http://bestiary.ca/chimaera The bestiary blog Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:38:53 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Bestiary.ca is now up to date, if such a phrase is meaningful for a site that deals only with stuff at least 500 years gone. There is a bit more of everything, but mostly pictures - about 300 new ones, some of them spectacular. The best overview of what pictures ... http://bestiary.ca/chimaera/279 Dr. Christopher de Hamel of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, shows us a bestiary (Parker Library, Corpus Christi College MS 22) and the Chronica Majora of Matthew Paris (Parker Library, Corpus Christi College MS 16) to illustrate the medieval view of the elephant.   Ah, to have Dr. de Hamel's job... http://bestiary.ca/chimaera/266 What you see above is the Beastmaster's hands holding a facsimile of a bestiary, MS. Bodley 764, to be exact, from the Bodleian Library. It is my very first full, printed bestiary facsimile, and I am very pleased with it. The reproduction quality is outstanding; the only way the facsimile ... http://bestiary.ca/chimaera/247 I updated the Bestiary site today. If you are wondering why I update so infrequently, well... it's a lot of work! This update is mostly about images, with an addition of about 400 from various sources. I have decided to use whatever images I can get my hands on; previously I ... http://bestiary.ca/chimaera/234 In the middle of the thirteenth century, Richard de Fournival, a French cleric, scholar and surgeon, wrote the Bestiaire d'amour, the Bestiary of love. This fusion of courtly love literature and Bestiary allegorical "natural history" was supposedly written to win the favor of an unnamed woman who Richard was in ... http://bestiary.ca/chimaera/189 Click the image for a larger and higher quality view. The manuscript images used for this illustration have been rudely ripped from their context and mercilessly modified to fit my mad scheme. To see the originals, follow the links below. Credits: Collage, background, other bits - David "Beastmaster" Badke © 2009. Sign (from ... http://bestiary.ca/chimaera/125 This is the second in a series of posts about magical beast parts. Today: the beaver, the hyena, and the lynx. Beavers losing valuable body parts. British Library, Harley MS 4751, Folio 9r Beaver: The beaver is hunted for one special body part, which, we are assured by the best authorities, is required ... http://bestiary.ca/chimaera/103 A living unicorn has been discovered in the Tuscany region of Italy - that is, if you define "unicorn" as a beast with a single horn. Italian unicorn deer. ROME - A deer with a single horn in the center of its head — much like the fabled, mythical unicorn — has ... http://bestiary.ca/chimaera/82 Imagine you are standing in front of a wall. If you look to your left or right, you can see that the wall stretches out far into the hazy distance. On the wall are arranged a series of pictures, all of bestiary beasts. If you move closer, you can see ... http://bestiary.ca/chimaera/55 A surprising number of medieval animals were thought to have a magical body part, or to have a magical object embedded in them, or to be able to produce a magical object. These magical beastie bits were, of course, much sought after, and often doomed the beastie that had them. ... http://bestiary.ca/chimaera/54