[Ansteorra] Bears

Tim McDaniel tmcd at panix.com
Sun Apr 18 12:57:16 PDT 2010


On Sun, 18 Apr 2010, willowdewisp at juno.com <willowdewisp at juno.com> wrote:
> In Christian symbolism a Bear stands for the Devil

Whoever did the Aberdeen Bestiary didn't mention such a thing.
<http://www.abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/translat/15r.hti>

What he did write was that cubs are born unformed and are licked into
shape, that bears know how to heal themselves by applying flomus or
eating ants, that they copulate like humans (unlike normal
quadrupeds), they know how to attack bulls, that bears hibernate right
after the child is born, and a few other things.
<http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast171.htm> quotes other bestiaries, with
some overlap of properties.  "Notes on a Slavic Bestiary",
<http://www.goldschp.net/archive/bestiary.html> says "In period, the
associations were not as general (or as friendly). Rather than being a
jovial child-friendly creature, the bear was seen as gluttonous and
quarrelsome. In one case, the bear was even described as a sodomite."

Which is not to doubt that some other bestiary, sermon, apocrypha, or
whatever said that bears stood for the Devil.  It illustrates, though,
that period ascribing of qualities to beasts is variable.

Daniel de Lincoln
-- 
Tim McDaniel, tmcd at panix.com



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