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THE BESTIARY

By M.R. JAMES, O.M., Litt.D., F.B.A., F.S.A.

Provost of Eton College.

Originally published in

Eton College Natural History Society

Annual Report 1930-31

Pages 12-16

Introduction to the Digital Edition

This text was scanned and proofread by Rosemary Pardoe and prepared for

digital publication by David Badke in November, 2003. It was scanned from the

original text.

Author : Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936) was born in Kent, where his

father was curate. James studied at Eton, and then moved on to King’s College,

Cambridge. He became an assistant in Classical archaeology at Fitzwilliam

museum and later lectured in divinity. He rose up the academic ladder at Kings

College to Provost and then Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University between

1913 and 1915. His academic areas of interest were apocryphal Biblical literature

and mediaeval illuminated manuscripts. He edited several books on medieval

manuscriptes for the Roxburghe Club, including, in 1928, Bestiary: Being A

Reproduction in Full of Ms. Ii 4. 26 in the University Library, Cambridge , in

which he set out for the first time the classification system of “families” of

medieval bestiaries, a modified and extended version of which is still in use. His

output of learned books was prodigious, and the ghost stories for which he is now

chiefly known formed only a tiny part of his busy life.

published by Eton College Natural History Society in 1931 is believed to be in

the public domain under Canadian copyright law. It may or may not also be in

the public domain under the copyright law of the United Kingdom and the United

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The page numbers shown in this edition (at the bottom of each page) do not

match the page numbering of the original printed edition. The original page

numbers have been added to allow references to the print edition to be located;

the number indicates the start of the print edition page. These page numbers

appear imbedded in the text, formatted like this: [27] .

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THE BESTIARY

By M.R. JAMES, O.M., Litt.D., F.B.A., F.S.A.

Provost of Eton College.

A popular picture book in the days of my youth was somebody’s Anecdotes of

Animals , of which I do not remember much more than that it was illustrated with

woodcuts, perhaps by Birket Foster, and that it besought us to note what valuable

lessons for the conduct of life we might receive from imitating the fidelity of the

Dog or the intrepidity of the Titmouse, and, doubtless, by shunning the voracity

of the Pig.

Such a picture-book our medieval ancestors also possessed, and it was called

the Bestiary. But, of course, the Bestiary was not a neatly-printed book in

English, bound in purple cloth and illustrated with woodcuts. It was current in

manuscript only; it was (usually) written in Latin and its pictures were either in

gold and colours or in outline; or else it had no pictures at all—but with the

unillustrated copies I am not concerned. The Bestiary is essentially a book of

Anecdotes of Animals : but the anecdotes are of two kinds. One kind drew

valuable lessons from the habits of the creature, the other only described it. The

first kind of anecdote was taken from a much older book than the Bestiary, a

book written in Greek either in Syria or Egypt as early as the third century and

called Physiologus . This book again went back a long way: it took its statements

largely (as have been recently shown) from a Greek writer called Bolos, and

upon these statements it grafted its moral and religious lessons. Broadly

speaking, I believe none of the statements are true, but the morals drawn from

them are doubtless unexceptionable.

Now Physiologus was translated out of Greek into several Eastern languages—

Syriac, Ethiopic, Armenian and Coptic—and also into Latin, and some of the

Greek and Latin copies had pictures. Early in the twelfth century, or perhaps

even in the eleventh, someone (in England, as I believe), had the bright idea of

enlarging Physiologus : he took over its text and its pictures, and added to them

more pictures and more descriptions, which latter he borrowed principally from

three writers who were greatly thought of in his time. These were, first and

foremost, Isidore of Seville (d. 636) who wrote an Encyclopaedia in twenty

books embracing all manner of topics, and included in it two books on Natural

History. Next, an earlier writer, Julius Solinus, who compiled (largely out of

Pliny’s Natural History) a book on Remarkable Things and Places—treating of

History, Geography, and Natural History. Lastly, St. Ambrose, whose book on

the Six Days of Creation contained a number of edifying stories about beasts,

birds, and fishes.

The Bestiary, thus constituted, had a very considerable vogue. The whole

book, or selections from it, was turned into Latin verse, French prose and verse,

German, Provençal, Welsh, Icelandic [13] and, for what I know, Irish, as well

as other western languages. The Latin text was taken hold of by

successive editors and rearranged and amplified. But, not to make the

longest possible story of it, its time of greatest success was in the twelfth

century, and its attractiveness at that time lay in the fact that it was a

popular picture-book—popular, that is, among such as could afford to

pay for a picture-book of any kind. I think that most of those who owned

an illustrated Bestiary were connected with the Church. That is certain in

the case of half a dozen fine copies, and probable for more. Consequently

it was preserved in places where a number of people would see it, and

again consequently many could take ideas from it which they used in the

decoration of churches and other buildings. Many a carving which you

may see on the arches of Norman doors, or the capitals of pillars, or on

the folding seats of stalls in churches (called misericords, not misereres)

or on the ends of benches, owes its existence to the Bestiary, whether it

be a mermaid or a centaur or an elephant with a castle on his back, or a

tiger chasing a huntsman. Hence, too, came a great deal of the imagery of

heraldry, dragons, giraffes, unicorns, antelopes, wyverns (the same word

as vipers, by the way), eagles, pelicans, phoenixes, and even hedgehogs.

Each of these creatures has some prowess or virtue which fitted it to be

the cognisance of a warlike house, or a noble clan. So the Bestiary be

said to be still with us, in a manner of speaking.

But all this time hardly anything has been said as to what the Bestiary

contains. Some samples of this must be given, chosen rather at random, but with

an eye upon the general arrangement of the work, which is of this sort. A well-

appointed one of the standard type treats first of all of Wild Beasts—Lion, Tiger,

Griffin, Panther, etc., then of Tame—Horse, Cow, Sheep, Dog, and so on; then of

Birds, beginning with Eagle and ending perhaps with Bee; then of Reptiles, and

Fishes, and Trees and Man, the last two sections being unimportant because they

never have any pictures.

In all the earlier sections a number of chapters are taken from Physiologus , as I

said. All these have morals attached to them; and I have already remarked that no

one of Physiologus ’ statements is true. The matter that is taken out of Isidore and

the others has no moral, usually; and since many of the creatures described were

common objects of the country, what is said of them is not always incorrect, and

is therefore, I fear, the least interesting part of the book. Nearly all that can be

called sensational comes from Physiologus . Still, the Bestiary has some notable

James - Bestiary - eton.pdf

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