The Phoenix

The story

Alone among all creatures, the bestiary's phoenix lives five hundred years, then gathers spices into a nest, sets itself alight in the heat of the sun, and rises from its own ashes after three days — a legend medieval commentators read as the clearest possible natural proof of the Resurrection, the bird preaching Christian doctrine by simply existing. This miniature, from the same Getty bestiary manuscript as the pelican, renders the phoenix in flame-toned reds and true gold leaf, the fire and the bird's plumage nearly indistinguishable at the page's brightest point. Bestiaries were among the most popular books of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries precisely because they let readers encounter the whole created order — real animals beside entirely legendary ones — as a continuous scripture written in fur, feather, and flame.