gems, early lapidaries, early gemology, early mineralogy, beastiaries

Ringger asks whether medieval bestiaries and lapidaries can properly be regarded as a literary genre, rather than merely as primitive works of natural history. He argues that they must be understood within the medieval Christian conception of nature as a system of signs: animals and stones possess observable characteristics (semblance) but also multiple spiritual and moral meanings (senefiance). Bestiaries and lapidaries therefore combine descriptions of the natural world with allegorical and exegetical interpretation, transforming natural history into a didactic discourse in which created things reveal divine truths. Ringger emphasizes the close structural relationship between the two traditions and the interaction of scientific, theological, moral and literary elements. He concludes that their characteristic movement between the physical object and its symbolic meanings gives bestiaries and lapidaries a distinctive literary coherence. Later scholarship frequently cites the paper for Ringger’s formulation that these works explicate the multiple meanings of the created world as a divine semblance.