BESTIARI. – Didactic-moral books of the Middle Ages, in Latin or the vernacular, in verse or prose, containing descriptions of several dozen real or fabulous animals (quadrupeds, birds, fish, and reptiles), with the purpose of making their nature known and drawing from them allegories concerning the relations between man and God, Jesus Christ, the Church, and the devil.
These writings derive from the Latin versions of the Φωτολόγος, but the “properties” of the animals are interpreted not so much from an exegetical, dogmatic, and mystical standpoint as in a moral sense; at times they serve as the starting point for a thesis concerning love, as in Le Bestiaire d'amour by Richard de Fournival of the thirteenth century (ed. C. Hippeau, Paris 1860), also translated into Italian (ed. G. Grion in Il Propugnatore, 2 [1869], pp. 147–79, 273–89, and into Middle French (ed. Holmberg, Uppsala 1925). One of the Latin versions probably predates 386 (cf. F. J. Carmody, Physiologus Latinus, Paris 1939, p. 7). It is certain that in the sixth century a version attributed to St. Ambrose and a Liber de natura bestiarum ascribed to St. John Chrysostom were in circulation.
Among the extant manuscripts, none predates the eighth century. The extensive dissemination of the Latin b. is confirmed by the large number of surviving manuscripts; approximately one hundred were known by 1914 (P. Meyer, p. 365). According to Carmody, most of these manuscripts derive from three translations. Most medieval b. derive from the recension represented by manuscripts AB (edited by C. Cahier, Mélanges d'archéol., II–IV, Paris 1851–56). The work entitled De bestiis et aliis rebus has been attributed to Hugh of St. Victor. The text published by V. Bartocetti (Studia Picena, 1 [1925], pp. 76–102) is to be identified with the metrical recension of the eleventh century attributed to Theobaldus. The twelfth century was the period of greatest development for the Latin b. At the same time, vernacular versions also developed, but their flowering belongs to the following century.
The oldest trace of a b. in a national language is the poetic adaptation of three chapters in eighth-century Anglo-Saxon (A. S. Cook, The Old English Elene, Phoenix and Physiologus, New Haven 1919). The other Germanic b. are more recent: two in Old High German, from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, based on the Dicta Chrysostomi (one edited by F. Lauchert, Geschichte des Physiologus, Strasbourg 1889, pp. 280–99), one Flemish and another Icelandic, preserved in fragmentary form. The most important are the French ones: Le Bestiaire de Philippe de Thann, from 1121 (ed. Walberg, Lund 1900; study by M. Fr. Mann in Anglia, 7 [1884], pp. 420–68, and 9 [1886], pp. 391–450); Le Bestiaire divin de Guillaume le Clerc, from around 1210 (ed. C. Cahier, op. cit.; Hippeau, Caen 1852; Reinsch, Leipzig 1892; study by M. Fr. Mann in Französische Studien, 6 [1888]); Le Bestiaire de Gervaise, from the twelfth–thirteenth centuries (ed. P. Meyer, in Romania, 1 [1872], p. 420 ff.); and Le Bestiaire de Pierre de Beauvais, before 1217 (ed. Cahier).
The Italian b. are a century later. Manuscripts from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are known (ed. Goldstaub-Wendriner, Halle 1892; K. McKenzie-Garver, in Studi Romanzi, 8 [1912], pp. 1–100; M. S. Garver, in The Romanic Review, 9 [1918]), but the Tuscan archetype has not been located. A B. moralizzato, in sonnets, from the thirteenth century was edited by Mazzantini and E. Monaci (Rendic. Accad. Lincei, 4th series, 5 [1889], pp. 718–29); a Waldensian b., perhaps from the thirteenth century, was edited by A. Meyer (in Romanische Forschungen, 5 [1890], pp. 392–418) from a fifteenth-century copy.
In the other Western Romance languages the b. is less well represented, and the first Romanian translation of the Physiologus was made only in 1693. Elsewhere in Europe, what is known is not so much the b. as translations of the Greek Physiologus. For the comparative history of the Slavic Physiologus cf. the study by St. A. Gecev (Sofia 1938).
The influence of the b. on medieval spiritual life was immense. Some were used as school textbooks, as is shown by the glosses inserted into the text attributed to Theobaldus, and by the phrase found in the Waldensian one: car yo non l'ai composta per li savi, mas per enformar alcuni meo scholars. Others were absorbed into the various encyclopedias: De natura rerum by Thomas of Cantimpré, De proprietatibus rerum by Bartholomew the Englishman, Speculum naturale by Vincent of Beauvais, and De animalibus by Albert the Great. The Church made remarkable use of all this in its exegetical, mystical, and moral work, in the liturgy, in the various collections of “exempla,” in certain hagiographical legends, in religious poetry, and in the work of preachers such as Aelfric, St. Peter Damian, Maurice de Sully, St. Anthony of Padua, Orm, Giovanni di S. Gimignano, and many others.
The b. supplied many motifs to European folklore and literature. Certain literary themes transmitted by the b. achieved an almost universal circulation: a typical example is the charming motif of torture. In the artistic sphere, too, with their iconographic types permeated by Christian symbolism, they were the richest source of subjects for medieval sculptors, painters, and miniaturists (v. ANIMALI ALLEGORICI).