May you have the confidence of a medieval bestiary artist drawing an animal he has never seen, never will see, and hasn’t got the slightest idea of what it looks like
May you have the confidence of a medieval bestiary blogger posting animals from renaissance paintings they've never looked into, never will look into, and haven’t got the slightest idea of what a medieval bestiary even is
“marginalia”
hey @feminist-mina-harker please elaborate on the chameleon bestiary rant
Okay, since you asked for it, here is the chameleon bestiary rant.
This is a chameleon from a lavish thirteenth-century bestiary, Bodley MS 764, produced in England c. 1240.
'Haha', you say, 'look at those idiot scribes! They drew a rainbow horse instead of a lizard!'
That's when I hit you over the head with a baseball bat and tell you to shut your fucking mouth.
Because of course this illuminator had never seen a chameleon--the vast majority of chameleon species live in sub-Saharan Africa, with a few in Asia and one in the southernmost part of Europe. Only a very few people had the ability to travel extensively during this time, and it was extremely risky to do so even if you were one of the tiny percentage who had the means.
Instead, they relied on descriptions--written, not verbal--from the few people who had traveled, such as this one:
'The chameleon is not all of one colour, but is multi-coloured, like the pard. It is able to vary the colours of its body very easily, whereas the bodies of other animals cannot readily be changed in this way. The chameleon-pard is so called because while it is like the pard in having white spots, its neck is like that of a horse, its feet like those of an ox, but its head is like that of a camel.' (Richard Barber, 1992, pp. 67-68)
'But Lucy,' you would say, had you not been thoroughly concussed with the baseball bat, 'chameleons don't look like leopard-horse-ox-camel hybrids! That's crazy!' And if you had said this, I would beat you over the head again, and say yes they do, if you think about it for more than thirty seconds.
Let's start with the first part of the description: 'it is like the pard in having white spots.' You see those little white spots around that central stripe? Check.
Second: 'its neck is like that of a horse.' That dorsal ridge is pretty reminiscent of a mane, and when they stretch their necks, you can see the resemblance to the musculature of a horse:
Check.
Third: 'its feet like those of an ox.' You see those bifurcated toes, and the tiny claws at the end of them? That's an extremely distinctive feature of chameleons, and well worth describing. You know what other animal has bifurcated feet and would be very familiar to the medieval people back home in England? An ox, with cloven hooves:
Look at the claws at the end of chameleon toes and tell me you don't see the resemblance. Check.
Fourth: 'its head is like that of a camel.' This one's a little confusing until you remember that some camels have heads with prominent ridges/bumps, like this:
Looks like a smaller version of the crest on our second lil chameleon, no? Check.
'But Lucy,' you'd interrupt again if you still had all your teeth, 'that might explain the description, but not the drawing--they got it all wrong!' To which I would reply that the description was all these illuminators had. They couldn't have conversations with the travelers directly to gather what exactly they meant by 'feet of an ox' (bifurcated) or 'head of a camel' (crested)--they only had the words themselves.
So you end up with this image, which very much does have the white spots of a leopard, the neck of a horse, the feet of an ox, and the head of a camel.
And since they didn't have any other guidance as to size, body shape, tail, etc., they improvise those based on the animals the description said it resembles--the body shape of a horse, the tail of an ox, etc.
In conclusion, don't be mean to medieval illuminators. They were not stupid, they were not overconfident; they were simply doing the best they could with the information that was given to them.
And if you have a problem with that, my baseball bat is always ready.
Okay, I really feel I should step in and say something. Much as I appreciate this defense of the artist, I must address the elephant in the room. Or rather, the giraffe. foreshadowing
First off, as I've discussed before on this very weblog, bestiaries were not based on traveler's tales. They copied and paraphrased previous authoritative Classical works, with additions, omissions, and alterations creeping in as copies were made of copies. In the case of MS Bodley 764, the primary sources were an earlier bestiary and On the Nature of Things by Rabanus Maurus, along with Gerald of Wales, Hugh of Fouilloy, and Peter of Cornwall as other sources. Meanwhile, the bestiary's obsession with finding the etymology of names is a holdover from Isidore of Seville, another major source. And ultimately all bestiaries owe their existence to the Physiologus (Barber, 1993).
And things got confusing! Because as mentioned, the process of copying and rewriting previous authors led to all sorts of confusion. I've already talked about how a sea monster evolved from Aristotle's account of the elephant filtered through a Latin translation from an Arabic translation from the Greek.
Classical authors were well aware of what chameleons look like. Aristotle talks about the chameleon having a lizard's body, with descending ribs and a backbone that sticks up like a fish. He describes its face as apelike, its tail as long, its feet as divided into two parts - in fact, he goes into detail about how the feet have five toes, with the ones in front having three in and two out, the ones in the back having three out and two in. He even describes the chameleon's bizarre turreted eyes (Aristotle, 1862). Hm, I should look into a newer translation of Aristotle, come to think of it.
But that's not the point. The point is that at least as far back as Aristotle, people knew what a chameleon looked like. Above is the chameleon Aristotle would have been familiar with, the common chameleon (the chameleon posted further above is from Madagascar). I guess you could say the spots look leopardy? Either way, the description still seems... wrong.
Let's take a look at it then. There's something fishy about it. Don't worry, I'll highlight it.
"The chameleon is not all of one colour, but is multi-coloured, like the pard. It is able to vary the colours of its body very easily, whereas the bodies of other animals cannot readily be changed in this way. The chameleon-pard is so called because while it is like the pard in having white spots, its neck is like that of a horse, its feet like those of an ox, but its head is like that of a camel. It is a native of Ethiopia." (Barber, 1993, pp. 67-68)
What gives? What animal are we talking about here, a chameleon or a chameleon-pard? And why does it live in Ethiopia? We just said chameleons are found in Europe!
And this is where it starts to make sense. These are two separate accounts, one about a color-changing animal called a chameleon and one about an Ethiopian animal called a chameleon-pard. You probably know it by another name.
That's right, the giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis). See, the name's right there! Because it was seen as having spots like a pard/leopard (that's another thing to discuss) and otherwise camel features! These are two different animals!
The last piece of the puzzle comes from the source of this information. In this case, Bodley 764 copies almost verbatim from Isidore of Seville.
"The chameleon (chamaeleon) does not have one color alone, but is speckled with a diverse variety like the pard. It is named thus... The small body of the chameleon changes with a very easy transformation to whatever colors it may see, while the larger body size of other animals is not as suited to an easy transformation. The giraffe (camelopardus) is so called because while it is speckled with white spots like the pard (pardus), it has a neck like a horse, ox-like feet, and a head like a camel (camelus). Ethiopia produces this animal." (Isidore of Seville, 2006, p. 252)
And there you have it. Isidore of Seville describes the chameleon and the giraffe in sequence. Our bestiarist followed his lead, but took "camelopard" to be "chameleon-pard". And, as far as I can tell, the artist either treated them both as the same animal, or just illustrated one of them (the chameleon-pard).
Either way, this confusion of the chameleon with the camelopard/chameleon-pard led to, for instance, this depiction of the chameleon in the Ortus Sanitatis, accessed here.
On the other hand, other sources give us a more reptilian chameleon, such as Valenciennes 0320 (Cantimpré's Liber de natura rerum, accessed here).
References
Aristotle, Cresswell, R. trans. (1862) Aristotle’s History of Animals. Henry G. Bohn, London.
Barber, R. (1993) Bestiary. The Boydell Press, Woodbridge.
Isidore of Seville, trans. Barney, S. A.; Lewis, W. J.; Beach, J. A.; and Berghof, O. (2006) The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Not a manuscript, but relevant to our interests (alas we do not have an illustrated bestiary in our collection, but perhaps someday)
