Fantastic beasts: the history of bestiaries

Popular during the Middle Ages, bestiaries were richly illustrated compendia that used real and mythical creatures to teach profound Christian lessons

- Written by Matthew Dennison

THE WHOLE world is full of different creatures,’ wrote the English theologian Thomas of Chobham in the 13th century. For Chobham, the extent and variety of natural history offered the wary observer valuable lessons in what best to imitate and what best to avoid: nature as a handbook for living.

Chobham's first readers would not have been surprised by this suggestion that the world around them contained moral and spiritual guidance: many were familiar with Aesop's Fables, the collection of well known animal stories illustrating aspects of human nature and offering lessons in best behaviour. Medieval theology glimpsed the hand of God in every aspect of existence. God had created pelicans, lions and whales, in each case with a clear purpose — a view enshrined in the Bible, with its injunctions, like that in the Book of Job, to look to nature for elucidation: ‘Ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall teach thee: or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee.’

Popular during the Middle Ages were illustrated compendia devoted to the natural world, known as bestiaries.

Mostly produced between the late-12th and mid-13th centuries, bestiaries embodied a belief in God's all-controlling design for both humankind and the wider world. Writers and illustrators made clear the links between God and nature. The Aberdeen Bestiary, for example, features a full-page creation scene in which God summons to life a diminutive elephant and a nut-eating squirrel. Another image depicts Adam naming a host of animals (among them horses, deer and a fork-tailed lion) that the bestiary writer subsequently describes, starting with the lion — the king of the beasts. In the creation scene in The Northumberland Bestiary, God creates birds, including an owl and a swan, before turning his attention to everything from a snail to a camel.