Domestic animals as symbols and attributes in Christian iconography: some examples from Croatian sacral art

The aim of this paper was to register the domestic animals appearing in the iconography of Christian saints and to explain their association. The sour ce of knowledge was literature dealing with hagiographies of saints, sacral iconography and liturgy along with visiting churches, monasteries and muse ums throughout Croatia. After research in sacral literature and works of ar t lasting several years, it was observed that the following domestic animal s appear as accompanying about seventy Christian saints: bees, bull, camel, cow, dog, donkey, goose, dove, horse, lamb, pig, sheep, steer. Reasons and explanations of their association are most often in practical relations (t he animal serves and helps the man). However, in the animal, the most varie d symbolic, especially ethical and morality messages are personified very o ften. Especially interesting are saints honoured as patrons of particular a nimals and of professionals occupied with animals. In human medicine, they are most frequently protectors from zoonoses, too. In some cases, animals a re attributed to saints because of the linguistic association resulting fro m similarity of the names of animals and saints. In the same way, domestic animals are present in sacral art as a part of ambient decoration, too. In addition, it can also be interesting from the historical and ethnic veterin ary point of view. Presented examples show how, by interdisciplinary approa ch to sacral art and tradition, we can come to other numerous findings surp assing mere religious messages. In this case, these are contributions to th e history of veterinary medicine in the widest sense.