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n this column, The Medieval Chronicle will explore the medieval world of animals, both the kind and the cruel, the practical and the fantastical.   Our primary source of research is a never-before-revealed series of notes discovered in a casket found in the Highlands of Scotland.  Although not signed, the notes seem to have all been written by one person, perhaps the chamberlain of a castle that once stood in the Glen of Balquhidder. Apparently his mistress, the chatelaine, whose name has come down to us only as the Lady Norena, had hired a scrivener known as Magister Gilfrith or Gilfrith Manducantes, to copy a bestiary for her grandson in Edinburgh.  From the tone of his notes, it would seem that the chamberlain was not satisfied with this Gilfrith’s work.

 

To my dear Magister Gilfrith…

Thank you for your kind note telling me that you Scotsmen are not the only ones to have kept ‘pets’. While I am beholden to you for your lengthy explanation of the Romans and their practices, meseems you wrote as though I have never heard of them. One might even think you have not been paying attention to my notes, wherein I described my schooling. As well, I did find it trying that you should wax so long and eagerly about the Roman Golden Age, as though it was so much more exalted than our own times.

It might interest you to know that I, too, have had dealings with these men of New Learning who search for ancient manuscripts – antiquarians they call themselves, Byzantine historians as you dub them, but we men of the sword knew them in Italy as black letter dogs. I have read Aristotle (not, as you imply, had it read to me) with his descriptions of the canis melitei from Malta that Roman women kept in the house with them, just as some of your lords keep gazehounds.

I have, moreover, been to Rome when the workers were digging the foundations for the new St Peter’s Basilica and have seen fragments of the pottery they unearthed. I saw paintings on them of Roman women playing with their Maltese dogs. They looked like small white bits of fluff without head or tail, and reminded me of the Icelandic dogs that, before I left London, every lady at the English court deemed necessary to carry, sometimes in small bags as the Roman ladies were said to do. This, to counterfeit – or, as some might say, to mirror – a Golden Age of bygone days!

But I digress. It is not my function within this castle to pass judgment on any man’s leanings. However, it is my function to ensure that Lady Norena can bequeathe her grandson with the bestiary you are commissioned to write. I take my obligation to mean that I am to ensure you write that which is proper. A bestiary is meant to teach how God created all living beings to be of service to mankind. Dogs whose sole purpose is to be carried by women – nay, who are even bred to be as small as possible so that they do not unduly task their owners in being carried – do not serve mankind, therefore I trust that your eloquence on the pagan Romans and their ‘pets’ will not appear in anything you scribe for this bestiary.

But let us not fight like cat and dog over this point. I noted on my first day that you were working on a page about how the lynx creates amber. Is that page not finished because you lack information? Will this help?

Amber, which serves us as lammas beads and as cups that warn against poison, is called either lapis lyncurium or lyncurius because it is supposed to form whenever a lynx passes water – this you have already depicted in an illustration. What you do not have is that there is question over whether lynx urine is indeed the source of amber. Pliny says not. He says that the Romans called amber succinem meaning ‘sap stone’ because it is made from the sap of trees – but I find this highly improbable. All know that amber was formed by the tears of birds who attended the Crucifixion and wept at the suffering of Our Lord. These birds have served mankind by producing a stone which aids us in curing fevers, blindness, deafness and debility in the joints.


 

This is something Lady Norena’s grandson should know. 

A bird of a different kind – perhaps we can call it a cat-bird, since the gryphon has both eagle head and wings, and lion body – also serves in its way. It builds the nests where is found the emerald, which God gave to Solomon; and amongst its many medicinal applications, the emerald is most efficacious for blinding snakes.Gryphon griffin pic

Snakes themselves, for all their malignancy, also serve. The adamantine stone, the diamond, which (as Sir John Mandeville has said) can mate and form children, can also be found in the jaws of poisonous snakes. Jasper, the stone that can help in cases of nausea, can be found in the heads of adders, just as a precious stone can be found in the head of a toad once you have buried it. Diamonds can prevent insanity, and since the time thirty years ago when the emperor Maximilian sent Mary of Burgundy a diamond ring before their wedding, perhaps it can be said as well that snakes also serve in providing the means for marital concord, the absence of which can cause a form of insanity.

Deer serve as well, making the bezoar stone which is so effective against poison. They eat snakes, and the poison they ingest leaves them through tears, which makes the bezoar stone. Sheep serve by helping to collect gold when their fleeces are held in Mediterranean rivers; and goats serve by helping to make diamonds easier to cut when soaked in their blood.

Ivory is a most useful material, and the animals that provide it – whether they live on the land or dwell in the sea – are all of service to mankind as God has ordained. There is even one kind of sea-bird that, when it dies, dissolves all but its beak to form ambergris that is most useful for headaches and colds, although I have heard that some use it for food and others for perfume. Even the lowly mussel serves, when those that are not fit to eat float to the surface of the water during the full moon to receive the celestial dew that will become a pearl. For all that a pearl is just a pearl, its beauty serves mankind.

So, let us have no more of this heathenish nonsense from a by-gone Golden Age. Let us get to work on teaching this boy the truth about the world around him, as we are being paid to do.

 

Nela Leja is currently re-writing her novel about the death of James III of Scotland.  She attributes her fascination with the Middle Ages to her childhood years spent partly in Cambridge, England. She wrote and illustrated her first book at the age of five.

 

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