ABSTRACT
Medieval bestiaries were encyclopaedias of the beasts of the world, all of which were put on Earth by God to educate Man about the scriptures. Every animal carried a message, which Man could read from its behaviour and appearance, while looking to the bestiaries for guidance. Since the moral teachings that were deducted from the observation of animals had to be readily available to people, the bestiaries would primarily be dealing with creatures that the readers encountered on an everyday basis. After all, ‘what is the good of a lesson that can only be taught by hearsay, relating to a beast that no one has seen in the flesh?’ (Barber 1993: 10). Fantastical creatures were therefore rare inhabitants of the pages of bestiaries, since they roamed fabled territories where few had gone (Barber 1993). This did not mean, however, that monsters had nothing to tell, merely that the messages of monsters were slightly different from those of animals:
[t]he Latin etymology of the term … monster/monstrum is primarily an object of display … Saint Augustine argued that monstrum is synonymous with prodigum, and thus the monster de-monstrates God’s will, which may or may not be a positive thing. Monstrum can in fact also be associated with moneo, which means to warn. (Braidotti 1996: 135–6. Emphasis in original)
