'What God has of invisible since the creation of the world lets itself be seen by intelligence through his works'; the idea of ??the medieval Bestiary is already present, in an embryonic state, in this text of Saint Paul, which summarizes in an essential formula the Platonic-Christian conception according to which the sensible world is only a shadow or a reflection of divine realities. Is it possible, however, to go further and to detect, in Christian and medieval thought, theories concerning more specifically animal symbolism, its premises, its modalities? In this regard, the Bestiaries, themselves, do not offer much; at most, a few summary indications, most often located in the titles or the prologues, on the religious meaning that believers must seek in the 'natures' of the beasts. But this or that exegete, this or that ecclesiastical author does not fail to provide us with more extensive and more organic developments on this subject which, since the first centuries of the Christian era, accompany the diffusion of the Bestiaries throughout the Middle Ages, by drawing a doctrinal background from which the study of this literary production cannot ignore. - [Author]

Language: French