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Weird medieval manuscripts2/25/2023 The photo will be featured in the Interactive Album of Medieval Paleography, a collection of transcription exercises intended to help train students and amateurs in the practical aspects of reading manuscript texts-especially how to decipher medieval handwriting. " could perhaps encourage at least one researcher to dedicate more time to the history of Dubrovnik, its immediate Hinterland (Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia), and the wider Mediterranean region." While it makes for an interesting cat meme, Filipović hopes the photo will move beyond a fun find and inspire more interest in the medieval Mediterranean. In the course of his research-which Filipović started in 2008-he's come across small doodles, strange fungi, elaborate decorated initials, holes presumably drilled through the manuscripts by worms or other pests, and even carefully crafted watermarks. But the more time spent scouring manuscripts, the better the chances of stumbling across oddities. "It's not very often that a researcher can come across curious things while sifting through monotonous and dull archival registers," Filipović said. "I never could have imagined the attention that those prints would subsequently receive," Filipović wrote in an email.įilipović sent the photo to fellow historian Erik Kwakkel via Twitter in September 2012, but it wasn't until earlier this year that the paw prints saw a flurry of reblogging, retweeting, and sharing. Filipović, a teaching and research assistant at the University of Sarajevo, discovered pages of the book stained with the inky paw prints of a cat and snapped a picture-something he planned on sharing with colleagues and students for a laugh. While thumbing through the medieval manuscript in July 2011, Emir O. But perhaps no other feline has walked through history in quite the fashion that a Mediterranean cat did when it left paw prints across the pages of a 15th century manuscript from Dubrovnik, Croatia (map). You can explore the whole menagerie at The Medieval Bestiary and in Janetta Rebold Benton’s book The Medieval Menagerie: Animals in the Art of the Middle Ages (New York: Abbeville Press, 1992).From ancient Egyptian religions to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat" to the latest I Can Haz Cheeseburger meme, felines, literature, and culture have enjoyed a long love affair. The medieval bestiary may seem naïve to modern viewers, but it’s still a great source of delight and can inspire imagination. If an elephant could exist with massive ears and a long trunk, why not also a phoenix, who resurrects itself from its own ashes and makes such a great Christian allegory?Ī Phoenix, c 1270, The Bestiary, The J. Medieval bestiaries also include many creatures that are just plain fiction, because people had no way to distinguish between the mythical and the merely exotic. It’s no wonder then that medieval representations of crocodiles look more like wolves or lions than reptiles.Ī Crocodile, c. Most medieval Europeans, including bestiary creators, had never encountered creatures native to other lands, so they had no idea how such animals would look or act. Such tales could hardly be reliable, which is perhaps why bestiaries included animals like the bonnacon, which was thought to fling its own flaming poop in self-defense.Ī Wild Boar a Bonnacon, c. Legends, folk beliefs, and travel accounts were the main sources of information. That’s because bestiaries weren’t based on scientific observation, a concept that didn’t even exist in the Middle Ages. Turn the pages of a medieval bestiary, and you’ll encounter creatures, illustrations, and statements that would definitely surprise any zoologist today. On the other hand, the monkey had strongly negative connotations, and its lack of tail was seen to parallel the devil’s lack of Scripture.Ī Monkey, c. This was good since it was an allegory of Christ’s Resurrection. For example, the pelican was believed to peck its own breast to resurrect its dead children with its own blood. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA, USA.Īnimals could have positive or negative attributes. So, the medieval bestiary attributed traits to animals and then made Christian moral lessons from them.Ī Pelican Feeding Her Young, c. All of these texts contained moralizing allegories about animals and other features in the natural world. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA, USA.īestiaries were based on an early Christian text called the Physiologus and works by Herodotus, Pliny the Elder, Isidore of Seville, Aesop, and others. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA, USA.Ī Crocodile and a Hydrus, c. It’s full of unusual information and charming illustrations about a variety of creatures. A medieval bestiary is a book about animals. Of all the medieval manuscripts, bestiaries are definitely the most fun.
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