Do you ever feel like textbook writing peaked before your time? Associate Professor of Communication Jordan Loveridge, Ph.D., does! In the fall Ducharme Lecture, he reviewed the Aberdeen Bestiary and the nuanced way that medieval authors seamlessly blended religion, ecology and morality in one compendium about plants, animals and rocks.
After introductory remarks by Dean of the College of Liberal Arts Bryan Zygmont, Ph.D., Layton Field, Ph.D., blessed the event by reciting A Christian Prayer in Union with Creation from Pope Francis’ 2015 Encyclical Letter. Pope Francis implored the world to love all life on Earth as we love God who “is alive in every creature.” In step with Pope Francis’ message was Loveridge’s lecture: Praise Bee! or, What Medieval Rhetoric Can Teach us About Ecological Advocacy. His personal fascination with bees was inexplicable, he admitted, but in his research of medieval literature, he found many apio-philic compatriots in monasteries. Monks were charged with maintaining and disseminating the mass media at the time and their publications were accepted as the premier textbooks at the time. Books that focused on flora and fauna (and even rocks) were known as bestiaries and they were used to understand local ecosystems and exotic creatures from the Orient, India and Africa.
These manuscripts employed flowery, anthropomorphic and intricate metaphors to explain the habits and lives of the animals. Bestiaries were primarily read by monks who would use them to develop sermons and help people understand biblical concepts. They were not the most scientific books, but Loveridge argued that accuracy was secondary compared to the insinuated lessons and morals that were imparted in these books. Precise documentation about the tireless work of bees is blended with tales of the proper mourning when a queen bee died. A brief passage on bees teaches lessons on duty, diligence, subservience, and if read further, plenty of religion.
Today nature faces many ecological crises and an indicator of environmental collapse is the disappearance of bees. Loveridge rattled off facts about how essential bees are to ecosystems and to humans stating, “billions of dollars and a way of life would be lost with pollinators due to limited crop yield” and “1 in 3 bites of food we eat depends entirely on bees…and they are dying out.” The messaging around the plight of bumblebees, and all environmental disasters, is always built around what humans stand to lose rather than appreciating the inherent value of life itself. The world continues to stray from environmental harmony because of the anthropocentric stance that has engulfed activism. People have been taught to comprehend the world as representing what they stand to benefit or lose based on their actions.
The authors of bestiaries commonly used the pedagogical strategy of the four-fold exegesis, the same way that the Bible was interpreted in medieval times. The four ways of understanding were the literal, allegorical (how we should live), tropological (moral), and analogical (the future and life to come). In modern writing, the ways of knowing have been narrowed to just the literal, and it leaves us disconnected from the world on a religious level. “The lengthy praises of animals in the Aberdeen Bestiary…lend it to be a political form of communication highlighting common understandings and social behaviors that cross the boundaries between human and non-human," Loveridge said.
The four-fold exegesis connects many ways of understanding, allowing people to understand nature on an intimate and personal level. The modern indifference to environmental collapses can be bridged by employing interwoven concepts of morality, science and history to heed the cry for help from the withering ecosystems all around us.