The artist Alberto Rossi was executed long and painfully. First, the inquisitors interrogated him with partiality, then using the heretic's fork (four thorns that bite into the victim's chin and neck), then seating him on the cradle of Judas - a kind of pyramid invented by the subject's fellow countryman, Bologna forensic scientist Ippolito Marsili.
And only then, without having achieved confessions from the "blasphemer", he was beheaded, having previously cut off the painter's right, "sinned" hand. What atrocity did this criminal commit? The unfortunate Rossi, who painted the portrait of the pious Venetian doge Francesco Donato, allowed himself, without the consent of the splendid customer, to depict him … against the background of a lion.
The language of birds
In the Western European Middle Ages, starting from about the 13th century, it was believed that any artist, writer, architect should be fluent in the secret "language of birds" and fully understand the symbolism of bestiaries.
Today, looking at old paintings, stucco moldings on ancient castles, enjoying short stories and novels of those years, we sometimes do not even realize that we perceive these works of art only superficially, not knowing about their hidden "three-dimensionality" and polyphony.
But in those distant times, negligent creators, too freely dispensed with such symbols, blessed by the patriarchs of Western churches, often faced a fate similar to that of Alberto Rossi.
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The secret meaning of the bestiaries
At first glance, any bestiary represents exactly what Wikipedia says about it - a collection of zoological articles with illustrations that detailed various animals in prose and poetry. However, here is the secret meaning of such "articles": in the XII-XIII centuries, European Christian theologians took it as an axiom that every living thing was created by the Lord not so much even for the sake of pleasing the insides (eyes, as well as other aesthetic needs) of the "crown of nature" - man, how much for his edification.
We read about this from David Batke in his "Medieval Bestiary": "The fauna and the natural world were created by God in the form of a visual instruction for mankind. The Creator endowed animals with characteristics that were supposed to serve as edification to man and strengthen him in his desire to study the Bible."
But let's not further intrigue the reader about the reason for the execution of the Venetian painter, along the way, explaining the above thought to Batke using this example. The lion, in accordance with the Aberdeen Bestiary (XII century) - and he was considered a canon for people of art and inquisitors (!) For several centuries - symbolizes Jesus Christ.
Thus, depicting the God-fearing Doge against the background of a lion, Rossi - willingly or not, did not matter! - likened Francesco Donato, at least from the point of view of the inquisitors, to the Savior.
And that is why he was deprived of a violent head, either “one who had conceived blasphemy,” or simply one that at one time had poorly comprehended the wisdom of the bestiary.
Fortunately, other images of animals were not so dangerous for medieval painters. It is probably worthwhile to look anew at the canvases created by them in order to understand their secret meaning.
So, for example, if the Venetian Rossi indirectly compared with his brush Francesco Donato not with a lion, but with an elephant (!), Then he would have received praise from the holy fathers and the customer of the portrait himself. Indeed, according to the bestiaries, the elephant is a symbol of chastity, for "this faithful animal copulates only once in a lifetime, to produce offspring into the world."
In addition, the elephant is not an allegory of Christ himself, but of the servant of God opposing the symbolic Satan - the green dragon. Now, having seen these animals together on ancient canvases, you will no longer be surprised at the fanciful imagination of the artists, but you will understand what they really meant.
The symbol of Russia is the creator of the future world
Of course, we will not list all the animals from the medieval bestiaries - there are tens and hundreds of them, both real and fictional. In addition, their images are important not only in themselves, but also in interaction - as in the same case with the dragon and the elephant.
However, we will still mention two. For the reason that the image of the former is sometimes misinterpreted, and the symbolism of the latter is directly related to our country.
Here is a whale. Modern interpreters often decipher this image as a "bulwark of the world."
In fact, in the Middle Ages, the whale, just like the turtle, was likened to the viper, "Satan seeking to deceive the one he was about to devour." And here is the symbol of Russia, the bear.
Compare today's ideas about the properties of the character of this strong beast with what is destined for him in the Western European medieval bestiaries.
According to these, the bear is the creator, the creator of the future world, bearing it in itself, and then giving it a shape.
This symbolism was based on the ancient idea that a bear gives birth to some unformed living "something", immediately after birth, giving it its inherent image through its paws.
The paintings of medieval artists depicting this beast have little in common with the famous bears ("Morning in a Pine Forest"). Medieval "Nostradamus from brush and canvas" encrypted their own ideas and prophecies about the future in their "bear" paintings.
It must be said that such cryptography still awaits its decoders. For now, we will only note one more thing: a bear killed in a hunt, from the point of view of medieval mystics, who are well versed in the secrets of bestiaries, symbolizes the murder of the future, the apocalypse, the collapse of the world.
Sometimes the artists of the past centuries confronted influential customers who were not privy to such secrets. Painting arrogant self-righteous feudal lords on a bear hunt, they silently - but for centuries - called them new Herods, destroying something immeasurably more than just animals.
East is a delicate matter
Note: the hidden meaning of bestiaries was also known to our distant ancestors. In ancient Russian literature, bestiaries are called "physiologists" - after the name of the oldest of such collections known in Western Europe, and, apparently, created in the II or III century in Alexandria.
However, here's an interesting nuance. "Physiologist" (translated as "naturalist", "naturalist"), created initially by an unknown author in Greek, then translated into Latin, and only then into many languages of the Middle
East, was, apparently, secondary in relation to some now forgotten Middle Eastern primary sources, brought by travelers to Hellas.
According to the latest data that can be gleaned from the studies of the already mentioned David Batke, some of the first bestiaries were brought to the Old World from the East. Then, in the course of "translations from translations", they lost their original meaning and were filled with a new one - embedded in them by Western European Christian theologians, who closely collaborated on this issue with the mystics of knightly orders and brotherhoods.
An indirect argument in favor of what has been said is the simultaneous spread of the so-called language of birds in Western Europe along with the bestiaries. Only from the point of view of the authors of Wikipedia, this language is "a phraseological unit that denotes speech overloaded with terms and formulations obscuring the meaning."
But in reality, being created by the same people who put new meanings into the Middle Eastern bestiaries, the "language of birds" is quite simple and easy to learn. For what? Yes, at least in order to feel the entire polyphony of medieval texts and the real context hidden in them.
Modern researchers are struggling to decipher many mysterious manuscripts, often simply not noticing the second and third layers of meaning in medieval paintings, novels, short stories, and even buildings (as an example of one such: Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria).
Meanwhile, literally in recent years, not only well-founded, but also fascinating scientific monographs devoted to the "language of birds" have finally appeared on the shelves of bookstores.
In order to stimulate readers in search of such "textbooks of the bird language" (we, for example, recommend the monograph by Grasse d'Orsay), once again emphasize: once you master its basics, you will rediscover the Middle Ages in 3D. And then it turns out that another romantic medieval novella is, in fact, a manuscript dedicated to military strategy, and another chronicle, supposedly telling about real events, is nothing more than a frivolous vaudeville.
By the way, the “language of birds” - and not at all in the sense of the supposedly “whistle emitted by sentinel warriors” - was known in Russia in the Middle Ages. For example, in one of the Moscow letters of 1508 you can read: "And the Crimean army will go to you, if you want us to give us the message of a bird's tongue." An outstanding scientist, Professor Boris Larin agrees that what is meant here is precisely “phraseological metaphoricity”, and not just a dashing whistle of Russian soldiers.
It is characteristic that this "polyphony of the Middle Ages" also has eastern counterparts, whether we are talking about bestiaries or about the "language of birds". So, in China, among the mystics of those years, in the course of their bestiary - "Shan Hai Jing" ("Canon of Mountains and Seas"), which had and still influences the symbolism of Chinese literature.
And in Japan in the 15th century there was a flourishing of the little known in our country "military hoku" In other lines about the moon and sakura, warrior-poets (not only samurai, but also ninjas), in an extremely compressed, "archived" form, encrypted, among other things, reports on military actions and similar plans for their coming day.
Sergey SABUROV