Some time in the first part of the Christian era, perhaps as early as the second century, there emerged a curious collection of zoological fables and religious moralizations called Physiologus.
Horn Iconography as Found in the Grand Medieval Bestiary
August 5, 2015 By
Given at the 47th International Horn Symposium, on August 4, 2015
Reality x Fiction: The Image of the Tiger in the Bestiaries of Medieval England
February 28, 2015 By
The present article intends to make an analysis of the way that how the tiger, an animal native from Asia, was represented in the bestiaries of the Medieval English literature (XIIth to XVth centuries), in a time that the European knowledge about Asia still was very loose.
The Hare and its Alter Ego in the Middle Ages
February 12, 2015 By
This article deals with the topic of hares and rabbits in Creation scenes and Naming of the beasts scenes in bestiaries and other medieval manuscripts.
Can You Guess Which Animal This Is?
January 31, 2015 By
Here are 25 images of animals from the Middle Ages – can you figure out which creature they are?
Ten Strange Medieval Animals You Might Not Have Heard Of
January 30, 2015 By
A fish that can stop a ship and a bull that passes gas to defend itself – these and more strange animals from the Middle Ages!
Northumberland Bestiary now online
January 5, 2015 By
The Getty Museum has recently digitized and made available the Northumberland Bestiary, a 13th century manuscript containing descriptions and images of animals and beasts.
The Regional Impact on Medieval Text and Image: Exploring Representations of Anti-Semitism in English and Northern French Medieval Bestiaries
January 1, 2015 By
This thesis endeavors to explain the variations in representations of anti-Semitism between medieval bestiaries.
De Herinacio. On the Hedgehog
October 21, 2014 By
Obrazki nunu and Discarding Images have teamed up to create a great video based on a medieval bestiary.
Ten Strange Medieval Ideas about Animals
September 4, 2014 By
Vipers killing each, panthers and their sweet breath, and how deer cure themselves of illness – the medieval bestiary and strange ideas about animals.
The Beauty of the Bestiary
January 16, 2014 By
Bestiaries were encyclopedias of animal life, complete with descriptions of the animals, their places in the world, and often their symbolic relationships to Christianity.
Medieval French bestiaries
September 15, 2013 By
The French Bestiaries of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries marked the culmination of at least two traditions of Beast Legend.
An Ecoritical Approach to Chaucer. Representations of the Natural World in the English Literature of the Middle Ages
December 15, 2012 By
The choice to write and present a study of nature in medieval English literature from an ecological perspective has been originated by a personal interest in the urgency of the deep environmental crisis we are faced with and by the drive to expand the eco- oriented study of representations of nature in literature to chronological and spatial areas well beyond those originally typical of ecological criticism.
The use of unicorn horn in medicine
August 13, 2012 By
The unicorn is unusual among the mythical animals in that people still believed in its existence up to and after the Renaissance.
Christ or Aristotle: Where did this book come from?
July 17, 2012 By
Although easily dismissed for its casual attention to detail, poor scholarship, and flair for the fantastic, the medieval bestiary offers a wealth of information – not, perhaps, about animals themselves, but about the people who wrote about them.
Aberdeen Bestiary goes on public display for the first time
June 26, 2012 By
The Aberdeen Bestiary, a beautifully illustrated manuscript that dates back to the twelfth century and which once belonged to King Henry VIII, can now be seen by the public for the first time at the the University of Aberdeen
Cryptozoology in the Medieval and Modern Worlds
May 6, 2012 By
Albertus Magnus’s thirteenth-century work, De animalibus, a lengthy compilation based on Aristotle and on a handful of commentators, is as close as the Middle Ages comes to a systematic natural history in our understanding of the term.
Fossils as Drugs: pharmaceutical palaeontology
January 8, 2012 By
The present paper surveys the medicinal applications of a number of fossils which were well known in classical, mediaeval and renaissance times….
Doubts and Ambiguities in the Transmission of Ideas in a Medieval Latin Bestiary: Canterbury Cathedral Archives Lit. Ms D.10
January 4, 2012 By
How did certain classical and early Christian ideas on nature and the visible and invisible worlds contest medieval cultural and literary norms in the medieval Latin bestiary? How does examining these tensions challenge our own perceptions?
Indecent bodies: gender and the monstrous in medieval English literature
September 25, 2011 By
Indecent bodies: gender and the monstrous in medieval English literature Oswald, Dana Morgan Thesis: Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English, (2005) Abstract While Old English literature rarely represents sexualized bodies, and just as rarely represents monsters, Middle English literature teems with bodies that are both sexualized and monstrous. In Old English, sexualized bodies appear in […]
The Bestiary of Anne Walshe
July 24, 2011 By
The Bestiary of Anne Walshe Badke, David A Paper for Medieval Studies 452 : The Illustrated Book in the Later Middle Ages, University of Victoria, Dr. C. Harding, April 17, (2001), www.bestiary.ca Abstract The Bestiary of Anne Walshe (Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek Gl. kgl. Saml. 1633 4˚) is a Latin bestiary of English origin, produced circa 1400-25. It is […]
Animals in English Wood Carving
June 5, 2011 By
Animals in English Wood Carving Druce, G. C. The Third Annual Volume of the Walpole Society, 1913-1914 (Oxford, 1914), Version 2 (August 2004) Abstract The treatment of animals and birds in ecclesiastical carvings hardly seems to have received sufficient attention in the past. In common with other unobtrusive details they are liable to be passed over […]
“The Mark of the beast: revisioning the medieval bestiary in the 20th century”
March 5, 2011 By
Vagantes Conference Session 2: Reception, Memory & Identity “The Mark of the beast: revisioning the medieval bestiary in the 20th century” Raina Polivka (Indiana University) The medieval period was an era of uncertainty – medieval people gave thought to how they applied their presence to the natural world. Bestiaries assigned a moralization of behaviour and […]
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