Bible 109in 1464, this project came to nothing. In the meantime
he had served the papacy as governor of Bologna and
made many diplomatic missions trying to drum up sup-
port for intervention against the Turks. Twice he was an
unsuccessful candidate for the papacy, in 1455 and 1471.
He spent the rest of his life after 1464 trying to promote
a crusade and reforming what was left of the Greek
Church outside Ottoman control. On return from a
diplomatic mission, he died at Ravenna on November
18, 1472.
Further reading:N. G. Wilson, From Byzantium to
Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance(Baltimore:
the Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); John Mon-
fasani, Byzantine Scholars in Renaissance Italy: Cardinal
Bessarion and Other Émigrés(Aldershot: Ashgate, 1995).
bestiaries Bestiaries drew ethical lessons in the central
Middle Ages from the supposed appearance or behavior
of animals. These stories were descended from a second-
century Greek text called the Physiologus,or “Natural
philosopher,” which was available in Latin by the end
of the fourth century. They varied in organization and
in length, ranging from fewer than 30 chapters to more
than 200.
A complete Physiologus contained 37 chapters
arranged according to moral lessons rather than by ani-
mal. The organization of the orally intended Physiologus
was based on the simple, memorable stories, repeated
phrases, and occasional direct address to an audience.
They were perhaps compiled as aids to preaching and as
allegorical didactic examples of the consequences of
virtue or vice.
The oldest surviving bestiary in Latin produced in
ENGLANDwas probably written at CANTERBURYbetween
1110 and 1130. It differed from a Physiologuscollection
only by addition of short extracts from the Etymologiae
of ISIDOREof Seville. In the 13th century, they were more
rarely used as sources for sermons. Preachers had begun
to take more examples directly from life and used alle-
gory less as they expanded and simplified their reach to
more of the laity. The age of bestiary compilation
was over by the end of the 13th century, but the stories
and their illustration lived on in expensive and elaborate
luxury manuscripts.
See also ANIMALS AND ANIMAL HUSBANDRY; ILLU-
MINATION.
Further reading:Ron Baxter, Bestiaries and Their
Users in the Middle Ages(London: Courtauld Institute,
1998); Debra Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image,
Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995); Debra Hassig, ed., The Mark of the Beast: The
Medieval Bestiary in Art, Life, and Literature(New York:
Garland, 1999); Florence McCullough, Medieval Latin
and French Bestiaries(Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina, 1960).
betrothal SeeMARRIAGE.beverages SeeFOOD, DRINK, AND NUTRITION.Bible The word Bible(Latin: biblia,derived from the
Greek biblia,meaning “books”) was first used for the
Septuagint, an early translation of the Hebrew Bible into
Greek. The term was later modified to include many
more books. In medieval Judaism the Bible was the 30
books of the Old Testament. In Christianity it was the
Old and the New Testaments.
The books of the Jewish Bible (Tanakh) or Old Testa-
ment were divided into three groups: first, the Torah or
Pentateuch with the five books of Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; second, the
Prophets, divided into the historical group of Joshua,
Judges, Samuel I, Samuel II, Kings I, Kings II, and the
Later Prophets, including Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and
the Twelve Minor Prophets; third, the books of Psalms,
Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Eccle-
siastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles I, and
Chronicles II. The New Testament or Christian Bible
added the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John, the Acts of the Apostles, the Letters of Saint Paul,
as well as the seven Letters of James, Peter, John, and
Judas, and the Apocalypse.
The canon of the Hebrew Old Testament was estab-
lished at the beginning of the second century C.E., and
that of the Greek New Testament in the middle of the
same century. By the fourth century many partial ver-
sions of the Bible, often with discrepancies, were used in
the Roman Empire. Saint JEROMEat the beginning of the
fifth century undertook a new translation of the Bible
from the Hebrew. This version, the VULGATE, became the
authoritative text for the Roman or Latin Catholic
Church.SCHOLARSHIP AND EXEGESIS
Understanding and interpreting biblical texts posed great
problems for Jews and Christians. Jews were the first to
do so, and their methods were in great part borrowed by
Christians. According to Jewish scholars, the Scriptures
could be interpreted on four different levels: the literal,
moral, historical, and allegorical. Whereas the literal and
historical methods dealt with understanding and explain-
ing the body of the text, the moral and allegorical meth-
ods attempted to find the spirit, or the underlying
message.
Christian exegesis had three distinct phases, becom-
ing traditional approaches in themselves: the patristic
period, dominated by the church fathers; the 11th and
13th centuries, when the school of Saint Victor at Paris
and the contributions of a number of individual exegetes
introduced the four Jewish senses into Christian exegesis,
and commentaries took the form of textual glosses; and