Some of you may know how fond I am of the ancient and medieval bestiaries. From Aristotle to Isidore of Seville to Aberdeen, I love reading the ancient descriptions of animals, seeing the illustrations in the manuscripts, and reading the allegorical Christian interpretation. The Christian bestiaries give such a great sense of the awareness the ancients and medievals had of Christ being the center of cosmology. That awareness is closer to reality. After all, he is the first born of all creation.

I found online today a project which reproduces online the Physiologus among other works. The Physiologus is a very ancient bestiary from which many medieval bestiaries drew. It’s definitely worth it to check out the facsimile of the Physiologus.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 5:14 PM and is filed under latin, links, photographs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.