Iconography of the miniatures of the Hyena Chapter in the 13th–14th century bestiaries of the abbeys of the Diocese of Passau

Abstract

The article analyses the origins of the formation of the regional tradition of bestiary painting in the Diocese of Passau. The study focuses on miniatures depicting the hyena in manuscripts from the 13th–14th centuries, created in the abbeys of Aldersbach and Fürstenfeld. The influence of regional peculiarities is examined within the framework of traceable 13th-century divergence in the iconographic schemes of bestiaries from the 12th-century design tradition. The aim of the study is to determine the preconditions for the rejection of the common iconographic scheme of the "hyena eating a corpse" in the preparation of the manuscript. The 'embracing hyenas' iconographic scheme found in English and French bestiaries is believed to have been formed based on ancient and late antique depictions of animal duels. This scheme is limited to the abbeys of the Diocese of Passau, including the abbeys of Aldersbach and Fürstenfeld. An analysis of the miniatures reveals both significant and minor transformations of the iconographic schemes. Comparative and historical research methods were applied to determine that the use of a fundamentally new iconographic scheme can be explained, on the one hand, by the peculiarities of the textual version of the Dicta Chrysostomi, which emphasises the “bisexual” nature of the hyena, and, on the other hand, by the tradition already established in the scriptoria of the Diocese of Passau. Additionally, the tradition of depicting the creature standing on its hind legs, which was already formed in the scriptoria of the Diocese of Passau, is taken into account. The tradition mentioned above is present in various sources, including the twelfth-century bestiary, the bestiary of the Dicta Chrisostomi group, Clm Bsb 3206 (13th–14th centuries), and the Rhine specimen book. The third reason appears to be the religious interpretation of the hyena's peculiarity and the artist's desire to emphasise the duality and deceitfulness of its nature as a metaphor for human apostasy and idolatry.