Bestiary | Literary Genre & History (2024)

bestiary, literary genre in the European Middle Ages consisting of a collection of stories, each based on a description of certain qualities of an animal, plant, or even stone. The stories presented Christian allegories for moral and religious instruction and admonition.

The numerous manuscripts of medieval bestiaries ultimately are derived from the Greek Physiologus, a text compiled by an unknown author before the middle of the 2nd century ad. It consists of stories based on the “facts” of natural science as accepted by someone called Physiologus (Latin: “Naturalist”), about whom nothing further is known, and from the compiler’s own religious ideas.

The Physiologus consists of 48 sections, each dealing with one creature, plant, or stone and each linked to a biblical text. It probably originated in Alexandria and, in some manuscripts, is ascribed to one or other of the 4th-century bishops Basil and Epiphanius, though it must be older. The stories may derive from popular fables about animals and plants. Some Indian influence is clear—for example, in the introduction of the elephant and of the Peridexion tree, actually called Indian in the Physiologus. India may also be the source of the story of the unicorn, which became very popular in the West.

The popularity of the Physiologus, which circulated in the early Middle Ages only less widely than the Bible, is clear from the existence of many early translations. It was translated into Latin (first in the 4th or 5th century), Ethiopian, Syriac, Arabic, Coptic, and Armenian. Early translations from the Greek also were made into Georgian and into Slavic languages.

Translations were made from Latin into Anglo-Saxon before 1000. In the 11th century an otherwise unknown Thetbaldus made a metrical Latin version of 13 sections of the Physiologus. This was translated, with alterations, in the only surviving Middle English Bestiary, dating from the 13th century. It, and other lost Middle English and Anglo-Norman versions, influenced the development of the beast fable. Early translations into Flemish and German influenced the satiric beast epic. Bestiaries were popular in France and the Low Countries in the 13th century, and a 14th-century French Bestiaire d’amour applied the allegory to love. An Italian translation of the Physiologus, known as the Bestiario toscano, was made in the 13th century.

Many of the medieval bestiaries were illustrated; the manuscript of the earliest known of these is from the 9th century. Illustrations accompanying other medieval manuscripts are often based on illustrations in the Physiologus, as are sculptures and carvings (especially in churches) and frescoes and paintings well into the Renaissance period.

The religious sections of the Physiologus (and of the bestiaries that were derived from it) are concerned primarily with abstinence and chastity; they also warn against heresies. The frequently abstruse stories to which these admonitions were added were often based on misconceptions about the facts of natural history: e.g., the stag is described as drowning its enemy, the snake, in its den; and the ichneumon as crawling into the jaws of the crocodile and then devouring its intestines. Many attributes that have become traditionally associated with real or mythical creatures derive from the bestiaries: e.g., the phoenix’s burning itself to be born again, the parental love of the pelican, and the hedgehog’s collecting its stores for the winter with its prickles. These have become part of folklore and have passed into literature and art, influencing the development of allegory, symbolism, and imagery, though their source in the bestiary may be frequently overlooked.