The elephant

I recently stumbled across some short clips on the subject of Medieval documents. A particularly interesting one is a short talk by Christopher De Hamel talking about some of the documents held in the Parker library. In the course of his talk, he shows 12th century pictures of an elephant included in a bestiary, although the artist had never actually seen one. This is contrasted by a picture by the famous medieval scribe Matthew Paris, of Saint Albans, just 100 years later. By that time an elephant had been brought to England and was kept at the Tower of London, although its life was short and uncomfortable. the contrast between the two images could hardly be greater. If you are interested in taking a look, click Here (but do make sure your volume setting is not too high before you click).