Bestiary animals functioned as hate signs encoding Jews as deceptive devil figures

Evidence

The fox and hyena are both animalia and monstrum. As symbols of the monstrous Jew who hunts and kills Christ and his followers, they function as hate signs. The fox ( vulpes) is a well-recognized “hate sign” in the language of anti-Semitism that symbolizes the Jew’s deceptive nature. The stories told on the pages of these manuscripts typically show a fox tricking a bird, resulting in its capture. “The fox is a symbol of the devil, who pretends to be dead before those who live according to the flesh [the birds], whom he traps and devours.” — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 215

Categorization

• XREF: Reinforces reading on ‘moral panics’ framing: bestiary allegories are a decoding key audiences used to read monstrosity onto real groups.