Have you ever wondered what the best way is
to catch the unicorn?
I'm a Naomi Speakman and I am the curator for
late medieval Europe here at the British Museum
and welcome to my corner.
Today I'm going to be talking about bestiaries
and the different sorts of mythical and other animals
that you find in the Middle Ages.
Bestiaries are effectively encyclopedias
which give detailed descriptions of different types of animals
and in that we find real ones like lions, bears, camels, doves
and we also find mythical ones
like a phoenix or a basilisk.
So bestiaries as books were particularly popular in England
in the 12th and 13th centuries
but they have their origins in the classical world such as Pliny the Elder
and a book written in the 4th century called Physiologus
In the medieval collection we have
lots of different beasts depicted on our objects.
So for example
the first beast we're going to look at is a unicorn
and here I've got an absolutely tiny pin.
It's bone
you can see it's broken at one end
but what we can see at the tip is the head of a unicorn.
Here it's got its horn and it has a tiny little beard as well.
These sorts of things are quite popular as hair-parters
they are called gravoires
So you'd use it to
I won't demonstrate
but to part your hair
but also some bone ones survive where the back
goes into a tiny spoon
they are my favourite
one of my favourite things
because they are to scoop out your earwax
tiny ear spoons
tiny ear spoons – romantic.
So unicorns in bestiaries are described as horse-like beasts
with a straight horn coming out of their head.
And Pliny the Elder, for example, wrote
that unicorns were impossible to catch.
And the way to catch a unicorn it said
in the Middle Ages
is to put a virgin maiden in the path of the unicorn.
No other hunter is able to catch them
or catch up with them or kill them.
but the maiden has the ability to tame the unicorn
it will lie down on her lap and fall asleep.
So some of the most popular depictions of unicorns
that you see in the late Middle Ages
have a unicorn asleep on the virgin's lap
and unfortunately they're often quite gruesome
because they'll be impaled with a spear
often with a hunter or a knight alongside it as well.
And the symbolic meaning of the unicorn really
is deeply tied to the concept of purity
and it's thought that the horn itself represented
the unity between God the Father and Christ
and that the unicorn
and the description of the unicorn
was related to the immaculate conception of Christ.
Now although unicorns are very pure
and kind of perfect beasts
the centaur had less positive description.
So this tiny tile is one of the series
called the Chertsey tiles.
It's from 13th century England
and our centaur here is running in this direction
but his torso is turned back
and he has a bow and arrow drawn
and crucially he's also been shot through the chest with this arrow
which has gone the whole way through and come out the other side.
There's some debate about whether this depicts Sagittarius or not
but what's important is that in the Middle Ages
the centaur was associated with ideas of hypocrisy
because he's a half-man half-beast
the front of him
the face of him is human
and that disguises the animal side of his nature.
So we find centaurs conflated with ideas of lust, hypocrisy
and the baser side of your nature
and that's why also in manuscript illumination
and other depictions we see centaurs alongside sirens
another half-human half-beast
the siren is the top of a woman and the base of a bird
because they're both lustful creatures.
I think something that we take from understanding
the meanings behind
and the rationale behind these beasts
is that they weren't just there as frivolous decorations
but that there was a deeper meaning behind them
and that deeper meaning
which was at the very heart of medieval Christian society
was the importance of God
and how even with things that look very playful and secular
there was a Christian vein running through it the whole time.
And also I think the connection that medieval people
had to the classical world is deeply important
these books didn't just come out of nowhere
they're drawing on their Greek and Roman forefathers
and that never-ending connection with Greece and Rome
is something that for me
is really important about the Middle Ages.
One of the most famous and commonly used beasts
in the Middle Ages is the Griffin.
I have a really nice example here on this bookbinders tool.
This is English from about 1150-1200
and we don't just see Griffins described in bestiaries
they are all over the place in medieval literature.
One of the most famous examples is in Dante's 'The Divine Comedy'.
Dante writing in the early part of the 14th century
tells of his journey through hell, purgatory and heaven
guided by the poet Virgil.
And in purgatory he witnesses a Griffin pulling a chariot of women
and he describes it that even as the Griffin moved
the feathers weren't even ruffled.
The Griffin is associated with royalty
that's one of the reasons why we see it a lot on coats of arms
because it combines the two kings of the beast world
the eagle and the lion.
Most normal people wouldn't have read a bestiary
purely because most people couldn't read in the Middle Ages
and the places where writing takes place are monasteries
religious environments
that's where scribes are writing and decorating manuscripts
and other than that
university environments
some courts as well
not every King could read or write either
so it's something that only the most learned members of society
would have known about
but people would have seen images of these beasts everywhere.
So people would have known and recognized what they looked like
but they may not have understood the full story
and description behind them.
So when you read a bestiary the first thing that you see
is how God created the world
made the animals and named the animals
and then when we look at descriptions of animals
we also see that they come with a moralizing story.
So underscored the whole way through
is the importance of God in the creation of the Christian and natural world.
So if you want to find some more medieval beasts
why not go to the medieval gallery
where you can see an ivory casket with different scenes from the romances
and on one end is a virgin and a unicorn