"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 (or any manuscript, for that matter).

Language: English

Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Hamburg.

Language: German

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

376 pp., illustrations, bibliography.

Language: Spanish
ISBN: 980-00-0875-6; LCCN: 96193653; LC: GR825.A65 1995; DDC: 398/.469

"Although Aelian was a Roman, he preferred to write in Greek, and the original text of the De Natura Animalium is in that language. It is so difficult, however, to put Greek on the Web with uniform results across the various browsers and platforms, that if you are one of the few who read Greek, I like to think you have access to TLG, and on this site, widening the audience for the work, I provide only a translation. I know of no English translation in the public domain, though, so I've transcribed the Latin translation by Friedrich Jacobs in the Frommann edition, Jena, 1832. I must reiterate that there is no particular virtue or antiquity in this Latin: it is not the original, it is a modern translation done at a time when Latin seemed a reasonably universal language; if the translation had been undertaken today with the same desire to reach the widest possible audience, it would have been in English. As almost always, I retyped the text by hand rather than scanning it..." - Thayer

Language: Latin

Language: English

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

Language: English
ISBN: 0-14-044649-4

Legal actions taken against animals in the middle ages.

Language: French

A Syriac version of the Physiologus, with German translation. "Textverbesserungen von Prof. Dr. G. Hoffmann".

84 pp.

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

Language: German

"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 Cantimpré 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." - Aiken

Language: English

"The intent of this translation is to introduce the modern reader to the zoological researches of Albertus Mangnus. Though revered as a saint and doctor of the Church and remembered as the mentor of Thomas Aquinas, Albert is less known for his accomplisments 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, Introduction

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.

516 pp. Introduction, bibliography, index, list of authors cited by Albert.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-86698-032-6

Language: Latin

"Prendendo in esame come ambito di riferimento larte catalana del periodo medievale, è possibile analizzare linserimento dellagnello e della colomba in una serie di programmi iconografici importanti che ci portano dai monumenti ai libri illustrati, dallXI e XII secolo al XV secolo. Logicamente, non è possibile esaminare tutti i esempi che ci sono arrivati nè tutte le sfumature del caso, però proverò a offrire un elenco rappresentativo in questa sede. La distanza che separa questi animali dallessere rappresentato li situa tra gli esseri più profondamente simbolici della religiosità cristiana In qualunque caso, e in termini generali, lAgnus trionfante manca di una prospettiva narrativa equivalente a quella dello Spirito Santo. Per tanto, bisogna considerare le somiglianze e differenze che separano entrambi i simboli, colomba e agnello, come proiezioni e simboli delle complesse situazioni che richiedono la visualizzazione metaforica dellessere divino." - abstract

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

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

Language: French

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

"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

The Rhind Lectures in Archeology for 1885.

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.

Reprinted in facsimile by Llanerch Publishers in three volumes: The High Crosses of Ireland (ISBN 094799201), The Romano-Period and Celtic Monuments (ISBN 0947992952), and Norman Sculpture and the Medieval Bestiaries (ISBN 0947992960).

Contents : I. Early Christian symbolism in foreign countries.--II. Romano-British period and Celtic sepulchral monuments.--III. The high crosses of Ireland (10th cent.)--Subjects on the heads.--IV. The high crosses of Ireland.--Subjects on the shafts and bases.--V. Norman sculpture, chiefly in the architectural details of churches (A.D. 1066-1200)--VI. The mediaeval bestiaries.

408 pp., illustrations, plates.

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

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.A45 1990z; DDC: 730/.941/0902 20; OCLC: 27768920

"...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

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

Language: English
OCLC: 39362109

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.A24 1984; DDC: 821'.1

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

Language: English

M. Div. dissertation at Princeton Theological Seminary.

88 p.

Language: English
OCLC: 22782229

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

92 p., bibliography.

Language: German
DDC: 881A; OCLC: 16931513

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 Day describe many beasts which are found in the bestiary.

449 p., bibliography, index.

Language: English
LC: BR60 F3A56

Language: Latin

Language: Spanish
ISBN: 84-920305-0-X

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

"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." - Amer

Language: English

Language: French

99 pp. bibliography, illustrations, index.

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

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

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

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..." - introduction

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

Language: English
LCCN: 55002979; LC: BR133.G6 A56; OCLC: 3330793

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

"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." - cover 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

"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." - Frederick J. Furnivall, 1894.

Language: English

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

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

Language: English

Romanesque sculpture on capitals in Vézelay, France.

Language: French

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.

Digital edition published by Onderzoekschool Mediëvistiek (Netherlands Research School for Medieval Studies), 1998.

Language: Latin

Symbols in the Physiologus and Macedonian folklore.

Language: Macedonian

Mythical animals in art.

372 p., illustrations, bibliography.

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

Language: German

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

Language: French

Language: Italian

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

Language: Spanish
ISBN: 968-36-5374-X

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

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

Language: English
ISBN: 0-87654-606-8

Language: English
ISBN: 0-520-01966-0

"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." - Armstrong

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

"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

Language: English

"Dans les recherches sur la narration, [A. J.] Greimas essaie de découvrir les règles qui sous-tendent divers genres littéraires et populaires, et par là, les règles de tout récit. Nous nous proposons d'appliquer ses théories de la grammaire narrative à l'Esope de Marie de France. Par une série d'exercices pratiques nous espérons découvrir les règles qui régissent quelques fables de Marie. Une telle grammaire, quand elle sera complète, nous appredra non seulement comment fonctionne la fable de Marie mais également comment fonctionne la fable comme genre. Puisque le présent 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

"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

"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

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

"Whether referred to as mermaid, usalka, mami wata, or by some other name, the siren is the remarkable creature that has inspired music and its representations since ancient Greece. This book, co-edited by a historical musicologist and an ethnomusicologist, brings together leading scholars and some talented newcomers in classics, music, media studies, literature, and cultural studies to consider the siren and her multifaceted relationships to music across human time and geography." - publisher

376 pages, 39 b&w photos, 2 maps, bibliography, index.

Contents:

Sirens in Antiquity and the Middle Ages - Leofranc Holford-Strevens / "Teach Me to Heare Mermaides Singinge": Embodiments of (Acoustic) Pleasure and Danger in the Modern West - Linda Phyllis Austern / Devils, Daydreams and Desire: Siren Traditions and Musical Creation in the Central-Southern Andes - Henry Stobart / "Sweet aluring harmony": Heavenly and Earthly Sirens in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Literary and Visual Culture - Elena Calogero / The Sirens, the Epicurean Boat, and the Poetry of Praise - Stephen Buhler / "Longindyingcall": of Music, Modernity, and the Sirens - Lawrence Kramer / Russian Rusalkas and Nationalism: Water, Power, and Women - Inna Naroditskaya / Rheinsirenen: Loreley and Other Rhine Maidens - Annegret Fauser / The Mermaid of the Meyhane: The Legend of a Greek Singer in a Turkish Tavern - John O'Connell / Siren Serenades: Music for Mami Wata/Mami Wata and Other Water Spirits in Africa - Henry Drewal (with Charles Gore and Michelle Kisliuk) / The Navel, the Corporate, the Contradictory: Pop Sirens at the Twenty-first Century - Thomasin LaMay and Robin Armstrong / The Cocktail Siren in David Lynch's Blue Velvet - Jeongwon Joe

Language: English
ISBN: 0-253-21846-2

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

107 p. illustrations, bibliography.

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

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

"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

"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

64 p., color illustrations on every page, bibliography, index of bird names.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-8020-8434-6; LC: ND3375.S44B295 2001; DDC: 745.6'7'0942

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

Language: English

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

Language: English

MA dissertation at the University of Maryland.

268 p.

Language: English
OCLC: 47901168

Language: English

Language: English

La présente publication offre la première édition critique du texte, fondée sur une étude approfondie des six témoins actuellement connus et un nouvel examen des sources mises à profit par lauteur. Pourvue dune ample introduction qui fait le point sur loeuvre et les problèmes quelle soulève, lédition reproduit également un choix dillustrations médiévales.

This publication provides the first critical edition of the text, based on a thorough study of the six witnesses known at present and new sources reviewed by the author. Provided with an ample introduction which provides an update on the work and the problems it raises, the edition also reproduces a selection of medieval illustrations.

Language: French
9782745320636; OCLC: 688494975

"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: AAT 3117592

Language: French

"Dans ce bref exposé, on procède à une comparison différenciatrice de quelques structures narratives des fabliaux et des plus anciennes nouvelles parues à l'origine du genre, structures liées à tel ou tel sujet. On n'étudie pas l'histoire du développement des sujets avec toutes les circonstances concrètes possibles, mais on confronte seulement deux niveaux: celui du fabliau et celui de la nouvelle à ses débuts." - Balachov

Language: French

Language: English
ISSN: 0887-4409

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

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

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. Part 1. The Eagle-Stone; part 2. The Vulture Epistle

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

Language: English

Language: English

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.B4 E5 1993; DDC: 878/.03080836 20

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

Language: French

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

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

"This fascinating book explores the history, techniques, and cultural significance of medieval aquamanilia, cast metal objects used to pour water for hand washing in religious and secular contexts. Usually created in appealing animal or human forms, aquamanilia feature two openings, one for filling and the other for pouring. They represent the first emergence of hollow-cast vessels in Western Europe and a significant development in the history of technology. The book presents and catalogues the entire aquamanilia collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time, as well as selected examples from other collections and other related medieval objects." - publisher

Language: English
ISBN: 0-300-11684-5

A translation into English of the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, based on the text edited by W. M. Lindsay (1911). Also includes an introduction to Isidore and his work.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-521-83749-9

Descriptions of mosaics in the Cluniac priorie of Ganagobie and St. André de Rozans, portraying fabulous creatures, inspired by the Physiologus and the Bestiaries; and interwoven designs, believed to have been executed by a monk from Ganagobie.

Language: French

"Gli animali hanno goduto di grande fortuna nelle arti figurative di ogni civiltà, e a questa fortuna non si è sottratto il Medioevo, la cui iconografia, soprattutto cristiana, ne ha fatto un uso costante, fin dalle sue prime manifestazioni. In questo saggio si ripercorrono alcune delle principali tappe attraverso le quali il Medioevo ha articolato il suo rapporto con liconografia degli animali, esaminando le valenze che di volta in volta si sono date a questo rapporto. Si analizzano poi i primi testi di età moderna nei quali liconografia si è venuta configurando come disciplina, da quelli rinascimentali a quelli ottocenteschi, nei quali gli animali furono ancora una volta interpretati in forma simbolica. Si chiude infine con una piccola provocazione, richiamando il caso dellartista contemporaneo Damien Hirst, i cui animali fatti a pezzi e messi in formaldeide hanno sconvolto negli ultimi anni i visitatori dei principali musei internazionali." - absract

Language: Italian
ISSN: 1846-8551; DOI: 10.1484/J.IKON.3.24

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

120 pp. Illustrated with black & white photographic plates.

Language: English

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:  AE2 B293 1975

This paper examines the reoccurring role of a winged griffin, a hybrid animal known from the third millennium B.C.E. Its earliest pictorial representations may be traced back to Mesopotamia, although there is steady appearance in other Mediterranean countries. Throughout different chronological periods, several selected scenes with griffins have been transmitted from the pagan iconography of non-Western cultures in accordance with diverse tastes of contemporary patrons and policy makers. With the advance of Christianity, among numerous examples, two favorite symbolic roles of griffins became popular, based on the following sources: a romance of Alexander the Greats Celestial Journey and a "master of animals" motif.

Language: English
ISSN: 1846-8551; DOI: 10.1484/J.IKON.3.32

"Totem, totémisme: voilà les mots qui viennent à l'esprit quand on pense à un classement des hommes mis en rapport avec le classement des espèces animals. Mais ces termes désignent, dans le modèle assez artificiel dressé par l'anthropologie traditionnelle, un sysème de division des hommes en «clans», dèfinis par leur parenté réelle ou mythique, en non par leur fonction sociale, les différences de vie entre ces groupes ètant plutôt d'ordre rituel que socio-professionel. ... A priori, on pourrait espèr trouver, dans ces images animales symboliques, des ensembles structurés correspondant aux riches typologies de l'ordre ecclésiologique et socio-professionel qu'a élaborées le Moyen Ages." Batany

Language: French

"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

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.A5 B38 1974

Language: English

"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.B4 Z54 1998; DDC: 809/.93362 21; OCLC: 39718250

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

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

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

Language: Dutch

Language: English

"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

Language: English

"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 Beckhöfer-Fialho

Bibliography.

Language: English

"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.F64B43 2003; DDC: 844'.1

"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 B.N. Ms. 25.545 ... 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 exposés. 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 deifferent packaging caters to all tastes. Thus the determining factor in all formal aspects of the work is the translator's public." - Beer

Language: English

"...explores the transformation of the bestiary into a work with secular symbolism in the Bestiaire d'amour and Réponse 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." - Beer

With one illustration from Bodleian Library MS. Douce 308.

Language: English

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

Language: English

Language: English
ISSN: 0110-7380

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

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.S83 v.25; DDC: 940.1'7s-dc19

Language: English
ISSN: 0362-2746

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

Edited by Lesley Smith and Jane H.M. Taylor.

193 pp.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-85991-479-8

"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, München).

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

70 p., illustrations, bibiliography

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

Language: Italian

"S'il est un point sur lequel les critiques sont unanimes, c'est pour reconnaîatre que les différents auteurs du Roman de Renart se livrent fréquement à la parodie des genres littéraires en vogue à leur époque, la Chanson de Geste et le Roman Courtois. Vouloir déterminer la place que tient la parodie épique dans l'ensemble du Roman de Renart, ce serait ouvrir une longue et minutieuse enquête; c'est pourquoi la présente étude s'inscrit nécessairement dans un cadre plus limité: nous ne nous intéressons qu'au «premier poème en français de Renart et d'Isengrin» selon l'expression de Foulet, c'est-à-dire les branches II et Va telles que les éditées Martin." - Bellon

Language: French

"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

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.B45 2000; OCLC: 44618162

"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

"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

Etude mettant en évidence la persistance de thèmes iconographiques appartenant à la mythologie germanique dans les oeuvres exécutées entre 993 et 1022 sous l'épiscopat de Bernward à la cathédrale d'Hildesheim, en particulier dans le bestiaire développé, tant dans la sculpture, que dans les pièces d'orfèvrerie : persistance directement liée aux efforts de l'évêque pour christianiser la Saxe.

Language: French

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

"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

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

Language: French

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

Language: French

Physiologus -- Criticism and interpretation.

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

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

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

Language: English

"Der besondere Reiz der Satire besteht in der Genauigkeit und Schärfe, mit der der Satiriker das Detail erfaßt, in der Keckheit, mit der er Realitäten aufgreift, die sonst weithin nicht literaturfähig sind. Auf ein solches Detail möchte ich mit einigen Bemerkungen zu zwei Stellen im Ysengrimus eingehen, in denen der Verfasser des Ysengrimus - eine Handschrift nennt ihn Nivardus magister - die »Säule des heiligen Gereon« zu Köln beschwört:

(Der Fuchs überredet den Wolf dazu, mit dem Schwanz in einem vereisenden Gewässer 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 muß von den Verfolgern des Fuchses Schlimmes erdulden, bis Aldrada, die alte Magd des Pfarrers, die den Wolf am ärgsten schindet, mit einem ungeschickten Axthieb dem Wolf den Schwanz abtrennt und ihn so befreit. Ysengrimus schwört dem Fuchs ewige Rache:)

II 179ff.

Terribilem sancti Gereonis iuro columpnam

Cui nec Roma parem nec Ierosolma tenet,

Post quam nullus agens reprobus vestigia profert

Momentum nulla conditione sequar.

(Die Rehgeiß verläßt ihre Heimat, um zu den Heiligen zu wallfahren, deren Besuch sie schon lange gelobt hatte:)

IV 25f.

Precipue sancti Gereonis in ede columpnam,

Dispariter stantem sontibus atque piis." - Berschin

Language: German

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

311 p., illustrations, bibliography.

Language: German
ISBN: 3-8309-1034-7; LCCN: 2001-422252; LC: PT5570.D48J33 2001; OCLC: 48847572

[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

Language: German
ISSN: 0044-3441

Language: French
DOI: 10.1075/rein.18.02bes

"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.R5B4 1983; DDC: 809'.9336

"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

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

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

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

262 p., bibliography

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

"Il ne me semble pas paradoxal d'affirmer que le Bestiaire d'Amour de Richart de Fournival est une oevre mal connue, et sur laquelle on n'a porté généralement que des appréciations d'autant plus péremptoires qu'elles étaient superficielles et mal fondées. La préface de Cesare Segre à son édition du Bestiaire d'Amour constitue toujours la seuale approche informée de l'oevre, et malgré as richesse, on ne peut considérer qu'elle ait épuisé touts les perspectives critiques. Les commentaires situent en général assez clairement le Bestiaire par rapport à son amont et à son aval dans le fil de l'histoire littéraire, mais sans caractériser autrement son rôle de charnière, et la transmutation qu'il a fait subir aux thèmes et aux images de la lyrique courtoise, aux métaphores du bestiaire traditionnel, avant de les transmettre à ses épigones du Dit de la Panthère d'Amour ou du Fiore di Virtù: il ne suffit sans doute pas de poser que le Bestiaire d'Amour a systématisé l'usage emblématique des animaux dans l'illustration d'une rhétorique amoureuse pour définir l'originalité du mode d'écriture de Richart de Fournival, et l'apport de l'auteur à la littéraire de son temps." - Bianciotto

Language: French

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

Language: French

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

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

Language: French

"Catalogue de l'exposition présentée à la bibliothèque 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

Language: French

Language: French

Language: English
ISBN: 0-85991-415-1

"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 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

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 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

Table of Contents

Encyclopaedia: Definitions and Theoretical Questions

Robert L. Fowler - Encyclopaedias: Definitions and Theoretical Problems

E.C. Ronquist - Patient and Impatient Encyclopaedism

Bernard Ribémont - About the Definition of an Encyclopedic Genre in the Middle Ages

Peter Binkley - Preachers' Responses to Thirteenth-century Encyclopaedism

Brian W. Ogilvie - Encyclopaedism in Renaissance Botany: From Historia to Pinax

Organisation of Knowledge

Catherine Rubincam - The Organisation of Material in Graeco-Roman World Histories

Hilary Kilpatrick - Cosmic Correspondences: Songs as a Starting Point for an Encyclopaedic Portrayal of Culture

Kimberly Rivers - Memory, Division, and the Organisation of Knowledge in the Middle Ages

Maaike van Berkel - The Attitude towards Knowledge in Mamluk Egypt: Organisation and Structure of the subh? al-asha by al-Qalqashandi- (1355-1418)

Jan R. Veenstra - Cataloguing Superstition: A Paradigmatic Shift in the Art of Knowing the Future

Epistemology of Encyclopaedic Knowledge

John North - Encyclopaedias and the Art of Knowing Everything

Wout Jac. van Bekkem - Sailing on the Sea of Talmud: the Encyclopaedic Code of Early Jewish Exegesis

Bert Roest - Compilation as Theme and Praxis in Franciscan Universal Chronicles

Guy Guldentops - Henry Bate's Encyclopaedism

Cultural and Political Uses

Geert Jan van Gelder - Compleat Men, Women and Books: On Mediaeval Arabic Encyclopaedism

Frank Trombley - The Taktika of Nikephoros Ouranos and Military Encyclopaedism

G.J. Reinink - Communal Identity and the Systematization of Knowledge in the Syriac 'Cause of All Causes'

E.L. Saak - The Limits of Knowledge: Hélinand de Froidmont's Chronicon

William N. West - Public Knowledge at Private Parties: Vives, Jonson, and the Circulation of the Circle of Knowledge

Vincent C. Renstrom - Censoring Encyclopaedic Knowledge: The Case of Sahagún and Sixteenth-century Spanish America

Reception and Transmission of Texts

Michael W. Twomey - Towards a Reception History of Western Medieval Encyclopaedias in England Before 1500

William Schipper - The Earliest Manuscripts of Rabanus Maurus' De rerum naturis

John B. Friedman - Albert the Great's Topoi of Direct Observation and his Debt to Thomas of Cantimpré

Juris Lidaka - Bartholomæus Anglicus in the Thirteenth Century

Ulrich Marzolph - Medieval Knowledge in Modern Reading: A Fifteenth-Century Arabic Encyclopaedia of omni re scibili

Language: English
ISBN: 90-04-10830-0

Illustrations from "The Hunting Book" by Gaston Phoebus.

108 p.

Language: English

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

Language: German

"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 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

Language: English
ISSN: 0029-3970

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

"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. Mossé 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

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

"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 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

Text in Latin. Incipit (p. [21]): Incipit liber de naturis bestiarum. The preceding pages contain the story of creation from Genesis (Genesis I, 1-28; I, 31-II, 2) and a section (beginning: Omnib[us] animantib[us] Adam p[ri]mus uocabula indidit) from Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae (XII, 1-8)./ M.R. James places MS. Asmole 1511 with the 12th cent. family of bestiaries which are much-expanded classified rearrangements of the 4th cent. Latin Physiologus. Cf.  The Bestiary / edited by M.R. James. 1928. p. 13ff.

Issued in a slipcase with title: Bestiarium : Oxford Ashmole 1511 : Faksimile. Book has spine title reading the same, without "Faksimile."/ "Die Verkaufasauflage der Akademischen Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt ist auf neunhundertachtzig numerierte Exemplare limitiert. Davon sind hundert Exemplare (numeriert I-C) für die Ausgabe mit handaufgelegtem Foliengold reserviert. Die Ausgabe mit konventioneller Goldreproduktion ist von 1-880 numeriert." In additon there are 3000 numbered copies for publication by Club du livre, Paris, and 500 numbered copies for Ediciones de Arte y Bibliofilia, Madrid. Finally, 40 unnumbered copies, not for sale, were produced for each of the three co-publishers.

105 pp., color illustrations.

Language: Latin
ISBN: 3-201-01218-1; LCCN: 84199934; LC: PA8275.B4 1982; DDC: 398.2/45 19

Language: English

Language: German

Examines the influence of bestiaries on Le Roman de Silence.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-8153-2952-0

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

Manuscripts discussed: Wolfenbüttel, 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

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.W6 v.1

Language: French
LC: NA5551.L9B6

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

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

2 v., 144 p., bibliography.

Language: Italian
LCCN: 76478931; LC: PQ4265.B3473 B6; OCLC: 2598766

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

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

Language: French
OCLC: 43153611

"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

Language: French

"...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 is a curator in the Department of Manuscripts at the Biritish Library." - cover copy

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

Language: English
ISBN: 0-8020-8512-1

Language: English

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

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

Language: Dutch

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

Language: Dutch

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 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

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

Language: French
PQDD: 3163C

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.B7 1969

Language: English

Language: English

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

Language: English
ISBN: 0-8153-2952-0

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.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-7123-4732-1; LC: Z115 E5E55

The Luttrell Psalter is one of the British Library's supreme treasures. It has more than 600 pages and the delicate task of recreating this masterpiece of English medieval art so accurately into a complete full size facsimile edition has taken well over a year to achieve. Every stage of the production process has been subjected to the greatest attention to detail, from reproducing the subtle effect of fine worked gold and silver that decorate the pages of the manuscript, to finding a modern paper which matches the weight and feel of the original animal skin vellum pages. This is a huge book in every sense: it measures over 7 cm in depth (and 36 cm long by 24.5 cm wide), and weighs just over 5 kilos. Very few people before have had the chance to turn and admire these wonderful pages; now it is open to everyone to do so in the comfort and leisure of their own home. This is a rare opportunity to own a superlative facsimile of one of the greatest medieval manuscripts anywhere in the world, and we anticipate demand to be high. The volume also contains a 64-page scholarly commentary by leading medieval manuscripts expert Michelle P. Brown, which details the history of the manuscript and includes a folio-by-folio description.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-7123-4934-0

"This short book covers some of the same ground as the more popularly oriented  Lore of the Unicorn, by Odell Shepard, before it ventures into comparative mythology. The present volume was written in the late 19th century at a time when all mythological and folklore narratives were believed to be astronomical metaphors. Brown sees the Unicorn as a lunar symbol, and draws on mythology from a wide range of sources to make his case, from Northern European to Vedic and Zoroastrian. He uses some idiosyncratic jargon; e.g. 'Kamic' means Ancient Egyptian."

Language: English

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

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

Language: German
LC: PJ1026.S3

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

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

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

Language: Danish

Introducción de Rafael de Cózar.

120 p.

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

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

Revision of the author's thesis (doctoral) - Katholische Universität Eichstätt, 1990.

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

Language: English

258 p., illustrations.

Language: Russian
ISBN: 5-88756-013-4; LCCN: 96174761; LC: GR825.B85 1995

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

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

Language: English

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

Language: English

"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

118 p., illustrations.

Language: Spanish

"Collection de mémoires sur l'orfévrerie et les émaux des trésors d'Aix-la-Chapelle, de Cologne, etc.; sur les miniatures et les anciens ivoires sculptés de Bamberg, Ratisbonne, Munich, Paris, Londres, etc.; sur des étoffes byzantines, siciliennes, etc.; sur des peintures et bas-reliefs mystérieux de l'époque carlovingienne, romane, etc."

"Bestiaires, textes": v. 2, p. 106-232. Medieval art; Church decoration and ornament.

4 volumes, illustrations, plates.

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

212 p.

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

247 pp., illustrations.

Language: French
LC: PQ145.3

Language: English
ISBN: 90-6186-973-0

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.C36 1996; DDC: 709.02'2-dc20

Language: English
ISSN: 0003-8970

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

Language: French

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

Language: Italian
ISSN: 0392-9752

Language: English

Language: English

"Mediaeval science is well known to scholars through Latin works, but vulgarizations have commanded far less prestige. Dreyer, for example, mentioned Latini's Trésor (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 Trésor 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 Trésor. 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 Trésor 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

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

Language: French

"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 Trésor (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

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

Available in microfilm from University Libraries, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, 1995 (1 microfilm reel ; 35 mm).

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

An edition of the Physiologus 'B' version.

61 pp.

Language: Latin
LCCN: 40000253; LC: PA4273.P8 L3 1939

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

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

Language: French

M.A. Thesis.

Language: English

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

"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

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

192 pp.

Language: Italian

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

Full-color facsimile of 11th-century manuscript (Archivio dell'Abbazia di Montecassino, Cod. Casin. 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

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

This encyclopaedia was the first illustrated book to be printed in England, originally published by William Caxton in 1481. The work is a translation of a prose version of the French L'image du monde (from British Library, Royal MS 19 A. ix); probably written by Walter or Gossuin of Metz, it was based chiefly on the twelfth century encyclopaedia Imago mundi, compiled by Honorius Augustodunensis. Caxton's version is in three parts: part 1 deals with the power of God and the creation of the world, as well as the seven liberal arts (grammar, logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music); part 2 is on geography, with descriptions of India, Europe and Africa and their beasts and birds, the elements, the weather, etc.; part 3 is on day and night, the eclipses of the sun, the sizes of the sun, moon and earth, and the number of the stars. Some images from the 1489 printing can be seen on the Glasgow University Library website.

Language: English

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: PQ1508 E5R4

"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

An edition of William Caxton's  Myrrour of the World (1481).

Language: English
ISBN: 0-85991-710-X

An edition of The History of Reynard the Fox which was translated and printed by William Caxton in 1481.

Black and white frontispiece, 224pp. including glossary and index, with nine additional black and white reproductions throughout text.

Language: English

Language: Italian

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: PA 8275.B4I8 1983

A study of the representation of sin in the chapel of St Andrés 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

240 pp., illustrations, bibliography.

Language: Italian
LCCN: 91-117874; LC: GR820.C46 1990; OCLC: 31754862

"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

A web site on "comparative mythology", with sections on water creatures, dragons, unicorns, and other mythical beasts.

Language: English

"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

"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.A5 C4813 1992; DDC: 246 20

Language: English
ISSN: 0362-1596; OCLC: 2210234

"Dans le Roman de Renart, le groupil frôle la mort à plusiers reprises, mais à las dernière minute, miraculeusement, il est toujours épargné. C'est ainsi que la branche I nous le montre condamné à mort par le roi et la cour. Pourtant, un dernier subterfuge le sauve: il déclare vouloir expier ses crimes par un pélerinage, si bien que Noble lui pardonne et qu'il peut s'enfuir. La branche XVII, elle aussi, prétend apporter au Roman une conclusion définitive: Renart meurt et l'on procède à ses funérailles. Mais au moment où l'on met le groupil en terre, il bondit hors de la fosse et s'enfuit en emportant Chanteclerc qui tenait l'encesoir. Le même thème sera repris dans une branche tardive, la branche XXIII, où une fois de plus Renart échappe à la sentence prononcée contre lui. Bref, Renart est immortel. Le héros de l'épopée animale, symbole autant que personnage, ne peut mourir." - Charbonnier

Language: French

Notes on poison-detecting birds, primarily from Eastern (Arabic, Indian) texts, but with some reference to Western bestiary texts.

Language: English

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

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

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 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." - abstract

Language: English
ISSN: 1846-8551; DOI: 10.1484/J.IKON.3.56

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

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

Language: Italian
ISBN: 88-8063-003-2

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 .C48 1967; DDC: 398.4/69; OCLC: 1266069

"...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 .C565 1975; DDC: 398/.369

A description of archaeological research into artifacts related to the use of horses in the middle ages, based on digs in London.

Language: English
ISBN: 1-84383-097-3

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

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)

Language: English

Language: English

"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

"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."

Contents: Bestiary history; cultural setting; The Text, an overview; The Text, details; The Illustrations, an overview; The Illustrations in significant manuscripts; The Manuscripts: origins, owners, codicology, general audience; Past Assumptions; New evidence and specific audience; Decline of the Latin bestiaries.

15 colour illustrations, 61 b/w illustrations, 294 pages.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-85115-682-7

"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.B4 H813 1992; DDC: 878/.307 20

Language: English

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

"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.B4Z55 1989; DDC: 809.9336 20

"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: 1846-8551; DOI: 10.1484/J.IKON.3.46

459 pp., illustrations.

Language: French
LCCN:  70-886449; LC: GR825.C483; DDC: 398.24/5; OCLC: 547543

Language: French

Language: French

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

Uses as models the illustrations of some herbals and bestiaries from the 13th century to the 16th century (Theriaca, MS arabe 2964, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; herbal, Cod. Pal. 586, Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence; MS it. 1108, Bibliothèque 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.

Comité international d'histoire de l'art. Atti del XXIV Congresso internazionale di storia dell'arte, 8.

Language: Italian

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

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

Language: English

"Given the existent knowledge of past legal and institutional developments and of the evolving relationship between élite 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 élite 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

"The relationship between medieval animal symbolism and the iconography of animals in the Renaissance has scarcely been studied. Filling a gap in this significant field of Renaissance culture, in general, and its art, in particular, this book demonstrates the continuity and tenacity of medieval animal interpretations and symbolism, disguised under the veil of genre, religious or mythological narrative and scientific naturalism. An extensive introduction, dealing with relevant medieval and early Renaissance sources, is followed by a series of case studies that illustrate ways in which Renaissance artists revived conventional animal imagery in unprecedented contexts, investing them with new meanings, on a social, political, ethical, religious or psychological level, often by applying exegetical methodology in creating multiple semantic and iconographic levels." - publisher

Language: English
9789004171015

Language: German

Language: English
ISSN: 1041-2212

Language: English

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

"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

"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

Language: English
ISSN: 0732-2992; OCLC: 8339076

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

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

239 p.

Language: English
LCCN: 19014191; LC: PR1505.C64; OCLC: 2084028

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.T7 1970; DDC: 829

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.C6 1973; DDC: 829/.1

A bibliography for English students at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois. Topics covered include: Animals; Biblical Typology; Birds; Mythology; Plants; Stones; Symbolic Themes. Sharon Coolidge is Chair / Professor of the English department. The entire bibliography is available as a web page or a PDF file.

Language: English

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 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

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

"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

Language: French

Language: French

Doctoral thesis, Christian Heck, director.

"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 practise 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 adresses a religious audience, traditionnaly 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 unvaluable 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

5 vol. (540, 230, 159, 9 f.) : ill., fac-sim. ; 30 cm

Language: French
National thesis number: 2007LIL30015

"Auteur dun livre consacré à la symbolique des oiseaux, Hugues de Fouilloy était proche de la spiritualité de saint Bernard. Ses relations avec les moines expliquent le succès de son œuvre auprès des Cisterciens. ... Les exemplaires cisterciens constituent à ce jour environ un tiers du corpus (7) des manuscrits conservés du De avibus. Cest le plus important de tous les groupes dattributions de lAviaire. Par ailleurs, les recherches de mes prédécesseurs sur le sujet ont établi que, parmi tous les exemplaires connus, ce sont vraisemblablement les manuscrits cisterciens qui se rapprochent constatations nous ont donc naturellement amené à nous demander pourquoi les cisterciens ont apparemment attaché autant d'importance à la copie du De avibus..." - Cordonnier

Language: French

Notes on the De avibus of Hugo de Folieto, including the textural tradition and the pace of the text in bestiaries.

Language: Dutch

Language: English
ISBN: 0-85389-712-3

Language: French

"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

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

"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, 2005. 308 p.

Language: French

Language: English

"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

"The legend of the caladrius, a bird with prognostic and healing powers, first appeared in early Indian writings as the haridruva--a yellow bird that cured jaundice. In classical Greek mythology it was a nondescript bird but in the medieval bestiaries it became pure white. The caladrius is used in the coats of arms of the South African Medical and Dental Council and also the Medical University of Southern Africa. These appear to be the first use of this medically significant bird in modern heraldry." - abstract

Language: English
PMID: 2218789

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

"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. Festugière, 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

14 pp., 9 pages of plates.

Language: English

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.F64 B433; DDC: 841.1

A brief article on the depiction of animals in Christian art, primarily in the Middle Ages.

Language: English

"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 Hexaëmeron 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

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

"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

Includes an modern English translation of the Old English Physiologus (panther and whale), plus a brief commentary.

Language: English
LC: PR1508 C7

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

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

"...[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

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

"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

Includes 51 beasts.

135 pp., notes, bibliography.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-292-76456-1; LCCN: 79014096; LC: PA4273.P8 E5 1979; DDC: 883/.01

"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 Cristian world. ... In the following remarks I shall attempt to outline the development of a Christian concept of öõóéïëïãßá, 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 öõóéïëïãßá." - Curley

Language: English
ISSN: 0083-5897

Language: Italian
ISSN: 0391-7835

Language: Italian

Includes facsimile of illuminated manuscript Særtryk af Aarb. for Nord. Oldk. og Hist. 1889.

92 pp., facsimiles, bibliography.

Language: Danish
LC: PT7318.P6; OCLC: 4560498

The Old High German Physiologus.

93 pp., bibliography.

Language: German
LC: PA4273.P9 D35 1988; OCLC: 24086176

"Les caractéristiques formelles et iconographiques des monstres sculptés en bas-relief sur l'architrave du portail central de l'église de S. Michele in Foro à Lucques, réalisés au 12e s. Elle sont confrontées aux lettrines de certains manuscrits enluminés contemporains et étudiées dans leur symbolique telle qu'elle est décrite dans les bestiaires et le Physiologus."

Language: Italian
ISSN: 0004-3400

92 pp.

Language: English
ISBN: 0-19-728003-X

Language: Italian
ISSN: 0085-2295

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

Language: English

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..." - Davis

3 p. introduction, 64 p. facsimile. Illustrated with woodcut pictures.

Language: English
LCCN: 59023629; LC: PA8275.L5 1958; DDC: 398.4; OCLC: 2785822

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

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: BL325 A6G8

"...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

This is a full photographic facsimile of the manuscript, approximately actual size. The gold backgrounds in the illustrations has been reproduced with a metalic ink, the colors are bright, and the text is sharp. There is a 20 page introduction by Christopher de Hamel, as well as a list of illustrations with commentary preceeding the facsimile.

About 300 pages, full color.

Language: English/Latin
ISBN: 1-85124-317-8

"All 44 pages of the Peterborough Bestiary are reproduced in the original format of 348 × 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

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

Bestiaries, Romanesque Sculpture, Animals in art. Translation by É. de Solms; introduction by Claude Jean-Nesmy.

195 pp., illustrations (some color), bibliography.

Language: French
LCCN: 77558562; LC: NB175; DDC: 734/.24

"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

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

Language: French

Contents: La bestiaire des sceaux de l'ancien Orient, by P Amiet. Les bovins, by M Vollenweider. La part du lion, by D Bérend. Le serpent d'Asclépios-Esculape, by S de Roquefeuil. Le mythe de la Gorgone Méduse, dans la numismatique antique, by M Le Roy. Le dragon autour de quelques pièces royales françaises, by F Dumas. L'"Agnus Dei" thème monétaire, by M Dhenin. Le bestiaire dans la numismatique d'Extrême-Orient, by M Tessier. Les animaux mythologiques fabuleux ou réels aux revers des médailles, by E Meunier.

535 p., index.

Language: French

Arnamagnæanske institut (Denmark), Manuscript AM 673a 4º.

127 pp., 22 leaves of plates (facsimiles), bibliography.

Language: Old Norse/Italian
LCCN: 93-174960; LC: PT7320.P482; OCLC: 29489332

132 p., illustrations.

Language: Italian
ISBN: 88-427-1444-5

Language: French
ISBN: 2-85088-197-X

"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.A5 D4313 2003; DDC: 700/.474 21

"Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliotheque Nationale et autres bibliotheques." Notes on the manuscripts of the Liber Floridus of Lambert of Saint-Omer.

215 p., illustrations.

Language: French
LC: PA8360.L2; DDC: 879.8; OCLC: 16171393

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

Presents photographs of illuminations from a manuscript of the Physiologus (destroyed 1921) formerly in the Evangelical School of Smyrna (MS B.8). The manuscript was probably a Palaeologan copy of an 11th c. original. Josef Strzygowski's early research efforts on the manuscript at the turn of the century are also discussed, and his list of all the miniatures is reproduced here. [Reprint of 1976 paper from Jahrbuch der Österreichische Byzantinistik, 25].

Illustrations in plates XXIV.1-XXIV.20.

Language: German

"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

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

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: CR1612 D45

Spanning prehistory to the present day, the story of the donkey, ass & mule.

175 p., illustrations, bibliography, index.

Language: English

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.

212 p., 42 plates (some color), index of sources, subject index.

Language: English
ISBN: 2-503-50792-1; LC: AE2.L363 D47 1998; DDC: 200; OCLC: 40406249

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

91 p., illustrations, facsimiles.

Language: English

Liber Floridus Colloquium, University of Ghent, 1967, on the work by Lambert of Saint Omer.

Language: English
LC: Z674; OCLC: 1122649

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

178 p., bibliography.

Language: French
ISBN: 2-84516-190-5

"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, Württembergische 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

Contents: L'universe des bestiaires (Deschamps & Roy); Le bestiaire retrouve (Deschamps); Les mues de serpent (Marteau); La belle ecsit la bête (Roy).

"L'universe des bestiaires" includes extracts from various bestiaries, plus a survey of beasts with bibliographies for each. "La belle ecsit la bête" discusses "aspects du bestiaire féminin du moyen âge".

16 plates, black & white, of sculpture animals, paintings.

Language: French
ISSN: 0014-2085; LC: PS8001.E8

Language: English

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.A5 D49 1990