Item 8: Bestiary

The layout of this manuscript is characteristic of the scientific manuals and encyclopaedias produced by monasteries in the 12th century for the instruction of their members. Both script and images are economically contained within two columns on each page. In contrast to the full-bodied paintings that often transformed later bestiaries into splendid picture-books, the unframed illustrations in this manuscript consist of deft pen-and-ink drawings, which are heightened with coloured washes. These instructive images, based on descriptions that include both physical characteristics and moralisations, were often applied to other books and contexts.

Reference to the elephant’s intellectual capacities and its prodigious memory, for example, are combined with an historical allusion to its use in warfare in a musical diagram in Boethius’ De Musica, which is displayed next to the Bestiary. This diagram sums up the theoretical analysis of the preceding musical section. Its function as an aide-memoire is thus adroitly emphasised by the bestiary embellishment.

The bestiary image of the elephant on its back invites comparison with a mid-13th-century drawing by Matthew Paris of the elephant presented to Henry III and put on show for some time at the Tower of London. An illustration of this elephant also appears in the exhibition in the Chronica Maiora of Paris. The bestiary illustration refers to the belief that elephants, once they fell, could not get up, as they had no joints in their legs. However, the drawing from life by Matthew Paris shows a beast with well-articulated joints. It nevertheless appears that this more recent scientific knowledge, gained by one historian and illustrator from first-hand experience, did not greatly influence later bestiary illustrative traditions.