The practice or tradition of writing, compiling, or illustrating bestiaries; the scholarly or artistic tradition of cataloging and describing animals with moral symbolism.
From bestiarian + -ism (suffix indicating a system or practice). A modern term used to describe the medieval tradition of bestiary-making as a unified intellectual movement.
Bestiarianism represents one of the most beautiful intellectual traditions: medieval scholars genuinely believed that studying how a pelican feeds its young (they thought it pierced its own breast) taught you about Christ's sacrifice—mixing observation with theology in ways that seem wild but shows how they understood learning!
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