The Medieval Bestiary was very much the Wikipedia of its day – though without the scores of undergraduates dredging its pages in search of tenuous references for their assignments the night prior to a deadline. Still, with each, the primary focus is, or was, to educate and enlighten, albeit, as far as the Medieval Bestiary is concerned, with a distinctly Christian filter overlaid. As the Horatian quote reads, “The aim of the poet is to inform or delight, or to combine together, in what he says, both pleasure and applicability to life.” Certainly, these words had a profound impact on the artists, writers and clergy of the middle ages, and…