelem. Tanulmányok a történeti ökológia világából (in Táj és történelem. Tanulmányok a történeti ökológia világából, Budapest: Osiris, 2000, 187-193) [Book article]

[The appearance of animals from the local environment in medieval Hungarian coats of arms] Analyses several Hungarian family coats of arms from the point of view of the illustrated animals on them.

Language: Magyar
ISBN: 963-389-055-1

Eine Geschichte des Physiologus auf einem Madonnenbild der Brera (Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte, 15:4, 1963, 313-330) [Journal article]

Language: German
ISSN: 0044-3441

Reynard the Fox (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1983; Series: Twayne's World Authors Series 673) [Book]

I have written the present book as an introduction to the major Reynard poems, which form a definite progression. The Latin Ysengrimus influenced many parts of the French Roman de Renart [Romance of Reynard], out of which the Dutch Van den Vos Reynaerde [Of Reynard the Fox] developed. With further help from the Roman de Renart, Van den Vos Reynaerde was expanded into the Dutch Reinaerts Historie [Reynard's History], which was reworked in Low German as Reynke de Vos [Reynard the Fox]. My book presumes no prior knowledge of medieval beast epics, being descriptive as well as analytical, but it also offers new interpretations. Rather than a summary of previous research, it is a statement of my own opinions, as grounded in previous research. - [Preface]

178 pp., bibliography, index.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-8057-6520-4; LCCN: 82-13095; LC: PN690.R5B41983; DDC: 809'.9336

Lamberti Floridus, nach der Genter Handschrift (Serapeum, 1845; Series: 6)

A study of the Liber Floridus by Lambert of Saint-Omer, based on the Universiteitsbibliotheek Ghent, MS 92 manuscript.

Language: German

Giving Birth: Stories of Weasels and Women, Mothers and Heroes (Web, 1998) [Web page]

"In 1998, Maurizio Bettini published his much-awaited book about weasels in ancient Greece and Rome: Nascere. Storie di donnole, donne, madre ed eroi. This webpage has been created to share the basic contents of the book with English-speaking readers."

Includes a large bibliography of weasel lore.

Language: English

Nascere. Storie di donnole, donne, madre ed eroi (Torino Italy: Einaudi Press, 1998) [Book]

Weasel lore in Greece and Rome.

See also Giving Birth: Stories of Weasels and Women, Mothers and Heroes for a partial English edition.

Language: Italian

Bestiaires du Moyen Age (Paris: Stock, 1980; Series: Serie "Moyen âge"; 35) [Book]

Includes a short introduction to the bestiary genre and a brief biography of each author, with bibliographies. "mis en Francais moderne et presente par Gabriel Bianciotto".

Contents: Bestiaire - Pierre de Beauvais; Bestiaire divin (extracts) - Guillaume le Clerc de Normandie; Bestiaire d'un poete - Thibaut de Champagne; Bestiaire d'amour - Richard de Fournival; Livre du Tresor - Brunetto Latini; Livre des proprietes des choses (livre XVIII) - Jean Corbechon.

262 p., bibliography

Language: French
ISBN: 2-234-01217-1; LC: PQ1327.B4; DDC: 398.245; OCLC: 27747241

Sur le Bestiaire d'amour de Richart de Fournival (in Gabriel Bianciotto & Michel Salvat, ed., Épopée Animale, Fable, Fabliau: Actes du IVe Colloque de la Société Internationale Renardienne, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984, 107-119) [Book article]

Il ne me semble pas paradoxal d'affirmer que le Bestiaire d'Amour de Richard de Fournival est une oevre mal connue, et sur laquelle on n'a porte generalement que des appreciations d'autant plus peremptoires qu'elles etaient superficielles et mal fondees. La preface de Cesare Segre a son edition du Bestiaire d'Amour constitue toujours la seuale approche informee de l'oevre, et malgre as richesse, on ne peut considerer qu'elle ait epuise touts les perspectives critiques. Les commentaires situent en general assez clairement le Bestiaire par rapport a son amont et a son aval dans le fil de l'histoire litteraire, mais sans caracteriser autrement son role de charniere, et la transmutation qu'il a fait subir aux themes et aux images de la lyrique courtoise, aux metaphores du bestiaire traditionnel, avant de les transmettre a ses epigones du Dit de la Panthere d'Amour ou du Fiore di Virtu: il ne suffit sans doute pas de poser que le Bestiaire d'Amour a systematise l'usage emblematique des animaux dans l'illustration d'une rhetorique amoureuse pour definir l'originalite du mode d'ecriture de Richart de Fournival, et l'apport de l'auteur a la litteraire de son temps. - [Author]

Language: French

Des trois oiseaux symboliques dans des textes anciens; aux sources du bestiaire roman (Reinardus: Yearbook of the International Reynard Society, 8, 1995, 3-23) [Journal article]

Discusses religious symbolism in the Vie de Saint Alexis, Sainte Foy d'Agen, and the Physiologus Latinus.

Language: French

Épopée Animale, Fable, Fabliau (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984; Series: Actes du IVe Colloque de la Société Internationale Renardienne) [Book]

Actes du IVe Colloque de la Society International Renardienne, Evreux, 7-11 Sept. 1981. A series of essays relating to animal fables of the Middle Ages, including several on Reynard the Fox; others discuss the Bestiaire d'amour of Richard de Fournival, the French fabliaux genre, bestiaries, etc. Articles in English, French and German.

724 p.

Language: French/German/English
ISBN: 2-13-038255-X; LC: CB351.C2

Bestiaire de Moyen Âge (Bibliotheque Nationale de France, 2004) [Web page]

The online catalog of an exhibition on the medieval bestiary, with samples from several bestiary manuscripts at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France. A printed catalogue is also available.

Language: French

Bestiaire médiéval : Enluminures (Paris: Nationale de France, 2005) [Book]

"Catalogue de l'exposition presentee a la bibliotheque nationale de France du 11 octobre 2005 au 8 janvier 2006".

An online catalog is also available.

239p.

Language: French
ISBN: 2-7177-2337-4; DDS: 091; OCLC: 62130576

Portraits d`oiseaux illustrant le De avibus d`Hugues de Fouilly, manuscrit de Clairvaux Troyes 177 (in B. Chauvin, ed., Mélanges à la mémoire du Père Anselme Dimier, Abbayes: Beernem / Histoire Cistercienne, 4, 1984, 409-447) [Book article]

Language: French

L'animal dans la littérature française aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles (Lille: 1976) [Book]

Language: French

Reynard the Fox as Anti-Hero (in Leo Carruthers, ed., Heroes and Heroines in Medieval English Literature, Cambridge: Brewer, 1994, 119-123) [Book article]

Language: English
ISBN: 0-85991-415-1

The Eschatological Conclusion of the Old English Physiologus (Medium Aevum, 58:2, 1989, 286-297) [Journal article]

"Much of the criticism of the Old English Physiologus has quite properly focused on the final fragmentary sections - conveniently called 'The Partridge' - since the differing interpretations of these lines provide strikingly different views of the shape of the entire work. The textual problem at this point in the Exeter Book is straightforward: after the opening phrases that identify the subject as a bird, the poem breaks off in mid-sentence at the bottom of folio 97b; the following folio begins mid-sentence, but does not explicitly mention a bird. ...it now seems likely that a single leaf, and not an entire gathering, has been lost at this point ... the two passages either may be or may not be part of the same poem. In this essay, I should like to strengthen the claim that they are part of a single poem about the partridge, by arguing that the final fragment differs from the moral gloss of the Latin source because the Anglo-Saxon poet has included eschatological motifs, and thus makes the conclusion of the work similar to other Old English poems that end with references to the Last Judgement." - Biggs

Language: English
ISSN: 0025-8385

The Anatomy of a Dragon (London: British Library, Medieval manuscripts blog, 2014; Series: 23 April 2014)

Dragons are near-ubiquitious in medieval manuscripts. They take pride of place in bestiaries and herbals, books of history and legend, and Apocalypse texts, to name a few. They serve as symbols, heraldic devices, and even as ‘just’ decoration, and their physical characteristics can vary widely. Cinematic and literary depictions of dragons today are fairly consistent; they are almost always shown as reptilian, winged, fire-breathing creatures (in a word, Smaug). But this was by no means constant in the medieval period. - [Author]

Language: English

Bugs in Books (London: British Library, Medieval manuscripts blog, 2014; Series: 26 August 2014)

Even the most cursory glance over the pages of medieval manuscripts will reveal a plethora of insects. Bugs are everywhere – although we hasten to add that we are extremely vigilant about avoiding the presence of any actual living insects within the pages of our books. But there has been little comprehensive scholarship about the appearance of such creatures in medieval manuscripts. Insects usually live literally in the margins, often not even appearing in catalogue entries despite their profusion. Whilst undertaking this very short exploration of the subject, therefore, we would do well to remember the words of one of the earliest writers about these minute creatures. As Pliny the Elder reminds us in the introduction to his book about insects: ‘Nature is nowhere to be seen in greater perfection than in the very smallest of her works. For this reason then, I must beg of my readers, notwithstanding the contempt they feel for many of these objects, not to feel a similar disdain for the information I am about to give relative thereto, seeing that, in the study of Nature, there are none of her works that are unworthy of our consideration.’ - [Author]

Language: English

Not Always Bad News Birds: The Caladrius (British Library, Medieval manuscripts blog, 2013; Series: 12 April 2013)

Although they are little-known today, caladrius birds were common features in medieval bestiaries. The caladrius, we are told in the bestiary text, makes its home in the courts of kings, and is pure white 'like the swan'. The dung of the caladrius was believed to cure blindness, but this remedy was rather a mixed blessing since it required the direct application of guano in the eyes of the afflicted. But the real value of the caladrius was in its infallible prognostic abilities. If it was brought into a sickroom and turned away from the man or woman within, that person would surely die. If, however, the caladrius kept his gaze on the ill person and 'directed itself towards his face' (sometimes this is depicted quite literally; see below), it was a different story. After staring down the sick man or woman, the caladrius would fly into the air, taking the illness with it, and the patient was destined to make a full recovery. = [Author]

Language: English

The Monstrous Middle Ages (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004) [Book]

"The figure of the monster in medieval culture functions as a vehicle for a range of intellectual and spiritual inquiries, from questions of language and representation to issues of moral, theological, and cultural value. Monstrosity is bound up with questions of body image and deformity, nature and knowledge, hybridity and horror. To explore a culture's attitudes to the monstrous is to comprehend one of its most important symbolic tools.

The Monstrous Middle Ages looks at both the representation of literal monsters and the consumption and exploitation of monstrous metaphors in a wide variety of high and late-medieval cultural productions, from travel writings and mystical texts to sermons, manuscript illuminations and maps. Individual essays explore the ways in which monstrosity shaped the construction of gender and sexual identity, religious symbolism, and social prejudice in the Middle Ages.

Reading the Middle Ages through its monsters provides an opportunity to view medieval culture from fresh perspectives. The Monstrous Middle Ages will be essential reading for anyone interested in the concept of monstrosity and its significance for both medieval cultural production and contemporary critical practice." - publisher

1. Introduction: Conceptualizing the Monstrous - Bettina Bildhauer and Robert Mills

2. Jesus as Monster - Robert Mills

3. Monstrous Masculinities in Julian of Norwich's A Revelation of Love and The Book of Margery Kempe - Liz Herbert Mcavoy

4. Blood, Jews and Monsters in Medieval Culture - Bettina Bildhauer

5. The Other Close at Hand: Gerald of Wales and the 'Marvels of the West' - Asa Simon Mittman

6. Idols and Simulacra: Paganity, Hybridity and Representation in Mandeville 's Travels - Sarah Salih

7. Demonizing the Night in Medieval Europe: A Temporal Monstrosity? - Deborah Youngs and Simon Harris

8. Apocalyptic Monsters: Animal Inspirations for the Iconography of Medieval North European Devourers - Aleks Pluskowski

9. Hell on Earth: Encountering Devils in the Medieval Landscape - Jeremy Harte

10. Encountering the Monstrous: Saints and Dragons in Medieval Thought - Samantha J.E. Riches

210 p., illustrations, index.

Language: English

The Cheval fol of Lyon and other asses (in Clifford Davidson, ed., Fools and Folly, Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996, 9-33) [Book article]

Discusses the relevance of appearance of horses and asses in literature, with particular reference to mystery plays.

Language: English
ISBN: 1-879288-70-2

Pre-Modern Encyclopaedic Texts (Leiden: Brill, 1997; Series: Proceedings of the Second COMERS Congress, Groningen, 1-4 July 1996) [Book]

"Pre-Modern Encyclopaedic Texts presents the proceedings of the second COMERS congress, the successor to Centres of Learning (Brill, 1995). Like its predecessor it contains in ancient, medieval and renaissance Europe and the Near East. Although the genre of encyclopaedia was defined and named only in modern times, texts that aspire to the encyclopaedic ideals of utility and comprehensiveness are found throughout recorded history. They respond to and shape ideas about the natural world, human history, and the nature and limits of human knowledge. The present volume comprises five extended essays on the problems and opportunities facing researchers into encyclopaedic texts, and 21 research papers on specific topics. It will be of interest to a general university audience as an interdisciplinary project, as well as to specialists in the various disciplines covered." - publisher

Language: English
ISBN: 90-04-10830-0

Medieval Hunting Scenes (Miller Graphics, 1978) [Book]

Illustrations from "The Hunting Book" by Gaston Phoebus.

108 p.

Language: English

Physiologus und Bestiarien im englischen Mittelalter (Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch: Internationale Zeitschrift für Mediävistik / International Journal of Medieval Studies, 40:2, 2005, 153-170) [Journal article]

Discusses manuscripts:

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 764

London, British Library, Royal 12.F.XIII

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 16

London, British Library, Royal 2.B.VII

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmole 1511

Language: German
ISSN: 0076-9762

Zur Quelle des Middle English Bestiary, 649-667 (Zeitschrift für englische Philologie, 94:1-2, 1976, 166-169) [Journal article]

Language: German

Animals of the imagination and the bestiary (Aldeburgh: Britten-Pears Library, 1994; Series: The Prince of Hesse and the Rhine memorial lecture, 1994) [Book]

"Given at the Jubilee Hall Aldeburgh, on Tuesday 14 June 1994, during the 46th Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts."

12p., bibliography.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-9511939-4-5

The Phoenix (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1964) [Book]

The Phoenix is an allegorical poem which has been preserved in the Exeter Book, an anthology compiled towards the end of the tenth century and given to Exeter Cathedral by Leofric, the first Bishop of Exeter. A picture of a terrestrial heavenly paradise, allegorical interpretations are linked with the story of the phoenix. Blake discusses the manuscript, the language of the poem and its sources, authorship and date. Illustrated with b/w frontispiece of Phoenix from Bestiaries.

Language: English

A Possible Seventh Copy of Caxton's Reynard the Fox (1481)? (Notes and Queries, 10, 1963, 287-288) [Journal article]

Language: English
ISSN: 0029-3970

Reflections on William Caxton's 'Reynard the Fox' (Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies/Revue, May; 4 (1), 1983, 69-76) [Journal article]

Notes on William Caxton's English language translation of "Reynard the Fox" from Die Hystorie van Reynaert de Vos. Netherlandic literature.

Language: English
ISSN: 0225-0500

Reynard the Fox in England (in E. Rombauts, A. Welkenhuysen & G. Verbeke, ed., Aspects of the Medieval Animal Epic, Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1975, 53-66) [Book article]

"The Roman de Renart is such an important text in medieval French literature and exerted such an influence on several other medieval vernacular literatures that it has usually been assumed it was also known in medieval England and influenced Middle English writers. Two attempts have been made to document this influence: one by F. Mosse and the other by J. Flinn. Since both scholars were intent on tracing the influence of the Roman de Renart, their surveys excluded some Middle English works containing stories of foxes in which the fox is not called Reynard. The omission of these works distorts the general picture of fox literature in England for it suggests that only those stories which have some connexion with the Roman de Renart were found. It is therefore worthwhile reopening the question of whether the Roman de Renart was known in England, partly to investigate the occurrences of the fox in a wider context, and partly to consider to what ends the English poets used their material since this may provide us with a clue as to the possible sources they used. My investigation will be concerned principally with works written in Middle English, though it should not be forgotten that the fox is frequently portrayed in he art of the later Middle English period and that stories about the fox were composed also in Latin and French in England." - Blake

Language: English

Of 'Briddes and Beestes': Chaucer's Use of Animal Imagery as a Means of Audience Influence in Four Major Poetic Works (Los Angeles: University Of Southern California, 1994) [Dissertation]

PhD dissertation at the University Of Southern California.

"This dissertation is an analysis of Geoffrey Chaucer's use of animal imagery in The House of Fame, The Parlement of Foules, 'The Nun's Priest's Tale' in The Canterbury Tales, and Troilus and Criseyde. Chaucer used animal imagery extensively in these works, either portraying animals acting like humans or humans exhibiting bestial behavior. The paper explores how Chaucer deliberately employed these animal portrayals to influence and to manipulate his audience. Chaucer's medieval audience was familiar with animal lore through numerous sources: daily agricultural interaction with animals, bestiary lore, religious sermons containing animal lore, folklore, and biblical allusions. For each work, I analyze the various references to animals in terms of historical usage and importance to the work. Also, I examine recent Chaucerian scholarship which discusses Chaucer's relationship with his audience. I argue that Chaucer's use of animal imagery is deliberate and calculated in its goal of imparting social and religious values to his audience. He enlightened and entertained his audience through the animal imagery, always with the specific intent of manipulating them to accept his own themes and commentaries. In The House of Fame, Chaucer uses the eagle animal figure to discuss medieval theories of science and rhetoric and to analyze the art of poetry itself. In The Parlement of Foules, extensive bird imagery enhances Chaucer's lament about the decline of chivalry and changes occurring in his social milieu. In 'The Nun's Priest's Tale,' the animal imagery enables Chaucer to indulge in humorous social class depictions, a means of audience manipulation and social control. And his greatest work involving animal imagery, Troilus and Criseyde, is Chaucer's most blatant and brilliant use of Christian oriented animal imagery. In this paper, I show that Chaucer's creative and successful use of animal imagery enables him to interact more cogently on philosophical, spiritual, intellectual, and humorous levels with both his medieval and modern audiences." - abstract

Copies available exclusively from Micrographics Department, Doheny Library, USC, Los Angeles, CA.

Language: English

Bell the Cat and Gnaw the Bone: Animals and Proverbs on Misericords (Reinardus. Yearbook of the International Reynard Society, 1991; Series: Volume 4, Issue 1)

Misericords with secular themes adorned the Catholic churches of Europe froin the thirteenth century until they were banned by counter-Reformation edicts in the mid-sixteenth century. Most of the animals on these misericords can be classified as fabulous monsters. The amorphous forms at Chichester, the scaly monsters created by Andre Sulpice at Rodez and Villefranche-de-Rouergue, and the glaring creatures at Aarschot in Belgium are more typical than exceptional. Their aberrations from the norm and their frightening details signify evil. These monsters provide a logical base for the living statues: the monk, canon, or bishop who sits upon them - a columnar figure who conquers evil by crushing the sins depicted below. When we see a realistic animai on a misericord, one that does not necessarily connote evil, we may ask why it ts there, for it does not suit the misericord as theme or statue base. Why are these animals here? What do they signify? How do they relate to the evil monsters we usually see on misericords? I propose that one must search for symbolic meanings in realistic animal carvings. Some represent the seasons; some represent specific vices. An intriguing possibility is that these animals are actors in proverbs, proverbs that show not the great sins of the world - the cardinal or theological sins - but the small evils, the everyday sins, the character traits and behaviour destructive to work and to interpersonal relationships. - [Author]

Language: English
0925-4757; DOI: 10.1075/rein.4.05blo

Corpus of Medieval Misericords in France (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepolis, 2003) [Book]

"The Corpus of Medieval Misericords (XIII-XXVI) consists of five volumes; the first four focus on the misericords and related choir stall carvings in specific regions of Europe. The fifth includes an extensive iconographic index of themes common to various countries as well as themes that are unique to a single country.

Volume I of this series, Medieval Misericords in France, covers approximately 300 churches that still contain gothic misericords with carved figures and narratives inspired by oral traditions suh as proverbs and folk tales, as well as by manuscript marginalia, romanesque capitals, illustrated bibles, engravings, playing cards... A vast portrayal of medieval life - rural activities, urban occupations, conjugal relationships, monastic life -- is displayed in these carvings under the seats of choir stalls along with costumes of the times, town and collegiate architecture, mechanical devices. Puns and rebuses are often intertwined with these themes to produce comic and, to twenty-first century eyes, mysterious puzzles. The global view of misericord carvings, generally ignored in studies of medieval art, is here presented as a multidisciplinary basis for further research by sociologists, historians, archeologists and other medieval scholars.

Following volumes include misericords in Iberia, Flemish and borthen Europe, Great Britain." - publisher

Volume 1: 452 pp., 921 black & white illustrations.

Language: English
ISBN: 2-503-51239-9

The "Egg" of the Pala Montefeltro by Piero della Francesca and its symbolic meaning (Heidelberg: Universität Heidelberg / Zentrale und Sonstige Einrichtungen, 2003) [Book]

"The hanging ovoid object in Piero della Francesca's Montefeltro Altarpiece has long been the subject of controversies with regard to its identification and symbolic meaning. The present article argues that it can only be an ostrich egg (or imitation thereof), intended as an admonitory example. This is supported by further representations as well as by the interpretation of the "Rationale Divinorum Officorum" and a late version of the Greek "Physiologus". It is also born out by the widespread practice of suspending ostrich eggs among Coptic, Armenian, Greek-Orthodox, Latin and Nestorian Christians as well as in Islam. The eggs, often in the context of hanging lamps or lamp crowns, always served as warning or admonitory examples. Their varying emblematic significance is almost always related to the ostrich's behavior towards its eggs, attested in post-classical natural-history tales with allegorical interpretations, which is interpreted as a symbol of man's relationship to God or to religious ideas."

Language: English

Animals as Symbolic Devices in Llull and Turmeda (in Antonio Torres-Alcala & Victorio Aguera, ed., Josep Maria Sola-Sole: Homage, homenaje, homenatge: Miscelanea de estudios de amigos y discipulos, Barcelona: Puvill Libros, 1984, 205-216) [Book article]

Language: English

Zur Textüberlieferung von Thomas von Cantimpratensis Liber de natura rerum (Archivium Fratrum Praedicatorum, 39, 1969, 53-68) [Journal article]

Language: German

Silence's Beasts (in Debra Hassig, ed., The Mark of the Beast: The Medieval Bestiary in Art, Life, and Literature, New York: Garland, 1999, 185-209) [Book article]

Examines the influence of bestiaries on Le Roman de Silence.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-8153-2952-0

La tradizione manoscritta del Liber monstrorum de diversis generibus (appunti per l'edizione critica) (in 34:3-4Cultura neolatina: Bollettino dell'Istituto di filologia romanza, 1974, 337-346) [Book article]

Details of five Liber monstrorum manuscripts at Leiden, London (B.L.), St. Gallen, Wolfenbuttel and the private library of the Marquis of Rosanbo.

Manuscripts discussed: Wolfenbuttel, Herzog-August-Bibliothek, 4452 Weissenburg; Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, Voss.Lat.8*.60; London, British Library, Royal 15 B XIX; St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 237; Rosanbo, private library of the Marquis, no shelfmark.

Language: Italian

Wood Carvings in English Churches: Misericords (London: Oxford University Press, 1910; Series: Church Art in England) [Book]

An extensive survey of misericords in English churches. Part 1 covers animal images (eastern mythology, classical mythology, the Physiologus and bestiary subjects); Part 2 covers traveller's tales, romances, Aesop, scenes of everyday life, agriculture and trades, sports, seasons, Bible subjects, miracle plays, symbolism and satire; Part 3 covers the use, design and chronology of misericords.

237 p., 241 black & white photographic plates, illustrations, bibliography, index, lists.

Language: English
LC: NA5050.W6v.1

L'art bestiaire de la cathédrale Saint-Jean de Lyon (Lyons: Impr. Bosc, 1959) [Dissertation]

Language: French
LC: NA5551.L9B6

The Aloe-bird in the Coptic Tradition (Aula Orientalis, 2019; Series: 40/2)

There is a bird in the Coptic tradition whose name is "aloe”. At least three Coptic texts mention the existence of this legendary species of bird of oriental origin whose main feature is the good smell that emanates. These texts state that, by its smell, this bird is capable of attracting other animals towards it. Its smell is also the main reason why it is coveted by kings and, therefore, searched and hunted. The aloe-bird was introduced in the Coptic version of the Physiologus as a manifestation of Christ, with features taken partly from the panther and the phoenix that appear in the original literary work. The allegorical meaning of the bird is to represent Christ. The origin and later fate of this symbol can only be conjectural due to the lack of sources. There are some hints to suggest that it has been the result of a confluence of information from different origins that sparked the imagination of the people. The identification of the aloe in the Coptic art is again hypothetical because of the lack of a description of its physical appearance and the absence of captions identifying it. - [Abstract]

Language: English
0212-5730

The Budapest Concordantiae Caritatis. The Medieval Universe of a Cistercian Abbot in the Picture Book of a Viennese Councilman (Gyula Schöck, 2017)

This book is the commentary volume to the facsimile edition of the Budapest Concordantiae caritatis manuscript from 1413 (Central Library of the Hungarian Province of the Piarist Order, CX 2).

The Budapest Concordantiae caritatis possesses an almost inexhaustible wealth of images created by a collective of seven artists whose personal styles represent at least two distinct regions of medieval Europe and who used a great variety of models originating from both the 14th and the early 15th centuries. The manuscript thus provides an extraordinary opportunity for studying the circulation of visual ideas between ages and among artists. Allowing insight into the workshop of seven painters, the manuscript invites us to study the conception of images, and, as a result, to glimpse art works in their complete, multi-layered historicity. ... Addressing his work to poor clerics having no access to well equipped libraries and compiling it for the benefit of simple laymen, Ulrich von Lilienfeld aimed to cover a whole universe of knowledge: everything that seemed to be important for the understanding of the divine plan of salvation. - [Author]

Language: English
978-963-12-9121-6

A Description of Three Hundred Animals,: Viz. Beasts, Birds, Fishes, Serpents and Insects (London: H Woodall, 1769)

A description of many animals, both real and mythical, with many references to Bestiary attributes. Illustrated with copper plate engravings.

95 pages.

Language: English

The Book Of Imaginary Beings (London: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1969) [Book]

Borges draws on sources ranging from Chinese legends to the works of Kafka and C. S. Lewis. The 1970 edition of the book describes about 120 "beings", some of which are from the bestiary.

Originally published as Libro de los seres imaginarios. Revised, enlarged and translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni in collaboration with the author.

Republished: Cape, 1970; Avon, 1970; Penguin, 1984.

256 pp., index.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-14-003709-8; LC: GR825; DDC: 398/.469; LCCN: 78-87180; OCLC: 12511080

Thomas de Cantimpré : indiqué comme une des sources où Albert-le-Grand et surtout Maerlant ont puisé les matériaux de leurs écrits sur l'histoire naturelle (Brussels: Academie Royale de Belgique, 1800s) [Book]

Thomas de Cantimpre as a source for the natural histories of Albertus Magnus and Jacob van Maerlant.

"Academie Royale de Belgique. Extr. du t. XIX, no. 1, des Bulletins." 30 p.

Language: French
OCLC: 43153611

Cynocephali and Blemmyae. Congenital anomalies and medieval exotic races (Ned Tijdschr Geneeskd, December, 1999, 143-151) [Journal article]

"In the mediaeval Dutch manuscript Der naturen bloeme ('On the flowers of nature') by Jacob van Maerlant (circa 1230-circa 1296), an encyclopaedia of descriptions of people, animals, plants and minerals dating from about 1270, many illustrations refer to the text. An intriguing part of the book is called 'Vreemde volkeren' ('Exotic people'). In another manuscript of Van Maerlant, Dit is die istory van Troyen ('The history of Troyes') in the chapter 'De wonderen van het Verre Oosten' ('The miracles of the Far East') the exotic people are also described. These exotic people have many features similar to congenital malformations. 'Hippopodes' are probably based on the lobster claw syndrome, 'Cynocephali' on anencephaly, 'Arimaspi' on cyclopia, 'Blemmyae' on acardiacus, the double-faced on diprosopus, 'Sciopods' on polydactyly and 'Antipodes' on the sirenomelia sequence."

Language: Dutch

Le Roman de Renart (Paris: 1967) [Book]

Language: French

La philosophe à la licorne. Savoir de l’animal et savoir de l’homme dans la Physica de Hildegarde de Bingen (RursuSpicae: Transmission des textes et savoirs de l’Antiquité à la fin du Moyen Âge, 2020; Series: 3 (La conversation des encyclopédistes))

The Woman Philosopher with the Unicorn. Animal Knowledge and Human Knowledge in Hildegard of Bingen’s Physica

Hildegard of Bingen, abbess and mystic of the twelfth century, devotes a significant part of her scientific writings to the animal world. Through the many records of the last four books of her Physica, she studies the fauna according to traditional criteria of presentation. To some extant, she follows informations that could also be found in encyclopaedias and bestiaries, composed and wide spread in Europe through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These texts share the same classic and late antique authoritative sources on animals, such as Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, Isidore of Seville and the Physiologus. However, Hildegard seems to take distance from these genres. This article aims to outline her peculiar and personal choices. We show that Hildegard builds for herself an innovative and visionnary autorship figure while recomposing the traditional medieval discourse about fauna in order to reach her own philosophical goal. For example, she tends to leave out the injunctive tone and catechetical purpose of the allegorical writings, as comparisons with the Latin bestiaries could illustrate. Hildegard rather aims for the “subtilities”, invisible and underlying links established between forms of the living world in the universe. In order to do so, the abbess often recomposes the zoological information that was accessible to her. She gives original notices so as to propose to man a way to achieve the knowledge of the natural world which man is not the only owner. Thereby, she draws attention to the role of sight and proposes original models of knowledge throughout the text of the Physica. - [Abstract]

Language: French
2557-8839; DOI: 10.4000/rursuspicae.1321

Aux seuils du monde animal : le bestiaire médiéval du péritexte au métatexte (Perspectives médiévales, 2021; Series: 42)

The peritextual apparatus described by Gérard Genette is an integral part of medieval book production and medieval studies are equiped to treat these productions in the manuscripts they study, whatever the genres are transmitted by them. However, the genettian terminology is not exactly new to medieval studies and the description of “page layout”, or mise en page is often prefered so as to describe the particularity of pre-print culture. This paper would like to measure the relevance of Genette’s theory through the example of French bestiaries production in order to understand the benefit of the use of peritext as a concept. - [Abstract]

Language: English/French/Italian
2262-5534; DOI: 10.4000/peme.36348

Medieval Monsters (London: British Library, 2015)

An online exhibition of some of the British Library manuscripts that show the monstrous human races and other monstrous beasts.

Language: English

Monsters and Grotesques in Medieval Manuscripts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002) [Book]

"...describes the rich and varied symbolism of mosters, as depicted in an extensive range of medieval manuscripts from the British Library's collections, and lends a special insight into the medieval imagination. ... Alixe Bovey was a curator in the Department of Manuscripts at the Biritish Library [now Head of Research at The Courtauld Institute of Art]." - [Cover copy]

64 pp.; extensively illustrated in color; manuscript list, bibliography, index.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-8020-8512-1

A Letter from Prester John (ca. 1165-1170) (Black Central European Studies Network)

A brief description of Prester John and his letter, with an English translation of version of the letter, including the original text and some of the additions.

Language: English

'All's Fowl in Love and War': Birds in Medieval Literature (Furman Studies, 30, 1984, 1-17) [Journal article]

Language: English

Walters Ms. W.199, Gossouin of Metz, Image du Monde (From the Page, 2021)

An incomplete transcription of L'Image du Monde by Gossuin de Metz from manuscript Walters Art Museum, Ms. W.199.

Language: English/French

The Lure of Creatures True and Legendary (Canada: Davis & Henderson Limited, 1978) [Book]

A series of stories, based partly on Chinese folklore. Two stories involve the fox-trickster character of Yakan, messenger of Inari, goddess of the rice harvest.

Also includes an essay, "The Mythic Panther", comparing the Panther of the Physiologus with the panther in the writings of Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, and Aelian, with reference to other classical and medieval writers.

Boyd was Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Grinnell College, Iowa, and Waterloo University, Ontario.

Language: English

Castoreum en bevergeil (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 2003) [Digital article]

A short article on the castration theme represented by the beaver.

Language: Dutch

De Ouderliefde van de pelikaan (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 2003) [Digital article]

A short article on the bestiary pelican theme, with illustrations.

Language: Dutch

An Encyclopedist of the Dark Arges: Isidore of Seville (New York: Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, 1912; Series: 48) [Book]

A biography of Isidore of Seville, followed by an English translation of selections of the Etymologies. The introduction includes: Isidore's life and writings; Isidore's relation to previous culture.

Reprinted in 1972 by Burt Franklin Reprints, New York.

274 p., illustrations, bibliography.

Language: English

The Career of the Cockatrice (Isis, 70:1 (March), 1979, 30-47) [Journal article]

The author traces the changes in the name cockatrice, relating it to the crocodile, regulus and basilisk through references to various classical and medieval writers. The use of the cockatrice in alchemy is also examined.

Language: English

Old Georgian phrases and sentences 67 (Physiologus § 13) (hmmlorientalia Blog, 2015; Series: September 18, 2015)

The text this time is longer than others in the series, but here is the whole of Physiologus § 13 in Georgian. The Georgian version was published by (in asomtavruli, with Armenian) and later by Gigineišvili and E. Giunašvili. - [Author]

Language: English/Georgian

Talking wolves, golden fish, and lion sex: The alterations to gerald of wales's topographia hibernica as evidence of audience disbelief? (Parergon, 2020; Series: Volume 37, Issue 1)

In his Topographia Hibernica, Gerald of Wales describes many Irish wonders, including talking werewolves, animal-human hybrids, and bestiality. Version III, written c. 1189-93 (after a recitation in Oxford in 1188/9), defends the truth of these particular wonders. Gerald's reactive revisions endorse the reality of the unnamed critic he attacks in the Expugnatio Hibernica (first written in 1189), whose objections seem to concern hexameral categories. The Oxford recitation of 1188/9 was probably where the critic raised these objections. A later critic, William de Montibus, bemoaned Gerald's consideration of bestiality as a legitimate object of ethnological discourse.

Language: English
ISSN: 0313-6221; DOI: 10.1353/PGN.2020.0057

Prester John: The Legend and its Sources (Routledge, 2019)

The legend of Prester John has received much scholarly attention over the last hundred years, but never before have the sources been collected and coherently presented to readers. This book now brings together a fully-representative set of texts setting out the many and various sources from which we get our knowledge of the legend. These texts, spanning a time period from the Crusades to the Enlightenment, are presented in their original languages and in English translation (for many it is the first time they have been available in English). ... In order to orient the reader, each of these iterations is explained in the comprehensive introduction, and in the introductions to texts and sections. ... The book is completed with three valuable appendices: a list of all known references to Prester John in medieval and early modern sources, a thorough description of the manuscript traditions of the all-important Prester John Letter, and a brief description of Prester John in the history of cartography. - [Publisher]

Language: English
ISBN: 978-0-367-87904-4

Bestiare taurin: Symbole et mythe (Liege: University de Liege, 1985) [Dissertation]

"Bull Bestiary: Symbol and Myth." Degree dissertation at the University de Liege.

Language: French
PQDD: 3163C

Gargoyles, Chimeres, and the Grotesque in French Gothic Sculpture (New York: Da Capo Press, 1969; Series: Architecture and Decorative Art 21) [Book]

A survey of French stone and wood sculpture in the 12th and 13th centuries. There are some animal images in the plates.

230 p. (10 p. text introduction, 220 p. black & white photographic plates), bibliography.

Language: English
LCCN: 68-27724; LC: NB543.B71969

Love Letters to Bare Bones: A Comparison of Two Types of Evidence for the Use of Animals in Medieval Novgorod (in Mark Maltby, Medieval Animals, Cambridge: Archaeological Review from Cambridge 18, 2002, 100-118) [Book article]

Language: English

Books of Beasts in the British Library: the Medieval Bestiary and its context (London: British Library)

A virtual tour of the Bestiary manuscripts in the British Library, with many illustrations. Sections: The origins of the medieval bestiary; English bestiaries and their beasts; Beast studies and beast stories; Beasts in the margins; Further reading.

Language: English

Medieval Bestiary: The Crane (London: British Library)

Collections of animal legends helped to explain the living world. Inspired by a story in an early medieval illustrated bestiary (Harley MS 4751), this animation explores the life of the crane.

Video, 2:20 minutes, animated, with transcription

Language: English

Medieval Bestiary: The Whale (London: British Library)

The Whale was the terror of the seas, a danger to sailors who often mistook it for an island and anchored their ships on its back. Inspired by a tale from an illustrated medieval bestiary (Harley MS 4751), this animation explores the life of the sea-creature beneath the waves.

Video, 1:37 minutes, animated

Language: English

The Myth of the Phoenix According to Classical and Early Christian Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 1972) [Book]

Language: English

Bestiary lessons on pride and lust (in Debra Hassig, ed., The Mark of the Beast: The Medieval Bestiary in Art, Life, and Literature, New York: Garland, 1999, 53-70) [Book article]

Investigates the animals associated with the most deadly sin of pride, as part of bestiary instruction.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-8153-2952-0

The Vernacular Universe: Gossuin de Metz’s Image du Monde, Translatio Studii, and Vernacular Narrative (Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2013; Series: Volume 44, Issue 2)

This article argues that Gossuin de Metz’s Image du monde is indebted to both the Latin encyclopedic tradition and vernacular narrative, particularly the romances of Chrétien de Troyes. As the first vernacular encyclopedia, the Image du monde forges space as a new genre by combining these previous forms through the key notion of translatio studii. Not only is the medieval encyclopedia dependent on the transfer of knowledge from one language and culture to another, but Gossuin’s deployment of the translatio topos throughout his work evokes vernacular narratives. In this way, the Image du monde performs a transmission of learning from Latin to the vernacular as well as a transfer of scientific knowledge from a clerical audience to a broader audience familiar with narrative. The three different redactions of the Image du monde, although not all attributed to Gossuin, relate to Old French narratives particularly through the prosification of romance. - [Abstract]

Language: English
2031-0234; : 

Gerald of Wales and the "Topography of Ireland": Authorial Agendas in Word and Image (Journal of Irish Studies , 2005; Series: Volume 20)

Gerald composed the Topography in 1186-8, after his travels in Ireland in 1183 and with Prince John in 1185. He produced a second edition before Henry II's death in 1189, followed by a third, fourth and various ‘late’ editions before his death in 1223. I shall suggest that his sojourn in Lincoln from 1196-8 may well have witnessed the formulation of an illustrative programme by Gerald or under his supervision, or that he may already have formulated it and have introduced it to the Lincoln Cathedral scriptorium. Of the surviving early manuscript copies, that in the National Library of Ireland in Dublin is closest to the original core of this programme, whilst that in the British Library in London probably represents a visual and textual elaboration by those who knew the author at Lincoln, probably conducted under his personal supervision, either during his stay there in 1196-8 or following his retirement to Lincoln from 1207 / 1208. - [Author]

Language: English

Marvels of the West: Giraldus Cambrensis and the Role of the Author in the Development of Marginal Illustration (English Manuscript Studies (British Library), 10, 2002, 34-59) [Journal article]

The manuscripts of the Topographia Hibernica and other works by Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales) are examined, with particular focus on the marginal illustrations. The author proposes that Giraldus was involved in the program of marginal illustrations for the manuscripts of his works. The author also makes comparisons to the illustrations and text of the bestiary manuscripts. - [Abstract]

Language: English
ISBN: 0-7123-4732-1; LC: Z115E5E55

The Unicorn (London: Longmans Green & Co., 1881) [Book]

Language: English

Pseudodoxia Epidemica: Or, Enquiries into very many Received Tenents and commonly presumed Truths (1646, 1672) [Book]

Also known as "Vulgar Errors", this seventeenth-century text is an attempt to correct the many "errors" in earlier texts. Book 3, "Of divers popular and received Tenents concerning Animals, which examined, prove either false or dubious" describes and debunks many of the fabulous stories told about animals in the Middle Ages.

Language: English

Barthelemy of England (Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge (ARLIMA), 2023)

Information on Bartholomaeus Anglicus and his encyclopedia, De proprietatbus rerum. Includes a (partial) list of manuscripts, and lists of editions and studies.

Language: French

Gerald of Wales (Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge (ARLIMA), 2022)

Reference page for the works of Gerald of Wales. Lists of works, manuscripts, bibliography.

Language: French

Gossuin de Metz (Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge (ARLIMA), 2022)

A list of the manuscripts of L'Image du Monde by Gossuin de Metz, plus references to editions, studies and translations of the work.

Language: French

Jacob van Maerlant (Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge (ARLIMA), 2022)

Information on the works of Jacob van Maerlant, including Der Naturen Bloems. With bibliographies, lists of manuscripts, and references to editions.

Language: French

Pierre de Beauvais (Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge (ARLIMA), 2021)

A listing of all the known works by Pierre de Beauvais (including the Bestiaire, with references to manuscripts and a bibliography.

Language: French

Richard de Fournival (Archives de Littérature du Moyen Age (ARLIMA), 2022)

A list of the works of Richard de Fournival, including extensive bibliographies and lists of manuscripts with links to descriptions.

Language: French

Agyptische Mythen im Physiologus (zu Kapitel 26, 25 und 11) (in Wolfgang Helck, ed., Festschrift für Siegfried Schott zu Seinem 70. Geburtstag am 20. August 1967, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1968, 13-44) [Book article]

A discussion of Egyptian myths found in the Physiologus, with references (including hieroglyphics) from many manuscripts and other sources.

Language: German
LC: PJ1026.S3

The Isopo Laurenziano (Columbus, OH: Lawrence Press, 1899)

The Italian versions of the Fables of Aesop and other Italian fable collections. Includes a list of manuscripts.

Includes a transcription of Aesop's fables (in Italian) from Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut.42.30. "Edited with notes and an introduction treating of the interrelation of the Italian fable collection".

Language: English

De Illuminerede Haandskrifter fra Middelalderen i Det Store Kongelige Bibliothek (Copenhagen: Kongelige Bibliothek, 1890) [Book]

A catalog of manuscripts held by the Kongelige Bibliotek (Copenhagen), including two bestiaries:

Bestiary of Ann Walsh (Gl. kgl. S. 1633 4*) - Page 117-118.

Bestiare (Gl. kgl. S. 3466 8*) - Page 93.

Language: Danish

Sirenas, monstruos y leyendas: bestiario marítimo (Segovia: Sociedad Estatal Lisboa, 1998; Series: Coleccion Los narradores y el mar 6) [Book]

Introduccion de Rafael de Cozar.

120 p.

Language: Spanish
ISBN: 84-95152-02-9; LCCN: 00296420

Megenberg aus zweiter Hand : uberlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien zur Redaktion B des Buchs von den naturlichen Dingen (Hildesheim ; New York: Olms, 1993; Series: Germanistische Texte und Studien, Bd. 42) [Book]

Redaction B of Das Buch der Natur by Konrad von Megenberg.

Revision of the author's thesis (doctoral) - Katholische Universitat Eichstatt, 1990.

Language: German
ISBN: 3-487-09733-8; LCCN: 93-194631; LC: QH41.K753; DDC: 508; OCLC: 28801502

The Virgin Phoenix (Mediaeval Studies, 38, 1976, 332-350) [Journal article]

Language: English

Studies in the Early Editions of the "Fiore di virtù" (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958; Series: The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America Vol. 49, No. 4 (Fourth Quarter, 1955))

Research on the Fiore di virtù, a fifteenth century Italian book of animal fables and moralizations.

Language: English

Fantasticheskii bestiarii (Sankt-Peterburg: Izd-vo KN, 1995; Series: Antologiia tain, chudes i zagadok) [Book]

258 p., illustrations.

Language: Russian
ISBN: 5-88756-013-4; LCCN: 96174761; LC: GR825.B851995

"Bieste à chief d’oliphant”. L’anabulla dans la Chevalerie Judas Maccabée (Paris, BnF, Fr. 15104) inspirée du Liber de natura rerum de Thomas de Cantimpré (Reinardus, 2019; Series: 30)

The Chivalry of Judas Maccabee and His Noble Brothers, a verse novel dated 1285, repeatedly uses animals as symbolic narrative motifs. Certain animals (including the anabulla, one of the names for the giraffe in the 13th century) are borrowed from the Liber de natura rerum (LDNR) by Thomas de Cantimpré. The analysis of the text of La Chevalerie and the illustration of its only manuscript witness (Paris, BnF Fr. 15104) shows that the author was not inspired by the text of Thomas de Cantimpré, but by the illustration of the manuscript 320 of Valenciennes (witness of the LDNR), whose iconographic program (of which the instructions for the illuminator have been preserved in the marginal notes) presents deviations from the textual content – ??errors which will be transmitted in later illuminated witnesses of the LDNR. Thus, the anabulla and the aloy are represented there as elephants, whereas it is respectively a giraffe and an elk. The author of La Chevalerie describes these two animals as elephants in his novel, thereby showing that his source is not the Latin text of the LDNR, but “faulty” illustrations of a particular handwritten witness. - [Abstract]

Language: French
DOI: 10.1075/rein.00013.buq; HALId: halshs-02106597

Dyrin, un programme de recherche sur la faune du Grand Nord (University of Caen Normandy, 2017; Series: Les Échos du Craham, 24/01/2017)

Dyrin is not an acronym: it is a word from the Scandinavian languages, the plural of dyr , which means "animal". The Dyrin project aims to create a corpus of texts relating to the knowledge of Arctic and subarctic fauna from Late Antiquity up to 1600. The main axis will be the transmission of zoological knowledge on this fauna which was still poorly known before explorations of the modern era. As a counterpoint to the research carried out on the history of exotic African and Asian fauna, work on the fauna of the Far North will make it possible to better understand a zoological exoticism coming from the cold, for animals even less well known than the fauna of the south, the ancient zoology having transmitted very little information about them. - [Author]

Language: French
2552-3139

Décrire les couleurs de la girafe (Presses universitaires François Rabelais, 2021; Series: Dans l’atelier de Michel Pastoureau. Hommages de nombreux amis et collègues)

In his Liber de natura rerum, Thomas de Cantimpré says of the giraffe (oraflus) that it is impossible to convey the variety of colors with which it is marked (pellem vero ita diversimode notatam omnium colorum generibus, ut frustra homo temptet artificio naturalem eius pulcritudinem imitari). The image illustrates a handwritten witness to the versified translation into Middle Dutch by Jacob van Maerlant of Thomas1's Liber de natura rerum. This translation is faithful to the Latin original for the passage that interests us; the miniaturist (who had probably never seen a giraffe) tried to take literally what the text says, and represented the multi-colored appearance of the quadruped with distinct bands, blue, yellow, green and red. This difficulty in describing and representing the color and structure of the giraffe's coat was common in medieval times.

Language: French
978-2-86906-788-2; HALId: halshs-03437206

Fact Checking: Can Ostriches Digest Iron? (Medieval Animal Data Network (blog on Hypotheses.org), 2013)

One of the most striking imaginary properties about an animal in the Middle Ages concerns the ostrich's ability to eat and digest iron. The paper presents several experiments which took place both in Islamic and Christian areas, from the tenth to the sixteenth century, trying to check if this legend was true or not, even if the result was the killing of the animal.

Language: English
HALId: halshs-00905413

La faune exotique dans le Liber de natura rerum de Thomas de Cantimpré. Quels nouveaux apports? (Louvain-la-Neuve: CRAHAM - Centre Michel de Boüard - Centre de recherches archéologiques et historiques anciennes et médiévales, 2022; Series: Bilan et perspectives des études sur les encyclopédies médiévales : Orient-Occident, le ciel, l’homme, le verbe, l’animal (Textes, Études, Congrès (33))

Speculum Arabicum Intersecting Perspectives on Medieval Encyclopaedism. Proceedings of the International Conference at Louvain-la-Neuve and Cambron-Casteau, 22-24 May 2017.

In the Middle Ages, the knowledge of exotic foreign fauna (African and Indian) owes much to the transmission of ancient authors (Aristotle, Pliny, Solin) and the first Christian authors (Physiologus, Isidore of Seville, Fathers of the Church). Yet we observe, especially in the 13th century, the appearance of new knowledge in encyclopedias and other related natural history texts. This new knowledge owes little to ancient authorities and is the result of new contributions, linked to direct observation (animals in menageries) or to vernacular knowledge (travellers, merchants, hunters, fishermen, sailors, etc.). This is particularly the case for the little-known animals of northern Europe, highlighting an exoticism from the cold, in the context of increased exchanges with the Scandinavian world. The presentation will attempt to highlight these contributions, particularly in the introduction of new species or new zoonyms in the inventory of the living world, but also in the additional information provided on ancient knowledge. Our investigation will focus mainly on Thomas of Cantimpré and Albert the Great, with additions from Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Vincent of Beauvais and Alexander Neckam. We will try to highlight the fundamental contribution of Thomas de Cantimpré in this enrichment of the medieval exotic animal world, by comparing it with the approach of his contemporaries. - [Abstract]

Language: French
HAL: hal-02139436

La girafe moralisée (Zürich: XXIe congrès de la société internationale renardienne, 2015)

Isidore of Seville reports, according to Pliny, the existence of the camelopardalis, described as a spotted animal, reminiscent of the leopard, the camel, the horse and the ox. The Ordinary Gloss will take up and comment on this description in a list of animals from Deuteronomy. The Middle Ages were unaware for a long time that this “camel-leopard” referred to the giraffe, very rarely seen in Europe in medieval times. This “philological” animal, with its disparate forms, has sometimes given rise to allegorical comments, from Raban Maur to the moralized encyclopedias of the 13th and 14th centuries, based in particular on Isidore and the Gloss. Each element of the description of this animal will serve as support for moral exegesis: cloven hooves, spots, neck, as well as rumination, noted by Barthélemy l’Anglais by analogy with the camel and the biblical laws on clean animals. Between description inherited from Antiquity and presence in the Bible, the camelopardalis, despite its status as a philological animal, disconnected from any zoological reality, will give rise to a wide variety of moral interpretations.

Language: French
HALId: halshs-01308128

La girafe, belle inconnue des bibles médiévales. Camelopardalis : un animal philologique (Anthropozoologica, 2008; Series: 43 (2))

The Bible, in its Latin version, contributed to call attention to the Christian Occident to the existence of the camelopardalis (camel-panther or camel-leopard), a term referring to the giraffe in Greek and Latin in the Antiquity, and which had been used to translate a misidentified Hebrew zoonym, the zemer. While the giraffe remained unknown in Europe for a long time, only a brief notice by Pliny transmitted to the Middle Ages some information on the camelopardalis, in a lacunar description, omitting for example the height of the animal and the characteristic size of its neck, preventing from recognizing there a “true” giraffe, in particular when some specimens were brought from Egypt to be offered to the king Alfonso X of Spain and to the emperor Frederic II in the XIIIth century. While at that time the modern name for giraffe is formed on the Arab zarâfa, no literary or zoological text, no translation, no exegesis manage to connect this new animal, with the new vernacular name, to the ancient camelopardalis. The giraffe and the “camel-leopard” seem to have became then perfectly distinct animals. The translations in vernacular languages of the Bible from the Latin fail to correctly interpret this obscure animal, dubious, which seems to have only a philological reality. When giraffes make their return at the end of XVth century in Italy, several humanists then recognize in the giraffa the kamelopardalis recently translated and published from Greek texts. The erudition then makes it possible to reconcile book learning with observation of a “true” animal. The “real” giraffe then makes its return in the biblical exegesis of the XVIth and XVIIth centuries, the question of the translation of the Hebrew zemer also stimulating the scientific investigations on the giraffe of Conrad Gesner, Ulysses Aldrovandi and Samuel Bochart, transforming an exceptional exotic animal into a philological animal par excellence. - [Abstract]

Language: French
HALId: halshs-00352040

Le guépard médiéval, ou comment reconnaître un animal sans nom (Reinardus. Yearbook of the International Reynard Society, 2011; Series: Volume 23, Issue 1)

The cheetah, used as a hunting aid in the Iranian-Persian and Arab worlds for millennia, and as such well known and identified in these cultural areas, has long remained a more uncertain animal in the West, still remaining today difficult to locate in medieval sources. Its name “cheetah” appearing in French only in the 17th century, it does not previously seem to have had a name of its own and bears the same zoonym as the panther: that of “leopard”. Likewise, in images, it is sometimes difficult to differentiate the two animals. This contribution therefore attempts to take stock of these confusions by providing some elements helping to identify this unnamed animal in texts and images. The article provides information relating to the literary or documentary context, mainly at the end of the Middle Ages, where the cheetah was part of princely hunting crews, particularly in Italy, as noble as the falcon, but sought after as a luxury and of exotic prestige. - [Abstract]

Language: French
DOI: 10.1075/rein.23.02buq

The Gyrfalcon in the Middle Ages, an Exotic Bird of Prey (Western Europe and Near East) (CRAHAM - Centre Michel de Boüard - Centre de recherches archéologiques et historiques anciennes et médiévales, 2021)

This paper will consider the medieval trade of the Gyrfalcon as an exotic animal. The exoticism the gyrfalcon is considered from two geographical points of view, Western Europe and Islamic lands. The bird was imported in Muslim countries form Northern Europe (through diplomatic gifts or from Italian and Spanish merchants) of from Russia through Central Asia; Gyrfalcons were also popular in Europe, praised as one of the noblest birds of prey. This study emphasizes three main topics. First, the naming of a foreign animal, as the name “Sunkur” was borrowed in Arabic from Turk languages of Central Asia. The medieval Latin Gyrofalco has a German and Old Norse etymology. Second, the paper investigates the geographic origin of this bird (Scandinavia and Russia) according to medieval Latin, Arabic and Persian historians and geographers. Third, the trade of this rare and expensive raptor is studied upon Latin and Arabic sources; during Mamluk dynasty, possessing gyrfalcons have been rather common in Egypt, an elite’s fashion. - [Abstract]

Language: English
HALId: hal-02139381

Les informations relatives à la faune du Nord dans le Liber de natura rerum de Thomas de Cantimpré (RursuSpicae: Transmission des textes et savoirs de l’Antiquité à la fin du Moyen Âge, 2020; Series: 3 (La conversation des encyclopédistes))

Information relating to Northern Fauna in the Liber de natura rerum by Thomas of Cantimpré.

The arctic fauna, very rarely mentioned in Classical texts, is progressively discovered by medieval scholars trough maritime and commercial contacts with Northern peoples. This new information sometimes allows Latin authors to enhance the sketchy data transmitted by Aristotle, Pliny or Solinus. This paper focuses on this kind of zoological information found in Thomas of Cantimpré's Liber de natura rerum (LDNR) through the geographical data given by the author, and through the zoological identification of the species. Thomas’ references on Northern fauna are compared to those found in books on animals written by Alexander Neckam, Vincent of Beauvais, Bartholomaeus Anglicus andAlbertus Magnus, to evaluate which information they share or not in their approach of Northern fauna. - [Abstract]

Language: French
2557-8839; DOI: 10.4000/rursuspicae.1445

Nouveaux apports des encyclopédies médiévales sur la connaissance de la faune exotique. Le cas de Thomas de Cantimpré (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgique: Université catholique de Louvain, 2017; Series: Bilan et perspectives des études sur les encyclopédies médiévales. Orient-Occident, le ciel, l’homme, le verbe, l’animal)

In the Middle Ages, knowledge of exotic foreign fauna (African and Indian) owed much to the transmission of ancient authors (Aristotle, Pliny, Solin) and the first Christian authors (Physiologus, Isidore of Seville, Fathers of the Church). However, we observe, particularly in the 13th century, the appearance of new knowledge in encyclopedias and other related natural history texts. This new knowledge owes little to ancient authorities and is the result of new contributions, linked to direct observation (menagerie animals) or vernacular knowledge (travelers, merchants, hunters, fishermen, sailors, etc.). This is particularly the case for little-known animals from Northern Europe, highlighting an exoticism coming from the cold, in the context of increased exchanges with the Scandinavian world. The presentation will attempt to highlight these contributions, particularly in the introduction of new species or new zoonyms into the inventory of the living world, but also in the additional information provided on ancient knowledge. Our investigation will mainly focus on Thomas de Cantimpré and Albert the Great, with additional information drawn from Barthélemy l’Anglais, Vincent de Beauvais and Alexander Neckam. We will try to highlight the fundamental contribution of Thomas de Cantimpré in this enrichment of the medieval exotic animal world, by comparing it with the approach of his contemporaries.

Language: French
HALId: halshs-01914290

Preventing “Monkey Business”. Fettered Apes in the Middle Ages (Medieval Animal Data Network (blog on Hypotheses.org), 2013, 2016)

The practice of keeping monkeys and apes in captivity during the Middle Ages, mainly as pets, is well known. ... This short paper aims to give some examples of the material aspects of keeping and controlling tamed but still savage animals, to prevent them from creating a mess in the home. - [Author]

Language: English
HALId: halshs-00845267

De proprietatibus quorundam animalium. Un bestiaire inédit dans un manuscrit composite contenant divers matériaux pour la prédication (Avranches MS. 28) (RursuSpicae, 2019; Series: 2)

De proprietatibus quorundam animalium. A bestiary in the ms. 28 of Avranches library. The manuscript 28 of Avranches is the result of the binding of two distinct codices in the seventeenth century. It consists of various short religious texts: commentaries and biblical glosses, distinctiones, treatises on vices and virtues, sermons, etc. Among this extensive textual material for the use of predication, we find, in the second part of the manuscript (dating from the 13th century) a bestiary entitled De proprietatibus quorundam animalium (f. 179-180). This is the unique text on animals kept from the library of the Mont Saint-Michel abbey. A short collection of exempla (partly involving animals) is added to the bestiary, and is entitled Ecce similitudines multe de diversis (f. 180-180v). The bestiary and the collection of similitudines seem to form a set which may have had the same use for the compiler. The bestiary is made of about 30 short chapters, from which ten are perfect copies of the B version of the Physiologus; other chapters can be sourced partly in B or Y, but are often summarized and contain original moralizations which differ from other versions of the Latin Physiologus. I am making the assumption that the author of the bestiary of Avranches may have worked from an incomplete witness of B such as in the codex of Bern, Bürgerbibliothek, Lat. 233, where the elephant and the dove are missing, and where ostrich (asida), panther and aspidochelon are found at the end of the text of the B version. The bestiary of Avranches is interesting from a twofold perspective: it is a new (partial) witness of the Physiologus B and an original creation in its composition and the redaction of some chapters which gives evidence of the reception and the use of old versions of the Physiologus among 13th century preachers. - [Abstract]

Language: French
DOI: 10.4000/rursuspicae.540; HALId: hal-02372123

Les "propriétés” des animaux et leur utilisation dans la création des images (Pau, France: University of Pau, 2016; Series: L’école des bêtes)

In medieval encyclopedias, a notice describing an animal can be defined as a succession of different properties (descriptive, behavioral, legendary, medicinal, moral, etc.) taking the form of an assembly of extracts chosen from the works of the Authorities ( Pliny, Isidore, Physiologus, Fathers of the Church, Aristotle, etc.). These properties can be used on the one hand by the illuminator to create an image of the animal, most of the time within the framework of a non-naturalistic representation; on the other hand by the man of the church to create exempla and moralizations, which can be used by the preacher to edify his audience, or by the prelate to write sermons on the basis of exemplary anecdotes taken from nature. In this context, we will focus on the Liber de natura rerum by Thomas de Cantimpré, a 13th century encyclopedia, particularly dedicated to natural history. Manuscript 320 from Valenciennes, dating from around 1290, is one of the oldest illuminated witnesses to the Liber de natura rerum. Each notice is illustrated with an image; the margins of the manuscript preserve a significant number of instructions for the illuminator, written in the vernacular. In a few words or a few lines, these instructions summarize the most significant elements of the instructions to indicate to the illuminator what he must draw. For the most common animals, a simple mention of the animal's common name is sufficient. More complex instructions are drawn from elements of the description, behavioral properties or synthesize an action or a short story, sometimes linked to a legendary property. Based on concrete examples taken from the Valenciennes manuscript – and in particular from the book on fish, which presents the most notes for the illuminator – we will try to understand how this image factory works, thus constituted in the form of a puzzle. from several properties transformed into figurative signs, which can often be presented in the form of well-known iconographic attributes, allowing us to recognize the animal with certainty (the tower on the back of the elephant, the sick man of the caladrius, the tiger's mirror, the camel's humps, etc.). Finally, it will be a question of seeing whether the behavioral or fictional elements taken from the notices to form the images are the same as those chosen by the authors of moralized bestiaries inspired by medieval encyclopedias. In this regard, we will take some examples taken from moralizations inspired by Thomas de Cantimpré, but also from texts using Barthélemy l’Anglais, the two authors sharing the same authorities on natural history and therefore numerous “properties” for each species described.

Language: French
HALId: halshs-01914276

De l'écume au sperme: Hypothèses médiévales sur l’ambre de baleine (Médiévales, 2021; Series: 80)

From Foam to Sperm. Medieval Hypotheses on the Origins of Ambergris

The origin of ambergris has been debated for a long time, from the Middle Ages to modern times. The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of Arabic scholarship on knowledge about ambergris in the medieval West, particularly as transmitted by the medical literature produced in the Salerno school of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Persian and Arabic texts written from the ninth century CE included many hypotheses on the origin of this substance: it was seen as a bitumen, a plant, some kind of solidified sea foam or the excrement of a sea animal; in fact, in each of these cases, the actual process of its transformation was not fully understood (it was not before the eighteenth century). In the Latin world, these explanations were spread by various translations of medical literature, as ambergris was used in perfumes and in medication. Beginning in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a new conjecture spread in Europe, without any reference to Arabic sources, describing ambergris as the sperm of the whale. Here we try to understand the origin of this legend, in relation to medieval knowledge on organic matters extracted from whales (spermaceti, oil), and possibly linked to other hypotheses mentioned by Arabic authors. - [Abstract]

Language: French
DOI: 10.4000/medievales.11290

Bestiario de Don Juan de Austria (Siloé, Spain: Siloé Arte y Bibliofilia, 1998) [Book]

Two volumes. Volume 1: facsimile reproduction of the original edition, 484 pags, 370 illustrations, text in (old) Spanish. Volume 2: (modern) Spanish transcription of the text and studies.

Limited edition of 696 numbered books.

Language: Spanish
ISBN: 84-923812-0-5

What is the "Experimentarius" of Bernardus Silvestris? A Preliminary Survey of the Material (Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age, 1977; Series: Volume 44)

The Experimenitarius has often been thought of as a witness to Bernardus Silvestris' attitude to astrology, and, therefore, as a potential key to the complex and apparently ambivalent status of the planets and stars in the Cosmographia. Bernardus is claimed to be the translator, rather than the author of the work, but we have no other evidence that he translated from, or was familiar with, Arabic. Hence Hermann of Carinthia has been summoned to his aid, on the grounds that both he and Bernardus had some connection with the School of Chartres, that Hermann addressed a work on the astrolabe to Bernardus, and that there is actually a picture of Hermann facing Euclid, and with his astrolabe in his hand, at the head of two MSS. of the Experimentarius. Of these three pieces of evidence, one is too tenuous and the other two are false. - [Author]

Language: English

Courtly Love: Who Needs It? Recent Feminist Work in the Medieval French Tradition (Signs, 27:1, 2001, 23-57) [Journal article]

Includes some notes on the Bestiaire d'amour of Richard de Fournival with relation to courtly love.

Language: English

The Hedgehog and the Apples (Illustrated London News, August 16, 1952, 264) [Journal article]

The author investigates the feasibility of the hedgehog gathering fruit on its spines.

Language: English

Codex and context : reading Old French verse narrative in manuscript (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002)

Includes discussions of some relevant manuscripts containing French verse (e.g. Reynard the Fox).

Language: English
978-90-420-1399-5

The Labours of the Months and 'The Haunted Tanglewood': aspects of late twelfth-century sculpture in Yorkshire (in R. L. Thomson, ed., A Medieval Miscellany in Honour of Professor John Le Patourel, Leeds: Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, Proceedings vol. 18, 1982, 79-95) [Book article]

"This article discusses the subject matter of doorway and capital carvings in Yorkshire churches. The scenes are mainly drawn from the Labours of the Month, the Signs of the Zodiac and the Bestiary, using mid twelfth-century manuscript sources. It is argued that the inspiration was not monastic scriptoria but the cathedral school at York as the majority of the churches were in the patronage of the archbishop Roger de Pont L'Eveque and the senior clergy of the cathedral chapter, most of whom had studied in Capetian France." - Butler

Language: English

The illustrations to the early manuscripts of Jean Corbechon's French translation of Bartholemaeus Anglicus' De Proprietatibus rerum: 1372-c.1420 (University of Cambridge, 1981)

In 1372 King Charles V of France received Le livre des propriétés des choses, the translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus' De proprietatibus rerum. The dissertation is a study of the illustrations of the manuscripts of this text in the period up to c.1420. In Chapter 1 the documentary evidence for copies of the Propriétés in the above period is reviewed, and this is related to the surviving copies. The result is used, along with the evidence of style which will be discussed in Chapter 5, to establish the "First Generation" of manuscripts (the original does not survive) in the period up to c.1410. Chapter 2 discusses the role of the encyclopedia and translation in the circle of Charles V, and relates this to the iconography of the Frontispieces of the First Generation copies. The rest of the iconographical cycles is the subject of Chapter 3, in which it is considered both in relation to the text and to other standard imagery. Chapter 4 offers a reconstruction of the pictorial cycle of the lost original, and looks at some sub-groupings within the First Generation copies. The style and date of the ten early copies is the subject of Chapter 5. Between c.1414 and 1420 five interrelated manuscripts were made which mark a new phase in the illustration of the text. These stem from the circles of the Boucicaut, Egerton, Rohan, and Berry Apocalypse Masters, and form the "Second Generation". They are treated in Chapter 6, whose main themes are patronage, the effects of patronage on iconography, now subjects, and the relationships between "workshops". The final chapter discusses a semi-independent manuscript made before 1420, and this is followed by a detailed Catalogue of the sixteen copies of the Propriétés discussed in the text. - [Abstract]

Language: English
DOI: 10.17863/CAM.31167

Rex imago dei: Charles V of France and the Livre des propriétés des choses (Journal of Medieval History, 1981; Series: Volume 7, Issue 1)

The subject of this paper is the Livre des propriétés des choses, the fourteenth-century French translation [by Jean Corbechon] of the thirteenth-century encyclopedia De proprietatibus rerum [by Bartholomaeus Anglicus]. The translation was made for Charles V of France, and the original copy is lost. Here a reconstruction is offered of the appearance of the frontispiece of the royal exemplar. The textual additions of the translator and the iconography of this frontispiece reveal a new conception of the meaning and usage of the encyclopedia, as well as a concerted attempt to draw this authoritative work into the orbit of royal aims and aspirations. The reconstructed frontispiece also allows us to correct an error, which originates with Montfaucon, concerning the illustration of the original copy of the Livre des propriétés des choses. - [Abstract]

Language: English
DOI: 10.1016/0304-4181(81)90038-5

Two hitherto unidentified copies of the « Livre des Propriétés des choses », from the Royal Library of the Louvre and the Library of Jean de Berry (Scriptorium, 1977; Series: Volume 31, number 1)

This brief notice is a portion of work in progress on the iconographical cycle of the last of the above-mentioned texts: the Livre des propriétés des choses, a French rendering of Bartholomaeus Anglicus' De proprietatibus rerum. The latter is a thirteenth-century ranging ontologically from God and the Angels, through Man, and down to the accidents of matter. For the most part it is, or was used as, a handy compendium of "physical" lore, a Herbal, Lapidary and Bestiary, to take but three examples. ... The proper bases for this study would be the original manuscript and a modern, critical edition of the text. The first has yet to be found, and the second has not yet been prepared. Thus, the of the cycle must begin part of the way into the story — by identifying, dating and grouping as many as possible of the early and using this basis to what came before and study what came after. As part of that work, the present notice has the limited aim of reviewing the earliest documentary to the Livre des propriétés des choses and some identifications of early copies which have been made, of two previously untraced copies and of taking a bird's-eye view of the ensuing picture. - [Author]

Language: English
DOI: 10.3406/scrip.1977.2818

La Fauna Monstruosa de las Catedrales Medievales. Estudio preliminar de Tibor Chaminaud y Juan Carlos Licastro (Buenos Aires: Enrique Rueda Editor, 1982; Series: Colección La Biblioteca de las Maravillas) [Book]

118 p., illustrations.

Language: Spanish

Melanges d'archeologie, d'histoire et de littérature, rediges ou recueillis (Paris: Mme Ve Poussielgue-Rusand, 1847-1856; Series: Volume 1-4) [Book]

A massive collection of information on medieval archeology, history and literature.

• Bestiaries (Latin and French) in volumes 2, 3 and 4, with text from several authors and manuscripts
• Medieval art
• Church decoration and ornament

4 volumes, illustrations, plates.

Language: French
LCCN: 16-13417; LC: N5971.C2; OCLC: 23433906

Le Bestiaire de l'antiquité classique (Paris: F. Lanore, 1955) [Book]

212 p.

Language: French
LCCN: 57002337; LC: GR825.C3

Le Bestiaire de la littérature francaise (Paris: F. Lanore, 1954) [Book]

247 pp., illustrations.

Language: French
LC: PQ145.3

Bestiary or biology? Aristotle's animals in Oxford, Merton College, MS 271 (in Carlos Steel, Guy Guldentops & Pieter Beullens, ed., Aristotle's Animals in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, Series 1: Studia 2), Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1999, 355-396) [Book article]

...animal representations in Latin manuscripts made for the new university audience, that are found in the treatises that comprise Aristotle's De animalibus remain relatively unknown. ... Starting from the question of whether the mode of animal illustrations in these radically different Latin texts conforms to their divergent philosophical positions, [this paper] will focus on one particularly important thirteenth-century illuminated copy of Aristotle's De animalibus. ... I want to examine the illustrations of ... Merton College Library (Oxford), MS. 271... - [Camille]

Language: English
ISBN: 90-6186-973-0

Gothic Art, Glorious Visions (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1996) [Book]

A survey of Gothic art in Europe in the 12th to 14th century. Chapter 4, New Visions of Nature, looks at how nature was represented in sculpture, painting and manuscripts.

192 p., color and black & white illustrations, bibliography, index.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-8109-2701-2; LCCN: 96-3899; LC: N6310.C361996; DDC: 709.02'2-dc20

Thematic Unity in the Old English Physiologus (Archiv fur das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 215:130:1, 1978, 73-79) [Journal article]

Language: English
ISSN: 0003-8970

Dragons (in John Cherry, ed., Mythical Beasts, London: British Museum Press/Pomegranite Artbooks, 1995, 14-43) [Book article]

A discussion of dragons from antiquity through the Middle Ages, with examples from Japan, China, India and Egypt, with additional references to dragons of Islamic and Christian tradition. Color and black & white illustrations.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-87654-606-8

Fiore di virtù (Venice: Matteo Capcasa, 1493)

Alternate title: Questa sie una utilissima operetta acadauno fidel christiano chiamata Fio de virtu`

A popular introduction to medieval morality, the Flower of Virtue explored humanity’s virtues and vices by means of parallels within the animal kingdom. Full of lore derived from bestiaries, biblical stories, and classical literature, the book provided moral instruction and amusement for young Italian readers of both sexes. Much of the book’s popularity derived from its engaging woodcuts of characteristic animal behaviors, designed by the anonymous “Pico Master,” the leading Venetian book illuminator and woodcut illustrator. - [Princeton University Library catalog].

Probably based on a manuscript copy of Fior de virtu` by Guidotto da Bologna (Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli, XII.E.11).

Language: Italian
PrincetonUniversityLibrary: exi2017-0004N

Wild World: Visual Representation of Animals in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books (Cambridge: St John's College, University of Cambridge, 2020)

Animals have always lived alongside humans, and the species which currently populate the planet evolved in step with us. Human interactions with the natural world have long inspired elements in mythology, folklore, and art. Visual depictions of animals have served to decorate and illustrate written texts from early manuscripts, through the dawn of the printed book, and up to the present day. These illustrations are charming for their unusual art styles, and unconventional ideas about animals that we are now more familiar with seeing in zoos or on television screens. However, much of the natural world which has inspired human creativity throughout the centuries is now at risk of being destroyed through human interference. This exhibition showcases just some of the interesting examples of animal art that can be found in the manuscripts and early printed books held in the Special Collections of St John’s College Library, as well as presenting relevant facts about the animals themselves and the often sobering nature of their relationship to humans. - [Author]

Language: English

Imaginaire, savoir et nature: notes sur l'allegorie animale au Moyen Age (Annals of the Archive of "Ferran Valls i Taberner's Library", 9-10, 1991, 235-247) [Journal article]

Language: French

Uomo e animale nell'emblematica rinascimentale (Esopo, 49 (March), 1991, 17-29) [Journal article]

On animal symbolism in Renaissance book illustration, including bestiaries, hermetic treatises, hieroglyphica, and emblem books, 16th-17th centuries.

Language: Italian
ISSN: 0392-9752

Books seen by Samuel Ward 'in bibliotheca regia', circa 1614 (The British Library Journal, 16, 1990, p. 89-98) [Journal article]

Language: English

John Leland and the foundations of the Royal Library: the Westminster Inventory of 1542 (Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies, VII, no.1, 18, October, 1989) [Journal article]

Language: English

Brunetto Latini's Tresor: Latin Sources on Natural Science (in 12:3 (July)Speculum, 1937, 359-366) [Book article]

"Mediaeval science is well known to scholars through Latin works, but vulgarizations have commanded far less prestige. Dreyer, for example, mentioned Latini's Tresor (1268 A.D.) very superficially, and was obviously ill informed on the Image du Monde of Gossouin (1245 A.D.). Langlois pointed out that vernacular works are of interest mainly to philologists, who find it difficult to delve into the technical intricacies of the various sciences. Vulgarizations, however, present a valuable picture of the subjects they treat. The Tresor is a compendium of material current in Paris in the active days of the 1260's, when astronomy was at its height, both in technical achievement and in speculative interpretation. Latini was a competent translator and compiler, and was guilty neither of the unorganized agglomeration of details found in the Livre de Sydrac and the translations of Adelard of Bath, nor the mistaken moralizing and theological zeal of Gossouin. One must turn to Vincent of Beauvais to find anything like the freedom from doctrine and the careful method and selection of the Tresor. Latini's manner was so objective that it annoyed many of the first copyists, who added doctrinal and moral references, present in most families of manuscripts. As a vulgarization, the Tresor makes no pretension to scholastic reasoning and deduction, nor to metaphysical subtlety, transmutations of elements, atomic theory, nor to mathematical discussion, elements which characterize so many thirteenth-century works. The material is of a simple nature, akin to Seneca, Bede, and Honorius, though there is no apparent affinity to other popular works like those of Chalcidius, Macrobius, and Pliny, nor to the classics, Aristotle, Plato, Plutarch, Lucretius, or Cicero." - Carmody

Language: English

De Bestiis et Aliis Rebus and the Latin Physiologus (Speculum, 13:2, 1938, 153-159) [Journal article]

A detailed analysis of the De Bestiis et Aliis Rebus, attributed to Hugh of St Victor, and its relationship to the Latin version of the Physiologus. Includes a list of the known (as of 1938) Physiologus manuscripts.

Language: English
DOI: 10.2307/2848397

Le Diable des Bestiaires (Cahiers de l'Association Internationale de Études françaises, Nos. 3-5, Juillet, 1953, 79-85) [Journal article]

Language: French

Latin Sources of Brunetto Latini's World History (Speculum, 11:3 (July), 1936, 359-370) [Journal article]

"Originality or artistry in an encyclopaedia are likely to defeat the purpose of science, which seeks accuracy, simplicity, and convenience. These last virtues are those of Vincent's Speculum Naturale and of Brunetto Latini's Tresor (1268 A.D.), at least in accordance with thirteenth-century standards. ... Li Tresors did not seek out controversial points, it desired merely to vulgarize as much and as varied knowledge as possible. Nevertheless, Li Tresors was carefully composed and based on standard source materials. Latini was a capable scholar, and his epitome is concise, clear, and not too detailed for the ordinary reader. He was not bound to reproduce his sources literally, so he added personal ideas and recollections from other reading, though never distorting the facts. Sermonizing and moralizing, whose bad effects are evident in the Image du Monde, do not find any place whatsoever in Latini's encyclopaedia. Latini's method of compilation is evident from a study of his sources. He had before him, at one time or another, a number of standard works; from these he made notes on special topics, such as the history of a certain country, limiting himself naturally to a single sufficient source for a given chapter. Thus it is that several sections have been derived in full from a single source, which may have been completely put aside in later pages. Other chapters, however, seemed insufficient as prepared from a single source, so Latini added further details from other works." - Carmody

Language: English

Physiologus Latinus Versio Y (University of California Press, University of California Publications in Classical Philology, Volume 12 (1933-1944), 1944, 95-134) [Journal article]

An edition of the Physiologus 'Y' version. Introduction in English, text in Latin. Includes a bibliography.

Language: English
LCCN: 41002431; LC: PA25.C3; DDC: 880.8; OCLC: 3889664

Physiologus Latinus: Éditions préliminaires versio B (Paris: Librairie E. Droz, 1939) [Book]

An edition of the Physiologus 'B' version.

Language: Latin
LCCN: 40000253; LC: PA4273.P8L31939; OCLC: 459089307

Physiologus, the very ancient book of beasts, plants and stones, translated from Greek and othe languages (San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1953; Series: Publication no. 85) [Book]

Translated from Greek and other languages, by Francis J. Carmody.

"The illustrations, hand colored, have been engraved on and printed from linoleum blocks./ 325 copies ... made by Vivien & Mallette Dean" - Colophon.

75 p., color illustrations.

Language: English
LCCN: 54027844; LC: GR820.P48; DDC: 398.3

Quotations in the Latin Physiologus from Latin Bibles earlier than the Vulgate (University of California Press, University of California Publications in Classical Philology 13:1, 1944, 1-8) [Journal article]

Language: English
LCCN: 44000030; LC: PA25.C3; DDC: 878.9; OCLC: 9523977

La nature des animaus nel Tresor di Brunetti latini. Indagine sulle fonti (in Baudouin Van den Abeele, ed., Bestiaires médiévaux. Nouvelles perspectives sur les manuscrits et les traditions textuelles, Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut d’études médiévales, 2005, 31-47) [Book article]

Language: French

Some Early Sources of the Medieval Bestiary (New York: New York University, Institute of Fine Arts, 1964) [Dissertation]

M.A. Thesis.

Language: English

Le Proprietà  degli animali (Genova: Costa & Nolan, 1983; Series: Testi della cultura italiana 5) [Book]

The Bestiario moralizzato by Bosone da Gubbio, died ca. 1349 (Annamaria Carrega, editor) and the Libellus de natura animalium (Paola Navone, editor). Texts in Italian and Latin, with introductory material in Italian.

521 pp., illustrations, bibliography.

Language: Italian
ISBN: 88-7648-011-0; LC: PQ4554.R15

Mermaids and Mastodons: A Book of Natural & Unnatural History (London: Chatto and Windus, 1957) [Book]

"The first part of this book is devoted mainly to fabulous animals, whoes origin I have tried to trace in the real birds and beasts of the living world." - Carrington, preface

Relevant chapters include: The Natural History of Mermaids; The Great Sea Serpent; The Kraken and other Sea Monsters; Dragons of East and West; Fabulous Ornithology.

251 pp., black & white illustrations, bibliography, index.

Language: English

Lo diretano bando: Conforto et rimedio delli veraci e leali amadori ()

Italian language translation of Richard de Fournival, Le Bestiaire d' amour (The Bestiary of Love).

192 pp.

Language: Italian

The Tapestry of Creation (Cathedral of Girona) [Web page]

The Tapestry of Creation is a eleventh- or twelfth-century work held by the treasury of the Cathedral of Gerona, Spain. Two sections of the tapestry are of interest: the creation of the animals, and Adam naming the animals. Both show various real and fabulous beasts in brilliant colors.

The Cathedral web site is difficult to navigate and has very little information on the tapestry, but it does have some good pictures.

Language: English

De rerum naturis : Cod. Casin. 132, Archivio dell'Abbazia di Montecassino (Turino: Priuli & Verlucca, 1994) [Book]

Full-color facsimile of 11th-century manuscript (Archivio dell'Abbazia, Montecassino, MS 132) of De rerum naturis or De universo of Hrabanus Mauris, the oldest illustrated version extant, produced at Montecassino for Abbot Theobald. Commentary volume edited by Guglielmo Cavallo. Text in Latin, commentary in Italian; accompanied by summary in English (47 p.). Limited edition of 500 Arabic numbered copies.

Volume 1: 530 p., color illustrations (facsimile); Volume 2: commentary, 215 p., bibliography; Volume 3: 47p., English commentary.

Language: Italian / Latin
LC: ND3399.H79; OCLC: 54256169

L'Universo medievale : il manoscritto cassinese del De rerum naturis di Rabano Mauro (Ivrea: Priuli & Verlucca, 1996) [Book]

The manuscript of De rerum naturis or De universo of Hrababus Mauris at Montecassino.

63 p., color illustrations, bibliography.

Language: Italian
ISBN: 88-8068-048-X; LCCN: 97-125526; LC: AE2.H72; OCLC: 36047082

Spiders Behaving Badly in the Middle English Physiologus,the Bestiaire Attributed to Pierre de Beauvais and Odo of Cheriton’s Fables (Neophilologus, 2020; Series: 104)

Two remarkably similar depictions of spiders survive in Middle English and French sources from the middle of the thirteenth century. Both of these vernacular versions of the Physiologus deviate so wildly from their sources when it comes to describing these creatures that their editors have declared these passages to be entirely original. And yet, the spiders who survive in the Middle English Physiologus and the long version of the Bestiaire attributed to Pierre de Beauvais perform such similar work that their originality may be called into question. The Physiologus’ and Bestiaire’s descriptions of spiders’ violent hunting methods were likely informed by the burgeoning of natural history writing that accompanied the recovery of Aristotle’s History of Animals, but for these texts’ allegorical interpretations I argue that we should look to Odo of Cheriton’s Latin fables from earlier in the thirteenth century. There is an explicit link between Odo’s fables and the Middle English Physiologus and implicit connections with the French Bestiaire. Together, these analogues demonstrate a small but coherent tradition of emphasizing the diabolical violence of spiders in the multilingual environment of thirteenth-century England and France. - [Abstract]

Language: English
DOI: 10.1007/s11061-020-09645-7; ProQuestID: 2471553060

The The Medieval Bestiary in English: Texts and Translations of the Old and Middle English Physiologus (Guelph, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2022)

First written in Egypt between the second and fourth centuries, the Physiologus brought together poetic descriptions of animals and their Christian allegories. As the Physiologus was translated into a wide range of languages from across North Africa and much of Europe, each version adapted the text in culturally specific ways that yield fascinating insights for those who delve into this truly global tradition of representing and interpreting animals. This edition provides the original texts and facing-page modern translations of the only two surviving English versions—the Old English Physiologus from the late-tenth-century Exeter Book and the Middle English Physiologus from the mid-thirteenth-century British Library, Arundel MS 292—as well as translations of a range of Latin, French, and Old English sources and analogues. Underpinned by a commitment to the fields of medieval studies and animal studies, this edition provides an accessible introduction to the literary history of the Physiologus and the politics of animal representation. It asks the vital question: how can we understand humanity’s relationships with non-human animals and the environment today without understanding those relationships’ history?

Language: English/Old and Middle English
ISBN: 978-1-55481-518-0

The booke of Raynarde the Foxe (New York: Da Capo Press, 1969) [Book]

A facsimile of a 1550 edition of Hystorie van Reynaert die Vos, translated from the Dutch by William Caxton. Original title page reads: Here beginneth the booke of Raynarde the Foxe, conteining diuers goodlye historyes and parables, with other dyuers pointes necessarye tur al men to be marked ... Imprinted in London in Saint Martens by Thomas Gaultier, 1550.

Language: English
LC: PQ1508E5R4

The History of Reynard the Fox (London: The Early English Text Society / Oxford University Press, 1970; Series: Number 263) [Book]

"Because of its humorous animal portraits and satyrical probing of medieavl society, Reynard the Fox has remained William Caxton's most poplar translation. Although modernizations have been numerous, this is the first fully annotated edition of Caxton's original text. ... Reynard the Fox is unique among Caxton's translations in being made from a Dutch printed book and is therefore of the greatest importance in assessing the influence of Dutch on fifteenth-century English and in illuminating the literary relations between England and Burgundy in the late Middle Ages. These and similar problems are discussed by Mr. Blake in the introduction." - cover copy

235 pp., glossary, index, list of Dutch loan words.

Language: English

Caxton's Mirrour of the World (England: Kega Paul, Trech, Trubner & Co. / Oxford University Press, 1913; Series: The Early English Text Society)

A transcription of Mirrour of the World, an early English translation by William Caxton from the French L'Image du monde by Gossuin de Metz, with an with introduction and notes by O.H. Prior. Caxton's translation was based on British Library, Royal MS 19 A IX.

Caxton's Mirrour has a double claim to the notice of all book-lovers and students of mediaeval literature: it is the first work printed in England with illustrations, and one of the earliest encyclopaedias in the English language. As Caxton himself tells us in his introduction, the Mirrour was translated in 1480 from the French... - [Prior]

A facsimile of the 1481 edition of Caxton's translation is available.

Language: English

Appunti per la lettura di un bestiario medievale: il Bestiario valdese (Torino: G. Giappichelli, 1976; Series: Corsi universitari) [Book]

Includes text in the dialect of the Valley of Aosta (Vaudois) and Italian.

2 v., 144 p., bibliography.

Language: Italian
LCCN: 76478931; LC: PQ4265.B3473B6; OCLC: 2598766

Le fonti letterarie della simbologia medievale: i bestiari (in Piero Sanpaolesi, ed., Il Romanico. Atti del Seminario di studi. Villa Monastero di Varenna 8-16 September 1973, Milano: Istituto per la Storia dell'Arte Lombarda, 1976, 181-190) [Book article]

Language: Italian

Le proprietà degli animali; Bestiario moralizzato di Gubbio; Libellus de natura animalium (Italy: Costa & Nolan, 1983; Series: Testi Della Cultura Italiana 5) [Book]

Texts in Italian and Latin, with introductory material in Italian. Contents: Bestiario moralizzato di Bosone da Gubbio (d. ca. 1349), a cura di Annamaria Carrega; Libellus de natura animalium, a cura di Paola Navone.

521 p., illustrations, bibliography.

Language: Italian
ISBN: 88-7648-011-0; LCCN: 85147951; LC: PA8275.B4I81983

El pecado en la capilla de San Andres de la catedral de Tui (Quintana, 1, 2002, 197-209) [Journal article]

A study of the representation of sin in the chapel of St Andres in the cathedral of Tui. The sculptures constitute a rich bestiary mostly in the form of serpents and dragons, symbols of of redemption the struggle against sin.

Language: Spanish
ISSN: 1579-7414

La tradition manuscrite de l’Image du monde (Ecole nationale des Chartes, 2005)

The 13th century was defined by Jacques Le Goff as the “century of encyclopaedism”. It was indeed a period of incredible growth for Latin encyclopedias, but also saw at the same time the birth of vulgar encyclopedism. The foundation of the new genre, destined to spread during the second half of the century, is linked to the publication of the Image of the world , a text which enjoyed immense success in the Middle Ages and which circulated in several editorial offices. The original intention of the author [Gossuin de Metz] of l’Image du monde was to develop an instructional program that could adapt traditional clerical knowledge to a new, secular, unschooled audience. To understand the text, it is therefore fundamental to understand the relationship it maintained with its readers. - [Introduction]

Language: French

Animali, uomini, leggende: il bestiario del mito (Milan: Xenia, 1990) [Book]

240 pp., illustrations, bibliography.

Language: Italian
LCCN: 91-117874; LC: GR820.C461990; OCLC: 31754862

Life in Medieval England as Portrayed on Church Misericords and Bench Ends (Oxfordshire: Teamband Ltd., 1998) [Book]

"Written to interest those who would like to place the carvings in their contemporary context rather than to provide an exhaustive catalogue". Largely focusing on examples in East Anglia and the West Country, Challis explores the various genres of misericord subjects represented, including depictions of events from the Bible, early disciples, beasts and monsters, scenes from everyday life and merry-making. Not a comprehensive study but one which reflects the time spent by the author visiting and recording these carvings.

67 p., many black & white illustrations.

Language: English
ISBN: 1-898187-01-0

WhiteRose's Garden (WhiteRose (Heather Changeri), 1997-) [Web page]

A web site on "comparative mythology", with sections on water creatures, dragons, unicorns, and other mythical beasts.

Language: English

Le Bestiaire du Christ (France: Desclée, De Brower & Cie., 1940) [Book]

"Just before the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe, a little-known Roman Catholic scholar published a compendium of animal symbolism that ranks with the greatest of the classical and medieval bestiaries. Louis Charbonneau-Lassay's Le Bestiaire du Christ (The Bestiary of Christ) was a tour de force that brought together the findings of a lifetime of scholarship in religious symbols gleaned from sources as diverse as ancient Egypt, classical Greece and Rome, early and medieval Christianity, the Kabbalah, Gnosticism, and various spiritual schools of the Near and Far East. ... By bringing together various schools of esoteric wisdom with Catholic thought and the folk legends of the French countryside around Loudun, where he lived and died, Charbonneau-Lassay created a stirring and lively account of the rich - and often contradictory - metaphorical meanings of real and imaginary animals." - publisher, English edition, 1991

Originally published in France in 1940, in an edition of 500 copies, almost all of which were destroyed during the war. An edition of 2000 copies was published in Milan, based on the few surviving copies of the original. An English edition was translated and abriged by D. M. Dooling in 1991.

Language: French

The Bestiary of Christ (New York: Parabola Books, 1991) [Book]

"Just before the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe, a little-known Roman Catholic scholar published a compendium of animal symbolism that ranks with the greatest of the classical and medieval bestiaries. Louis Charbonneau-Lassay's Le Bestiaire du Christ (The Bestiary of Christ) was a tour de force that brought together the findings of a lifetime of scholarship in religious symbols gleaned from sources as diverse as ancient Egypt, classical Greece and Rome, early and medieval Christianity, the Kabbalah, Gnosticism, and various spiritual schools of the Near and Far East. ... By bringing together various schools of esoteric wisdom with Catholic thought and the folk legends of the French countryside around Loudun, where he lived and died, Charbonneau-Lassay created a stirring and lively account of the rich - and often contradictory - metaphorical meanings of real and imaginary animals." - publisher

Originally published in France (as Le Bestiaire du Christ) in 1940, in an edition of 500 copies, almost all of which were destroyed during the war. An edition of 2000 copies was published in Milan, based on the few surviving copies of the original. This English edition was translated and abriged by D. M. Dooling.

467 p., many black & white (woodcut) illustrations, bibliography

Language: English
ISBN: 0-930407-18-0; LCCN: 91040422; LC: BV168.A5C48131992; DDC: 24620

Christ the Hunter & the Hunted. A dual symbol from The Bestiary of Christ (Parabola, 16:2 (May), 1991, 23-25) [Journal article]

Language: English
ISSN: 0362-1596; OCLC: 2210234

Un Episode Original: La Mort du Loup dans le Livre VII de l'Ysengrimus (in Gabriel Bianciotto & Michel Salvat, ed., Épopée Animale, Fable, Fabliau: Actes du IVe Colloque de la Société Internationale Renardienne, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984, 133-139) [Book article]

"Dans le Roman de Renart, le groupil frole la mort a plusiers reprises, mais a las derniere minute, miraculeusement, il est toujours epargne. C'est ainsi que la branche I nous le montre condamne a mort par le roi et la cour. Pourtant, un dernier subterfuge le sauve: il declare vouloir expier ses crimes par un pelerinage, si bien que Noble lui pardonne et qu'il peut s'enfuir. La branche XVII, elle aussi, pretend apporter au Roman une conclusion definitive: Renart meurt et l'on procede a ses funerailles. Mais au moment ou l'on met le groupil en terre, il bondit hors de la fosse et s'enfuit en emportant Chanteclerc qui tenait l'encesoir. Le mame theme sera repris dans une branche tardive, la branche XXIII, ou une fois de plus Renart echappe a la sentence prononcee contre lui. Bref, Renart est immortel. Le heros de l'epopee animale, symbole autant que personnage, ne peut mourir." - Charbonnier

Language: French

Poison-Detecting Birds (Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, 5:2, 1929, 233-242) [Journal article]

Notes on poison-detecting birds, primarily from Eastern (Arabic, Indian) texts, but with some reference to Western bestiary texts.

Language: English

Le dragon me´die´val. "Physiologus", encyclope´dies et bestiaires enlumine´s (VIIIe-XVe s.) : Texte et Image (École doctorale de l’EHESS, 2020)

The medieval dragon. “Physiologus”, illuminated encyclopedias and bestiaries (8th-15th centuries): Text and Image. Doctoral thesis in History and civilizations

The ubiquitous of the dragon in the geographical area of the Medieval West makes it a fundamentally complex figure. Faced with an unfathomable production, as immense as the dragon itself, the Latin bestiaries offer a corpus which, thanks to the text-image relationship, allows us to analyse its symbolism and iconography. The production of the bestiaries is a continuation of the Greek Physiologus (2nd/4th century) and its Latin translations, and predates the encyclopaedic revival of the 13th century. It will therefore be important for us to understand the formation and processes underlying the symbolic evolution and iconography of the dragon, to identify the different stages that mark its history and contributed to molding its image in medieval times. To do this, it is necessary to identify the different symbolic components of the biblical dragon, at the very origin of the medieval monster, through the Old Testament, the Revelation and Patristic. This analysis aims to identify the complex and intertwined networks that govern the symbolism of the dragon in the Physiologus and its Latin translations. The study of the vernacular translations of the Latin versions of the Physiologus allows us to highlight the permanence and mutations of the dragon which began during the 12th century. The Latin bestiaries allow us to understand the links that unite and distinguish the dragon from the various snakes. The 13th century encyclopaedias, by compiling ancient knowledge and medieval traditions, redefine the place of the dragon in Creation and its symbolism. The iconographic analysis of the bestiaries allows us to determine the criteria inherent to the physiognomy of the dragon, its singularity in relation to other snakes and to understand how its depiction participates in the exaltation of its diabolical nature. - [Abstract]

Language: French

Genèse, symbolique et iconographie du basilic au Moyen Âge. Exemple des bestiaires latins enluminés (xiie-xve siècle) (Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes, 2022; Series: Magikon zoon: Animal et magie dans l’Antiquité et au Moyen Âge)

A small snake in Antiquity, a hybrid animal in the Middle Ages or a giant monster with a murderous gaze in contemporary fantasy, the basilisk continues to reinvent itself. These mutations bear witness to the evolutions and recreations of the visual and symbolic imagination which have marked its history throughout the centuries. Faced with the protean nature and unstable iconography of the basil, Latin bestiaries offer a corpus that allows us to understand its symbolism and iconography. Bestiaries enjoyed great success during the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, in the British Isles and on the European continent. This literary genre is heir to ancient zoology and the exegetical tradition of paleo-Christian writings, thus offering an original theological discourse rich in meaning. It will therefore be important for us to understand the formation and processes that underlie the symbolic evolution and iconography of the basil, to identify the different stages that mark its history and contributed to forging its image in the medieval period. To do this, it is necessary to identify the multiple symbolic components of the basil, at the very origin of the medieval monster, through ancient pagan literature, the Old Testament corpus and patristics. This analysis aims to identify the complex and tangled networks which govern the symbolism of the basil in the writings of the High Middle Ages in order to highlight the permanences and mutations which began during the twelfth century, in particular through the different families of Latin bestiaries. Finally, the iconographic analysis of the manuscripts will make it possible to determine the criteria inherent to the physiognomy of the basil and to define how its presentation contributes to the exaltation of its diabolical nature. - [Author]

Language:
978-2-493209-07-8; DOI: 10.4000/books.irht.802

Mythical Beasts (London: British Museum Press/Pomegranite Artbooks, 1995) [Book]

This text for the general reader explores the history and significance of 150 mythical beasts from around the world. This book takes four of the most significant - the dragon, the unicorn, the griffin and the sphinx - and shows how, through changing cultures from antiquity to the present, they have provided inspiration for writers and artists. Half-human creatures are also explored. The book draws on a wide variety of sources to illuminate the roles that mythical beasts have played in many different cultures, showing how they have retained their appeal through the ages.

191 pp., color and black & white illustrations throughout, glossary of beast names, bibliography, index. Introduction by John Cherry.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-87654-606-8

Unicorns (in John Cherry, ed., Mythical Beasts, London: British Museum Press/Pomegranite Artbooks, 1995, 44-71) [Book article]

A discussion of the unicorn with refrerence to classical literature, Christianity, heraldry, medieval secular literature, chastity and medicine, from antiquity to modern times. Illustrated in color and black & white.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-87654-606-8

De naturis bestiarum by Johannes Chrysostomus: an XI Century MS. in the Monastery of Gottweih (19--?) [Book]

Facsimile reproduction of the manuscript leaves without commentary. The manuscript is now in the Pierpont Morgan Library under the shelfmark M.832.

20 p. of facsimiles.

Language: Latin

Animal Symbolism in Ancient Russian Culture (Filozofski fakultet u Rijeci, 2009; Series: IKON volume 2)

Animal Symbolism played an important role in the Ancient Russian culture. Animal Symbols can be divided into three groups. At the first, animal symbols in the Ancient Russian literature (Hexameron, Physiolog and others). For the most part, these were the symbols of Christian virtues and vices. At the second, animal symbols in the churches. For the most part they were symbols of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and the apostles, as well as characters Last Judgment (for example fresco of Church of our Saviour on Nereditsa) and symbols. Thirdly, they were symbolic images of animals on jewellery ornaments and embroiderys. Like many symbols used by Christians, animal symbols were adopted and adapted out of a pre-Christian usage.

Language:
1846-8551; DOI: 10.1484/J.IKON.3.56

The Physiologus and 'The Whale' (Medieval English Studies (Korea), 6, 1998, 21-57) [Journal article]

Includes a critical edition of the text of 'The Whale', one of the three narratives in the Old English Physiologus in the Exeter Book. Summaries in English and Korean.

Language: English

Douze notices du physiologue en transmission arabe : Bestiaire spirituel pour les chrétiens (Academia, 2021)

The Arabic version [of the Physiologus] has come down to us through two significantly different recensions... In his imposing collection in Latin, the "Physiologus leidenensis", comprising 81 entries drawn from various sources, Land indicates 37 notices as coming from an Arabic recension... To the same recensions belong the 19 notices found in the manuscript Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Arabe 258 attributed by the superscription to Saint Gregory of Nazianzus. ... However, it is to another recension that the twelve notices presented here belong ... in the translation given by Gérard Troupeau in 1975. It will be noted that, unlike the notices in the Greek collection which generally bear "The Physiologus said", no notice transmitted by this manuscript specifically mentions an author. - [Author]

Includes the French translation of the twelve Arabic Physiologus chapters from Troupeau, Une version arabe du Physiologus.

Language: French

Le Physiologue ou Bestiaire spirituel à l'usage des chrétiens (Academia, 2017)

Many translations of the Physiologus have therefore been made, but it must be admitted that few of us read 13th century "French" fluently. Also, failing to find a French translation carried out according to the rules of the art which is at the same time in the Public Domain, I fell back on a translation which was carried out in the 19th century – as a curiosity for an individual – on an Armenian text and was not intended to be published. Luckily, Father Cahier (SJ), who had a long-standing interest in the symbols that adorn churches – and for that reason had spotted what they must in the Physiologus – chose to insert this translation in one of his numerous studies in 1855. I dug it up and, at the cost of some modernizations of the language, I present yhe Physiologus according to the Armenian transmission, well aware that the text proposed below would certainly not give complete satisfaction to the researcher or the scholar. However, it will be enough for a first discovery, a first contact. This “Physiologus according to Armenian transmission” being full of biblical quotations, I have endeavored to identify them, and have reported them as best I can. It goes without saying that the Physiologus cites Holy Scripture from the Greek version of the Septuagint, like all the authors of his time. This posterity is reflected in certain decorative elements of churches, In addition, and to complement it, I have added - under the title "Le physiologue normand" - the series of summaries that Professor Hippeau gave, in 1852, of the long rhymed notices in Romance languages of Guillaume's "Bestiaire divin", Norman priest. To make it less difficult to use, I have added a comparative table between these two texts. - [Author]

Language: French

Animali simbolici: alle origini del bestiario cristiano (Bologna: EDB, 2002; Series: Biblioteca patristica 39) [Book]

Christian symbology of animals; animals in the Bible. Includes Greek and Latin texts with facing Italian translation.

508 p., bibliography, indexes.

Language: Italian
ISBN: 88-10-42048-9; LCCN: 2003422759; OCLC: 51106036

Le meraviglie d'Oriente nelle enciclopedie illustrate del Medioevo (in Michelangelo Picone, ed., L'enciclopedismo medievale: Atti del convegno "L'enciclopedismo medievale", San Gimignano, 1992, Ravenna: Longo, 1994, 79-116) [Book article]

Language: Italian
ISBN: 88-8063-003-2

Bestiaire médiéval des animaux familiers (Rennes: Ouest-France, 2013)

A study of the symbolic animal of the Middle Ages. The author examines the representations moral, metaphorical and imaginary attached to animals domestic or wild : pig, dog, cat, wolf, bear, rat, birds of prey, insects, etc

Language: French
978-2-7373-5923-1

Un aspect de l’encyclopédisme de Thomas de Cantimpré. La section De lapidibus pretiosis du Liber de natura rerum (Médiévales, 2017; Series: Volume 72)

Even though all thirteenth century encyclopaedists used a common corpus of sources, each of them had a precise and personal way to choose, “tailorize” and arrange the contents taken from these auctoritates. These peculiar and custom modi scribendi reflect accurately the different formae mentis and purposes behind the encyclopaedic texts, while also permitting the compiler (who collects authoritative materials of others) to become an author (who in turn becomes authoritative). Through the analysis of the structure, contents and sources of De lapidibus pretiosis—the fourteenth book of the widespread encyclopedia Liber the natura rerum (approximately 1242/1247-1260)—, this essay will show the exclusive « encyclopaedic style » and goals of its author, the Flemish Dominican friar Thomas of Cantimpré (1201-1270/1271). - [Abstract]

Language: French
DOI: 10.4000/medievales.8121

On the borders of humanity. Amazons, wild men, giants and wolf-girls in Thomas of Cantimpré’s Liber de natura rerum (Reinardus: Yearbook of the International Reynard Society, 2020; Series: Volume 32, Issue 1)

The Liber de natura rerum is a thirteenth-century encyclopedia that reflects the naturalistic interests of its author, the Dominican friar Thomas of Cantimpré (ca.1200/ 01–ca.1270/ 72). Despite his realistic focus, Thomas was a man of his time and he introduced elements in his work that may seem bizarre to a modern reader. The purpose of this article is twofold. Firstly, it analyses how the Friar treats these different elements, whether they were widespread in thirteenth-century culture (e.g. Amazons, wild men, mermaids, etc.) or discussed for the first time by the Thomas himself (e.g. giants of Vienna, wolf-girl of Burgundy, etc.). Secondly, the paper highlights some very interesting and new aspects of Thomas’s work that shed light on his way of thinking and on his encyclopedia. - [Abstract]

Language: English
DOI: 10.1075/rein.00037.cip

"In dorso colorem habet inter viridem et ceruleum…": Liber rerum e osservazione zoologica diretta nell’enciclopedia di Tommaso di Cantimpré (Reinardus: Yearbook of the International Reynard Society, 2017; Series: Volume 29)

Like other contemporary encyclopaedists of his time, Thomas of Cantimpré (1200 ca.–1270/72) used a vast number of sources in his Liber de natura rerum (completed between 1241 and 1260 ca.), which he meticulously selected to copy, cut and ‘paste’ in order to create a solid, well-argued, coherent and ‘Dominican’ discourse on nature. Among these auctoritates, the friar also uses a mysterious and anonymous libellum, which he qualifies as “liber rerum,” in his work. Consequently, the paper explains this auctoritas through a careful consideration of all the objective aspects that can be acquired from the Liber de natura rerum. Secondly, the work shows how the anonymous source was Thomas’ privileged vehicle through which to introduce in his encyclopaedia ‘alternative’ information borrowed from non-canonical sources (direct observations, personal experiences, etc.). The analysis therefore identifies the particular textual typology of the anonymous libellum, while also demonstrating how the friar of Cantimpré was a curious and actual auctor on nature, observing everyday reality directly and thereby distinguishing himself from his contemporary compilatores. - [Abstract]

Language: Italian

Il Physiologus nel Liber de natura rerum di Tommaso di Cantimpré (RursuSpicae, 2019; Series: Volume 2)

The Physiologus in Thomas of Cantimpré's Liber de Natura Rerum

In the Prologus to his Liber de natura rerum (1225 ca.-1260 ca.), the Dominican Thomas of Cantimpré lists the 15 sources he used most during the writing of the encyclopedia. In the penultimate place on this list, he puts the Physiologus and describes it as an auctoritas “quite succinct and useful on several occasions”. Starting from this indication, the present article investigates therefore two aspects of this relationship. First, how and how much the Alexandrian treatise is actually used in the Dominican encyclopedia. Second, what version of this didactic work was on Thomas’ desk during the drafting of the Liber. - [Abstract]

Language: Italian
2557-8839

La place de Thomas de Cantimpré dans l’encyclopédisme médiéval : les sources du Liber de natura rerum) (Paris: Theses.fr, 2014; Series: Doctoral thesis in History of science, École pratique des hautes étude)

The place of Thomas of Cantimpré in the medieval encyclopedism : the sources of the Liber de natura rerum

The Liber de Natura Rerum is a medieval encyclopedia born from the need of a text capable of explaining nature and the Bible, viz. The Will of the Creator. The Dominican Thomas de Cantimpré (1201-1270/71) compiled the work with the view of helping preachers and Christian educators strengthen the faith of believers: a faith which must be without error. In order to understand this text and its compiler, the present work has been divided into two parts: 1) a new philological reconstruction of the Liber together with a statement of all the identifiable sources used by the Flemish Dominican; 2) a commentary of the new Liber analysing and explaining the culture of Thomas. By observing the explicit and implicit sources and the relationship between Thomas’ work and the encyclopedism of the Middle Ages, the aims of de Cantimpré can be reconstructed. The analysis of the Liber de Natura Rerum hence is not limited to the philological level, but portrays the text in hermeneutic terms; via the analysis of the sources, Thomas de Cantimpré and his work can be placed in the complex reality of medieval encyclopedism - [Abstract]

Language: French

Fragmented Nature: Medieval Latinate Reasoning on the Natural World and Its Order (Routledge, 2022)

The Latin Middle Ages were characterised by a vast array of different representations of nature. These conceptualisations of the natural world were developed according to the specific requirements of many different disciplines, with the consequent result of producing a fragmentation of images of nature. Despite this plurality, two main tendencies emerged. On the one hand, the natural world was seen as a reflection of God’s perfection, teleologically ordered and structurally harmonious. On the other, it was also considered as a degraded version of the spiritual realm – a world of impeccable ideas, separate substances, and celestial movers. This book focuses on this tension between order and randomness, and idealisation and reality of nature in the Middle Ages. It provides a cutting-edge profile of the doctrinal and semantic richness of the medieval idea of nature, and also illustrates the structural interconnection among learned and scientific disciplines in the medieval period, stressing the fundamental bond linking together science and philosophy, on the one hand, and philosophy and theology, on the other. - [Publisher]

Contents:

1. Zoological Inconsistency and Confusion in the Physiologus latinus - Emmanuelle Kuhry
2. Gerald of Wales and Saint Brigid’s Falcon: The Chaste Beast in Medieval and Early Modern Irish Natural History - Bernd Roling
3. Medieval Universes in Disorder: Primeval Chaos and Its Authoritative Coordinates - Nicola Polloni
4. Animals under an Encyclopedic Lens: Zoological Misinterpretation in Thomas of Cantimpré's Liber de Natura Rerum - Mattia Cipriani
5. Learning from Bees, Wasps, and Ants: Communal Norms, Social Practices, and Contingencies of Nature in Medieval Insect Allegories - Julia Burkhardt
6. Defining and Picturing Elements and Humours in Medieval Medicine: Text and Images in Bartholomew the Englishman’s De Proprietatibus Rerum - Grégory Clesse
7. Why Do Animals Have Parts? Organs and Organisation in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-century Latin Commentaries on Aristotle's De animalibus - Dominic Dold
8. La reproduction imparfaite: les "gusanes" et l’état larvaire des insectes chez Albert le Grand - Isabelle Draelants
9. Elixir as Means of Contrasting with Nature in Albert the Great’s Alchemy - Athanasios Rinotas
10. From Prime Matter to Chaos in Ramon Llull - Carla Compagno

Language: English
ISBN: 978-1-00-309479-1; DOI: 10.4324/9781003094791

Unnatural History: An Illustrated Bestiary (New York: Abelard-Schumann, 1967)

Aside from legendary beasts also has legends & lore of actual animals.

"In Unnatural History, and illustrated modern bestiary, Colin Clair has unearthed the incredible stories of a whole galaxy of extraordinary beasts. ...nearly every fabulous beast of myth and legend has been included here for the benefit of the contemporary reader, who, in his prudent circumspection, may well wonder in just what jungles the imaginations of his ancestors may have wandered." - publisher

The illustrations are mostly 16th and 17th century woodcuts (Gesner, Topsell, etc.) and line drawings.

256 pp., illustrations, bibliography.

Language: English
LCCN: 66025012; LC: GR825.C481967; DDC: 398.4/69; OCLC: 1266069

Beasts and Bawdy (New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1975) [Book]

"...the author describes the real and fabulous beasts thus depicted, comments on their beastly behavior, and explores the curious sex lives our ancestors attributed to them." - publisher

A general introduction to (mostly) medieval animal lore. The lack of references makes it difficult to use for serious study, or to follow up on sometimes dubious statements. Small bibliography, index. 16 pages of black & white illustrations.

Contents: Sources of Animal Lore; Physiologus and the Bestiaries; Fabulous Beasts; Men as Beasts and Beasts as Men; Sex and Bawdy; Beastly Behaviour; Animal Medicines, Charms and Aphrodisiacs.

159 pages, 24 black & white photographic illustrations, bibliography, index.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-8008-0691-3; LCCN: 75000807; LC: QL791.C5651975; DDC: 398/.369

Ovid in the Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 2011)

Ovid is perhaps the most important surviving Latin poet and his work has influenced writers throughout the world. This volume presents a groundbreaking series of essays on his reception across the Middle Ages. The collection includes contributions from distinguished Ovidians as well as leading specialists in medieval Latin and vernacular literature, clerical and extra-clerical culture and medieval art, and addresses questions of manuscript and textual transmission, translation, adaptation and imitation. It also explores the intersecting cultural contexts of the schools (monastic and secular), courts and literate lay households. It elaborates the scale and scope of the enthusiasm for Ovid in medieval Europe, following readers of the canon from the Carolingian monasteries to the early schools of the Île de France and on into clerical and curial milieux in Italy, Spain, the British Isles and even the Byzantine Empire. - [Publisher]

Language: English
ISBN: 978-1-107-00205-0

Animals and Men (London: Thames & Hudson, 1977) [Book]

Mostly plates with captions. Includes some information on the Physiologus and bestiaries, as well as symbolic and sacred animals.

240 p. index.

Language: English
LC: N7660.C6

The Aviary-Bestiary at the Houghton Library, Harvard (in Meradith T. McMunn, ed., Beasts and Birds of the Middle Ages. The Bestiary and its Legacy, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989, 26-52) [Book article]

Discussion on Houghton Library, MS Typ 101 containing an Aviary (De columbia deargentata, Libellus ad Rainerum conversum...) by Hugh of Fouilloy, prior of Saint-Laurent-d'Heilly, and Bestiary (Dicta Chrysostomi version)

Also a comparison of the Houghton Library manuscript with a related manuscript, National Library of Russia, Lat. Q.v.III. 1.

Language: English

Four Latin Bestiaries and De bestiis et aliis rebus (Louvain-la-Neuve: Catholic University of Louvain, 2005; Series: Bestiaires medievaux. Nouvelles perspectives sur les manuscrits et les traditions textuelles, communications presentees au xve Colloque de la Societe Internationale Renardienne (Louvain-la-Neuve, 19-2)

Notes on five manuscripts (Bibliothèque Mazarine, Ms 742, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 11207, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 14297, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 14429, Wormsley Library, MS BM 3747).

Language: English

The Illustrated Medieval Aviary and the Lay Brotherhood (Gesta, 21:1, 1982, 63-74) [Journal article]

"Hugh of Fouilloy's De avibus, written sometime after 1152, is a teaching text for monastic lay-brothers, using birds as the subjects of moral allegory. Copies were usually illustrated,and a standard program of miniatures can be followed, all or in part, through some forty-six of the seventy-eight extant manuscripts, produced mainly in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In England, the text was often incorporated directly into the Bestiary, with or without the typical Aviary illustrations. The Aviary's formal parallels to the Bestiary, and its similar patronage and currency, suggest that the Bestiary, too, may have been used as a teaching text for lay-brothers." - Clark, abstract

Includes black & white manuscript images.

Language: English

A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-family Bestiary : Commentary, Art, Text and Translation (Suffolk, Rochester: Boydell Press, 2006)

The bestiary - a book of animals, both real and mythical - is one of the most interesting and appealing medieval artefacts. The "Second-family" bestiary is the most important and frequently produced version (some 49 known manuscripts exist). Of English origin and predominantly English production, it boasts a spiritual text "modernized" to meet the needs of its time, and features exceptional illustrations. This study addresses the work's purpose and audience, challenging previous assumptions with direct evidence in the manuscripts themselves, linking their use to teachers at the elementary-school level, and exploring the art, the text, and the cultural context for the bestiary. It includes a critical edition and new English translation, and a catalogue raisonné of the manuscripts. Fully illustrated. - [Publisher]

Language: English
ISBN: 978-0-85115-682-8; OCLC: 959160341

Medieval Book of Birds: Hugh of Fouilloy's Aviarium (Binghampton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1992; Series: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies) [Book]

"Medieval scribes gave a variety of titles to the Book of Birds... Here I will refer to it as the Aviary, for in many respects it parallels prose versions of a familiar genre, the bestiary. ... In recent times the Aviary has been the subject of a number of studies, all dealing summarily or only in part with the text, the illustrations, and the manuscripts. ... While these studies have made valuable contributions to an understanding of the Aviary, no one has analyzed the complete text in detail, nor has anyone compared the text and illustrations of the many copies in order to group the manuscripts textually and pictorially, nor placed their illustrations in their proper stylistic context. ... Therefore, in addition to an art historical study of the manuscript tradition, I have provided a modern edition and an English translation of the Aviary... In the introduction I analyze the manuscript groups and discuss style in individual manuscripts in relation to their respective groups. I also provide a catalog of all the extant Aviary manuscripts known to me. ... My purpose in publishing this edition and translation is to provide easy access to Hugh's appealing treatise on birds. I have not sought to establish an authorial text, but to present a text which seems to reflect the original at a reasonably close range. ... The edition is based upon the Heiligenkreuz Aviary (Heiligenkreuz Abbey MS. 226), an early copy, complete in text and illustrations." - Clark, preface

341 pp. of text, 49 pp. of black & white illustrations, catalogue of illuminated Aviary manuscripts, bibliography, general index, index of manuscripts cited.

[See also van den Abeele, 2003]

Language: English
ISBN: 0-86698-091-1; LCCN: 90048430; LC: PA8275.B4H8131992; DDC: 878/.30720

Text and picture in the medieval aviary (Manuscripta, 24:1, 1980, 5) [Journal article]

Language: English

Zoology in the medieval Latin bestiary (in Man and nature in the Middle Ages, Sewanee, Tenn.: University of the South Press, 1995) [Book article]

Language: English
ISBN: 0-918769-37-X; LCCN: 82-50575; LC: CB351/BD581; OCLC: 35778979

Beasts and Birds of the Middle Ages: The Bestiary and its Legacy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989) [Book]

"The essays in Beasts and Birds of the Middle Ages, all by internationally known scholars, demonstate the scope and variety of bestiary studies and the ways in which the bestiary can be addressed. The contributers write about the tradition of one of the bestiary's birds, Parisian production of the manuscripts, bestiary animals in a liturgical book, theological as well as secular interpretations of beasts, bestiary creatures in literature, and new perspectives on the bestiary in other genres." - Introduction

In an appendix, the authors provide a list of western Latin and French bestiary manuscripts, extending the bestiary family classification system begun by James (1928) and McCulloch (1962).

Includes articles by: Beryl Rowland, Willene B. Clark, Xenia Muratova, Guy R. Mermier, Wendy Pfeffer, Jeanette Beer, Lilian M. C. Randall, Meradith T. McMunn, Michael J. Curley, Mary Coker Joslin, John B. Friedman.

224 p., black & white illustrations, extensive bibliography (since 1962), index, list of bestiary manuscripts, contributer biographies.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-8122-3091-4; LCCN: 894915; LC: PA8275.B4Z551989; DDC: 809.933620

Four latin bestiaries and De bestiis et aliis rebus (in Baudouin Van den Abeele, ed., Bestiaires médiévaux. Nouvelles perspectives sur les manuscrits et les traditions textuelles, Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut d’études médiévales, 2005, 49-69) [Book article]

Language: English

Claudian (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1922)

Volume II of this work contains translations of The Rape of Proserpine, The Gothic War, On Stilicho's Consulship, Panegyric on the Sixth Consulship of Honorius, various shorter poems (including Gigantomachia and Phoenix), as well as the source Latin texts, Platnaeuer's introduction and footnotes and an index of proper names.

Language: English

Taming the Beast: Images of Trained Bears in Twelfth-Century English Manuscripts (IKON: Journal of Iconographic Studies, 2009; Series: Volume 2)

Amongst the surviving representations of bears from the twelfth century are two images from southern England in which the creature is being taught to speak. These depictions resonate with the contemporary use of animal fables to teach children both Latin and correct behaviour. The bears serve as parallels for human beings and appear to achieve impossible skills. In the Middle Ages bears were famed for being both fierce and stupid. However, captive bears, which were frequently represented in twelfth-century images, could also provide entertainment. This study considers images of bears being taught to speak in the context of written and visual accounts of education. It argues that these images of bears echoed current debates about the nature of children. According to some writers, young pupils were like wild animals who needed to be reformed through the process of learning Latin in the schoolroom. Whilst such images of bears seemingly achieving the impossible were entertaining, they could thus also be didactic. - [Abstract]

Language: English
ISSN: 1846--855; DOI: =10.1484/J.IKON.3.46

The Image du monde Challenge, Team 1, Phase 1/2: BNF Français 14964 (From the Page / Stanford Libraries, 2020)

The Image du monde challenge is a project to transcribe several manuscript copies of l'image du monde by Gossuin de Metz. Team 1, phase 1 & 2 transcrbed the text from Bibliothèque Nationale de France, fr. 14964. The full transcription is available.

Language: English/French

Bestiaire Fabuleux (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 1971) [Book]

459 pp., illustrations.

Language: French
LCCN: 70-886449; LC: GR825.C483; DDC: 398.24/5; OCLC: 547543

Hugues de Fouilloy, imagier de ses propres oeuvres? (Revue du Nord, 177 (January-March), 1963, p. 31-42) [Journal article]

Language: French

La Nature et le sens du De Avibus d`Hugues de Fouilloy, d`après le ms d`Heiligenkreuz n 226 comparable au ms. Troyes 177 ()

Language: French

Un compilateur en eaux (in-)connues: Thomas de Cantimpré et la faune aquatique du nord-ouest de l'Europe (Anthropozoologica, 2018; Series: Volume 53, Number 1)

This paper studies how the Dominican compiler Thomas of Cantimpré deals with ichthyological information from his own country in his Latin encyclopedia called Liber de natura rerum (c. 1242-1247), and the posterity he will have in works directly influenced by him. The first part analyses the passages where Thomas of Cantimpré provides some geographical indications on marine wildlife, focusing on the few sections where Northwestern Europe and vernacular nomenclatures are mentioned. The compiler’s position is paradoxical. On the one hand, he is familiar with the wildlife of the region he himself comes from, but on the other hand the authorities he quotes originate mainly from the Mediterranean area and sometimes do not give precise information in this respect. The second part considers the reception of those chapters in the Dutch translation of Jacob van Maerlant and in the 15th century Hortus sanitatis, via Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum naturale. Within this scope, we pay special attention to the “silences”, i.e., the passages omitted in this chain of transmission. Indeed, these omissions also provide evidence on the epistemological approach of Thomas of Cantimpré in comparison with his followers, considering the spatial, temporal and linguistic conditions of the compilation. - [Abstract]

Language: French
DOI: 10.5252/anthropozoologica2018v53a7

Thomas de Cantimpré et l’Orient : les sources arabes dans les chapitres zoologiques du Liber de natura rerum (Reinardus. Yearbook of the International Reynard Society, 2013; Series: Volume 25, Issue 1)

Encyclopedic works offer a rich textual corpus for the study of cultural relations between East and West. More particularly, the Liber de natura rerum of Thomas of Cantimpré gives an important place to the census and description of animal species. Therefore, its examination makes it possible to collect a series of objective data, quantitatively and qualitatively, on the circulation and integration of Arab elements within the knowledge widespread in the 13th century in the West. An initial survey of the Arabic sources used by the compiler makes it possible to account for a dynamic interaction between Eastern and Western knowledge. The East-West relationship can also be exercised in a more indirect way, as during the reception of Aristotle's De animalibus through the Arabic-Latin translation carried out by Michel Scot. However, by taking this intermediary into consideration, several zoonyms taken up by Thomas de Cantimpré whose sound was puzzling can be clarified and the organization of the census of animal species carried out by the compiler can be studied from a new angle. Finally, on the question of the identification of the Experimentator, cited by Thomas de Cantimpré, new elements of response are provided with regard to the language of composition, the dating and the editorial mode of this work. - [Abstract]

Language: French
DOI: 10.1075/rein.25.05cle

Des textes sources au texte compilé : le portrait de l’autruche dans les compilations naturalistes des ordres mendiants au XIIIe siècle (RursuSpicae: Transmission des textes et savoirs de l’Antiquité à la fin du Moyen Âge, 2020; Series: 3 (La conversation des encyclopédistes))

From Sources to Compilations: Portraying the Ostrich in the 13th-Century Compilations about Nature of the Mendicant Orders

Most of the time, the study of encyclopaedic sources tends to start with the compilations to lead to the authorities which are quoted. This article, focusing on the ostrich, proposes the opposite approach. As a first step, we establish a typology of the zoological knowledge available in the 13th century on this animal. We do this, considering a wide range of sources in various disciplines: works of natural history in the Antiquity with Aristotle and Pliny, moral literature, encyclopedic syntheses, alphabetical series of properties, and medical treatises. The second step is to analyse the reception and assimilation of these contents in the main compendia of natural science produced by the mendicant orders in the middle of the thirteenth century, focusing on the Liber de natura rerum of Thomas of Cantimpré, the De proprietatibus rerum of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, the Speculum naturale of Vincent de Beauvais, and the De animalibus of Albert the Great. With this article we wish to contribute to the question of the criteria underlying the selection made by these authors, paying specific attention to the transmitted knowledge as well as to what is rejected or introduced in an original way. - [Abstract]

Language: French
2557-8839; DOI: 10.4000/rursuspicae.1486

Let sleeping cranes lie (London: British Library, Medieval manuscripts blog, 2019; Series: 19 March 2019)

The RSPB has reported that the ccrane is coming back to Britain, with a record number of new birds reported in recent years. We have similarly found many cranes hidden in the British Library’s medieval bestiaries, manuscripts full of fantastic stories about all manner of birds and beasts. A bird with great wings and long thin legs, the crane’s Latin name — grus — was thought to derive from the hoarse cry of her voice. The Polonsky Foundation England and France Project has created an animation that tells the story of the life of the bird and her flock, based on an account in an illustrated bestiary (British Library, Harley MS 4751). - [Author]

Language: English

Whale of a time (London: British Library, Medieval manuscripts blog, 2019; Series: 02 May 2019)

The Polonsky Foundation England and France Project has created a new animation telling the story of the Whale, the terror of the seas, based on an account in an illustrated bestiary (British Library, Harley MS 4751). ... Illustrations of the whale in early medieval bestiaries vary greatly, but they often take the form of a type of enormous fish, with fins, a tail and a huge belly. According to one description in a manuscript made during the early 13th century (Harley MS 4751), the whale’s body is so large that unwary sailors mistake it for land and anchor their ships on its back. When they light fires, the creature feels the heat of the flames and dives beneath the waves, dragging the sailors to their deaths. -[Author]

Language: English

The Sculpture Of Saint-Sauveur De Nevers (Berkeley, CA: University Of California, Berkeley, 1987) [Dissertation]

PhD dissertation at the University Of California, Berkeley.

"The city of Nevers saw a considerable flourishing of church building in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Relatively few of these structures survive, however, and what does stand today displays very little of what was a substantial output of sculptural decoration in that period. The former Cluniac priory of Saint-Sauveur, destroyed in 1838, was a modest twelfth-century building which belonged to one of the smaller monastic establishments of the city, but from it survives the fullest document of sculpture from Romanesque Nevers. A study of the style of the sculpture of Saint-Sauveur, now housed in the Musee de la Porte du Croux in Nevers, reveals a homogeneous body of sculpture of high quality dating to the middle of the twelfth century. These capitals, corbels, and a tympanum and lintel were carved by an atelier composed of a master who had carved capitals of the tribune story of the narthex and perhaps the Romanesque west facade of the abbey church of Vezelay on the northern border of the Nivernais, as well as, perhaps, a stonecarver who had worked earlier in Nevers itself. The stamp of this atelier may also be seen in Nevers in corbel sculpture of the chapel of Saint-Michel of the Benedictine convent of Notre-Dame de Nevers. Analysis of the iconography of the Saint-Sauveur sculpture, which included a remarkable sculpted 'bestiary' on the nave capitals and a particularly pointed emphasis on the powers of the apostle Peter in sculpture from the crossing and transept portal, gives more specific indication of the background and intentions of the Cluniac patrons of the sculpted decorations of Saint-Sauveur. As well, it may pinpoint the historical moment of the conception of the sculpture to the years around 1152. The collection of fragments from Saint-Sauveur emerges as the creation of an atelier working in an old and rich Romanesque idiom but touched also by a newer aesthetic and by intellectual concerns which scholars commonly associate with early Gothic works. Indeed, the Saint-Sauveur sculpture was soon to be followed in Nevers itself by works closely related to the dramatic contemporary innovations in the sculpture of the Ile-de-France." - abstract

578 p.

Language: English
PQDD: AAT8813835

Bestiari ed erbari dal manoscritto alla stampa (in Henri Zerner, ed., Le stampe e la diffusione delle immagini e degli stili, Bologna: CLUEB, 1983, 17-22) [Book article]

Uses as models the illustrations of some herbals and bestiaries from the 13th century to the 16th century (Theriaca, MS arabe 2964, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; herbal, Cod. Pal. 586, Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence; MS it. 1108, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Herbarium of Apuleius, incun. 794, Biblioteca Marciana, Venice; and herbal, Passau 1486, incun. 915, Biblioteca Marciana, Venice) to test the hypothesis that images played an important role in linking various cultures through the centuries.

Comite international d'histoire de l'art. Atti del XXIV Congresso internazionale di storia dell'arte, 8.

Language: Italian

Dal Fisiologo al Bestiario di Leonardo (in 1-2Rivista di storia della miniatura 1996-1997, 1997, 239-248) [Book article]

Surveys European Medieval illuminated manuscripts (11th-15th cs.; various collections) of the Physiologus and other bestiaries (e.g., those of Sextus Placitus, Guillaume le Clerc, Richart de Fornival, etc.), and the representation of animals in Arab illuminations (13th c.) as precedents for the studies of animals by Pisanello and Leonardo da Vinci.

Language: Italian

Fonti figurative del ''Bestiario'' di Leonardo (Arte Lombarda Milano, 62, 1982, 151-160) [Journal article]

The author discusses the possible sources (illustrated bestiaries of the 13-14th centuries) in studies of animals by Leonardo da Vinci. In addition to specific works that the artist could have consulted in the ducal library of Pavie, the tradition of the international Gothic style, with its Arab components, is described as the source of inspiration of Leonardo da Vinci.

Language: Italian

A Modern Look at Monsters (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1970) [Book]

Language: English

Law, Folklore and Animal Lore (Past and Present, 110 (February), 1986, 6-37) [Journal article]

"Given the existent knowledge of past legal and institutional developments and of the evolving relationship between elite and popular cultural expressions, it is possible to attempt a long-term interpretation. One such practice, the criminal prosecution and execution of animals, may illustrate the interaction of various legal levels and cultural influences. These trials, documented in European legal history from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century, occupy an intermediate position between popular and elite legal culture. On the one hand, they were definitely not judicial folklore: the sentences were passed and executed in properly constituted courts of law by fully qualified magistrates, according to generally accepted laws. On the other hand, there is no question that they were an integral part of customary law and owed their continued existence partially to popular traditions and influences. ... Following the phenomenon through the warp and woof of legal history, from court-house to university and from customals to the gallows across centuries of changing perceptions of nature, law and justice, one might attempt an interpretation of continental European law as practised within its specific cultural context." - Cohen

Language: English

Geschichte des Einhorns (Berlin: 1896) [Book]

Language: German

Beast Allegory in the Late Medieval Sermon in Strasbourg: The Example of John Geiler's Von den vier Lewengeschrei (1507) (Bestia: Yearbook of the Beast Fable Society, May; 3, 1991, 115-124) [Journal article]

Language: English
ISSN: 1041-2212

Renard the Fox and Other Mediaeval Netherlands Secular Literature (Leyden: Heinemann, 1967) [Book]

Language: English

Some Twelfth-Century Animal Carvings and their Sources in the Bestiaries (in Vol. 106. No. 472The Connoisseur, 1940, 238-243) [Book article]

A brief article comparing animal images carved on British churches with similar images found in bestiary manuscripts.

Churches include: Alne, Yorkshire; Newton-in-Cleveland, Yorkshire, Dalmeny, Scotland; St Margaret's, York; Alton, Hampshire; Herefordshire; Faversham, Kent.

Manuscripts include: St John's College, Oxford, MS. 61; Westminster Chapter Library, MS. 22; British Library, Sloane MS. 3544; British Library, Harley MS. 4751; British Library, Harley MS. 3244.

17 black & white photographs.

Language: English

Symbolism of Animals and Birds Represented in English Church Architecture (New York: McBride, Nast & Company, 1913) [Book]

"No student of our ancient churches can fail to have noticed how frequently animals and other representations of natural history are to be found carved therein. The question will naturally occur: are these scultures, or paintinge, mere grotesque creations of the artist's fancy, or have they rather some meaning which patient investigation will discover for us? ... This link has now been found in the natural history books of the Middle Ages, which were in more common circulation than any other book, save, of course, the Bible. ... Such books are usually called Bestiaries. They are to be found in every great library... Few books have entered more than the Bestiaries into the common life of European nations. Hence we may understand that the sculptors who beautified our churches were not slow to make use of such familiar material." - Collins, chapter 1.

Includes 120 black & white photgraphs of sculpture and carvings (primarily stone) in churches througout England. All photographs are fully annotated as to location, date and subject.

Language: English

Bestiaire D'amours, Richard de Fournival - La redazione francoitaliana: Studio comparativo ed edizione dei testi (Edizioni Accademiche Italiane, 2014)

The present work aims to study the internal and external characteristics of the three Franco-Italian manuscripts of Richard de Fournival's Bestiaire d'Amours (two kept at the Florentine Libraries and one at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York [Morgan Library, MS M.459]) giving each a complete transcription with Italian translation accompanied by a codicological, linguistic and iconographic analysis. - [Author]

Language: Italian
ISBN: 978-3-639-65783-8

Medieval uroscopy and its representation on misericords (Clinical Medicine, Journal of the Royal College of Physicians, 2:1, 2002, 75-77) [Journal article]

"By the fifteenth century the practice of uroscopy was falling into disrepute and the uroscopy flask (matula) became a symbol of ridicule. On the carved misericords in choir stalls, the physician holding the matula was commonly represented as an ape, with the allegorical implications of foolishness, vanity and even lechery. The ape uroscopist was frequently shown with his friend the fox, an animal that was often used to satirise the less-than-perfect cleric, and this association may reflect the close ties between the medical and clerical professions in the medieval period."

Language: English
ISSN: 1470-2118; DOI: 10.7861/clinmedicine.2-1-75; PMCID: PMC4953178

A Bestiary Tale: Text and Image of the Unicorn in the Kitab na`l al-hayawan (British Library Or. 2784) (Muqarnas, 20, 2003, 17-34) [Journal article]

Language: English
ISSN: 0732-2992; OCLC: 8339076

Musical beasts: the swan-phoenix in the Ibn Bakhti-shu-' bestiaries (in The Iconography of Islamic Art: Studies in Honour of Robert Hillenbrand, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005, 93-101) [Book article]

Discusses the depiction and description of the si-ra-nas or swan-phoenix in manuscripts of the Kita-b t.aba-'I' al-h.ayawa-n by Ibn Bakhti-shu-', which concern the characteristics of animals, including the musical sound made by this creature.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-7486-2090-7

The Old English 'Whale' (Modern Language Notes, 9:3 (March), 1894, 65-68) [Journal article]

A discussion of the Whale poem of the Old English Physiologus found in the Exeter Book. Cook focuses on the word Fastitocalon as a name for the whale, and compares it to the name Aspidocalon. Much of the article consists of quotations in German, Greek and Latin.

Language: English

Old English Elene, Phoenix and Physiologus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919) [Book]

The Old English Physiologus, or Bestiary, is a series of three brief poems, dealing with the mythical traits of a land-animal, a sea-beast, and a bird respectively, and deducing from them certain moral or religious lessons. These three creatures are selected from a much larger number treated in a work of the same name which was compiled at Alexandria before 140 B. C., originally in Greek, and afterwards translated into a variety of languages into Latin before 431. ... In this standard text, the Old English poems are represented by chapters 16, 17, and 18, dealing in succession with the panther, a mythical sea monster called the asp-turtle (usually denominated the whale), and the partridge. Of these three poems, the third is so fragmentary that little is left except eight lines of religious application, and four of exhortation by the poet, so that the outline of the poem, and especially the part descriptive of the partridge, must be conjecturally restored by reference to the treatment in the fuller versions, - [Preface]

Language: English
LCCN: 19014191; LC: PR1505.C64; OCLC: 2084028

Translations from the Old English (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1970) [Book]

Includes the Old English Physiologus, text and prose translation by A. S. Cook, verse translation by J. H. Pitman. Reprint of contributions originally published 1899-1921 as Yale studies in English, v. 7, 21-22, 48, and 63. Includes a reproduction of the original title page of each contribution.

274 pp.

Language: English
LCCN: 75016347; LC: PR1508.T71970; DDC: 829

The Old English Physiologus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1821; Series: Yale studies in English 63) [Book]

Text and prose translation by Albert Stanburrough Cook. Verse translation by James Hall Pitman. Neither translation is literal; the verse translation in particular takes liberties with the OE text.

Editor's preface dated: March 27, 1921./ "Text is extracted from my edition, The Old English Elene, Phoenix, and Physiologus (Yale university press, 1919) where a critical apparatus may be found."--Pref./ Three short poems of the Exeter book: the Panther, the Whale, and the Partridge; often ascribed to Cynewulf. The last is a mere fragment.

Reprinted by: Folcroft Library Editions, Folcroft, PA, 1973.

25 pp.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-8414-1843-8; LCCN: 73004487; LC: PR1752.C61973; DDC: 829/.1

Dictionary of Symbolic and Mythological Animals (London: Harper Collins, 1995) [Book]

Consists of an alphabetic list of animals, with dictionary-style entries; includes many references to the bestiary.

284 p., bibliography, list of authorities.

Language: English
LC: GR820.C66

A Tale of Two Fishes: Magical Objects in Natural History from Antiquity Through the Scientific Revolution (Journal of the History of Ideas, 52:3, 1991, 373-398) [Journal article]

A study of two fish as magical objects: the echineis, said to have the power to hold back ships; and the torpedo, able to stun at a distance. The author cites ancient authorities (Pliny, Aristotle, Galen, and others) to explore the origins of the legends, and looks at the effects of the scientific revolution on the belief in them.

Language: English

The Position of London, British Library, MS Arundel 292 in the Medieval Bestiary Tradition (Academia / University of Oxford, 2015)

This paper aims to demonstrate how the historical context of a manuscript can affect our reading of its texts. The case study in this case is London, British Library, MS Arundel 292 and its engagement with pastoral literature, the bestiary tradition, and other texts from Norwich Cathedral Library. First-year postgraduate thesis, MPhil English Studies (Medieval Period), University of Oxford (2015). - [Abstract]

Language: English

The Unity of ‘Panther’, ‘Whale’, and ‘Partridge’ in the Anglo-Saxon Physiologus (Acedemia)

The Anglo-Saxon Physiologus (ASP) is a text that no longer exists in its entirety. Much of its critical study, therefore, has fixated upon the question of how many pages of the work was lost between the beginning and end of the poem commonly titled 'Partridge', when the Exeter Book was damaged by fire. Critics are found to make their own judgement by analysing the work's possible sources and the surviving text. Examination of a facsimile edition of The Exeter Book makes it highly likely that at least two leafs of 'Partridge' are missing, merely from examining the lengths of the other two poems in comparison to the terribly short 'Partridge', beginning grandly at the bottom of the page with a large illustrated 'H' for 'Hyrde' and ending on the next page with only nine lines more. - [Author]

Language: English

Mys/mus, qui est tu? (in Elisabeth Mornet & Franco Morenzoni, ed., Milieux naturels, espaces sociaux: Etudes offertes à Robert Delort, Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1997, 161-175) [Book article]

Discusses the etymology of mus as well as occurrences of this word in scientific literature of Antiquity and the Middle Ages/

Language: French
ISBN: 2-85944-330-4

Crossing paths in the Middle Ages: the Physiologus in Iceland (Yumpu, 2013)

The Physiologus, originally written down in Alexandria, Egypt, be- tween the end of the second and the beginning of the third century A.D., became one of the most popular handbooks of the Middle Ages since its material dealing with real and imaginary animals, plants and stones, could be constantly manipulated to suit audiences and employed in instructing Christian believers. The two Icelandic fragments, conventionally called Physiologus A and Physiologus B, are independent of each other and seem to have been written in about 1200. Scholars agree in thinking that their source is to be found in the Latin version con- ventionally called Versio B. Although this statement is true in a general sense, it acts as a screen which hides a much more complex reality: textual and iconographic fea- tures give evidence of their derivation from models whose origins lie in England. Moreover the analysis of the chapters dealing with onocentaurs highlights that the two Icelandic Physiologi, in which tradition and innovation mingle profoundly with each other, are original manipulations of the ancient matter. - [Abstract]

Language: English

The Old English 'Physiologus': Its Problems (Modern Language Quarterly, 10 (September), 1949, 351-355) [Journal article]

"Scholarship has been faced with two problems in the Old English Physiologus: (1) Does it constitue a small cycle complete in itself, or is it only a remnant of a longer series? (2) What is the bird of the fragment? There has been no unanimous decision. ... The answer to the complex question of the cycle seems to lie in the identification of the bird in the third poem. If the writer selected the bird that succeeds the Whale, the longer-cycle theory is left with argument; if he mechanically followed his source and took the next member, the longer-cycle theory is given substantial credence. The matter of choice is crucial." - Cordasco

Language: English

Haec pertica est regula. Texte, image et mise en page dans lâ "Aviarium" dâ Hugues de Fouilloy (in Baudouin Van den Abeele, ed., Bestiaires médiévaux. Nouvelles perspectives sur les manuscrits et les traditions textuelles, Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut d’études médiévales, 2005, 71-110) [Book article]

Language: French

Hugues de Fouilloy (Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge (ARLIMA), 2023)

A biography of Hugh of Fouilloy, with a list of his works and manuscripts.

Language: French

Hugues de Fouilloy, De avibus, Traité des oiseaux (extraits), fac-similé du manuscrit 177 de la Médiathèque de l’Agglomération troyenne (Paris: Phénix Éditions, 2004) [Book]

Language: French

L'iconographie du Bestiaire divin de Guillaume le clerc de Normandie (Brepolis, 2022; Series: Répertoire Iconographique de la Littérature du Moyen Age, vol. 8)

p Description and iconographic analysis of the miniatures from the Bestiaire divin of Guillaume le Clerc of Normandy. This volume presents, reproduces and comments on the cycles of illustrations that adorn the manuscripts of the Bestiaire divin. /p

Language: French
978-2-503-60082-6

Des oiseaux pour les moines blancs: réflexions sur la réception de l'Aviaire d'Hugues de Fouilloy chez les cisterciens (La Vie en Champagne, 38, 2004, 3-12) [Journal article]

"Auteur dun livre consacre a la symbolique des oiseaux, Hugues de Fouilloy etait proche de la spiritualite de saint Bernard. Ses relations avec les moines expliquent le succes de son oeuvre aupres des Cisterciens. ... Les exemplaires cisterciens constituent a ce jour environ un tiers du corpus (7) des manuscrits conserves du De avibus. Cest le plus important de tous les groupes dattributions de lAviaire. Par ailleurs, les recherches de mes predecesseurs sur le sujet ont etabli que, parmi tous les exemplaires connus, ce sont vraisemblablement les manuscrits cisterciens qui se rapprochent constatations nous ont donc naturellement amene a nous demander pourquoi les cisterciens ont apparemment attache autant d'importance a la copie du De avibus..." - Cordonnier

Language: French

Un 128e Exemplaire de L'aviarium de Hugues de Fouilloy : Bruxelles, Kbr, Ms. Ii 2313 (Revista Signum, 2010; Series: Volume 11, Number 1)

In 2003, Baudouin Van den Abeele added 31 new manuscripts from the Aviarium to the list established by Willene B. Clark in 1992. Since then, two other illustrated copies have been discovered, one in Seville and the other at the Royal Library from Belgium (Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, Ms. II 2313). We propose here a monographic study of the Brussels copy, including a contextualization of the manuscript within the corpus of Aviaria, which now amounts to 128 copies, followed by the exhaustive codicological notice of the manuscript, as well as the transcription of the text and accompanied translation French. - [Abstract]

Language: French
HALId: hal-01634167

L'illustration du "De avibus" de Hugues de Fouilloy : symbolisme animal et méthodes d'enseignement au Moyen Âge (Lille: Université Charles de Gaulle (Lille), 2007)

The Aviarium is a treaty on the exegetical significance of birds. It was written in the middle of the XIIth century by Hugues of Fouilloy, then prior of a community of Augustinian regular canons. In his dedication and his prologue, Hugues states that he conceived the iconographic program of his treaty so as to make it accessible to the illiterates (illiterati), which places it in the tradition of the "picture as literature of the illiterates" concept. The iconographic program of the Aviarium is nothing less than the equivalent to a text for the religious illiterates who must practice the lectio divina in spite of their difficulty to read scriptures. Its illustrations follow the tradition of visual exegesis, which goes back to the Carolingian period but appears to have been systematized in the XIIth century - especially by the school of Saint-Victor - in this period of emergence of new scholastic exegesis methods. The choice of animal symbolism, and of birds in particular, is first motivated by the fact that Hugues addresses a religious audience, traditionally represented by birds in Christian thought, and, secondly, because of the long tradition of the use of bestiaries as teaching manuals in medieval scolae, which also sheds light on the didactic approach of such books. The Aviarium's conception in the middle of the XIIth century and in the context of regular canon orders, made of its iconographic program an invaluable example of the place and function devoted to pictures within a school of thought that expresses/transcribes both the canonical world and the monastic one, alongside the emergence of the universities and of a new way of thinking. - [Abstract]

Language: French
Nationalthesisnumber: 2007LIL30015

The Smyrna Physiologos and eleventh-century monasticism (in Work and Worship at the Theotokos Evergetis 1050-1200, Belfast: Belfast Byzantine Enterprises (Belfast Byzantine texts and translations, 6, 2), 1997, 201-212) [Book article]

Language: English
ISBN: 0-85389-712-3

Note sur les excerpta médiévaux de Columelle (Revue d'histoire des textes, 7, 1977, 109-132) [Journal article]

Language: French

The Magic Zoo: The Natural History of Fabulous Animals (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979) [Book]

"I should like to make clear, at the very beginning of this book, just exactly what I mean by 'magic' in the title. ... By magic I mean the other realm of meaning which lies between man and nature, that world of mystery and enchantment that we first recognize as children in fairy tales. ... Such creatures as the unicorn are not purposeless fantasies. They all have some special meaning. They are all cultural artefacts, as much so as the flint knife of the early shaman, or the space-probe of the modern scientist. They are 'man-made' in a very special sense. ... The natural history of these magical creatures -- and I emphasise that this book is about their natural history only -- is bound up with man's experience of animals, wild and domestic, through the centuries. In the...first part of this book, I shall try and outline man's changing relationship with the animals around him. ... In the second part of the book I have collected together some of the fabulous animals of Western man over a long period of time. ... Though most of this book deals with the natural history of fabulous beasts, the last part takes a brief look at the magical dimensions of man's experience and knowledge of these animals." - Costello

222 pp., 4 leaves of plates, illustrations, bliography, index.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-312-50421-7; LC: GR825.C53

Un manuscrit oublié du Physiologus (New York, P. Morgan M. 397) (Scriptorium: International Review of Manuscript Studies, 28:2, 1974, 276-277) [Journal article]

A short discription of a "lost" manuscript containing the Physiologus: New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS. M. 397. The description includes a list of the 48 beasts found in the manuscript.

Language: French

Une Nouvelle edition du 'Bestiaire' de Philippe de Thaon (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2003) [Dissertation]

"The goal of the dissertation is to propose a new critical edition of the Bestiaire of Philippe de Thaon, last edited by Emmanuel Walberg in 1900. The edition is accompanied by four introductory chapters which present in order: a brief overview of the bestiary tradition and the works of Philippe de Thaon, an analysis of the three manuscripts containing the Bestiaire, an explanation of the criteria for edition and an examination of the cycle of miniatures conceived to accompany this work. Appendices include: notes indicating Philippe's sources, an index of proper names, a thematic index of beasts, birds and stones mentioned in the bestiary and a glossary." - abstract

PhD dissertation, 2003. 308 p.

Language: French
PQDD: AAT3086514

Asiatic Mythology (London: George G. Harrap & Co., 1932) [Book]

Language: English

The 'Great Fish' in Ancient and Medieval Story (Transactions of the American Philological Association, 57, 1926, 32-50) [Journal article]

"In every age of the world, travellers to far off lands have brought back stories of strange peoples and strange customs, of plants and birds and beasts unknown to those who stayed at home. Perhaps no sight has made a stronger appeal to the imagination than an enormous fish, whose vast bulk lay stretched out on the surface of the sea, or who opened his huge jaws to devour smaller creatures. According as the lines of travel moved to the east or to the west and north, he is pictured, now off the coast of India or among the islands of the Southern Pacific, now on the shores of the Baltic; his dimensions and habits are variously described; but always he is an object of terror, and always he lends himself to stories of adventure and romance." - author

Language: English

Bench-Ends in English Churches (London: Oxford University Press, 1916; Series: Church Art in England) [Book]

An extensive survey of bench-end wood carvingin English churches. The are some animal references.

208 p., 164 black & white plates and illustrations, bibliography, index.

Language: English
LC: NA5075.C7

The Physiologus: a Poiesis of Nature (Church History, 52:4, 1953, 433-443) [Journal article]

"If we were to adopt the standard scholarly perspective on the Physiologus ... we would have to say that, while it is unusually transformative, it is not very good poetry. For, in the traditional view, the imagination of the Physiologus has its base precisely not in reality but in embarrassing flights of zoological fancy. A.-J. Festugiere, for example, characterized the Phusika literature, literature which meditated on nature, as a 'museum of the weird' and contrasted its 'disconcerting credulity' with Aristotle's program of establishing fixed natural laws. In a similar vein, B. E. Perry remarked that the Physiologus was written by 'a simple man for simple people.' Naive and unartistic, fantastical, romantic, and magical, the Physiologus was responsible virtually singlehandedly for blotting out the bright light of Aristotelian science for nearly a thousand years.These scholars obviously have a clear and distinct idea about what constitutes the 'reality' to which the Physiologus was so woefully unresponsive. It is the reality of Aristotelian scientific observation, which catalogues, classifies, orders, and arranges the natural world, placing its bewildering superabundance of forms into a manageable system. From this biological perspective, a document like the Physiologus has no art. ...the reality in which the author of the Physiologus was indeed a specialist may not have been the biological reality of Aristotle but another passion altogether. It is this other reality that I would like to explore in this essay." - Cox

Language: English

The Twelfth-Century Design Sources of the Worcester Cathedral Misericords (Society of Antiquaries, Archaeologia, 1959) [Journal article]

14 pp., 9 pages of plates.

Language: English

Animal encounters contacts and concepts in medieval Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013; Series: Middle Ages series)

Traces of the living animal run across the entire corpus of medieval writing and reveal how pervasively animals mattered in medieval thought and practice. In fascinating scenes of cross-species encounters, a raven offers St. Cuthbert a lump of lard that waterproofs his visitors' boots for a whole year, a scholar finds inspiration for his studies in his cat's perfect focus on killing mice, and a dispossessed knight wins back his heritage only to give it up again in order to save the life of his warhorse. Readers have often taken such encounters to be merely figurative or fanciful, but Susan Crane discovers that these scenes of interaction are firmly grounded in the intimate cohabitation with animals that characterized every medieval milieu from palace to village. The animal encounters of medieval literature reveal their full meaning only when we recover the living animal's place within the written animal.The grip of a certain humanism was strong in medieval Britain, as it is today: the humanism that conceives animals in diametrical opposition to humankind. Yet medieval writing was far from univocal in this regard. Latin and vernacular works abound in other ways of thinking about animals that invite the saint, the scholar, and the knight to explore how bodies and minds interpenetrate across species lines. Crane brings these other ways of thinking to light in her readings of the beast fable, the hunting treatise, the saint's life, the bestiary, and other genres. Her substantial contribution to the field of animal studies investigates how animals and people interact in culture making, how conceiving the animal is integral to conceiving the human, and how cross-species encounters transform both their animal and their human participants.

Language: English
978-1-283-89871-3; DOI: 10.9783/9780812206302

Una versione pisana inedita del Bestiaire d'amours (Leiden: Universitaire Pers Leiden, 1972; Series: Collana romanistica leidense, v. 18) [Book]

Richard de Fournival, fl. 1246-1260. Bestiaire d'amour.

119 pp., illustrations, bibliography.

Language: Italian
ISBN: 90-6021-156-1; LCCN: 73-343178; LC: PQ1461.F64B433; DDC: 841.1; OCLC: 559227364

Animals in Christian Art (in The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume I, New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907) [Book article]

A brief article on the depiction of animals in Christian art, primarily in the Middle Ages.

Language: English

The Besitiary and the Mediaeval Mind - Some Complexities (Modern Language Quarterly, 2, 1941, 191-198) [Journal article]

"It is the purpose of this paper to indicate some complexities in the study of the Bestiary which seem to be frequently and surprisingly overlooked. Though much valuable work has been done on various individual questions connected with the Bestiary, one cannot escape the suspicion that the more general aspects of interpretation have been unwarrantably simplified. ... The naturally close relations between symbolism and scriptural interpretation are even closer with regard to the Bestiary, for much of this strange lore derives from Biblical accounts of creation. All students of the Bestiary admit this, and it is therefore all the more surprising to find in many of them the assumption that facts did not matter to the early authors of Biblical commentaries, especially of the Hexaemeron type. It is quite true, and scarcely a matter for wonder, that the perception of meaning, the perception of the connection of the isolated fact with more cosmic problems, held a higher place in the hierarchy of values than did the observance of single facts. But it is not true that this kind of subordination implied any contempt for the facts, as such." - Cronin

Language: English

Bestiary material in the literature of religious instruction of Mediaeval England (Madison: University Of Wisconsin - Madison, 1941) [Dissertation]

PhD dissertation at the University Of Wisconsin - Madison. Available in microform from University of Wisconsin Memorial Library, Madison, 1980 (1 reel; 35 mm).

232 p, bibliography.

Language: English
OCLC: 6473843

John Mirk on Bonfires, Elephants and Dragons (Modern Language Notes, 57:2 (February), 1942, 113-116) [Journal article]

"In his homily for the feast of St. John the Baptist John Mirk describes the manner of celebrating the vigil, a description of obvious value to the historian of folk-custom and yet, apparently, little noted. ... But whereas Beleth is content to explain that a fire made of bones was especially popular as a remedy against the pestilential dragon in the time of St. John and that the people annually light similar fires to commemorate the historical fact, Mirk interweaves into his explanation of the custom the old story of Alexander's stratagem against elephants. But what has all this to do with the story of the elephants? Is Mirk merely implying that the same wise clerks who knew the natural history of the elephant were also up on their dragon lore? Clarity is conspicuously absent from the explanation given by Mirk, but an examination of Bestiary beliefs reveals that there is good reason for connecting the stories of the elephant and of the dragon.

One of the details of the Greek Physiologus involves the hostility existing between the dragon and the elephant." - author

Language: English

The Battle of Maldon, and other Old English poems (London; New York: Macmillan; St. Martin's Press, 1965) [Book]

Includes an modern English translation of the Old English Physiologus (panther and whale), plus a brief commentary.

Language: English
LC: PR1508C7

The Rainbow Allegory in the Old Icelandic Physiologus Manuscript (Reykjavík (Iceland): Gripla, 2011; Series: Volume 22)

The purpose of this paper is to present a new semi-diplomatic edition with textual notes and an overall analysis of a short allegorical sermon fragment on the rainbow preserved in the 'Physiologus manuscript' AM 673 a II, 4to, fol. 9 v. Tthis homiletic text, which has been almost completely ignored by scholars, concerns a trichromatic description and tropological explanation of the rainbow, based on the biblical episode of Nnoah's flood (esp. Gen. 9, 13-16). two variant versions of it exist, which are found in Hauksbók and in the so-called Rímbegla, and they are also taken into account here, together with Christian references to the rainbow within the whole Old Icelandic literary corpus. The Icelandic Old rainbow allegory is examined against the Latin-Christian background of exegetical literature concerning both Old general colour-imagery and specific symbolical interpretations of the rainbow, in order to verify possible sources. Ssome analogues both in German biblical epic poetry Old and in the Irish and Continental Hiberno-Latin homiletic production are also investigated. - [Abstract]

Language: English
1018-5011

The Paul Mellon collection of sporting books (Yale University Library Gazette, 75:3-4, 2001, 167-187) [Journal article]

Describes Paul Mellon's collection of sporting books which was bequeathed in 1999 to the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven. The collection is particularly strong in items concerning horses, such as riding, hunting, breeding, and racing. Among the most important works is the English Helmingham Herbal and Bestiary of ca.1500 which contains over 100 images of plants and animals, and the Livre du Roi Modus et de la Reine Racio of ca.1400 which features depictions of the chase.

Language: English
ISSN: 0044-0175

The Hound and the Hawk: The Art of Medieval Hunting (New York: Sterling Publishing, 2001) [Book]

Edition of a text on methods for hunting deer, boar, wolves, foxes, bear, otter, birds, hare, and even unicorns.

Reprint of the 1988 St Martin's Press edition.

306 p., illustrations (some color).

Language: English
ISBN: 1-84212-097-2

Animal symbolism in the prophecies of Merlin (in Willene B. Clark & Meradith T. McMunn, ed., Beasts and Birds of the Middle Ages. The Bestiary and its Legacy, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989, 151-163) [Book article]

"...[studies] the extension of bestiary influence to secular medieval genres. ... Curley surveys the use of animal symbolism, including some from the bestiary, in the development of the most enduring of medieval legends, that of King Arthur." - introduction

Language: English

A Note on Bertilak's Beard (Modern Philology, 73:1 (August), 1975, 69-73) [Journal article]

Commentary on Bertilak's "beaver-hued" beard in fit 2 of Gawain and the Green Night in relation to the allegory of the beaver in the bestiaries, the Physiologus, Solinus, Pliny, and others.

Language: English

Physiologus (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979) [Book]

Curley has based his translation on the Latin versions of Physiologus as established by Francis Carmody. Curley's intrduction places Physiologus within its intellectual and historical framework. He also provides a selected bibliography and notes. This volume is illustrated with reproductions of woodcuts from the 1587 Rome edition." - [Cover copy]

The present translation is based on the two editions of the Latin Physiologus prepared by Francis Carmody, the y- and b- version [Carmody Y, Carmody B]. I have relied primarily on the y-version since it is generally agreed to be the closer of the two to the Greek original. Whenever important additions or variations are supplied by the b-version, however, I have translated them... - [Introduction]

Language: English
ISBN: 0-292-76456-1; LCCN: 79014096; LC: PA4273.P8E51979; DDC: 883/.01

Physiologus, Fisiologia and the Rise of Christian Nature Symbolism (Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 11, 1980, 1-10) [Journal article]

The anonymous author of Physiologus infused these venerable pagan tales with the spirit of Christian moral and mystical teaching, and thereafter they occupied a place of special importance in the symbolism of the Christian world. ... In the following remarks I shall attempt to outline the development of a Christian concept of oooeieiasa, and then go on to show how the author of Physiologus set about to compile his anthology of legends in conformity to the early Christian notion of oooeieissa. - [Author]

Language: English
ISSN: 0083-5897

Vikings shipped walrus ivory from Greenland to Kyiv, ancient skulls show (Science, 2022; Series: April 22, 2022)

When archaeologist Natalia Khamaiko first started digging in a vacant lot at 35 Spaska Street in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2007, her expectations were low. Previous archaeological surveys had yielded little, despite the site’s location along what had once been a thriving medieval waterfront, where Norse merchants from Scandinavia traded furs for silver minted in the Islamic world. Khamaiko and her colleagues had better luck. They unearthed layer after layer of new finds, preserved by periodic flooding from the Dniepr River. A layer dating to the 1100s C.E. yielded gold wire, glass fragments, bits of carved ivory, an iron sword from Germany, and thousands of animal bones, including nine massive fragments that turned out to be walrus snouts. Those snouts and carvings, ancient DNA reveals, came from a genetic group of walruses found only in the western Atlantic Ocean. They suggest a thriving 4000-kilometer trade route stretched from Greenland and Canada to the muddy banks of the Dniepr. - [Author]

Language: English
DOI: 10.1126/science.abq6688

Un esempio di bestiario dantesco: La cicogna o dell'amor materno (Studi Danteschi, 67, 2002, 129-160) [Journal article]

Language: Italian
ISSN: 0391-7835

Cuvier’s History of the Natural Sciences (Paris: Publications scientifiques du Muséum (National Museum of Natural History), 2012; Series: Archives | 16)

Here, for the first time in English, is Georges Cuvier’s extraordinary “History of the Natural Sciences from Its Origin to the Present Day.” Based on a series of public lectures presented by Cuvier from 1829 to 1832, this first of a five-volume series, translated from the original French and heavily annotated with commentary, is a detailed chronological survey of the natural sciences spanning more than three millennia. It is truly astonishing in its detail and scope. Cuvier was fluent in many languages, English, German, Spanish, and certainly Latin, in addition to French. He was therefore well prepared to investigate and interpret firsthand the scientific literature of Europe as a whole. The work is an affirmation of Cuvier’s vast encyclopedic knowledge, his complete command of the scientific and historical literature, and his incomparable memory. This history is remarkable also for providing in one place a large set of useful references to a vast ancient literature that is not easily found anywhere else. This huge body of information provides us furthermore with unique insight into Cuvier’s concept of the natural sciences, and to the vast breadth and progress of this human endeavor. With this work, Cuvier fills an important gap in philosophical thought between the time of Carl Linnaeus and Charles Darwin. - [Abstract]

Language: French/English
ISBN: 978-2-85653-867-8; : 

Considerazioni sul Physiologus antico inglese: Pantera vv. 8b-l3a; Balena vv. 1-7 (AION: Filologia germanica, 27, 1984, 303-309) [Journal article]

Language: Italian

Physiologus i to islandske bearbejdelser (Copenhagen: Thiele, 1889) [Book]

A transcription and facsimile of the Icelandic Physiologus, from manuscript Arnamagnæanske Institut, AM 673 a 4º.

92 pp., facsimiles, bibliography.

Language: Danish
LC: PT7318.P6; OCLC: 4560498

Der Wortschatz des althochdeutschen 'Physiologus' (Venice: Cafoscarina, 1988; Series: Quaderni della sezione di filologia germanica 1) [Book]

The Old High German Physiologus.

93 pp., bibliography.

Language: German
LC: PA4273.P9D351988; OCLC: 24086176

Sirene animalia sunt mortifera: animali e mostri in un architrave Lucchese del XII secolo (Arte Cristiana, 87: 795, 1999, 405-412) [Journal article]

"Les caracteristiques formelles et iconographiques des monstres sculptes en bas-relief sur l'architrave du portail central de l'eglise de S. Michele in Foro a Lucques, realises au 12e s. Elle sont confrontees aux lettrines de certains manuscrits enlumines contemporains et etudiees dans leur symbolique telle qu'elle est decrite dans les bestiaires et le Physiologus."

Language: Italian
ISSN: 0004-3400

De beestearis : Een opmerkelijke bewerking van Richard de Fournivals Bestiaire d'amour (Nederlandse Letterkunde, 1999; Series: Volume 4:1)

"A remarkable adaptation of Richard de Fournival's Bestiaire d'amour"

Two fragments of a Middle Dutch translation in verse of the Bestiaire d'amour have survived on two sheets of parchment kept in the University Library of Amsterdam under the signature IA 24 f [Universiteit van Amsterdam Bibliotheek, IA 24 f]. One of the sheets contains 114 lines of verse from the first quarter of the translation, the other contains the last 84 verses. The text concludes on the verso of this sheet with 'Explicit die Beestearis', after which the inscription 'Hier beghint Ovidius' with the first ten lines of a poem about love have been preserved. Judging by the dialect, the manuscript originates from West Flanders and is dated around 1290. ... The two sheets contain two columns of text on each side. In a number of places, especially on the verso of the first page, the text is very difficult to read. Here and there spaces have been saved in the columns for miniatures, which, however, have not been added. - [Author]

Language: Dutch

Animal Symbolism in Warqa Wa Gulshah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986; Series: Oxford Studies in Islamic Art) [Book]

92 pp.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-19-728003-X

Note sul bestiario toscano (Italia Dialettale: Rivista di Dialettologia Italiana, 30, 1967, 29-117) [Journal article]

Language: Italian
ISSN: 0085-2295

A sculptural fragment from Cluny III and the three-headed bird iconography (in L. A. J. R. Houwen, ed., Animals and the Symbolic in Mediaeval Art and Literature (Mediaevalia Groningana, 20), Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1997, 209-223) [Book article]

Identified here as the upper part of a slingshot once belonging to a sculpted capital depicting a warrior fighting a monstrous three-headed bird (resembling capitals preserved in other Burgundian churches), an iconography explained here as a metaphor of the spiritual struggles faced by monks between human frailty of the flesh and the ascetic life.

Language: English
ISBN: 90-6980-097-7

Looking East and West : the reception and dissemination of the Topographia Hibernica and the Itinerarium ad partes Orientales in England [1185-c.1500] (St Andrews Research Repository, 2009)

In this study the manuscript transmission, dissemination and reception of Gerald of Wales’ Topographia Hibernica (TH) and William of Rubruck’s Itinerarium ad partes Orientales (Itinerary) in England c.1185-1500 have been explored. The TH and the Itinerary are well known texts and have been carefully examined by modern scholars. Nevertheless, the afterlives of these two medieval texts have largely been neglected. Similarities in the authors’ approach and interests alongside the obvious difference in subject matter, i.e. the focus on two opposing ends of the believed peripheries of the world, have made the two texts worthy of consideration together. In chapters I and II, the extant manuscripts of each text have been been examined. ... In addition, through the examination of the manuscripts, the surviving attestations from catalogues and correspondence and through the subsequent re-use of the texts within other medieval narratives, this study offers a geographical and literary mapping of the dissemination of both works. It also examines the various uses to which the TH and the Itinerary were put, highlighting in particular the political significance of each text. Furthermore, in chapter III the contents of each manuscript containing the TH or the Itinerary are considered in order to explore the significance, if any, of the accompanying texts. The study culminates in chapter IV with an examination of three medieval bibliophiles: Simon Bozoun, John Erghome and John Gunthorpe, whose association with one or other of the text have offered a further contextualisation of the interest in the text... - [Abstract]

Language: English

Myths and Legends of Japan (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1932) [Book]

Language: English

Libellus de Natura Animalium (London: Dawson's of Pall Mall, 1958) [Book]

A 16th century printed text that was ascribed to Albertus Magnus. Reproduced in facsimile with an introduction by J. I. Davis.

The chief aim in publishing this facsimile ... is to reproduce a woodcut book which is not only very rare, but artistically unique. ... Although its authorship is attributed by Sander to Albertus Magnus... it is clear that he had nothing to do with its composition. ... The 'Libellus' was printed between 1508 and 1512 by Vincenzo Berruerio in the smal Piedmontese town of Mondovi, where the earliest book published in Piedmont was printed in 1472. ... To say that only so many copies of a rare book are known is always dangerous, but after the fullest research it appears that apart form this one which I was fortunate enough to acquire some years ago, there are but three other copies surviving: those in the National Library, Turin; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; and the one in the possession of Mr. Philip Hofer, New York..." - [Author]

There is another copy at the Biblioteca della Fondazione Giorgio Cini - Venezia.

3 p. introduction, 64 p. facsimile. Illustrated with woodcut pictures.

Language: English
LCCN: 59023629; LC: PA8275.L51958; DDC: 398.4; OCLC: 2785822

Notes on the Middle English Bestiary (Medium Aevum, 19, 1950, 56-59) [Journal article]

Commentary on problems in the language and interpretation of lines 77-80, 274-277 and 419-420 of the Middle English Bestiary, based on the Hall edition of 1920 (British Library, Arundel MS. 292).

Language: English

Vestiges des Bestiaires dans la Phraséologie Française (Florilegium, 1998; Series: Volume 15 Issue 1)

French bestiaries, like the Greek and Latin versions of the Physiologus which preceded them, are based on the tradition of encyclopedic compilations by ancient naturalists who described the properties of animals. But unlike encyclopedias, bestiaries aimed to establish correspondences between the physical world and the spiritual world. To the descriptions of animals and their behavior are added their moral and religious symbolism as well as the lessons that Christians must learn from them. Playing on the complementary principles of zoomorphism and anthropomorphism, bestiaries constantly draw parallels between men and animals. - [Abstract]

Language: French
DOI: 10.3138/flor.15.006

Zoological Mythology; or The Legends of Animals (Detroit: Singing Tree Press, 1968) [Book]

Animals in mythology and legend, from India, the Middle East, Greece and Rome, and Western Europe from antiquity to the middle ages. Discusses animals of the land, sea and air. Some of the myths are related to bestiary episodes, making this text useful as background reading.

This is a reprint of the 1872 (London: Trubner) edition.

2 volumes: 432 + 442 p., index.

Language: English
LCCN: 68058904; LC: BL325A6G8

Beastly Books (The Centre for the History of the Book, CHB News 2004, 2004, 3) [Journal article]

"...a Bestiary was not merely an ill-informed book of natural history. It was in no way a practical guide to identifying animals. It was a religious book. It can best be approached by comparing the medieval monastic technique of studying the Bible. century. We can apply exactly the same technique of study to the Bestiary. ... Just as a medieval biblical writer would be reluctant to discard any verse of the Bible, however questionable its textual authority, for fear of accidentally rejecting authentic text, so too the compilers of Bestiaries did not dare exclude any animal from the canon, however improbable, in case they discarded part of the divine revelation. It is an interesting way of looking at a medieval text, and it tells us much about concepts of textual authority in the Middle Ages." - de Hamel

Language: English

Book of Beasts (Oxford, UK: Bodleian Library, Oxford University, 2008)

A full facsimily of Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 764, with an introduction and a reference to images by Christopher de Hamel.

Language: English/Latin
978-1-85124-317-4

The Peterborough Bestiary (Luzern: Faksimile Verlag Luzern, 2001) [Book]

"

All 44 pages of the Peterborough Bestiary are reproduced in the original format of 348 x 236 mm in a limited edition of 1,480 copies world-wide. The volume comes in a carefully hand produced and blind-tooled brown leather binding, a faithful replica of a typical Cambridge binding. All sheets are trimmed in accordance with the original and stitched to the contents by hand The cover is tooled using roulettes, showing motives of the griffon, the lion and the dragon. An academic commentary volume, including a complete transcription and translation of all texts, by Christopher de Hamel, Director of the Corpus Christi Library in Cambridge, and Lucy Freeman Sandler, the great New York University expert in English book illumination, facilitates the understanding of the manuscript." - Publisher

Language: English

De Sirenibus: An Inquiry Into Sirens From Homer To Shakespeare (Harvard: Harvard University, 1983) [Dissertation]

PhD dissertation at Harvard University.

"The motif of the Sirens is examined from several different perspectives and in a number of cultural and historical contexts. Chapter I is devoted to a close analysis of the Siren episode in the Odyssey; it is argued that the Sirens not only represent a problematization of the Nature/Culture opposition, but also embody a mode of song which threatens the very narrative structures and conventions of the Odyssey itself. Chapter II explores the various literary and iconographic metamorphoses which the Sirens undergo in post-Homeric classical tradition. Chapter III, devoted to the Christian interpretations of Sirens, deals with patristic writings, with allegorical bestiaries, and with the iconographic traditions of medieval ecclesiastical art: it traces the gradual transformation of the Siren from birdmaid into mermaid and her emergence as a symbol of heresy. Chapter IV builds on this context of Christian interpretation in order to analyze the Siren in Canto 19 of Dante's Purgatorio: it is contended that she represents a particular fusion of the classical Siren with the medieval notion of worldly blandishments. Chapter V examines Platonic and neo-Platonic versions of the Sirens as heavenly muses in reference to the poetry of Petrarch, Bembo, and Aretino. Chapter VI in turn discusses Boccaccio's treatment of the Siren myth in his Genealogia and its influence on Renaissance mythography. Chapter VII follows the various avatars of the Siren as enchantress in the romances and epics of Pulci, Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, and Camoens. Chapter VIII discusses the Siren as emblem and the emblem as Siren in the Renaissance and touches on the Siren as common printer's mark of the period. Chapter IX treats Shakespeare's image of the Siren/mermaid. Also included are the following appendices: a brief survey of Siren scholarship in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, an excursion into the motif of Sirens in folklore, and a representative sampling of Siren iconography from Greek antiquity through the Renaissance." - abstract

391 p.

Language: English
PQDD: AAT8322330

Bestiaire roman: textes medievaux (La Pierre-qui-Vire: Zodiaque, 1977; Series: Les Points cardinaux 25) [Book]

Bestiaries, Romanesque Sculpture, Animals in art. Translation by E. de Solms; introduction by Claude Jean-Nesmy.

195 pp., illustrations (some color), bibliography.

Language: French
LCCN: 77558562; LC: NB175; DDC: 734/.24

Homo Monstrosus (Scientific American, 219:4 (October), 1968, 113-118) [Journal article]

"The belief in the existence of monstrous races had endured in the Western world for at least 2,000 years. During that time a rich assortment of semihuman creatures were described by explorers and travelers, whose accounts were probably based largely on malformed individuals and the desire to enhance their own fame at home. No part of the human body was neglected; each was conceived as having elaborate variations. There were, for example, people with tiny heads, with gigantic headws, with pointed heads, with no heads, with detachable heads, with dog heads, with horse heads, with pig snouts and with bird beaks. In the absence of knowledge of farawy places (and about the limits of human variation) men populated them with creatures of their imagination." - author

Illustrations from early printed sources.

Language: English

Le Bestiaire Sculpté du Moyen Age en France (Paris?: Arthaud, 1961; Series: Grandes Études d'Art et d'Archéologie 3) [Book]

An extensive discussion of bestiary and other animal subjects found in sculpture and other stone works in medieval French architechure. Thoroughly illustrated with high-quality photographs of sculptural details from buildings all over France. Contents: The General Evolution of the Medieval Bestiary; Animal Decoration; The Imaginary Animal; Animal Symbolism.

413 pp. 480 black & white photographs, 36 line drawings, index of subjects, geographical index, cross reference of locations and subjects, table of illustrations, short bibliography.

Language: French

Remarques sur la tradition du Physiologus grec (Byzantion: Revue internationale des études byzantines, 51:1, 1981, 148-158) [Journal article]

Language: French

Le bestiaire: des monnaies des sceaux et des medailles (Paris: 1974) [Book]

Contents: La bestiaire des sceaux de l'ancien Orient, by P Amiet. Les bovins, by M Vollenweider. La part du lion, by D Berend. Le serpent d'Asclepios-Esculape, by S de Roquefeuil. Le mythe de la Gorgone Meduse, dans la numismatique antique, by M Le Roy. Le dragon autour de quelques pieces royales francaises, by F Dumas. L'"Agnus Dei" theme monetaire, by M Dhenin. Le bestiaire dans la numismatique d'Extrame-Orient, by M Tessier. Les animaux mythologiques fabuleux ou reels aux revers des medailles, by E Meunier.

535 p., index.

Language: French

Il Physiologus in Islanda (Pisa: Giardini, 1992; Series: Biblioteca scandinava di studi, ricerche e testi 7) [Book]

Arnamagnaeanske institut (Denmark), Manuscript AM 673a 4*.

127 pp., 22 leaves of plates (facsimiles), bibliography.

Language: Old Norse/Italian
LCCN: 93-174960; LC: PT7320.P482; OCLC: 29489332

Il Physiologus nella tradizione nordica (Pisa: Giardini Editori e Stampatori in Pisa, 1990; Series: Biblioteca Scandinava di Studi, Ricerche e Testi) [Book]

132 p., illustrations.

Language: Italian
ISBN: 88-427-1444-5

Animaux étranges et fabuleux, un bestiaire fantastique dans l'art (Paris: Citadelles & Mazenod, 2003) [Book]

Language: French
ISBN: 2-85088-197-X

Here Be Dragons: A Fantastic Bestiary (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003) [Book]

"Sphinxes, hydras, chimeras, dragons, unicorns, griffins, sirens, and centaurs--fantastic animals can be found in works from Greek vases to paintings by Bosch, Goya, and Picasso, from folk art to comic strips, advertising, and Hollywood movies. Here Be Dragons is a lavishly illustrated compendium of the marvelous menagerie of imaginary animals that humans have conjured up over the ages. Ariane and Christian Delacampagne take us on a visually and intellectually riveting journey through five thousand years of art, examining the symbolic meanings of such creatures and what they say about the unconscious life of the human mind. In the first book to explore this subject with such cross-cultural and chronological range, the Delacampagnes identify five basic structures (unicorn, human-headed animal, animal-headed human, winged quadruped, and dragon) whose stories they relate from prehistory to the present day. They also provide fascinating sociological and psychoanalytical insight into the processes through which artists have created these astonishing animals and how they have been transmitted from culture to culture." - publisher

200 p., color illustrations, bibliography, index.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-691-11689-X; LCCN: 2003051741; LC: N7745.A5D43132003; DDC: 700/.47421

Notice sur les manuscrits du "Liber floridus" de Lambert, chanoine de Saint-Omer (Paris: Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque nationale et autres bibliothèques, 1906; Series: 38:2) [Book]

Notes on the manuscripts of the Liber Floridus of Lambert of Saint-Omer. Includes extensive information on some of the manuscripts, including chapter and folio content lists; there is also a summanry of each chapter.

The author's original manuscript has come down to us. After having been kept for a long time by the monks of Saint Bavo in Ghent, it is now kept in the library of the University of Ghent. The manager of this depot ... was good enough to leave this very precious volume in my hands for a long time, and to give me the means of comparing it with the other copies of the same work... I have been able to compare the Ghent manuscript with the nine copies whose existence has been recognized so far, and which all derive more or less directly from the copy preserved at Ghent. ... I will describe each of these manuscripts, beginning with that of Ghent, of which I will demonstrate the character of an original copy and of which I will place the date beyond all dispute. This copy has undergone more than one alteration, and in its current state it has several major gaps, most of which can be filled with the help of copies made prior to the disappearance of the leaves, the loss of which we regret. ... These copies are nine in number: two at the National Library in Paris; one at the Musée Condé, in Chantilly; one at Douai; one at Leiden; two in The Hague; one in Wolfenbittel and one in a private library in Italy. All of them, with the exception of the two last, have passed before my eyes, and I have been able to study them at leisure, several times, comparing them sheet by sheet with the original copy. - [Author]

215 p., illustrations.

Language: French

Le Livre des merveilles du monde (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2000) [Book]

A critical edition of the French Mandeville's Travels. The introduction includes biographical information on Mandeville, and details on the manuscripts used in the edition and on the versions of the text.

528 p., map, index of places, index of names.

Language: French
ISBN: 2-271-05744-2; LC: G370.M2M3612

In the midst of the nations...: the iconography of the choir capitals in the Church of Our Lady in Maastricht (Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 62: 3, 1999, 320-365) [Journal article]

"A thorough study of the set of 20 capitals in the choir ambulatory of the church of St. Mary in Maastricht. The capitals portray Biblical scenes, animals, monsters, birds, naked and scantily-clad humans, and humans fighting and being attacked by animals. Explores potential sources such as the 200 A.D. Physiologus and derivative bestiaries. Speculates on meanings and questions such as whether the capitals can be read as a coherent series. Compares the cycle with the work by the same atelier in the church of St. Servatius in Maastricht and dates them to c. 1150-1160. Considers the place of the Second Crusade. Concludes that the capitals were created in an environment that embraced the ideas of St. Bernard of Clairvaux."

Language: English
ISSN: 0044-2992

Le Monde enchanté, cosmographie et histoire naturelle fantastiques du moyen âge (Paris: Burt Franklin, 1965) [Book]

A survey of fantastic natural history from the eighth to the sixteenth century. Includes a long section on the Tresor of Brunetto Latini and the age of Dante, as well as sections on Isidore of Seville, science under Charlemagne, marvels, animals of the Talmud, Marco Polo, and the New World of the sixteenth century. Appendixes provide a French translation of the letter of Prester John, and an account of the El Dorado legend. There is also an extensive annotated bibliography (to 1845), organized by subject.

Reprint of 1845 (Paris) edition.

376 p., illustrations, bibliography, index.

Language: French
LCCN: 66020702

The Heraldic Imagination (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1975) [Book]

A general introduction to medieval heraldry, focusing on the use of animals. Includes sections on human monsters, lions and kindred creatures, fabulous beasts, eagles and fabulous birds, dragons and fabulous reptiles. The main sections are: Heralds and Armory (an introduction to the topic); The Literature of Heraldry (medieval texts dealing with heraldry); The Heraldic Imagination in Action (the animals used in heraldry and their symbolic meaning). There are many bestiary references, and a large number of good illustrations. There is also a glossary of heraldic terms and a list of primary medieval heraldic treatises.

224 p., color and black & white illustrations, bibliography.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-214-65386-2; LC: CR1612D45

Donkey : The Story of the Ass from East to West (London: Harrap, 1972) [Book]

Spanning prehistory to the present day, the story of the donkey, ass & mule.

175 p., illustrations, bibliography, index.

Language: English

The Autograph Manuscript of the "Liber Floridus": A Key to the Encyclopedia of Lambert of Saint-Omer (Turnhout: Brepolis, 1998; Series: Corpus christianorum. Autographa Medii Aevi, 4) [Book]

A study of the original copy of the Liber Floridus of Lambert of Saint-Omer, the manuscript Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent MS 92. Includes data on the copies of the Liber Floridus and related manuscripts, and a survey of the sources.

This encyclopedical compilation of the early twelfth century (finished 1121) was composed, written and illustrated by an obscur canon of the Chapter of our Lady in Saint-Omer (France, dépt. du Pas de Calais). It may be considered one of the earliest illustrated medieval encyclopedias and its maps, diagrams and pictures (some of them masterpieces of Romanesque art) are world-famous. Due to its apparent lack of logical structure, however, Lambert's work has often been dismissed as an unorganized compilation. Against this still prevailing opinion the present book shows that the encyclopedia is the expression of a highly personal global view of the world. It was to be a brilliant synthesis, pervaded by an emphatic sense of symbolism, allegory and eschatology. The close codicological and textual analysis of the complete work shows also why Lambert failed to achieve his object in its full splendour; how especially external circumstances have caused a gradual weakening of the original train of thought as well as of the original beauty of the manuscript. The book focuses on the fundamental links between Lambert's thoughts and the material structures he had to create to give them their place in his book. - [Summary]

Language: English
ISBN: 2-503-50792-1; LC: AE2.L363D471998; DDC: 200; OCLC: 40406249

Lambertus qui librum fecit - een codicologische studie van de Liber Floridus-autograaf (Gent, Universiteitsbibliotheek, handschrift 92) (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1978; Series: Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België - Klasse der Letteren Jg.40 nr.89)) [Book]

A codicological study of manuscript Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent MS 92. With a summary in English: The genesis of the Liber Floridus of Lambert of Saint-Omer.

511 p., illustrations.

Language: Dutch
OCLC: 13613196

Liber Floridus Colloquium: Papers Read at the International Meeting Held in the University Library, Ghent, on 3-5 September 1967 (Gent: E. Story-Scientia, 1973) [Book]

91 p., illustrations, facsimiles.

Language: English

The making and meaning of the 'Liber Floridus' : a study of the original manuscript, Ghent, University Library MS 92 (London, Turhout: H. Miller, 2015)

The Liber Floridus (1121), composed, written and illustrated by Canon Lambert of Saint-Omer, is the earliest illustrated encyclopedic compilation of the Latin West. Its autograph (Universiteitsbibliotheek Ghent, MS 92), a masterpiece of Romanesque book art and one of the most complicated manuscripts ever made, has been studied by the author for almost half a century. The present book is the culmination of this research and provides a detailed codicological and textual analysis, showing how this wonderful book was put together and which are the hidden ideas Lambert sought to develop in its hundreds of texts and pictures dealing with astronomy, geography, natural history, history, religion and countless other subjects. The book is illustrated with some 100 colour reproductions and numerous diagrams of quire structures. Three tables help the reader to understand the author's argument, and full indices give access to the text and provide the basis for further investigation of individual chapters and pictures. - [Publisher]

Language: English
ISBN: 978-1-909400-22-1

Report on the proceedings of the Liber Floridus Colloquy, Ghent University Library, 5-6 September 1967 (Gent: Centrale Bibliotheek van de Rijksuniversiteit, 1969; Series: Mededeling, nr. 12) [Book]

Liber Floridus Colloquium, University of Ghent, 1967, on the work by Lambert of Saint Omer.

Language: English
LC: Z674; OCLC: 1122649

Tales Told in Church Stones: Symbolism and Legend in Medieval Architecture and Handicrafts (London: The Lutterworth Press, 1935) [Book]

A survey of stories told in medieval church sculpture and woodcarving. Many animal references.

128 p., illustrations (line drawings of sculpture, by the author), index.

Language: English

Bestiaire du roman contemporain d'expression française (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2002; Series: Cahiers de recherches du CRLMC) [Book]

178 p., bibliography.

Language: French
ISBN: 2-84516-190-5

Nieuwe fragmenten van Van den Vos Reynaerde (in Aspects of the Medieval Animal Epic, Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1975, 199-206) [Book article]

"In juni 1971 zijn er fragmenten van een vijfde handschrift van Van den vos Reynaerde of Reynaert I aan het licht gekomen. Tevoren werden twee volledige handschriften en fragmenten van twee handschriften ontdekt : omstreeks 1805 het Comburgse handschrift of hs. A (Stuttgart, Wurttembergische Landesbibliothek, Ms. poet. et phil. fol. 22); in 1889 de Darmstadtse fragmenten of hs. E (Darmstadt, Hessische Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek, 3321); in 1908 het Dyckse handschrift of hs. F (Schloss Dyck bij Neuss) en in 1933 de Rotterdamse fragmenten of hs. G (Rotterdam, Gemeentebibliotheek, 96 B 5). De nieuwe fragmenten zullen we de Brusselse fragmenten of hs. H noemen (Brussel, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, IV 774). Volledigheidshalve vermelden we de twee handschriften van Reynaerts historie of Reynaert II, die zoals bekend uit een bewerking van Reynaert I (vs. 1-3468) en een vervolg (vs. 3469-7805) bestaat : het Brusselse handschrift of hs. B (Brussel, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 14.601) dat het werk volledig en het fragment-Van Wijn of hs. C ('s-Gravenhage, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 75 B 7) dat slechts vs. 67557791 en dus geen enkele versregel van de bewerking van Reynaert I bevat." - Deschamps

Language: Dutch

Le bestiaire perdu (Montreal: Presses de l'Universite Montreal, 1974; Series: Etudes Francaises 10:3) [Book]

Contents: L'universe des bestiaires (Deschamps & Roy); Le bestiaire retrouve (Deschamps); Les mues de serpent (Marteau); La belle e(s)t la bête : aspects du bestiaire féminin au moyen âge (Roy).

"L'universe des bestiaires" includes extracts from various bestiaries, plus a survey of beasts with bibliographies for each. "La belle e(s)t la bête : aspects du bestiaire féminin au moyen âge" discusses "aspects du bestiaire feminin du moyen age".

16 plates, black & white, of sculpture animals, paintings.

Language: French
ISSN: 0014-2085; LC: PS8001.E8

Der "Experimentator" : eine anonyme lateinische Naturenzyklopädie des frühen 13. Jahrhunderts (University of Hamburg, 1998)

The "Experimentator": an anonymous Latin natural encyclopedia of the early thirteenth century

The subject of the dissertation was prompted by the quotations in the Liber de natura rerum by the Dominican Thomas of Cantimpré (ca.1201-ca.1270), which Thomas took from an anonymous work and which he attributed to a so-called Experimentator. In 1968, while researching Thomas in Stuttgart, Christian Hünemörder discovered a manuscript in which some of the quotes attributed to the “Experimentator” were found again. Further research unearthed other manuscripts (Sloane, Chambéry, and an abridged version of the same work). During his research on the work De proprietatibus rerum by the Franciscan Bartholomaeus Anglicus, with which the work of the "Experimentator" has fundamental similarities such as the almost identical prologue, the structure of the work and the material used, Heinz Meyer discovered further manuscripts of the "Experimentator". Due to the relationship of the "Experimentator" to the work of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, the anonymously transmitted "Experimentator" is also listed under the name of Bartholomaeus Anglicus and under the title De proprietatibus rerum in the indexes of manuscripts. Since the actual connection between the two works is still largely unclear, the previously ascribed title De proprietatibus rerum is not retained here. In this way, confusion between the two works can be avoided. The task of the dissertation is to present a body of work (i.e. there is a body of common material based on a common theological objective, which is processed differently) and to show its relationship to the two most important medieval encyclopedias of Thomas de Cantimpré and Bartholomaeus Anglicus. The dissertation sees itself as a basic overview of the various experimental versions and their reception. Detailed individual examinations must be reserved for a later date. When examining the individual manuscripts, it turned out that there are at least three different experiential versions, namely versions I and II as well as an abridged version, which differ in some respects in terms of structure, scope and the material used. - [Abstract]

Language: German

Bestiario minimo (Firenze: Alinea, 1990; Series: L'arte per Reggio per l'arte) [Book]

Published on the occasion of the exhibit "Conservazione e metamorfosi," held in Reggio Emilia at the Civici musei L. Spallanzani Jan. 27-Feb. 18, 1990.

95 p., illustrations (some color).

Language: Italian
LCCN: 90178377; LC: N7745.A5D491990

L' "Agnus Dei" thème monétaire (in Pierre Dehaye, ed., Le bestiaire: des monnaies des sceaux et des médailles, Paris, 1974, 163-177) [Book article]

Language: French

La tradition manuscrite du Physiologus grec au miroir de témoins conservés en France et en Italie : réflexions pour une étude comparée (RursuSpicae, 2019; Series: Volume 2)

A new codicological and paleographic analysis of four Italian manuscripts of the Greek Physiologus (third type of the second version in Sbordone's nomenclature), compiled in the 1550s-1560s, enables to determine the conditions of their production. These luxurious copies commissioned by the Roman Curia were done in collaboration by various, more or less identified members of the entourage of the scriptor Emmanuel Provataris and of Manuel Malaxos. These copies are well known for their illustrations and demonstrate the persistence of preference for the manuscript book, even though the first printing of the work is based on them (1587). - [Abstract]

The manuscripts are:

• Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Barb. gr. 438
• Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ott. gr. 354
• Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Suppl. 143 sup.
• Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, gr. IV. 35

Language: French
DOI: 10.4000/rursuspicae.666

Le Le bestiaire, le lapidaire, la flore : actes du Colloque international, Universite McGill, Montreal, 7-8-9 octobre 2002 (Montreal: Editions Ceres, 2004; Series: Le moyen francais, 55-56) [Book]

Publication of a conference on bestiaries, lapidaries and plants, in Montreal, October 2002.

351 p.. illustrations.

Language: French
ISBN: 0-919089-64-X; LC: PQ157; OCLC: 61398807

Locutions et editions (in J. Claude Faucon, Alain Labbe & Danielle Queruel, Miscellania Mediaevalia: Melanges offerts a Philippe Menard, France: Honore Champion, 1998, 417-428) [Book article]

Examine les locutions proverbiales en moyen francais tirees du Bestiaire et le lapidaire du Rosarius.

Language: French

The Physiologus, the Bestiaries and Medieval Animal Lore (Neophilologus: An International Journal of Modern and Mediaeval Language and Literature, 69:1, 1985, 142-155) [Journal article]

Old English period; Physiologus and its relationship to the bestiary; treatment of animal lore; influence on Christian iconography.

Language: English
ISSN: 0028-2677

Bestiary in British Library, Royal MS. 2 C. XII and its Role in Medieval Education (The Electronic British Library Journal, 2014)

The process of medieval education is still very obscure to us, and indeed very little is known about how texts were used in schools. This is particularly true of the role and function of the influential genre of medieval bestiaries in the process of educating novices and pupils in cathedral schools and monasteries. The Royal collection contains one peculiar manuscript, namely British Library, Royal MS 2 C XII, a bestiary of the so-called BIs Family, made in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, probably at the abbey of St Peter at Gloucester. The text of this bestiary was published at the end of nineteenth century, and thus Royal 2 C. XII is one of the first bestiaries published by modern scholars. The published text has almost nothing exceptional, and it was perhaps for this reason that this manuscript has been almost absolutely neglected by specialists in the field. Nevertheless, the manuscript (contrary to almost all other known manuscripts of this genre) has a large number of contemporary glosses, which were not published, and which shed a light on how the bestiary was used and how students were intended to learn the basic tenets of Christian doctrine from its stories about animals and birds. - [Author]

Language: English

Between Image and Text. Long Rubrics and Captions in Medieval Bestiaries (De Gryuter, 2016; Series: Jahrbuch des Instituts für Frühmittelalterforschung der Universität Münster)

Captions are very common in medieval manuscripts. They inhabit the liminal space between text and image and, formally speaking, belong to both and neither. Their indeterminacy has contributed to the current state of research on captions: so far, captions as a genre sui generis are rarely discussed in the scholarly literature, in works dealing with either the history of art or with the history of text. Here, I will discuss in detail the corpus of captions as they appear in the genre of Medieval Latin bestiaries, one of the most influential types of medieval pedagogical books. - [Author]

Language: English

The Copying and Imitation of Images in Medieval Bestiaries (Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 2014; Series: 167)

In this paper, I bring to scholars’ attention for the fi rst time and discuss in detail Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 602, and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 88, two 13th-century English manuscripts containing bestiaries that are rarely mentioned in the scholarly literature. It will be argued that the images in these manuscripts supply proof of direct copying, although at fi rst glance, the miniatures in question do not appear to be similar. This is because the artist of Douce 88 made numerous additions to and elaborations upon the images he was copying. For example, one scene in MS Bodley 602 has four geese, while the corresponding scene in Douce 88 has three. But, when the texts and details of the images are compared, it becomes clear that the images were indeed copied by the artist of Douce 88 before he elaborated on them. - [Author]

Language: English

A Critical Edition of the Bestiaries of the Third Family (Hebrew University: Hebrew University, 2008)

The five bestiaries of the Third Family (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 254; Cambridge, University Library MS KK 4.25; London, Westminster Abbey MS 22; Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 88; Oxford, Bodleian Library MS e Musaeo 136), all of them of English origin dating back to the 13th century, have received far less scholarly attention than the bestiaries of other families. Their abnormal structure (as opposed to that of other families) has been only briefly discussed and the order of species has been specified inaccurately. - [Abstract]

Language: English
OCLC: 457118645

The Earliest Use of John of Salisbury’s Policraticus: Third Family Bestiaries (VIATOR, 2013; Series: 44.1)

Medieval Latin bestiaries from the very moment of their formation incorporated excerpts from many different sources. Most of these additions have been discussed in the scholarly literature, but not the excerpts from the Policraticus, the text written by Thomas Becket’s secretary John of Salisbury in 1159. The excerpts, which are anecdotal in nature, appear in Third Family bestiaries written in the diocese of Lincoln at the beginning of the thirteenth century, in the circle of the famous teacher and theologian William de Montibus. It is surprising that the author of the bestiary would choose anecdotes from the Policraticus, whose main subject is what we now would call political science and social relationships. This article is devoted to the functions of the Policraticus in the bestiaries, as well as to the reasons the author of the Third Family bestiary archetype chose to use it as a source. - [Author]

Language: English

A French modeled English bestiary: Wormsley Library MSBM 3747 (Mediaevistik, 2007; Series: 20)

A description, codicology and list of contents for the Bestiary Wormsley Library, MS BM 3747.

Language: English

The Function of Latin Bestiaries in Medieval Miscellanies (Getty Publications, 2019; Series: Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World)

Bestiaries as a genre of medieval literature began to be studied at the end of the nineteenth century, and since then, major work has been done on the subject. Nonetheless, crucial questions still await a proper response: What were bestiaries? Or, more specifically, how we can determine their purpose? This essay will examine a specific group of miscellanies to ascertain the original function of the bestiaries included within them. - [Author]

Language: English

The Hare and its Alter Ego in the Middle Ages (Reinardus, 2004; Series: Volume 17)

This article deals with the topic of hares and rabbits in Creation scenes and Naming of the beasts scenes in bestiaries and other medieval manuscripts. It has not been generally noticed that in these scenes the hare, which has negative connotations both in classicalzoology and in biblical exegesis, is curiously shown in a ‘privileged’ position as one of the ‘first’ animals created. I suggest that this occurs because the hare has been confusedwith another animal, shafan sela which is mistranslated as chyrogrilus and Lepusculus in the Septuagint and Jerome’s Vulgate, and which takes on a positive symbolism in the Scriptures and in exegetical texts.

Language:

A Hitherto Unknown Bestiary – Paris, BN MS Lat. 6838B (Rivista di Studi Testuali, 2004-05; Series: 6-7)

Notes on Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 6838B.

Language: English

Medieval Latin Bestiaries (The Encyclopedia of British Medieval Literature, Wiley-Blackwell, 2016)

A general introduction to medieval Latin bestiaries, with information on the bestiary manuscript families.

Language: English

Medieval Manuscripts at the Library of Congress (Washington: Library of Congress, 2016)