Medieval Elephants

There's something fishy about this "elephant"...

Getting carried away...

Venice personified, a castle, and a whole marsh are being carried on the back of an elephant. The ribbon with words depicts Venice saying, "I admit you saved me when I was falling" and the elephant responding, "I deny this, for you escaped by divine power."

This image appears in a copy of the Life of St Maurice made for the Renaissance prince René of Anjou. In his book The Politics of Culture in Quattrocento Europe (Oxford, 2016, pp. 226-28), Oren Margolis argued that the elephant represented René or possibly his agent Giovanni Cossa, even though neither had elephants as part of their family heraldry. Maybe they chose an elephant because elephants were often portrayed as good guys in medieval art and symbolism?

Here's looking at you!

This big-eyed elephant with a segmented trunk and petite pink castle can be found in a 15th-16th century copy of parts of Thomas de Cantimpré's De Natura Rerum (On Natural Things, now Bruges, Bibliothèque publique, Ms. 411, f. 27r).

The manuscript only contains the parts of the text. It includes some animals and begins with part of book 3 on the different types of humans and the "monstrous humans" ("hominibus monstruosis") who were said to live outside of Europe (such as the man-eating cyclops below). This manuscript is a reminder that elephants' exotic nature could be co-opted as part of projects that spread fears about the wider world, as well as those that encouraged or revealed connections.

Bruges, Bibliothèque publique, Ms. 411, f. 4r

I heard you like elephants, so here's an elephant on an elephant (ivory) to make an oliphant...

I had a great time in the Victoria and Albert Museum's early medieval gallery the other day, looking at the ivories. There were so many fascinating pieces on display. One of the largest items was this oliphant, or ivory horn, made in the south of the Italian peninsula about 1000 years ago.

Detail of an elephant, lion, antelope(?), birds, and other animals, V&A Sculpture Collection 7953-1862

The material is a testament to the long-distance ivory trade (or at least continued access to ivory). The design also shows how ideas-- and possibly people-- traveled. The style ivory carving (with delicate animals in framed compartments) is reminiscent of that found throughout the Islamic Mediterranean, from the Iberian Peninsula to Egypt. Indeed, some argue that this piece might have been made by ivory workers who moved from Egypt to southern Italy.

A penny gold coin for your thoughts...

The gold coin above was made during the reign of Kumaragupta I in the area that is now India, around 414-455 AD. Even though it is only 1.74 cm wide, its creators still managed to include an elephant, a king riding an elephant, an elephant driver behind the king, and a lion. The coin also probably once included the inscription, "the elephant of King Mahendra, the destroyer of lion" (Pratapaditya Pal, Indian Sculpture (1986), p. 112).

Some of you may be wondering if 414 AD isn't a bit too early for a "medieval elephant". (Recently, a surgeon innocently asked me when the Middle Ages began and whether that terminology only applied to Europe and got far more information than he bargained for: that's one way to make your outpatient procedure go more quickly!*) The "Middle Ages", as the vague name suggests, isn't particularly helpful or distinct framework even for Europe, so I've seen the start date set as early as the early 300s AD (with the legalization of Christianity in the Roman Empire) or as late as the 600s, when the Senate in Rome disappears from the records. Still, given that early modern elephants as well as ancient elephants are welcome here, we won't split hairs.

*Mindful of who was holding the knife in that situation, I was polite when asked about the term "Dark Ages".

Keep a lid on it!

This cylindrical container was made in Córdoba on the Iberian Peninsula in the tenth century from an elephant tusk. (Its lid might have been added later.) Not only was it made from a real elephant's tusk, it depicts a man seated on the back of an elephant. While the proportions are a little odd, the elephant is much more recognizable than depictions of elephants made around the same time in Northern Europe, even though elephants did not live on the Iberian Peninsula in this period, either. This might reflect the different trade links that the Umayyad rulers of al-Andalus had, or possibly surviving Roman models.

Ivory was still rare on the Iberian Peninsula as it was in the rest of Europe and the Mediterranean in this period. Earlier in the tenth century, the Baghdadi geographer al-Mas’udi complained that the large elephant tusks from East Africa ‘usually go to Oman, and from there are sent to China and India. This is the chief trade route, and if it were not so, ivory would be common in Muslim lands' (translated in G.S.P. Freeman-Grenville, The East African coast. Select documents from the first to the earlier nineteenth century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), p. 15.) As a result, this sort of ivory box was often associated with caliphs and royals, The inscription on this box, very unusually, mentions a non-royal: Ziyad ibn Aflah, the sahib al-shurta (leader of the guards, sometimes translated as "prefect of police"). He must have been highly favored to have acquired or been given this ivory.

Elephant enthroned...

Medieval Europeans weren't the only ones who produced highly stylized images of elephants. East Asian art also featured elephants with tiny ears and "beak"-like trunks, as shown on this fragment of a wooden throne from fourteenth-century Tibet. (The elephant appears at the base, under depictions of celestial and supernatural beings.) This is a rare example of medieval Tibetan woodcarving, and probably once served as the backdrop to an image of the Buddha or another teacher.

Detail of an elephant on a fragment of a 15th-century Tibetan throne (now Los Angeles County Museum of Art, M.2001.1)

The elephant's stylized appearance may have been influenced by examples from examples from nearby Chinese art. Vaguely similar examples of elephants with "beak-like" trunks have also been found all the way on the other side of the world. At about the same time as the Tibetan woodworker was making his throne, 7800 km away in Carlisle Cathedral in the north of England, a beak-y elephant with small ears was also being carved onto a wooden chair, depicted fending off a dragon. In the this case, however, it was not a throne back but the underside of a folding seat in the choir stalls.

Detail of a dragon attacking an elephant from a 15th-century misericord in Carlisle Cathedral There are earlier examples of such beaky elephants in Western Europe, too, such as that found in a 13th-century bestiary from York (now St John's College, Oxford, MS 61.) Note that the English elephants were depicted with cloven hooves, like the Tibetan elephant.

Detail of an elephant attacking a dragon from a 15th-century bestiary (now Oxford, St John's College, MS 61, f. 61r).

Commemorating World Elephant Day with not one, not two, but three major medieval elephant motifs, as found in the Queen Mary Psalter (British Library, Royal MS 2 B VII, f. 118v). This manuscript was made between about 1310 and 1320 in England. It was later owned by Mary I (Bloody Mary), hence its nickname.

Elephant and castle: British Library, Royal MS 2 B VII, f. 119

The elephants appear in some of the 464 illustrations that were added to the bottom margins of the Psalter's pages (not to mention its 223 Old Testament images, 104 half- or full-page miniatures, and 24 decorated calendar pages). Elephants appear nestled between Biblical texts and depictions of saints and fantastic creatures: perhaps its artist would have been a fan of World Elephant Day, had it existed in the fourteenth century.

Time for another real medieval elephant! The comb above was made from elephant ivory around 875 AD. It shows two Zodiac symbols: Sagittarius the archer firing on Capricorn. (Western European artists often portrayed Capricorn as a half-goat/half-fish thing in this period.) Similar depictions of Capricorn have been found in other fine ivory works from this period, perhaps indicating that this comb's creator(s) were part of an imperial workshop, perhaps at Metz. Ivory was a rare enough material, but this comb features colored glass and gold foil, too. Who needed such a fancy grooming tool? The curators at the Victoria and Albert Museum have posited two main explanations. The first is that it was involved with the coronation ceremony of the West Frankish ruler Charles the Bald in Italy, after which the comb ended up in Pavia Cathedral. (Don't worry about Charles's nickname: the combing would just have been ceremonial, although some scholars argue that the nickname 'Charles the Bald' was ironic and that he was actually very hairy.)

Charles the Bald looking rather not-bald in a sacramentary made at his court (now Paris, BnF Latin 1141, f. 2v).

Alternatively, all priests needed to comb their hair before mass, to prevent any stray hairs falling in the Eucharist wine. High-ranking clerics therefore exchanged combs as presents. For example, in about 794 A.D, Alcuin of York, abbot of St Martin's in Tours, wrote to thank Archbishop Riculf of Mainz (d. 813) for sending him a comb:

"I have taken great pleasure in your loving present, giving thanks in proportion to the number of teeth I have counted in your gift. A wonderful animal with two heads and sixty teeth - not as large as an elephant, but made of beautiful ivory. I was not terrified by this beast, but was delighted by its appearance, and had no fear that it might bite me with its gnashing teeth, but I was amused by the charming servility with which it smoothed down the hair on my head." ~Alcuin of York/Tours to Archbishop Riculf of Mainz, edited and translated in Paul Sorrell, ‘Alcuin's “comb” riddle’, Neophilologus 80 (1996), p. 313.

Whether the comb above was fit for a king or coiffed a cleric, it shows that ivory-working skills endured in northern Europe throughout the early medieval period. Even then, global connections and access to distant materials endured at elite workshops, at least.

Hats off to the long-eared elephant that forms the crest in the arms of the marquis of Las Navas. This images appears at the start of the manuscript to assert the Las Navas family's ownership of this manuscipt of Guido delle Colonne's History of the City/Destruction of Troy (Historia Civitatis Troiane) that was made in Italy (Venice?) in the 14th century.

Crests were used in tournaments to identify different jousters, perhaps a bit like the way people choose avatars in a game like Mario Kart. German tournament books show people admiring a range of helmets with some fairly elaborate crests before a tournament.

Image above from Das Wappenbuch Conrads von Grünenberg (now Munich, BSB Cgm 145, f. 233r. (This manuscript also includes more examples of elephants in heraldry, but that's a story for another time!)

Some crests depicted in manuscript illuminations were pure fantasy, however, and were never actually made into helmets in reality.