What is an animal? Medieval reflections on language and the world
Ein Beitrag von Nicky van de Beek
On 11 November 2021, former GRK member Dr. Sandra Hofert (now at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg) treated us to a lecture titled Was ist ein Tier? Mittelalterliches Nachdenken über Sprache und Welt zwischen Universalität und Tradierung. This talk formed the first installment of a new lecture series, aiming to dive deeper into the subtitle of the GRK: to what extent are concepts found to be universal, specific or transmitted across cultures.
To answer the question 'what is an animal?', Sandra started her talk by looking at the cuckoo: a bird whose name is an onomatopoeia in many languages. In Chinese, the name for this bird is bu-gu-niao 布谷鸟 where 'niao' is a classifier but 'bugu' (echoing 'cuckoo') means 'scattering grain' at the start of a new agricultural season. The Chinese word contains onomatopoeic elements, but is composed according to a different logic. Also, it is interesting to note that in each language the call of the cuckoo is vocalized slightly differently, although we each hear the same bird. The Middle High German word for cuckoo is ‘gouch’, but does this mean cuckoos said ‘gouch’ in the Midde Ages? A diachronic element is present: Languages are not static, as illustrated by the notion of Grimm's "Sprachgeist".
Words like 'animal', 'human' and 'nature' can be understood as abstract concepts, but when words change, do their corresponding concepts change as well? In other words: do they have their own ontological existence? This so-called problem of universals reached its high point during the Middle Ages. Nominalists argued that universal or abstract concepts do not exist in the same way as particular physical things do. Realists however posed that universals are just as real as physical, measurable things. 13th century philosopher and theologist Thomas Aquinas was a moderate realist. He proposed that there are three types of universals: ante rem (divine spirit), in re (realized in things) and post rem (existing in our imagination). The ideal ante rem can only be approximated by our imperfect imagination.
How can one approach the divine ideal nevertheless? During the Middle Ages, it was thought that this ideal could be reached through language, by reading the Bible and the Book of Nature. The Physiologus is a collection of allegories telling the story of deliverance. In these stories, the world is presented as a system of signs that needed explaining. The lion for example is used as a symbol for the salvation of mankind ('erasing its tracks'), wakeful divinity ('sleeping with its eyes open') and as the resurrection of Christ ('bringing its young to life').
Fig. 2: The Physiologus: using animals as moral lessons (Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 602, Folio 1v).
Konrad von Megenberg's Book of Nature was a 14th century encyclopedia that built on the tradition of the Physiologus, among others. In it, nature is seen as the creation of God and thus as a mirror of the divine. As a microcosm mirroring the universe at large, the body was ordered according to various elements (fire, air, water and earth) causing temperaments (sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic and choleric). These were each connected to different organs and bodily fluids, playing a role in the healthcare system and still present in our modern-day vocabulary (e.g. 'bilious' for melancholic).
In Middle High German texts such as Hugo von Trimberg's Der Renner, animal allegories are again used as a didactic illustration. The lion is here presented as a terrifying animal on land, but sweet and compliant in water. In a bird’s eye perspective, animal symbolism in Medieval allegorical texts could be seen as way to suggest to the reader different modes of though. Sandra's talk in any case has very playfully showed us the origin of various Medieval modes of thought and how these can still be current today.
Fig. 3: The world as a system of signs (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, fr. 1951, fol. 32).
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