ABSTRACT
Naive and unartistic, fantastical, romantic, and magical, the Physiologus was responsible virtually singlehandedly for blotting out the bright light of Aristotelian science for nearly a thousand years. The Physiologus is a collection of fifty-odd chapters, each of which addresses the behavior or “natural activity” of a particular animal, plant, or mineral. The evocation of the nature of the beast is followed by an allegorical appropriation of that nature in a Christian context, and the story closes with a quotation from the New Testament that sometimes also mentions the beast but more often appeals to the spiritual significance of the whole story. The Physiologus says the panther is poikilos and goes on to describe the seductive sweetness of its breath, which attracts other animals to it. Typically, each story is introduced by a quotation from the Old Testament in which the featured animal is mentioned. Animals indeed seem to be the “shadows of the Gods”, as Carl Jung once remarked.
