Treatise on the Dynamics of Sin

AN INCOMPLETE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL ART L

MEDIEVAL NATURE II: ANIMALS

In the Middle Ages, the relationship of humans to animals was pre-ordained and immutable:

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male . female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:26-28).

The Old Testament authorizes the exploitation of animals for their labor, by-products, or as food. These were divine instructions, not self-serving justifications, and ignoring them would imperil one’s salvation.

In the 12th century, the inferior status of animals was reinforced by the Platonism-inflected theology expounded in the cathedral schools, which held that animals had no souls. Thomas Aquinas reversed that claim in the 13th century, arguing along Aristotelian lines that animals had souls, but concluding that while humans and animals shared a common genus, they differed in species, with humans being more advanced.

Aristotle established that understanding, alone among the acts of the soul, took place without a physical organ …so it is clear that the sensory soul has no proper activity of its own, but every one of its acts is of the body-soul compound, which leaves us with the conclusion that since souls of brute animals have no activity which is intrinsically of soul alone, they do not subsist … Hence though man is of the same generic type as other animals, he is a different species (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1970:17).

Derived from the late-antique Physiologus, the medieval bestiary gathered classical learning, scriptural citations, literary topoi, and folklore concerning animals in single reference work. Copied in the monasteries for consultation by learned readers, the bestiary was not a “popular” text. Because it was neither a guidebook to nature nor was it designed for the classification or identification of species, anachronistically judging the bestiary inaccurate by the standards of modern empircal biology is to mistake its purpose utterly. 

The first passage is found in a Franciscan encyclopedia; the second and third are excerpts from a Visigothic encyclopedia routinely cited in bestiaries.

A fox is called Vulpes, and hath that name as it were wallowing feet aside, and goeth never forthright, but always aslant and with fraud. And is a false beast and deceiving, for when him lacketh meat, he feigneth himself dead, and then fowls come to him, as it were to a carrion, and anon he catcheth one and devoureth it. The fox halteth always, forr  the right legs are shorter than the left legs … . The fox doth fight with the brock for dens, and defileth the brock’s den, and hath so the mastery over him with fraud and deceit, and not by strength … The fox feigneth himself tame in time of need, but by night he waiteth his time and doeth shrewd deeds (Bartholomaeus Anglicanus, De proprietatibus rerum Bk 18).

Maria Prymachenko (Ukrainian self-taught artist, 1909-1997)