ABSTRACT
The lore of beasts, birds, and fishes provided a rich and enduring popular source of Christian allegory throughout the Middle Ages. As early as the fifth century, a scholar now known only as Physiologus prepared an allegorical bestiary in Greek, and his work was subsequently imitated throughout the western world. The Old English bestiary contained in the Exeter Book (ca. 970–80), though fragmentary, is typical of the tradition; it demonstrates that the panther betokens Christ, the whale betokens the devil, and the partridge betokens God. For the Norman aristocracy Philipe de Thaun produced a much more extensive Anglo-Norman Bestiaire (ca. 1125), which was soon followed by other Anglo-Norman versions. The bestiary excerpted here is the only extant example of the genre recorded in Middle English. It is based on a Latin adaptation composed in the eleventh century by Theobald the Italian and contains 802 lines.
