The Physiologus: The Onocentaur and Other Hybrid Beings

Record summary

The Physiologus is a late antique Christian animal book that combines descriptions of real and fabulous creatures with moral interpretation. It includes hybrid or extraordinary beings such as the onocentaur and siren, alongside animals treated symbolically. The work matters because medieval bestiaries and later travel literature transmitted its creature repertoire into European and colonial imagination. It is not field zoology: textual borrowing, allegory, manuscript variation, and uncertain origins are fundamental to understanding why later readers sometimes mistake its entries for empirical reports.