11th cent illustration from Beatus' Commentary on the Apocalypse
A fabulous bird of the East, distguising itself with dirt and making itself insignificant, surprises and
kills a serpent. The bird is Christ, distguising His divine nature in order to conquer the Devil
Apart from the symbols of the Evangelists, three other categories of what may be loosely
classed as symbolic animals occupied the attention of the Middle Ages, early and late.
First, there were the monsters who appear frequently in Romanesque sculpture. They
are represented biting and tearing their victims and symbolize with irresistible power the
energy of evil. Then, at the opposite pole, is the series of MSS. known as bestiaries. The
sources of the bestiaries are unknown. The entries often quote the authority of a writer
known as the Physiologus (which may mean no more than 'the natural historian'), about
whom we may conjecture from internal evidence that he lived in late Antiquity, although
probably in Christian times. The bestiary claimed to give information, and some of it did
in fact go back to Pliny. But the greater part was based on legend and folklore. For
example, a drawing in a MS. in
the University Library
in Cambridge shows the eagle flying
up to the sun in order to burn away its old plumage and the film over its eyes, after which
it can take a rejuvenating plunge into the sea. No bestiary is complete without the
famous scene of sailors anchoring on the back of a whale which they had mistaken for
an island. Another example of the fabulous shows the dog seeing the reflection of its
cake in the water, and losing it in his greedy attempt to get two.