Medieval Bestiaries

Medieval Europeans were well aware of the balanced network of living creatures that populated their existence, but the great thinkers of the Late Middle Ages (about 1050-1500) were less interested in writing about the web of life than they were about trying to demonstrate the way the natural world pointed to spiritual truths. The Medieval genre of Bestiaries illustrates this, with various animals described in a type of encyclopedia.

Bestiaries have their roots in a work by the first century (pagan) Roman author Pliny the Elder. His _Natural History_ catalogued loads of animals. His work was extremely popular, and taken up by a Greek Christian in the second century who cast the excerpts of animals through the prism of Christianity in a work called the _Physiologus_.

Among the most fascinating animals discussed in this tradition is the panther (Latin _panthera_). These beasts didn’t live in Medieval Europe, but that didn’t prevent scholars such as the famed Albertus Magnus (d. 1280) from writing about them. The general description follows that of the _Aberdeen Bestiary_ from 1200:

“There is an animal called the panther, multi-colored, very beautiful and extremely gentle. Physiologus says of it, that it has only the dragon as an enemy. When it has fed and is full, it hides in its den and it sleeps. After three days it wakes from its sleep and gives a great roar, and from its mouth comes a very sweet odor, as if it were a mixture of every perfume . . .”

As you can see from the above images, Medieval ideas about the panther don’t jive with reality. Their rainbow-color fur and the sweet smell of their breath might have indicated something holy, because that was a common idea of the time. Add to these qualities the way that panthers allegedly slept for three days (the same number of days that Jesus was buried), that it was gentle (not in IRL), and that only the dragon (a la Satan) feared it, and we have the panther as a stand-in for Jesus in the Bestiaries.