Dragons, Dogs & Amadillos?

[MarcoP]

I can't say what the VMS illustrator means by the nebuly but every medieval manuscript I've seen with nebuly has meant heaven or heavenly or "of heaven" or some spiritual presence.

A picture of a lion could be a bestiary animal, a zodiac animal, a heraldic animal or an animal from a chronicle, but as soon as the illustrator added nebuly or wings, it represented St. Mark, the evangelist or something "heavenly" or godly, depending on the subject at hand.



I agree with you that nebuly weren't added as random design elements. In those days, they had meaning, the same way a halo or royal orb in a picture had meaning.

Hi JKP, I agree with what you write. VViews' illustration from Aristotle is an example of the fact that "heavenly" can also mean literally "of the sky" and the nebuly line can represent an actual "physical" cloud. Of course, since dead pangolins etc. are not usually found above clouds, the image is most likely to be interpreted as allegorical.

BTW, the British Library site describes the Aristotle image as f. 140v: initial 'P'(ost) of a scholar pointing at the sky with falling rain and a head spewing fire from clouds. 
Aristotle's treaty is about meteorology and the animal is possibly meant to represent lightning.
Another possibility is that the BL is wrong about fire-spitting and the animal represents the wind. In another treaty (On the Universe) Aristotle wrote: Wind is also called breath, a word used in another sense of the vital and generative substance which is found in plants and living creatures, and permeates all things.