You can watch the video about this subject in here: [The Bear - Symbology During the Middle-Ages]
When people
ask you “what animal is the king of all animals?” the first creature to come to
mind is the lion. But in truth, before the church imposed the lion as the king
of all the animals, the bear was the real king, at least in the European
continent. The bear was the symbol of power, strength and majesty.
It is
possible that our ancestors during prehistoric times already worshiped bears.
We can find bear skulls aligned in niches in caves, and they weren’t placed in
there at random. There might have been an early bear cult, and unlike the image
we grow up with, of people living in caves, our ancestors actually built houses
made of huge animal bones and tusks, tree-trunks and animal skins, so those
caves with beautiful paintings, were in fact out ancestors’ first temples. But
let's not go back so much in history.
Anyway, we
can find traces of the utmost respect, even fear and also admiration our
ancestors had for these creatures, in folktales, changed by time and the
different political and social realities throughout history, and of course,
changed by new faiths. We can also see it in sacred places, christianised, but
were once the places of pagan deities and with the new faith became the
dwelling places of saints and Christian mythological accounts. For instance,
the Celts worshiped a goddess which was represented with a bear on her side or
in front of her. The bear goddess called Artio, and the name has a lot of
similarities with Arthur, who in turn is also a name connected with bears. This
was a primitive deity, linked to the fertilizing force of the earth, in a time
when gods had not yet been anthropomorphized and were still represented as
animals.
There were
certain early Cristian accounts that show the importance the bear had to the
pagans, and as such, the devil often took the form of a bear to come and terrorized
the monks. The king of animals was turned against those who admired it, by demonizing
the poor animal. In the Jewish and Christian traditions, the bear often has a
negative symbology, and you can see that in the Old Testament.
When the
missionaries began their process of evangelization through Europe, they
encountered a variety of pagan deities, many of which were either associated
with bears, or were bears themselves. To the Germanic and Celtic populations of
Europe, the bear was the animal associated with royalty, so it isn't a
coincidence that the most famous legendary king, Arthur, was also associated
with the bear. It’s interesting to see that the bear, well, the she-bear, was
connected to the warrior goddess Brigid, of whom the Celtic kings were sons of,
making them little bear cubs. So there was the necessity to christianise this
goddess, and so Saint Brigid was born, and later, this pagan goddess, now
christianised, was associated with a real abbess of Kildare named Brigid, who
died more or less in the year of 525 of our era.
To the
Germanic and Scandinavian peoples, the bear was connected to the warrior
spirit, personified by the god Thor. It appears that in certain Germanic
groups, one of the imposed trials to the young warriors, was the solitary bear
hunt. Although it hasn't been proven yet if these initiation rites were real or
just mythical. Anyway, what is real is that the strength and the ferocity of
the bear was an inspiration to the Germanic and Scandinavian warriors.
Many ancient
cities throughout Europe still have the representation of the bear in their
coat-of-arms. The survival evidences of the bear being the king of animals
before the church replaced the symbolic functions of the bear for the lion. The
lion was an exotic animal, and by the time it replaced the bear, sometime in
the year 1000, the lion didn't belong to the European Fauna so this almost
mythical creature during medieval times was easily adopted. But to this day
some cities such as Bern in Switzerland and Berlin in Germany, to name a few,
still have the bear in their coat-of-arms.
It's not a
coincidence that during the reign of Charlemagne a lot of bears were hunted
almost till extinction, because of the cult the Germanic peoples had and the
pagan gods associated with the animal, and of course taking down loads of
sacred trees. We all know about the forest devastation held by Charlemagne and
his nobles, but we don't often hear about the bear-hunt.
To the church,
during medieval times, the bear was the personification of evil, ferocity and
chaos, because the creature lived in the dense, almost unreachable, forests.
The forests were the dwelling places of the pagans (in truth the forests were
the places the pagans considered to be sacred, once, but now it was their
refuge from the horrible acts of forced cristianization). But the bear started
to enter in the christian mythology in another way. It became the symbol of the
divine dominating chaos, because the only ones who could contact with these
terrible creatures and turn them into docile animals, were the hermits; those
who would seek the most inhospitable places to live in solitude, for spiritual
reasons. Only through their faith, and the connection with the divine and the
power of god, could they do such a thing, turning a ferocious beast into a
docile companion. Thus the bear became the symbol of the victory of the divine
over chaos, and we can actually see this representation in the story of Saint
Columbanus and his many encounters with bears, and befriending them.
The bear was also
associated with the Devil, and a symbol of the many vices and sins condemned by
the church. There were many accounts of bears being the evil creatures of
chaos, to the point that they became the creatures that would kidnap young
beautiful maidens and would rape them. And we can still see this in many
folktales; the bear being the "bad guy" in the story. This actually
might be the beginning of the creation of the story of "The Beauty and the
Beast", highly infantilized and softened by Disney, and thank the gods for
that because no child would want to hear about the real account.
So, in
conclusion, the fight of the church against the bear, was a symbolic, and in
some cases a very real way to free territories from their pagan past and
convert them to Christianity and order over chaos. Unfortunately, the bear had
a very negative connotation during the middle-ages, but at the same time, the
symbolism the bear had during pagan times, somehow prevailed till nowadays, and
I'm sure all of us remember the childhood stories of the she-bear being a kind
and caring mother, and it isn't a coincidence that many children to this day
still sleep with their teddy-bear.
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