Panther

In medieval bestiaries the word ‘panther’ deals with a very different animal from the carnivorous mammal of presentday zoology. Aristotle had written that it gives off a sweet smell attractive to other animals; Aelian - the Roman author nicknamed ‘Honey-Tongued’ for his perfect command of Greek, a language he preferred to Latin - stated that this odour was also pleasant to men. (In this characteristic some see a confusion of the Panther with the civet cat.) Pliny endowed the Panther’s back with a large circular spot that waxed and waned with the moon. To these marvellous circumstances came to be added the fact that the Bible, in the Septuagint version, uses the word ‘panther’ in a verse (Hosea, V: I4) that may be a prophetic reference to Jesus: ‘I am become as a panther to Ephraim.’

In the Anglo-Saxon bestiary of the Exeter Book, the Panther is a gentle, solitary beast with a melodious voice and sweet breath (likened elsewhere to the smell of allspice) that makes its home in a secret den in the mountains. Its only foe is the dragon, with which it fights incessantly. After a full meal it sleeps and ‘On the third daywhen he wakes, a lofty, sweet, ringing sound comes from his mouth, and with the song a most delightful stream of sweet-smelling breath, more grateful than all the blooms of herbs and blossoms of the trees.’ Multitudes of men and animals flock to its den from the fields and castles and towns, drawn on by the fragrance and the music. The dragon is the age-old enemy, the Devil; the waking is the resurrection of the Lord; the multitudes are the community of the faithful; and the Pantheris Jesus Christ.

To attenuate the amazement this allegory can awaken, let us remember that the Panther was not a wild beast to the Saxons but an exotic sound unsupported by any very concrete image. It may be added, as a curiosity, that Eliot’s poem ‘Gerontion’ speaks of ‘Christ the tiger’ .

Leonardo da Vinci notes:

The African panther is like a lion, but with longer legs, and a more slender body. It is completely white, spattered with black spots like rosettes. Its beauty delights the other animals, which would all flock to it were it not for the panther’s terrible stare. Aware of this, the panther lowers its eyes; other animals approach it to drink in such beauty, and the panther pounces on the nearest of them.