The Bizarre and Beautiful World of the Medieval Bestiary

The stunning Aberdeen Bestiary

What are Bestiaries?

Bestiaries are essentially compendia of animals and plants (and often inanimate objects) both fictional and real. They take the form of illuminated manuscripts of often staggering beauty. However, beyond their aesthetic value they provide a unique insight into the medieval mind. In a world seemingly teetering between paradise and the inferno, ruled by an all powerful church, and lost in a thousand year void of reasonless ignorance, ancient biblical dragons and huge vultures that could rise from the dead seemed only too plausible. In the fifty or so bestiaries still in existence even mundane animals are given the most wonderfully curious mythologies. For example the bear:

“the bear bringeth forth a piece of flesh imperfect and evil shapen, and the mother licketh the lump, and shapeth the members with licking.... For the whelp is a piece of flesh little more than a mouse” - Bartholomeus Anglicus

Bear cubs were believed to be born shapeless, without eyes or ears. The mother would lie upon the cub to warm it, and then mould arms, legs and features with her tongue. Hence the phrase ‘to lick into shape’. Even more absurd, and a personal favourite, is the Myrmecoleon; the offspring of a lion and an ant (don’t ask). Such creatures fail to proliferate as the lion head can only consume meat whilst the ant’s body can digest nothing but grain. The curiosities are endless from hedgehogs having spikes in order to collect grain and hyenas that feed from the graves of the deceased.

Truly disturbing: The Manticore - Rochester Bestiary

Why were they created?

Far from being mere catalogues of natural history, bestiaries were designed to draw parallels between the natural world and the divine world. Pelicans teach us about the sacrifice of Christ by plucking their breasts and feeding their young with their own blood. The vulture, reproducing as it does without intercourse, is hailed as evidence of the virgin birth. The devil is also well represented by creatures such as the blackbird, tainted by the blackness of sin. Although they take their inspiration from ancient Greek texts, medieval bestiaries are dripping with Christian theology and indeed give us many of the myths and superstitions surrounding animals that we maintain to this day. The ability to date bestiaries fairly accurately not only from construction materials but also the style of image and script allows us to follow the history and development of theology and cultural beliefs. Until recently a sound knowledge of Latin and the ability to infiltrate the university libraries of England and France was required to view and understand these documents. Fortunately they are now available in beautifully curated online archive format. The Aberdeen Bestiary for instance, one of the world’s finest examples, is now available in full on Aberdeen University’s website and is well worth spending a rainy afternoon perusing.

How were they made?

The process of creating a bestiary, or indeed any illuminated manuscript, was arduous. Generally one person wrote the text whilst another painted the images. However, the list of expertise extended from the creation of parchment or vellum, the production of gold leaf for gilding, and of the course the ability to mix paint from pigment and glair. Generally a single monk would mark lines and then write the content. The vellum would then be passed to another monk who would draw the images with silverpoint, and then add gilding. Finally, the image would be painted with glair based paint – glair being a sort of whisked concoction of rotten egg whites. A rather nice and fairly accurate animated video of the process can be found here.

An attempt at recreation…

Inspired by the stories I discovered in various books of beasts and being of an artistic bent I decided a few months ago to try my hand at recreating the Tiger page from the Aberdeen Bestiary. Having equipped myself with a sheet of vellum from Cowley Parchment Works (one of the only remaining producers of parchment in the world and exceptionally helpful) I set about the extremely arduous task of researching in depth all of the processes of drafting, marking, gilding and painting with glair. This included learning from scratch how to write in black letter script with a dip pen. Several months on and the result so far can be seen below. Admittedly I have worked on it extremely intermittently (setting up the equipment takes a very long time) but thus far I’m fairly pleased with my progress (obviously it's shoddy at the moment but has potential). When I’m finished rest assured I shall post images of the finished result and go into a bit more detail on its creation.

Very much a work in progress

A small selection of the tools required

So there you have it. An exceptionally brief introduction into medieval bestiaries. It’s a huge subject and one I could write on for hours. However, I don’t want to lose you so I’ll stop here. Perhaps I’ll post more on illumination and medieval art in the future. In the meantime, explore for yourselves.