Beasts and Birds

As the large and growing literature on medieval animals has shown, finding meaning in animal imagery in art and architecture can be extremely complicated. Since animals can be found in so many periods and locations, and in such a variety of sources - decorated initials in liturgical books, for one, but also architecture, fables, bestiaries, and religious texts - it can be very difficult and perhaps even inappropriate to ascribe a single meaning to an animal in any of these sources. Therefore, the next few pages will suggest some of the resonances the eight zoomorphic initials in Plimpton MS 034 may have had with the scribe and the readers at the Brussels convent of St. Clare. 

Beasts and Birds