Bestiaries are medieval collections of zoological articles (with illustrations), in which various animals were described in detail in prose and verse.
Bestiaries constituted a special genre in medieval literature, combining the features of a natural science composition and a theological treatise.
Their character corresponds to the medieval view of nature, which combined the inquisitiveness of the mind with feelings of amazement and horror from unknown forces and phenomena; they represent a harmonious mixture of scientific knowledge with fabulous legends and symbolic interpretations. Animals, plants and stones are outlandish creatures, full of magical powers and a mysterious relationship to humans.
In the bestiaries, one could learn about the basilisk, griffin, mermaid, manticore, salamander, anthropophagous, psoglavtsy and others. Including such bizarre marine life as the Sea Monk and the Sea Bishop.
Sea bishop
According to legend, this creature lived in the Baltic Sea. The birth of this legend dates back to the 16th century. According to the surviving descriptions, the sea bishop resembled a large scaly fish with sharp lateral fins and a fin on the back, supposedly so wide that the fish could use it instead of a cloak, and a sharp crest on the head, reminiscent of an episcopal miter, for which this creature got its name.
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According to legend, the sea bishop first fell into the net of Polish fishermen in 1433. The outlandish creature was delivered to the king.
The sea bishop was addressed in Polish and Latin, but he was silent in response, sadly looking at the people with large transparent eyes.
At the same time, he refused any food and grew sickly before our eyes. In the end, he allegedly managed by signs to beg the bishops to let him go to sea.
The bishops with great difficulty managed to persuade the king, and finally the grateful creature, overshadowing those around him with a cross, disappeared forever in the waters of the Baltic. Another naval bishop was allegedly caught from the net already in Germany in 1531, but lived in captivity for only two days. It was he who was portrayed by Konrad Gesner in his "History of the Animal Kingdom". It is assumed that the sea bishop is actually a giant manta ray (stingray), indeed with a head ridge and wide fins.
Imagination can easily make her resemble a person. However, mantas are not found in the Baltic Sea, but in tropical waters.
Then what kind of creature was it really?
Sea monk
The sea monk lived somewhere in the northern seas. The stories about the “sea monk” have been known since the early Middle Ages.
This is how, for example, the creator of the first “natural history” in German, Konrad of Megenberg (1349), characterizes the extraordinary “fish”:
The first time the monster, described as “a fish resembling a monk with a shaved tonsure in a hood,” was thrown onto the Danish coast during a storm in 1546.
Around 1550, the "sea monk" was caught in fishing nets near the city of Malmö (Sweden). And again she was caught in the net in Denmark, as evidenced by Arild Hwitfeld reports in the "Chronicle of the Danish Kingdom":
The “fish” was not too rare, and from time to time it was caught in the net along with herring. The specimen, caught in 1550, was kept as a "curiosity" in the basements of the royal castle in Copenhagen, where it was found and sketched for his "History of Animals" by Konrad Gesner in Zurich (1516-1565).
Comparing these drawings with the old descriptions of the "monster", Professor Steenstrup came to the conclusion that we are talking about a ten-tentacled cuttlefish, usually painted in black and red tones, with suckers and warts on the skin and suckers on the tentacles, which can easily be mistaken from a distance for scales.
Thus, apparently, the “sea monk” is a legend that arose from the usual error of perception - the subconscious “painting” of the unfamiliar to the acquaintances.
Cryptozoologist Bernard Heulmans, for his part, wants to see a walrus in the "sea monk".
There is also an opinion that identifies the “sea monk” with a giant stingray, in Germanic countries called “monk fish” or with a gray whale.
