As we move through the campaign, I wanted to share a closer look at the manuscript behind these designs: British Library MS Sloane 1975.
Because this 12th-century codex was a medical treatise adapted from Sextus Placitus, its illuminators weren't drawing from direct observation. European artists at the time had never seen a live African lion or elephant. Instead, they relied on imagination, allegory, and centuries of accumulated lore—resulting in some of the most bizarre and wonderful creature illustrations in medieval art.
The "Smiling" Lion (Folio 80v)
Take the lion on Folio 80v. To a modern eye, it looks less like an apex predator and more like a grinning dog or a mythical leucrota, complete with expressive eyebrows, distorted proportions, and a fluffy tail.
For a 12th-century scribe working within the Physiologus tradition, anatomical accuracy was beside the point. The lion was pure symbolism: absolute courage (seated in the heart), royalty, and divine authority. In medieval pharmacology, incorporating lion components into a medicine was believed to literally transfer those noble virtues to the patient.
Mandrakes, Elephants, and Dragon's Blood (Folio 81v)
The entries on Folio 81v get even stranger:
The Mandrake Cure: Medieval lore claimed that elephants were naturally chaste and lacked sexual desire. To reproduce, a pair had to travel far East, search for a mandrake root, and eat it together to spark fertility.
Giant Repellents: The manuscript records that these massive beasts could supposedly be paralyzed or driven off using human urine or menstrual blood.
The Fatal Duel: The text recounts Pliny’s ancient myth of the feud between elephant and dragon. A dragon would suffocate an elephant and drink its blood, only to be crushed beneath the giant’s falling body. Their mixed blood soaked into the earth, creating the deep red pigment and prized alchemical ingredient known as sanguis draconis ("dragon’s blood").
Thank you all for supporting this project and making this production run possible! Let me know in the comments which of these manuscript details surprised you the most.
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