What is it about?
Medieval bestiaries, a type of illuminated manuscript especially popular in England during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, are celebrated for their lively descriptions and images of various beasts, birds, fishes, reptiles, plants, and stones, both real and imaginary. The Christian compilers of these books aimed to showcase the wonder and diversity of Creation, and to teach readers how they could look to Nature for moral instruction believed to have been ‘written by the finger of God’. This article explores the medieval theological and 'scientific' significance of insects to explain why these tiny creatures were given such distinctive treatment in the bestiaries and other types of illuminated manuscripts.
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Why is it important?
By exploring medieval artistic and literary treatments of insects, this study highlights relationships between two types of illuminated manuscript previously assumed to be fundamentally opposed to each other: bestiaries, books of Christian moral instruction; and medieval encyclopedias, works of 'science' based partly on empirical observation. More fundamentally, it calls attention to the importance of insects in a medieval Christian worldview.
Perspectives
I hope this article inspires people to think about relationships between art and nature, and to appreciate the incredible beauty and diversity of the insects we see all around us.
Debra Strickland
University of Glasgow
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Insects in and around the Bestiaries, July 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004734937_010.
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