The Beaver's Sacrifice
Self-mutilation as the price of escape — chastity's strangest medieval mascot.
- Work
- Bestiary (Aberdeen Bestiary)
- Artist / creator
- Unknown English illuminator
- Origin & date
- England (probably the North Midlands), c. 1200
- Held by
- University of Aberdeen
Format
The full-resolution color-managed file — yours to print, study, and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan's resolution doesn't clear our floor for a physical print, so this piece is offered as a digital download only.
Size
$24.00
The story
Pursued by a hunter who wants it for the medicine drawn from its body, the beaver — so the bestiary insists — knows exactly what is being hunted. Cornered, it bites off its own testicles and throws them at its pursuer, then flees; if a second hunter takes up the chase, the beaver rears up to show it has nothing left worth taking, and is let go. This folio, sharing its page with the ibex, renders the moment with startling directness. Medieval preachers turned the legend into a lesson for the devout: whoever wishes to live chastely, the bestiary says, must cut away every vice and cast it in the devil's face, so that he too finds nothing left worth pursuing. It is one of the bestiary's most literal-minded allegories — self-mutilation read straight through as the price of virtue.
About this reproduction
- Faithful reproduction of a public-domain work, sourced from University of Aberdeen’s open-access release.
- Printed to order on archival cotton-rag stock, pigment inks rated 100+ years.
- Color-managed to the source scan.
- Ships in 5–8 business days; satisfaction guaranteed.
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Frame
This scan's resolution is offered as a digital download only, so there's no physical size to frame here — shown for reference, true to the piece's own proportions.
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