The hilarious thing about that medieval bestiary thing that’s ALL OVER MY DASH is that real medieval beliefs about animals were like ten times weirder than anything joked about in it.
Like, mice were believed to be clods of dirt that grew legs and a tail.
Worms were also believed to spontaneously generate from dead bodies. No reproduction needed, they just happened.
Bees were a kind of bird, and came out of livestock (oxen specifically.)
Bears were believed to be born shapeless, and had to be “licked into shape” by their mother’s tongue. (Yes, that is exactly where that phrase came from.)
Goat blood was believed to be hot enough to dissolve diamond, even though they had enough goats to disprove this.
Pelicans, supposedly, had terrible tempers and would beat their own young to death, then grieve so intensely that they’d wound themselves and their blood would revive the dead babies.
Seriously, this shit is wild. Look it up. It’s worth your time.
(I’m sorry for hijacking your post, OP, but I got really excited about this and I couldn’t help myself.)
Medieval bestiaries are super fucking weird, there is really no getting around it. I mean, the descriptions above are testimony of that. Let’s take a closer look at the Aberdeen Bestiary (England, c. 1200):
Here is an image of a bear licking her formless cubs “into shape”. The author of the manuscript describes the cubs as “tiny lumps of flesh, white in colour, with no eyes” who regain their shape from the licking of the mother and from cuddling (!). Also, bears apparently heal themselves by eating ants. The more you know.
Dogs get a very long description in the manuscript. Most importantly though, puppies are said to cure “inner wounds”!
Bees, who were in fact considered a kind of bird, are said to have a model society, ruled by a king (which they elected, mind you, this is a bee democracy. a communist bee democracy. wait what?) and possessing multiple armies. They are indeed also born from the corpses of oxen. If you feel like “producing” bees yourself, you can beat calves to death and wait until worms form in their blood. These worms will later become bees. Why not, right?
Aside from “real” animals, bestiaries were often also filled with imaginary ones. (some of these were inspired by classical mythology, such as the Minotaur, Chimera and Cereberus) Examples include:
The Bonnacon, an Asian beast resembling a bull but with horns that curl inwards and the mane of a lion. Don’t chase this bastard, because he will poop dung that burns like fire to defend himself. (also it looks as though it has a tattoo on its upper arm?)
The Dragon, here fighting its mortal enemy: an elephant. Because obviously.
And lastly, meet the Yale! A black horse-like creature with two “unusually long” horns on top of its head, that are adjustable. According to the manuscript, they “move as the needs of fighting require. The yale advances one of them as it fights, folding the other back, so that if the tip of the first is damaged by a blow, it is replaced by the point of the second.” A+ on practicality there.
Bear in mind that in medieval times, nothing happened without a reason and things certainly didn’t get written down without a specific goal. Since most scribes and intellectuals in the (early) middle ages were members of the clergy, the bestiaries make slightly more sense if we remember the moralizing and educating function they had. Allegories and metaphors were basically medieval fetishes and the animal world was a lovely way to teach people about the Bible and about morals.
Slightly more sense that is, overall they’re still WEIRD AS FUCK.
