A polar bear, by Nicolas Maréchal • WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Favila, second king of Asturias, died in 739 under the claws of a brown bear (Ursus arctos ) in the heights of Cangas de Onís, according to the Chronicle of Albelda and that of Alfonso III. A popular Spanish saying, inspired by this episode, warns latecomers of a danger that apparently cost the life of the sovereign:“Hurry up, Favila, or the bear will catch up with you. » Hunting reserved The bear has always played a leading role in the history of the European continent, and more particularly in the Middle Ages. In the Iberian Peninsula, it was found on the main mountains of Castile and in other regions listed by the Hunting Treaty , a hunting guide commissioned in the XIV th century by Alfonso XI of Castile. At that time, bear hunting was almost exclusively reserved for the royal family and the aristocracy. Some kings of Aragon thus forbade their vassals to indulge in it in order to retain a monopoly, such as Jacques II, Alphonse V or Ferdinand II the Catholic. A bear also scared the latter and his wife, Isabelle, while they were in the county of Real de Manzanares. Ferdinand II sent a letter to the Council of Seville, asking it to prohibit the hunting of "wild pigs, bears, stags and deer" on an estate along the Guadalquivir, in order to claim exclusive access to its rich fauna. Several chronicles report that Philip II, his great-grandson, killed the last bear of Madrid on the heights of the village of El Pardo, when he was still a prince. Also read:Kraken:the giant squid that shook the seas Several coats of arms testify to the abundance of bears, such as those of the municipalities of Madrid, Berlin or Bern. According to tradition, the Madrid coat of arms, featuring a bear standing against an arbutus tree, would represent the wealth of the forest:hunting, trees and wood. We also find this image of the bear and the strawberry tree on the famous and enigmatic painting by Jérôme Bosch, the Garden of Delights , on display at the Prado Museum. Bears adopting different postures also appear on the capitals and modillions of Romanesque buildings erected in communities in Cantabria and Asturias, in the provinces of León, Palencia and Navarre, and in the cities of Segovia or Soria. In Cangas de Onís, a capital of the former monastery of San Pedro de Villanueva admirably traces the last moments of Favila, from the farewell to his wife until his death. Unions between bears and women By the end of the Middle Ages, the dignity the bear had enjoyed within the animal kingdom and human society began to erode. It is then depicted as a ferocious, terrifying and cruel animal, at least in the imagery conveyed by the pagan festivals of the Celtic and Germanic peoples. In Spain, even today, the carnivals of Salcedo (province of Álava), Bielsa (Huesca), Arizkun (Navarre) and Almiruete (Guadalajara) show him as an animal inclined to do evil and chase down all participants. The medievalist Michel Pastoureau explains that the morphological proximity of the man and the bear, hairy and erect on its hind legs, inspired legends of union between bears and women. The desacralization of the bear is reflected through its successive artistic representations. Long popular on illuminations of bibles, missals, beati and chronicles, the bear often occupied a prominent place on Noah's ark, alongside the lion, boar or deer. The evolution of iconography, which gradually raised the lion to the throne of the animal kingdom, relegated the bear to the background and even ousted it from the biblical ark. The Church ends up associating the bear with the devil. In the XII th Century multiplied the tales of monks having seen the Evil One appear to them in the guise of a bear to seize them and suffocate them in a dream. The dark color and hairiness of the animal brought it closer to Satan, corroborating a comment by Saint Augustine in his Sermons (V e century) on King David's fight against the bear and the lion:Ursus est diabolus , “The bear is the devil”. The lion at the top of society The Novel of Renart, a bestiary compiled in the twelfth century and in the XIII th century, perfectly describes the rise of the lion to the pinnacle of animal society, to the detriment of the bear. Adorned with all the qualities, the lion, which responds to the name of Noble, is a monarch responsible for dispensing justice and ensuring compliance with the law; clumsy and ridiculous, the bear, named Brun, on the contrary arouses the mockery and contempt of other animals.
