Medieval beasts

Do you know your dragons? Tiles based on dragons and dragon variants: drakes, wyverns, wyrms, voivres, and basilisks from medieval manuscripts: The Liber Floridus, Harley bestiary, and others.

Five different types of dogs by Arnaldus de Villanova, 1491. The Wellcome Library, CC-BY

Many of our readers will already be familiar with our Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, a resource which enables you to search by shelfmark, keyword, or date, as well as by more advanced fields such as language and provenance. We thought it was about time to give a reminder that all...

A fish that can stop a ship and a bull that passes gas to defend itself - these and more strange animals from the Middle Ages!

To ward off attackers this mythical animal was said to expel excrement with a devastating explosive force.

Blog post on an exhibition and catalogue that explore this unique medieval book and its enduring influence.

Imagine a four-legged beast with no knee joints that cannot lie down and has to sleep leaning against a tree. An animal with a long, skinny trumpet for a nose. A creature large enough that one can build small castles on its back. It lives for 300 years and is afraid of mice. Its mortal enemy is the dragon...

Daniel's vision: the fourth beast with ten horns -- Moses Ben Abraham, Chronique de la Bible, France, ca 1290-1300 (The Hague, KB, 131 A 3 fol. 34r)