Beastly Humans: Liminal Creatures in Medieval Bestiaries

Medieval bestiaries present a fascinating idea of what people of the middle ages believed their world was like.  Combining the “facts” about the animals with moral lessons that could be learned from the animals, bestiaries show different types of knowledge.  However, the factual knowledge was often not very factual.  Non-existent creatures continually appeared in journals and letters of travelers who claim to have seen them, lending credibility to animals that we now see as humorous or monstrous.

Of particular interest to this study are the liminal characters, creatures that are combinations of two other animals.   While some liminal animals were real, such as the giraffe and leopard, their evolutionary descent now seems silly (the giraffe as a combination of camel and leopard and the leopard as combination of lion and pard).   When two creatures were combined into one, often the new animal showed characteristics from both of its evolutionary ancestors.

The tendency to use contributing characteristics becomes particularly interesting in light of those liminal animals that are part animal and part human.  This study will look at how such monstrous creatures present the medieval view of humanity, not just in the morals that follow the descriptions in the bestiaries, but in the very description of the nature of the creatures.  By comparing the descriptions of the centaur, mermaid, siren, manticore and onocentaur to other liminal creatures like the griffon, giraffe and leopard, we can develop a picture of the more monstrous side of human nature.