Panther

For three days there is nothing in the cave but the smell of a finished meal, cold stone, and an animal sleeping so deeply it might be dead. On the third day it stirs. The roar comes up out of the dark and rolls down the hillside, and riding on it is a sweetness no forest has any business producing, heavy and floral and slightly sickening in its richness, the kind of scent that arrives before you have decided whether you want it. Deer lift their heads. Cattle stop chewing. Somewhere a boar turns from the water and starts walking uphill.

They all come. That is the point of the story. Everything with four legs and a nose in the whole country converges on one cave mouth, and the panther waits for them without teeth bared and without any particular hunger, because in this version of the animal it never eats what it summons.

One creature goes the other way. The dragon hears the same roar, catches the same sweetness, and something in it fails. It stiffens, it flattens, and it backs down into a hole in the earth to lie there like something already dead until the sound has stopped. In the pictures the illuminators loved, the panther stands at the centre with a garland of attentive faces around it while a small green coil in the bottom corner tries to fold itself out of existence.

The beast that does this is described as beautiful and, more oddly, as multicoloured. Its coat carries small round marks, discs of white or black scattered across a lighter ground, which Pliny the Elder recorded in the Natural History as spots like little eyes. Pliny also gave the creature a habit that its later admirers quietly dropped. In his account all four-footed animals are drawn to the panther’s smell, but they are frightened by the savagery of its head, so the panther hides the head in cover and lets the scent do the work until whatever is approaching comes close enough to take. That is an ambush predator, described soberly, by a Roman who thought he was writing natural history.

The transformation happened in Alexandria. The Physiologus, compiled there somewhere between the second and fourth centuries and copied afterwards more widely than almost anything except scripture, took the sweet-smelling cat and removed the trap. What remained was gentleness, sleep, a voice, and a fragrance, and one enemy who will not come near. Isidore of Seville then supplied the etymology in the Etymologies, deriving the name from the Greek for “all” on the grounds that the panther is the friend of all animals except the dragon. Isidore added a piece of grim reproductive lore as well: the female bears young only once, because the cubs claw at the womb in their impatience to be born and leave her unable to conceive again.

The allegory that made the beast famous is laid out plainly in the bestiaries. The panther is Christ. The three days in the cave are the three days in the tomb, entered after Christ had taken his fill of mockery and abuse. The roar on waking is the shout of triumph over death, and the sweet breath riding out on it is his teaching, drawing Jew and Gentile alike. The many colours of the pelt are the many virtues gathered in one person. The dragon is the devil, bound in hell during the descent and hiding ever after from a voice it cannot bear. Every element of the animal is spoken for. Nothing is left over.

England took to it. Around the tenth century an Old English poet turned the Physiologus panther into seventy-four lines of alliterative verse, preserved in the Exeter Book as the first of a three-poem sequence with The Whale and The Partridge, the trio running from death through hell to resurrection. Two centuries later the great illuminated bestiaries of the second family gave the panther a full page. The Aberdeen Bestiary sets it on folio nine, drawing on Physiologus and Isidore together, ringed by the animals it has called.

From the manuscripts it walked onto shields. Heraldry knows the panther incensed, shown with flames pouring from its mouth and both ears, the flames standing in for the fragrance that a painted animal cannot emit. Henry VI used it as a badge, and other descendants of the House of Lancaster followed him. A herald’s manuscript in the College of Arms explains the choice: a king should have as many excellent and several virtues as this beast has diversities of spots and beautiful colours, and then his people will love and follow him as all other beasts love and follow the panther for its sweet smell and glorious colours. A monarch, in other words, should be worth walking towards.

Its powers are all persuasion. It commands by scent and by voice, it needs no speed and no ambush, and it holds an audience of every species at once without spilling a drop of blood. Nothing in the tradition credits it with claws worth mentioning, which is remarkable for a big cat.

The limits are equally clean. The dragon is immune, the one listener the fragrance cannot reach and the one animal the panther cannot draw, which in the allegory is the whole reason the story has a villain. The female pays for her single litter with her fertility. And the deepest constraint is that this animal was never quite an animal. It is a reading of one. When Europeans came to know real leopards well enough to stop believing in the sweetness, the panther did not die out so much as change register, stepping off the bestiary page and onto the banner, where it still stands with fire coming out of its ears.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the panther in medieval bestiaries?

The panther of the bestiaries is a gentle, multicoloured beast whose breath carries an irresistibly sweet fragrance. After feeding it sleeps for three days in a cave, then wakes and roars, and the scent that comes out with the roar draws every animal that smells it. It is a very different creature from the real big cat, and it harms nothing it attracts.

Why is the panther a symbol of Christ?

The Physiologus and the bestiaries read every part of the panther as an image of Christ. The three days asleep in the cave stand for the three days in the tomb, the roar on waking is the triumph over death, the sweet breath is the teaching that draws all people to him, and the many colours of the coat are his many virtues. The dragon that flees the sound represents the devil.

Why is the dragon the panther’s only enemy?

The dragon is the single creature that flees the panther’s roar instead of coming to it, hiding in a hole in the earth and lying there as though dead. Isidore of Seville even derived the panther’s name from the Greek for “all”, explaining that it is the friend of all animals except the dragon. In the Christian reading, the dragon is the devil, who cannot bear Christ’s voice.

Where does the panther legend come from?

The oldest surviving elements come from Pliny the Elder, who wrote in the Natural History that the panther’s small eye-like spots and sweet smell attract other animals, and that it hides its frightening head to lure them close. The Physiologus, compiled in Alexandria between the second and fourth centuries, removed the ambush and turned the creature into an allegory. Isidore of Seville and the later illuminated bestiaries, including the Aberdeen Bestiary, carried it through the Middle Ages.

What is a panther incensed in heraldry?

A panther incensed is the heraldic panther shown with flames issuing from its mouth and ears, the flames representing the sweet fragrance described in the bestiaries. Henry VI used the panther as a personal badge, as did other descendants of the House of Lancaster. A College of Arms manuscript explains that a king should possess as many virtues as the beast has colours and spots, so that his people follow him as the animals do.

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