ABSTRACT
Wolfgang Franzius, writing in his 1612 Historia Animalium Sacra, notes certain analogies between the habits of scholars and those of bears. A bear, as any Renaissance naturalist would know, gives birth to a mere fleshy lump, which it must then lick into the shape of a cub. Franzius observes the equivalent practice in ‘scholastic and Philosophical life … thus it is most commonly amongst scholars, the first thing that is put out is not so polite and well digested as the next is’. Having ‘discovered’ the analogy, Franzius goes on to locate nine other similarities between bears and scholars (all instantly recognisable), for example: ‘as a Bear loveth Caves and Dens, thus scholars love retiredness and secrecy’. ‘As a Bear when he is tyed to a stake, will still be walking round it; thus the Scholar delighteth to be in his study and among his Books, spending all his time there’. He notes that the Bible compares bears to the Persian monarchy, and on this basis he embarks on a crop of analogies to demonstrate the ways in which this is true. Bears are said to suffer frequently from sore eyes, for example, so the Persians lack ‘insight’, having ‘very little skill or insight in Military affairs’.1 Every aspect of the bear’s natural history – its hunting, its reproduction, its anatomy and its habitat – is subject to such allegoresis. This systematic patterning deploys analogies as apparently reliable categories of thought, even if the resemblances that Franzius creates are not always characterised by their utter clarity. Comparing frogs to Jesuits, he notes ‘If a Frog be set upon a Golden Stool, it will leap off from it into the mud. Thus, Jesuits brought to the Scripture, will betake themselves to Philosophical arguments … Frogs do not love wine but had rather drink water: thus the Jesuits do tell us that the Scripture is ambiguous’.2 Franzius’ natural history ranges over a bewilderingly wide field, finding endless emblematic and moral purposes to the animals he explores.
