While a knight methodically chops the heads off a multi-headed dragon (perhaps the hydra, or the Beast of the Apocalypse), two rabbits do mock battle with sword and mace, and a dog sleeps peacefully amid the carnage.

Another dog waits patiently for his master to stop having a symbolic conversation with a strange man she met while out walking her hound and squirrel. Quite what is going on here is beyond me, but perhaps the man, with a suggestive sword sticking out of his side and a very large ring, is proposing to the woman that they merge their menagerie in holy matrimony.

The dog looks amused by all this, but probably just wants to get on with the walk.

The illustration I like most is of the unicorn.

Here we have a spirited unicorn, that despite his wound turns to take on the cruel knight who spears him. Perhaps the unicorn will yet bag himself a knight to hang on his trophy wall. The maiden seems distressed, as well she should be, since she got the beast into this mess in the first place. At least she is gesturing to the knight to stop his attack; maybe the unicorn will spare her when he finishes off his attacker.

Ah, to have Dr. de Hamel’s job…

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 could be better would be if it was printed on vellum, and I think there may not be enough sheep in all of England for that. The colors are wonderful, and the gold backgrounds look like real gold. Everything is perfectly reproduced, down to the finger smudges of long dead readers and imperfections in the vellum. The book is almost the same size as the manuscript. The introduction by Christopher de Hamel is very good as well, explaining the bestiary genre in general, and the manuscript in particular.

Bodley 764 is a typical second family bestiary. In addition to the usual text for the Physiologus, it draws on the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, as well as from Solinus, the Hexaemeron of Ambrose, and Rabanus Maurus. This manuscript is unusual in that it includes the story of the barnacle geese taken from Gerald of Wales. There are 135 miniatures in the manuscript’s 137 folios, all painted with great skill and bright colors. Most of the illustrations have gold backgrounds, something that the facsimile renders very well. The text and illustrations are quite similar to another second family bestiary, Harley MS 4751 in the British Library, similar enough that one was probably copied from the other, a common practice.

The text of Bodley 764 has previously been published in an English translation by Richard Barber (Bestiary: Being an English Version of the Bodleian Library, Oxford MS Bodley 764), which includes good copies of the illustrations (though not as good as the facsimile). Barber’s translation is very readable; it was originally published by the Folio Society in Britain, but has been republished several times since and is commonly available. The facsimile, Book of Beasts: A Facsimile of MS. Bodley 764, is available from the Bodleian or from Amazon or from the David Brown Book Company, where you can see a few more pages from the book.