PHYSIOLOGUS PHYSIOLOGUS, the most common title of a collection of some fifty Christian allegories much read in the Middle Ages, and still existing in several forms and in about a dozen Eastern and Western languages. As nearly all its imagery is taken from the animal world, it is also known as the Bestiary. There can be hardly a doubt about the time and general circumstances of its origin. Christian teachers, especially those who had a leaning towards gnostic speculations, took an interest in natural history, partly because of certain passages of Scripture that they wanted to explain, and partly on account of the divine revelation in the book of nature, of which also it was man s sacred duty to take proper advantage. Both lines of study were readily combined by applying to the interpretation of de scriptions of natural objects the allegorical method adopted for the interpretation of Biblical texts. Now the early Christian centuries were anything but a period of scientific research. Rhetorical accomplishments were considered to be the chief object of a liberal education, and to this end every kind of learning was made subservient. Instead of reading Aristotle and other naturalists, people went for information to commonplace books like those of yElian, in which scraps of folk-lore, travellers tales, and fragments of misapprehended science were set forth in an elegant style for the enjoyment of the general reader. Theological writers with a merely literary training were not in the least prepared to question the worth of the marvellous descriptions of creatures that were current in the schools on the faith of authorities vaguely known as "the history of animals," "the naturalists," and "the naturalist" in the singular number (^i-crioAoyos). 1 So they took their notions of strange beasts and other marvels of the visible world on trust and did their best to make them available for religious instruction. In some measure we find this practice adopted by more than one of the fathers, but it was only natural that the Alexandrian school, with its pronounced taste for symbolism, should make the most of it. Clement himself had declared that natural lore, as taught in the course of higher Christian education accord ing to the canon of truth, ought to proceed from " cosmo gony" to "the theological idea," 2 and even in the little that is left of the works of Origen we have two instances of the proceeding in question. And yet the fact that these reappear in the Physiologus would not suffice to stamp the work as a series of extracts from Alexandrian writings, as parallels of the same kind can be adduced from Epiphanius (loc. cit.) and Ephraem Syrus (Opp. Syr., ii. pp. 17, 130). Father Cahier would even trace the book to Tatian, and it is true that that heresiarch mentions a writing of his own upon animals. Still the context in which the quotation occurs makes it evident that the subject-matter was not the nature of particular species nor the spiritual lessons to be drawn therefrom, but rather the place occupied by animal beings in the system of creation. On the other hand, the opinion of Cardinal Pitra, who referred the Physiologus to the more orthodox though somewhat peculiar teaching of the Alexandrians, is fully borne out by a close examination of the irregularities of doctrine pointed out in the Physiologus by Cahier, all of which are to be met with in Origen. The technical words by which the process of allegorizing is designated in the Physiologus, like ep/^veia, 6ewpia, di/aywyr/, dAAr/yopta, are familiar to the students of Alexandrian exegesis. It 1 Origen, Kel. in Jerem., xvii. 11, " tv TIJ ire pi fauv iffropip" ; Epiphan., Adv. liter., i. 3, p. 274 (ed. D. Petav.), "fa <(>aaiv oi 4>vffioyot" ; Origen, Horn, xvii., in Gen. xliv. 9, "nam physiologus de catulo leonis scribit." "Strom., iv. p. 564 (ed. Potter), i^ yow nark rbv TT;J dXij&t as Kav&va yvwo-TiKTJs ?ra/>a56<rfws <f>vcriooyia, fjLaov dt twoirTda, fK TOV TTtpl KOffnoyovlas ijprijTai yov, ivOtvfe avafiaivowa. lirl -rb has, moreover, been remarked that almost all the animals mentioned were at home in the Egypt of those days, or at least, like the elephant, were to be seen there occasion ally, whereas the structure of the hedgehog, for instance, is explained by a reference to the sea-porcupine, better known to fish -buyers on the Mediterranean. The fables of the phoenix and of the conduct of the wild ass and the ape at the time of the equinox owe their origin to astro nomical symbols belonging to the Nile country. 3 In both chapters an Egyptian month is named, and elsewhere the antelope bears its Coptic name of "antholops." That the substance of the Physiologus was borrowed from commentaries on Scripture 4 is confirmed by many of the sections opening with a text, followed up by some such formula as " but the Physiologus says." When zoological records failed, Egypto-Hellenic ingenuity was never at a loss for a fanciful invention distilled from the text itself, but which, to succeeding copyists, appeared as part of the teaching of the original Physiologus. As a typical instance we may take the chapter on the ant-lion, not the insect, but an imaginary creature suggested by Job iv. 11. The exceptional Hebrew for a lion (layisJi) appeared to the Septuagint translators to call for a special rendering, and as there was said to exist on the Arabian coast a lion-like animal called "myrmex" (see Strabo, xvi. p. 774 ; ^Elian, N. A., vii. 47) they ventured to give the compound noun " myrmekoleon." After so many years the commentators had lost the key to this unusual term, and only knew that in common Greek "myrmex" meant an ant. So the text " the myrmekoleon hath perished for that he had no nourish ment " set them pondering, and others reproduced their meditations, with the following result : " The Physiologus relates about the ant-lion : his father hath the shape of a lion, his mother that of an ant ; the father liveth upon flesh, and the mother upon herbs. And these bring forth the ant-lion, a compound of both, and in part like to either, for his fore part is that of a lion, and his hind part like that of an ant. Being thus composed, he is neither able to eat flesh like his father, nor herbs like his mother; therefore he perisheth from inanition " ; the moral follows. At a later period, when the church had learnt to look with suspicion upon devotional books likely to provoke the scoffing of some and lead others into heresy, a work of this kind could hardly meet with her approval. A synod of Pope Gelasius, held in 496, passed censure, among others, on the "Liber Physiologus, qui ab hsereticis conscriptus est et B. Ambrosii nomine signatus, apocryphus,"and evidence has even been offered that a similar sentence was pro nounced a century before. Still, in spite of such measures, the Physiologus, like the Church History of Eusebius or the Pastor of Hermas, continued to be read with general interest, and even Gregory the Great did not disdain to allude to it on occasion. Yet the Oriental versions, which had certainly nothing to do with the Church of Home, show that there was no systematic revision made according to the catholic standard of doctrine. The book remained essentially the same, albeit great liberties were taken with its details and outward form. There must have been many imperfect copies in circulation, from which people tran scribed such sections as they found or chose, and afterwards completed their MS. as occasion served. Some even re arranged the contents according to the alphabet or to zoological affinity. So little was the collection considered as a literary work with a definite text that every one assumed a right to abridge or enlarge, to insert ideas of his 3 Cp. Leemans on Horapollo, i. 16, 34. 4 Including the Apocrypha. See the Icelandic account of the ele phant, also a decidedly Alexandrian fragment upon the /j.dpyos, founded upon 4 Maccab. i. 3, which has got into the scholia upou the Odyssey,
xviii. 2 (ii. p. 533, ed. Dindorf, Oxford, 1855).