The History of the physiologus in Early Medieval England

The protean work known as the Physiologus—the word means a person learned in the nature of things—is a description of animals, birds, fantastic creatures, and a few stones and plants, along with allegorical interpretations of their significance. It originated with foundational Greek texts in the second and third centuries, continued through several distinct branches of Latin texts from the fourth century onwards, and was translated and adapted into a host of languages, including Coptic, Ethiopic, Georgian, Slavonic, Syriac, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Provencal, Slavonic, Spanish, and English. It drew heavily on the encyclopedic tradition, especially Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae; influenced a range of genres including sermons, homilies, gnomic aphorisms, Biblical exegesis, natural history, glosses and glossaries, riddles, and exempla; occupied a central place in early medieval monastic and lay pedagogy; and formed the basis for the vigorous bestiary tradition of the later Middle Ages. This book details the textual origins and transmission of the Physiologus in English monastic circles, culminating in the Old English Physiologus, a series of three animal poems in the tenth-century Exeter Book. The author tackles the “titanic research challenge” (p. 19) of sorting out all the versions and their relations, and does so with an impressive mastery of texts and transmissions, ultimately concluding that the Physiologus reached England at an early date and in a specifically configured version.The first of the book's three sections traces knowledge of the Physiologus in the seventh and eighth centuries in England and on the Continent. Among Salvador-Bello's many original claims is that Physiologus texts came to England in the seventh century via the Canterbury school of Theodore and Hadrian, who had likely worked with the primal Greek versions before emigrating to England. The influence of the Physiologus texts can be traced through Biblical commentaries and Latin poetry originating in Canterbury, the Liber monstrorum (650–75), and the work of Aldhelm, especially his De uirginitate and Enigmata (riddles), a number of which draw directly on a Latin version. Aldhelm's Enigma 39 (lion) exemplifies the allegorical method central to the Physiologus: the lion is royal (like Christ's lineage), sleeps with open eyes (Christ's vigilance), is transformed by the sun (resurrection), and is restored by a fountain in old age (baptism).Part II follows the Physiologus into the ninth and tenth centuries, pursuing the claim that a specifically English version of the text originated in Continental monasteries associated with the early English missions and communities. The two principal manuscripts adduced by Salvador-Bello to prove this claim are Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 129 (ca. 800) and Arras, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 636 (last third of the ninth century), both little-known and sparsely studied. Both originate in regions dense in communities associated with St. Boniface's missions or the work of the influential English writer and scholar Alcuin (ca. 734–804). The author strongly argues that a specifically English version of the Physiologus evolved based on Version Y of the Latin text, and that this evolution was part of the standardization of Latin texts in the era of English missions on the Continent. Salvador-Bello proves convincingly that this standardized version was a major source for The Phoenix, the first work in Old English discussed in the book. That poem describes the bird being burned and then reborn from its ashes, a motif original to the Latin Physiologus. Furthermore, the poem's binary structure of description and allegory is obviously inspired by the same format in most Physiologus texts. Part II concludes with the strong and well-supported claim that the Physiologus was one of the canonical texts imported into England as part of the tenth-century Benedictine Reform: the book donations by Æthelwold to the refounded Peterborough Abbey include a “Liber bestiarum,” which was very likely a Physiologus, and its traces are evident in many manuscripts from the English-associated monasteries of Corbie, Reims, and Fleury, mostly in the Anglicizing text based on the Latin Version Y.Part III discusses two versions of the Physiologus from early medieval England: the Latin version in Part III of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 448 and Oxford, Bodleian Lat. Th. e. 9, as well as three poems in the Exeter Book. The “Corpus Physiologus,” dated to the late tenth or early eleventh century, is the only extant complete Latin version from pre-Conquest England. Originating in southern England or Worcester, Part III of the Corpus manuscript contains highly valued school texts by Augustine, Isidore, Prudentius, and others, alongside the Physiologus, again testifying to the work's central and prestigious place in English monastic collections. The learned quality of the other works in the manuscript makes it likely that this text was designed for a school context, and a close examination of the texts in this and related Continental manuscripts leads Salvador-Bello to conclude that the miscellany in the Corpus manuscript “may have been modelled, at least in part, on the Canterbury-school curriculum . . . under the influence of Aldhelm” (p. 268).Like the Old English poetic version, the text in the Corpus manuscript has a three-part structure comprising the three most popular symbols of Christ in the Physiologus tradition: the lion, the unicorn, and the panther. This is an idiosyncratic compilation, selecting three animals from a larger version and then harmonizing them via various characteristics such as beauty and smell. Through a detailed comparison of the symbols, motifs, and structural patterning of the three sections, Salvador-Bello demonstrates the tight organizational structure of the unit, whereby the three chapters are linked via “the employment of parallel ideas, allegorical interpretation, and biblical allusion” (p. 288). She links the text to one of her main theses by showing that the Corpus Physiologus derives from a “revised Y-version,” with some influences from Versions B and C.The book's final chapter examines texts more familiar to most, namely the Old English Physiologus, a series of three poems in the Exeter Book drawing directly on the existing English-inflected Latin versions. In most editions, the poems are given the titles The Panther, The Whale, and The Partridge (although the latter is a misnomer, as Salvador-Bello shows later in the chapter). The Exeter Book was among a group of books donated in 1050 by Leofric, Bishop of Exeter, to the episcopal see there, and the manuscript features in a booklist alongside highly valued Latin texts: Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae immediately precedes it.Bishop Leofric highly valued vernacular literature as one method of monastic and pedagogical revival, and the early date of the poem (ca. 750-ca. 850) leads Salvador-Bello to conclude that the Physiologus “had long ago earned a place in the Anglo-Saxon literary canon” (p. 312). The Old English poet had access to several versions but mostly adheres to the “revised Y version” drawn on by the Laud, Arras, and Corpus texts, solidifying the notion of a specifically English-inflected version of the Physiologus. The panther and the whale were among the most popular animals in the tradition, and the poems expand the traditional allegorical interpretations by deploying themes familiar in English poetry such as exile (the panther is an anstapa, “lone wanderer”), and the comitatus (the panther is also duguða estig, “kind with gifts”).Following the familiar structure of earlier Physiologus entries, each animal gets a description of its nature, followed by a hermeneia or allegorical interpretation of the animal's significance. The panther, gracious by nature, sleeps for three days and then arises, and its fragrance and voice reach all people, symbolically evoking the Resurrection and Christ's evangelical mission. The whale, on the other hand, lures sailors to their death by pretending to be an island and then submerging them, readily interpreted as the devil's seduction and destruction of Christian souls.The third poem in the sequence is incomplete, probably due to the loss of a leaf. The subject is a bird most often interpreted as a partridge, based on the fact that a panther/whale/partridge sequence occurs in some of the most central manuscripts of the Latin Physiologus. The partridge symbolizes the devil, because the female partridge steals other birds’ eggs, but the hatchlings hear their true mother's voice and return to her, like lost souls returning the church. An alternate interpretation of the bird as a phoenix was proposed as early as 1896, and was fully argued by Michael D. C. Drout in Neophilologus 91 (2007). Salvador-Bello builds on Drout's work, noting that the phoenix in the Latin sources, unlike the partridge, matches all the narrative components and symbolism in The Panther and The Whale. Furthermore, since the panther is a Christ symbol and the whale is a demonic symbol, the inclusion of the partridge, another demonic symbol, would create a very unlikely imbalance between divine and Satanic elements in the unit.Salvador-Bello argues her claims and overarching theses systematically and in meticulous detail, showing an impressive mastery of the Physiologus's tangled textual tradition and demonstrating convincingly that a nascent English version was introduced through the Canterbury school of Theodore and Hadrian, developed and flourished on the Continent in English-associated monasteries, was reimported into England where it functioned as a central text in the tenth-century Benedictine reform, and finally emerged in an adaptation in full harmony with English poetic tradition. The book has five useful appendices, including a timeline of the different Physiologus versions and manuscripts, an annotated edition and translation of the Corpus Physiologus, and images from the principal manuscripts discussed in the book. Salvador-Bello has impressively joined careful textual study with religious and literary history, and the book provides a solid basis for further research on the uniquely English transformation of an internationally famous text.