#etymologies

The Physiologus is a compilation of folklore from various traditions including Indian, Hebrew, and Egyptian legends, that were passed down through ancient scientific writers such as Pliny the Elder. These legends were then filtered through a Christian framework of the world. Natural things like plants, animals, and stones are shown as representing qualities of Christ. For example, the Physiologus describes the serpent growing old and losing its vision. To restore its eyesight, the serpent will fast for forty days and forty nights to shed its skin and renew itself.  

My interest in the Physiologus is its visual representations of plants and animals, and how those depictions became iconographic over hundreds of years. The earliest surviving illustrated copy is the Bern Physiologus from around the 9th century CE. I’ve included illustrations of the lion and elephant from the digitized Bern Physiolgus from Europeana.  

Many illustrations that first appear in copies of the Physiologus later appear in medieval bestiaries, and even early printed books.  

One of my favorite examples is the pelican bird. From Michael J. Curley’s English translation:

“Physiologus says of the pelican that it is an exceeding lover of its young. If the pelican brings forth young and the little ones grow, they take to striking their parents in the face. The parents, however, hitting back kill their young ones and then, moved my compassion, they weep over them for three days, lamenting over those whom they killed. On the third day, their mother strikes her side and spills her own blood over their dead bodies (that is, of the chicks) and the blood itself awakens them from death.”  

The illustration shows the mother pelican rejuvenating the chicks with her blood. I included three visual examples of this: A woodcut from UW-Madison's copy of Ortus sanitatis (Latin for The Garden of Health) from the 1490s, a woodcut from the 1587 G. Ponce de Leon edition of Physiologus from the Newberry Library in Chicago (scanned from Michal J. Curley’s book), and the 1953 Book Club of California edition of Physiologus illustrated by Mallette Dean, which we have featured in several Fine Press Friday posts. Francis J. Carmody‘s translation for the Book Club of California is a composite of Greek, Syrian, Ethiopian, and Latin.  

I will explore other illustrated natural history books from the manuscript tradition in upcoming posts before moving on to early printed zoological and botanical books. 

View more posts in the Summer Series: The Spectacle of Nature.  

–Sarah, Special Collections Senior Graduate Intern

Scholarly works that I consulted while researching the Physiologus:

Curley, Michael J. Physiologus: A Medieval Book of Nature Lore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Kay, Sarah. Animal Skins and the Reading Self in Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017.