L.A.J.R. Houwen

Bestiaries in Wood? Misericords, Animal Imagery and the Bestiary Tradition

Animal imagery on misericords has long since been a favourite topic for research and much work has been done and much progress has been made on the identification and classification of animal scenes. The actual interpretation of animal imagery on misericords is a different matter, however. When such imagery is deemed worthy of discussion this rarely progresses much beyond the inevitable references to the Physiologus and bestiary traditions with their moralised animal lore and well-developed animal iconography. In this paper I shall evaluate the various ways in which such animal imagery can be read and was likely to be read in later medieval times. The paper will concentrate on animal imagery found on British misericords, but its conclusions will be valid for the entire area where such imagery appears. It will be argued that even when traditional iconography is transferred to the misericords this does not mean that it is accompanied by its original (moralised) sense. This, it will be shown, not only holds ...

A Fifteenth-Century French Heraldic Bestiary

The text which is presented here for the first time is taken from manuscript M. 19, one of many heraldic manuscripts in the College of Arms. The manuscript, entirely in French, is written on vellum in an early fifteenth-century French text hand. Like many other heraldic manuscripts, M. 19 is essentially a compilation of shorter treatises, some of which are also found in other manuscripts. One of the editorial problems associated with such compilations is that it is often impossible to delimit the individual items precisely. The text which we have chosen to present (ff.95-130) consists of the largest and in many ways the most interesting clearly delimited subsection of a heraldic treatise, the exact beginning and end of which are not so easy to distinguish. As far äs is known, no other copy of this treatise has survived, but a study of the late fifteenth-century Scots translation shows that at least one other copy must have existed, since some omissions found in M. 19 are not reflected in the Scots text or any of its copies. The work begins with a discussion of the origin and development of the Offices of constable, marshal, captain, herald and pursuivant. This is followed by a treatise aimed specifically at heralds and pursuivants, explaining how they should address emperors, kings, councils and the like when visiting them in their capacity äs couriers. After this comes an outline of the rudiments of heraldry, including