“Every Living Beast Being a Word, Every Kind Being a Sentence”: Animals and Religion in Reformation Europe

Helen Parish

doi:10.3390/rel10070421

Abstract

The ability of animals to convey meaning, either sacred or profane, features prominently in the dialectic of natural knowledge and sacred histories. Animals, particularly those that exhibited irregularities of nature, symbolised and revealed God’s wrath and favour, fulfilling a polemical and pastoral purpose in the communication of God’s anger and assiduous care for humanity. The language of readable nature ran through the ancient natural histories of Pliny and Aristotle, the words and images of the medieval bestiaries, and the natural histories and popular discourses of Reformation Europe. In the history of the natural world, ‘God’s great book in folio’, ideas about connections between the written word and human observation, miracles, wonders and providences, were interleaved with theological and biological taxonomies. In so doing, discussions of irregularities and portents in nature expose the conceptualisation of human relationships with the world, with the past, with the present, and with the divine. This article explores the connections between real and symbolic animals, religious, and the plasticity of God’s creation in the natural histories and polemical literature of the Reformation. It explores the multivalent positioning of particular sea creatures as providential signs of God’s continued presence in the world, natural phenomena, and man-made objects, and the ongoing syncretism between natural history, religion, ancient texts and human observation in the dialectic of this period.

Highlights

Bhuant dthoefpGroisdminocfrpehatyisoincaalnedxpdeivriinenecientdeirdvennottiooncscliundtheeawssourmldp, toironims mabeoduiat ttehley ounngdoeirnmginienftlhueernecaelitoyfotfhcereahtaunrdes odfesGcroibdedininctrheeatpioangeasnodf edarivliienrenaintuterarvl ehnisttioornisesianndthaeutwhoorriltda,tivoer ismoumrceedsi.aItnelfyacutn, dsteorrmieisnaebtohuetrtehaeliptyreosfecnrceeaotuf rtehseduensncaritbueradliinntnhaetupraeghesadofaenaerlniedrunriantguraaplpheiastloprrieecsiasenldy abuecthauosreitastuicvhe esxoeumrcpelsa. hInadfatchte, satboirliietys taobocruotssthteheppreesremnecaebolef tbhoeuunndnaraiteusrbael tiwn eneanturerelighiaodusaannednndautruinragl appeal precisely because such exempla had the ability to cross the permeable boundaries between religious and natural explanations. Such narratives could clearly become the stuff of chatter and gossip, and enthusiasm for displays of monstrous fish in the taverns of London perhaps had less to explanations
Such narratives could clearly become the stuff of chatter and gossip, and enthusiasm for displays of monstrous fish in the taverns of London perhaps had less to do with edification than with entertainment
Alexandra Walsham rightly warns against the dangers of exaggerating the extent to which natural prodigies and providences were demythologised in the early modern period

Summary

Introduction

The ‘historia’ of Herodotus encompassed both the human and the natural world, and its acceptance of the didactic purpose of history was not limited to the human past alone This moralised approach to nature that had shaped the content of the medieval bestiaries certainly did not disappear entirely in the early modern period. Gesner’s detailed and descriptive Historia Animalium, for example, was genuinely expansive in its approach and method, and in its aggregation of scholarship from centuries past It was the product of its time, and the complex intersections between literary and cultural communities of writers and their readers, and the personal encounters of the author with the natural world that he had observed (Ogilvie 2006; Kusukawa and Maclean 2006; Azzolini 2017). Recognising the persuasiveness of Ogilvie’s argument that natural histories in this period demonstrated a determination to present an account of nature that was comprehensive and accurate, this article suggests that this approach be tempered by a recognition of the desire of authors whose work grew out of the interaction between animals and religion to present nature as a terrifying and malleable polemical weapon

God’s Great Book in Folio

Conclusions