LION
Leo
The two pages before the lion text were prepared but never painted. The University of Aberdeen describes f.6r as blank and probably intended for lion scenes, like those in its twin manuscript, Ashmole 1511, and f.6v as “probably intended for scenes about the lion”. The lion text follows on f.7r–7v.
VIEW THE BLANK PAGE · UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN ↗The lion opens the Aberdeen Bestiary’s book of beasts. It is also the clearest case of one story told two ways: in one source a father’s roar wakes the cub, in the other his breath brings it back to life.
ff.6r–6v: blank pages, ruled, probably meant for lion scenes.
f.7r: “Here begins the book of the nature of beasts. De leonibus.”
The lion sleeps with its eyes open.
The cub sleeps for three days and nights after birth, until its father’s roar wakes it.
The cubs are born dead. On the third day the father breathes into their faces and restores them to life.
Waking a sleeping cub and raising a dead one are different stories. The second carries the resurrection allegory.
THE LAYERS · KEPT DISTINCT
ISIDOREETYMOLOGIAE XII.2.3–6
For Isidore the lion is king of the beasts, named from the Greek. It sleeps with its eyes open. Its cub, once born, sleeps for three days and nights until the father’s roar rouses it.
The cub passage is XII.2.5 in the Lindsay text: the father’s fremitus vel rugitus — rumbling or roar — rouses the sleeping cub.
PHYSIOLOGUS LINEBORN DEAD · BREATH OF LIFE
The version in which the cubs are born dead and given life by the father’s breath belongs to the Physiologus tradition and the later bestiary, where it is read as an image of the Resurrection.
MANUSCRIPT WITNESSABERDEEN MS 24 · f.7r–7v
The Aberdeen text gives the lion three natures: it wipes out its tracks with its tail, it sleeps with open eyes, and it revives its stillborn cubs. On f.7r it credits these natures to the physici, the natural philosophers. It does not name Physiologus at this point.
The same page adds that there are short, curly-maned lions, which are peaceful, and tall, straight-haired ones, which are fierce, and that lions fear the sound of wheels and fire.
HOW WE KNOW WHAT WE THINK WE KNOW
Isidore XII.2.3–6 checked in two online editions. The sleeping-cub / father’s-roar passage is XII.2.5.
Aberdeen f.7r and f.7v checked on the university’s folio pages. f.7v uses breath, not a roar.
The university’s commentary for f.6r and f.6v, re-read on 4 October 2026, describes both pages as blank and probably intended for the lion. Its commentary for f.7r and f.7v describes no picture. So there is no Aberdeen lion image to reproduce. A Rochester Bestiary lion exists on Wikimedia Commons, but it is a different manuscript and is not substituted.
Viewing the folio at the University of Aberdeen is not a reuse permission.
Record levels, status labels, the streams diagram and the interface framing are authored by Make It Believable. They are not historical testimony.
WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW YET
- Why the lion pages were left blank.
- The Physiologus version behind the Aberdeen lion.