The so-called Physiologus: problem of its origin.
The problem of an early Christian work entitled Physiologus is no easy one, although much has been written concerning it[2132] and more has been taken for granted. For instance, one often meets such wild and sweeping statements as that “the name Physiologus” was “given to a cyclopedia of what was known and imagined about earth, sea, sky, birds, beasts, and fishes, which for a thousand years was the authoritative source of information on these matters and was translated into every European tongue.”[2133] My later treatment of medieval science will make patent the inaccuracy of such a statement. But to return to the problem of the origin of Physiologus. The original Greek text,[2134] which some would put back in the first half of the second century of our era, if it ever existed, is now lost, and its previous existence and character are inferred from numerous apparent citations of it, possible extracts from it, and what are taken to be imitations, abbreviations, amplifications, adaptations, and translations of it in other languages and of later date. Thus we have versions or fragments in Armenian,[2135] Syriac,[2136] Ethiopian,[2137] and Arabic;[2138] a Greek text from medieval manuscripts, mostly of late date;[2139] various Latin versions in numerous manuscripts from the eighth century on;[2140] in Old High German a prose translation of about 1000 A. D. and a poetical version later in the same language;[2141] and Bestiaries such as those of Philip of Thaon[2142] and William the Clerk[2143] in the Romance languages[2144] and other vernaculars.[2145] The Physiologus has been thought to have originated in Alexandria because of its use of the Egyptian names for the months and because Clement of Alexandria and Origen are supposed to have made use of it. But it is difficult to determine whether the church fathers drew passages concerning animals and nature from some such work or whether it was a collection of passages from their writings upon such themes. Ahrens, who thought he found the original form of the work in a Syriac Book of the Things of Nature,[2146] regarded Origen as its author. In a medical manuscript at Vienna is a Physiologus in Greek ascribed to Epiphanius of Cyprus,[2147] of whom we have just been treating, while we hear that Pope Gelasius at a synod of 496 condemned as apocryphal a Physiologus which was written by heretics and ascribed to Ambrose,[2148] who so closely duplicated the Hexaemeron of Basil. A work on the natures of animals is also attributed to John Chrysostom.[2149] I am not sure whether a Physiologus ascribed to John the Scot in a tenth century Latin manuscript is the same work.[2150]
Does the title apply to any one particular treatise?
The Physiologus is commonly described as a symbolic bestiary, in which the characteristics and properties of animals are accompanied by Christian allegories and instruction. Some have almost gone so far as to hold that any passages of this sort are evidence of an author’s having employed the Physiologus, which some have held influenced the middle ages more than any other book except the Bible. But Pitra’s point is well taken that the Physiologus is one thing and the allegorical interpretation thereof another. In the case of the discordant versions or fragments which he gathered and published from different manuscripts, centuries, and languages, he noted one common feature, that the allegorical interpretation was sharply separated from the extracts from Physiologus and sometimes omitted entirely. This is what one would naturally expect since a physiologus is a natural scientist on whose statements concerning this or that the allegorical interpretation is presumably based and added thereto. But this suggests another difficulty in identifying Physiologus as a single work. The abbreviations for the word in medieval manuscripts are very easily confused with those for philosophers or phisici (physical scientists), and just as medieval writers often cite what the philosophers say or the phisici say without having reference to any particular book, so may they not cite what physiologi or even physiologus says without having any particular writer in mind? In the De bestiis ascribed to Hugh of St. Victor of the twelfth century physici are cited[2151] as well as Physiologus. When Albertus Magnus states in the thirteenth century in his work on minerals that the physiologi have assigned very different causes for the marvelous occult virtue in stones, he evidently simply alludes to the opinions of scientists in general and has no such work or works as the so-called Physiologus in mind.[2152] This is also clearly the case in a fragment from the introduction to a Latin translation from the Arabic of some treatise on the astrolabe, in which we find phisiologi cited as astronomical authorities.[2153] Furthermore, even in works which deal with the natures of animals and which either have the word Physiologus in their titles or cite it now and then in the course of their texts, there exists such diversity that it becomes fairly evident not only that it is impossible to deduce from them the list of animals treated in the original Physiologus or the details which it gave concerning each, but also that it is highly probable that the title Physiologus has been applied to different treatises which did not necessarily have a common origin. Or at least the greatest liberties were taken with the original text and title,[2154] so that the word Physiologus came to apply less to any particular book, author, or authority than to almost any treatment of animals in a certain style.
And to what sort of a treatise?
But of what style? It has too often been assumed that theology dominated all medieval thought and that natural science was employed only for purposes of religious symbolism. Of this general assumption the Physiologus has been seized upon as an apt illustration and it has been represented as a symbolic bestiary which influenced the middle ages more than any other book except the Bible[2155] and whose allegories accounted for the animal sculpture of the Gothic cathedrals and the strange or familiar beasts in the borders of the Bayeux Tapestry, the margins of illuminated manuscripts, and so on and so forth.
Medieval art shows almost no symbolic influence of the Physiologus.
The more recent scientific study of medieval art has largely dissipated this latter notion. It has become evident that in the main medieval men represented animals in art because they were fond of animals, not because they were fond of allegories. Their art was natural, not symbolic. They were, says Mâle, “craftsmen who delighted in nature for its own sake, sometimes lovingly copying the living forms, sometimes playing with them, combining and contorting them as they were led by their own caprice.” St. Bernard, although “the prince of allegorists,” saw no sense in the animal sculptures in Romanesque cloisters and inveighed against them. In short, with the exception of the symbols of the four evangelists, “there are few cases in which it is permissible to assign symbolic meaning to animal forms,” and it is “evident that the fauna and flora of medieval art, natural or fantastic, have in most cases a value that is purely decorative.” “To sum up,” concludes Mâle, “we are of the opinion that the Bestiaries of which we hear so much from the archaeologists had no real influence on art until their substance passed into Honorius of Autun’s book (Speculum ecclesiae, c. 1090-1120) and from that book into sermons. I have searched in vain (with but two exceptions) for representations of the hedgehog, beaver, tiger, and other animals which figure in the Bestiaries but which are not mentioned by Honorius.”[2156]
Physiologus was more natural scientist than allegorist.
These assertions concerning medieval art hold true also to a large extent of medieval literature and medieval science, although they were perhaps less natural and original than it and more dependent on past tradition and authority. But medieval men, as we shall see, studied nature from scientific curiosity and not in search for spiritual allegories, and even Goldstaub recognizes that by the thirteenth century the scientific zoology of Aristotle submerged that of the Physiologus in writers like Thomas of Cantimpré and Albertus Magnus who, although they may still embody portions of the Physiologus, divest it of its characteristic religious elements.[2157] But were its characteristic elements ever religious? Were they not always scientific or pseudo-scientific? Ahrens holds that the title was taken from Aristotle in the first place, and that Pliny was the chief source for the contents. The allegories do not appear in such early texts as the Syriac version or the fragments preserved in the Latin Glossary of Ansileubus. Not even the introductory scriptural texts appear in the Greek version ascribed to Epiphanius. Moreover, in the Bestiaries where the allegorical applications are included, it is for the natures of the animals, the supposedly scientific facts on which the symbolism is based, and for these alone that Physiologus is cited in the text. Thus the symbolism would appear to be somewhat adventitious, while the pseudo-science is constant. It is obvious that the allegorical applications cannot do without the supposed facts concerning animals; on the other hand, the supposedly scientific information can and does frequently dispense with the allegories. We do not know who was responsible for the allegorical interpretations in the first instance. Hommel would carry the origin of their symbolism back of the Christian era to the animal worship of Persia, India, and Egypt.[2158] But we are assured over and over again that Natural Scientist or Physiologus vouches for the statements concerning the natures of animals. Thus the symbolic significance of the literature that has been grouped under the title Physiologus has been exaggerated, while the respect for and interest in natural science to which it testifies have too often been lost sight of.