Snake fact #58: snakes will attack a man wearing clothes but flee from a naked man. This is because nudity represents the primordial sinless state, but once you are clad in mortality and sin you are vulnerable to evil.
Epiphanius said that snakes attack naked men but flee from clothed men. This is because when you are clothed in God's spirit you are safe, but when you sin you are naked and vulnerable.
Further testing is required to determine which of these mutually incompatible truths are true.
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In a previous post we explored the Physiologus, a collection of animal legends compiled by an anonymous author in Alexandria, Egypt around the 2nd century CE. These stories were widely popular for centuries and set the stage for the bestiaries (books of beasts) in the Middle Ages. Medieval bestiaries combined the stories of the Physiologus, which filtered the natural world through a Christian framework, with Isidore of Seville’s encyclopedic work Etymologies (ca. 623) which compiled knowledge from classical sources such as Pliny the Elder's Natural History. This combination led to an expansion of the original 40 chapters of the Physiologus, to up to 100-150 chapters in medieval bestiaries that covered all sorts of animals and mythical beings like unicorns and centaurs.
Bestiaries were extremely popular all over Europe in the Middle Ages, especially in the 12th-13th centuries. They were primarily used as a teaching tool for lay brothers in monasteries and schoolboys, especially for learning Latin. Sarah Kay wrote in their book Animal Skins and the Reading Self in Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries (The University of Chicago Press; 2017) that “it is generally accepted that they become less sermon-like, more oriented toward the natural world and more secular in their uses, as time goes on” (p. 12). In future posts we will examine how early printed zoological books started moving away from symbolism into more naturalistic depictions of animals.
Much of the imagery in medieval bestiaries can be linked to descriptions of animals in the Physiologus. My favorite being the depictions of the fox, which is thought to be very sly and likened to the devil. Here is translation from the Book Club of California’s edition of the Physiologus from our collection:
“The fox is very deceitful. When it is hungry and cannot find things to eat, it seeks a place where there is red earth, and rolls over on it, and lies on its back; then, holding its breath, it swells up; and the birds, thinking it is dead, descend to eat it; it however suddenly seizes them and eats them.”
I’ve included three illustrations from medieval bestiaries that depict this scene of the fox lying on its back, right before it devours the birds that land on it. The scenes and illustrations found in bestiaries would have been extremely familiar to Europeans during the Middle Ages, and would have been found in all sorts of works of art.
UW-Milwaukee Special Collections is a print-based collection, so we do not have many original manuscripts. We do have some great facsimiles of medieval manuscripts such as the Luttrell Psalter which has interesting depictions of animals in the margins that remind me of those found in medieval bestiaries.
Thankfully so many medieval bestiaries have been digitized to look at online. The examples that I included in this post are:
1.) Whale and sailing boat, Artist Unknown. Franco-Flemish. Created 1277 or after. Ms. Ludwig XV 4 (83.MR.174), fol. 84v. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
2.) Whale and sailing boat from Harley 4751 Bestiary from the British Library. Created in England late 12th century-early 13th century.
3.) Adam naming the animals from the Aberdeen Bestiary (Aberdeen University Library, Univ Lib. MS 24).
4.) Unicorn and maiden from the Rochester Bestiary c. 1230–1240 (London, British Library, Royal MS 12 F.xiii).
5.) A Unicorn with its Head in the Lap of a Maiden, Artist Unknown. Franco-Flemish. Created 1277 or after Ms. Ludwig XV 4 (83.MR.174), fol. 84v. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
6.) Fox from the Aberdeen Bestiary (Aberdeen University Library, Univ Lib. MS 24).
7.) Birds on a Dead Fox, Artist Unknown. Franco-Flemish. Created 1277 or afterMs. Ludwig XV 4 (83.MR.174), fol. 84v. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
8.) Illustration of a fox; detail of a miniature from the Rochester Bestiary dating from c. 1230–1240, BL Royal 12 F xiii, f. 26v. Held and digitized by the British Library.
9.) A Siren and a Centaur, Artist Unknown. Franco-Flemish. Created 1277 or after Ms. Ludwig XV 4 (83.MR.174), fol. 84v. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
10.) Lions from the Northumberland Bestiary, dating to around 1250-1260 in Northern England.
There are so many online great sources to study bestiaries, such as:
“Beastly tales from the medieval bestiary” by Dr Elizabeth Morrison is Senior Curator of Manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
The Medieval Bestiary: Animals in the Middle Ages, ed. by David Badke
View more posts in the Summer Series: The Spectacle of Nature.
–Sarah, Special Collections Senior Graduate Intern
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The bad news is, like probably a lot of you, I’m in an area that just went into emergency lockdown. The good news is
a) now I definitely have time to finish the snail/insect/ape posts I promised
b) I’m finally experiencing a mood that justifies this reaction image:
[Morgan Library MS M.459 fol. 15v]
I hope you’re all doing as well as you can be, given the circumstances! If you’re looking for a distraction, I recommend this manuscript (or the historieofbeafts tag for it, if you prefer), which still has the best elephant I’ve ever seen. & hopefully I’ll have more posts for you soon!
Artists/Makers: Angelos Gregorios (Greek (Cretan), active about 1460 - 1480); Dorotheos of Gaza (Egyptian, active 6th century) and Cyril of Alexandria (Egyptian, died 444)
Place of origin: Crete, Greece
Date: 1510–1520
Medium: Pen and red lead and iron gall inks, watercolors, tempera colors, and gold paint on paper bound between wood boards covered with probably original brown calf.
The carved and painted wooden ceiling of the abbot’s lower chambers at St. George’s Abbey in Stein am Rhein. The designs of the bosses were inspired by the Physiologus, an early Christian book of natural philosophy that described plants, stones and animals as well as allegories of salvation through Christ such as a phoenix and a pelican. This room was completed between 1508 and 1516.
