The illuminated English bestiaries: Aberdeen, Ashmole and Rochester

Between the late twelfth and the mid thirteenth century England became the most productive centre of Latin bestiary making. From its workshops came manuscripts in which the text of the Physiologus, by then expanded with passages from Isidore of Seville and other authors, is joined to images painted in intense colours on gold grounds. Three manuscripts, now kept in Aberdeen, Oxford and London, are considered among the high points of this period and show how the bestiary was at once a book of study and an object of prestige.

The families of bestiaries

To find a way through dozens of manuscripts, the English scholar Montague Rhodes James proposed in 1928 a division into ‘families’, based on the order and content of the chapters. The so-called second family, to which the Aberdeen and Ashmole manuscripts belong, is the richest: it exceeds a hundred entries, arranges the animals by category, such as beasts, birds, serpents and fish, and draws heavily on the twelfth book of Isidore’s Etymologies.

Many copies of this family open with scenes from Genesis, in which God creates the world and Adam gives names to the animals. The image is not decorative: it declares that the book means to read creatures as the Creator had conceived them, starting again from the moment each received its name.

Aberdeen and Ashmole, two twins

The Aberdeen Bestiary, kept in the library of the University of Aberdeen as manuscript 24, dates from around 1200. It is famous for its generous use of gold leaf and for some unfinished pages, in which the preparatory drawings and the various stages of the illuminator’s work can be seen. According to scholars, in the sixteenth century it was in the English royal library.

The Ashmole Bestiary, in the Bodleian Library in Oxford under the shelfmark Ashmole 1511, is slightly later and has a text and picture cycle closely related to those of Aberdeen. The resemblance is so strong that a common model or a shared circle of artists has been suggested, although the exact relationship between the two manuscripts is still debated.

Rochester and monastic use

The Rochester Bestiary, in the British Library among the Royal manuscripts under the shelfmark 12 F XIII, is dated to around 1230 and belonged to the Benedictine priory of Rochester Cathedral. Its lively, narrative miniatures show scenes such as the hunting of the unicorn or the whale mistaken for an island by sailors.

Its monastic origin is a reminder that these books were not only luxury objects. In the cloister they served meditation and preaching: an example drawn from nature made a sermon on vigilance, prudence or redemption more vivid. At the same time, the quality of the paintings suggests wealthy patrons, whether churchmen or lay people.

Today these three manuscripts can also be consulted in digital reproduction, and anyone who leafs through them finds, page after page, the symbolic language that filled the English churches of the time. Their value lies precisely in the union of word and image: a knowledge meant to be read, looked at and remembered all at once. Studying them also means understanding how scribes and illuminators worked in a medieval workshop.