The bee and the ant, teachers of order and prudence
From Ambrose's Hexameron to the Physiologus: why in the bestiaries the bee and the ant were models of community life, chastity, work and wisdom.
Alongside lions and dragons, the medieval bestiaries devoted careful pages to two tiny creatures: the bee and the ant. They were among the animals easiest to observe in daily life, present in monastery gardens and in the fields, and for that very reason they lent themselves to concrete moral lessons. Both represented an orderly, hard-working and provident society, which preachers held up as a mirror of the Christian community and, in particular, of monastic life.
The bee, image of the perfect community
The symbolic fame of the bee has classical roots. Virgil, in the fourth book of the Georgics, describes its orderly state, with its laws, its divided tasks and its devotion to the common good. Ambrose of Milan, in the Hexameron, his commentary on the six days of creation, takes up that portrait in a Christian key: bees have their offspring in common, live in a single house, share work and toil, and choose their king by nature and not by lot.
It was also believed that bees were born without mating, and this supposed chastity made them a symbol of virginity. The Exsultet, the solemn Easter proclamation sung during the vigil, praises the wax of the candle produced by the ‘apis mater’, the mother bee. As for the ‘king’ of the hive, only in the modern age was it recognised that it was in fact a queen.
A legend told in the Life of Ambrose written by his secretary Paulinus relates that, when the saint was a child, a swarm of bees settled on his mouth without doing him any harm, a sign of his future eloquence. For this reason the beehive became one of the iconographic attributes of the bishop of Milan. Many statues of Saint Ambrose still show him this way today.
The ant and its three natures
The ant too has a biblical basis. The Book of Proverbs urges: ‘Vade ad formicam, o piger’, go to the ant, you sluggard, and consider her ways. The Physiologus ascribes three natures to it. Ants walk in line carrying grains; those that have none do not steal them from others, but go and look for them where they are. The bestiary reads in this the image of the wise and foolish virgins of the Gospel parable, who cannot borrow oil from their companions.
The second nature concerns foresight: the ant splits the grains it stores in two, so that the damp of winter will not make them sprout and it will not starve. In the same way the believer must distinguish in Scripture the literal sense from the spiritual one, because the letter alone, according to Saint Paul, kills. The third nature is discernment: the ant tells barley, the food of beasts, from wheat, and gathers only the latter, as the faithful reject heretical doctrines.
Giant ants and industrious bees
Not all the ants of the ancient books were small. Herodotus tells of Indian ants, larger than a fox, which in digging the sand brought specks of gold to the surface. The report crossed the centuries and reappears in various medieval texts among the wonders of the East, alongside the more homely notes on the ants of the fields.
The bee and the ant show an often overlooked side of the bestiaries. Alongside the great Christological symbols, these books offered an ethic of common life, made of work, order, foresight and discernment. It is no accident that monks, who lived precisely in regulated and industrious communities, looked on the hive and the anthill as an image of themselves.