The Bestiary

 

1.    Bestiary: bes·ti·ar·y

ˈbēsCHēˌerē,ˈbes-/

noun

noun: bestiary; plural noun: bestiaries

1.    a descriptive or anecdotal treatise on various real or mythical kinds of animals, especially a medieval work with a moralizing tone.

 

A bestiary (Also known as Bestiarum vocabulum ) Is a “Compendium of beast”. (Which is basically my fancy and annoying way of saying that it is a big old book about different medieval beasts and monsters. Did you like that vocab right there? I am making you think. See? It’s not all just knowledge about monsters, might as well toss some vocabulary in there.) It is said that bestiaries go all the way back to the Ancient world. They were extremely popular back in the medieval ages, much like sappy young adult romances today. Given the strictly religious beliefs of this time period, many of the animal histories and facts were accompanied with some sort of life or moral lesson. It furthered the belief that the world was a reflection of God’s word and that every living thing was special and had a special meaning.

          The earliest bestiary (at least, the one similar to the type that later became extremely popular) was an anonymous 2^nd century Greek volume called Physiologus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiologus ). The book was practically a summary of all ancient knowledge of animals in classic writings written by authors, such as Aristotle, Herodotus, Pliny the Elder, Solinus, and Aelian. Bestiaries were actually most popular in the European countries of England and France around the 12^th century. Many bestiaries were basically a large book pulled together by various writings that came before them, almost a collage of ancient writings. The Aberdeen Bestiary is one of the most popular and widely known of over 50 manuscripts of bestiaries that actually still exist today (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberdeen_Bestiary ). Even the Italian artist, Leonardo da Vinci, had his own bestiary.

          Bestiaries of medieval times usually contained things such as descriptions and illustrations of species commonly located in Western Europe. The content was usually exotic animals and, what we today consider to be, imaginary animals. The descriptions in the bestiary included the physical characteristics of the creature, though these were often physiologically incorrect, along with the Christian morals and beliefs that the animal represented. Below the description, there would usually be an artistic drawing or illustration of the animal as described in the bestiary.

          Bestiaries would contain animals such as; bears, boars, elephants, deers, etc. The strange thing was, they would also contain unicorns, basilisks, griffins, caldrius, all types of creatures of mythology. The creatures would often be organized alphabetically and would show no description between the imaginary and non-imaginary creatures. My view of this lack of classification shows how deep rooted mythology was back in this time period. The folklore intermingled with daily creatures and no one seemed to object to the collaboration of both.