While this middle-english Bestiary ostensibly seeks to unfold theological truths

through the description and analysis of the behaviour of its animals, I will suggest
that the text also reveals a self-aware concern with the problems involved in such a
cataloguing of animals, and the use of analogy for the purpose of religious teaching
in general.
There is a strikingly formulaic and repeated treatment of certain animals in this
text in regards to their dwellings or hiding places. The spider, waiting to catch a fly,
hides itself "in hire hole" (471). The fox takes the goose by the neck "to hire hole"
(394). The ant stockpiles grain for the winter "in hire hule" (253). There seems to be
an eagerness in the text to assign to each animal a personally owned space - a
location which becomes a characteristic or attribute of the beast itself, part of the
"kinde" with which the text's analysis is preoccupied. The way the fox returns to its
hole with the goose or the lion escapes safely "to his den" (13) lends a reassuring
sense of order to the animal kingdom, as if each beast is packed into its individual
box.
Clearly this is of great significance to the Bestiary itself. An writer engaged in
the process of arranging and categorising the natural world into a testament to
Christian theology adorned with images of wild animals curling themselves into
regular geometric forms, the idea that the animal kingdom is arranged and ordered
to a great extent before the work commences would seem to affirm the usefulness of
the Beastiary's treatment of it.
An additional significance of the frequent discussions of animals' holes is that it
can be taken as an argument in favour of a more specific part of the bestiarist's
work. Not only does the image of animals tucked away into their various holes serve
as a figure for the bestiary's collection and cataloguing of them, it can also be read
as asserting the appropriateness of using animals as symbols and analogies in order
to mean things. The Bestiary demands, fundamentally, that the reader acknowledge
that an animal can be taken as a signifier, pointing towards meaning outside itself.
The fact that a real physical location can be treated as a characteristic of an animal
makes the reader more likely to accept the truths extracted from remarks on the
animals other characteristics - the oft repeated "kinde", which, in the Bestiaries
serves to bring together nature and meaning. If the Bestiary treats nature like a
language to be translated, the animals' holes and dens give the reader hope for the
correctness of the translation, reassuring him that the words of this language, have a
truth and correctness to them, are natural and god-ordained rather than conventional
and man-made. As sure as the fox runs to its hole, every signifier in the language of
the Bestiary appears to be linked solidly to its signified.
However, the points I have drawn from this observation are far from universally
upheld in this Bestiary. While I have suggested that the image of each animal in its
particular hole suggests an attempt to construct a coherent symbolic language from
the animals that casts nature as a coherent system of natural meaning, there are
many examples of the Bestiary using animals meaningfully in a way that makes it
extremely difficult to place the all the animals side by side in a unified system of
meaning.
As an example, we might compare the presentation of the whale in this text,
with that of the panther. The behaviour of these two animals appears to be very
similar, but the Bestiary turns each one to a completely different allegorical use. The
Whale emits his "onde" (507), a sweet breath scent from his throat, which entices
small fishes into his jaws, but does not attract larger ones. Similarly the "swetnesse"
of the panther's "onde" (753) attracts animals to follow him, but not the dragon,
which resists such attraction. What is strange about these two cases is that the
Bestiary takes what is broadly the same apparent pattern of behaviour in both
creatures, and makes one represent Christ and the other the Devil. The whale and
its sweet scent is the Devil and his temptations. The little fish are the weak in faith,
the easily tempted, swimming to damnation, while the bigger fish are the good
Christians, resistant to the Devil's call. In the case of the Panther though, the
allegorical structure is reversed so that the animal is Christ. The sweet smell is now
the call of Christ to man, and to follow it brings the faithful into "his godcunde" (780)
rather than death. The Devil, is transposed from the role of calling animal to the role
of the resistant creature - he is the dragon that hides from the smell of the Panther,
the word of God.
Clearly, the difficulty here is that the directly oppositional figures assignation to
the two animals seems rather arbitrary. Why could the Devil not be the Panther and
Christ the Whale? Making a comparison between the two prompts one to wonder
what distinguishes the predatory temptation of the Whale from the scent of the
Panther. In fact the text points out that the Panther "fedeth him al mid other der"
(740), only to gloss over what it does with the animals it attracts with its sweet
breath. One is left with the faint idea of that Christ, too, is a devouring predator.
The point I mean to make, though, is not that the Bestiary is a confusing source
of theology. I raise this two-sided inverted allegory in order to point out that these
passages pose a challenge to the view of nature and the role of the Bestiary I have
put forward in relation to holes in the Bestiary.
If my comments on holes suggested that the Bestiary's catalogue of symbol
and allegory was attempting to represent the system of natural meaning that existed
outside of the text, in the animal world itself, then the Whale and Panther cause a
dilemma. The descriptions are so interchangeable before they are interpreted by the
Bestiary that it is very difficult to see these opposing meanings as present in their
natures. Thus, the Bestiary seems like less of a unified language of symbols, and
more a series of allegorical figures which work in different, sometimes conflicting
ways to deliver their meaning. Similarly the animal kingdom is made to seem more
arbitrary - once we question the interpretive work of the Bestiary, both the Panther
and the Whale are stripped of meaning in an almost Darwinian fashion. Christ and
the Devil become two creatures simply contriving to attract prey.
If we broaden the scope of this point, as I did in regards to animals and their
holes in the Bestiary, to suggest a statement about the working of language itself, we
are again challenged. The steady positivism suggested by the aforementioned
compartmentalised hole-dwellers gives way to a less certain relationship between
signifying symbols and their objects. Words are no longer foxes and lions returning
to their holes and dens. The Panther and Whale are potentially interchangeable -
tied to their meaning by convention alone.
Additionally, their passages make further comment on the potential uncertainty
of language. The Panther's breath is glossed by the "Significacio" passage as
representative of "godes word". If langugae is the sweet "onde", then we must be
aware of its temptations, its potential to fool, to provide damnation as easily as
salvation.
I have shown two opposing views of the relationship of nature to meaning, of
the text to nature, of the signifier to the object, both of which are upheld and
explored by passages in the Bestiary. I suggest that this interesting ideological
discussion is driven by two of the forces that combined to produce bestiaries in this
form. A proto-scientific urge for the cataloguing and understanding of patterns in
nature, and the desire to educate about theological truths. Modern science,
separated from religious thinking, has shown us that nature is indeed intricately
patterned and is far from arbitrary. Perhaps these oppositional ideas in the Bestiary
come from a recognition of the possibility of a scientific classification of nature in
dialogue with a culture of religious thought.