Fantastyczne stwory i bestie w ikonografii średniowiecznych pieczęci rycerstwa śląskiego .......... 193

FANTASTIC CREATURES AND BEASTS IN THE ICONOGRAPHY OF THE MEDIEVAL SEALS OF SILESIAN KNIGHTS

The article takes up the problem of the presence of fantastic creatures and beasts in the iconography of the medieval seals of Silesian knights. The source basis for the research presented in it is 12 seals showing such animals, included in the catalog by Marek L. Wójcik. We find depictions of unicorns, a unicorn with a fish tail, dragons, a hybrid with a deer’s head and the body of a fish, a fish with a deer’s horn, a griffin’s wing and a griffin’s leg.These ideas were considered on two levels – religious and knightly – expressing two spheres important in the lives of medieval knights who owned these stamps.The analysis also referred to the amount of knowledge about the above-mentioned animals available to these holders, including through the bestiaries of that time, most often based on the Physiologus, an early Christian treatise from the second–fourth centuries.