MEDIEVAL BERTIARY

The students from 2nd year of ESO of Geography and History have become copyist monks from the Middle Ages. The activity was about making a medieval bestiary - Bestiaries were the Natural History encyclopaedias of that time.

The monks copied the life and characteristics of animals that they had often never seen. That explains why the drawings, sometimes based on legends, sometimes on erroneous data and often used as Christian examples of behavior, were fanciful. They don't come close to reality, for example, of what a crocodile or an elephant looks like. One lesson to be learned is that, although thanks to them we have preserved many texts from Antiquity and the Middle Ages, knowledge only advances when the data are verified using direct observation and reason, that is to say, the scientific method.

However, medieval bestiaries have influenced numerous later artists and are part of our culture. Many fantastic creatures come to us through them, like dragons or mermaids.

The activity consisted in inventing a creature and drawing it up to the waist. They had to write the guidelines of what their drawing was like, both the color and the shape. Later a partner, without seeing what the head and arms looked like, drew the bottom of the animal. Then they put both pieces together. Finally, the person who had created the top part was in charge of inventing the name, characteristics and way of life of the animal. The result was very original and fun, as you can see in the photos.