Rochester Bestiary

The medieval bestiary ultimately derives from the Greek-language Physiologus, a text whose precise date and place of origin is disputed, but which was most likely written in North Africa sometime in the second or third century.

[4] The most important of the Latin Physiologus translations — the one now known by scholars as the "B Version" — was expanded even further in the twelfth century (most likely in the 1160s or 1170s), with more additions from Isidore, to become the so-called "Second Family" standard form of what now may be properly termed as the bestiary.

[5][6] This text was much longer than the original Physiologus and included in its typical format over 100 sections, distributed among nine major divisions of varying size.

[9] Its principle contents are a bestiary, but it also contains a short lapidary (a treatise on stones) in French prose and, as the flyleaves, two leaves of a 14th-century service book.

[6][10] A complete copy of the Pantheologus, now extant as British Library, Royal MS. 7 E.viii, was located in Rochester in the early 13th century, and may have been the direct source for the bestiary additions.

Detail of a miniature of elephants, which were known to have been ridden into battle in India carrying castles ( howdahs ) on their backs; folio 11v. [ 1 ]
Detail of a miniature of hedgehogs rolling on grapes, sticking them to their spines to carry back to their young; folio 45r.
Detail of a miniature of a unicorn , tamed by a virgin and being killed by a hunter; folio 10v.
Detail of a miniature of a manticore , with the head of a man and the body of a lion; folio 24v.
Detail of a miniature of a crocodile, whose name derives from the Greek for ‘pebble worm’; folio 24r.
Detail of a miniature of a fox, which lures in its prey by playing dead; folio 26v. [ 16 ]
The gaze of a wolf could strike a man dumb, for which the only cure was tearing off the man’s clothes and hammering two stones together to frighten the wolf away, allegorized as casting off sin to drive away the devil; detail of a miniature from f. 29r; folio 29r. [ 17 ]