It is easy to see a lion being displayed as ‘king of the beasts’. For example, numerous European royal families and Dukes used the lion in their coat of arms, which represents their power and authority. Also, various names and symbolization of bravery or audacity have the lion as the root of them, such as the Belgian Lion, the name Leo or the word lion-hearted.
This kind of symbolization of lions in European society appeared during the 13th century. However, the European lion, Panthera leoeuropaea, went extinct around the 1st century BC. If that is the case, then why is it that the lion remains king of the animals in European society? Why are there so many lions in the king’s epithet and coat of arms? What is the historical background of this situation when European lions became extinct millennia ago?
To begin with, the lion’s habitat used to be in Africa, Southwest Asia, and India. In ancient times, southern Europeans, who lived across the Mediterranean Sea and Northern Africa, knew lions. However, for most Europeans who did not know lions, mostly from middle to northern Eruopeans, the common king of the beast were bears. Bears were considered special to the native Celtic people of continental Europe and the Germanic peoples of northern Europe. The bear was regarded as the founder of the Noble family and used as a part of royal families’ coat of arms Also, warriors used to drink the blood of bears and paint it onto their bodies before going to war because they believed it would make them have the power of bear. Additionally, it was common to worship the bear as a divine animal or deity itself in ancient Europe. There were other divine beasts, but the bear cult was the major religion since it could walk upright like a human being, unlike other animals. The bear was the king of the beasts in ancient Europe.
However, this kind of bear-worshiping tradition or idolatry became an obstacle to Christian missionary work. It was in the 4th century that the Roman emperor Constantine recognized Christianity by the edict of Milan. Due to this event, it was in the 10th century that the entirety of Europe accepted Christianity. In the meantime, the Christian church fought against the bear-worshiping tradition. They made the bear a vile beast, considering them as rivals of Christ. As a part of this campaign, they made the monarchs carry out large-scale military operations to hunt bears. During the reign of Carolus the Great, these kinds of operations were often held under his name since large-scale military operations and large-scale hunting had numerous common aspects which made these operations work as a military drill.
As the Catholic church tried to abolish the idolatry of bears, they came up with another “king of the beast” to usurp the throne of the animal kingdom. Through the Crusades, the symbolization of lions from northern Africa and Palestine, where the Bible was written, was introduced to Europe. Due to this adaptation of mythology about the lion, around the 12th century, lions were introduced to be the guardians of the faith and symbols of brave knights. The most famous knight who used the lion as a symbol was Richard, the Lion Heart King, who participated in the Third Crusade. His coat of arms had three lions. Since then, not only the British royal family but also other organizations from armoury to soccer teams have been using the lion as their symbol.
By the 13th century, lions had become considered as the king of beasts throughout Europe and one of the symbols of Christ. Due to this deification, in various writings, the lion is depicted as a king and a righteous being, symbolizing Christ, including the medieval “Aesop’s Fables” and modern literature. For example, in “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” Arslan, the lion who is revived after death in place of Edmund’s crime of betrayal, symbolizes Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. Also, in Aberdeen Bestiary, illuminated manuscript bestiary written in 12th-century England, the author describes the lion to have a symbolization to Christ by saying “one of characteristics of the lion is that when a lioness gives birth to her cubs, she produces them dead and watches over them for three days, until their father comes on the third day and breathes into their faces and restores them to life”, which is an obvious analogy.
Meanwhile, there are some examples in the Bible that the lion has some symbolization of the devil or malicious characteristics, which causes a contradiction in the claims. To solve this irony, the Catholic church made an imaginary animal called “Leo Pardus”. It is claimed to be produced by the adultery between a lioness and a pard. In Aberdeen Bestiary, Leo Pardus is described as a killmongering, swift, and nefarious beast. The Catholic Church claimed that all the evil deeds of lions in the Bible are actually done by Leo Pardus, not the lion, which solves the contradiction in their deification of the lion.
However, it seems that in the deep-rooted unconsciousness of humans, we still cannot forget the power of the bear. Young children who are afraid of darkness go to bed with bear dolls, not lions.
References
Iain Beavan, Davidson, P., Stevenson, J. and University Of Aberdeen. Library (2011). The Library and Archive Collections of the University of Aberdeen : an introduction and description. Manchester: Manchester University Press With The University Of Aberdeen.
Pastoureau, M. and Holoch, G. (2011). The bear : history of a fallen king. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press Of Harvard University Press.
중세 동물지. (2017).
