Animals were omnipresent in medieval culture in the form of rituals, proverbs, and songs, but also in the art of bookmaking itself: the glues, pigments, brushes, and parchements used were all animal-derived products.
Animals appear in encyclopedias, travel narratives, and of course the Bible: the dove, the whale that swallowed Jonah, and the animals aboard Noah's ark are all regularly depicted, as is the tetramorph, the religious emblem that combines a man, a lion, a bull, and an eagle, symbolizing the four Apostles and, by extension, Jesus Christ.
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