This course surveys medieval monsters through the lenses of multiple academic disciplines — archaeology, literary studies, musicology, intellectual history, art history, philosophy, and theology. Across twelve modules, scholars from the University of Waterloo demonstrate how studying what medieval people feared, imagined, and depicted reveals the deeper values, anxieties, and cosmologies of the Middle Ages.

Module 1: Introduction to Medieval Monsters

Steven Bednarski & Andrew Moore (History, University of Waterloo)

1a. Context: The Middle Ages and Periodization

Overview

This is a course on medieval monsters. The purpose of the course is twofold:

• First, it aims to show how medieval people viewed their world by analyzing their monstrosities– those things which, by their very nature, exceeded the boundaries of the normal. In good anthropological fashion, though, by looking to the extreme we are able to see the limits of the acceptable.
• Second, this course demonstrates how aninterdisciplinary field of research operates. It does this by providing examples by and from scholars who research in different disciplines. Unlike most other courses you will take, this one was not developed by a single expert. Rather, a team of scholars – all dedicated to understanding the Middle Ages in different ways – worked collaboratively to generate the course content. This course truly is an example of interdisciplinary research and teaching!

Medieval Studies and Interdisciplinarity

When it comes to interdisciplinarity, medievalists were among the very first humanists and social scientists to band together for the greater good and, among them, Canadians led the charge. In the English-speaking world, in 1929, the Institute of Mediaeval Studies (today called the Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies) was founded at St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto. In the 1930s and 1940s, American scholars followed suit, notably at the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Most of these early efforts were driven by Catholic intellectuals, since the period in question, the Middle Ages, represented in some ways an historical flourishing of Catholic institutions. When the University of Waterloo was formed in the late 1950s, Catholic medievalists at St. Jerome’s College worked in partnership with the University of Waterloo’s classicists to found a joint Medieval Studies Program, the oldest interdisciplinary program at the University of Waterloo. All over the world, though, by the 1960s, similar efforts continued to draw international appeal. In the United Kingdom, thus, where departments dedicated to, say, medieval British languages had existed since at least the 1920s, full-blown Medieval Studies programs with interdisciplinary breadth grew up in the sixties in English towns such as Reading, Leeds, and York. At the same time, American expansion continued apace in universities such as New York City’s pre-eminent Catholic university, Fordham, but also at leading secular U.S. universities such as the University of California, Berkeley.

Historical Development of Medieval Studies

This timeline adapted from Wikipedia shows significant points in the development and establishment of Medieval Studies programs with interdisciplinary breadth.

More recently, newer fields such as the digital humanities, environmental studies, and popular culture continue to expand the boundaries of Medieval Studies’ collaboration. Today, Medieval Studies is a shining example of how scholars with very different methodological training, who rely on very different sources of evidence, and who are interested often in very different questions, can collaborate effectively.

(Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, c. 1929)

(Unknown, c. 1200-1299)

Each module in this course presents a different monster as studied by a different scholar and discipline. In this course you will see how archaeologists view giants, how intellectual historians might view dragons or conjured spirits, or how literary scholars conceive of so-called wild people. In every module, you will learn about a different “monster” from the Middle Ages, but also, importantly, about how different disciplines ascribe and derive meaning about the medieval past.

The Middle Ages and Historical Periodization

This course presumes a basic working knowledge of the Middle Ages, or, at the very least, a willingness to do some light independent background reading and to fill in any gaps in your knowledge. You may, from time to time, need to research a term that scholars take for granted. For example, if you are unfamiliar with the papacy and the popes, or with the Crusades, or with words such as ecclesiastical or liturgical, then you may need to look up such terms. That’s okay. These are general concepts required to access the more specialized information contained in the course. Wherever possible, we have tried to use plain language or to define terms.

Additional Resource

There is an excellent reference tool available in the library and online that can help with almost any medieval term or topic.  It is the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, edited by the famous Princeton medievalist Joseph R. Strayer.

• Strayer, Joseph R.Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner, 1983. You can access this resource online through the UWaterloo Library atDictionary of the Middle Ages

Click the HathiTrust Emergency Access link under View Online. From the HathiTrust page you will be asked to login (top right). Select University of Waterloo and login using your WatIAM username and password.

You also should begin the course with a general sense of what we mean when we refer to “the Middle Ages” or to the “medieval.” To help with that, let’s review some historical chronology related to European history and periodization.

A Note on Referencing Historical Eras: BC / BCE and AD / CE

Basically, you should understand for this course that the Roman Empire was at its height in the first century CE, that is to say, the first century of the “Common Era,” (CE) or what used to be referred to by Christians as Anno Domini, the Year of the Lord, or “AD” for short. This dating system differentiates CE from BCE, meaning simply Before the Common Era, or, what Christians previously referred to as the era Before Christ, or “BC.” In any event, in the first century CE, the Roman Empire comprised all of Europe, including parts of Britain, and much of the Middle East and North Africa. The Map of Roman Empire at its Height, 116 CE shows how widespread and universal the Roman Empire was in the first and second centuries CE.

The Roman Empire

The Roman Empire, though, collapsed due to external and internal pressures. Externally, the migrations of foreign peoples in search of a better life put huge strains on Rome’s vast border. Internally, Roman political and economic systems collapsed after centuries of challenges. All of these pressures came to head sometime in the fifth century CE (which is to say, the 400s). Certainly, by the year 500, the Empire was but a distant memory.

In western Europe, that is to say in what is today Britain, France, the Low Countries, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland, and their neighbour states, the former Roman lands were replaced by newer Germanic “barbarian” kingdoms. As foreign peoples migrated into the old imperial lands, they set up their own nations in the heart of western Europe. This also happened in the less Romanized northern regions of western Europe, in modern day Scandinavia (Finland, Sweden, and Norway) and also in Iceland.

(Coldeel, 2009)

Farther to the East, however, especially in areas around modern-day Turkey and the Middle East, Roman traditions evolved and continued on for much longer. In fact, though the western capital city of Rome was conquered by the Visigoths (a Germanic tribe) in the year 410 CE and then, more thoroughly, by the Vandals (another Germanic tribe) in 476, the eastern capital city of Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) remained intact for almost another thousand years. The last remnants of the eastern portion of the former Roman Empire only fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 CE.

Nonetheless, if we set aside for a moment what happened in the Near and Middle East, and focus on western Europe, Roman ways transitioned as new cultures established themselves. This initial period of resettling older western Roman lands, settling new nations, and implanting new cultures in western Europe lasted from about 500 to about 800. This is what we call the early Middle Ages.

Over time, if Rome became a distant memory, many Roman institutions continued on in Germanic lands, though sometimes in modified forms, and this helped to provide continuity and richness to the newly forming nations of western Europe. Rome’s official religion since the first quarter of the fourth-century CE, Christianity, survived thanks to the conversion of the so-called barbarian kingdoms. With Christianity came the vast administrative network of the Roman Catholic Church, which promoted education for its administrators, constructed monumental buildings, and developed a complicated legal system based on Roman traditions, among others. And, of course, the common tongue of Rome, its lingua franca, Latin, remained the language of European education. So, over time, as the barbarian kingdoms stabilized, new hybrid cultures flourished in western Europe. The second map below, Simplified Map of Europe circa 998CE, shows how much more complex Europe had become by about the year 1000. Compare that map to the earlier one, Map of Roman Empire at its Height, 116 CE, in which all of Europe was controlled by Rome and you will immediately see how much more fractured European politics had become in a period of about 500 years.

(Roke 2006)

By about the year 1000, most places in Europe had come to be dominated politically by a military class of horse-riding warriors wearing armour. Those warriors developed a sort of elite horse culture whose English name “chivalry” comes from the French work for horse, cheval. Their leaders organized themselves into courts, they built strong fortifications of stone called castles, and they set about spreading their dominant religion, through war, throughout the Middle East and North Africa in a series of so-called “crusades.” They also used their military might to dominate and subordinate the masses of their own European population, whose task it was to farm and to produce food. In general, agrarian farm workers had far fewer rights than their ruling elites, and normally such farmers did not own the land they worked, had limited property rights, and could not move around very much. Still, agricultural technology and population stability eventually paved the way for the rebirth of cities and the shift away from subsistence agriculture (wherein a population produces just enough food to survive) to surplus agriculture (in which extra food means a culture can afford to have artists, intellectuals, and elites who do not produce food for themselves but live off the work of others). This western European culture flourished between about 800 and 1200. This period is what we tend to call the high Middle Ages.

Finally, after about 1200, though, conditions began to change in Europe. For one thing, the planet became slightly cooler and wetter; Europe exited what climatologists call the Medieval Climate Optimum and entered the Little Ice Age. By the first years of the 1300s, Europe saw successive seasons of heightened precipitation, leading to rotten crops and failed harvests. By 1315-1317, waves of successive famine swept across Europe. A generation later, the worst epidemic to strike the planet, the Black Death, caused widespread mortality, a Great Pestilence across the land; in some place well over a third of the population died in a short period of time. Worse: this disease recurred in successive waves for centuries. The demographic surge Europe had enjoyed in the early and high Middle Ages crashed and Europe’s population would not recover its 1300 levels until around the industrial revolution, hundreds of years later. This was a time of crises and collapse, but also a time that sowed the seeds of modernity. By the 1400s, Europeans widely questioned the old ways of doing things, broke the universal control of the Catholic Church, asked new questions about the universe, and, eventually, began to explore far beyond their shores thanks to new advances in shipbuilding, weaponry, and navigation. When white European settlers arrived on North American shores in the late 1400s, the entire world changed. This was the late Middle Ages, the period from about 1250-1500, when Europe struggled with climate change, famine, epidemic, and warfare, and then set out to colonize the Americas.

Why “the Middle Ages”?

Why do we call this era “the Middle Ages”? Simply, because it is the 1,000 era between the end of the ancient world, and the start of the modern period. It is, literally, in the middle. Since, however, this age has three distinct phases (early, high, and late), in English, anyway, we refer to the Middle Ages, plural.

Timeline of the Ancient, Middle, and Modern Ages. Image Description © University of Waterloo, derived from Biw3ds/iStock/Getty Images and Hampi/iStock/Getty Images.

The English adjective “medieval,” which describes the period, comes directly from the Latin medium aevum, meaning, simply, the middle age. No one alive in that time period called it that, of course. This is a purely modern way of breaking up the past into learnable chunks! This is called periodization, which humans look back and divide the past into different ages, eras, or periods. It helps us see connections, track change, and, generally, learn our stories if they are divided into tidy categories. In reality, though, this is purely a mental system and does not necessarily reflect how things evolved. Still, periodization provides a useful way to teach and learn the past.

Summary

As you read through the various modules in this course, and learn about different ways scholars “see” medieval monsters, you should keep this very broad and very general European history in mind. The Ancient world of Egypt, Greece, or Rome ended by about 500. Between 500-800, new cultures established themselves on the soils of western Europe, hybrids of Germanic and Roman civilizations that were characteristic of the early Middle Ages. Between about 800 and roughly 1250, this pan-European culture became well established. It was characterized by the domination of chivalric culture, knights, horses, and crusades, and by a population boom leading to ever greater advances and stability: the high Middle Ages. Between roughly 1250 and 1500, this world fragmented, in part due to changes in natural environment, in part because any organism can only sustain itself for so long before problems of internal cohesion cause it to fracture and break apart. That was certainly the case in the late Middle Ages. As you study, think about where each monster fits in time. Was it a product of the Roman world? Of the high medieval world? Or of the decaying late medieval?

Works Cited

Coldeel. 2009. “Map of the Roman Empire in 116 AD.” Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Roman_Empire_in_116_AD.png

Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies. c. 1929. “Seal of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto.” Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. Wikimedia Commons. Toronto. Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pontifical_Institute_of_Mediaeval_Studies_seal.svg

Roke. 2006. “Map of Europe in 998 AD.” Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_map_998.PNG

Unknown. c. 1200-1299. “Seal Made from a 13th Century Seal Matrix.” Augustinian Canons Stone Priory. British Library. Staffordshire. Retrieved from: https://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/.a/6a00d8341c464853ef0153938a1852970b-pi?_ga=2.31796094.1328444194.1609356399-187946553.1605721563

Unknown. n.d. “Medieval Studies” Wikipedia. Retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_studies

1b. Here There Be Monsters

Introduction to Medieval Monsters

The very term monster (French monstre, German monstrum, Italian mostro, Portugese monstro, etc.) has been with Europeans and their various cadet cultures for a very long time. In the ancient Roman Empire, the Latin noun monstrum simply meant an ill omen, a bad sign, a signal that pointed to coming misfortune; it would have been used, for example, to refer to the birth of a two-headed calf – an omen that things are not right in nature. That noun was also connected more generally etymologically to the Latin verb monstrare, which meant, quite logically, to show something or to point it out.Both senses are fossilized in modern day English through the verbs to remonstrate (meaning to present negative reasons to someone) or to demonstrate (simply to point out or to show something).

The Legacy of Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE)

The Roman author and natural philosopher Pliny the Elder, who lived around 23-79 CE, used the term monstrum even more generally than its original sense. In his Historia Naturalis, or Natural History, he used it to describe unusual creatures, which he claimed could be found only in India or Africa. Pliny, thus, recounted tales of dog-headed men called cynocephali, or big-footed men called sciapodae, but he by no means invented such fantastic beasts. Indeed, Pliny was simply repeating what had been written and re-written for hundreds of years going back to even more ancient Greek authors such as the fifth-century BCE author Herodotus of Halicarnassus, often called the “father of history”. But, as Pliny remained popular throughout the Middle Ages, and as medieval writers continued the tradition of repeating and reincorporating tales from long before their time, his mythical creatures remained well known long after his death. So, throughout the Middle Ages, “monsters” meant creatures that were fantastical, and they appeared everywhere in medieval art, architecture, poetry, and prose.

Take a look, for example, at this illustration of cynocephali which appears in a late medieval book (see the figure Jesus Christ Surrounded by Cynocephali). It is an illumination, a painting used to make a hand-written and hand-drawn book, called a manuscript, more beautiful and more interesting.

Cynocephali (also spelled cenocephali) were among some of the most copied monsters of the Middle Ages. Many medieval chroniclers described them, though their precise appearance sometimes varied. For example, the medieval chronicler Adam of Bremen, who died in 1081, wrote that cyncocephali were the children of Amazons, wild warrior women living on the shores of the Baltic.

Adam also wrote that the cynocephali had their dog-heads situated on their torsos, from which they barked loudly!

Still, cynocephali, along with pygmies (miniature wild humanoids), giants (oversized humanoids), himantopodes (men whose feet faced backward), panotii (humanoids with oversized ears), monoculi (humanoids with one eye), and bleymae (also spelled blemmya, headless men whose faces were on their bodies), they remained popular in medieval books.

(Unknown, 1397)

Why Study Monsters?

What roles did monsters serve in generic medieval culture writ large? The American literary scholar of the Middle Ages, John B. Friedman, has noted that the famous early medieval theologian (St.) Augustine, the bishop of Hippo Regius (354-430 CE) in Algeria, North Africa, raised a troubling question for Christians: since the Book of Genesis, the first “book” or section of the Bible, the Christian sacred scriptures, which contains the Christian creation stories, does not mention God creating such monsters, whence did they derive? If the Bible did not have God creating such creatures, who did? Moreover, Augustine asked, when did these monsters appear and to what end? In response, Friedman posits two possible answers:

• medieval thinkers might have viewed monstrosity as punishment for human wickedness, which they called sin (a wicked act that creates distance from humans and god).
• though, medievals might just as likely have viewed monsters as something fantastic, something wonderful, something beautiful even: a sure sign of God’s infinite creativity and love of diversity!

Finally, Friedman concludes that medieval descriptions of monsters serve altogether different purposes today to help us understand the Middle Ages. For example, since many monsters appear in travel literature, stories of far-off lands and their inhabitants, they point to how Europeans viewed foreigners. Those views, which range from strange to downright xenophobic and even, to apply a modern perspective, at times racist or Eurocentric, were part of the background knowledge Europeans brought with them as they encountered and attempted to frame encounters with Muslims, Jews, Africans, and, eventually the indigenous populations of the New World.

Taken more positively, monstrosity informs how medieval people saw themselves in relation to a larger world, a world that, unlike for us today, remained deeply mysterious and unknown, if not unknowable. The othernessor alterity of monsters reflected medieval peoples’ sense of the normal, the safe, the knowable, even the good. Through monsters, we see, therefore, the contours of medieval people’s world, their (and its) boundaries. So, by crossing into the world of monsters, we understand better how medieval people understood themselves.

Required Reading Break

Take some time now to read through this website and article published by the British Museum. While you read, be sure to explore some of the digitized manuscripts and study their illuminations!

• Bovey, Alixe. “Medieval monsters,” 30 April 2015.

Check Your Understanding

1) In the thirteenth-century miscellany of Peraldus, a Christian knight on horseback faces off against the Seven Deadly Sins and their sub-vices. How are the Seven Deadly Sins personified? As…

2) The first-century Roman author who described monsters living at the edges of the known world was:

3) A medieval book that contains detailed evidence of animals ranging from real-world to fantastical examples is called a…

Works Cited

John B. Friedman, “Monsters and monstrous races,” Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, ed. R. G. Dunphy (London: Brill, 2010): 1117 – 1121.

Unknown. 1397. “p.67: Illumination of Jesus Christ surrounded by cynocephali.” The Boris Yeltzin Presidential Library. The Kiev Psalter of 1397. Kiev. Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kievskaya_psaltir_kinocefal.jpg

1c. Disciplinary Lenses

Overview of Interdisciplinarity Across Modules

As noted, every field of study has its own rules, its own methodologies (ways of working), its preferred data sets (sources of information), and, therefore, its own unique way of training students. Throughout this course, you will experience several of them. The plan is as follows:

Medieval Giants

You will begin by looking at giants with Andrew Moore, an environmental historian whose work necessarily leads him to consider archaeological evidence. Giants held a special place in medieval lore and also for modern students of the Middle Ages. In the twelfth-century, the medieval philosopher Bernard of Chartres (d. 1124) was fond of saying that thinks of his age were as dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants (in Latin, “nanos gigantum humeris insidentes”). What he meant, of course, was that human progress and knowledge are cumulative. For most of human history, change came about slowly, in increments. Whatever new developments were made then, as now, were, more often than not, improvements on prior discoveries. But giants signified much more to medieval people, and they were popular monsters throughout Europe. To help you understand giants, you will explore the problem from the perspective of the archaeologist, who relies on physical evidence to reconstruct material culture.

Werewolves

From giants, we next turn our attention to werewolves, men who transformed from rational human form to wild beasts. Ann Marie Rasmussen, a scholar of medieval German literature, gender, and material culture argues that, since there are no physical werewolf remains for us to examine, archaeology would be the wrong tool for the task and instead adopts the technique of the literary scholar to explore lycanthropy. She deploys a close reading of texts to gain a deeper cultural understanding of what werewolves signified for medieval culture.

Satirical Monsters

Continuing the theme of animals, humans, and monstrosity, Kate Steiner has prepared the third module, satirical monsters, which looks at how medieval people constantly tested the boundary between the human and the monstrous. She analyses anthropomorphized asses and horses though the lens of musicology. Just as you will see how werewolves permeated medieval literature, this exploration of music history will point to the intersection of living beasts in sacred and profane culture.

Ghosts and Revenants

From the living, Caley McCarthy, a medical historian by training, next turns your attention to the dead and the boundaries between this life and the next. The study of medieval ghosts and revenants is complex, though, and she argues for an inherently culture-based approach rooted in anthropology, sociology, and, once again, archaeology. Here you will see how a blended technique allows us to see that which is otherwise… invisible.

Dragons

The sixth module in the course, prepared by historian Steven Bednarski, takes on a larger-than-life proportion by exposing you to the most iconic of all the medieval monsters: dragons. It was no accident that the famous writer and English medievalist, J. R. R. Tolkien set his antagonist, the great wyrm Smaug, at the heart of The Hobbit, or that, more recently, George R. R. Martin constructed his historical drama in Westeros, a land dominated by the return of dragons. Like knights and castles, dragons are emblematic of the Middle Ages, both historically and in the popular consciousness today. To view dragons, you will explore the techniques of the historian, most specifically, the intellectual historian (who traces the history of ideas across cultures, time, and space).

Summoned Spirits

In the seventh module, summoned spirits, David Porreca, a scholar of intellectual history focused on medieval magic, explores how medieval people believed humans could apply the science of applied magic to summon “spirits” which obeyed the practitioner or their clients. Conjuring provides an excellent way to apprehend how complex systems of thoughts often lie at the intersection of science, ritual, ideas, and religious expression.

Demons

From summoned spirits, Gabriele Niccoli, an expert on late medieval and renaissance Italian literature and culture, presents a case study from Dante’s Divine Comedy, which considers demons and other hellish monsters. Through Dante, this eighth module provides you with a deeper appreciation of the lasting connections between the ancient and late medieval world, and see how the dominant Catholic influence in Italy altered Classical myth to fit its own ideologies.

Wild People

Ann Marie Rasmussen in the ninth module, wild people, explores the boundaries between civilization and chaos. Medieval people were obsessed with the wild, they imagined all sorts of fantastical creatures living outside the bounds of civilization: these were the so-called “wild people”. Through their obsession, though, you will see applied a gendered analysis which underscores medieval priorities.

Medieval Conceptions of the Devil

In the tenth module, Andy Stumph demonstrates how philosophers and theologians approach the topic of the medieval conceptions of the devil, the ultimate medieval monster. Here you will see mapped out a methodology aligned closely with that of medieval thinkers. Unlike some of the other scientific approaches taken in this course, theology allows you to ask similar questions to those posed by medieval thinkers, providing an opportunity for our world – and theirs – to align.

Political Monsters

Though, by the eleventh module, political monsters, you will have explored literary approaches to the past using continental sources, this will be your first opportunity to read monsters using medieval English literature. Here, to wrap up our survey of monstrosity, Norm Klassen, an expert on the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, forces us to think broadly about monstrosity. He uses examples from The Canterbury Tales in contrast to a much earlier poem, the Old English Beowulf. Through this comparison, you will have a unique opportunity to read a word from the early Middle Ages against one composed in the late Middle Ages, bookending medieval English culture.

(Skelton, 1908)

Over the course of these modules, you will be exposed to many different kinds of monsters and, equally importantly, to many different kinds of scholarly disciplines. Each module will flag for you the disciplinary “lens” being featured.

All of the expert medievalists who contributed to the design of this course believe in cross-disciplinary collaboration and in the core mission of Medieval Studies: that, individually, medieval scholars have developed various approaches to the source material transmitted by that lost world. When we work together, though, when we share our different ways of “seeing” the past, then we gain a much richer, more holistic understanding of the Middle Ages.

The Historical Disciplinary Lens

We will end this brief introduction to Medieval Studies and to the study of medieval monsters by providing an example of one of the disciplinary methodologies you will encounter in this course. You have now read about the various experts and their fields of study, but there is a utility in mapping out in detail how a discipline works. The example used is one that may already be accessible to you from previous courses: the discipline of history.

Historians engage the present in a dialogue about the past to understand the future. We read the evidence left behind by previous people and cultures to understand their world and, though it, our own. This approach was summed beautifully by the famous French historian, Fernand Braudel (1902-1985). In his published essay On History, Braudel explained to his French students the value of studying a foreign landscape to understand their own world better:

Live in London for a year and you will not know much about England. But by contrast, in light of what has surprised you, you will suddenly have come to understand some of the most deep-seated and characteristic aspects of France, things you did not know before because you knew them too well. With regard to the present, the past too is a way of distancing yourself.(Braudel 37)

Importantly, then, historians try not to look at our own situation. Direct modern analysis is best left to anthropologists, sociologists, modern cultural scholars, and political scientists; disciplines which have developed rigorous methodologies for engaging the present. As a general rule, the historian’s method demands a certain degree of distance. As soon as the historian becomes caught up in the events she studies, historical understanding becomes compromised.

That does not mean it is not ever necessary for historians sometimes to engage the present – but it does make our work more complicated and tends to blur the boundary between disciplines and approaches.

The overarching goal of historical study and analysis is to inculcate what we call historical literacy and historical consciousness**.**

Additional Resources

For further reading on historical consciousness, see:

• Seixas, Peter. “What is Historical Consciousness,” in Ruth Sandwell (ed.),To the Past: History Education, Public Memory & Citizenship in Canada.University of Toronto Press, 2006. pp. 1-22. [Course Reserves]
• Stearns, Peter N., Peter Seixas and Sam Wineburg (eds.),Knowing, Teaching & Learning history: National and International Perspectives.New York University Press, 2000. [Course Reserves]

Both these concepts mean that readers of history will come to know and understand past events, that they will develop the ability to appreciate continuity and change over time, that they can appreciate that there are many ways to see the past, that they will know how to interpret evidence appropriately, that they will make connections, and that they will grapple with causation and motivation.

Once an individual has acquired a certain degree of historical literacy, and developed the reflex for historical consciousness, he or she will inevitably apply them to the interpretation of their own world. At its most sophisticated, then, benefit of the historical method is that it equips us to make meaning of modern debates through our knowledge of similar (if never identical) past contexts.

Historians, much like physicians, accept that the historical arts are diagnostic and never prescriptive or absolute. Imagine a doctor confronted with a patient who presents clinically with certain symptoms. The patient can relay some of the symptoms directly to the doctor, though the patient’s perception of their symptoms is always filtered through his or her own experiences. So, for example, the patient might say, “Doctor, I am burning up!” This leads the doctor to conclude that the patient reports a fever. When the doctor takes the patient’s temperature with a thermometer, though, she notes that the patient actually only has a low-grade fever, not particularly worrying. To the patient, though, this symptom is of grave concern. Next, there are symptoms the patient is unable to report directly. For this, the doctor must make deeper investigations which require a combination of data gathering and interpretation. So the doctor will order blood and urine samples collected, take a throat swab, and request an ultrasound. The doctor then sends off those samples to a Lab where they are interpreted by specialists who provide their opinion to the doctor. Once the doctor receives all this information, she performs her own diagnosis based on the evidence she has gathered.

But here’s the catch. Two doctors who receive the same data may arrive at a totally difference diagnosis.

Patients know this and will often seek a second opinion for this reason. While most doctors might agree on any given diagnosis, some will always dissent.

(Unknonwn, c. 1300)

Primary Evidence

That is how historians work. The historian must decipher the evidence left behind directly from people in the past: primary evidence. Primary source material or primary evidence be written records from the Middle Ages, such as diaries, account books, laws, charters, religious manuals, and so on. But it might also be stone statues or sculptures, buildings, paintings, music, jewelry or badges, or any other original artefact from the time period in question.

Using primary evidence, the historian reads what other people write, thought, expressed visually, or said about their world. The historian approaches primary evidence much like the physican: suspiciously and skeptically. After all, what people said and wrote about a situation was not necessarily what was really happening. Like a patient description his or her symptoms to a doctor, it was more a reflection of medieval peoples’ values, wants, desires, and beliefs.

Secondary Evidence

To help provide context to primary evidence, the historian next consults any available secondary evidence. Secondary evidence includes anything that other people, since the period in question, have created or written or thought or said about the primary evidence or its time period. So, much like the doctor must rely on a radiologist to tell her about what she thinks the patient’s ultrasound shows, the historian might consider what people living fifty years or a hundred years or two hundred years after a medieval event came to think about it. After all, given time, new details might emerge that helped later observers reach a more accurate assessment than people who lived through a particular event.

Finally, it must be said that the very best historians work through interdisciplinarity. This means they do not limit their analysis to evidence provided by past people and other historians. Instead, they will look to other branches of science to shine light on an historical question.

For example, if an historian is writing, say, a cultural history of climate change (for example, this book: A Cultural History of Climate Change) he might look at data preserved in ice core sample, pollen, soil, and trees. Once he has assembled that evidence and data, the historian would “read” it against what people wrote, drew, and said about climate in the past to then draw conclusions about what was happening.

Even so, remember: another historian, faced with the same evidence, might choose to tell a very different story!

So, at the end of the day, the study of history remains deeply subjective. Sure, it tells us about things that actually happened, but so does Wikipedia or the newspaper. The analysis, the story written by historians to give those events meaning, is interpretive. It is crafted by skilled thinkers, who study primary and secondary evidence, who read across disciplines, and who attempt to formulate a meaningful narrative that advances our understanding of the past, but which can equally help train us to “read” the present more accurately.

Check Your Understanding

1) Historians rely on two fundamentally different type of evidence, namely…

2) An example of a work of English poetry from the Early Middle Ages is…

3) A great French historian once advised his students to live in London so that they could…

Once you have completed reviewing all of this week’s content, return to the module page.

Works Cited

Fernand Braudel, On History, trans. Sarah Matthews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980) 37.

Peter Seixas, “What is Historical Consciousness,” in Ruth Sandwell (ed.), To the Past: History Education, Public Memory & Citizenship in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006) : 11-22

Peter N. Stearns, Peter Seixas and Sam Wineburg (eds.), Knowing, Teaching & Learning history: National and International Perspectives (New York: New York University Press, 2000).

Unknown. c. 1300. “Medicine: Examining Urine.” British Library. Harley 3140 f. 32v. London. Retrieved from: https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item100351.html

Module 2: Medieval Giants

Andrew Moore (History, University of Waterloo)

This module, written by an environmental historian, draws on perspectives from archaeology and geography, including landscape history , to discuss the origins and development of cultural myths and traditions, specifically regarding stories of giants. To investigate research questions, archaeologists and geographers focus mainly on context, particularly the relative location where the item of interest lies. Studying physical objects and spaces can help us fill in the gaps from written records, especially considering how sparse ancient historical documentation can be. Keep in mind that even with methodologies using the scientific method, there is always a level of interpretation involved. For balance, you will also be introduced to a couple different scholarly perspectives in the readings, o

2a. Giants in Mythology

Different Cultural Portrayals of Giants

(Reynolds, c. 1769)

Tales of giants loom large in the traditions of cultures throughout world history. Tales of these humanoids, massive in size, strength, and appetite, abound in the books and stories of many religions and mythologies, including Abrahamic (Judeo-Christian and Islamic), Norse, Celtic, Greek, Hindu, Jain, Native American, and many others.

Giants were often portrayed, especially in European traditions, as creatures with little intelligence and destructive tendencies. This perception generally persisted throughout the Middle Ages and for much of the early modern period. As Edmund Burke (see the figure, Portrait of Edmond Burke), the famous philosopher, wrote in 1757:

It is impossible to suppose a giant the object of love. When we let our imaginations loose in romance, the ideas we naturally annex to that size are those of tyranny, cruelty, injustice, and every thing horrid and abominable.(Burke 157-58)

Modern authors have begun to nuance views of giants to some extent. When Roald Dahl, for example, wrote his beloved children’s book, The BFG(an acronym for “The Big Friendly Giant”), he clearly did not agree with that Burke quote. Although that work still portrays most giants as simple beings with limited vocabularies and a fondness for eating humans, the BFG himself eats vegetables, sends good dreams to children at night, and is protective of his human friend, Sophie (see the figure, The BFG, below).

(Walt Disney Pictures, 2016)

Ancient myths, however, overwhelmingly portrayed giants as violent antagonists and an existential threat to the world. The Gigantes of Greek mythology waged a famous war, the Gigantomachy, against the Olympian gods and only suffered defeat once Hercules intervened to assist his kin. The figure below, Gigantomachy, depicts, on the left, Hekate (Goddess) fighting Klytios (Giant); on the right, Otos (Giant) against Artemis (Goddess), while her hunting dog bites another giant on the neck. The giants in this frieze does not depict the giants as particularly large, which demonstrates how Greek giants were noted predominately for their strength and aggression, not necessarily massive size.

(Pergamon Museum, c.188 BC)

The giants, afterwards buried under the earth, were considered the cause of volcanoes and earthquakes by the ancient Greeks. The Norse foretold that at the end of the world, during Ragnarök, giants would rise up against the gods and storm Asgard. Volcanic eruptions also played an important role in that narrative and may have influenced or inspired ancient Norse perceptions of giants.

In the Hebrew Bible, giants often appeared as antagonists who attacked the people of Israel or attempted to prevent them from accomplishing their goals. For example, a race of gigantic people called the Nephilim reputedly blocked Moses’ entry into Canaan. Most famously, the Philistine giant Goliath challenged the Hebrew army until he was defeated in single combat by David.

(Dollman, c.1909)

From Where Did These Stories Come?

It can be exceedingly difficult to determine where myths originate. Tracing familiar stories back to their origin risks running into various insurmountable obstacles, especially if the tales have evolved drastically over time. Many myths originate in oral traditions as well, so we often have no surviving record apart from what later authors wrote down regarding them. The most important thing is to empathize and try to consider how contemporary people understood those stories, not necessarily whether it’s the “original” version or if it makes sense to us as modern readers. We can, however, do our best to analyze how these myths changed over time and ascertain when the ideas first gained traction. Many narratives we often take for granted as “medieval” or “ancient” were in fact created by later writers trying to explain how their own society originated. As the stories evolve, they take on a life of their own and influence (and sometimes mislead) how we view the past. Different research methods and perspectives, including from literary history, science, and archaeology, can help give us a holistic view of how medieval people conceived of mythical creatures like giants.

Cultural Narratives Around Giants

People in the Middle Ages, like in any other era, drew heavily on familiar stories when trying to explain their world. Biblical narratives especially influenced medieval culture in many respects, including conceptions of supernatural beings. The stories of Gog and Magog, later combined into one giant named Gogmagog, represent a clear example of this. Gog and Magog, according to some other legends, were trapped behind a wall in the Caucasus by Alexander the Great. Other medieval myths stated that they would escape from the Caucasus during the Apocalypse (Lindquist and Mittman 15). Gog and Magog were so prominent in medieval myths, that they are even represented in many medieval maps of the world. They are described in one corner of the famous Hereford “mappa mundi”, pictured below in the figure, Hereford Mappa Mundi, and also in maps by the noted Arab cartographer Muhammad al-Idrisi, pictured below in the figure, Al-Idrisi World Map.

(Richard of Haldingham, c.1300)

(al-Idrisi, c.1154)

Required Reading Break

Read this article about how medieval society incorporated some of these biblical stories.

• Scherb, Victor I. “Assimilating Giants: The Appropriation of Gog and Magog in Medieval and Early Modern England.“The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, vol. 32, no. 1, 2002, pp. 59-84.[Course Reserves]

Classical myths significantly influenced the development of medieval European cultural traditions, including a common theme of heroes overcoming giants. Many prominent Western figures, both historical and mythical, were purported to have fought with giants, including Hercules, Alexander the Great, and King Arthur.

(Wace, c.1350)

Check Your Understanding

Gog and Magog, originally mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as a race of people, were later appropriated by medieval writers in order to:

Works Cited

al-Idrisi, Muhammad. Muhammad al-Idrisi’s World Map. 1154. Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Al-idrisi_world_map.jpg. Accessed 16 December 2019.

Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Sublime and Beautiful. London, Routledge, 2008.

Dollman, John Charles. The Giant with the Flaming Sword. 1909. Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_giant_with_the_flaming_sword_by_Dollman.jpg. Accessed 16 December 2019.

Lindquist, Sherry C. M. and Asa Simon Mittman. *Medieval Monsters: Terrors, Aliens, Wonders.*New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, 2018.

Figure 3. Pergamon Museum. Detail of the Relief of the Pergamon Altar. left to right: Hekate fights Klytios, Oltos (?) against Artemis. 188 BCE. Pergamon Museum. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pergamonmuseum_-_Antikensammlung_-_Pergamonaltar_02-03.jpg. Accessed 22 November 2019. [CC-BY-SA-3.0]

Reynolds, Joshua. Edmund Burke. 1769. National Portrait Gallery. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:EdmundBurke1771.jpg. Accessed 22 November 2019. [Public Domain]

Richard of Haldingham. Hereford Mappa Mundi. 1300. Wikimedia Commons. Accessed 16 December 2019. [Public Domain]

Scherb, Victor I. “Assimilating Giants: The Appropriation of Gog and Magog in Medieval and Early Modern England.” The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies vol. 32, no. 1, 2002, pp. 59-84.

Wace. Roman de Brut, a verse epitome (begins imperfectly) with continuation to Edward III; La Destruction de Rome; Fierabras. Vol. Egerton 3028. British Museum Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts 1916-1920, c.1350. f.49 Drawing of king Arthur finding a giant roasting a pig.

Walt Disney Pictures. The BFG [Movie Still]. 2016. Stephen Spielburg. https://movies.disney.com/the-bfg.

2b. Giants, Geography, and Climate

Using Giants to Help Explain the Natural World

Myths about giants did not come only from other cultural traditions, but also developed independently based on local ruins, geography, and climate. Stories of long-disappeared gigantic races were used to explain the existence of massive structures and the presence of enormous natural features that defied their understanding of human construction capabilities. For example, the Aztecs credited a race of ancient giants with building Teotihuacan (see the figure The Pyramid of the Sun below). Some early medieval northern European writers referred to the remnants of grand Roman architecture as the product of gigantic construction (Grammaticus 24-5).

(Case, 2015)

(SofiLayla, 2019)

Many ancient writers mention massive bones found in the earth, which they ascribed to lost species of giants. Some modern scientists have suggested that Ice Age-era mammal bones, found buried in the ground, led to stories trying to explain how such large skeletons could exist (Romano and Avanzini 116-17). Remember, dinosaur bones weren’t even “discovered” until the 1820s, and so ancient people had little conception of past, long-extinct species of animals.

Required Reading Break

Read this article theorizing the connection between giant myths and gigantic bones.

• Romano, Marco, and Marco Avanzini. “The skeleton of Cyclops and Lestrigons: misinterpretations of Quaternary vertebrates as remains of the mythological giants.“Historical Biology, vol. 31, no. 2, 2019, pp. 116-139.[Course Reserves]

Check Your Understanding

Medieval people who found huge skeletons used all of the following explanations, except that:

Landscapes and natural phenomena have always stimulated curiosity and inspired various explanations for their existence. Giants have captivated the imaginations of people for millennia. Stories of giants are common throughout many Indo-European cultural traditions as beings of awesome primeval power, closely tied to nature. The Norse, for example, equated giants with representations of the raw power of nature, and thus many different places in Iceland and Scandinavia are named after giants. Tales of gigantic heroes from an earlier, mythical era are furthermore often linked to notable features in the landscape. This gave ancient peoples the most obvious explanation for inexplicable geological phenomena from a previous age. The most famous theme of these myths revolves around legendary battles where giants threw massive stones at each other. This helped explain the awe-inspiring placement of some geologic formations, the most famous of which is Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland (see the figure The Giants’ Causeway in Northern Ireland).

(Moore, n.d.)

(Moore, n.d.)

As a result of a prehistoric volcanic fissure, roughly 40,000 columns of basalt slabs, most of which are uniformly hexagonal, stretch out into the North Sea (see the figure, Basalt Slabs Reaching out to the North Sea). In some stories of Gaelic mythology, the Irish giant Finn MacCool, after being challenged to a fight by the Scottish giant Benandonner, began to build a causeway across the North Channel to Scotland.

In the British Isles, myths of giants, based on both natural phenomena and classical legends, played an important role in medieval conceptions of history and of national identity. The best example of this could be Geoffrey of Monmouth, an important twelfth-century writer, who effectively popularized the early history of Britain and the story of King Arthur. While not considered historically reliable in a modern sense, his works were widely considered authoritative by people in the Middle Ages. See here for his description of the early settlement of Britain by Trojan colonists:

At this time the island of Britain was called Albion. It was uninhabited except for a few giants. It was, however, most attractive, because of the delightful situation of its various regions, its forests and the great number of its rivers, which teemed with fish; and it filled Brutus and his comrades with a great desire to live there. When they had explored the different districts, they drove the giants whom they had discovered into the caves in the mountains. With the approval of their leader they divided the land among themselves. They began to cultivate the fields and to build houses, so that in a short time you would have thought that the land had always been inhabited.Brutus then called the island Britain from his own name, and his companions he called Britons. His intention was that his memory should be perpetuated by the derivation of the name. A little later the language of the people, which had to them been known as Trojan or Crooked Greek, was called British, for the same reason.Corineus, however, following in this the example of his leader, called the region of the kingdom which had fallen to his share Cornwall, after the manner of his own name, and the people who lived there he called Cornishmen. Although he might have chosen his own estates before all the others who had come there, he preferred the region which is now called Cornwall, either for its being the cornu or horn of Britain, or through a corruption of his own name.Corineus experienced great pleasure from wrestling with the giants, of whom there were far more there in any of the districts which had been distributed among his comrades. Among the others there was a particularly repulsive one, called Gogmagog, who was twelve feet tall. He was so strong that, once he had given it a shake, he could tear up an oak-tree as though it were a hazel wand. Once, when Brutus was celebrating a day dedicated to the gods in the port where he had landed, this creature, along with twenty other giants, attacked him and killed a great number of the Britons. However, the Britons finally gathered together from round and about and overcame the giants and slew them all, except Gogmagog. Brutus ordered that he alone should be kept alive, for he wanted to see a wrestling-match between this giant and Corineus, who enjoyed beyond all reason matching himself against such monsters. Corineus was delighted by this. He girded himself up, threw off his armour and challenged Gogmagog to a wrestling-match. The contest began. Corineus moved in, so did the giant; each of them caught the other in a hold by twining his arms round him, and the air vibrated with their panting breath. Gogmagog gripped Corineus with all his might and broke three of his ribs, two on the right side and one on the left. Corineus then summoned all his strength, for he was infuriated by what had happened. He heaved Gogmagog up on to his shoulders, and running as fast as he could under the weight, he hurried off to the nearby coast. He clambered up to the top of a mighty cliff, shook himself free and hurled this deadly monster, whom he was carrying on his shoulders, far out into the sea. The giant fell on to a sharp reef of rocks, where he was dashed into a thousand fragments and stained the waters with his blood. The place took its name from the fact that the giant was hurled down there and it is called Gogmagog’s Leap to this day.(Monmouth 52-4)

Two long-since-vanished images of giants, carved into the hillside outside Plymouth until the early seventeenth century, may have commemorated the supposed site where Corineus cast Gogmagog into the sea. The legend then says the sea was stained with his blood; in parts of Devon, near Plymouth, naturally red rocks can give the appearance that there is blood washing up on shore (Clark 120). Furthermore, some medieval commentators believed that the Plymouth figures represented Gog and Magog, the two biblical giants we discussed previously. Although they remained invisible for centuries, other lost or nearly lost images of giants in the English countryside have been revealed with the use of infrared photography, in addition to resistivity surveys. We will explore some of these studies in the next section of this module.

Works Cited

Case, Daniel. Pyramid of the Sun from Pyramid of the Moon, Teotihuacan. 2015. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pyramid_of_the_Sun_from_Pyramid_of_the_Moon,_Teotihuacan.jpg. Accessed 16 December 2019.

Clark, John. Trojans at Totnes and Giants on the Hoe: Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historical Fiction, and Geographical Reality. Rep. Trans. Devon. Assoc. Advmt Sci., 148, 2016, pp. 89−130.

Monmouth, Geoffrey of. The History of the Kings of Britain, trans. Lewis Thorpe. London, Penguin Books, 1969.

Moore, Andrew. Basalt Slabs Reaching Out to the North Sea.[Photograph]. n.d.

Moore, Andrew. The Giants’ Causeway in Northern Ireland.[Photograph]. n.d.

Romano, Marco and Avanzini, Marco. “The skeletons of Cyclops and Lestrigons: misinterpretation of Quaternary vertebrates as remains of the mythological giants,.” Historical Biology vol. 31, no. 2, 2019, pp. 116-139.

Saxo Grammaticus. Gesta Danorum*, vols 1-9.*Trans. Oliver Elton. London, 1894.

SofiLayla. Syria Apamea Roman Ruins Sky Blue. 2019. Pixabay. Accessed 16 December 2019  from: https://pixabay.com/photos/syria-apamea-roman-ruins-sky-blue-4033538/.

2c. Case Study: Archaeology and the Giant Hill Figures of England

Giants in the Hills

Markrhiggins/iStock/Getty Images

Throughout England, there are mysterious white figures carved into hillsides that are so large they can be seen from miles away. These iconic chalk hill figures of England have long dominated their landscapes and played an important role in local folklore and tourism. Subsequent legends of giants and semi-mythical ancient heroes abound. The actual origins of their creation, however, have so far eluded historians. Written accounts of the mysterious hill giants before the eighteenth century rarely survive. Recent archaeological work focused on geography has given insight into when, and most importantly, why some of these figures came to be. Topography, soil type, and vegetation all give clues, as well as tools such as infrared photography and resistivity surveys.

These hill figures are in reality large images made visible by cutting shapes into a steep hillside to reveal the geology underneath. Such visual representations in landscapes are not unique to England. Other cultures have been known to carve large images of animals into the ground as well; take the Nazca Lines in Peru (see the figure, Monkey Geoglyph), for example, carved sometime between 500 BCE and 500 CE.

Those numerous images tend to be incredibly large and durable (they’re carved on an isolated, dry, almost windless desert plateau) though not nearly as clear or bright as the English examples. The most recognizable of these figures thus tend to be located on the quintessential Downs of England, due to the vibrant white chalk contained beneath the vegetation. You will no doubt be familiar with images of the famous White Cliffs of Dover, the Seven Sisters, or Beachy Head (see the figure Beachy Head).

(Leupold-Löwenthal, 2008)

(Silly Little Man, 2011)

That same material lies below much of the grass in Southern England and provides a striking palette for those seeking to bring their very own hill giant to life. Some of these figures were so bright and geographically significant, that they were covered over during World War II so as to avoid being used as landmarks by the Luftwaffe (Cleaver).

Many different figures have captivated the imaginations of observers, among locals and tourists alike. They vary greatly in size, shape, theme, and likely provenance. They tend to depict animals, but there a few noteworthy human examples as well. Their similarities involve the methods of creation and maintenance, and especially, the way that they dominate their respective landscapes. You can see these hill figures from remarkably far away. Some famous examples include the Fovant Regimental Badges (see the figure, Fovant Regimental Badges Hill Figures in England, an obviously modern example), and the Osmington White Horse (see the figure, Osmington White Horse Hill Figure in England, also well known as a modern cutting, this one a depiction of King George III).

(Steel, 2009)

(Poliphilo, 2014)

By far the most common hill figures in England are those that represent horses, as can be seen in Figure 5. Many of them are well documented as modern creations, either themselves unique or as imitations of other older representations. Some of these include: the Marlborough White Horse, (see the figure, The Marlborough White Horse) the Cherhill White Horse, (see the figure, The Cherhill White Horse) the Mormond Hill White Horse (see the figure, The Mormond Hill White Horse) in Scotland (one of the very few such figures in Scotland), and the Westbury White Horse (see the figure, The Westbury White Horse), which some people believe may actually be much older than the other ones.

(Marshall, 2007)

(Schildiecom, 2015)

(Downer, 2007)

(Kuc, 2016)

Methods Used to Create Giant Hill Figures

The hill figures differ in clarity and brightness due to the various methods used to create hill figures.

Stripping Method

Stripping involves removing the top layer of vegetation. This can be done quite quickly to demonstrate an image, and so is a favourite of modern copycats for its efficiency, especially when undertaking some form of vandalism. However, it is incredibly lacking in longevity and once overgrown is virtually impossible to recreate.

Covering Method

Covering, is used mainly in areas where a chalk base is unavailable. This method involves stacking rocks on top of the vegetation in the desired shape. It is more labour intensive and tends to be less visible than other comparable versions.

Trenching Method

The most common method is known as trenching. Virtually all of the famous figures I will mention are examples of trenching. Some of these trenches can be quite deep and invasive, and some require chalk to be added from other areas. Sites with planned drainage routes tend to last longer. Otherwise, the chalk runs off and the image “moves down the hill” or sediment washes down into the bottom of the figure, which then appears “to climb up the hill.”

Concrete Method

The only one that’s solely modern is the use of concrete, specifically white-painted breezeblocks and lime mortar to make the image permanent. Most major hill figures now consist of this composition, since, despite some maintenance required, it ensures a longevity that the other methods do not.

Maintaining Ancient Hill Figures

The Uffington White Horse, depicted in the figure, The Uffington White Horse, the notable exception to the other more modern copycats or creations, is widely considered to be ancient, probably the first (or at least the oldest surviving such figure). It has inspired uncountable lookalikes, legends, and theories about its origins. I should mention the complexity, or ambiguity, of periodization for the origin of these images. Even if the trenches for Uffington were in fact dug 3000 years ago, the site requires constant maintenance even to this day (Brown 38). If vegetation is not cleared regularly from within the outline of the horse, it could vanish, as many other images are now known to have done. Within just a decade of neglect, the horse image would become unrecognizable. Local groups of enthusiasts have kept up this tradition for centuries (if not millennia).

(NASA, 2008)

Ancient Giants: Local Lore Meets Modern Technology

Images of humans carved into hillsides are far rarer, though two famous examples survive to this day: the Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex and the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset. The one I’m personally most familiar with, and have hiked to numerous times, is the Long Man.

Markrhiggins/iStock/Getty Images

The figure is 235 feet (or 72 metres) tall and holds what are commonly believed to be two staves. Historians traditionally considered it to be an Iron Age creation, or even possibly Neolithic. There are many local legends regarding the Long Man. For example, at one time it was commonly referred to as the Green Man of Wilmington. The motif of Green Men has wide traction throughout the traditions of many cultures, and generally involves some form of human representation, generally a face, surrounded by leaves and representing deities of growth and rebirth. Legends of the Long Man go from such ancient myths still revered by modern Wiccans and Druids, to some other science fiction theories. I’ve heard from locals the story that it could be an alien being opening the doors of his spaceship. This mirrors widely held conspiracy theories surrounding crop circles, the creation of the Pyramids, etc. The most prevalent legends regarding anthropomorphic hill figures, however, unsurprisingly revolve around the concept of giants. One noteworthy story tells that the Long Man image marks the burial site of a giant lying in his grave, after being struck down by a rival giant on a nearby hill.

An even more famous Giant hill figure, and the other notable surviving humanoid hill figure, is the Cerne Abbas Giant, sometimes called the “Rude Man”.

It’s somewhat smaller than the Long Man, standing at 180 feet (55 metres) high, though he’s holding a 120 feet long club that adds to the height. Like many other hill figures, the Giant was long considered to be an ancient creation. There are numerous theories as to the inspiration for the image. The first commentaries we have, including an edition of William Camden’s Britannica, posit a Saxon god with some variation of the name “Helis”. Over time these theories have been updated to suggest either a Celtic origin (based on similar contemporary depictions elsewhere) or a Romano-British interpretation of Hercules. This latter Herculean theory, first suggested by William Stukeley in the late eighteenth century and supported by some early twentieth-century archaeologists, was strengthened by two rounds of resistivity surveys (one in the late 1970s and another in the mid-1990s) along with corresponding drill samples. Resistivity surveys, which are used for the purpose of mapping archaeological features by introducing electrical currents into the ground and testing the voltage resistance, in these cases revealed a missing carving of an animal-skin cloak draped over the arm of the figure, similar to the Nemean Lion-skin cloak of Hercules lore (though it could also represent an ancient Celtic hunter for example). Similar to legends of the Long Man, local lore has long held that it could represent the mythical burial place of a giant.

RMAX/iStock/Getty Images

[Interactive 3D model: https://sketchfab.com/models/d51238668ec840b58a039b5061b9f89c/embed?preload=1&ui_controls=1&ui_infos=1&ui_inspector=1&ui_stop=1&ui_watermark=1&ui_watermark_link=1]

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The Cerne Giant. This interactive 3D model of the Cerne Abbas Giant really helps to show the scale of this hill figure. You can interact with it by zooming in and out and rotating the model to see it from all sides.

Smiling Ottor on SketchFab. (2019, August). Cerne Giant by Smiling Otter on Sketchfab. Retrieved from https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/cerne-giant-d51238668ec840b58a039b5061b9f89c

Required Reading Break

Read this article on the Long Man explaining how modern archaeological methods can help us reconstruct changes to these figures over time.

• Castledon, Rodney. “Shape-shifting: The Changing Outline of the Long Man of Wilmington.“Sussex Archaeological Collections, vol. 140, 2002, pp. 83-95.[Course Reserves]

Check Your Understanding

Modern archaeological tools, such as resistivity surveys, have reconstructed the shape of the Long Man of Wilmington before it was bricked in 1873-1874, and have shown that:

How Ancient are the Giant Hill Figures?

Giant hill figures throughout the British Isles have certain similar themes: almost all of them depict animals, usually horses; they generally have mythical inspiration, of giants most significantly; they have inspired countless local legends, generally tied to geography; and they traditionally were considered to be ancient in origin. Many of the hill figures are located incredibly close, and sometimes even on the same hill, as Iron Age or Neolithic barrows, or burial mounds. For example, the Cerne Abbas Giant lies in the midst of what seems to be the ruins of entire Late Neolithic or Bronze Age community, including burial mounds, earthworks, and agricultural field systems. However, the presence of nearby ancient ruins does not necessarily imply the same origin. Later images could have been carved in selected areas based on local knowledge and sites of interest.

Evidence the Hill Figures May Be Relatively “New”?

The first clue that these hill figures may in fact be relatively recent creations is that virtually no mention of these monumental images survives before the early modern period, basically the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The notable exception to this is the Uffington White Horse, which is also surrounded by numerous prehistoric monuments and geographic features (Castleden 94-5). References exist from the eleventh century in a cartulary from Abingdon Abbey that describes “mons albi equi” (the white horse hill) at Uffington. The fourteenth-century Welsh book The Red Book of Hergest also makes a clear description for the horse figure. But other than Uffington, medieval documentation for hill figures is remarkably scant. A 1617 survey of Cerne Abbas makes no mention of the Giant.  Now this is not to say that an absence of evidence necessarily indicates the evidence of absence. It is perfectly plausible that ancient and medieval writers made many references to the chalk giants that just simply do not survive. This would be unsurprising considering that we know many thousands of medieval documents simply did not survive the sands of time. Also, as almost all of these figures are located in rural areas, you may expect them to show up on manorial records, but the only land descriptions that occur in those rolls are vague and based on land held by the tenants, so the hill figures may just not have been relevant for the purposes of rural medieval socioeconomic documentation.

However, one must take into account the level of constant maintenance that these figures require on an annual basis. The Long Man of Wilmington, due to the topography of its location and the rate of vegetation growth, loses the bottom half of its figure within a remarkably short period of time. In fact, the carving of the current image is largely a guess based on older descriptions and sketches. It’s thus surprising that so few mentions of the labour required would survive from before the seventeenth century. Starting in the Stuart period (seventeenth century), and increasingly in the Georgian and Victorian (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries), numerous references all of a sudden pop up all over the place. This includes allocations in manorial budgets for clearing of the figures. At Cerne Abbas, the churchwarden’s accounts from 1694 include three schillings for re-cutting the Giant (Barker 179-183). The first mention of the Giant in a published survey dates from 1764, and in 1774 it was then reported that the figure was known to be one century old. References in travel diaries and local histories appear to an unprecedented level in the mid-eighteenth century.

Could the Hill Figures Be From the Georgian and Victorian Era?

Is it possible that most, if not virtually all, of these hill figures are in reality Georgian or Victorian creations? Let us take a moment to look at that possibility, based on the mentalities and practices of people in those eras. Three general characteristics of Georgian and Victorian society may give some insight.

Were The Hill Figures a Prank?

Firstly, Victorian gentlemen were well-known pranksters. Take as just one example the creation of entire houses that from a distance seem to be full-size, but up close you realize that they’re basically a façade meant to trick party guests into thinking there’s a guest house on the property. These are commonly known as follies. The folly at Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex looks like a full guest house but is actually only several metres deep (see the figures Herstmonceux Castle from Walled Garden and Herstmonceux Castle Close-up).

(Oast House Archive, 2010)

(Oast House Archive, 2010)

It’s not a big leap to assume that many of these figures could plausibly have been the creation of several generations of adventurous schoolchildren brought up on the tales and myths of an ancient past. It wouldn’t be out of character, even in a modern context. To this day, English authorities deal with constant reports of vandalism and copycat ventures regarding the hill figures. The most common and prominent of these involve the addition of genitalia onto the images, one example being the Long Man from 2010 (see the figure Long Man or Wilmington Hill Defaced in 2010).

(Purvis, 2010)

An Expression of a Sexually Repressed Society?

Secondly, and in a related note, Georgian and Victorian society had very complex views about sexuality. The officially repressive nature of their society clashed clearly with the sexual expression that we see so clearly in the documentary evidence. Take for example, the 36 foot long erection of the Cerne Abbas Giant (see figure Cerne Abbas Giant)!

Many contemporary couples thus used the site as the locus for a complex fertility ritual, including dancing around some form of maypole. Victorian illustrators often consciously left the phallus out of contemporary drawings yet allowed postcards of it to pass freely through the mail system as the “only indecent photo” to make it through. The Cerne Abbas Giant has thus been referred to as having “the most famous phallus in England”.

(SiGarb, 2005)

Expression of Foundational Cultural Myths?

The third significant element relates to the early modern fascination with antiquity and cultural myths. No one needs to go see the Elgin Marbles or the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum to understand that generations of British imperialists were obsessed with the histories and myths of other, past cultures. They wanted to trace the origins and development of human civilization, including their own. They were obsessed with ancient and classical myths and often sought to immortalize important characters and events from antiquity. Remember, that Geoffrey of Monmouth had declared that before Trojans settled Britain, the island was known as Albion and inhabited by races of giants.  At the same time as the British empire was expanding and spreading its cultural narratives, starting in the early eighteenth century, sketches and descriptions of the giant hill figures began to appear with remarkable regularity (see figures Sketch of Cerne Hill Giant and The Wanderings of a Pen and Pencil).

(Sydenham, c.1842)

(Palmer, Crowquill and Bissett, 1846)

A 2003 archaeological dig claims to have confirmed that the Long Man of Wilmington was at least a sixteenth or early seventeenth century creation.

Were the Hill Figures a Form of Satire?

Let’s now discuss the most famous example of a modern theory for a supposedly ancient figure. The Cerne Abbas Giant, the most famous example of a supposedly ancient mythical figure, may indeed be an example of an early modern satire. The prevailing theory now is that the Giant may have been created to mock none other than Oliver Cromwell. There is evidence that servants of Lord Denzil Holles, who owned the estate, may have created the satirical image to mock their lord’s major rival during the English Civil War. The timing makes sense, since no mention of the Giant occurs before 1694. If you take into account that Cromwell was often called “England’s Hercules” by his enemies, then it’s plausible that the most famous “ancient” human hill figure may in fact be an early modern satire after all.

Check Your Understanding

Comparing three different scholarly perspectives provides us plausible explanations for how people construct and share myths. Why did medieval people tell so many stories about giants and include them in their art and their maps?

Summary of British Hill Figures

• Usually depict horses
• Mythical themes, often giants
• Inspired numerous local legends
• Long considered to be ancient in originMany are near Iron Age barrows, for example
• Recent research has challenged assumptions that they are ancientAlmost no surviving references before the seventeenth centuryThey would require constant maintenance for centuries
• Archaeological methods can help us investigate their origins

Once you have completed reviewing all of this week’s content, return to the module page.

Works Cited

Barker, Katherine. “Brief Encounter: The Cerne Abbas Giantess Project*."*1997. Proceedings – Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1997, vol. 119, pp. 179–183.

Brown, Ian. *Beacons in the Landscape: The Hillforts of England and Wales.*Oxford, Windgather Press, 2009.

Castleden, Rodney. “Shape-shifting: The Changing Outline of the Long Man of Wilmington.” Sussex Archaeological Collections, vol. 140, 2002, pp. 83-95.

Castleden, Rodney. *The Wilmington Giant: the quest for a lost myth.*Seaford, East Sussex, Blatchington Press, 2012.

Cleaver, Emily. “Against All Odds, England’s Massive Chalk Horse Has Survived 3,000 Years.” Smithsonian Magazine, July 2017.

Downer, Chris. Paragliding above Westbury White Horse. 2007. Wikimedia Commons. Accessed 16 December 2019 from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paragliding_above_Westbury_White_Horse_-_geograph.org.uk_-_539764.jpg.. [CC BY-SA 2.0]

Kuc, Morag. Makeover for Strichen’s White Horse. 2016. Buchan Observer. https://www.buchanobserver.co.uk/news/makeover-for-strichen-s-white-horse-1-4187695. Accessed 16 December 2019.

Leupold-Löwenthal, Markus. Monkey geoglyphs on Nazca plains in Peru. 2008. Wikipedia. Accessed 16 December 2019 from: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:NazcaLinesMonkey.jpg. [CC BY-SA 3.0]

Marshall, Brian Robert. White Horse, Preshute Hill, Marlborough. 2007. Wikimedia Commons. Accessed 16 December 2019 from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:White_Horse,_Preshute_Hill,_Marlborough_-_geograph.org.uk_-_460740_(cropped).jpg. [CC BY-SA 2.0]

NASA.Satallite Image: Uffington White Horse. 2008. Wikipedia. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Uffington-White-Horse-sat.jpg. Accessed 16 December 2019.

Oast House Archive. Folly at Herstmonceux Castle garden. 2010 . Geograph. https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2417190. Accessed 16 December 2019. [CC BY-SA 2.0]

—. The Folly. 2010. Geograph. https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2417191. Accessed 16 December 2019. [CC BY-SA 2.0]

Palmer, F. P. (Francis Paul), Alfred, ill Crowquill and Clark Prescott Bissett. “The White Horse Hill.” The wanderings of a pen and pencil. London, Jeremiah How, 1846. 263. Accessed on December 16, 2020 from: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:The_wanderings_of_a_pen_and_pencil_(1846)_(14783357192).jpg.

Poliphilo. Osmington White Horse (Weymouth). 2014. Wikimedia Commons. Accessed 16 December 2019 from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Osmington_White_Horse_(Weymouth).JPG. [CC0 1.0]

Purvis, Rob. Long Man of Wilmington Hill, defaced in 2010. 2010. Geograph. Accessed 16 December 2019 from: https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2267227. [CC BY-SA 2.0]

Schildiecom. Cherhill White Horse July 2015. 2015. Wikimedia Commons. Accessed 16 December 2019 from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cherhill_White_Horse_Juli_2015.jpg. [CC-BY-SA 4.0]

SiGarb. Cerne Abbas Giant’s phallus. 2005. Wikimedia Commons. Accessed 16 December 2019 from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cerne_Abbas_Giant%27s_phallus.jpg. [Public Domain]

Silly Little Man. Beachy Head. 2011. *Flickr.*Accessed 16 December 2019 from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/silly_little_man/6992679815. [CC-BY-SA 2.0]

Steel, Trish. Fovant Badges The badges originate from 1916. From the left:- The Royal Corp of Signals, The Wiltshire Regiment and The London Rifle Brigade. 2009. Wikimedia Commons. Accessed 16 December 2019. [CC-BY-SA 2.0]

Sydenham, John. A drawing of the Cerne Abbas Giant in John Sydenham’s Baal Durotrigensis, 1842. 1842. Wikipedia. Accessed 16 December 2019. [Public Domain]

Module 3: Werewolves

Ann Marie Rasmussen (German Literary Studies, University of Waterloo)

3a. Introduction

Werewolves as Shape-shifters

The idea that some humans shape-shift, whether purposefully or because of a curse, is ancient and near universal. It is reported by many classical authors and from folklore throughout the world. The adjective, berserk, for example, meaning wild and enraged (“he went berserk”), is derived from the Old Norse word, berserkr, thought by some to mean “bear-shirt.” Others say that the word means “bare-shirted”, i.e. bare chested. In Old Norse texts, berserkers were warriors who fought in a terrifying, trance-like, frenzied state of ferocity; regardless of the correct etymology of the word they can be imagined as shape-shifters who took on the guise (“shirt”) of bears while fighting. Shape-shifters are traditionally perceived as monsters. Our module treats one of the most familiar shape-shifters, the werewolf, a creature who is part human and part wolf, and focusses on one remarkable werewolf story from twelfth-century France.

“Werewolf” is a compound word made up of two elements, ‘wolf,’ (the animal), and ‘were’, which is an ancient, now extinct Old English word meaning ‘man’ that is cognate (having the same linguistic derivation as another word; in this case, descending from a shared ancestor) with the Latin word, ‘vir.’ Werewolves are shape-shifting monsters. Traditionally they are said to appear now in their human, now in the wolf guise, their physical appearance entirely altering from one shape to the other and attended by a transformation from a human to an animal state of cognition, volition, and consciousness.

(Cranach the Elder, 1472-1553)

Some Background on Wolves

What might it mean to become a wolf? Wolves are large predatory mammals. They kill to live. The Eurasian subspecies of the grey wolf was endemic throughout Europe in the Middle Ages and survives in isolated pockets of Eastern Europe to this day. Males typically weigh around 40 kilos (although exceptionally large individuals can weigh double that) and stand up to 50-80 centimetres in shoulder height. Wolves are fast and possess enormous stamina. They are intelligent and employ a variety of tactics to capture prey, including stealth, stalking, and cooperative pack hunting.

Wildlife biologists tell us that wolves are shy and try to avoid human beings. Supporting this scientific perspective is a short video of a human-wolf encounter produced in the United States by a member of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW).

Required Watching Break

Click the play button to watch this short (~2 mins) video of a human-wolf encounter from ODFW.

myodfw. (2019, October 24). What to expect if you encounter a wolf. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r76GJDP0uWQ

The modern biologists who have reintroduced wolves into the Pacific Northwest, for example, treat wolves with respect and find much to admire about them. The situation in Oregon, however, where huge swathes of wilderness make human-wolf encounters unlikely, is no longer the rule in many places such as parts of Ontario or Vancouver Island. There, steady human encroachment on wild places brings humans and wolves repeatedly into contact, resulting in some wolves becoming used to or even habituated to human beings and exhibiting bold, adaptative behaviors such as attacking pets or stalking unwitting humans.

Required Reading Break

Mackinnon, J.B., “No One’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf ­– And That’s a Problem,” Smithsonian Magazine Online, 23. October 2017.

At the same time and regardless of modern scientific and environmental realities, the wolf occupies a singular place in human legend and folklore as a powerful and feared creature, often perceived as an embodiment of greed, savagery, and wickedness. The Latin proverb, homo homini lupus (man is a wolf to man), still in use today, uses this understanding of the wolf to express the dark view of human nature that human beings prey savagely upon one another. In his poetic translation of the old English epic, Beowulf, the Nobel Prize winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney selected language evoking ravenous and cruel wolfishness when translating the lines of the poem in which the monster, Grendel, attacks the great hall, Hereot, for the first time: “In off the moors, down through the mist bands God-cursed Grendel came greedily loping. The bane of the race of man roamed forth hunting for a prey in the high hall.” (Beowulf, lines 710-714, p. 49). In traditional lycanthropy (the study of werewolves), it is this loathsome and terrifying creature that appears when the werewolf inhabits his or her wolf guise or skin.

Additional Resources

Students interested in the history of wolves in Europe are directed to the published work of environmental historian, Aleks Pluskowski.

• Pluskowski, Aleksander.Wolves and the Wilderness in the Middle Ages. Boydell Press, 2006.
• Pluskowski, Aleksander. “Apocalyptic monsters: animal inspirations for the iconography of medieval North European devourers.”The Monstrous Middle Ages, edited by Robert Mills and Bettina Bildhauer, University of Toronto, 2003, pp. 155-176.

Werewolves in Popular Culture Today

Werewolves are an enduring element in popular culture today. The idea of shape-shifting was taken to new, imaginative lengths in the NBC series, Grimm (2011-2017), which is a kind of crime drama with a supernatural twist: most of the criminals are shape-shifters (although, as the viewer discovers, not all shape-shifters are criminals), and the police detective whose special powers of detection lead him into this supernatural world is partnered there by a werewolf who has tamed his savage side by becoming vegetarian.

Check Your Understanding

1. Scientific and folkloristic understandings of wolves

Works Cited

Cranach the Elder, Lucas. 1472-1553. “The Werewolf or the Cannibal.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund 1942. New York, New York. Retrieved from: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/383718

Heaney, Seamus, translator. Beowulf. Norton, 2000, lines 710-714, p. 49.

3b. Philology: Marie de France as a Case Study for Working with Medieval Sources

What is Philology?

The great linguist, Roman Jakobson (1896-1982), famously called philology “the art of reading slowly.” The word, philology, is derived from the Greek, ‘philo,’ meaning love and ‘logia’ meaning “words,” “reason,” or “study.” Approaching an ancient text philologically means applying scholarly practices that demand substantial expertise in order to pay close attention to:

• the text in itsoriginal language;
• themeans of transmissionof the text, here handwritten books called manuscripts, and the specific kinds of knowledge that can be won from attending closely to them;
• thehistorical circumstancesand conditions of creation and world view that are embedded, as it were, in the ancient text.

These forensic-like practices allow scholars to derive much knowledge from the ancient texts alone, which have survived into our times without the kinds of corroborating evidence (letters; newspapers; archives; accounting records, for example) that we moderns take for granted.

Let’s apply these philological methods to Bisclavret and see what we can establish for certain about the text, what we can plausibly surmise, and where we must acknowledge limits.

I ask you to begin by leafing through the most important surviving manuscript witness for this text. It is housed in the British Library and bears the shelfmark Harley MS 978. The manuscript has been digitised and is one of the required readings.

The Lais of Marie de France begins on folio 118r. Folio numbering and pagination are different. A folio is both the front and the back of a manuscript page. Thus, page one of a manuscript is folio 1r and the next page, which is the back of the first, is folio 1v (Latin recto, abbreviated r, and Latin verso, abbreviated v).

Required Looking Break

Leaf through London, British Library, Harley MS 978 digitally to get a sense of what a medieval manuscript looks like. You are not required to read anything. Just look for things such as different handwritings, different layouts, notes in the margins, additions by modern librarians, signs of wear, and fancy initials.

• Leaf throughHarley MS 978until you come to theLaisof Marie de France, which begin on folio 118r.Bisclavretbegins on folio 131v. Can you find the title?

Additional Resource

Pollock, Sheldon. “Future Philology? The Fate of a Soft Science in a Hard World.” Critical Inquiry 35, Summer 2009, pp. 931-961.

The Original Language: Anglo-Norman French

Let’s start our philological analysis of Bisclavret by focussing on the language in which it was originally written: Old French.

Ancient languages were not standardised and so linguistic features of the dialects spoken by writers and scribes made their way into written texts. These differences of features within a language group are regular, not random, and they can include differences in

• phonetics(speech sounds),
• phonology(the regular use of speech sound patterns to make meaning),
• morphology(meaningful differences in speech sound units that create meaning, for example tense or number),
• syntax(differences in parts of speech and the way they relate to one another to create meaning, for example, word order), and
• semantics(the meanings of words).

Historical linguists find and study these regular features of language difference in surviving corpuses of texts in order to understand how languages change over time and how languages are related to one another. Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, they painstakingly analysed and compared linguistic features across the huge surviving corpus of Old French texts, which resulted in linguistic findings that they were able to map onto time and place. Based on distinct linguistic features such as noun forms and verb endings, they identified that the Lais were written in a distinct dialect or version of Old French known as Anglo-Norman.

The identification of the language of the Lais as Anglo-Norman Old French is our first nugget of forensic information about these texts because we can safely assume that Anglo-Norman Old French was the language used by the original author and by that author’s audience. Anglo-Norman Old French maps very specifically onto time and place. It is the version of French spoken by William the Conqueror and his barons, who were from Normandy in France and who conquered England in 1066, where they established themselves as rulers.

By the time the Lais were written over 100 years later, Anglo-Norman had diverged from other versions of Old French (although they were mutually intelligible) and became a distinctive linguistic marker of the French-speaking elites who ruled medieval England (as a side note: Anglo-Norman French continued to be the primary language of ruling elites in England until the fourteenth century). In other words, the findings of historical linguistics allow us to narrow our search for the original author and audience to a specific social group: the ruling elites of England in the late twelfth century.

The Manuscript: London, British Library, Harley MS 978

Our philological analysis returns now to the manuscript, London, British Library, Harley MS 978, to see what knowledge we can glean from examining the physical elements of the manuscript and on its contents.

This method of analysis is called codicology, from the Latin codex, meaning “book”. Manuscripts are handwritten books created by scribes who often functioned more like modern editors, obtaining, selecting, ordering, and copying source texts into a new manuscript, usually for a specific user or reader whose identity is now lost to us but whose reading habits can be discerned from the manuscript’s contents. Manuscripts were produced in abundance in medieval Europe for hundreds of years before being displaced by printed books.

Before focussing in on Harley 978, however, I must mention that one of the first questions a medieval literary scholar might ask at this stage is not, ‘what can an individual manuscript tell me about Bisclavret,’ but rather, ‘are there any other manuscripts containing this text?’ The answer to that question, in this case, is very simple. Only one further manuscript version of Bisclavret survives.

A Side Note

London, British Library, Harley MS 978: This designation is called the manuscript’s shelfmark (sometimes the world signature is also used). It is standard scholarly practice to designate manuscripts by the city where they are held, the full name of the library that holds them, and finally the complete shelf mark designating that manuscript in that library.

Sound scholarly editions and translations of the Lais are nearly always based on  Harley 978 for good philological reasons: it is the only manuscript containing all the lais attributed to Marie de France; comparative codicological analysis has shown that the Harley 978 versions are superior linguistically and editorially to the versions of tales preserved in other manuscripts; and Harley 978 is the only manuscript that transmits the prologue to the entire collection of Lais, in which the author meditates on the practice and value of writing and storytelling.

Codicological Detective Work

Let’s return to Harley 978 and peruse the British Library’s catalog entry on the manuscript, which is, as a first glance shows, long and chock-full of all kinds of information that has been uncovered through careful study and analysis over time, from the physical characteristic of the manuscript (for example, size; formats; binding; handwriting; method of assembly; illustrations; changes in any of these over time) to the texts it contains.

A Side Note

Printed books: Print as we know it today was invented in Mainz, Germany, by Johann Gutenberg in the 1440s. Printing presses spread rapidly, though unevenly and in “boom and bust” entrepreneurial cycles, across German-speaking lands and continental Europe (excluding Scandinavia), competing with handwritten books (manuscripts) for a number of decades before finally displacing them in the first decades of the sixteenth century. England arrived very late to the printing party, and developments there do not help us understand the origins of printing.

Required Looking Break

Scroll through the British Library’s catalogue entry for Harley MS 978, paying attention to the kinds of information it collects, the categories it uses to organize this knowledge, and the ways it takes advantage of digital media to integrate photographs (are they live links? Can you figure out how to view the binding?) into its written descriptions.

Medievalists love to study medieval manuscripts, which involves a kind of detective work in which the philologist uses their expertise to chase down the most minuscule clues in order to solve a kind of whodunit:

• who wrote and compiled this manuscript and for whom?
• What texts does it contain in which languages, who authored them, and how have they been changed or adapted?
• What do the texts in the manuscript reveal about the cultural practices and social situation of its readers?

The answers obtained reveal surprising and nuanced glimpses into medieval life. When looking at Harley 978, for example, it is clear that we are not talking about the kind of sumptuously designed and painstakingly produced religious manuscript, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, which most modern people associate with medieval manuscripts.

Harley 978, by contrast, is small, plain, and a bit messy. It is a good example of the most common kind of manuscript from the high and late Middle Ages: serviceable, without pictures (which in manuscripts are called illuminations), meant to be used. These manuscripts do not survive well into our times; their value lay primarily in the uses to which their medieval owners put them. Richly illuminated manuscripts, which were rarer to begin with, have survived into our times in relatively larger numbers because of their value as treasury or as status symbols.

(Lindisfarne Gospels, ca. 700 CE)

This skewed survival has helped to created a false vision of the high and late Middle Ages as a largely bookless world in which manuscripts were lavish, rare, cult-like objects. The historical reality is different. The beautiful liturgical manuscripts and illuminated secular manuscripts produced for elites existed in a sea of manuscripts such as Harley 978 that were produced at low cost by scribes in commercial workshops.

The British Library catalog entry for Harley 978 is our gateway to learning more about what such a commercially produced manuscript looked like. One key piece of information provided by the descriptive elements of the catalogue entry is the book’s size: at approximately 5 by 8 inches, it is, to paraphrase the medievalist Andrew Taylor, small enough to be easily carried around.

When was Harley 978 written? Unless a manuscript includes a colophon (a statement providing information about when and where it was written), which is rare, it is impossible to provide an exact date. A date range is arrived at instead through codicological analysis of the physical elements of the manuscript such as handwriting and of the texts themselves, through comparative analysis with other surviving examples, should they exist, and by looking for clues such as the mention of a recent king or historical event. The date range for Harley 978 is provided at the beginning of the catalogue entry: the third quarter of the thirteenth century.

The catalogue entry for Harley 978 provides an exhaustive list of the manuscript’s contents. Manuscripts usually contain texts that have been copied (and often modified) from another manuscript. To identity the texts in a manuscript a scholar has to, first, be able to read them, which requires specialized linguistic knowledge and also the ability to read medieval handwriting (the study of which is called paleography). Medieval manuscripts only sometimes provide titles or authorship for texts, and so it takes a lot of detective work and a deep knowledge of medieval literature to successfully identity the various texts. When this is done, however, the scholar has produced a snapshot of the presumed reading tastes and cultural practices of the user for whom the manuscript was made.

With its many unusual texts, Harley 978 is a good example of a compilation manuscript known as a miscellany. Most compilation manuscripts focus on collecting, for example, specific kinds of texts (for example poetry, or religious legends, or prayers, or theological texts) or texts treating a specific topic (for example medicine, or Arthurian stories), but a miscellany compiles texts from a very wide range of sources. Harley 978 is a great example of a miscellany. It includes texts written in Latin (the majority), Anglo-Norman French, Old French, and a few texts in Middle English.

In addition to musical texts, a calendar with prognostications, and medical texts, all these mostly though not exclusively in Latin, the manuscript includes poetry (love poetry; satirical and ribald poetry; laments) in Latin, English, and Anglo-Norman, short tales or laisin Anglo-Norman, including those by Marie de France as well as some in Latin, fables in Anglo-Norman also attributed to Marie de France, and other miscellaneous texts such as an Anglo-Norman treatise on hawking.

(Harley MS 978, 1245)

The British Library catalogue entry for Harley 978 also provides an exhaustive bibliography of scholarship on every text found in the manuscript. One of the English texts in Harley 978 is arguably the most famous surviving song in Middle English, the round ‘sumer is icumen in.’

Additional Resource

Famous surviving song in Middle English found in Harley 978, the round ‘sumer is icumen in.’ You can listen to this song at the following link or you can access it through Course Reserves.

Please Note: You will need your library card barcode number and password to access this resource. It can also be found in Course Reserves. The library’s Naxos license allows for up to 15 simultaneous listeners at a time. If you have trouble accessing the resource, try again after a few minutes.

Remember that we must not confuse the maker or makers of Harley 978, which in this case was written by different scribes, with the person who might have commissioned and first owned it. Because of the brilliant codicological detective work on Harley 978 done by Andrew Taylor, a Canadian scholar of medieval English literature, referenced in Additional Resources at the end of this section, we are in the unusual position of being able to catch a glimpse of that original owner and his intellectual tastes. Taylor identifies the probable first owner of the manuscript as a Benedictine monk with worldly tastes named William of Winchester (flourished 1260s to 1280s), who was probably educated at Oxford and who was accused in a surviving letter written by his bishop of carrying on an affair with a nun (see Taylor, pages 110-121). This attribution is widely accepted by scholars, and is summarized in the British Library catalogue entry under ownership. Finally, it is unlikely that Harley 978 was written in a monastic setting. The evidence points rather to its having been produced in Oxford, which had a well-established commercial trade in creating manuscripts.

While the many gaps and inconclusive statements in this information might not satisfy a modern reader, for a medievalist the situation is reversed. We know so much less about the vast majority of surviving medieval manuscripts even after much serious philological and codicological analysis. Taylor’s meticulous detective work has produced an astonishingly detailed snapshot of this manuscript that provides a glimpse of a life lived in one corner of the world in the 1260s and that confounds many stereotypes about medieval life: we can imagine an educated young man, who happens to be cleric, on his way to visit his lover and carrying the manuscript in which they will together look up a remedy, or consult the prognostications in the calendar, or practice a liturgical tune together, or read an animal fable, or even, perhaps, the story of Bisclavret.

Additional Resource

• Pickens, Rupert T. “Reading Harley 978: Marie de France in Context.”Courtly Arts and the Art of Courtliness, edited by Keith Busby and Christopher Kleinhenz, Brewer, 2006, pp. 527-542.

The meticulous philological analysis of Harley 978 by Andrew Taylor, is available in the Course Reserves, as an optional reading.

• Taylor, Andrew.Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.Chapter 3. British Library MS Harley 978,pp. 76-136.

Who was Marie de France?

I have put off the most burning questions to last—who was Marie de France and did she really write these tales—because I wanted first to share the evidence and scholarly reasoning processes underlying the search for plausible answers to these questions. What facts can philological analysis help us glean about the (putative) author of the Lais?

First, let’s look at what can be learned about the author from the surviving Lais themselves. There is but a single mention of the name, Marie, in the lais:

Listen, my lords, to the words of Marie, who does not forget her responsibilities when her turn comes.Guigemar, ll. 3-4

A first context is to understand when and where medieval writers of vernacular language texts on secular topics name themselves; in brief, they do sometimes, but not always. Some genres of writing, such as heroic epics, are anonymous by design and it is unusual for authors to name themselves. In other cases, claims of authorship may have gotten lost in the course of manuscript transmission. The fact that an author names him- or herself is not unusual, then, but neither is it unusual that an author to remain unnamed.

The prologue to the Lais states that they are dedicated to a noble king. Aside from corroborating the evidence that the author is a member of the elite class, this nugget of information starts the guessing game again: which king? There are a number of candidates and the search for answers produces a dizzying swirl of dating problems, because a scholar must correlate the probable composition dates of the Lais with the ruling dates of the kings who are the most likely candidates to have been interested in them. While there does not appear to be a firm scholarly consensus, mostly because there are too many unknowns, many reputable scholars believe that the most likely candidate is Henry II (d. 1189).

But why Marie “de France”? Harley 978 contains also a collection of fables, which are transmitted in twenty-three manuscripts total. In the epilogue to the fable collection the author writes:

At the close of this text, which I have written and composed in French (Romanz), I shall name myself for posterity: my name is Marie and I come from France.Marie, “Ysopë,” ll. 1-4

The fables, the author tells us further, were translated from English into French. Based on philological, codicological, and stylistic or literary analysis, the scholarly consensus is now that the same “Marie” composed both the lais and the fables, and so the appellation “de France” is used for both.

A third work is often attributed to Marie de France, an Anglo-Norman text known as the Purgatory of Saint Patrick*,*in which an author names herself as Marie (“I, Marie, have recorded for posterity the book dealing with the purgatory”). (The recent attribution to her of a fourth work, La vie seint Audree, is still being debated by scholars.) Finally, there is a helpful bit of extra-textual evidence for a woman named Marie writing in Anglo-Norman around the time the Lais were composed.  An Anglo-Norman author named Denis Piramus, who is only associated with England, mentions in his prologue to The Life Saint Edmund the King (around 1180) a Dame Marie whose poetry was much praised and read in aristocratic circles, where it was beloved by both men and women.

What exactly is meant by ‘de France’ is difficult to pinpoint, however. There are medieval precedents for it meaning, for example, that she was born in France and moved to England, or that she spent part of her youth in one place or the other, or that it is a kind of royal aristocratic designation. It does correlate nicely with the linguistic fact that Marie’s Laiswere written in Anglo-Norman (which she would have called Romanz, or French), that the fables were translated from English, and that the corroborating evidence points to aristocratic circles in England. The surviving Lais supply evidence that their author was also fluent in Latin and Breton.

So here is the sum total of the facts, dear medieval studies detectives, from this lost person quest: We are looking for a highly educated, multi-lingual, well-connected Anglo-Norman noblewoman named Marie who flourished as writer for some run of years between ca. 1170-1200.

The next step is to turn to historical records to see if there are any likely candidates. Scholars have done so, but the results are inconclusive: there are a few Maries who might qualify (the name is not uncommon in aristocratic circles), but none fit all the criteria and the dating poses problems. The handbook articles included in the optional reading provide more details on the historical Maries who are plausible candidates for having been “Marie de France” and on the problems that arise when trying to fit the evidence together.

The point to take away from this discussion is that barring some sensational find (which does still happen but is rare), the limits on what we know and what we can reasonably surmise present insurmountable barriers to conclusively identifying Marie. There is nothing unusual or exceptional in having no information about a medieval author beyond their name and what can be surmised about them generally from the surviving texts and manuscripts. It is in fact the rule. Marie’s case is not exceptional, or rather, it would not be perceived as exceptional if she were not a woman.

Debate: Is Marie Real or Fictitious?

Should we then mistrust the manuscript and text attributions of authorship? This “Marie de France” could simply be a fiction, an authorial persona invented by an author, male or female, or a group of authors, or even a copyist or scribe. In the past, some scholars dismissed the idea that a medieval woman could have written anything at all. This notion is no longer credited in medieval studies scholarship, however. Over the past forty years scholars have assembled a large and still growing body of reliable evidence about the substantial contributions made by medieval women to the cultural production of texts, including authorship, especially in the religious realm, in spite of women’s much more limited access to cultural means of production. A more nuanced argument can be made, however. It has been often and strongly argued that those on a quest for a “real” female author behind the name “Marie de France” are falling victim to a biographical fallacy because they are naïvely confusing the first-person narrator and implied author of the text, which are in the end just another character or creation in the text’s story universe, with an actual author. As the evidence of the previous paragraphs show, this argument is a strong one that cannot be refuted on historical grounds alone.

And why, indeed, should it matter whether we imagine Marie de France as a fictive, implied author or as a historical woman whosebiographical details are lost to us? This debate is not closed and neither side is entirely right or wrong. It is, in fact, a debate in which informed students could take a position (either position!) to practice making a good argument.

A Case for the Fictive Persona

To argue that Marie de France is a fictive persona is, in a way, a safe answer; it accords with the limited nature of what we do know for sure; after all, Harley 978 was created some sixty to eighty years after the laiswere composed and there were probably stages of manuscript transmission between it and the original, time and opportunity enough for additions, deletions, or emendations to be made. The point of view that Marie is a fiction refuses to speculate and advances the claim that the texts are sophisticated literary constructs in spite of their apparent simplicity. In other words, it honours the texts as fictions.

A Case for the Marie’s Historical Existence

What might be gained by risking the appearance of naiveté to argue, on the other hand, for Marie’s historical existence? In this case the strongest argument might be to argue that we can trust the medieval sources and take them at their word. Such claims could be bolstered by research into the conventions of authorial naming in comparable sources. By arguing for Marie’s historical existence we can add to the literary canon the brilliant works of a female writer from the Middle Ages. And even if we prefer the argument that Marie is a fiction, the conclusion must nevertheless be that such a fiction carved out a space in the medieval world in which it was plausible to imagine an educated woman who wrote and who shared her work.

The topic remains one of scholarly disagreement, and that is a good thing. Debates based on trustworthy inquiry and a sound understanding of the evidence in which sources, processes, and claims are made clear and transparent, are the bedrock of reliable scholarship and the foundation for the production of new knowledge.

Additional Resource

• Kinoshita, Sharon and Peggy McCracken. “Posterity: The Afterlives of Marie’s Works.”Marie de France: A Critical Companion, Boydell, 2012, pp. 201-218.

Check Your Understanding

1. Marie de France was probably

2. Harley MS 978 is

Works Cited

Marie de France. “Guigemar.” Lais of Marie de France. Edited by Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante, Grand Rapids, MI, 1978, p. 30.

Marie de France. Les Fables / Marie de France. Edited and translated by Charles Brucker, Louvain, 1991.

Marie de France. L’espurgatoire Seint Patriz. Edited and translated by Yolande de Pontfarcy, Louvain and Paris, 1995.

Unknown. ca. 700 CE. “Lindisfarne Gospels (Manuscript Page).” Cotton Nero MS D I IV. British Library. London. Retrieved from: https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/lindisfarne-gospels?gclid=Cj0KCQjw59n8BRD2ARIsAAmgPmKg1HMldmcbGP_kFZOcVwkqjFAr18DB5vKTN733P8bOz953vhqzEAcaArXTEALw_wcB

Unknown. 1245. “Sumer Is Icumen In, in a Miscellany.” British Library. Harley MS 978. London. Retrieved from: http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/illmanus/harlmanucoll/s/largeimage75978.html

3c. Interpretation: Nature and Culture

What are Stories Good For? Marie’s Prologue

Required Reading Break

• Marie de France. “Prologue.”Lais of Marie de France.Edited by Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante, Grand Rapids, MI, 1978.pp. 28-29pp. 92-100pp. 100-104

The story, Bisclavret, is a literary tale told with the kind of elegance and apparent artlessness that is the hallmark of a master storyteller. Those who believe that fiction is largely about escapism and entertainment might be surprised to discover that the only medieval thinkers and writers who would agree with this assessment are moralizing preachers. The difference between present and past in this case turns on how each evaluates escapism and entertainment. Most modern people would say that reading fiction is a leisure activity that is useless but also harmless; the medieval moralizers, however, said that it was a dangerous activity that harmed people by diverting their attention from eternal religious truths. It might also surprise modern people to know that the surviving evidence suggests that most medieval people did not agree with such moralizers. The author of the Prologue, whom we shall call Marie, did not. In the Prologue Marie uses the first person to address in an associative way four key problems regarding literary texts and stories:

• why a writer should write;
• the difficulties and purpose of studying and writing;
• why the lais were written; and
• for whom.

Marie begins by asserting that a person’s God-given talents should be exercised and shared with the world because doing so will propagate those gifts and cause them to flower elsewhere. She then turns to the example of classical authors (whom she could only have read in Latin) to reflect on an important issue:why is valuable literature often so difficult to understand? The answer begins by establishing that this obscurity is deliberate. Its purpose is to make the reader think, or as she puts it, “supply [the writing’s] significance from their own wisdom.” Doing so will help the reader develop a more subtle mind, which in turn will help her or him navigate ethically the moral dilemmas of the world. Studying and understanding literature, story, and fiction, in other words, can help us become better people, not because stories provide rules that must be obeyed but because they present dilemmas for us to ponder. Marie advances in the prologue a theory of education: learning is not about rote memorization or blind adherence to doctrine, but rather requires us to actively seek understanding.

At this juncture (line 23) the prologue takes a surprising turn. It is not enough to merely read and study. Rather, we should become creators ourselves. In addition to guarding the writer against vice, undertaking an intellectually demanding task will also be therapeutic.

The statement that writing can “free [the author] from great sorrow” inaugurates the prologue’s biographical turn. It is also one of those points were the lack of information about medieval writers can be especially maddening for modern readers, accustomed as we are to being able to know so much about the personal lives of our modern authors. What happened to Marie? What caused her such great sorrow? The prologue does not tell us, and we will never know.

ALai: A Text to be Heard

What Marie shares instead is the process through which she came to choose her materials. A first idea—translating some good stories from Latin into romanz, Marie’s term for Old French—is discarded, apparently because it has already been done. But then she thought, not of works she had read, as is implied by the notion of Latin texts, but rather of a specific kind of a text, a lai, that she had heard. Much is implied in this shift that would have been obvious to Marie’s original audience but may not be so to us. A lai was a very specific kind of text: it was short, composed in a specific metre (octosyllabic verse), treated stories of adventure and romance that often are of Celtic origin, and was often sung or accompanied by music. Above all, as Marie mentions, in contrast to Latin, which was read, a lai was heard. One emerges from a written tradition; the other, from an oral one. Although Marie does not say so directly, the prologue implies that these original lai were composed in Breton, the Celtic language spoken in Brittany.

Only by spelling all this out can we begin to appreciate one of Marie’s innovative and enduring accomplishments. Unlike other authors of her time writing in Old French who are also drawing on oral traditions for their written work, Marie does not disparage or dismiss her sources. Rather she surmises that their authors composed their works for a third reason beyond the two already discussed: literature preserves cultural memories and traditions. Marie aligns her efforts with those of these unnamed poets. By noticing, appreciating, and attending to the Breton oral lais, which were perhaps overlooked or taken for granted or simply inaccessible to many, she brings them from a small language community to a large one, and from ephemeral orality into the realm of the written text, where their chances of not being forgotten were greater.

There is one final thought before the prologue moves to its dedication: Marie often stayed awake in order to write. These hints are enough to imagine Marie, whoever she was, as a well-to-do woman whose way of life gave her access to books, wax tablets, parchment, ink, quills, and candles for writing at night, as an educated woman whose life was so full of responsibilities and demands that there was no time or quiet during the day to write, and as a grieving woman from whom sorrow had stolen sleep, and who sought solace in the power of writing.

Dedications

Dedications such the one that closes the prologue are standard fare in medieval literature. Many great lords and kings cultivated learning and poetry at their courts, and relationships between these lords and the writers who worked in their circles were usually conceptualized in terms of patronage, as we see here. Imagining the lais as a carefully assembled and composed gift being presented by Marie to a refined and learned ruler, the prologue slips from a narrated past to an imagined present and closes with the enduring command of the storyteller, always in the present tense, “Now hear how they begin,” that we set aside our cares and cross into the timeless realm of story.

Close Reading: Nature and Culture

Required Reading Break

• Marie de France. “Bisclavret.”Lais of Marie de France.Edited by Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante, Grand Rapids, MI, 1978, pp. 92-104.

Stories and literary texts set the stage for us to ponder dilemmas of the human condition that transcend time and place and to reflect on the historically and socially inflected circumstances in which they were written and read. One such dilemma is the fraught relationship between nature and culture for human beings: to what extent are our appetites and drives based in nature and instinct? To what extent are they harmful to the self or to others? How are behaviours and beliefs that limit or constrain instinct taught and shared? What is virtue? What kinds of virtuous relationships do individuals and society value, and how do we know when others are truly enacting them?

Bisclavret does not deliver simple, unambiguous, or doctrinal answers to these questions. Rather, it tells a story in a way that invites readers to explore these  issues through discussion and debate by setting up conventional expectations and then confounding or challenging them. These moments are deliberate, yet subtle, and they demand that the reader slow down while reading and attend carefully to the evidence presented in the story. This reading process is often called close reading. Especially important for close reading is that the reader pay attention to the ways in which the text bewilders, confuses, or puzzles them. Schooling too often trains us to skip over what we don’t understand in order to arrive at some kind of conclusion or interpretation, however half-baked, or to come up with a pronouncement that perforce is based more on our own, limited knowledge and preconceptions and less on what the text is actually telling us. Close reading asks readers to refrain from such interpretive moves and instead to describe and explore the puzzles and gaps the text creates for them. Because Bisclavret is so short I invite you to return now to the text and to have it open as you read this section of the module.

The start of Bisclavret in Harley MS 978. Folio 131v. (Unknown, ca. 1261-1265)

Required Reading Break

You should now return to the text or have it open so that you can follow along

• Marie de France. “Bisclavret.”Lais of Marie de France.Edited by Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante, Grand Rapids, MI, 1978, 92-104

I am going to walk us through lines 1-36 of the text, tracking my impressions and questions and noticing how the text sets up expectations and then undercuts or transforms them, with a focus on issues of nature and culture. I invite you to finish re-reading the text in a similar manner, paying attention to the conventions that the text sets up and undermines, so that you can reflect on the text’s meanings in deeper ways.

Demonstration of a Close Reading

In the first lines a first-person narrator tells us this lai is a retelling of a story whose title in the Breton language is Bisclavret, a foreign word that the narrator helpfully translates immediately into Norman (i.e. Anglo-Norman French) as garwaf, which means werewolf in English. The narrator then goes on to describe what a werewolf is, while insinuating that there were werewolves in past (“it often actually happened”, line 6) but that they are no longer exist (“In the old days, people used to say”, line 5). The description of the werewolf is succinct, but leaves open a lot of questions. Werewolves are shape-shifting men. How and why they change shape is not explained. A werewolf (note the change from plural to singular!) lives in nature deep in the forest (that is to say, far away from roads, villages, and towns) where a different and monstrous state of mind takes possession of it (“while his fury is upon him”). The werewolf acts like a cruel animal (“savage beast”), more precisely, it eats human beings. This line arrests me as I read and a first dilemma presents itself. The text does not say “kills men,” although this action is obviously implied; it says “eats men.” Surely, I think to myself, the imagined werewolf eats, for example, rabbits, squirrels, or deer as well, but these prey are not named. Besides, human beings hunt and eat them, too. But human beings do not eat other human beings; this practice is known as cannibalism. Is the werewolf a kind of cannibal? Is the werewolf’s real crime not so much breaking the commandment against killing human beings (against which human beings transgress) but rather breaking the taboo against consuming human flesh and does that taboo still apply when the werewolf inhabits his wolfish guise?

The story moves along briskly, yet I notice that the narrator uses the definite article and the Breton word when she states that she is going to tell the story of the Bisclavret. Why does she continue to use the Breton word? Why not write “the garwaf” (so that, by extension, the correct translation would be “the werewolf”)? What is gained by this stylistic choice? Bisclavret is not the personal name of a character in the story, but rather the creature, but the foreignness of the word makes it sound like a personal name even while the use of the definite article mitigates against that understanding. The two aspects together, however, achieve the effect that the werewolf, the bisclavret, is a singular creature.

As the story commences I find myself a bit taken aback. I am introduced to an exemplary nobleman who is faultless in all ways: handsome, courteous, trusted by his overlord, praised and loved by his neighbours, and blessed to be living in a loving marriage with an excellent, respectable woman. I wonder: where is the bisclavret? The story is supposed to be about a man-eating beast, and instead I have just been introduced to a virtuous, well-loved lord. Conventionally, these two figures are total opposites. Something is wrong, though, and the story shifts to the wife’s perspective to explore what that might be.

The conventional reason for a husband to return in an excellent mood from an unexplained three-day absence is that he has a mistress, and it is obvious that this is what the wife thinks. No wonder she is consumed by a desire to know the truth while being fearful of it. Aren’t we taught to seek the truth? And yet, in the space of a few more lines, these conventions are overturned and confounded. The wife’s conventional suspicions are wrong and the discovered truth is bitter and horrifying: the virtuous lord is the werewolf himself.

I will break off my reading practice here and encourage you to finish the story again for yourself, watching for the ways the story presents insights and events that summon conventional expectations and then undermines them, challenging the reader to re-think the relationship between nature and culture. Other themes emerge along the way that you might wish to consider as well:

• the way in which culture is equated with chivalric values;
• the nature of love and trust;
• the contrast between the relationship between the bisclavret and his wife and the bisclavret and his overlord.

Bisclavret raises existential questions as well: Who is more “beastly” and who more virtuous in this story? What is the relationship between nature and culture? Is the bisclavret ever really a wolf? I suggest that you write down your thoughts and musings in full sentences; you may find yourself returning to them to use in this week’s discussion board and in your final writing assignment.

Additional Resources

Additional resources for Marie de France

• Whalen, Logan E., editor.A Companion to Marie de France.2011.
• Krueger, R.L. “Marie de France.”The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, 2003, pp. 172-183.

The following contains an edition of *Bisclavret,*which has the original, in French, if someone who is good with French wants to take a look at the Old French.

• The Lais of Marie de France: Text and Translation. Edited and translated by Claire M. Waters, Broadview, 2018.

Check Your Understanding

1. Marie de France’s work suggests that she viewed composing, hearing, and reading literary texts:

2. Close reading means

Works Cited

Unknown. ca. 1261-1265. “Harley MS 978.” British Library. Folio 131v. London. Retrieved from: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=harley_ms_978_f131v

3d. Adaptation

Adapting Works of the Human Imagination Across Time, Space, and Media

This section of the module provides an analytical framework that will help students to discuss and debate modern adaptations of Marie de France’s *Bisclavret.*The framework is summarizes important points about adaptation from the theoretical writings of the great Canadian literary scholar and theorist, Linda Hutcheon.

Additional Resource

An excerpt from Hutcheon’s now standard work on adaptation is available as an optional reading and for those interested in this topic; students are not required to read it.

• Hutcheon, Linda with Siobhan O’Flynn.A Theory of Adaptation, second edition. Routledge, 2006, pp. xiii-xxviii; 1-32.

Great written stories do not try to answer every question and explain every detail; indeed, they cannot. Reading relies instead on the reader engaging their imagination to creatively stage the text in their minds. Any written text leaves many gaps, some minor, some large. To take Bisclavret as an example: what color is the lady’s hair? How long have the lord and lady been married? Do they have any children? How did the lord become the bisclavret? Such gaps are a fundamental feature of telling (as opposed to seeing or doing) and are often deliberate on the author’s part. Telling builds space for the creativity and imagination of the reader and for debate and discussion between readers about the text’s meanings and about the issues raised by the text.

Interpreting the Gaps

When a work of the human imagination is transported across time, culture, and media, the nature of these gaps changes. Social conventions and norms change; understandings and pre-knowledge that were obvious to the original audience vanish; new understandings create questions and gaps that were not intended or foreseen. As philologists we tried to reconstruct as best we can salient aspects of the horizon of expectations of the original audience. Some things that are gaps for us would not have been gaps for them: for example, what it meant to be deemed a beautiful lady in twelfth-century France or England, or what caused a man to become a werewolf, or that a quest for justice might include acts of revenge, a view that is anathema to modern legal systems, in which the quest for vengeance pursued outside of the legal system is a crime. There would have been received opinion, as it were, on points such as these, which can often be discovered through scholarly research.

Through the many choices made by its author, a written text draws attention to what is at stake in it and what is not. In Bisclavret it does not matter in what manner the lady is comely, to use an old-fashioned word, merely that she is. The reader is free to imagine her beauty in any way the reader wishes. Her loss of beauty through a specific kind of disfigurement of the face, on the other hand, matters, and so it is described and even given a story of its own that stretches into the future.

Gaps from Transposing Between Media

The need to fill in gaps in a meaningful way becomes especially urgent when transposing works between media. Marie de France hints that her lais lived in a world of oral performance, suggesting that they were read out loud and perhaps accompanied by music. Transposing an oral performance into a text or a text into an oral performance moves the original into a different medium, each of which has its own affordances and limitations. A performing artist can convey shades of interpretation and meaning through gesture, change of voice, intonation, musical accompaniment, silences, and so on. To be effective, oral performance demands that the artist give shape, voice, and meaning that is to say adapt and interpret, the source work in order to reach their audience. Performing, or doing, a source text is related to both telling and showing but has its own affordances and limitations.

The issue of differences in affordances and limitations across media is especially salient when thinking about adaptation between writing, which is a mode of telling, and moving images, which are a mode of seeing. Let’s return to the issue of the wife’s beauty. A filmmaker who wishes to make the wife a character in the film must decide what she looks like, right down to her clothing. The remarkable affordance of the medium of film, which is the immediacy and fullness of showing, can also be construed as a kind of limitation, because the viewer’s freedom to imagine their own ideal of beauty, which is allowed in reading, is overridden. These remarks are not intended as value judgments on various media but rather as a way of pointing out that media themselves shape their products.

Adaptation: A Product and A Process

In Theory of Adaptation (second edition), Linda Hutcheon provides a spirited defense of adaptation as a literary mode of knowing that creatively reanimates a source. By altering an original work or source, she argues, an adaptor seeks to successfully suit it to a different medium, audience, time, or culture. Adaptations are products (films; written texts; performances; paintings; and so on) and adaptation is also a process of creative, interpretive making.

Adaptations are indeed everywhere but their status as works of art is fraught. Novels are adapted into movies and television series (the Harry Potter novels and movies; The Lord of the Rings, for example). Classical works of opera and theater (Carmen; Wagner’s operas; even Shakespeare’s plays) drew their plots, characters, themes, and settings from older written sources. Marie tells us that she drew on the work of oral storytellers and performers. Every staged play or opera is an adaptation of its source. Contemporary media offer new opportunities for adaptation; some video games, for example, are adaptations that allow the player to immerse themselves in, for example, a world that is an adaptation of the Old English epic, Beowulf.

And yet, the widespread modern perception, indeed I would say the social norm, is that adaptations are intellectually inferior to works that are original inventions. Adaptations are deemed inferior because they do not challenge audiences or readers but rather are assumed to provide the anodyne comfort of familiarity or the distraction of pleasure rather than earnest ethical or moral appraisals. Adaptations are often critiqued in terms of loss because they have failed to adequately and faithfully reproduce a source or original. Hutcheon calls this expectation of faithful reproduction “the fidelity principle.” One of her key interventions is to critique the fidelity principle because its application to adaptions leads to flattened and superficial judgments that cannot account for the creative, interpretive work that adaptations can accomplish (although obviously there are bad adaptations, too).

In sum, Hutcheon says that adaptation is

…repetition without replication; it is a derivation that is not derivative – a work that is second without being secondary.Hutcheon, p. 9

A Working Definition of Adaptation

Hutcheon defines adaptation as an extended, acknowledged, and recognizable transposition of a source.

“Extended” means that to count as adaptation, a work must engage with key elements of the source in prolonged and extensive ways. Merely citing or referring to a source does not make the new work an adaptation. To take the example of the fairy tale, Little Red Riding Hood, a film would not count as an adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood just because a girl wearing a red cape strolled through a frame. There would also have to be a wolf, some setting that hinted at wildness, probably a grandmother and also some red garment, perhaps a woodsman and definitely some kind of fraught encounter between the girl and the wolf. This part of the definition matters because in contemporary popular culture, a kind of “pastiche” storytelling has emerged that is build up around superficial allusions to familiar characters or stories. As entertaining and clever as such works often are in their own right, they are not adaptations.

“Acknowledged” means that the work references its source; in the modern world, a work that does not do so is regarded as being plagiarized.

“Recognizable” means that there are enough elements in the adaptation that the audience recognizes it as such, and so their familiarity with the material can be part of the encounter. This part of the definition is interesting because it can account for the messy ways in which we actually encounter adaptations and their sources. My first encounter with, say, the legends of King Arthur, might have been the Walt Disney film based on T. H. White’s novel, The Sword in the Stone (in other words, an adaptation of an adaptation), and but that does not invalidate my experience once I begin encountering other adaptations and sources of the King Arthur legend. It merely means that I build familiarity with the King Arthur legend in ways that are typical for a specific time and place.

Finally, there are many possible synonyms for “transposition,” trans-coding being one of them. What Hutcheon is avoiding here is using the word “translation.” Her theory of adaptation rules out translation (i.e., rendering works out of one language and into another) as adaptation, in large part because successful translations are in fact bound by the fidelity principle. (This stance does not mean that Hutcheon denigrates the enormous knowledge and creativity that are necessary to produce outstanding translations.)

Check Your Understanding

1. According to the theorist Linda Hutcheon, an adaptation is

Once you have completed reviewing all of this week’s content, return to the module page.

Works Cited

There are no additional references for this section.

Module 4: Satirical Monsters

Kate Steiner (Musicology, University of Waterloo)

4a. The Ass in Music

Satire Expressed in Deformed Genres

Satire is a mode of writing that exposes the failings of individuals, institutions, and societies to ridicule or scorn. As such it is closely linked to the idea of monsters in the Middle Ages. If monsters were useful symbols to describe conditions of depravity, as David Williams argues in his book Deformed Discourse, then it is no surprise that monsters, whether obvious mythical creatures, or creatures that simply defied explanation, show up in musical satires. Monsters came to symbolize that which eluded logic and disordered form, both of which had moral implications. Depravity, deformity and disorder were tied together in the medieval world.

In music, the ass most often symbolized the deformed singer. In one of the best-known treatises on singing plainchant by Guido of Arezzo (c. 992-1033) he compares the bad singer, who thinks louder is better, with the ass, which cannot sing with understanding. In another treatise, the bad singer is like an ass that moves back-to-front. The ass was surely the most common of these satirical monsters. Although not scary in the sense of threatening, the ass symbolized something scarier: a fundamental disorder to the world. A singing ass represented everything rational about the world, including music, gone awry.

The Singing Ass

The ass appears in the lyrics of many songs criticizing political leaders and clergy, two groups who held power and authority. Occasionally, university professors were the subject of satire as well. The Carmina Burana (Songs of Benediktbeuern) contains one such satire in which an ass appears in the lyrics. The Carmina Burana was a hefty collection of songs and poetry (c. 1230) written by some disgruntled university students known as the goliards (after a lewd and drunken mythical Bishop Golias). One of these poems laments the current state of learning among university students by invoking the great symbol of the world up-side-down: the ass (translated as donkey below) singing and playing the lute.

(Church of Saint-Pierre-de-la-Tour d’Aulnay,c. 1120-1140)

Florebat olim studium/nunc vertitur in tediumOnce learning flourished. Now it’s cometo be condemned as tediumthe days of thirsting after truthare now the idle days of youth…Now lads of barely a decadecan graduate - get themselves madeprofessors too! And who’s to mindhow blind the blind who lead the blind?So fledglings soar upon the wing,so donkeys play the lute and sing:bulls dance about at court like spritesand ploughboys sally forth as knights.Parlett 2007, CB6

If only we knew the music they imagined for this poem, but sadly no one committed it to notation, like many other songs in the collection. But we are asked to imagine a absurd noise: an ass playing the lute and singing. (Carl Orff gave many of these songs a new life in his 1935 musical setting, Carmina Burana, but not this text.) Nonetheless, the original text in Latin gives us some idea of what it might have sounded like when these university students, the object of their own satire, sang Florebit olim. A heavily accented rhythm in the text with regular eight syllable lines suggests a genre of popular song, perhaps with drum accompanying. Their goal was entertainment, not furthering learning (the very thing they criticize in students of their day!).

Additional Resource

Review the surviving original manuscript of the *Carmina Burana.*It is housed in the Bavarian State Library, and has been fully digitized.

The Feast of the Ass

The symbol of the ass also appeared in an inverted sacred ritual the week after Christmas celebrated in northern France. As the authoritative and politically sanctioned institution, the Catholic Church controlled religious beliefs and practices through its sacred rituals, known as the liturgy: the daily cycle of prayer services called the Divine Office, and the celebration of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ called the Mass. These daily rituals were organized throughout the year by feast days that celebrated events in the life of Jesus Christ and his followers. The Feast of the Ass, celebrated on the day of Jesus Christ’s Circumcision on January 1, turned the major festivities of the previous week of Christmas up-side-down. One of the young boys of the choir dressed up and acted as bishop, the most significant and dignified church position in the region. The parody of the bishop’s role was taken a step further by introducing a donkey into the most sacred ritual of the mass. While ostensibly brought in as a re-enactment of the story of Jesus Christ’s flight to Egypt, the donkey’s presence also symbolized the parodic nature of the celebration. In one version of the mass, the choir was to add braying sounds to the end of every song of the mass, turning the core music of the mass into the absurdly ugly “he-haw,” making everyone a bad singer in the reckoning of Guido of Arezzo. At the end of the mass, everyone was to turn to the ass and genuflect after singing a song of praise to him in an act of mis-directed reverence, singing a conductus:

(Maître de Fauvel, c. 1318-1320)

Out from lands of OrientWas the ass divinely sent.Strong and very fair was he,Bearing burdens gallantly.Go, sir ass, Go.In the hills of Sichem bredUnder Reuben nourished,Jordan stream he traversed,Into Bethlehem he sped. Go, Go!Higher leaped than goats can bound,Doe and roebuck circled round,Median dromedaries’ speedOvercame, and took the lead. Go, Go!While he drags long carriagesLoaded down with baggages,He, with jaws insatiate,Fodder hard doth masticate. Go, Go!Chews the ears with barley corn,Thistle down with thistle corn.On the threshing floor his feetSeparate the chaff from wheat. Go, Go!Stuffed with grass, yet speak and sayAmen, ass, with every bray:Amen, amen, say again:Ancient sins hold in disdain. Go on, go on,Fair Sir Ass, you trot all day;Fair your mouth, and loud your brayTranslation adopted from Greene, 535.

Ritual, Musical Genre, and Satire

What marks the Song of the Ass as satire, rather than only a silly song, is the music. The conductus was a genre of music that developed in the late eleventh century to be sung in the sacred rituals of the Catholic Church, but it took second place to plainchant, the main music of all sacred rituals. Plainchant has a distinctive sound even today because it is sung without instruments, monophonically (all voices singing the same melody), and with flexible rhythm.

(Aboense, c. 1301-1400)

Required Listening Break

Plainchant is still sung in Latin today, particularly by monastic communities. Listen to these nuns at the at the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Fidélité sing a short chant for the Mass at the most intimate part of the ritual, when the body and blood of Jesus Christ is eaten in the form of bread and wine (the Eucharist). As you listen, try to identify the flexible rhythm and monophonic song.

Neumz. “Communio - Cantate Domino - Abbaye Notre-Dame de Fidélité - Complete Gregorian Chant.” , 5 May, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyAA_BG11pg.

Additional Resource

You can also check out the app Neumz, created by the nuns at the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Fidélité , which lets you listen and follow along with the same music notation that was used in thirteenth century.

The conductus was similarly sung in the sacred rituals in Latin, but the text was accented poetry, and the music gave one syllable for every note, making it sound more like a popular song, as in Florebit olim. In Orientis partibus, the popular style was amplified through the incessant seven syllable lines that all rhyme in each stanza. The melody repeats for each stanza with a simple rounded tune that begins and ends in the same place, completed with the refrain, a short line repeated at the end of every stanza. In this case the music of the refrain, “Go, Sir Ass, Go!”, mimics the opening line of music. The result is a mockery of a genre of music that was already on the fringes of acceptable ritual music.

Required Listening Break

Listen for the incessant rhymes and accents that give a feeling of regular rhythm to this song.

• Orientis partibus, sung by the Boston Camerata directed by Joel Cohen, onWorlds of Early Christmas Music, Erato 825646759675, 2010, Naxos Music Library.You can listen to this song at the following link or you can access it through Course Reserves.

Please Note: The University of Waterloo Library has a license that allows for 15 simultaneous listeners to this resource. If you have difficulty accessing the resource, please wait a few moments and try again.

Ritual Context for Music

There is folly in this praise of the ass. What makes it monstrous is the humanization of the beast. To hail the lowly donkey as “Sir Ass” is to disorder the world, putting the human lower than the lowliest beast. While the short invective in the refrain might seem insignificant, it was no doubt the most memorable. Refrains were commonly added on to Christmas songs as a way of celebrating with extra jubilation. The refrain “Go, Sir Ass, Go” thus was characteristic of other Christmas season conductus and plainchants in its form, but the text, combining the common goad for a donkey with hailing him as a lord, points to the fundamental irrationality of the song. Some bishops strongly disapproved of the folly in the Feast of the Ass, and heavily censured the ritual in order to maintain control and order. What survives of this ritual is likely a tamed version of what was often performed. In fact, it is possible that the Feast of the Ass was a Christianized version of a more grotesque New Year’s celebration, in which people dressed as wild beasts, disrupting the sacred order of creation. Understanding the roles of the singers and other clergy involved in the ritual, as well as its function within the ritual is key to uncovering the monstrous nature of the ass lauded in Orientis partibus. Each of these participants in the Feast of the Ass had symbollic signficance, allowing the ritual, including the music, to be “read” as a sacred text revealing the true nature of the world.

Required Reading Break

Read this article on how the ass in the Feast of the Ass was a symbol of a deformed, irrational world.

• Ahn, Dongmyung. “Beastly yet Lofty Burdens: The Donkey and the Subdeacon in the Middle Ages.” L’Humain et l’Animal Dans La France Médiévale (XIIe-XVe s.), January 1, 2014, 145–60.

Check Your Understanding

The subdeacon and ass were compared to each other in the Feast of the Ass because

Works Cited

Aboense, Graduale. The Introit Gaudeamus omnes. Hymn book of Turku, Finland. c. 1301-1400. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_chant#/media/File:Graduale_Aboense_2.jpg.

Ahn, Dongmyung. “Beastly yet Lofty Burdens: The Donkey and the Subdeacon in the Middle Ages*.” L’Humain et l’Animal Dans La France Médiévale (XIIe-XVe s.),* January 1, 2014, 145–60. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789401211079_010.

Church of Saint-Pierre-de-la-Tour d’Aulnay.Aulnay, Nouvelle-Aquitaine. Animal terrestre musicien, lion se mordant la queue, bestiaire. Photograph of architectural detail: Ass playing a rote]. Aulnay, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France, 1120 -1140. http://musiconis.huma-num.fr/en/fiche/10/ane-jouant-de-la-rote.html.

Beck, Eleonora M. “Dancing in the Street: Fourteenth-Century Representations of Music and Justice.” In Music, Dance, and Society: Medieval and Renaissance Studies in Memory of Ingrid G. Brainard, 173–88. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2011.

Davenport, Tony. Medieval Narrative: An Introduction. Oxford, UNITED KINGDOM: Oxford University Press, 2004. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/waterloo/detail.action?docID=4963508.

Fassler, Margot. “The Feast of Fools and Daniel Ludus.” In Plainsong in the Age of Polyphony, edited by Thomas Forrest Kelly. Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Fassler, Margot Elsbeth. Music in the Medieval West. Western Music in Context : A Norton History. New York, NY: WWNorton and Company, 2014.

Greene, Henry Copley. “The Song of the Ass.” Speculum 6, no. 4 (1931): 534–49. https://doi.org/10.2307/2849511.

Knight, Charles A. The Literature of Satire. Cambridge, UNITED KINGDOM: Cambridge University Press, 2004. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/waterloo/detail.action?docID=256716.

Leach, Elizabeth Eva. Sung Birds: Music, Nature, and Poetry in the Later Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007.

Maître de Fauvelm [Enlumineur]. Gervais du Bus et Raoul Chaillou de Pesstain, Roman de Fauvel; Geoffroy de Paris et Jean de Lescurel, Poèmes; Geoffroy de Paris, Chronique métrique. c. 1318-1320. Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Miniature_Fête_des_Fous.jpg

Parlett, David, trans. Selections from the “Carmina Burana.” Penguin UK, 2007.

Williams, David. Deformed Discourse the Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and Literature. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996.

Zayaruznaya, Anna. The Monstrous New Art: Divided Forms in the Late Medieval Motet. Music in Context. Cambridge: University Press, 2015.

Orientis partibus, sung by the Boston Camerata directed by Joel Cohen, on Worlds of Early Christmas Music, Erato 825646759675, 2010, Naxos Music Library: https://greblweb.nml3.naxosmusiclibrary.com/streamw.asp?ver=2.0&s=157321%2FCGUCnmlPD08%2F2306028

4b. The Monstrous Horse in Musical Symbols

Musical Destruction of Fauvel

Another beast related to the ass is the subject of the most prized collection of music from around 1317, the Roman de Fauvel. This lavish manuscript, carefully composed by a group of scribes, artists, poets, and musicians, is a scathing critique of the king of France, Philippe IV (1285-1314), and his chancellor, Enguerrand de Marigny (1260-1315), in the form of a satire. The literary genre of this satire is a romance, a genre of vernacular literature upholding the values of courtly love and the predecessor to the modern novel. It is the medium in which the characters of Arthurian legends, still well known today, were developed. Romances frequently recounted musical performances in which the characters would pause for musical entertainment in the form of song. These moments give us some idea of how music that was not recorded in notation might have shaped aristocratic life. But in the Roman de Fauvel, music and image are harnessed along with the word to provide the fullest possible indictment of the king and those he placed in office.

Fauvel is a horse that fools people into fawning over him, to the extent that he moves from the proper place for a horse, a stable, to a palace. In character with a romance, he attempts to court a woman, Lady Fortune, who is a symbol of the unpredictable turns of life. She denies him her hand, but nonetheless helps him find better fortune. Spurned by Lady Fortune he finds a Vice to wed instead - Vaine Gloire (vainglory, vanity). By the time he wins over Vaine Gloire he has morphed into a hybrid beast - sometimes a horse with hands, sometimes a human with hooves.

Opening folio (page) of the Roman de Fauvel. This folio is found in the most extensive copy held at the Paris Bibliotheque Nationale, fr. 146, fol. The central image of Fauvel is framed by music on both sides. (Maître de Fauvel, c. 1318-1320)

His match with Vaine Gloire is appropriate, since Fauvel’s name itself is an acrostic for six vices:

• Flaterie
• Avarice
• Vilanie
• Variété (changeability)
• Envie
• Lâcheté (cowardice)

Virtues and vices in the Middle Ages were not only guideposts for being a decent person, they were also the qualities of the Divine. As a symbol of vice, Fauvel’s hybrid nature was an image of depravity: a creature that had lost it proper form, and therefore fallen away from God. This monstrous creature might itself have been conceived as a means not just of criticizing the King, but also of revealing the true nature of God, since Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), writing only a few years earlier, said:

(Maître de Fauvel, c. 1318-1320)

It is more fitting that divine truths in the Scriptures should be imparted to us in the guide of figures drawn from base objects rather than noble objects . . . [since] it is natural for man to reach intellectual things by means of sensible things . . . Likenesses drawn from those things which are furthest removed from God give us a truer estimation of God.St. Thomas Aquinas

A satirical monster like Fauvel might have been funny, but the truth underlying him was grave.

(MFR, 2016)

Hidden Truth in the Isorhythmic Motet

One of the key interests for musicologists in the Roman de Fauvel is the great variety of genres used. Latin chant was the bread and butter of the massive complex of sacred ritual in churches called the Divine Office and Mass. French monophonic songs (single voice so that they could be sung by one person) in fixed forms on subjects of courtly love also pervade the romance. But the isorhythmic motet is the genre with the most opportunity for hidden truths, only to be discovered through music analysis.

Music analysis starts with the music itself, rather than external factors. It focuses on the structures within the music and seeks to understand their function. This method of inquiry was developed largely in the late nineteenth century, which means the methods of identifying musical structures and their functions reflected the music of that time. But in the last fifty years scholars have developed analytic methods that reflect both the music theory of the Middle Ages and the compositional process (the order and the tools used to compose the music).

Music theory, much like mathematics, developed a method of explaining the phenomenon of music through various principles and processes. Medieval music theory focused on harmony and rhythm. Harmony (notes sounding together in a pleasing way) and rhythm (the duration of notes) were both based on proportions discovered by Pythagoras (c. 570-c. 495 BC), an ancient Greek mathematician. Thus harmony was understood as a production of two sounds in a simple ratio with each other. Sounds that were not harmonious were discordant, indicating not only the sound but their metaphysical significance creating a disordered world. Rhythm was ordered through the division of a unit of time (long) into three or two equal shorter notes (breve), creating ratios of 1:2 or 1:3. Ratios also played an important role in the overall structure of a piece. In particular, some composers organized a piece into smaller sections according to the golden section (also called the golden rule or golden mean). This ratio, developed by the ancient Greek philosopher Euclid (fl. 300 BC), is when two quantities have the same ratio to each other as their combined units have to the larger ratio: a:b is the same ratio as a+b:a. The golden section influenced many artists, architects and musicians (although the extent of the influence may sometimes have been overestimated).

The compositional process used the tools of theory to create and record new musical works. In the case of the isorhythmic motet, the composer built a three parts with different French texts above a snippet of a melody (called a color) taken from a Latin chant, called the tenor. Although the original melody from the chant did not have a clear rhythm, the composer created a repeating rhythmic pattern, called a talea. This treatment of the tenor in a composed color and talea is the definition of the isorhythmic motet. More than simply a way of structuring the music, the talea and color also themselves could have hidden symbols.

Required Listening Break

Think of the tune for “Happy Birthday”. Now think of a rhythmic pattern, like long-short-short-long. Now sing the melody of “Happy Birthday” with the talea you have just composed. If you use the rhythmic pattern long-short-short-long, it should sound like this:

Download MP3 © Course Author(s) and University of Waterloo.

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Johannes de Grocheo (1255-1320), writing roughly at the same time the Roman de Fauvel was composed, thought the very definition of the motet made it suitable only for certain audiences:

A motet is a song composed of many voices, having many words or a variety of syllables, everywhere sounding in harmony. Each line ought to have a text with the exception of the tenor, which in some has a text and in others not. This kind of song ought not to be propagated among the vulgar, since they do not understand its subtlety nor do they delight in hearing it, but it should be performed for the learned and those who seek after the subtleties of the arts. And it is normally performed at their feasts for their edification…Johannes de Grocheo, 26

The community Johannes de Grocheo imagines enjoying these motets may have grasped the meaning of the multiple texts performed at once and the literary and musical quotations that further revealed the meaning of the music. But there were sometimes musical symbols that could only be revealed through study of the notation.

Required Listening Break

Now that you know the construction of the isorhythmic motet, listen to Tribum/Quoniam/Merito by Phillipe de Vitry. The triplum (top part) begins first with a quick rhythm, then is followed by the duplum (middle part) at a similar speed. Finally the tenor enters singing on “oh” in the slower sustained notes of the color, with a consistent three beat pattern. See if you can identify each part.

Ensemble La Rota - Topic. (2015, January 29). Tribum que / Quoniam secta / Merito hec patimur - Tribum quem non abhorruit. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90HTg-nCaIs

Many Forms of Fauvel

We take as an example a famous motet near the end of the Roman, known by the incipits (beginning words) of the three voice parts: Tribum / Quoniam / Merito. The lower two parts frame an image of the Fountain of Youth, in which the human spawn of Fauvel and Vaine Gloire are eternally renewed. In the right column, a short musical piece imitating chant compares the Fountain of Youth to a baptismal font, the Christian ritual washing. It mimics the chant for baptism but with the words, “This fount, this water of degeneration, this damning wave. Amen.” Even after Fauvel’s less than laudable marriage to Vain Gloire and the defeat of all his Vices by the Virtues in a tournament (typical of the climax of romances), Fauvel still seems to win in the end. His hybrid form has so changed that he spawns not beast but human flesh that will never die.

(Maître de Fauvel, c. 1318-1320)

(de Lorris and de Meung, c. 1200-1304)

But the motet embedded in this page lays bare the belly of this monster. Although it does not speak directly of Fauvel, there is another monster hiding in its midst. The duplum text speaks of a fox (Fauvel, aka Enguerrand de Marigny), which gnaws on the cocks [a play on the same word for the French] while the blind lion rules [Philipe IV]. If it is not clear who the fox is in this motet, his identity is revealed in the final motet two folios later. In the triplum of that motet, the fox is compared with the most dreadful monster of all: the dragon of the Apocalypse as recorded in Revelation 12:9 and 12. In this vision of the Apocalypse, the dragon represents the ultimate evil force, Satan. In Tribum/Quoniam/Merito, the fox instead devours the French people while the one who is supposed to rule over them turns a blind eye.

Required Reading Break

This isorhythmic motet has further hidden meanings in the tenor, structure, and textual allusions that can only be discovered through textual and musical analysis. Read the below analysis in which the author considers the compositional process, the structure, the textual analysis, and quotations in both text and music to piece together the hidden message.

• Bent, Margaret. “Polyphony of Texts and Music in the Fourteenth-Century Motet: Tribum Que Non Abhorruit/Quoniam Secta Latronum/Merito Hec Patimur and Its ‘Quotations.’” InHearing the Motet Essays on the Motet of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, edited by Dolores Pesce, 82–103. New York ; Oxford University Press, 1998.

The structure, numerical symbols, and textual surface all point to one hidden truth. The monster Fauvel may be allowed to run free now, but “furious fortune” will soon cause his downfall. Even the tenor line, amounting to 72 longs, symbolizes Fauvel’s fall as it represents the number of disciples of Christ, who spread the truth and cast out Satan. The words of the chant, “We deserve to suffer these things justly” is put into the mouths of Fauvel’s followers who are expelled by the just disciples of Christ.

Additional Resource

View the entire original Fauvel manuscript, including the many remarkable illustrations, which is housed in the National Library of France.

For more on the connection between Fauvel and the just disciples of Christ, see:

• Roesner, Edward H. “Labouring in the Midst of Wolves: Reading a Group of ‘Fauvel’ Motets”.Early Music History, vol. 22, Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 169–245.

Check Your Understanding

1) A isorhythmic motet uses notes of a plainchant in a

2) The isorhythmic motet Tribum/Quoniam/Merito hides the monstrous nature of Fauvel

3) The Roman de Fauvel is an unusual romance because:

Once you have completed reviewing all of this week’s content, return to the module page.

Works Cited

Johannes de Grocheo, De musica, trans. Albert Seay (Colorado Springs: The Colorado College Music Press, 1974).

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, trans. Thomas Gilby (London and New York: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1964), la I, art. 9; the passage is reprinted in Alastair J. Minnis and Alexander B. Scott, Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c. 1100-c. 1375, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 239-40.

Heu Fortuna. " Tribum que / Quoniam secta / Merito hec patimur - Tribum quem non abhorruit” Ensemble La Rota. ATMA Classique, 2007. Naxos: https://greblweb.nml3.naxosmusiclibrary.com/streamw.asp?ver=2.0&s=157321%2FCGUCnmlPD08%2F222448

Bent, Margaret. “Fauvel and Marigny: which came first?.” Fauvel Studies: Allegory, Chronicle, Music, and Image in Paris—Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS français 146, edited by Margaret Bent and Andrew Wathey, Oxford, 1998, pp. 35-52.

“Damien Kempf on Twitter: ‘The Lute Player @BIUSteGenevieve, Ms. 143, 14th c. Https://T.Co/HPXiQvyPMy’ / Twitter.” Twitter. twitter.com, https://twitter.com/damienkempf/status/743471704165523456/photo/1. Accessed 3 June 2020.

de Lorris, Guillaume and de Meung, Jean. “Lady Fortune” in Recueil. c. 1200-1304. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Français 2195, fol. 156v. Retrieved from: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b60003385/f320.item

Dillon, Emma. Medieval Music-Making and the Roman de Fauvel. Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Dixon, Rebecca, et al., editors. “The Songs of Jehannot de Lescurel in Paris, BnF, MS Fr. 146: Love Lyrics, Moral Wisdom and the Material Book.” Poetry, Knowledge and Community in Late Medieval France, Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2008, pp. 151–75.

Fassler, Margot Elsbeth. Music in the Medieval West. WWNorton and Company, 2014, 197-222.

Kelly, Thomas Forrest. Capturing Music: The Story of Notation. First edition., WWNorton & Company, 2015, 143-167.

“Le Roman de Fauvel.” The Boston Camerata, 28 Sept. 2018. bostoncamerata.org, https://bostoncamerata.org/shopitem/le-roman-de-fauvel/.

Maître de Fauvel, [Enlumineur]. *Gervais du Bus et Raoul Chaillou de Pesstain, Roman de Fauvel; Geoffroy de Paris et Jean de Lescurel, Poèmes; Geoffroy de Paris, Chronique métrique.*F-Pn Fr. 146. c. 1318-1320. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits. Français 146. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8454675g.

Maître de Fauvel [Enlumineur]. Gervais du Bus et Raoul Chaillou de Pesstain, Roman de Fauvel; Geoffroy de Paris et Jean de Lescurel, Poèmes; Geoffroy de Paris, Chronique métrique.F-Pn Fr. 146 c. 1318-1320. Retrieved from: Retrieved from: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8454675g/f42.item.r=gervais%20du%20bus%20146.zoom

MFR. How Conservatives And Fox News Created The Unstoppable TRUMP Monster. 2 March 2016. https://medium.com/@MFR/how-conservatives-and-fox-news-created-the-unstoppable-trump-monster-28ca188ea2e.

Rankin, Susan. “The Divine Truth of Scripture: Chant in the ‘Roman de Fauvel.’” Journal of the American Musicological Society, vol. 47, no. 2, [University of California Press, American Musicological Society], 1994, pp. 203–43. JSTOR, JSTOR, doi:10.2307/3128878.

Robertson, Anne Walters. “A Musical Lesson for a King from the Roman de Fauvel.” Music and Culture in the Middle Ages and beyond: Liturgy, Sources, Symbolism, edited by Benjamin David Brand and David J. Rothenberg, Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 242–62.

Roesner, Edward H. “Labouring in the Midst of Wolves: Reading a Group of ‘Fauvel’ Motets.” Early Music History, vol. 22, Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 169–245. JSTOR.

Zayaruznaya, Anna. The Monstrous New Art: Divided Forms in the Late Medieval Motet. University Press, 2015.

Module 5: Ghosts and Revenants

Caley McCarthy (History, University of Waterloo)

This module examines the subject of ghosts and revenants —the returned dead—in the Middle Ages. It approaches the subject from three perspectives – intellectual history, sociocultural history, and archaeology. Like much sociocultural history, this module underscores that when studying a history of beliefs what matters is not whether or not what a society believed was true, but why a society believed what they did. Intellectual history allows us to understand how medieval societies could believe in the returned dead and what medieval societies believed about the returned dead. It employs medieval writings about ghosts—sagas, theological and medical treatises, etc. The sections “Learned Beliefs about Death and the Soul” and “Medieval Tales of the Restless Dead” rely primarily on this approac

5a. Introduction

Studying Medieval Ghosts and Revenants: Sources, Methods, and Focus

Sources and Methods

Beliefs about ghosts and revenants have left traces in many medieval sources. Such records include, but are not limited to:

• Sagas
• Chronicles
• Criminal inquests
• Canonical inquests
• Vitae(saints’ lives)
• Art
• Ecclesiastical writings
• Penitentials
• Medical writings
• Physical remains (burials)

These sources capture different beliefs about ghosts and revenants. Sometimes their beliefs are consonant, sometimes they are dissonant.

This module approaches the study of ghosts and revenants from a sociocultural perspective. It puts into conversation research on learned attitudes toward death, the soul, and the afterlife – notably, ecclesiastical and medical writings – and more popular attitudes toward these subjects – like inquest records, physical remains, and different forms of art.

It happened that this man was talking with the master of the ploughmen and was walking with him in the field. And suddenly the master fled in great terror and the other man was left struggling with a ghost who foully tore his garments. And at last he gained the victory and conjured him. And he being conjured confessed that he had been a certain canon of Newburgh, and that he had been excommunicated for certain silver spoons which he had hidden in a certain place. He therefore begged the living man that he would go to the place he mentioned and take them away and carry them to the prior and ask for absolution. And he did so and he found the silver spoons in the place mentioned. And after absolution the ghost henceforth rested in peace. But the man was ill and languished for many days, and he affirmed that the ghost appeared to him in the habit of a canon.Joynes, 2001

Studying medieval ghost stories is as illuminating as it is entertaining. By considering beliefs about the returned dead within their historical contexts, we are able to understand the cultural attitudes and social structures that shaped these beliefs. This module examines both what medieval people believed about ghosts and why they believed what they did about ghosts. It examines such beliefs through the lenses of intellectual history, sociocultural history, and archaeology to reveal the role that beliefs in ghosts and revenants played in medieval societies.

This sociocultural approach borrows methods from the Annales school of history. Lucien Febvre (1878-1956) and Marc Bloch (1886-1944) first established the Annalesschool of history through their journal, *Annales d’histoire économique et sociale,*which promoted a study of social history over a long period. Focusing primarily on medieval and early modern Europe, scholars of the Annales school rejected earlier approaches to history that focused on the “great men” of the past, and instead sought to retrieve the history of ordinary people through broad study. They employed the methods of anthropology, sociology, geography, psychology, and economics to access the social structures that underpinned medieval society. First-generation Annalistesapproached history primarily from a socioeconomic perspective, but, overtime, the emphasis shifted toward a sociocultural perspective. Later Annalisteslike Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and Philippe Ariès championed the study of cultural mentalities (mentalités), which understands history as a construction of perceptions and not just of events. Although, in recent years, studies of mentalitéshave been criticized for their attempt to identify universal systems of belief, their emphasis on the social structures and patterns that shaped medieval practices continue to provide useful methods for sociocultural studies of the Middle Ages. This module reconstructs the mentalitésthat underpin medieval beliefs in ghosts and revenants.

(Unknown 1878-1956)

A Note on Subject Selection

This module operates within two constraints:

• It focuses primarily on medieval Western Christian beliefs about ghosts. This focus does not intend to suggest that other religions did not hold beliefs in the returned dead. They did. Their beliefs, however, are difficult to access due to the scarcity of extant sources. The first assigned reading in this module provides a brief examination of medieval Jewish beliefs in ghosts, for cultural comparison (see the assigned reading by Ido Peretz).
• It focuses on the ghosts of ordinary people. Medieval sources are replete with references to visions of, visitations by, and conversations with dead saints. But, as Peter Brown has noted (The Work of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity),saints were the “very special dead,” and such visions, visitations, and conversations served a different sociocultural function than those involving the ordinary dead.

Required Reading

Read this article about medieval Jewish beliefs in ghosts for a point of comparison for this module’s content:

• Ido Peretz, “Ghost Stories in Medieval Hebrew Folktales: The Case of Sefer Hasidim and Sippurei Ha-Ari,” inWith Both Feet on the Clouds : Fantasy in Israeli Culture, ed. Danielle Gurevitch, et al. (Academic Studies Press, 2013): 220-247.

Introduction: Appearances of the Dead in the Middle Ages

Beliefs in ghosts and revenants varied throughout and across the Middle Ages and were shaped by different understandings of death. In the Early Middle Ages, ghosts were, theoretically, impossible, as medieval theology understood death as a finite event marked by the separation of body and soul. By the sixth century, however, death came to be understood, in theology, as a process, rather than an event; this understanding created theoretical space for the existence of ghosts that persisted throughout the Middle Ages, although theological and medical discourses would, in the twelfth century, return to the concept of death as a discrete event.

Yet, even if much of medieval Europe shared the same learned understandings of death and the afterlife, how the returned dead visited the living differed geographically. In Northern Europe, the dead returned bodily, while, in the Mediterranean, the dead returned in spirit form (Caciola, Afterlives). To characterize this distinction, this module will use the terms revenant to connote the dead who return bodily and ghost to connote the dead who return only in spirit form.

An examination of these beliefs – and their differences – within their historical contexts reveals that medieval tales about the returned dead served multiple functions in medieval society. When employed in prescriptive discourses like theology and pastoral literature, they served an edifying function, first, as a tool for conversion, and, later, as a tool for educating the laity about proper Christian belief and practice. When employed in folk culture, they reveal a preoccupation with the dangers of a “bad death,” the antithesis of the concept of the “good death” that developed in the later Middle Ages.

(Maître du Pierre Michault de Guyot Le Peley, c. 1475-1480)

Learned Beliefs about Death and the Soul

Death as Event, Death as Process

In the early years of the Christianity, Church writers and missionaries worked to articulate a theology of death and the afterlife. Their writings, in part, sought to combat pagan beliefs and practices about death and the afterlife that persisted in society. Lactantius (d. 320), a fourth-century Christian apologist, for example, ridiculed ordinary folk who “believe that the souls of the dead wander around their tombs” and rejected the belief that the human soul slowly disentangles itself from its body at death.

For early Church Fathers, death was a finite event, not a process. Tertullian (c.160—c.255) argued that:

The operation of death is in essence the separation of body and soul. Some, however …choose to believe that some souls cleave to the body…But not even a little bit of the soul can possibly remain inside a [dead] body, which is itself destined to disappear… Death, if it is not complete, is not death; if any part of the soul remains, it is life. Death will no more mix with life than will night with day.Tertullian, Liber de anima, LA, col. 736-738, as cited in Caciola, Afterlives, p. 39-40

A century later, another significant theologian and Church Father, Augustine of Hippo, (354—430) similarly rejected the idea that death was a process, challenging even the idea that a person could be dying: Although a person may be close to death, according to Augustine, they were nevertheless still alive, until they arrive at death; then, they are dead. An individual can be pre-death, in death, or post-death, but not dying.

Tertullian’s and Augustine’s articulations of death challenged earlier beliefs about the returned dead. Ancient pagan cultures commonly held beliefs in the wandering dead. These beliefs were varied and included such ideas as the continued existence of the dead inside the grave and the hovering of spirits around their corpses, amongst others. Various practices corresponded with these beliefs in the undead and returned dead. People often avoided graves, particularly at night, for fear of the spirits who hovered around them, for example, and there is evidence of the use of tubes that allowed the living to pour offerings of wine to the dead who continued to exist, in some form, in their graves. The early Christian belief, espoused by Augustine and Tertullian, that death was an instantaneous and complete separation of body and soul left no conceptual space for these beliefs in the lingering dead. When a soul broke from its body, it entered another plane of existence.

If ghosts were a theoretical impossibility, how did early Christian writers make sense of claims of encounters with the recently deceased? According to Augustine, such encounters could only be visions of the dead, not the dead themselves. Such visions – often presented to the individual by angels – were neither the material nor the soul of the deceased, and were perceived not by one’s eyes, but by the eyes of one’s soul. They were what Augustine categorized as an imago, a “spiritual image.” (Schmitt, 26)

Although Augustine’s conceptualization of death dominated early Christian discourse, occasional references to apparitions of the dead do appear. When they do appear, writers generally articulated them within the divine/diabolical framework that characterized their worldview in this period. Appearances of the dead were either the work of God or the work of the devil. When the ‘evil dead’ appeared, they presented the opportunity for would-be saints to exorcise them, thus demonstrating their miraculous powers. Visions of saints and other holy individuals also increased in this period, though, as noted in the introduction, such visions served a different function in Christian society than appearances of the ordinary dead. They might serve as proof of the miraculous abilities of the saint who appeared in the vision or of the holiness of the person who received the visions.

Theological articulation of death as an event subsisted until the sixth century, when it was reformulated under a new agenda, most notably, by Pope Gregory I “the Great” (540—604). Gregory revived the ancient belief – rejected so passionately by Augustine and Tertullian – that death was a gradual process. According to the tales recounted in Gregory’s *Dialogues,*the souls of the dead may remain for a period and interact with the living; they may return to the living after having departed; they may be corporeal, or they may be incorporeal. Although how and why they appear may vary, all served an instructive function in the Dialoguesof Gregory the Great: they attested to the eternal nature of the human soul and the existence of an afterlife.

(Crivelli, c. 1435-1495)

In his *Dialogues,*for example, he recounts the tale of a ghostly encounter by a certain Bishop Felix. According to this story, Bishop Felix, the pastor of the Church of St. John in Tauriana, used to frequent a certain place where there were hot waters in which he could bathe. There, he was always met by a man ready to attend to him. He helped him take off his shoes, held his clothes, and otherwise attended to him. To show his gratitude, one day, the priest brought with him two eucharistic loaves for the attendant. After the attendant had helped him, the priest offered him the loaves. When presented with the gifts, the attendant said, sadly,

Why did you give me these, father? This is holy bread and I cannot eat it, for I, who you see here, was once overseer of these baths, and am now after my death appointed for my sins to this place. But if you wish to please me, offer this bread unto the Almighty God, and by this shall you know your prayers have been heard, if when you come again you find me not here.Joynes, 10

The man then vanished. As the man had requested, the priest offered daily the holy sacrifice and prayers for his soul. When he returned to the baths after having done this, he found that the attendant was gone.

Gregory thus reformulated persistent ancient beliefs in death as a process within a Christian belief in the afterlife. This reformulation created a theoretical space for the existence of ghosts in Christian theology. One historian has referred to Gregory the Great as “the father of the Christian ghost story” (Caciola, Afterlives, 49) and, although the rise of university medicine in the thirteenth century would challenge his conceptualization of death, the theoretical space that he created would continue to exist alongside differing discourses throughout the Middle Ages.

Death in Medieval Medicine

By the late twelfth century, medical interpretations supported the Augustinian view that death was a single, instantaneous event. This period witnessed the revival of classical medical texts from ancient Greece and Rome. Although these texts had largely been lost to Western Europe in the Early Middle Ages, they survived in the Arab world, where learned scholars continued to work with and comment on them. Increased cultural contact between Western Europe and Arabic cultures in the twelfth century resulted in the transmission of classical medical works to the West, where they were incorporated into the scholastic curriculum of the universities.

(Legrand, c. 1475-1500)

The Hippocratic corpus – that is, the works of Hippocrates – upon which medieval medicine came to be based included advice on diagnosis of illness, treatments, and apprehension of death. Many medical treatises contained sections on “signs of death” (signa mortis).

Vincent de Beauvais, citing the authority of al-Razi, describes in his Speculum naturale, for example, how:

At that time the face will have collapsed, the eyes will appear sunken, the temples will have caved in, the ears will have become cold and turn yellow (and their end parts that hang down will have shrunk), and the facial skin will appear slack. Besides these things, if the patient passes anything the color yellow, or else green or black, then the ill person will not last long past the evacuation: all these are signs of death. In particular black urine, black saliva, or black stools are signs that indicate death.Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum naturale, col. 2372, as cited in Caciola, Afterlives, 81

And such ideas were not the reserve of university-trained physicians. A fourteenth-century preacher’s aid, composed by an anonymous English Franciscan, adopts the signs of death indicated in classical treatises, explaining to the reader that:

When the head tremblesAnd the lips turn paleAnd the nose sharpensAnd the sinews stiffenAnd the breast shuddersAnd the breath is wantingAnd the teeth chatterAnd the throat rattlesAnd the soul has gone outThen the body is nothing but a lump.Soon it will stink so badlyThat the soul will be completely forgotten.Fasciculus Morum, trans. Caciola, Afterlives, 84

These examples, whose theories align with those of other treatises from this period, indicate that medieval medicine understood death as an event that could be predicted and diagnosed and which resulted in the rupture of the soul from the body. Medieval medicine thus aligned most closely with the Augustinian model of death, which, as we have seen, left little theoretical space for the existence of ghosts.

Still, from the year 1000 onward, ghost stories proliferated in medieval Europe.

Check Your Understanding

True or False: By the sixth century, the idea that death was a gradual process completely replaced the idea that death was a discrete event.

Works Cited

Caciola, Nancy. 2016. Afterlives: The Return of the Dead in the Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Crivelli, Carlo. c. 1435-1495. “Augustine of Hippo.” National Museum of Western Art. Ex-Matsukata Collection. Venice. Retrieved from https://collection.nmwa.go.jp/en/P.1962-0005.html

Joynes, Andrew. 2001. Medieval Ghost Stories. Rochester, New York: The Boydell Press.

Legrand, Jacques. c. 1475-1500. “The good death.” British Library. Harley 1310. Retrieved from http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=3489&CollID=8&NStart=1310

Maître du Pierre Michault de Guyot Le Peley. c. 1475-1480. “Pierre Michault, Doctrinal du temps présent et Danse aux aveugles.” Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits.Français 1654. Retrieved from https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b85100277/f337.item.r=michault%20danse.zoom

Schmitt, Jean-Claude. 1998. Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Unknown. 1878-1956. “Lucien Febvre [Professeur à la Faculté des lettres de Strasbourg] .” National Library of France. Gallica Digital Library. Retrieved from https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10219609x/f1

5b. Medieval Tales of the Restless Dead

Overview

Around the year 1000, ghost stories began to appear more frequently. As noted in the introduction, beliefs in the returned dead differed along a geographical divide. This section discusses the form that the returned dead took in medieval societies. While Northern European sources expressed a return of the dead in bodily form, Mediterranean cultures conceived of the dead as returning only in soul. The final section of this module will discuss the function of these tales in medieval societies.

Northern Europe: Revenants

Numerous writers throughout medieval Northern Europe recounted tales of the dead who return in corporeal form (revenants). In the Icelandic sagas in which they often appear, these revenants are referred to as draugr*.* As the article by Stephen Gordon on deviant burials discusses, archaeologists have uncovered physical evidence of these beliefs throughout Iceland and other regions in Northern Europe.

According to the tales from Northern Europe, revenants led lives parallel to those of the living. Although many appeared alone, often they lived in communities; they worshipped, interacted with the living, and defended themselves against outsiders. In the chronicle of Henry of Erfurt, when a ghost named Reyneke is asked if he is alone, he replies, “No, there is a large population of us.” When asked what they do, he explains, “We eat, we drink, we take wives, we have children; we arrange the weddings of our daughters and the marriages of our sons; we sow and we reap, and various other things just as you do” (Caciola, *Afterlives,*149).

We find amongst descriptions of the tenth-century Germanic conquest of Slavic lands, for example, tales of such communal revenants. Thietmar of Merseburg (975-1018) writes that:

So that none of the faithful in Christ should doubt the future resurrection of the dead, but should eagerly desire the joys of blessed immortality, I will recount that I have discovered happened in the town of Walseben after it was rebuilt following its destruction by the Slavs. The priest of the church was in the habit of going at dawn to sing matins in the church, but one day, passing the cemetery, he saw a great multitude offering prayers at the entrance to the holy chapel. Standing his ground, he prepared himself by making the sign of the holy cross, and then made his way apprehensively through the crowd. But then a woman whom he recognised, who had just departed this life, came forward and asked him what he wanted. When she had been informed by him why he had come, she told him they had prepared everything and made ready for his imminent departure from life. According to the story as told locally, this prediction was shortly afterwards fulfilled by the priest’s death.Indeed, during my own time of residence at Magdeburg, according to what I have been told by reliable witnesses, the custodians in the merchants’ church saw and heard happenings which were consistent with what I have already recorded. Standing some way from the cemetery one evening they saw lights places upon the candelabra and at the same time heard two male voices singing the invitatory and morning lauds in the usual fashion. When they went to investigate, however, they heard and saw nothing at all…Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, Book I, Chapter 7, trans. Joynes, Medieval Ghost Stories, 17

Communities of revenants could also be harmful to individuals and communities of the living. Another of Thietmar’s tales tells of these revenants at a church in Deventer. According to the tale, a certain Bishop Baudry had appointed a priest to oversee the renovation and reconsecration of the church in Deventer, which the Slavs had destroyed. One morning, the priest saw a congregation of dead people celebrating mass inside the church. When he told the bishop what he had seen, the bishop ordered him to spend the night in the church, which he did. The next morning, the dead congregation threw the priest, along with the bed upon which he slept, from the church. The priest returned to Bishop Baudry and told him of his encounter. The bishop instructed the priest to return the church that night, armed with relics for protection, and ordered him not to leave for any reason. The priest returned that night and fell, uneasily, to sleep in the church. The dead returned at the same time as the night before, but this time lifted the priest and placed him on the altar, where they killed him by burning. When the bishop heard of this, he ordered prayers to be said for the priest’s soul.

Perhaps one of the most notable communities of revenants in medieval sources is that of Hellequin’s Army. Although references to spectral armies appear in other sources, the first reference to Hellequin’s Army, specifically, appears in the Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis (1075—1142) and refers to an army or band of the undead who roamed the French countryside. Although the origin of the term Hellequinis unclear, it is possible that it derived from the Old French hèle-chien*,hunting dog, or as a diminutive of the German word from the underworld, Helle.*The tale is rooted in the folklore of Northern Europe and may have derived from myths of the pagan god, Wotan, as a wandering huntsman.

(Limbourg, Limbourg and Limbourg, c. 1411-1416)

According to Orderic’s account, one night, a young priest named Walchelin, who served the church of Bonneval, was returning from a visit paid to a sick parishioner when he heard the approach of a great army. Just as Walchelin sought cover under some trees, a giant man armed with a mace appeared before him and ordered him to watch the approach of the army. The army was composed of various groups. The first group comprised individuals on foot, some of whom he recognized as recently deceased neighbours, accompanied by beasts of burden. They were followed by a band of bearers carrying around fifty biers, on which sat dwarfs with large heads. Two Ethiopian demons were carrying a tree trunk on which a poor man sat being tortured. The next group comprised women on horseback, many of whom Walchelin recognized as having lived lives of debauchery; they were pierced with burning nails and crying out their sins. The women were followed by a band of clergyman, who begged Walchelin to pray for them. Then appeared the largest group, the knights.

As thousands of knights rode past Walchelin, he realized that he was witnessing Hellequin’s ‘rabble.’ Fearing he would not be believed, he tried to capture one of the horses as proof. Although the first horse evaded him, he managed to catch the second. But when he tried to mount the horse, he felt such a great burning in his foot that he had to release it. Just as he released it, four knights came riding up to him, accusing him of trying to steal their property. As Walchelin was trying to explain that this had not been his intention, the fourth knight interjected and asked him to pass on a message to his wife. In his life, the knight had committed the crime of usury, acquiring fraudulently and willing to his heirs a mill that he had held as collateral on a loan he knew could not be repaid. As punishment in death for his crimes in life, the knight was forced to carry a heavy burning mill-shaft in his mouth. The knight asked Walchelin to ensure that his wife returned the mill to its rightful owner so that he could be relieved of his eternal suffering. Walchelin, however, feared that, if he passed on to the living the words of a dead man, they might think him mad, and so he said he would not do it. The knight, in rage, grabbed Walchelin’s neck with his burning hand and left an indelible mark, proof of his encounter with the revenant. When this dead knight departed, another appeared before him. This time, it was his brother, Robert. Robert told Walchelin that, because he had attempted to steal the property of one of the other dead, he was forced to share in their suffering by carrying a heavy flaming sword. Because Walchelin had said mass that morning, though, his suffering was reduced, just as their dead father’s had been the day Walchelin took his vows. Robert asked Walchelin to pray for him and to offer alms in his name so that he could be released from his suffering within one year (Orderic Vitalis, EcclesiasticalHistory, Book VIII, Chap. XVII, as cited in Joynes, Medieval Ghost Stories, 67-73).

The details of Walchelin’s tale – the burning in his foot from the stirrup, the mark left on his neck from the knight’s hand – attest to the materiality of the army that appeared before him, just as the lighting of the candelabras and the killing of the priest evince in Thietmar’s tales. The material form that the dead assumed reflects the inheritance of Germanic culture and custom, in which the dead most often returned corporeally. This contrasts with the inheritance of Roman culture and custom in the Mediterranean.

The Mediterranean: Ghosts

The restless dead appear also in sources from the Mediterranean. In this region, though, the restless dead appear most often only in spirit, not bodily form. Like the revenants of the north, these ghosts haunted churches; but they also haunted the homes of their loved ones. The ghosts of the Mediterranean could be violent and harmful, but, unlike revenants, their attacks were spiritual rather than physical. In some cases, they appeared of their own volition to those able to see them; in others, they could be summoned; in still others, they possessed the bodies of the living.

In fourteenth-century Montaillou, people believed that the spirits of the dead could return to haunt the living and that certain individuals were imbued with the gift to see and communicate with these spirits. These individuals were called amariés*,*messengers of the soul, in Montaillou. Such spirit mediums can also be found in medieval Italy, where they were called the *benedante,*and Switzerland, where they were called Seelenmutter(“Mother of Souls”). One of the most notable amariésin Montaillou was a certain Arnaud Gélis, a canon’s servant. Gélis claimed to have been visited by some twenty spirits of the dead. Gélis used his interactions with the dead both to help the dead themselves, by asking the relatives of the deceased to pray for them, and the families of the dead, by settling disputes through his exchanges with the spirits. A woman, Barcelona, who had recently died, for example, appeared to Gélis and engaged him to help reconcile her son-in-law with her daughter. We learn of these ghosts and their mediums through the inquisitorial register (1318 to 1325) of Jacques Fournier, bishop of Pamiers and Mirepoix and, later, Pope Benedict XII (1334). This inquisition record is valuable to a study of mentalitésbecause, unlike the chronicles, sagas, and other normative sources, it preserves the voices of ordinary people. (Schmitt 1998)

In Alès, around the same time that Arnaud Gélis was communicating with the spirits of Montaillou, Jean Gobi was called in as an interlocutor between the living and the dead in the haunting of a widow by the spirit of her dead husband, Gui de Corvo. Eight days after Gui’s death, his widow became frightened by the noises and moans that she heard in her bedchamber. She turned, first, to the city consuls and, then, to the prior of the Dominicans, Jean Gobi, for help. The woman confessed to Jean that she and her husband had committed a sin in the bed where he continued to haunt her, a sin which they had both confessed before his death, but for which neither had been absolved. The reader never learns the nature of the sin, as it was protected by secrecy of confession. Jean agreed to visit and inspect the house. Accompanied by a master in theology, a lector in theology from the convent, a notary, and two hundred armed guards provided by the mayor of Alès, Jean spent two nights in the house, during which he conversed with the ghost of Gui de Corvo, whose voice his widow identified for Jean. The notary recorded their dialogue, which included discussions of the Gui’s nature and his state, the location and temporality of purgatory, and the role of angels and demons in the hereafter and at the time of Judgement. From Jean’s interrogation, we learn that Gui is a “good spirit,” and their dialogue confirms his incorporeal nature: when Jean asks him sign himself, he says that he cannot, as he has no hands; when he asks him how can hear, if he has no ears, he replies that he does so “by the power of God.” Gui implores Jean to say one hundred masses for him, in order to lessen his suffering (which they do). When his ghost has been appeased and he departs, leaving his widow at peace, Jean concludes the exchange by imploring the widow to lead a holy life from that day forward. (de Beaulieu 2003)

(Marmion c. 1455-1457)

The incorporeal nature of ghosts like Gui de Corvo and Barcelona meant that, at times, they could possess the bodies of the living. The exact nature of the spirits that possessed the bodies of the living, however, was a subject of contention in medieval society. While popular belief asserted that it was the ghosts of the recently deceased, learned others rejected this belief, arguing, instead, that spirits possessing the living could only be those of demons. The tale recounted by Jerome de Raggiolo, in his fourteenth-century Miracles of John Gualbert(d. 1073)*,*illustrates the attempt that authors made to reconcile these dissonant discourses:

Another woman came to us… and the demon that had invaded her, as many are accustomed to do, confessed that it was the soul of a certain Ligurian named Beltramo. It must be noted that this is an impudent lie that must be restrained by the authority of Holy Mother Church, so that the average common man might perceive that such a thing is hardly possible, and thus be instructed in true religion… First of all, it is proved by the authority of the Prophet who says, ‘the spirit goes and does not return’ (Ps. 77:39). Nothing tells us where it goes: either it flies through the air purging itself; or it dwells in an earthly place that is deserted and uncultivated, or else not deserted; or it seeks a place unknown to use, which we call Purgatory. But that it should go back into a human body again we consider, and declare, to be a blasphemy. Besides, of no people has it been read, that two souls of the same condition and nature, and experiencing various things together, [might] occupy a place in one body.(Miraculi S. Joannis Gualberti Abbatis, AASS, xxix, trans. Nancy Caciola, “Spirits seeking bodies”)

By rejecting the idea that the invading spirit could be that of the recently deceased Beltramo, Jerome de Raggiolo communicates to his reader the popularity of this (to him unacceptable) belief amongst the laity. We find this belief expressed more clearly in the Miracles of Nicholas of Tolentino.

Amongst the miracles of Nicholas of Tolentino we find tales of his role in the exorcism of malevolent spirits. In 1322, Salimbena, a Cistercian nun, claimed to be possessed by the ghosts of three men: Lord Vivibene de Esculo, Lord Johannes, and Lord Raynaldo. When under their possession, Philippucia would hurl verbal abuses, make grotestque faces, and walk on her hands, exposing herself in the process. Philippucia experienced her possession as a spiritual attack by “men of the foulest kind.” In the hope of curing her of this possession, Philippucia was brought to Nicholas’ tomb, where she practiced the ancient custom of incubation – spending the night in the church while keeping watch over the relics of Nicholas. After one night, she was healed by the miraculous power of the relics. Nicholas’ relics also played a role in the healing of two other women possessed by malevolent spirits – Zola and Salimbena. Like Philippucia, Zola and Salimbena experienced the classic signs of possession – eyerolling, seizing, foaming at the mouth, contortions, and the uttering of verbal abuses and immodest behaviour – and were, after one night of incubation, freed of their ghostly afflictions.

As these tales of possession reveal, although the ghosts of the Mediterranean appeared primarily in spirit form, they could also assume corporeal form through the possession of the living. Through their stolen bodies, these ghosts could inflict harm on their hosts, both spiritually and bodily. Ghosts could also rely on the abilities of those gifted with the ability to communicate with them, the amariéslike Arnaud Gélis. The purposes of the ghosts’ returns to the living reflects the functions that ghost stories served in medieval societies and will be explored in the next section of this module.

Check Your Understanding

The main difference between the restless dead in Northern versus Mediterranean Europe is:

Works Cited

Caciola, Nancy. 2000. “Spirits seeking bodies: death, possession and communal memory in the Middle Ages” in The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Edited by Bruce and Peter Marshall Gordon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

—. 2016. Afterlives: The Return of the Dead in the Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

de Beaulieu, Marie Anne Polo. 2003. ““Paroles de fantôme: Le cas du revenant d’Alès”.” Ethnologie Française 33: 565-574.

Gordon, Stephen. 2019. Supernatural Encounter: Demons and the Restless Dead in Medieval England, c.1050-1450. London: Routledge.

Joynes, Andrew. 2001. Medieval Ghost Stories. Rochester, New York: The Boydell Press.

Limbourg, Herman, Paul Limbourg, and Johan Limbourg. c. 1411-1416. “The Horsemen of Death.” Musée Condé, 65 (1284). Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry. Chantilly. Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Folio_90v_-_The_Horseman_of_Death.jpg

Marmion, Simon. c. 1455-1457. “Miniature de Dédicace.” National Library of Russia. *Les Grandes Chroniques de France.*Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Simon-Marmion_-_Les_grandes_Chroniques_des_France.JPG

Schmitt, Jean-Claude. 1998. Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

5c. Conclusion

The Function of Ghost Stories in Medieval Society

The previous section examined the form that the returned dead took in medieval societies. This section examines their function in medieval societies. Ghosts and revenants were powerful cultural figures, as they provided evidence of what lay after death. When ghosts are used in normative discourses, like theology, chronicles, and vitae (saints’ lives), they often serve an edifying function for their audiences, teaching their reader “proper” Christian belief and practice. When ghosts appear in more popular discourses or reflect more popular experiences, they often illustrate societies’ concerns about the “right way” to die – what, in the Middle Ages, was called “a good death.”

Conversion and Edification

Much of Christian doctrine is concerned with what transpires after death. Since ghosts and revenants attest to life after death, they served as invaluable instruments for the Church, first, for teaching newly converted societies about proper Christian belief and, later, for reforming beliefs and practices that did not conform with the official teachings of the Church. We find in tales of the returned dead expressions of medieval Christian soteriology and eschatology, both as the Church prescribed it and as it was interpreted by the laity. Soteriology refers to beliefs and doctrines about salvation. Eschatology is a branch of Christian theology concerned with the “last things” or end times.

Medieval Christian soteriology asserted that the soul lived on eternally, either in torment or in bliss. In early Christianity, souls could go either to heaven or hell. Those who attained salvation, by living good lives and atoning for their sins, went to heaven. Those who did not suffered in hell. Prayer, confession, atonement, and penance in this life helped individuals to attain salvation in the next. In the late twelfth century, the doctrine of purgatory developed, which created a space in which the souls of those not fully absolved at death would remain temporarily to atone for their sins before receiving entrance to heaven. Indulgences, which granted either the partial remission (a partial indulgence) or complete remission (a plenary indulgence) of one’s sins, could also reduce the amount of punishment a soul would have to undergo before attaining salvation. Indulgences could be obtained either through prayer or the performance of good works, although, increasingly in the later Middle Ages, they could also be purchased. The living could also lessen the time that souls of individuals spent in purgatory through prayer and the recitation of masses in their name.

(Lochner, c. 1400-1451)

According to Christian eschatology, the dead would be judged again during the Last Judgement, which will transpire when Christ returns to Earth, in the Second Coming. In this event, the dead will be resurrected bodily and judged by Christ, who will consign them either to heaven or to hell. Since this doctrine asserts that Christ will resurrect bodily the dead, the site of burial became a major concern for Christians: only those buried in consecrated ground – that is, the hallowed ground of a Christian cemetery – can be resurrected for the Last Judgement.

Recommended Reading

For a clear explanation of medieval Christian beliefs in the resurrection of the body, see the following article by Sean Lawing (also available on course reserves):

Sean Lawing, “Medieval Depictions of the Last Judgement: The Resurrection of the Body,” Glencairn Museum News, Glencairn Museum, last modified 14 March 2018.

The eternal life of the soul (and, eventually, of the body) was thus central to medieval Christian belief, and we can find in early Christian ghost stories use of the returned dead as corroboration of such beliefs. Gregory the Great, for example, concludes his tale of the priest and the ghostly bath attendant by telling his reader that, “from this we can see what great profit the souls of the deceased received by the sacrifice of the holy oblation, seeing the spirits of those that are dead desire it of the living, and even give certain tokens to let us understand how in this way they have received absolution” (Joynes 2001, 11). Gregory’s tale thus demonstrates both the significance of absolution to the salvation of one’s soul and the role of the clergy in mediating this salvation.

We can also see the use of the returned dead as instruments of conversion in Thietmar of Merseburg’s tale. Thietmar was a frontier bishop. He served as the second bishop of Merseburg from 1009 until death in 1018, which was a period of Germanic conquest and Christianization of (predominantly) pagan Slavic lands. It is clear from Thietmar’s reference to the destruction of the churches by the Slavs in Walseben and Deventer that the revenants played a role in the Church’s conversion efforts in the region. As Thietmar himself tells his reader, he recounts his tales of the returned dead “so that none of the faithful in Christ should doubt the future resurrection of the dead, but should eagerly desire the joys of blessed immortality…” (Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, Book I, Chapter 7, trans. Joynes, *Medieval Ghost Stories,*17). In these tales, Thietmar is able to reconstruct local pagan beliefs about the return of the dead within the Christian framework provided earlier by Gregory the Great to affirm the doctrine of the resurrection, which, he claimed, locals had failed to grasp.

Even after regions had been converted to Christianity, Church officials continued to use tales of the returned dead as instruments of edification. They could be used to instruct the laity in proper Christian belief and practice and to reform beliefs and practices that ran contrary to these teachings. Orderic Vitalis’ account of Hellequin’s Army, for example, affirms the doctrine of purgatory. The revenants of the army wander for years through the countryside, suffering the physical burdens of their moral sins and atoning for their wrongdoings and unable to reach heaven. This would have communicated to the reader the importance of living a good life, free of sin, while their pleas to Walchelin for prayers would have communicated the power that the living had to ease the plight of the suffering dead. In a second example, this one by a thirteenth-century tale by an anonymous English Franciscan, a woman was murdered in her bedroom by a burglar. A few days later, she appeared to her sister and told her that she is horribly burned because, on feast days, she used to leave church before receiving Communion. The function of the returned dead in this tale is clear: the author uses her to teach the reader the importance of receiving Communion for the salvation of one’s soul.

(Angelico, c. 1395-1455)

Stories of the returned dead were used especially by the Mendicant Orders as a method of communicating proper belief and practice to the laity. The Mendicant Orders were founded in the early thirteenth century and included, most notably, the Dominicans and Franciscans. These orders lived lives of poverty in the city, rather than behind the walls of the monastery. One of their main vocations was preaching to the laity in order to teach them proper beliefs and thus avoid heretical or deviant practices from taking hold in communities. Ghosts were an entertaining and useful tool for these efforts.

But, if the Church used tales of ghosts to educate the laity in proper Christian belief and practice, tales of the returned dead served, for ordinary people, as an expression of their anxieties about dying a good death.

The Good Death

Even if the general population did not compose tales of the dead (and we can assume that they did not), the subjects of the tales must have resonated with society outside the sphere of ecclesiastical authorities, or the tales would have served no function to their audience. The theme that underpins the majority of medieval ghost tales is restlessness – an inability to rest peacefully and eternally due to a deed incomplete or unrealized. These restless dead died a bad death and thus could not attain eternal salvation. They risked being forgotten as they suffered their days in purgatory. We can see in such tales an expression of anxieties about the right way to die, especially as the idea of purgatorial suffering took root in the mentality of lay society and as death became an increasingly common feature of their landscape in the later Middle Ages.

The idea of dying a good death preoccupied society in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The devastation of the Black Death, which reached its height in Europe between 1347 and 1349, evoked a consciousness of death not evident before this period. This plague killed an estimated one-third of Europe’s population. Tens of millions died. The danger of contagion and the speed at which people died meant that bodies had to be disposed of quickly and, often, without ceremony. Agnolo di Turo gives a firsthand account of the devastation.

…It is impossible for the human tongue to recount the awful thing. Indeed one who did not see such horribleness can be called blessed. And the victims died almost immediately. They would swell beneath their armpits and in their groins, and fall over dead while talking. Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another; for this illness seemed to strike through the breath and sight. And so they died. And none could be found to bury the dead for money or friendship. Members of a household brought their dead to a ditch as best they could, without priest, without divine offices. Nor did the death bell sound. And in many places in Siena great pits were dug and piled deep with the multitude of dead. And they died by the hundreds both day and night, and all were thrown in those ditches and covered over with earth. And as soon as those ditches were filled more were dug… After the pestilence the Sienese appointed two judges and three nonSienese notaries whose task it was to handle the wills that had been made at that time. And so they searched them out and found them.Agnolo di Turo, The Plague in Siena: An Italian Chronicle, trans. William M. Bowsky, The Black Death: A Turning Point?, 13

The horrors that Agnolo recounted illustrate the components of a bad death. People died alone, without funerary rite, and were buried in mass, unmarked graves. We can construct, inversely, from this account the characteristics of a good death.

A good death, generally, included:

• Presence of family:  Dying in the presence of family and friends ensured that there were people who could pray for the salvation of the individual’s soul
• The Last Rites: The receipt of confession, extreme unction, and viaticum (Communion) ensured that an individual died blessed and at peace
• Funerary rites: Ritual was important in the Middle Ages (as it is today). Death is a rite of passage, and the performance of funerary ritual – including preparation of the corpse, procession, and a graveside mass – ensured that an individual could complete their passage to the next world
• Burial and marked graves:  Burial in consecrated ground ensured that, when Christ returned for the Last Judgement, an individual could ascend bodily into heaven, and burial in a marked grave ensured that an individual could be commemorated in the future, remembered in the prayers of the living and in the memory of society
• Testament: A testament ensured that the last wishes of the dying could be known and executed by those who survived them. Testaments usually included donations to be made to the needy or to the charitable institutions who supported the needy, for the salvation of the benefactors soul, as well as assignment of deceased’s possessions.

(University of Sheffield, 2016)

The idea of dying a good death reached its fullest expression in the genre of the artes moriendi*,*manuals on the art of dying well, in the early fifteenth century.

We can thus understand medieval tales of the returned dead as an expression of societies’ anxieties about death and dying a good death. The dead who returned in these tales are restless; they have unfinished business to which they wish to attend. This business sometimes touched on temporal affairs. The case of the knight from Hellequin’s army is an example of this. The knight beseeched Walchelin to have his wife return to its rightful owner the mill that he had acquired and bequeathed fraudulently, so that his eternal suffering might abate.

The business of the restless dead could also touch more directly on spiritual affairs, as in the fourteenth-century tale recounted by the Monk of Byland about the child of Richard Rowantree. The tale tells of a certain Richard Rowantree, who left England on a pilgrimage to Spain while his wife was pregnant. While keeping watch on the road one night, he heard a noise and, upon investigating, found a baby tangled in swaddling clothes. Rowantree asked the child who it was and what it was seeking, and the baby replied, “It is not appropriate for you to address me, for you were my father and I was your stillborn child, buried without being named and baptised.” Rowantree, hearing this, wrapped the infant in his own shirt and named it in the name of the Holy Trinity (thus baptising it). The child, having been baptized, walked off. When he returned home and questioned his wife in front of many during a feast, the midwives who had delivered the stillborn baby confessed to burying it without proper funerary rite. This tale thus underscores the importance of sacraments to the eternal salvation of one’s soul (in this case, also, because, not having been baptized, the child could not be buried in consecrated ground). Other ghost stories tell of the dead returning to be absolved of their excommunication, which prevented them from being buried in consecrated ground (which was a requirement to rise again in the Second Coming). Still others tell of an unconfessed sin that held them in purgatorial suffering.

While such tales of the restless dead could be used by Church officials as a means to educate the laity in proper beliefs and practices, for them to be effective tools required that the laity accept the possibility of their horrors: People needed to fear a bad death in order for tales of a bad death to serve as an effective tool of edification. We can thus understand medieval ghost stories not only as tools of edification but also as expressions of anxieties about death and dying a good death in medieval society.

(Lotter, M., c. 1500)

Check Your Understanding

Tales about the returned dead were used, in the Middle Ages:

Conclusion: Beliefs in Practice, Archaeological Evidence

Tales of the restless dead thus served an edifying and expressive function in medieval society. But did medieval societies actually believe in these revenants?

It can be difficult for historians to discern to what degree medieval societies actually subscribed to the beliefs found in medieval literature, hagiography, and other such discourses. Like much of medieval literature, tales of the restless dead could simply have been conforming to literary tropes and conventions of genre. But evidence from other types of sources illustrates practices aimed at preventing the wandering dead. The eleventh-century penitential of Burchard of Worms (c. 965—1025), the Corrector, for example, warns against the staking of the corpses of unbaptized infants:

Have you done what some women do at the instigation of the devil? When any child has died without baptism, they take the corpse of the little one and place it in some secret place and transfix it with a stake, saying that if they do not do so they child would rise up and injure many? If you have done, or consented to, or believed this, you should do penance for two years on the appointed days.(Burchard of Worms, Corrector, as cited in Gordon 2019)

The Eyrbyggja Saga tells of Thorolf Half-Foot, who returned from the dead and wreaked havoc on the living, killing both men and livestock, until his body was removed from its tomb and relocated to headland, where it was surrounded by a wall that prevented its wandering. And the Laxdœla Sagatells, similarly, of the exhumation and reburial in marginal land of the violent corpse of Hrapp.

Archaeological evidence of deviant burial practices corroborates the beliefs in revenants espoused in these writings. Such deviant burial practices – that is, burial practices which differed in some way from the normative burial practices of a given society – included liminal burials, decapitation, staking, weighting, ligation, and dismemberment, amongst others. The assigned reading by Stephen Gordon explores evidence – and the implications – of such burial practices.

Required Reading Break

Read this article on archaeological evidence of deviant burials for insight into the practices that accompanied beliefs in revenants:

• Stephen Gordon, “Dealing with the Undead in the Later Middle Ages,” inDealing with the Dead: Mortality and Community in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Thea Tomaini (Leiden: Brill, 2018), p.97-128.

This module has examined the subject of the returned dead through three lens: intellectual history, sociocultural history, and archaeology. An intellectual lens, which we applied to the tales themselves, allowed us to see whatpeople believed about the returned dead. A sociocultural lens, which we applied to beliefs and practices about death and dying in medieval society, allowed us to see whypeople believed what that they did about the returned dead. And an archaeological lens, which we applied to the study of physical remains, allowed us to see howpeople practiced what they believed about the returned. Together, these perspectives allow us to recreate the mentalities that constructed these beliefs and practices and that underpinned medieval societies more broadly.  As Jean-Claude Schmitt has noted, “the dead had no other existence than that which the living gave them. The individual and social imaginary (dreams, tales, shared beliefs), the socialized speech (at mourning, in preaching), made ghosts move and speak” (Schmitt, 224).

Check Your Understanding

Which type of archaeological evidence best illustrates medieval beliefs in the returned dead?

Once you have completed reviewing all of this week’s content, return to the module page.

Works Cited

Angelico, Fra. c. 1395-1455. “Meeting of St Francis and St Dominic.” Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Gemäldegalerie der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin. Berlin. Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Angelico,_incontro_tra_san_francesco_e_san_domenico.jpg

Bowsky, William M., editor. 1971. *The Black Death: A Turning Point in History?*New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc.

Gordon, Stephen. 2019. Supernatural Encounter: Demons and the Restless Dead in Medieval England, c.1050-1450. London: Routledge.

Joynes, Andrew. 2001. Medieval Ghost Stories. Rochester, New York: The Boydell Press.

Lochner, Stefan. c. 1400-1451. “The Last Judgement.” Wallraf-Richartz Museum. WRM 0066. Cologne. Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stefan_Lochner_-Last_Judgement-_circa_1435.jpg

Lotter, Melchior. c. 1500. “Ars moriendi ‘Quamvis secundum philosophum tertio Ethicorum…’.” Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. Bodleian Library Douce 75. Oxford. Retrieved from https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/8df07410-c367-4ec9-85cb-a4a66a61fab2/surfaces/88ef628b-6e83-4d7b-a23b-02ddc8bfbc9a/

Schmitt, Jean-Claude. 1998. Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

University of Sheffield. 2016. 14th Century Mass Burial Pit Full of Victims of the Black Death. Sheffield, December 05. Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/mass-grave-shows-catastrophic-impact-black-death-rural-england-180974219/

Module 6: Dragons

Steven Bednarski (History, University of Waterloo)

This module applies a historical lens to explore the topic of dragons. Historians divide evidence into two types : primary and secondary sources. Primary source evidence , which is the sort you will largely encounter in this module. It means anything left from the period being studied, anything produced by a person back then. Primary evidence allows us to see firsthand what people who lived in the past thought … or, at least, what they wanted us to think they thought! Historians also consider secondary source evidence , which is anything produced after the period in question. At the university level, most secondary source evidence comes from published works by later scholars, though we also often consider newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and so on.

6a. General Introduction and Argument

Dragons in the Middle Ages

There were no dragons in the Middle Ages and yet they were everywhere.

No monster or creature is more linked in the popular consciousness to the Middle Ages than the dragon. This is as much, of course, because of the dominant influence of popular writers like J R R Tolkien, or, more recently, George R R Martin, as it is because of anything medieval people have left us. But dragons did play an important role in the universal mythology of the medieval world, whether we look at its Christian, Jewish, or Muslim cultures. In fact, while the three great religions of medieval Europe, north Africa, and the Near East disagreed on a great number of things, when it came to dragons, there was some consensus (as well as some variation on a theme).

Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil

This unit argues, from an historical perspective, that there are certain massive cultural assumptions about the nature of the universe which are so powerful that they transcend space and time. Dragons represent the continuation of an ancient Near Eastern assumption of an eternal struggle between good and evil.

For the ancient Mesopotamians, this struggle was personified by the god Marduk battling Tiamat. While she may have started out as a creator goddess, Mesopotamian priests shifted her into a massive sea dragon, literally the very first “Mother of Dragons,” whose monstrous offspring had poison in the veins. For the ancient Egyptians, this cosmic struggle between good and evil, order and chaos, manifested in the tale of the sun god Ra, the literal bringer of light, battling Apep, the so-called Serpent of the Nile and Lord of Chaos. Egyptian priests, scribes, and artists represented Apep, who was born from Ra’s umbilical cord, as a large serpent or sometimes as a massive crocodile. This common assumption of the ancients, that the universe is a battleground between the embodiment of good and evil, was so powerful, so transcendent, that even the shift to monotheism could not entirely shake it.

As a result, the Abrahamic religions (that is, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) which evolved in Europe and the Near East maintained this tradition. For medieval Christians, Jews, and Muslims, the dragon continued to represent:

• the forces of evil,
• the embodiment of chaos,
• the opponent to order,
• justice, and divinity.

A Window Through Which to Perceive Medieval Culture

The consequence of this commonality was such that, even though the three great religions and cultures of the Middle Ages disagreed about quite a lot, they also had a common cultural assumption about the nature of the cosmos. The study of medieval dragons is, therefore, useful to help us understand a basic assumption shared by most people who lived at that time. It points to a common, ancient, ideological currency which facilitated encounter and exchange and transcended ideology.

Everyone in the Middle Ages, no matter where they lived, was likely to encounter a dragon at some point in their lives. Though these encounters existed in the imagination, the universality of the creature was so dominant that dragons afford us an interesting and rather unique window through which to perceive a general medieval culture.

Works Cited

There are no additional citations for this section.

6b. Dragons in Medieval Myth

The Ancient Tradition: Ancient Greece

The Greek writer Hesiod (active sometime c. 750 – 650 BCE) transmits to us the ancestry of the great wyrms that populated ancient mythology. In his earliest surviving work, the Theogony, Hesiod lays out the origins of the world and its deities. Hesiod’s creation story is clearly influenced by older eastern traditions, including those of the Babylonian Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation story of the Seven Tablets. The Enuma Elish contains several parts, among them the legend of Tiamat the terrible goddess sea dragon. So it is no surprise, then, that Hesiod, in writing his own creation stories, incorporated a monstrous dragon who had supposedly battled his own Greek gods.

A Side Note

If you are unfamiliar with the following terms, check out the resources at the following links to build some foundational knowledge about these terms.

• Hesiod
• Enûma_Eliš
• Tiamat

Required Reading Break

Take a moment now to read the primary source written by Hesiod over two thousand years ago to understand how ancient Europeans came to provide a sort of genealogy for dragons.

• Hesiod,Theogony, 270 – 336 which appears as “1. Hesiod’s influential genealogy of the great dragons,” in Daniel Ogden,Dragons, Serpents, and Slayers in the Classical and Early Christian Worlds: A Sourcebook(Oxford: OUP, 2013).pp. 13 – 14.

Check Your Understanding

1) In Greek mythology, who are the parents of the largest sea monsters?

2) Of all the monstrous creatures named, in her death, only one gave life to winged horse who flew up to Zeus, king of the Greek gods, to bear his lightning. They are:

3) Which mythical Greek creature had the head of a lion, a goat, and a snake?

(Pollaiolo, c. 1475)

Zeus was not the only epic character to battle a dragon and, without a doubt, the most famous hero of the ancient Greek world was Heracles, who did likewise. Heracles performed twelve epic labours, the second of which was to slay the dreaded hydra of Lerna. Lerna was a supposed entrance to the underworld, a place steeped in myth and magic. In actuality, archaeological excavations made at Lerna in the 1950s, a site close to the east coast of the Peloponnesus, confirm that it was first inhabited by humans as early as the Neolithic age. So, by the time Greek culture flourished, it was already ancient and it is no wonder Greek culture found it fascinating.

In the myth, the goddess Hera, Zeus’ jealous wife, created the many-headed serpentine Hydra, which rose up and attacked the countryside around Lerna. Heracles and his nephew, Iolaus, sought out the creature’s lair and, once there, Heracles lured it out of hiding with his flaming arrows. In the battle that ensued, Heracles found that as soon as he killed one of the hydra’s heads, two more erupted from the stump. In the end, Heracles and Iolaus worked together so that, each time the hero removed a head with his sickle or bashed it off with his club, Iolaus used his torch to cauterize the wound, preventing a new head from sprouting. The ninth and final head in the tale, though, was the toughest as it was immortal and would not die, even after being severed from its serpentine body. After decapitating the beast one, Heracles buried the final head and placed a boulder atop it. He then slit open the body and dipped his arrows in the creature’s toxic blood.

The Greeks were neither the first nor the only ancient civilization to have a hero subdue a dragon, though Greek civilization is the one that would later most directly influenced medieval Europe. Still, in the Assyrian tradition, the god Ninurta slew a similar serpent. In the late Mesopotamian tradition, moreover, the god Marduk, patron of the city of Babylon, was famously accompanied by a sacred dragon servant, mušhuššu, which he had also previously subdued. So, for our purposes, it is important to note that as far back as the origins of western civilization, there was a strong common tradition of a hero subduing a dangerous, serpentine monster.

Moreover, the hydra was far from the only dragon to lurk in Greek mythology. There was also Ladon, who hid in a tree to guard his golden apples, much as Aeetes’ dragon did to guard his golden fleece. The god of war, Ares, famously deployed his own dragon to battle Cadmus when he attempted to found Thebes. After slaying that dragon, Cadmus planted its teeth and grew an army of bronze warriors. Ares eventually got revenge on Cadmus by transforming him and his wife, Harmonia, into dragons. And, let us not forget the Greek boy Perseus, who created wings and flew over a serpentine monster before turning it to stone with the severed head of Medussa.

(Mattielli, c. 1678/1688-1748)

The Ancient Tradition: The Romans

(Jan van der Straet, c. 1596)

As heirs to the Greek tradition, the Romans reworked many of these tales and added their own. So, when, in 256 BCE, eight years into the First Punic War, as the Romans invaded North Africa to advance their way on Carthage, the General Regulus was confronted by an unthinkable monster.

A Side Note

If you are unfamiliar with the following terms, check out the resources at the following links to build some foundational knowledge about these terms.

• Aulus Gellius
• Quintus Aelius Tubero

At the famous Battle of Bagradas, Regulus and his men battled through enemy elephants and combatants and, with the help of the Spartan Xanthuppus, prevailed. The writer Aulus Gellius (c. 125 – after 180 CE), drawing on a version of a tale that first appeared in Quintus Aelius Tubero’s first-century BCE Histories, tells us in his Attic Nights:

… in the first Punic war the consul Atilius Regulus, when encamped at the Bagradas river in Africa,13 fought a stubborn and fierce battle with a single serpent of extraordinary size, which had its lair in that region; that in a mighty struggle with the entire army the reptile was attacked for a long time with hurling engines and catapults; and that when it was finally killed, its skin, a hundred and twenty feet long, was sent to Rome.Gellius

Regulus and his troops slew the fearsome dragon, however, in the end, the water nymphs of the nearby river cursed them for it. The dragon was, after all, their beloved pet. In any event, the bigger point here is that even the sensible Romans could not resist adding dragons into their most important legends and the ancient world of the Mediterranean, North Africa, and Near East was full of terrifying serpents waiting to be slain by brave men.

All of this leaves aside entirely, for this module at least, the many other ancient Greco-Roman monsters that incorporated draconic features into their own composite bodies, for example: chimaeras, a combination of vicious serpents, ferocious lions, and, well, smelly goats; or lamia, who blended human female parts with those of serpents. Time prevents us from delving into their serpentine attributes!

Still, as classical historian Daniel Ogden, an expert on ancient dragons, has remarked, there is a symmetricity to all the dragon tales of the ancient Mediterranean. They all involve, to some extent, a brave male hero (human, demigod, or god) battling a monstrous serpentine creature who has a standard weapon, if not aspect:

The dragon is above all a creature of fire, its fieriness being an imaginative extrapolation of the burning sensation caused by the natural viper’s venom. But it is not only the dragon’s venom that is fiery: so are its eyes and, as we have seen, its breath.Ogden 7

Judeo-Christian Traditions

The Book of Genesis, the start of both the Jewish Torah, the first books of the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible, and of the Christian Bible, lays down the foundation for wicked serpents who seek to undo humanity.

The First Book of the Bible and the Serpent

Genesis, the first book of the bible, opens though, not with one, but with two creation stories. This was the result of the historic union of divergent nomadic oral traditions which eventually fused to become a single Jewish tradition.

In the first century, a Jewish reformer in Nazareth attracted followers and, after his execution through crucifixion, those followers evolved their sect by continuing a written scriptural tradition. This means that, in the decades and centuries after the death (and, according to his followers, resurrection and ascension into heaven) of Jesus of Nazareth, his followers, called Christians, translated their most sacred stories first from Aramaic. their spoken language, then into Greek, the learned language of philosophers and theologians in the first century. Eventually, as Christianity spread to become the official religion of the Roman empire, Christians translated their scriptures from Aramaic and Greek into Latin, the lingua franca (common tongue) of the empire.

By the fourth century, Christianity had spread far beyond Palestine and the Levant, its birthplace, and had diverged significantly and permanently from its Jewish origins, except, importantly, for the first five books of its scriptures. Though fourth-century Christians no longer practised universal circumcision, observed Jewish dietary laws, or celebrated Jewish holidays, they retained a common culture through the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, which continued to be held sacred by fourth-century Jews. This means that, even after Christianity split from Judaism, there was a common mythological foundation which both cultures recognized as essentially historic and factual.

(Book of Hours, c. 1400)

If fourth-century Jews continued to read these common creation stories in Hebrew, Christianity underwent yet another linguistic revision.

A Side Note

If you are unfamiliar with the following terms, check out the resources at the following links to build some foundational knowledge about these terms.

• Jerome
• Bishop
• Pope Damasus I

In the year 383 CE, a saintly hermit named Jerome (c.347 – 420) wrote a letter to the bishop of Rome, Pope Damasus (c. 305 – 384) to explain why he was attempting to revise the older Latin translations of the Christian scriptures:

You urge me to revise the old Latin version, and, as it were, to sit in judgment on the copies of the Scriptures which are now scattered throughout the whole world; and, inasmuch as they differ from one another, you would have me decide which of them agree with the Greek original. The labour is one of love …St. Jerome, n.d.

Two Creation Stories in Genesis

The first creation story in Genesis is not as important to us as the second but bears very brief consideration in one part as it suggests ties to older draconic legends. In the first creation story, which we can call the “cosmic creation story,” by way of shorthand, God is an omnipotent being who creates the universe by speaking powerful words. As Jerome tells us in Latin:

In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram terra autem erat inanis et vacua et Tenebrae super faciem abyssi et spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas dixitque Deus fiat lux et facta est lux(In the beginning God created heaven and earth. And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters. And God said: Be light made. And light was made.)Genesis 1:1-3

The abyss or “deep” referred to here is meant to be some form of primordial waters. The Hebrew word is Tehom (תְּהוֹם), a cognate of the Akkadian word tamtu which scholars equate to the older Sumerian Tiamat. So, some scholars do believe there is a linguistic basis to discern cultural transmission between the older Babylonian creation story in the Enuma Elish and that recorded by the ancient Israelites and transmitted to early Christians in the opening chapter of Genesis.

The second creation story, which begins in Gen. 2:5 is more human-centered, or anthropomorphic. In the verses which follow, God is no longer a booming cosmic voice who speaks powerful words to create, but a kindly gardener. He fashions the first man, Adam, de limo terrae, from the slime of the earth, and breaths into his face the breath of life (et inspiravit in faciem eius spiraculum vitae). Through the breath of life, God imbues man with a human soul. God-the-gardener then raises trees in his garden, divides rivers, and puts man into this paradise for pleasure (in paradiso voluptatis) and to care for it (custodiret illum). But, while he tells man he can eat of every tree in paradise, he shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil lest he die (de lingo scientiae boni et mali ne comedas in quocumque enim die comederis ex eo morte morieris).

(Unknown. c. 1350-1400)

The anthropomorphic creation story then has god say that it is not good for man to be alone (dixit quoque Dominus Deus non est bonum esse hominem solum) and so god-the-gardener casts the man, Adam, into a deep sleep, takes one of his ribs, and filled up flesh for it, creating woman, Eve (inmisit ergo Dominus Deus soporem in Adam cumque obdormisset tulit unam de costis eius et replevit carnem pro eat et aedificavit Domainus Deus costam quam tulerat de Adam in mulierem).

As the story continues to unfold in Gen. 3, we meet the serpent, more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth which the Lord God had made (serpens erat callidior cunctis animantibus terrae quae fecerat Dominsu Deus). The serpent challenges the notion that the man and woman will die if they eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Rather, he tells the woman, Eve, her eyes will be opened and she shall be as gods, knowing good and evil (aperientur oculi vestry et eritis sicut dii scientes bonum et malum).

Eve is tempted, eats the forbidden fruit, and then gives it to her husband Adam, to try.

(Document sans titre, n.d.)

None of this pleases the gardener and the first humans incur grave punishments, but so, too, does the serpent for being the author of this disobedience. God curses the serpent among all other animals, and condemns it to slither on the ground for its entire existence. He creates a deep and lasting hatred between itself and the children of man. When Eve’s children see a serpent, says God, they shall crush its head, and the serpents shall lie waiting to bite their heels. For the woman, the curse is also terrible: suffering and pains in childbirth and submission to her husband’s power. For the man, likewise, for having listened to his wife and the serpent, pains of labour as his body aches from having to work cursed fields. Ultimately, though, the most serious punishment for following the serpent is that all three are cast out of paradise, forced to live – and now die – in a harsh and imperfect world.

The Role of the Serpent in Genesis

According Jewish and Christian creation stories, drawing on ancient Middle Eastern tropes, The serpent ruined god’s perfect plan by corrupting humanity. It was the:

• root of human unhappiness,
• the cause of all suffering in the world,
• the original reason for death,
• representation of evil, and
• embodiment of forces that distances humans from god.

(Masaccio, c. 1427)

The Last Book of the Bible and Dragons

If the opening book of the Bible laid the foundation for an association between evil and a loosely defined “serpent,” the closing book triangulated the link with dragons.

The Apocalypse of John, as Jerome called it, or The Book of Revelation, to use its more commonly accepted modern name, is unique to Christians and is not part of Jewish scripture. The book prophesizes the End Times, a chaotic moment of global unravelling which will usher in the end of human history and a new eternal age. God will return to Earth, the wicked shall be cast out, and the righteous shall be restored back into paradise.

The Book of Revelation is a mystical text, difficult to interpret, and rich in allegory and imagery. According to Rev. 12, at the end of human history there will come a great sign in the sky: a pregnant woman dressed in the sun with the moon at her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars.

(Berry Apocalypse, c. 1415)

Along with the woman will come another sign:

draco magnus rufus habens capita septem et cornua decem et in capitibus suis septem diademata et cauda eius trahebat tertiam partem stellarum caeli et misit eas in terram et draco stetit ante mulierem quae erat paritura ut cum peperisset filium eius devoraret(a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns and on his heads seven diadems and his tail drew the third par tof the stars of heaven and cast them to earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth; that, when she should be delivered, he might devour her son.)Rev. 12:3 – 4

Chapter 20 of Revelation then tells us that a great battle will ensue which mirrors a battle which took place at the dawn of time: the war in heaven which led to Lucifer, God’s angelic bringer of light, being cast out of heaven along with all the other rebellious angels. According to Revelation, the archangel Michael, whom we shall see below, will, at the end of time, once again lead the heavenly host against the devil, who is clearly identified as a dragon. Revelation says that Michael and the heavenly host will cast out “the old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, he who had seduced the whole world.”

(Yolande de Soissons Psalter-Hours, c. 1350)

et vidi angelum descendentem de caelo habentem clavem abyssi et catenam magnam in manu sua et adprehendit draconem serpentem antiquum qui est diabolus et Satanas et ligavit eum per annos mille et misit eum in abyssum et clusit et signavit super illum ut non seducat amplius gentes donec consummentur mille anni post haec oportet illum solvi modico tempore.(And I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. And he cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up and set a seal upon him, that he should no more seduce the nations till the thousand years be finished. And after that, he must be loosed a little time.)Rev 20:1-3

The Serpent at Creation, the Dragon at the End

So, from the time Christian theologians assembled their Bible, the narrative was clear: there had been a war in heaven led by the devil which resulted in rebellious angels being cast down.

At the creation of man: The devil appeared in paradise as a serpent and introduced evil to the world.

At the end of time. This war will repeat itself and the old serpent, a great dragon, will again battle the heavenly host who will, at last, vanquish it so that paradise may be restored.

For Christian theologians and philosophers, then, there was an ancient, mystical, and enduring connection between the dragon and the source of all evil in the world. For medieval Christians dragons were the very embodiment of all that was impure in the world.

Now, for a deeper sense of how early and medieval Christians thought about the connection between the devil and dragons, read the excerpt from the so-called Gospel of Bartholomew.

A Side Note

If you are unfamiliar with the following terms, check out the resources at the following links to build some foundational knowledge about these terms.

• Questions of Bartholomew

Required Reading Break

The Gospel of Bartholomew is an early Christian text that is not part of official scripture and that Jerome chose not to include in his Vulgate Bible (nor is it contained in any version of the Bible). Texts such as these which groups choose not to include in their official or canonical scriptures are deemed apocrypha. Still, despite its official exclusion from the Christian Bible, this apocryphal text remained popular and circulated fairly broadly but which the institutional Church decided was not canonical. Jerome knew of the Questions in the fourth century, and early copies survive today in Greek, Latin, and Slavonic ranging in age from the fifth to the ninth centuries CE. A later copy, preserved from the monastery of Monte Amiati dates to the eleventh century.

• Excerpt from the Questions of Bartholomew.Read section IV starting at 7 (“When Jesus appeared again, Bartholomew saith unto him …”) down to the end of 46 (“Bartholomew saith: Be still (be muzzled) though dragon of the pit.”

Check Your Understanding

1) Who is Beliar, who is summoned and held aloft by 660 angels and bound in fiery chains?

2) According to this story, who is the first angel formed by God?

3) If Beliar was able, he tells Bartholomew he would like to …

Works Cited

Adam and Eve with the Serpent. Document sans titre [Augustine, La Cité de Dieu] Source: gallica.bnf.frBibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Français 19, fol. 27r. http://jessehurlbut.net/wp/mssart/?p=7138

Berry Apocalypse. France, Paris, ca. 1415. Conserved in the Morgan Library & Museum MS M.133 fol. 39v. http://ica.themorgan.org/manuscript/page/39/77026

Book of Hours: Netherlands, S., 2nd quarter of the 15th century: Harley MS 2982, f. 97r. c. 1400. Retrieved from: https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=18103

Document sans titre [Augustine, La Cité de Dieu] Adam and Eve with the Serpent. Source: gallica.bnf.fr. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Français 19, fol. 27r. n.d.

Gellius, A. Cornelius. “Noctes Atticae (Attic Nights),” translated by William P. Thayer. Loeb Classical Library, 1927. http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Gellius/7*.html#ref12.

Gospel of Bartholomew from The Apocryphal New Testament, translated by M.R. James. Clarendon Press, 1924. http://www.ricter.com/wordline/barth.htm.

Jan van der Straet (aka Stradanus). *Plate 25 in the Venationes Ferarum series [Engraving on Paper].*Netherlands. Cooper Hewitt Museum. Accession no. 1952-37-15; object ID 1839173. c. 1596.  http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18391973/

Jerome, St. Latin Vulgate Bible, Vulgate.org. https://vulgate.org/. Accessed 8 July, 2020.

Jerome, St.. “St. Jerome’s Preface to the Vulgate Version of the New Testament”. *Latin Vulgate**Bible,*Vulgate.org. https://vulgate.org/. Accessed 8 July, 2020.

Masaccio. Expulsion of Adam and Eve. [Fresco]. c. 1427; in the Brancacci Chapel, Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, Italy. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Masaccio/The-Brancacci-Chapel

Mattielli, Lorenzo.Hercales and the Lernean Hydra. Hofburg Palace in Vienna. c. 1678/1688-1748. CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Statues_of_Heracles,_Hofburg#/media/File:Herc02.jpg

Ogden, Daniel. Dragons, Serpents, and Slayers in the Classical and Early Christian Worlds: A Sourcebook. Oxford University Press, 2013.

Pollaiolo, Antonio del.Hercules and the Hydra [painting]. Uffizi Museum. 2nd floor room 09 Botticelli, Pollaiolo. Florence, c. 1475. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Antonio_del_Pollaiolo_-_Ercole_e_l%27Idra_e_Ercole_e_Anteo_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Unknown. c. 1350-1400. “Eve: tempted by Serpent” in Speculum humanae salvationis. The Morgan Library & Museum. MS M. 140 fol. 4r. Retrieved from: http://ica.themorgan.org/manuscript/page/2/77070

Yolande de Soissons. Psalter-Hours (Morgan Library, M.729, fol. 404v). France, second half of the 14c. c. 1350. https://ima.princeton.edu/tag/iconography/

6c. The Battle of Good vs. Evil: Saintly Dragonslayers

Medieval Saints

For medieval Christians who hoped for eternal life after death, the goal was to live as pure a life as possible to foster proximity to god. People who supposedly did this the most successfully served as role models for ordinary, less capable and more worldly, men and women. Medieval Christians recognized the very pure, the especially good, with a special title: saint, from the Latin sanctus meaning ‘holy.’ The Catholic Church conferred (and still confers) the mantle of sainthood on certain noble individuals who then serve as focal points for veneration or worship.

(Hours of Henry VIII, France, c.1500)

It is no surprise, therefore, to learn that there are a good number of medieval saints who purportedly battled and slew dragons. We will mention only briefly St. Theodore Tiro of Amaesa, St. Agapetus or Agapitos, St. James the More / Apostle, St. Martha, St. Peter, St. Dominic, St. Donatus, St. John the Evangelist, St. Silvester, St. Sebastian, St. Sebastian, St. Matthew, St. Saturnine, St. Simeon, and St. Quiriacus. By the late Middle Ages, all of these saints’ legends at least mentioned encounters with dragons. Here, though, we will focus instead on the three who are most associated with dragons:

• St. Margaret,
• St. George, and
• St. Michael.

St. Margaret of Antioch

By the late Middle Ages, throughout Christendom, people believed in a virgin girl who slew a dragon. This mythical figure was Margaret of Antioch, a character who was quite possibly a derivation of another saint named Pelagia or, even, of an older pagan goddess, possibly Aphrodite / Venus.

Whatever the origins of her tale, medieval people believed that there was an historical girl named Margaret, whose name means ‘pearl’ (hence her association with the sea), who lived during the reign of the Roman Emperor Diocletian (*r.*286 – 305), a ruler remembered for his brutal persecutions of Christians. In any event, Margaret’s father was supposedly a pagan priest in Antioch who sent his infant child off to the countryside to be nursed. Her nurse, however, was a Christian woman who baptized Margaret a Christian, a fact which displeased her father. Margaret was pious in her faith, and committed her life to Christ. When she caught the eye of a local Roman official, but spurned his amorous advances, he had her tortured. During her torment, the devil visited her in the form of a dragon and swallowed her whole. Luckily, Margaret was able to escape by making the sign of the cross (or, in some versions of the story, wielding a crucifix she wore). The dragon, unable to withstand the holy symbol, belched her up whole.

A Side Note

If you are unfamiliar with the following terms, check out the resources at the following links to build some foundational knowledge about these terms.

• St. Theodore Tiro of Amaesa (St. Theodore as dragon-slayer’)
• St. Agapetus or Agapitos,
• St. Martha (‘Martha’)
• St. Silvester (‘popesilvesterdragon’)

A Side Note

If you are unfamiliar with the following terms, check out the resources at the following links to build some foundational knowledge about these terms.

• Roman Emperor Diocletian (‘Diocletian’)
• Antioch

Margaret’s tale was recorded in the ninth century by the Frankish Benedictine monk, Rabanus Maurus (c. 780 – 856), a famous encyclopedist who enjoyed cataloguing data for posterity.It was common in the Middle Ages to record the lives and miracles of holy people, a genre called by its Latin name, Vita. The study of saints’ lives, (in Latin vitain the singular, vitae in the plural), is known as hagiography, from the Greek roots meaning, literally, the study of the holy. After the mid-thirteenth century, the most famous collections of saints’ lives was a book known commonly as the Legenda aurea or The Golden Legend, believed to be assembled by Jacobus (or James) de Voragine (1230 – 1298).

(Unknown. Portrait of Margaret of Antioch, c. 1500)

A Side Note

If you are unfamiliar with the following terms, check out the resources at the following links to build some foundational knowledge about these terms.

• FranksBenedictines
• Rabanus Maurus
• The Golden Legend(Legenda aurea)
• Jacobus (or James) de Voragine

Required Reading Break

Take a moment now to read the version of Margaret’s life as it appears in The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine.

• The Golden Legend or Lives of the Saints. Compiled by Jacobus de Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa, 1275.  First Edition Published 1470. Englished by William Caxton, First Edition 1483, Edited by F.S. Ellis, Temple Classics, 1900 (Reprinted 1922, 1931.)
• Read just the section titled “Here followeth the glorious Life and passion of the Blessed Virgin and Martyr S. Margaret, and first of her name.”

Check Your Understanding

1) Margaret comes from the ancient Persian word for “pearl,” which medieval people believed had the power to…

2) How did the imprisoned Margaret defend herself against the dragon? She …

3) Because she refused the provost’s advances, Margaret was …

Margaret was among the most famous of all medieval saints. In the first decades of the thirteenth century, the Catholic Church assigned her a Feast Day in its liturgical calendar, ensuring that Christians everywhere celebrate her with annual devotions. During the Hundred Years’ War between England and France (1337 – 1453), Joan of Arc (1412 – 1431) claimed that Margaret was one of three saintly guides who had spoken to her to deliver the divine mission which led her to take up arms against the English and, ultimately, to be burnt at the stake. Margaret was so beloved that, still today, hundreds of churches in England alone are named for her. She is still venerated by the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, and several major denominations of orthodox and Coptic Churches. In the Eastern rites, she is known as St. Marina.

(Unknown. Book of Hours,Use of Bayeux, c. 1400-1425)

A Side Note

If you are unfamiliar with the following terms, check out the resources at the following links to build some foundational knowledge about these terms.

• Hundred Years’ War
• Joan of Arc

Required Listening Break

View and listen to the description at the link below, from London’s Victoria and Albert museum, of the St. Margaret altarpiece. This is a stunning sixteenth-century work of religious art that depicts, much like a graphic novel today, the various “scenes” from Margaret’s Vita.

Pay particular attention to discern how it is that Margaret became the patron saint of childbirth.

• The St. Margaret Altarpiece

Check Your Understanding

1) What is the statue of Margaret holding in her right hand?

2) Margaret was believed to have burst from the belly of a dragon who had swallowed her and was, thus, invoked by…

3) What is boiling pitch and why was it being thrown on a naked Margaret?

Because of her popularity, Margaret is one of the most artistically depicted medieval saints. All across Europe and the Near East, Christians would have recognized very readily by her iconography (the symbols normally depicted with a divine or holy figure that help identify them without words). It is no surprise that in the altarpiece preserved at the Victoria & Albert Museum, or in the following examples, Margaret was very often depicted with the evil creature she purportedly vanquished; the dragon.

(Unknown. Miniature Margaret with Cross Staff, c. 1500)

(Unknown. Margaret in the Round, c. 1500)

(Unknown. Miniature of St. Margaret, c. 1500)

Additional Resources

The following readings are additional optional readings, which you can find in Course Reserves. You can learn more about the artistic representation of St. Margaret in this article, which catalogues the fourteenth-century painted murals in the English Church of St. Mary at Tarrant Crawford.

• Jenny C. Bledsoe, “The Cult of St. Margaret of Antioch at Tarrant Crawford: The Saint’s Didactic Body and Its Resonance for Religious Women”Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, vol. 39, No. 2, 2013.pp. 173-206

On Margaret’s role in childbirth, see:

• Róisín Donohoe. “‘Unbynde her anoone’: the Lives of St. Margaret of Antioch and the lyingin space in late medieval England,” inGender in Medieval Places, Spaces andThresholds, edited by Victoria Blud, Diane Heath, Einat Klafter. University of London Press, 2019.pp. 139 – 156.

On how art historians identify Margaret through her iconography, see:

• Oswald Goetz and Meyric R. Rogers, “A Medieval Masterpiece Rediscovered,”Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago, vol. 38, no. 4, 1944.pp. 53-58

St. George

According to the Vita he presented, Jacobus de Voragine reports that St. George was born a knight in Cappadocia. George travelled to Lydda, to the city of Silene (in earlier versions, he was a Roman soldier born to Christian parents). There the townspeople lived near a stagnant pond with a dragon which terrorized them. The dragon “venomed the people with his breath” until the locals began to pay it tribute, sheep or virgins. The townspeople had settled on a lottery system, to help pick the next sacrifice but, one day, the king’s daughter drew the unlucky lot. The king begged his people to spare her, and offered all his wealth, but a deal was a deal. And so, the poor king dressed his fair daughter like a bride and sent her off to be eaten by the dragon. It was then that George happened to pass her by on his horse. He saw the girl weeping and asked what was wrong. She told him to move on, not to risk staying with her. As they spoke, though, the dragon appeared. George, in good knightly fashion, charged the beast and skewered it with his spear. He then asked the princess for her girdle, her belt, which he used as a leash so the girl could lead the dragon around like a tamed pet. Which she did. When she re-entered the city, the people were terrified. George told the king and the inhabitants of the city that if they were baptized and became Christians, he would slay the beast. They were and he did, cutting off the serpent’s head.

(Jacobus de Voragine, 1382)

Though the dragon tale is the major event in George’s Vita, it is important to note that, like so many other medieval saints, Christians believe he was martyred by decapitation (like the dragon he slew).

This is the legend as it was known to Christians everywhere in Europe and the Middle East in the Middle Ages, but George, or Hazrat Jurjays in Arabic, was so famous that he also appears in Muslim sources as a sort of prophet. There, he opposed a wicked pagan king and was put to torture, whereupon he was defended by angels. After the king had him martyred for exposing that his pagan idols were satanic, Allah (God) destroyed his city by raining fire upon it. In some versions of the tale, George comes back from the dead each time he is killed and dire omens accompany his resurrection. Though Islamic authors, of which there are several, recorded George’s miraculous deeds in great detail, the dragon is conspicuously absent from them.

As a consequence of his fame, George was instantly recognizable in iconography. In earlier images, he appears as a Roman soldier with a spear. During the Crusades, though, George’s popularity increased throughout Europe (though he had been worshipped there since the early Middle Ages) and there it was the dragon that came to be his most identified symbol. Despite the many male saints who had dragons in their Vitae, almost invariably, in the later Middle Ages, when a European image, painting, or sculpture depicted a soldier, a horse, a spear, a dragon, or some combination thereof, it is George.

See for yourself how easy it is to identify George in late medieval works of art:

First, consider this religious icon, a painting used to focus devotion, contained in the British Museum, to St. George.

The Miracle of St. George and the Dragon (Unknown. The Miracle of St. George and the Dragon, c. 1500)

Now, study this illumination from a fifteenth-century Flemish Book of Hours, a popular prayer book from the Middle Ages, contained in the Getty Museum.

St. George and the Dragon (Master of Guillebert de Mets, c. 1450-1455)

Compare them to the sixteenth-century marble relief sculpture of St. George preserved at the Louvre in Paris.

St. George and the Dragon (Michel Colombe, 1508)

And then contrast it to the fifteenth-century statue of St. George at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which leaves out the horse, but in which the artist was careful to include the knight’s lance, a weapon only used from horseback.

St. George (Unknown, 1475)

George’s legend, and, remember, it is far from certain that this story relates to an actual historical person, extends back to the first 500 years of Christianity and the oldest written fragments are in Greek, though another older record text alludes to a similar character. His popularity continues long after the Middle Ages. He is still the patron saint of the British royal family and of all of England, where his standard, a red cross on a white field (see figure, The St. George’s Cross), forms the heart of the Union Jack flag (as well as the flags of some former British colonies such as Australia and New Zealand). George is also patron saint of Malta, Portugal, and of the Spanish regions of Aragon and Catalonia, where his cross appears on the flag of the city of Barcelona.

The St. George’s Cross (Anomie, 2011)

St. Michael the Archangel

If the Book of Revelation prophesizes for Christians that, in the End Times, a dragon representing Lucifer will appear and be defeated by the heavenly angelic host, led by Michael, medieval people understood this to be a repetition of the battle which cast Lucifer out of heaven with his rebellious angels, and led to their Fall.

In medieval Catholic theology, Michael is one of the major angels and his name appears twice in what Christians call the “Old Testament” (that is, the books of the Christian Bible derived from Jewish scriptures) and twice in the “New Testament” (the books recorded after the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth by his followers, who broke with Judaism and formed a new religion). Read these Bible passages in Jerome’s Vulgate to observe the scriptural basis for his devotion:

The Book of Daniel, derived from the Jewish Ketuvim (Writings), the third component of Jewish scripture, Chapter 10:13

princeps autem regni Persarum restitit mihi viginti et uno diebus et ecce Michahel unus de principibus primis venit in adiutorium meum et ego remansi ibi iuxta regem Persarum(But the prince of the kingdom of the Persians resisted me one and twenty days: and behold Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, and I remained there by the king of the Persians.)Daniel 10:13

And again in Daniel 12:1.

in tempore autem illo consurget Michahel princeps magnus qui stat pro filiis populi tui et veniet tempus quale non fuit ab eo quo gentes esse coeperunt usque ad tempus illud et in tempore illo salvabitur populus tuus omnis qui inventus fuerit scriptus in libro(But at that time shall Michael rise up, the great prince, who standeth for the children of thy people: and a time shall come, such as never was from the time that nations began, even until that time. And at that time shall thy people be saved, every one that shall be found written in the book.)Daniel 12: 1

The Epistle of Jude, the penultimate book of the Christian Bible, verse 9.

cum Michahel archangelus cum diabolo disputans altercaretur de Mosi corpore non est ausus iudicium inferre blasphemiae sed dixit imperet tibi Dominus(When Michael the archangel, disputing with the devil, contended about the body of Moses, he durst not bring against him the judgment of railing speech, but said: The Lord command thee.)Jude, v. 9

The Book of Revelation/Apocalypse 12:7.

et factum est proelium in caelo Michahel et angeli eius proeliabantur cum dracone et draco pugnabat et angeli eius(And there was a great battle in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought, and his angels.)Rev 12:7

So, based on these few lines of scripture, medieval tradition bestowed upon Michael four duties. He was responsible for:

• battling Satan (at the beginning and end of time),
• rescuing the souls of the dying from the devil,
• defending god’s people, and
• to bring the souls of the departed forward for judgement.

He is called the Archangel, because he holds a position above all other angels, though, notably, the famous medieval philosopher, Thomas Aquinas, did not hold this view. Early in his cult, Michael was associated with healing and was invoked in times of plague to defend the sick. Elsewhere, he became associated with sailors and still today visitors travel to Mont-Saint-Michel, the famous medieval abbey in Normandy.

(Rosser1954, 2019)

Distinguishing Michael from George

It is easy to distinguish Michael from George, since the latter usually has angelic wings. Much like St. George, moreover, Michael was almost always depicted by the late Middle Ages slaying a dragon with a lance or sword. But Michael’s “dragon” is not always as draconic as that of George. In fact, in some artistic traditions, medieval artesans went to pains to explain that, although Michael slays a dragon in Revelation, we must remember that this creature is, in fact, the incarnation of the devil. So, depending on the place, time, genre, and artist, Michael’s “dragon” can appear very much like that of George, or very deliberately more demonic.

Consider, first, these very typical thirteenth-century bishop’s croziers made in Limoges, France. A crozier is the staff used by bishop’s, one of the symbols that they are the “shepherds” of their congregation or “flock.” Traditional shepherds used staves with crooks to pull sheep who had wandered away from the herd back to safety. This is the origin of the bishop’s crozier. Look for similarities at each of these medieval artefacts and you will notice that the traditional crook has been replaced with a stylized snake. Within the circle formed by the snake’s body is depicted St. Michael the Archangel. Almost always, he is stabbing the dragon from Revelation, which looks distinctly draconic.

• Crozier with St. Michael and the Dragon.From the Watlers Art Museum. Limoges (France), c. 1225 – 1250. Champlevé enamel, gilded copper.
• Head of a Crozier with St. Michael Slaying a Dragon.From  the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Limoges (France), c. 1220 – 1230. Champlevé enamel, copper-gilt, glass paste.
• Crozier.With St. Michael Slaying the Dragon from the Victoria & Albert Museum. Limoges (France), 13thcentury. Copper with remains of champlevé enamel.
• Crozier Head: St. Michael and the Dragon.From the Detroit Institute of Art. Limoges (France), c. 1210 – 1225. Gilded copper with champlevé enameling.

From these four examples, sampled from major museum collections in North America and England, you may surmise that, in the thirteenth century at Limoges, there was a workshop or workshops which produced a certain type of crozier. And that was true. In other genres, too, Michael clearly stabs a very reptilian dragon:

• Coin - Angel, Richard III, England, 1483-1485.Gold “angel” coin minted by Richard III depicting St. Michael standing, one foot on fallen dragon, spearing it in the mouth from the Museums of Victoria. England, 1483 – 1485.
• St. Michael.Limestone statue of St. Michael from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Touraine (France), c. 1475.
• St. Michael.Carved ivory statuette of St. Michael from the Victoria & Albert Museum. Netherlands or Spain, c. 1460 – 1490.
• Archangel Michael Slaying the Dragon.Tempera and gold leaf on panel of Archangel Michael Slaying the Dragon. Italian, Master of St. Verdiana, c. 1380 – c. 1420.

Required Watching Break

Now watch the following video narrated by Metropolitan Museum of Art curator, C. Griffith Mann, and hear his explanation for how late medieval artists attempted to represent the ancient struggle between good and evil by embedding it simultaneously within an imaginative world and the actual natural world. Note how the dragon in this piece is absolutely not a dragon, or even solely reptilian, but a strange and fabulous composite demon.

• The Met Art Explained: Master of Belmonte, St. Michael[Khan Academy] (~3 mins.)

Next, compare what you just saw to this medieval pilgrim’s badge, a sort of brooch kept as a souvenir of a holy trip to the shrine at Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy.

The point here is that Michael is clearly associated in the medieval mind with dragons but nowhere else is the dragon so directly linked with the embodiment of evil. Of all the saints who encountered, tamed, and slew dragons, the dragon sometimes represented with the fictional Michael most directly brings us back to the ancient struggle between the forces of order and light and those of chaos and darkness. Ironically, in the archangel, we are able to see the stripping away of Christianization and the return to ancient myth: Hercules killing the hydra, Marduk against Tiamat, Ra against Apep.

(Unknown, n.d.)

Check Your Understanding

For the following questions check your understanding by trying to answer the questions yourself before clicking to reveal the answer.

1) Where does the altarpiece depicting St. Michael come from?

It’s important to know where works of art originate, since medieval culture, although sharing in certain universal elements, was actually very diverse and localized. The Spanish tradition from this time period is particularly rich and ornate, but also highly stylized. Notice the grotesque but also somewhat charmingly cartoony aspect of the dragon / devil.

2) How is this image part of a multimedia experience and why was that important in the Middle Ages?

They would have viewed the altarpiece while hearing the divine offices chanted (sung), they would have smelled burning incense, and the images would have resonated with fabric, metal, and jewelry all around them in the church.

It is difficult today to image how a work of art impacted its viewer hundreds of years ago. It helps us to know its setting, so we can better understand the intentions of its creator and patron (i.e. sponsor).

3) What is the story, at its most basic level, about?

Though we may no longer share the same belief system as medieval people, at the most basic element, we can still relate to their human struggles. Just as Hollywood movies depict over and over the battle between good and evil, so, too, did medieval myths.

Works Cited

Anomie. 2011. St. George’s Cross (image). Wikipedia. Retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_England.svg

Anonymous. The Taming of the Tarasque. The Morgan Library & Museum. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Taming_the_Tarasque,_from_Hours_of_Henry_VIII.jpg

Jacobus de Voragine. c. 1382. Original manuscript of Jacobus de Voragine, translated by Jean de VIgnay, Legenda Aurea, France, Central (Paris) contained in the British Library as Royal 19 B XVII. Retrieved from: https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=47960

Jerome, St. Latin Vulgate Bible, Vulgate.org. https://vulgate.org/. Accessed 8 July, 2020

Master of Guillebert de Mets. c. 1450-1455. St. George and the Dragon. The J. Paul Getty Museum. Ms. 2 (84.ML.67), fol. 18v. Ghent, Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Master_of_Guillebert_de_Mets_(Flemish,active_about_1410-1450)-Saint_George_and_the_Dragon-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Michel Colombe. St. George and the Dragon. 1508. The Louvre. Richelieu wing Ground floor Michel Colombe Room 211. Nantes, Retrieved from: https://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/saint-george-and-dragon

Rosser1954. 5 October, 2019.  Distant view of Mont Saint-Michel. Wikipedia. Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Distant_view_of_Mont_Saint-Michel._France.jpg. [CC BY-SA 4.0]

Saint Martha Taming the Tarasque, from Hours of Henry VIII, France, Tours, ca. 1500. The Morgan Library & Museum, MS H.8, fol. 191v. Accessed 8 July, 2020 from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Taming_the_Tarasque,_from_Hours_of_Henry_VIII.jpg

Unknown. c. 1400-1425. Book of Hours. Use of Bayeux. Folio #: fol. 149v. Manuscript. Place: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/. https://library-artstor-org.proxy.lib.uwaterloo.ca/asset/BODLEIAN_10310800767.

Unknown. c. 1500. Portrait of Margaret of Antioch. In Master of the Dark Eyes workshop, Marciana Group, van Ommeren of Guelders. Hours, miniature, column, fol. 132r, Miniature. Illuminated Manuscript. Place: Princeton: Library, University, Garrett 57, Garrett 57. https://library-artstor-org.proxy.lib.uwaterloo.ca/asset/PRINCETON_MANUSCRIPTS_1031320310.

Unknown. n.d. Medieval Pilgrim’s Badge: Lead alloy pilgrim badge depicting St. Michael slaying Lucifer with his lance. British Museum, catalogue no. 1913,0619.37. n.d. https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?assetId=936337001&objectId=47222&partId=1

Unknown. c. 1500. Miniature of St. Margaret. Unidentified Book of Hours. Miniature from fol. 158v. conserved today at Princeton University Library as Garrett 59. https://library-artstor-org.proxy.lib.uwaterloo.ca/asset/PRINCETON_MANUSCRIPTS_1031319924

Unknown. c. 1500. Margaret in the Round. Breviary. Cistercian use., Folio #: fol. 173r. Manuscript. Place: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/. https://library-artstor-org.proxy.lib.uwaterloo.ca/asset/BODLEIAN_10310801316.

Unknown. c. 1500. Miniature Margaret with Cross Staff. Miscellany, miniature, full-page, arched, fol. 15r, Whole Page. Illuminated Manuscript. Place: Princeton: Library, University, Taylor 17, Taylor 17. https://library-artstor-org.proxy.lib.uwaterloo.ca/asset/PRINCETON_MANUSCRIPTS_1031320717

Unknown. c. 1475. Saint George and the Dragon. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of George Blumenthal, 1941, Accession Number: 41.100.213. Swabia. Retrieved from: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/467786

Unknown. c. 1500. The Miracle of St. George and the Dragon. The British Museum. Museum number 1998,1105.3. Novgorod, Retrieved from: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1998-1105-3

6d. Comparing Cultures

Dragons in Judaism

(Peraldus, 1236)

We have already seen how Christianity inherited its anthropomorphic creation story in Genesis 1 (the Garden of Eden) from Judaism, and how there was, from the start of the newer religion, a general, if not precise, consensus, about the role of evil in paradise, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and its consequences as described in the anthropomorphic creation story in Genesis 2.

More broadly, the Jewish holy texts also contain creatures which rabbinical scholars, learned Jewish religious authorities, tend to translate as “dragons” [

] (Hirsch, 1906).

The Hebrew word thus, connotes a dangerous monster with a poisonous bite, a term translated by Jewish scholars as “dragon.” (This is the same term actually used in Genesis 1:21, in the cosmic creation story, to describe the great sea creatures brought to existence by Yahweh.)

In Exodus 7:9, this is the term which appears in relation to Moses’ staff transforming into some sort of serpent. The Book of Isaiah, moreover, mentions that same term in relation to the creatures of the sea:

In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.Isaiah 27:1

As well, Isaiah 14:29 mentions a fiery flying serpent, for example. And, the Book of Numbers notes in Chapter 21:4 another time Moses’ staff was associated with dragons:

4 And they journeyed from mount Hor by the way of the Red sea, to compass the land of Edom: and the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.5 And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread.6 And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.7 Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people.8 And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.9 And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.Num 21:4-9

Finally, the Book of Ezekiel**, Chapter 29:3**, tells of “the great dragon that lies in the midst of his rivers.” These are but some of the examples contained in Jewish canonical scriptures.

So, in a great many ways, medieval Christians and Jews shared a rich textual tradition linked to their common sense of biblical history which involved dragons. As noted earlier, they also agreed on the role of evil in creation. It would not have been difficult for medieval Jews to understand how Christians had linked the two concepts together, or to be able to relate to the Christian notion of wicked dragons.

Dragons in Islam

If St. George increased in Christian popularity during the Crusades, and the Muslim world venerated him as a holy prophet, it seems a shame that Islam did not pick up on the notion of his dragon slaying. Still, this was not because Islam was devoid of dragons. Far from it. No other mythical creature was more represented in Islam than was the dragon, both in sacred and mundane settings.

Islam grew up in regions that had already had dragons since the Bronze Age and, as it spread, it encountered new forms and traditions of dragons, closer in appearance to the undulating Chinese dragon known to the cultures of Mongolia.

For many years, Islamic scholarship focused on the wickedness which dragons represented. In this, they focused on the same tradition as scholarship on the Christian tradition. More recently, Prof. Abbas Daneshvari has attempted to show that dragons in Islam could represent both light AND darkness, both good AND evil; dragon fire could, according to Daneshvari, be both hellfire and divine radiance.

(Unknown, c. 1650 – 1700)

In the words of another scholar of Islamic dragons, Dr. Sara Kuehn:

However, unlike in most of Christian culture where the overall image of the serpent or dragon is predominantly associated with its portrayal in the Bible as the epitome of evil and sin, the position of serpents and dragons in Islamic culture is ambiguous and can have benevolent as well as malevolent connotations. The serpent as symbol of evil does not exist in the Qur’an where it appears only once in the story of the staff of Musa (Moses) metamorphosed into a serpent (sūras 20, 20; and 79, 16). However, both serpents and dragons figure more frequently in Persian than in Arabic tradition. The ambiguity in the nature of the dragon is also mirrored in the Persian language, the word for dragon (azdahā) being used to describe “a strong and brave man,” or “passionate testy person” as well as a “tyran.”Kuehn, p. 6

She goes on to note that, in Arabic and Persian literature, dragons could be helpful, powerful, and friendly. So, on the one hand, the Islamic world inherited monsters such as the thoroughly evil Azhi Dahaka from Zoroastrianism, while, on the other, the pre-Islamic literature of the sixth-century poet Abid ibn al-Abras emphasized how it was a serpent who saved Banū Asad after he gave it his last drops of water.

Still, despite the ambiguities, there was common ground with Christian draconic traditions. The serpent is mentioned in the Qu’ran, the primary religious text of Islam, which Muslims believe to be God / Allah’s revelation to humanity. According to canonical Islamic tradition, at the dawn of creation, the serpent was the fairest and strongest of all the creatures in paradise. It was like a camel but with a rainbow-coloured tail and mystical eyes. It smelled wonderful. The devil (Iblis) was prevented from entering paradise by the angels who guarded its gates, but had been goaded on by the peacock. So he tricked the serpent and hopped into its mouth, hiding behind its fangs (hence the reason serpents’ fangs have venom). Once inside, the devil hopped out, found the forbidden fruit, and brought it to Adam and Eve to eat. The serpent’s punishment for assisting the devil was the loss of its legs and proximity to the earth, having to slither. (Kuehn 9)

A Side Note

If you are unfamiliar with the following terms, check out the resources at the following links to build some foundational knowledge about these terms.

• Azhi Dahaka (‘Zahhak’)
• Zoroastrianism

So, despite the existence of pre-Islamic traditions which continued on into the Islamic age, of positive dragons, Muslims also understood quite clearly the Christian equation of serpents, dragons, and evil. Sharing a common scriptural tradition helped.

Check Your Understanding

1) How did early Muslims learn of dragons?

2) How does Islam portray serpents?

Works Cited

Daneshvari, Abbas. Of Serpents and Dragons in Islamic Art: An Iconographical Study. Costa Mesa, California, Mazda Publishers, 2011.

Hirsch, Emil G. “Dragon,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia: the Unedited Full Text of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia (http://jewishencylcopedia.com/articles/5304-dragon)

Kuehn, Sara. The Dragon in Medieval East Christian and Islamic Art. Islamic History and Civilization. Brill, 2011

Jerome, St. Latin Vulgate Bible, Vulgate.org. https://vulgate.org/. Accessed 8 July, 2020.

Unknown.  c. 1650 – 1700. Manuscript of Zakariya al-Qazwini, ‘Aja’ib al-makhluqat (Wonders of Creation) of Qazwini, with 253 paintings’. Harvard Art Museums / Arthur M. Sackler Museum, object number 1972.3. Retrieved from: https://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/view/14136734?width=3000&height=3000 in https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/216430

Peraldus. c. 1236. Theological miscellany, including the Summa de vitiis, 3rd quarter of the 13th century, after c. 1236, Latin MS preserved in the British Library as Harley 3244 fol. 65. https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=21549

6e. Conclusion

Summary

You should by now have a good sense of how the ancient, transcendent concept, which grew out of the East and spread westward, of a cosmic struggle between the embodiment of good (Heracles, Ra, Marduk, St. George) and the embodiment of evil (the Hydra, Tiamat, Apep, dragons) infiltrated the medieval consciousness. Medieval Christians, but also their Jewish and Muslim neighbours, all shared similar, sometimes almost identical, concepts that allowed them to participate in a common cosmology.

While this may not seem particularly relevant today, to think that they all believed in evil dragons, it is. Dragons were part of their understanding of the universe and the planet and mankind’s role in creation. When Muslim and Jewish astronomers and doctors sought to advance scientific knowledge, this shared understanding helped Christian thinkers access these diverse works and incorporate them into their own. It is, after all, much easier to absorb knowledge if it feels, at least in part, familiar. Dragons are one of the ways we can help illustrate this.

More on Dragons

There is, of course, so much more we could do with dragons. This unit has not touched, for example, on their role in medieval magic or medicine. Students interested can consult the work of the leading expert on magic in the Middle Ages, Richard Kieckhefer who notes, for example, a medical scroll from c. 1100 which advises its reader to use the “herb dracontium, so called because its leaves resemble dragons [to] counteract snakebite and internal worms.” See Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 13. In the writing assignment, you will have the opportunity to explore dragons in the Viking world, a topic not covered in this module to this point.

There were indeed dragons everywhere in the Middle Ages. As a final thought, though, consider this. Medieval people had rich internal lives and wonderful imaginations. But they were also no fools. They had the same brains and intellectual capacity we do, they merely lacked our cumulative knowledge. Think, then, what you might have made, were you alive in the Middle Ages, and had you come upon a dinosaur fossil…

A 2008 exhibit at Stanford University, entitled “Dragons Unearthed” explored this theme. It presented a 66-mllion-year-old dragon-like dinosaur called the Dracorex. Adrienne Mayor has argued that dragon tales may have been sparked by the discovery of dinosaur bones near the Himalayas.

(Harley MS 3244, c. 1236-1250)

Additional Resources

For more on dragon tales and dinosaur bones read the following optional article: “Dinosaurs and Dragons, Oh My!”.

Once you have completed reviewing all of this week’s content, return to the module page.

Works Cited

Humanities at Stanford. “Dinosaurs and Dragons, Oh My!” *Stanford Humanities Center,*2 Oct 2008, https://shc.stanford.edu/news/research/dinosaurs-and-dragons-oh-my%e2%80%a8.

Richard Kieckhefer, *Magic in the Middle Ages.*Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 13.

Harley MS 3244. Dragon illustration in 13th century manuscript. c. 1236-1250. The British Museum. Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dragon_Harley_MS_3244.png

Module 7: Summoned Spirits

David Porreca (Classical Studies, University of Waterloo)

7a. Introduction

Defining Magic

This section of the course deals with a type of monster that was thought to be present on Earth solely through the active participation of an expert in the science of applied magic – a magical practitioner. This participation came in the form of rituals conducted as specifically appointed times, involving specific collections of ingredients that needed to be manipulated in particular ways, all while chanting appropriate prayers. The objective of this activity was to call to Earth – to “summon” – immaterial, intelligent beings – “spirits”, in order to command them to do something on behalf of the practitioner, or their client(s).

The material in this module aims to give you some idea of the complexities involved in practice of summoning spirits. In order to do so, we must begin by defining magic, and situating it in the broad sweep of the history of science, the history of ideas, and the history of religion.

The Sources

This module will draw upon two specific written Medieval sources:

• ThePicatrix, and
• TheMunich Handbook

These sources preserve numerous examples of both specific instructions for summoning spirits, as well as broader theoretical discussions of the principles behind the workings of magic. These two books are introduced briefly in this section.

Understanding References to the Sources

For the Picatrix a three-digit reference is provided (Picatrix 3.5.2, p.145) that corresponds to:

• the book (3),
• chapter (5),
• paragraph number in the original text (2), and
• the page number (p.145) where the passage can be found in the Attrell and Porreca translation is also provided.

For the Munich Handbook, the number of the ritual in the published series, as well as the page number in Kieckhefer’s edition are provided. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are drawn from these two publications.

The Intellectual Framework

The conceptual principles that underpin how magic was thought to work are the focus here. These principles draw their roots in standard philosophical models of the universe that date back to Classical Antiquity, and were still widely accepted throughout the Middle Ages. The philosophical models were later supplemented by the theological concerns and worldviews of monotheistic faiths, Christianity and Islam in particular.

Summoned Spirits

With a good grounding in the background material covered so far, the module turns to specifics: defining summoning, and defining spirits. Only now are we ready to examine how all of the theories end up manifesting in concrete terms in the written sources. We will examine the treatment of summoned spirits in each of the sources with the following questions in mind:

• What kinds of spirits are being summoned?
• For what purpose(s) is/are the spirit(s) being summoned?
• Is there a difference between summoning a spirit, and summoning the power of a spirit?
• Are there any commonalities between the various rituals that involve summoned spirits?

Works Cited

None for this page.

7b. Introduction to Magic

Defining Magic: General and Historical Perspectives

The “magic” we are discussing here has very little to do with parlour tricks or stage magic intended for entertainment that has become one of its main manifestations today. Although some form of such prestidigitation has existed since time immemorial, what concerns us here is more closely associated with the history of religions, the history of science, the history of ideas, and social history.

Magic is one of those terms that becomes increasingly difficult to define precisely the more closely one examines it. This is partly due to the fact that for most of the history of Western culture, magic has been the activity against which mainstream culture has defined itself. In ancient Greek times, when the term magoi (from which our term “magic” is derived) referred to a class of Perisan priests whose religious rituals were different from those of the Greeks, and therefore suspicious to the latter. In time, any ritual activity that was conducted outside of the mainstream public and private cults of the ancient world fell under suspicion and was therefore defined as “magic”.

When monotheistic Christianity took over as the principal mode of religious expression in the final centuries of the Roman Empire, it redefined what was considered sacred, and in the process, re-categorized all polytheistic pagan religious practices as “magic” that was either considered complete charlatanry, or was thought to operate thanks to the intervention of demons. In fact, all pagan deities were summarily re-defined as demons, which goes a long way toward explaining the early Christians’ zeal in destroying pagan temples and statuary, as well as successive waves of criminalization of pagan practices that drew increasingly harsh penalties.

In the modern world, the collective social enterprise known as “science” has to a large extent taken on the norm-defining role that the Christian churches had previously played. Yet magic remains one of the things that science uses to define itself: fundamentally, it’s not magic.

All of the above suggests that magic has been a fundamental and necessary foil against which mainstream culture has defined itself in the West from the very beginning. According to the modern scholar Wouter Hanegraaff, magic thus falls into a category he describes as Western culture’s “rejected knowledge”, alongside other practices that had at one point been accepted as normative (like the polytheistic religious practices of antiquity), but that have since been rejected for an assortment of reasons. Examples of other practices that fall under Hanegraaff’s “rejected knowledge” include alchemy, astrology, phrenology, and eugenics.

Without entering into the debates surrounding the definition of magic according to its modern practitioners, we need a concise description of what is meant by the term when it is employed for the purposes of studying magic as it manifested historically. The definition must be sufficient to encompass the materials and practices that we will be examining more closely as far as they apply to the summoning of spirits.

Magic can be considered as a manipulative strategy to influence something in the material world by supernatural (or “occult”, or hidden) means. Let’s unpack each component of that definition:

• a manipulative strategy: requires specific actions applied to physical objects, the process of which is usually described as a “ritual”; “magic”, in other words, is not something that can be practiced passively
• to influence something: magic is goal-directed
• by supernatural means: processes of perceptible cause-and-effect do not apply in the case of magic; forces hidden to our senses are involved

Note that several other human activities overlap with portions of this definition. Every piece of technology ever invented qualifies as “a manipulative strategy” that is intended to “influence something”, but the usage of technology lacks the supernatural aspect on which magic relies. Religion and its ceremonies involve manipulative strategies that involve the supernatural, but it tends not to be goal-directed, since it is practiced out of faith for its own sake. A magical ritual is always conducted with a specific goal or objective in mind. Also, unlike many religious customs, magic tends to be a solitary pursuit (or sometimes with a small group of associates), while religion tends to be a communal activity whose main rituals are conducted publicly.

Some Final General Comments About Magic

Since we are dealing with magical practices based on what was written down in books that happen to have survived over the centuries, the individuals who wrote these books (as well as their intended audiences) were by definition literate. Therefore, everything contained in this unit assumes that those involved in any respect were from sufficiently elevated social classes to have learned how to read and write. The corollary to this statement is that what we are discussing here by definition excludes the widespread beliefs, practices, and superstitions of the lower classes who made up the majority of the European population throughout the Middle Ages.

Works Cited

None for this page.

7c. The Medieval Written Sources

Introduction to Magic Texts

Summoning spirits was one of the major components of the learned magic that was discussed and practiced by educated people (mostly men) during the Middle Ages. As discussed above, magic was something that mainstream society used to define itself against, and the principal agent behind the establishment of such social norms in Medieval Europe was the Christian Church. Considering how early the Christians re-defined pagan gods as demons and that demons are (as we will see below) one type of spirit, it should come as no surprise that not only was the practice of magic frowned upon generally speaking, but the sorts of magic that involved summoning spirits in particular were considered especially troublesome to Church authorities.

The Need for Secrecy

The practice had to be kept secret for two reasons:

• the risk of harsh punishment by Church and legal authorities, and
• to keep practices that were considered extremely powerful from falling into the wrong hands.

Indeed, emphasis on the need for secrecy is a regularly recurring trope in both texts. Moreover, the goal-directed nature of magical practice did not always aim solely for anyone’s benefit, but instead, it sometimes directed harm at others, up to and including murder. A good example of a planetary spirit being summoned for the sake of doing harm can be found in the Picatrix (3.7.26, p.169). Note that this passage is taken from a much longer prayer to the star named “Benethnays”, and its neighbors in Ursa Major:

I ask you (Benethnays) that you pour into this individual your power and spirit with great fury and anger, that you swiftly transmit to him all these penalties because he deserves loss, misery, great pain, to be treated poorly by everyone around, that he be despised, that you shower great infirmities and pains upon all his limbs. …I conjure you by your power and spirit that you may remember my request.(Picatrix, 3.7.26, p.169)

So, it should come as no surprise that magical texts from the Middle Ages are fairly scarce, and those that regularly rely on summoned spirits are scarcer yet. The two texts we are using as key examples in this module were chosen for three reasons:

• their length provides an exceptional wealth of material;
• each contains numerous examples of material involving summoned spirits; and
• both have become accessible to modern readers – neither of these books had appeared in print until the final years of the twentieth century.

Picatrix

The Picatrix is a volume dedicated to the theory and practice of astral magic, which is ritual magic that specifically focuses on harnessing the powers and properties of the heavens – planets, stars, constellations - as opposed to alchemy, for example, which focuses on the manipulation and transformation of physical matter.

The original version of the text was written in Arabic during the years 954-959 by Maslama al-Qurtubī, who states himself that he assembled no fewer than 224 different sources in the process of composition. In other words, it is a carefully curated compilation of materials that he had encountered over the course of his travels in the Eastern Mediterranean during his youth (the 930’s). The original title in Arabic was Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm (The Goal of the Sage), and was accompanied by a sister volume dedicated to alchemy entitled Rutbat al-Ḥakīm (The Rank of the Sage), but this latter book never got translated into any Western language, so had no influence on the intellectual culture of Europe.

During the reign of King Alfonso X (“The Wise”) of Castile in Spain (r. 1252-1284), a team of scholars was employed at the court to produce Spanish translations of important Arabic works. The Picatrix received the attention of this group during the 1250’s, but only a few pages of this Spanish version survive for scholars to examine today. Instead, we have the complete text surviving in a Latin translation that was produced on the basis of the Spanish one. The selections from the Picatrix that you will be reading in this unit are drawn from a recent English translation of the Latin text. There are substantial differences between the original Arabic text and the Latin one but based on the fragments of the Spanish version that survive, we can tell that the Latin text is more faithful to its Spanish exemplar than it is to the Arabic version. It seems like the translators were tailoring their work to their Western Spanish/Latin audiences and leaving out certain sections that they thought would be distasteful or incomprehensible to their intended readership.

Despite internal evidence pointing to the Latin version being completed by 1300, the oldest manuscript we have of the text dates to the late 1450’s, and the earliest mention of the text (i.e., the first time anyone demonstrated an awareness of its existence) comes from the same decade. That being said, there survive no fewer than seventeen manuscripts of the text that were copied over the following two centuries, which reveals a fairly widespread interest in this work. The fact that it never saw print during this time – indeed, the Latin text was finally published only as recently as 1986 – indicates that the contents were considered sufficiently controversial that no one was willing to be associated formally with its distribution.

Taken as a whole, the Picatrix offers unevenly alternating sections of

• theory(i.e., discussions of the general principles of how astral magic was thought to operate and how it fit into the broader intellectual framework of the time) and
• practice(i.e., magical rituals described in very concrete terms that are often reminiscent of cooking recipes: lists of ingredients accompanied by instructions detailing what is to be done with those items and/or materials).

The theoretical passages are those that received the most substantial paring down between the original Arabic and the Latin versions, which suggests that it’s the practical side of the book that was thought to be of greatest interest to its Latin audience.

The Picatrix presents magic as the culmination of human science. As will be seen below under various sections of the “Intellectual Framework” that lies behind the operation of magic, practitioners needed to be thoroughly versed in every branch of human knowledge in order to perform their rituals correctly, with the right ingredients, at the right times.

Required Reading Break

The following excerpts are drawn from the introduction to the English translation of the Picatrix. The first one provides additional background information about how the text evolved from its original version in Arabic into Latin, and thence how that text came into our hands today. The second one illuminates the distinction between “black magic” as it is understood in the popular imagination nowadays, and the term “nigromancia”, which is the Latin term used in the Picatrix itself to refer to “magic”.

• Dan Attrell and David Porreca,Picatrix. A Medieval Treatise on Astral Magic, University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press (2019):Introductionpp. 1-7;pp. 10-12 [section entitled “Onnigromancia”].

Check Your Understanding

Summoning spirits relates to magic in the same way that

Munich Handbook

The text of the Munich Handbook survives in a single manuscript held in Munich (hence the name), and presents a series of forty-seven sections, most of them detailed recipe-like instructions for magical rituals. The text is in Latin and was compiled from numerous sources during the middle decades of the fifteenth century – precisely the time frame when the Picatrix became widely known. It was compiled by a Bavarian cleric of lower rank whose precise identity remains unknown.

Required Reading Break

The following excerpts drawn from the editor’s introduction to the text provide

• a description of how the Munich Handbook fits within the broader historical context of perceptions of magic and its practices; and
• a summary of what is known about the Munich Handbook, along with a very broad outline of its contents.

Richard, Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites. A Necromancer’s Handbook of the Fifteenth Century, University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press (1998):

• pp. 10-17 [sections entitled “The Mentality of the Necromancers and their Opponents” and “Demonic Magic and the Theory of Ritual”];
• pp. 24-30 [section entitled “Codex Latinus Monacensis 849”];
• pp. 34-39 [section entitled “The Composition of the Munich Handbook”].

Check Your Understanding

The Picatrix and the Munich Handbook share which of the following characteristics?

Works Cited

None for this page.

7d. Intellectual Frameworks

An Introduction to Intellectual Frameworks

• What is the world around us made of?
• Why does it behave the way it does (at least on human scales of space and time)?
• How did it come to be?
• Where does our planet fit within the whole?
• How and where do we humans fit within the above as beings both material and sentient?

The Intellectual Framework of Scientific Consensus

Today, broadly speaking, there is a widely shared scientific consensus featuring an internally consistent set of answers to all of these questions. An internally consistent theoretical system is one in which there are as few clashes between observed reality and what one would expect to happen through the application of theory, and in which the theory itself aims to have as few internal contradictions as possible. Internal consistency is one of the necessary characteristics of a theoretical system that is both broad in its explanatory power (it explains many different phenomena), and resilient in adapting to contradictory evidence (when something unexplainable is observed, and explanation can eventually be found without needing to step outside the framework).

The modern scientific consensus, built around discoveries arising from the application of the scientific method, did not arise fully formed: it has a long history of piecemeal (and sometimes accidental) development and honing. Moreover, it has a theory of causation (i.e., explaining what makes things happen or change) that assumes a physical, observable, and thereby explainable cause for the existence of and/or change in any given thing.

The above represents the “intellectual framework” within which modern science operates. It amounts to what modern science assumes as a given when it attempts to explain anything, whether that’s how to build a sturdy bridge or why predatory mammals have forward-facing binocular vision. The intellectual framework of the Medieval magical practitioner was radically different in many important ways from the modern scientific consensus in terms of how it answers the series of questions listed above, as well as in terms of its theory of causation. What both frameworks share, however, is a remarkable level of internal consistency, as we shall see below.

Intellectual Framework: Cosmology

Cosmology is a mental model of the physical universe. The one that has become widely accepted nowadays holds that

• the Earth is a smallish planet that rotates upon itself daily and around its closest star, the Sun, yearly
• a number of other planets similarly orbit the Sun at various distances
• the Moon orbits the Earth
• other stars appear to us as mere points of light on account of their great distance

This modern cosmology had not yet been conceived at the time when the Picatrix and the Munich Handbook were composed. Instead, their cosmology was drawn partly from scientific theories elaborated during Greco-Roman antiquity, and partly from Christian theology.

Ancient Model of the Universe

Ancient scientists (principally Aristotle [384 – 322 BC] and Claudius Ptolemy [c. 100 – c. 170]) posited an Earth-centred cosmos, with the other planets occupying a series of concentric, transparent spheres on the surface of which they traveled along in specific, predictable, circular paths around the Earth in the following order, from closest to farthest:

• Moon,
• Mercury,
• Venus,
• Sun,
• Mars,
• Jupiter,
• Saturn.

Beyond the planets was the firmament: the sphere of fixed stars that provided the stable backdrop against which the motions of the planets could be observed.

A fundamental distinction was drawn between the celestial realm (from the Moon upward) and the terrestrial or material realm (everything under the Moon). This distinction was based upon the types of motion observed in each case:

• the irregular, chaotic motion one observes here below, and
• the regular, predictable motion in the heavens.

Below the Moon, everything was thought to be composed of some varying mixture of the four basic elements:

• earth,
• air,
• fire, and
• water

Each of which was characterized by a pair or properties, temperature and moisture (i.e., earth is cold and dry, water is cold and wet, fire is hot and dry, air is hot and wet).

(Bruno, 1576)

The Properties of the Four Elements. Each element was characterized by two properties, temperature and degree of moisture. PeterHermesFurian/iStock/Getty Images

According to this model, the amazing variety of different material objects (living and non-living) we see around us results from the infinitely variable range of possible combinations of those four elements. One of the fundamental properties of matter is that these combinations of elements can change, which is how these theorists accounted for the growth and decay they saw around them.

By contrast, the celestial realm, with its regular and predictable set of motions, was considered more perfect precisely because of its predictability. We will return to this point with regard to how it intersects with Christian theology elsewhere. The brighter stars of the firmament created patterns that were identified with various culturally significant (mostly mythological) figures called constellations.

The more important constellations were considered those that the planets traveled through on their regular courses across the sky. Twelve in number, they became known as the Zodiac. On the basis of the fundamental principal of universal correspondences expressed in the form of “As above, so below”, to each of the constellations was attributed a set of properties and areas of influence over affairs in the material world. On the same principle, the planets were also

attributed certain properties and governances that were projected downward onto Earth. The fact that distant objects in the heavens could have influence over affairs on Earth via invisible correspondences was justified by observation: the Moon and the Sun clearly show their invisible influence via a phenomenon as widespread and powerful as the tides, so why wouldn’t such an influence extend to other earthly affairs?

shaunl/E+/Getty Images

In addition to the roles of the Zodiacal constellations and the seven planets, there was an additional layer to the Medieval understanding of celestial influences on earthly life that drew its origin from.

Required Reading Break

This following excerpt, drawn from the introduction to the English translation of the Picatrix provides a more elaborate description of the cosmological framework that the author of the text assumed as an intellectual starting-point for the practice of astral magic.

Dan Attrell and David Porreca, Picatrix. A Medieval Treatise on Astral Magic, University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press (2019).

• Introductionpp. 12-16 [section entitled “The Cosmology of thePicatrix”].

The Role of Analogy in Ancient Cosmology

It is important to note that modern notions of causality do not apply in the intellectual framework being described here. Instead, we see links and correspondences being justified by analogy. Indeed, the types of influence exerted by the planets and Zodiacal constellations were the result of analogical modes of thinking: because two things resemble each other, they must be linked in some way. The most obvious example of this phenomenon involves the planet Mars, which appears red in the sky. Since blood is also red, Mars governs the shedding of blood (it’s only red when it’s being shed), and by extension, warfare, anger, aggression, conflict, and so on. Equivalent sets of governances were attached for similar reasons of analogy to each of the planets and each of the constellations. The Picatrix features several lengthy passages where the properties of all the celestial objects and constellations are set out in intricate detail.

The Picatrix expresses this notion of connectedness between things that share qualities in this way (4.5.11, p.244): “It is said in the books of the wise that the binding of spirits with harmonies and appropriate substances consists primarily in love.” What the author means by “love” here is a sense of natural attraction of like to like – similar things, like members of the same species, come together naturally due to their natural affinities. The magical practitioner, however, is aware of the hidden natural connections that unite things that, on the surface, seem vastly different (e.g., the links that connect planets to specific animals to specific plants to specific gemstones).

What lies beyond the firmament, however, is of particular interest because it is in that realm that the overlay of Christian theology has its greatest impact.

Check Your Understanding

Which of the following is an example of analogical thinking?

Christian Adaptations to the Cosmological Framework

In the infinite space beyond the sphere of fixed stars was where angels, the souls of the blessed (i.e., the saints), and God resided. It is crucial to note that the great distance that separates the material world from the heavenly realm beyond the stars was not just physical, but also qualitative and moral. The things that are really important in this intellectual framework are the ones that exist beyond the stars.

The farther from that infinite space one is:

• the farther from God one is,
• the more corruptible,
• the denser,
• the less perfect, and
• the less moral good one was in the presence of.

The universe was thought to be Earth-centred physically, but the physical world was precisely the one that mattered the least conceptually, as if the physical world were this messy, constantly changing and imperfect realm that is almost as far as can be from the infinite perfect changeless goodness that is God. The only place that could be farther from God than the material world of the four elements is the space that lies under our feet, and that is where the Christians placed hell in this cosmological framework, as will be explained below.

Like God, the firmament of fixed stars is basically changeless. Unlike God, who is everywhere at once and therefore motionless, the firmament has only one form of motion: its perceived nightly drift across the sky. Moving outward from God, but inward through each of the planets in turn, each planet moves more and more quickly until one reaches the Moon, which manifests the greatest amount of change of any of the celestial objects and is also the farthest of them from God. Moreover, distance from God was not only a question of motion, but also of physical density and resistance to the passage of light. As a result, each of the four elements was thought to have its own “home”, or proper place, that was stacked in order of increasing density as one moved from the sphere of the Moon downward toward Earth.

Four Spheres of the Sublunar Realm. A graphic representation of the four spheres of the sublunar (or, material) realm, with Earth at the centre, followed by water, air, and fire. © University of Waterloo

In this model (depicted in the figure, Four Spheres of the Sublunar Realm), the proper place for the element of fire came first (i.e., highest above, from Earth’s perspective), since it was considered the most “rarefied” (or, “least dense”) of the elements, followed by air, then water, then earth. Combined with the principle whereby any individual sub-part of an element seeks out its “home” as a default mode of natural behaviour, the model explains the generally observed behaviour of each of the four elements, such as why fire seems to want to rise, why rain falls, why water flows downward toward oceans, and why solid things like rocks fall until they are stopped by another one of their kind.

This model based on how the physical “density” of the four elements interacts with the behaviour of physical light in ways that inspired its extension into the theological and moral realms as well. The topmost, least dense of the elements, fire, is the element considered most like God: it is itself an emitter of light, and also seeks to extend itself into things that are equipped to receive it (i.e., a fire will spread among combustible materials just as the word of God will spread among those ready to receive it). Air, the next denser element, allows light through it unhindered, while water (being denser yet) does so with more resistance. Earth, and the realm of objects that are made from it, is the farthest from God that one can get in the physical world; so far, in fact, that even physical light cannot penetrate it. It is when this model is extended into the moral realm that one can deduce the positioning of hell – the absolute farthest spot possible from God both physically and morally, but not coincidentally immediately next to our world – in the centre of the Earth.

Among other things, the importance of all the above lies in the fact that the spirits that are being summoned in the context of the Picatrix and the Munich Handbook (and in summoning magic beyond these two books) are being summoned from some place, and that place is generally thought to be beyond the firmament.

Check Your Understanding

In the Medieval intellectual framework, distance from God equates with

The Intellectual Framework: Neoplatonic Hierarchy of Being

Another component of the intellectual framework that is the backdrop of how magic was thought to operate was the notion of a hierarchy of being (also known as a “great chain of being”) that was deduced from the writings of Plato (428/27 or 424/23 – 348/47 BC) and elaborated by later generations of his intellectual successors, such as Plotinus (c. 204/5 – 270), Porphyry (c. 234 – c. 305), Iamblichus (c. 245 – c. 325), and Proclus (412 – 485). This hierarchy can be conceived as a pyramid (or as a ladder) that ranks everything in the universe according to the type of soul it was thought to have, and the type of motion of which it was capable, since one of the defining characteristics of a soul is precisely its capacity to imbue motion to whatever matter it inhabits. The Latin word for soul, anima, is the source of our word “animate”, which means “capable of movement”. Therefore, types of soul and types of motion amount to the same thing in this scheme. The hierarchy of being is illustrated in the figure, The Neoplatonic Hierarchy of Being.

The Neoplatonic Hierarchy of Being. This schematic representation summarizes the notions encompassed under the Neoplatonic Hierarchy of Being. © University of Waterloo

At the bottom we see inert matter (i.e., inanimate, soulless), such as rocks, water, and other things that don’t move unless something else moves them. Above that, we see the vegetable world, since plants have the capacity to move in space by virtue of their growth, so they are in possession of a vegetable soul. Above them are animals, who not only have a vegetable soul since they too can grow (puppies become dogs, etc.), but they can also move themselves about by their own means (legs, fins, wings), meaning that they have an animal soul. Above animals are people, since we grow and move around, but we also can reason: humans thus have a rational soul in addition to our animal and vegetable souls. Our rational soul has a notionally infinite range: we can project our minds to anywhere in space or time at will via the imagination, but our bodies are what hinder us from actually engaging in such travels as whole beings.

Humans are the only beings in the hierarchy who have simultaneously a rational soul and a physical body, which makes our position in the hierarchy unique. The latter we share with all other physical beings, and the rational soul we share with the next layer upward from us in the hierarchy, which belongs to disembodied, rational souls. These are angels, demons, and spirits. The position of humans in the hierarchy is unique because we are the only beings who can willfully transcend our position in the hierarchy. Indeed, by cultivating our rational souls and rejecting our bodily impulses, we become more like angels and less like animals. Above the angels and demons is God, who is at the top because of his uniqueness, indivisibility, perfection, infinity, goodness, and power. Each of these properties becomes less present the farther down the hierarchy one looks.

In the second illustration of the hierarchy of being, Great Chain of Being, taken from a 1579 drawing, we see the full scheme, including its Christian adaptations, integrated and illustrated in one place: God at the very top, followed by choirs of angels, people, animals, plants, inert matter, and at the very bottom, hell, complete with the fallen angels (on the right) taking a swift route downward. Note that each main layer in this hierarchy could be subdivided according to the same principles: birds can fly, and therefore are superior to other animals because of their capacity to be physically closer to God; by virtue of their tallness, trees are superior to shrubs, which are in turn superior to grasses, which are above mosses and lichens. Incidentally, when applied to humans, the hierarchy of being also helped to justify and reinforce notions of social and racial hierarchy, with the figureheads of the Christian Church poised naturally (from their perspective) at the top.

The Rational Soul Can Project Itself Anywhere. People have a rational soul, because we have the ability to reason and thereby our minds can go anywhere via our imagination and memory. romulof/iStock/Getty Images

Great Chain of Being. 1579 drawing of the Great Chain of Being from Didacus Valades, Rhetorica Christiana.

(Valedes, 1579)

Great Chain of Being. 1579 drawing of the Great Chain of Being from Didacus Valades, Rhetorica Christiana.

The Hierarchy of Being and Magic

The hierarchy of being is also helpful in understanding how magic was thought to work. Just as analogical thinking fueled notions about what kinds of influence the celestial bodies had upon the material world, analogical thinking also forms the basis of the body of knowledge that the magical practitioner had to master in order to achieve success in his operations. Indeed, it is the hidden (i.e., “occult”) vertical linkages between the layers of the hierarchy of being that were the special concern of magicians. In order to achieve the purpose of their ritual, they needed to understand precisely which components from the various layers of the hierarchy they needed to use. Each ritual had its own objective, and said objective is what determined what ingredients of what type to use in combination with which prayers, which manipulations, and which angels, demons, or spirits to call upon. In other words, each ritual had its own combination of inanimate objects, plant materials, animal parts, prayers and invocations of specific disembodied rational souls in order to achieve its end. In the hierarchy of being conceived of as a pyramid, one could notionally trace a more-or-less vertical line connecting the necessary components from each layer. These vertical links were determined based on analogy. To pursue the example that involved Mars when we discussed the influence of celestial objects earlier, a ritual to achieve success in a conflict might require some form of red or hard stone, a plant that has the property of being hot, blood or some other body part of an animal considered fierce (e.g., a lion), and prayers to the appropriate planet (in this case, Mars), conducted when Mars would be appropriately positioned with respect to the other planets and the signs of the Zodiac.

Importance of Gems and Crystals

The hierarchy of being even explains the particular importance of gems and crystals to the magical practitioner. Their tendency toward bright colours and their ability to allow the passage of light (and therefore of divine emanation) already made them stand out from other mineral substances. It was observed, however, that crystals grow. They are the only examples of inert matter to have such a capacity, and were therefore thought to possess a basic form of soul, which made them more potent than ordinary rocks in the context of magical operations.

The Notion of Occult Links and Natural Affinities

The notion of there being occult or hidden links between things, as well as that of there being a natural affinity between some things and not others, is repeatedly observable through the action of magnets. They cling to ferrous materials, but not others, and when placed at the tip of a floating board, the board will spin so as to point toward one of what we now call the Earth’s magnetic poles. Such phenomena served to confirm and reinforce belief in the internal consistency and accuracy of the entire intellectual framework we are discussing.

The Planets as Rational Souls and the 5thElement

Note that the regularity – and therefore the predictability – of the planets’ motion across the firmament was thought to occur because those planets were themselves rational souls. The material world composed of the four elements was thought to be inanimate – literally, it had no soul. The motions we observe in it seem to occur by random chance so much more often (e.g., storms, volcanoes, earthquakes) than similarly random occurrences in the heavens beyond the Moon – the nature of shooting stars, supernovae, and comets were thus the topics of perpetual debate. In the sublunar world, only the behaviour of things that have some form of soul could be predicted with any kind of reliability (e.g., seasonal growth of plants, habits of animals, behaviour of humans). By extension, the even more predictable and regular motion observed among the objects in the sky could only have been the product of rational souls untroubled by a material existence attached to the four elements. They were thought to be made of a fifth element – the “quintessence” – that is immaterial, shines by its own light, and only exists beyond the sphere of the Moon.

It is important to note that the model described above is a simplified synthesis of notions that were never described as succinctly in any ancient or medieval source. The Picatrix itself contains three separate descriptions of a “hierarchy of being”, none of which are identical at the level of detail.

Check Your Understanding

Which of the following statements does not apply to the Neoplatonic Hierarchy of Being?

Intellectual Framework: Al-Kindī’s Theory of Rays

Now that the general framework in which magic was thought to operate has been described, we need to take a look at the mechanisms whereby the celestial realm could project its influences down onto the material world. The author who most succinctly explained the phenomena in question was a Baghdad-based Arab author by the name of Al-Kindī (c. 801 – c. 873) whose principal treatise on the topic was entitled On Rays and survives only in its Latin translation De radiis. In this text, he explains that rays emanate outward constantly from every object in the universe and that they reflect the nature of their source object.

These rays share in all the physical properties that apply to light:

• spherical propagation from a source,
• immateriality,
• diffusion of intensity in proportion to distance from its source,
• always travels predictably in straight lines.

When extended by Christian thinkers (such as Robert Grosseteste, c. 1175 – 1253, who provided the most succinct treatment of this topic in his treatise On Light [De luce], an English translation of which is listed among your supplementary readings) to apply to God, we can see how Al-Kindī’s theory could be combined with the idea that all of creation is an emanation from God to produce a cosmology and a theory of physics (remember how motion was a factor in the makeup of the universe) that are both completely compatible with theological truths derived from the Bible. Remember, God inhabits the infinite space beyond the sphere of fixed stars, so from the perspective of the material world, divine emanations appear to be moving downward toward us. Since light was thought to share its physical behaviour with the divine emanation that spread creation forth from its source (God), the result of creation would logically see those things most like God be positioned close to him. This conclusion explains both the placement of disembodied rational souls like angels and spirits closest to God in the hierarchy of being, and the placement of the Zodiac and the planets in the heavens, and even the elements in the sublunar realm.

Animal Sacrifice and Suffumigations

Al-Kindī’s theory of rays that emanate from every thing in the universe also helps explain the frequent need for animal sacrifice as part of magical rituals. Indeed, the act of ritually slaying an animal was thought to sever the link between that creature’s body and soul, producing a sort of invisible explosion of rays. These rays would bear with them in a concentrated burst the essence and inherent properties of that animal. This explosion, when conducted at the astrologically appropriate moment and accompanied by the appropriately corresponding prayers, gestures, actions, locations, other ingredients/components, and suffumigations (i.e., the kind of animal being sacrificed matches with the right planet that is positioned in the right constellation and not cancelled out by other planets or constellations, with the practitioner reciting the prayers directed at drawing down the influence of that specific planet while burning specially concocted blends of incense that are made of the right kinds of herbs, resins, congealed liquids, and/or animal parts [the resulting smoke is what is known as the ‘suffumigation’], all of which have some analogical link with each other that harmonize and collectively amplify the power and effectiveness of each individual part), harnesses the combined influences of all those factors to produce the practitioner’s desired effect. Knowledge of these combinations (which can be represented as vertical lines running through the hierarchy of being) is what magical practitioners claimed as their specialty.

Required Reading Break

The following reading provides a fuller description of Al-Kindī’s ideas on celestial rays and how these were thought to provide the basis for magical operations.

• Liana, Saif, “Arabic Theories of Astral Magic: The De radiis and thePicatrix,”Arabic Influences on Early Modern Occult Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan (2015)pp. 30-36

Check Your Understanding

Medieval theories take the properties of which of the following things as a model for explaining celestial influences upon earthly events?

Works Cited

Bruno, Giordano. 1576. “2. MACROCOSMOS: FROM ANAXIMANDER TO EINSTEIN.” *neutrino.aquaphoenix.com.*http://neutrino.aquaphoenix.com/un-esa/universe/universe-chapter2.html.

Valades, Didacus. 1579. “Great Chain of Being.” Rhetorica Christina. Wikimedia Commons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_chain_of_being#/media/File:Great_Chain_of_Being_2.png

7e. Spirits and Summoning

Defining Spirits

The spirits that one sees in the magical texts we are examining are disembodied, rational souls. In part due to the very different origins of the two principal texts we are using for this unit, the spirits are treated somewhat differently in each.

In particular, Arab theorists, such as Abu Ma‛shar (787 – 886), proposed that all celestial objects (e.g., planets and stars) are in fact:

• conscious,
• spiritual (i.e., non-material),
• living beings who are the agency behind the stellar and planetary influences on the world below, and
• have their own specific term in Arabic: “rūḥāniyyāt” (spiritual powers).

It is these beings whom the magical practitioner attempts to convince by means of appropriately conducted ritual with the correctly corresponding ingredients to invest their powers in a talisman or in the results of the ritual.

Spirits that are Excluded

Some spirits are explicitly excluded from consideration here. In particular, those that show up uninvited (e.g., ghosts) are the subject of a different unit in this class, and are treated in detail there. A similar exclusion applies to spirits that were believed to be associated with specific natural places, such as faeries as they appear in popular folklore.

Please note here that these exclusions are imposed by the need to set up our own mental structures in an attempt to better understand material that is sometimes stubbornly resistant to modern categorization. The following statement from the Picatrix (4.7.23, p.255) brings together in one place the central focus of several of the units of this course, as if to emphasize the ultimate unity of the material we’re dealing with. Note that the passage is made up of a few lines taken from the midst of a detailed page-long ritual:

If you gaze into that [ritually prepared] mirror and guard it well, know that through it you will bring together men,winds, spirits, demons, the living, and the dead.All shall be obedient to you and heed your command. … Suffumigate with those things, and instruct the winds of your desires; they shall enact your will. Guard this, and heed everything I have said. You will thereby have power overwinds,humans, anddemons, and you will do what you wish. [emphasis mine](Picatrix, 4.7.23, p.255)

Required Reading Break

The following excerpt provides a deeper understanding of the intersection between Aristotle’s philosophy and the Arabic thinkers who assumed the existence and power of celestial influences on Earth. The passage specifically addresses the planetary spirits that feature so prominently in the Picatrix.

• Liana Saif, “From Ġāyat al-ḥakīm to Šams al-maʿārif: Ways of Knowing and Paths of Power in Medieval Islam,”Arabica, 64 (2017).pp. 299-309.

Check Your Understanding

From a Medieval person’s viewpoint, which of the following statements does not apply to spirits?

Defining Summoning

In order to keep the amount of material within reasonable limits, this section is adopting a fairly restricted definition of what it is to “summon” a spirit. The following criteria must apply:

• The ‘spirit’ in question must meet the definition supplied in the immediately preceding section;
• The ‘spirit’ must be ritually called to the presence (physical or mental) of the practitioner or someone else involved in the ritual
• There must be some defined purpose for the act of summoning (i.e., one doesn’t summon a spirit just for its own sake)

Not all magical practices require the immediate presence of an otherworldly entity. In many cases, invoking the name (or names) of a supernatural entity is sufficient to harness its power or influence without requiring its actual presence. The material we are considering in the context of this portion of the course will not be including the mere naming of spirits, but rather instances where the spirits are present and contribute somehow to the ritual.

Summoned Spirits in theMunich Handbook

In the introduction to his edition of the text, Richard Kieckhefer provides a good overview of how summoned spirits function in the Munich Handbook. Of the forty-seven subdivisions in the text, thirteen feature conjurations that bring the spirit(s) into the physical presence of the operator (or to the target(s) of the ritual). In several other cases (eight out of forty-seven, to be precise), the spirits do not manifest physically, but rather only in reflective surfaces such as a mirror or a sword (where the spirit is meant to supply the operator with information, i.e., divination), or they become visible by candlelight in the anointed fingernail of a child medium, or on a polished ram’s shoulder blade bone. There are also singular instances of a ritual meant for constraining a spirit (as well as constraining people or animals), and another that provides a generic preparation for conjuring spirits.

Excerpts from twelve of the thirteen rituals that involve spirits appear below, translated by Richard Kieckhefer in the introductory portions of his edition. The excerpted passages below are intended to show the nature of the spirits, how they are conjured, for what purpose, and how they interact with the operator and any others present.

Required Reading Break

Read the following excerpted passages from the Munich Handbook. The main task for students will be to compare the role of spirits as they appear in the Munich Handbook with what one can observe from the assortment of selections from the recently published English translation of the Picatrix by Attrell and Porreca that appear in the next section.

• Richard, Kieckhefer,Forbidden Rites. A Necromancer’s Handbook of the Fifteenth Century, University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press (1998):No. 1 For Gaining Knowledge of the Seven Liberal Arts (pp.117-119)No. 3 For Arousing a Woman’s Love (pp.82-85)No. 5 For Arousing Hatred Between Friends (pp.72-73)No. 6 For Obtaining a Banquet (pp.47-50)No. 7 For Obtaining a Castle (pp.50-53)No. 9 For Obtaining a Horse (pp.54-56)No. 10 For Resuscitating a Dead Person (pp.61-63)No. 11 For Invisibility (pp. 59-60)Notes to pp.47-63 are on pp.66-68No. 13 For Constraining a Man, Woman, Spirit, or Beast (pp. 89-90)No. 18 The Mirror of Floron, for Revelation of Past, Present, and Future (pp.104-105)No. 27 For Obtaining Information About a Theft by Gazing into a Fingernail (pp.108-110)No. 41 For Discovering Hidden Treasure in Sleep (pp.114-115)

Then read the following chapters. The first of the chapters listed below provides a detailed overview of how spirits are summoned in the Munich Handbook, showing the common elements that feature in all of the rituals that involve the summoning of spirits. The second chapter deals specifically with a prominent sub-set of these spirits, namely, demons.

• Richard, Kieckhefer,Forbidden Rites. A Necromancer’s Handbook of the Fifteenth Century, University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press (1998): 126-169.Ch. 6 Formulas for Commanding Spirits: Conjurations and ExorcismsCh. 7 Demons and Daimons: The Spirits Conjured

Check Your Understanding

Spirits in the Munich Handbook take which of the following statements forms:

Summoned Spirits in thePicatrix

In this section, we are going to look at specific passages from the Picatrix that are concerned with the summoning of spirits. These passages divide fairly neatly into three sub-sections, each of which shall be examined in turn. While reading these passages, try to keep in mind the general background information we’ve discussed so far, and note the conceptual parallels (and occasional divergences). Also pay attention to the general tone of the passages: the author was keenly aware that he was discussing lofty, intellectually demanding, and deadly-serious matters, not parlour tricks.

Background as Expressed in thePicatrix

Know that this science is called “magic.” We call “magic” any act someone performs in which the spirit and all the senses are engaged throughout the whole process and through which miracles are produced to the extent that the senses are driven to their contemplation and wonder. Magic is difficult to perceive through the senses and lies hidden from sight on account of its similarity to sense perception. This is because divine powers have been set aside for perceiving these things and using them. This knowledge, however, is too deep and powerful for the intellect. One part of this magical science is practical, on account of how it works by operating from spirit to spirit, making those things similar that are not so by their essence. Working with images, however, involves spirit in matter, and alchemical work involves matter in matter. Generally, we use the term “magic” for everything hidden from the senses whose causes most of humanity cannot perceive. The wise call these images “talismans” which literally means “force-bearers” because those who fashion images do so through force, by conquering the substances from which they are composed. To succeed, one builds images with mathematical proportions, influences, and celestial effects. Such talismans are composed from substances appropriate for receiving the celestial influences. This is done at appropriate times, and the influences are further fortified by suffumigationsthat attract specific spirits to those particular images. [emphasis mine](Picatrix1.2.1, p.41)

Aristotle claimed that the first man who worked with images and the one to whom the spirits first appeared was Caraphzebiz. He was the first to discover the magical art. The spirits were first manifest to him performing wondrous things. They unveiled a “Perfect Nature” in regard to science, causing him to understand the secrets of nature and knowledge. Thus spoke the familiar spirit: “Hold me with you, but reveal me to no one except to those who invoke me and sacrifice in my name.” This sage, who was made wise working through the spirits, benefited himself by their powers and actions in magical rituals. Between the wise Caraphzebiz and another sage named Amenus (this Amenus was the second one to work on spirits and magical operations), 1,260 years passed. In Amenus’s teaching, he warned that any sage who wishes to perform a magical ritual and protect himself from the power of the spirits must cut himself off from all inner anxieties and every body of knowledge other than this one. All the senses, the mind, and the thoughts that are turned toward something exclusively are capable of acquiring it more easily.(Picatrix3.6.3, p.152)

Note that neither of the names (aside from Aristotle) mentioned in the passage above correspond to any known historical figure.

[A]ccording to the Indians, spirits reveal themselves as bodies that speak and make demonstrations such that they cause kings to love and hate whomever they wish or to produce and withdraw whatever they desire through their effects. This was done according to the procedures of the ancient sages who made images of various figures, including prayers at the correct hours relative to whatever they sought. They say that images are the spirits of the chosen time because the works done through them are like miracles (or things that seem miraculous). This is because their works are established by natural powers for the natural powers produce wondrous effects just as the red stone jacinth (that is, the ruby), by its innate virtue, supports and reinforces bearers against evil, sickness, epidemics, and many other ills. [. . .] The images must be fashioned out of the materials at the hours and minutes naturally appropriate to the desired effect. Know and understand the property of the natural virtues of the materials used to craft images, and build them according to the power and effect you desire.(Picatrix2.5.6, pp.88-89)

We seek the powers of the planetary spirits so that they might join their own figures, but we do not comprehend the form of spirit, nor could we understand it by experience except in the form of a human, animal, or another thing. We thus conclude that every power of the planets manifests most powerfully in images.(Picatrix3.5.5, p.148)

The reception of planetary spirits according to the opinion of the ancients, however, is as related below. First, it behooves you to know about the planet’s nature you desire to use for the reception of its powers and spirits and to gather their powers into the chosen figure or image, as well as the natures of things connected to a specific planet, as was touched upon above (namely, on colours, foods, incenses, and suffumigations). Then ensure that the colour of the surface of the image’s body be a similar colour to that of the chosen planet; the incense to the incenses; and the colour of the image’s clothes – and those of the operator – must also be suited to the colour of the chosen planet; so too should the suffumigations belong to the incenses suited to that planet. The inner body of the operator should belong to the nature of that planet, that is, one should eat foods assigned to the chosen planet as much as one should for that operator’s body to sustain a complexion of humours suited to the chosen planet.(Picatrix3.5.5, pp.147-148)

Those sages who wrote much on these topics also discussed a subtlety and sharpness of the mind. When they sought to achieve the level of the higher ones who established the laws, they first had to punish their bodies and purify themselves of all uncleanliness. This they began in the first hour of Sunday, which day and hour are properly attributed to the Sun. They fasted for forty days without meat and were nourished by the things grown in the earth, seeds, and herbs. They would diminish their food intake each day unto the fortieth day; then on the last of the forty days, they ate one fortieth part of what they had eaten on the first day. Throughout the whole fast and afterward, drugs were employed by which the desire for eating and drinking was removed (the opportunity for which they never lacked). After they did this, they discovered a subtlety and sharpness of mind in their spirit. They understood everything they wished while strengthening and enhancing their spirit and senses. Within them the earthly and gross parts were diminished; then subtlety and insight manifested clearly within them. The taste or longing for ascending to the higher world and the place from which the spirit comes became evident. They abhorred the tastes, comforts, and delights of the world. Once they did this, it was fitting that they drew upon the powers of the heavens for they would say and do wondrous things. They realized their desires in past and future things by knowing the periods of their lives. Thus, they had the power of establishing laws as they pleased,and the spirits of the stars were obedient to them. [emphasis mine](Picatrix2.12.53, p.127)

Ancient Greek sages used to perform tricks for altering vision and making things appear that do not exist. They called this science of imagesyetelegehuz, which translates as “the attraction of celestial spirits”. The sages applied this name to all facets of ceremonial magic. They came to such knowledge by no means other than astrology, and they could not proceed beyond astrology until they knew (i) all the figures on the eights sphere, (ii) their motion, (iii) the motion of the other spheres, (iv) the division of the twelve signs with their own degrees and natures, (v) the qualities of each sign and the implications of each upon worldly affairs, (vi) the parts of each of the planets in those twelve signs, (vii) the movements of the Zodiac and at what times other bodies are conjoined with them, (viii) the natures of the seven planets and the Head and Tail of the Dragon, (ix) their location in the heavens and the meaning of each relative to the things of this world, (x) how to predict each of their ascendants and descendants, (xi) which ones rise above and fall before the others, and (xii) their radical significations; these are the fundamentals of astrology.(Picatrix1.2.5, p.43)

Aristotle said: “A learned individual is one who understands the spirits’ separations, unions, and natures – the layout of the macrocosm and microcosm. They know and understand the mutual separation and union of all things, both spiritual and material.”(Picatrix3.11.24, p.201)

[T]he images operate by the power of similitude because an image is nothing more than the power of the celestial bodies flowing into matter. So when the matter of the body is disposed to receiving the influence of those celestial bodies or planets, and likewise the body is disposed to influencing the material bodies of the images, then that image will be stronger and more disposed to effect everything sought and desired; similarly, the gift of the planet will be more perfect and complete. For example: when you wish to begin crafting an image, consider the shape and the reason for which you wish to fashion the image as well as the material. Let all these things be harmonious with one another in similitude. Similarly, let them be in the powers and influences of the planets governing that work. When things are ordered thus, the image will be strong and complete, and its effects will follow and be visible.The spirit that has been placed in the image will manifest with effect. Then the effects of that planet will be clear to you as-is, and its mode of reception [. . .] will be manifest and apparent. Indeed, practitioners of any era who make images and ignore these things do wrong. [emphasis mine](Picatrix2.6.1, p.89)

When you will have made these images thus, make a censer [. . .] such that it is completely enclosed except at the top where a hole should allow smoke to exit. The smoke of burning substances should not escape elsewhere. Moreover, have a building set aside into which only those involved in your ritual may enter (if at all possible) and only at the time of performance. This building should have a place exposed to the heavens. It should be decked in the herbs of that ritual’s ruling planet alone – there ought to be nothing in it other than those herbs. Then inhale the suffumigations according to the chosen planet’s nature – burn it in the fire of that censer. [. . .] All these things should occur in an appropriately selected hour with the ritual’s ruling planet being as mentioned. These orders having been fulfilled carefully, the smoke of this suffumigation ought to reach the sphere of the signs in a straight line. It should not be intersected by the rays of other planets contrary to the elected planet. If your ritual involved those things of the lesser world,the planetary spirit should be harnessed, and its power should descend through its own rays down to the Earth into the ritual. Then the thing sought will be fulfilled. [emphasis mine](Picatrix3.5.5, p.149)

Some Indian sage who had been very well taught in this body of knowledge combined compound suffumigations and terrestrial natures with celestial natures. The Indians used to operate with suffumigations in all their works and effectsand thereby attract the spirits of the planetsand make them enter whatever they wished. Thus, the sages accomplished whatever they desired. This work is not designed for one single objective: rather, it is useful in its single effect or product to the rituals of each and every planet, as we have often said in this book. Thus, rituals are conjoined with suffumigations. [emphasis mine](Pictrix4.6.1, p.245)

The suffumigation of Saturn. Take 100 oz. each of mandrake fruits and dried olive leaves; 10 oz. each of black myrobalan seeds and dried black chickpeas; 30 oz. each of black crow’s brains and dried crane brains; 40 oz. each of pig blood and dried monkey blood. Grind, and blend everything well. From this, make 8 oz. tablets. In making them, operate with the spiritual power of Saturn, namely with the thing that we have discussed in book 3, chapter six of this volume. Next, compress them, and set them aside for use.(Picatrix4.6.2, p.245)

Difficulties, Hazards and Precautions

The specifics of these magical rituals must be hidden from humankind and the light of day. They should not be performed anywhere the Sun might enter. Let no other individual know about these rituals unless he be faithful in his friendship and persuaded in the work. Let him be neither a scoffer nor a disbeliever in the works and powers of the celestial spirits, in their potencies which have effect upon this world, or in the belief that these works ensue from these spirits.(Picatrix1.5.36, p.60)

The [ancient] sages had no intrinsic knowledge about the spirits, nor did they come to any except through great difficulty, study, and toil. They achieved what they could from this effort, first in quietude, removed from all anxiety or concern for this world, and they studied with continued zeal and the good minds and memories they possessed.(Picatrix2.11.1, p.115)

Aristotle said in his books on magical images: “The best and most excellent effects that images can have come from the seven planets. The effects are more durable when a fortunate planet is looking on.” He meant this in regards to drawing the spirits and powers down from heaven to Earth. Furthermore, he said that there are names of spirits that if one were to invoke and draw them down, their powers in their respective hour would kill the invoker unless he was wise and well-instructed in the nature of that spirit (and of the planet appropriate to this ritual for drawing it down) that he might receive it into his body.(Picatrix1.5.37, p.61)

Aristotle says [. . .] that the spirits sometimes attack those working on the aforesaid stones by cursing their natures. When you wish to free the operators from this infirmity so that their natures may be returned to their normal states, give them to drink the medicine written out below. Take ½ oz. of human blood, and mix it with 4 oz. of sweet almond oil and 2 oz. of rabbit’s marrow or brain, and mix them with 1 oz. of donkey urine. Combine these things, and give them to drink to the ones suffering (every day for nine days on an empty stomach). By this medicine they will be cured, and their natures will be made right. The seven evil planetary spirits, whatever kind they were, will be driven from them with their natural complexion remaining strong.(Picatrix3.10.6, pp.192-193)

[T]here are among the names of God some words that cause spirits to descend from the heavens to the Earth. Were one who works with those names and words not wise and learned in the natures of spiritual matters, the power of the descending spirit would kill them. None but the wise may have the grace of working with those names. [. . .] Then, celestial things above will be joined with terrestrial matter, descending all the way to the center of the Earth.(Picatrix4.4.61, p.239)

Whenever doing these things, work with the power of the planet for which the compound is made (that is, with the spiritual power just as was touched upon in book 3, chapter six). While performing this work, do not be silent: speak the words and prayers of that planet continuously. Be on guard lest anyone see these suffumigations and that neither the Sun’s nor the Moon’s rays touch them in any way. Set them aside in a chosen place, and tuck them away in a metal container. Make this case from the mineral of the planet to which the ritual pertains. If you do not do those things as described, the ritual will be ruined – know that destruction will come to the operator. After all these things, I will provide you the remedies in order that you not be ruined by that ritual.(Picatrix4.6.9, p.246)

This compound guards and protects those who make suffumigations from the harm caused by the planetary spirits. The strength and power of this compound is universal to all the planets’ rituals and communication with their spirits. It is also very powerful against poisons since it protects and guards the operators so that they might not be harmed by these spirits. Its composition is this: take 6 oz. of scorpion brain; 4 oz. of white dog’s brain; 8oz each of peacock and quail brain; 4 oz. of sparrow brain; 2 oz. of hawk brain; 6 oz. of male hedgehog’s blood; and 20 oz. each of donkey and hoopoe brain. Mix and allow all of these brains to dry. Afterwards, grind them up, and add to them 4 oz. each of white and yellow sandalwood, saffron, cinnamon, and spikenard; 1 oz. of pine resin; 20 oz. of amber; 6 oz. of ammoniac; 10 oz. of frankincense; 4 oz of nutmeg; 2 oz. of camphor; 16 oz. ofquia(a certain kind of gum); and 4 oz. of mandrake. Mix everything together once well ground, and blend with well-made moringa oil. Make seven round pills from these, and dry them in the shade. While you are making these planetary compounds, utter their prayers and those of their angels continuously. Once the pills are made as described, set them aside in a box made from the seven metals of the seven planets so that the spirits of the planets abide in them continuously. One who wished to perform one of the rituals of the seven planets or the celestial operations should carry one of those capsules, and they will not be harmed by the planetary spirits. The ancient sages would protect themselves from harmful effects of those spirits with this mixture. Know that this is an utmost and very useful secret, so guard and hide it well.(Picatrix4.6.12, pp.247-248)

Prayers and Names of Planetary Spirits

How one can speak with Saturn. When you desire to speak with Saturn and you want to ask something from him, it is proper that you wait until he enters a favourable position. The best of these is in Libra (his exaltation), then in Aquarius, which is the house of his joy, and last in Capricorn, which is his second house. If you cannot have him in any of these three locations, place him eastward on any of his boundaries, triplicities, or in any of his angles (among these, the best is mid-heaven) or subsequent locations, direct in his course, and in the masculine quadrant east of mid-heaven. Beware of the harm he causes and his unfortunate aspects, the worst of which is his fourth aspect toward Mars. Do not have him descending. A fundamental (which you should heed carefully) is to ensure that the planet himself be in a favourable position and quality, removed from unfortunate aspects. Positioned thus, Saturn is like a well-meaning individual with a courageous heart and a great mighty will, who can hardly deny whatever is sought from him. When this planet is retrograde in motion or falling from the angles, he is like a man filled with anger and ill will, who quickly denies everything sought from him. When Saturn is in a favorable position, as touched upon above, and you wish to speak with him and pray to him, dress yourself in black clothes – that is, let all the clothes on your body be black – with a black cape tailored in the manner of a professor. Wear black shoes. Go to a place assigned to such a task, remote from mankind and humbly chosen. Walk there with a humble will, in the fashion of a Jew, for Saturn was the lord of their Sabbath. Hold an iron ring in your hand and carry an iron censer. In it, place burning charcoal upon which you should set the suffumigation mixture whose recipe is this: take equal parts of opium, storax (which is an herb), saffron, seed of laurel, carob, wormwood, lanolin, colocynth, and the head of a black cat. Grind them up, and mix everything together with the urine o a black she-goat in equal parts. Make tablets out of it. When you want to operate, place one of these on the burning coals of the censer. Keep the others aside. Then turn your face toward the part wherever Saturn stands at the time. While smoke rises from the censer, say this prayer:“O lord on high whose name is great and stands firm in a place above all the heavens’ planets, he whom God placed sublime and lofty! You are lord Saturn, cold and dry, dark, author of good, honest in your friendship, true in your promises, enduring and persevering in your amity and hatred. Your perception is far and deep; honest in your words and promises, alone, lonely, removed from others in your works, with sadness and pain, removed from rejoicing and festivities. You are old, ancient, wise, and the despoiler of good intellect. You are a doer of good and of evil. Wretched and sad is he who is cured by your misfortunes. The man who attains your fortunes is blessed indeed. In you God placed power and strength and a spirit that does both good and evil. I ask you, father and lord, by your splendid names and wondrous acts, that you should do such-and-such a thing for me.“Then speak the request you desire, and throw yourself to the ground with your face always toward Saturn with humility, sadness, and gentleness. Your will should be pure and firm. Repeat these words many times. Do these things on Saturday in his hour. Know that your request will be fulfilled with effect.(Picatrix3.7.16, pp.158-159)

The Spirit of Saturn called Redimez is the one binding all his compound names and separate names and his parts below, above, and elsewhere. All this is according to the opinion of Aristotle in the book he wrote to Alexander called Antimaquis, wherein he discussed how the powers of the planets and their spirits ought to be attracted. Their names, divided according to the opinion of Aristotle himself, are these. His spirit of above is called Toz, the spirit below is Corez, to the right Deytyz, to the left Deriuz, to the front Talyz, and to the read Daruz. His motion in his sphere, his progression in the signs, and his motion in the spirits - all the above are joined together in this name: Tahaytuc. All these names are contained in this first name, Redimez, and this name is the root and source of all the names mentioned.(Picatrix3.9.1, p.184)

Aristotle talks about these things in the aforesaid book assigning these names to these spirits by asserting that they are the spirits of the parts of the world, which are the six parts in all the regions of the seven planets. The names of these spirits are those that individuals who pray to the planets area accustomed to using and being intimate with in prayer to the planets. Heed these things diligently.The philosopher said that for this reason all the spirits’ powers affecting the climes and generative things descend from those spirits. From these things, wondrous effects ensue through prayers – from these emanate wealth and poverty since they give, take away, and divert. They have bodies by which they are covered and made physical. In their own climes, each of them governs individuals into whom flow their powers and spirits. They grant these to be arranged in their systems of knowledge and to be used in affairs of their natures.Later, the same philosopher said: “When you want to draw forth some of the abovementioned planetary spirits in any clime, heed the fundamentals since each of the planetary effects works more strongly in its own clime.”(Picatrix3.9.8-10, p.185)

A ritual of Jupiter. [. . .] Repeat these things seven times. Afterward leave the house while uttering the prayer stated above. If you have done the work five times, while you are returning to the house a sixth time, utter the prayer stated above, and the spirits will come in beautiful forms, dressed in ornate clothes. They will undertake your petition, whatever it was. They will help you in knowledge and understanding. The power of the spirits will shield and cover you.A ritual of Mars. [. . .] Once you have spoken these things, say: “This sacrifice is for you, spirits of Mars! Take and eat from it, and do what you will!” Afterward, bring that same sacrifice to some place away from the tree, and suffumigate yourself with the abovementioned suffumigation. Decapitate your sacrifice, flay it, and roast its liver. Take the offerings that you have brought with you, and lay them all out on the hide. Lay the sacrifice upon it, and speak the prayer. Then speak this: “O spirits of Mars, this is your sacrifice! Come, and smell this suffumigation, and make what you will from that sacrifice and those offerings.” At that moment, a red spirit will descend like a tongue of flame. While passing over those offerings, it will consume some of them. Once you have seen it, ask what you wish. If will assist you in all your operations.(Picatrix3.9.12, p.186)

When the Moon is in Capricorn. When the Moon is in Capricorn and you wish to draw upon her strength and power – when the Sun is sitting in the sign of Cancer, enter a house that can only fit two individuals, and cover it for seven days with odoriferous branches (that is, on each day, renew the covering with fresh branches). On each and every one of those seven days, suffumigate the house with aloewood and incense. After these seven days, enter the house dressed in the most beautiful red clothes. See to it that the house be covered with a board or something similar. Whenever you wish, uncover it and say: “Heyterim heyterim falsari falsari tifrat tifrat.” Afterward, leave the house, and walk around it seventy times. Then suffumigate the house for one hour with 2 oz. of aloewood in a silver censer. Next, go outside, and go around the house again seventy times as before. Once finished, make your sacrifice with the cock that we have often mentioned above, then enter the house again. There, you will find a seated man to whom you should say: “I conjure you by the beautiful and luminous Moon, ornate and honoured, so that you may speak to me.” Once that man addressed you, state to him your desire, and it will be accomplished with effect.(Picatrix4.2.12, pp.228-229)

Required Reading Break

This excerpt examines the particularly hazardous ingredients that feature prominently in the rituals one finds in the Picatrix, in particular those used in suffumigations. It offers a much-needed warning against trying any of the formulas, since many are truly dangerous.

• Dan Attrell and David Porreca,Picatrix. A Medieval Treatise on Astral Magic, University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press (2019):Introductionpp. 26-30 [section entitled “Psychoactive and/or Poisonous Substances in thePicatrix”].

Check Your Understanding

The process of summoning spirits in the Munich Handbook resembles what we observe in the Picatrix in which of the following ways?

Which among the following would not be a factor to take into consideration when conducting a magical ritual?

Once you have completed reviewing all of this week’s content, return to the module page.

Works Cited

None for this page.

Module 8: Demons: Dante’s Inferno

Gabriel Niccoli (French and Italian Studies, University of Waterloo)

This module has been composed by a literary comparatist and makes a comparative analysis of various commentaries , both Italian and English, on Dante’s poem, The Divine Comedy , with particular attention on the Cantos (poem sections) containing the description and poetic treatment of the monstrous demons. The literary comparatist not only provides a commentary summarizing the various sources and annotations, but adds his own textual interpretation . More specifically, this module explores how the great poet of the Middle ages, the Florentine Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), presents the nature and consequence of sin through the description of monsters in his Divine Comedy . Dante’s Divine Comedy was likely begun around 1295 and revised up to the day of his death. The focus of this module is sp

8a. Introduction to Dante’s Inferno

Introduction to Dante’s Demonic Monsters

It is essential that you read the Required Resourceslisted at the end of this page before you move to the next module page (the first demonic monster).  This initial required reading is very important as it serves both as an introduction to the theme at hand and as a context within which each chapter in this module can be better understood.

Dante and hisDivine Comedy

As with his other major works (be they in Latin or Italian) Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), through his Comedy’s plots, thoughts, and characters, provides us with an accurate idea of the European forma mentis(mental framework or habit) of his times.  His strong engagement in Florentine politics (Florence was not a city but an independent city state or republic), his political rivalries that caused his exile for life, his ideal world order, his love for this human woman (Beatrice) who will become a saint and his guide through most of Paradiso, his courageous attempt to reform the Church, his profound Christian faith, his desire to express them all in a brand new language (Italian) that would be able to best popularize them, these were the issues that fuelled his life and imagination.

(Dore, 1832-83)

(Daddi, B., 1342)

(Holiday, H., 1882-84)

(Caetani di Sermoneta, 1855)

Fusion of Classics with Christianity

Masterfully able to synthesize classical learning with Christian teachings, and leaning on major literary figures of the classical period and the Christian era, Dante taught the medieval world a novel way of thinking about our human life, its nature, and its meaning here on earth.  And so, the nature of sin, the reason why we are so attracted to it, engenders the structure of hell and the creation of the demonic monsters that we must learn to combat if we are not to be vanquished by their brutal violence.  After all, Dante tells us, it’s our choices here on earth that will eventually place us either in a state of blessedness or one of eternal damnation when we go to the grave.  Journeying throughInferno is for Dante and for us perhaps the best way to learn how to properly navigate our present life here on earth, how to make proper, reasoned choices.  As to the theme at hand in this module, Dante places as guardians of the various circles or zones of his medieval hell a series of important and often majestic classical characters drawn from pagan mythology but transformed into monstrous demons by the poet’s medieval symbolism. Classical tradition and literature offered the Italian poet and the Christian medieval imagination numerous indications on the guardians of the pre-Christian underworld, legendary figures also met by Homer’s Ulyssesand Virgil’s Aeneasin their journeys through the pagan underworld. Often evading classical tradition, however, and drawing heavily on Christian medieval thought, Dante recalls such figures by morphing them into monstrous demons and subjecting them to the poetic structure and scope of his Inferno as well as to the implacable infernal law of Contrappasso (which we’ll discuss in the section on Cerberus).  Thus, these Dantean infernal guardians’ deformed and bestial monstrosity signals, amongst other motifs discussed during the course of the module, the violently degenerative and deathly effects of sin on our sense of humanity.

The Devil in Medieval Imagery and Reality

In medieval religiosity the personification of evil, the devil himself, with the devastating effects he can have on our eternal lives, plays a role of fundamental importance.  People’s supreme terror of the devil, in their daily living, becomes nothing short of an obsession in the Italian Middle Ages, a terror quite visible in the innumerable paintings and sculptures occupying religious and urban spaces of the Italian city states, which demonstrate vividly the dangers and horrors of eternal damnation with bestial demons tormenting the living and punishing the dead.  Dante’s early readers and contemporaries were terrorized by the punishments of hell. They also believed demons operated cunningly in their midst, on earth, always battling against the forces of good in order to win more souls for Hell. Dante draws freely from such popular beliefs by inserting them also into the context of the doctrine of medieval theology.  For instance, from the Book of Revelation, and from the abundant fire and brimstone sermons heard daily at church, every medieval man, woman, and child knew of the great battle in Heaven between God and the rebel angels headed by Lucifer, or Satan, himself. It is the quintessentialbattle of good against evil which ends with Satan, the king of evil, and his army of rebel angels, being thrown away from Heaven and, like a meteorite rushing through space, hitting finally our planet with such force that Satan encases himself forever right at the centre of the earth (the farthest point from the presence of God in Dante’s medieval cosmology).  And the hierarchy of demons Satan mutely, despairingly, and bestially rules over for eternity will form some of his most beast-like guardian monsters.

Check Your Understanding

1. In writing his Inferno, Dante brings together

Required Reading Break

Ensure you read attentively the following before proceeding to the next page of this module:

• Mills Chiarenza, Marguerite.The Divine Comedy: Tracing God’s Art.  Twayne Publishers, 1989.pp.1-7 (on the historical context of theInferno)pp. 19-35 (on the structure of theInferno)
• Cecchetti, Giovanni.An Introduction to Dante’s Divine Comedy.Approaches to teaching Dante’s Divine Comedy,edited by Carol Slade. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1982.pp. 38-54 (provides a general introduction to theInferno)Exclusion: you are not required to read items5, 6, 7,(on pages 47-50) as they deal primarily withPurgatorioandParadiso(the other two canticles in Dante’sDivine Comedy), although reading them would augment your understanding ofInferno.
• Pinsky, Robert, translator.Inferno.  By Dante Alighieri, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996.pp. 1-25, the first three Cantos of Infernopp. 305-310 (Notes)Foreword by John Freccero (pp ix-xvii)

Additional Resources

The following resource are not required, but will enrich your understanding of this module and the required readings. This resource provides excellent additional notes that you may find helpful as you study the different monsters in Dante’s Inferno.

• Durling, Robert, M., translator.Inferno.  Dante Alighieri, Oxford University Press, 1996.Durling’s Introduction to his edition ofInfernois also excellent, pp. 3-24.As you go through some of the demonic monsters in this module you may find some of Durling’s “Additional Notes” informative, including the following:pp. 552-555 (Note 2)pp. 567-568 (Note 9)pp. 577-578 (Note 14)

Works Cited

Caetani di Sermoneta, Michelangelo. 1855. Plate IV: “Cross Section of Hell”. Cornell University Library, Rome. Retrieved from: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/mapping-dante-hell-inferno-satan-divine-comedy

Daddi, Bernardo. 1342. Madonna della Misericordia (detail). Piazza San Giovanni 1 Centro Storico di Firenze, Florence. Retrieved from: http://www.reidsitaly.com/places/florence/see/museum-of-bigallo/

Dore, Gustave. 1832-83. “Portrait of Dante Alighieri.” *Frontispiece from ‘The Vision of Hell’.*Retrieved from: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/portrait-of-dante-alighieri-gustave-dore.html

Holiday, Henry. 1882-1884. Dante and Beatrice. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Retrieved from: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/dante-and-beatrice/XAEGdUo8BUOPYQ?hl=en-GB

8b. Charon

Introduction to the Demonic Ferryman

Required Reading Break

• Pinsky, Robert, translator.Inferno.  By Dante Alighieri, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996.By now you should have read Cantos 1, 2, and 3 in their entirety.In this section we’ll focus onvv. 67-99 of Canto 3 (p. 23)p. 310 (Notes)

(Doré, Gustave. 1832-83)

Canto 3, vv. 67-99

In Canto 3 (vv. 67-99), having crossed the gates of Hell with their cryptically coded language telling us to lose all hope, we meet, along with the wise guide Virgil and the fearful pilgrim Dante, Charon, the first of our hellish monsters, the demonic ferryman whose infernal and eternal chore is to ferry the naked damned souls stranded on the shores of the classical river Acheron to the other side, into Hell.

Acheron is the first of the four classically anointed rivers Dante will encounter in Inferno.  This Canto, described by some commentators as perhaps the most Virgilian, forms the Antinferno, the antechamber to the nightmarish sights and sounds of the horrendous punishments reserved for the “wicked seed of Adam”, as Dante calls all sinners headed for Hell proper. This grim and violent monster, as one can gather from the verses above, this spectral ferryman of the river of death, makes his horrific entrance as a menacing old man shouting in anger:

Woe to you, wicked souls!(v 23)

Anger, as we shall see throughout Inferno, will be one of the essential elements of both the monstrous guardians or custodians of the various circles of Hell and the sinners therein punished. Anger and infernal fury, blasphemy, and inarticulate violence (not to mention the horrific punishments executed on the souls in the various circles guarded by such monsters), these will be the major attributes that will define “physically”(although they’re shadows they still endure the physical pain and suffering) and psychologically both the monstrous demonic guardians and the damned souls in their custody (note the harsh tones of vv. 89-92).

Dante’s Monsters Reveal about Medieval Italy

The description Dante provides us of the monster ferryman (vv 80-82), as with the other demonic monsters throughout Hell, caters to the artistic and popular culture of the strongly Catholic and Church dominated world of Medieval Italy.  Otherwise imposing figures of the pagan world of classical antiquity are thus often degraded by our 14^th-century poet in order to aggrandize the new world order of Christendom. For instance, although Charon is taken from well-read classics like other classical figures of the Greek and Roman mythological universe (in this case Dante relies heavily on Virgil’s Aeneid), this ferryman of the classical underworld becomes both a filthy monster and a demon.  This is in keeping, as many commentators suggest, with the Christian belief from early Church beginnings that gods and prominent figures of the pagan world were really demons leading humanity astray.  After all, it is the greatest classical poet himself, Virgil, who in the very first canto of Inferno regrets (of course Dante puts the words in his mouth) his having lived under false and lying gods (the Latin poet was born and died before Christ).

A Side Note

If you are unfamiliar with the following term, check out the resources at the following links to build some foundational knowledge about these terms.

• Virgil’sAeneid

Already with this very first monster guardian we meet in Hell we sense, through the brief dramatic sketches of Dante’s pen, the awesomeness, the monumental violence, the furious brutality and the desperate vitality (both in Charon’s grotesque appearance and in his movements fuelled by eternal anger) that will characterize the infernal gestures of the other monster demons we shall meet, satanic figures such as Minos, Cerberus, Plutus, Phlegyas, Geryon, and the ultimate and greatest monster sinner of them all, Satan (also called Lucifer).

Check Your Understanding

1. Charon strikes the damned

Additional Resources

• Durling, Robert, M., translator.Inferno.  Dante Alighieri, Oxford University Press, 1996.pp. 551-552 (Additional Note 1)

Works Cited

Doré, Gustave. 1832-83. “Plate X: Canto III: Charon herds the sinners onto his boat.” *Dante’s Inferno.*Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gustave_Dor%C3%A9_-Dante_Alighieri-Inferno-Plate_10(Canto_III_-_Charon_herds_the_sinners_onto_his_boat).jpg

8c. Minos

Infernal Judge

Required Reading Break

• Pinsky, Robert, translator.Inferno.  By Dante Alighieri, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996.Read Cantos 4 and 5 in their entirety (pp. 26-43)Pay special attention to vv. 1-23 of Canto 5 (p. 37)pp. 310-313 (Notes).

(Doré, G., 1832-83)

Canto 5, vv. 1-23

In Canto 5 (vv. 1-23), as Dante and Virgil descend to the second circle of Hell, that of the lustful, we have the first indication (in the opening terzina or tercet) that the Inferno is funnel-shaped, and that the torments and the darkness increase with the increasingly restricted space of each descending circle.  More than through a description, the monster Minos is characterized by the horrendous sounds of his “dreadful snarls” and by the wrapping and turning of his tail. This monstrous guardian demon is, in Dante’sInferno, an angry beast; yet, at the same time, a strange mix of majestic and grotesque elements. He’s all snarl and tail, his tools of judgement.  But this infernal judge’s inflexible and eternal condemnations and judgements still emanate from above: his anger, as many critics would suggest, is but an infernal expression of God’s will.  His implacable and, again, grotesque judgement of unrepented sin is utilized by Dante in order to transform, for a Christian audience’s taste, such pagan deities, as mentioned before, into monstrous demonic figures.

Classical Sources

According to Greek and Roman legends, Minos was the son of the great god Zeus, and was also king of Crete.  He became one of the major judges of the underworld in classical mythology and literature.  Dante finds him best exemplified in Virgil’s Aeneid(Book VI) and, while attempting to maintain the character’s monumentality as found in Virgil, goes further by poetically adding a bestial and furious rapidity, a bestiality which is typical of the geography of his Medieval Christian Hell, but lacking in the classical underworld (be it Tartarus or Hades, as the after-death space is referred to in classical antiquity).  A rapidity, one might add, that perversely parallels the damned soul’s instant confession of sins:

They tell; they hear—and down they all are cast.(v 14)

Diabolical Guardians

As always, these demonic and monstrous guardians in Dante’s Inferno give us also proof of their diabolical intents and deeds, in keeping with their evil nature, by trying to trick the pilgrim by, first of all, attempting to frighten him with their terrifying appearance and their angry yelling.  Here, in usual angry and shouting mode, the monster tries to dissuade Dante from trusting Virgil as the proper guide through hell.  In other words, Minos attempts to place seeds of doubt in the pilgrim’s mind as to the authority of classical literature to be properly equipped to journey through hell, i.e. to truly understand the nature of sin.  And it is the epigone of classical literature itself, Virgil, Dante’s “guide and author” (Canto I, v 66) who has to silence the monster.  As always, the voice of classical reason prevails over the irrational beast.   It is interesting to note that (vv 19-20) Minos, besides attempting to place a seed of mistrust in the pilgrim’s mind about Virgil’s noble intent and ability to guide him safely through the horrors of hell, also alludes in a satanical manner, to biblical passages, in this particular case to Matthew 7, v 13(the passage which alerts us not to be fooled by the ample entrance).

Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.Holy Bible, New King James Version, Matt. 7.13

Examples, these, of satanic verses, perversions of Christ’s teachings about the dire consequences of a sinful life.  This type of linguistic deviance is the monster’s food.

Check Your Understanding

1. Hell’s gate inscription tells us to

Works Cited

Doré, Gustave. 1832-83. “Plate XIII: Canto V: Minos judges the sinners.” *Dante’s Inferno.*Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gustave_Dor%C3%A9_-Dante_Alighieri-Inferno-Plate_13(Canto_V_-_Minos).jpg

Holy Bible, The New King James Version. Bible Study Tools, https://www.biblestudytools.com/nkjv/. Accessed 11, November, 2020.

8d. Cerberus

The Three-Headed Dog

Required Reading Break

• Pinsky, Robert, translator.Inferno.  By Dante Alighieri, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996.Read vv. 12-32 of Canto 6 (pp. 45-47)pp. 314-315 (Notes)
• Read John Freccero’s Foreword (pp. ix-xvii).While it does not generally deal with the subject at hand it will be of great help in putting it in context. Freccero is one of the leading American Dantists.

(Doré, G., 1832-83)

Canto 6, vv. 12-32

In Canto 6 (vv. 12-32), having descended to the third circle of Hell (where the gluttons are punished), Dante and Virgil come face to face with one of the most grotesque figures of infernal guardians, a bizarre mixture of beast and man in the monstrous body of a three-headed dog. Flaming eyes and a greasy beard soiled by excessive eating give a premonition of the cannibalistic motifs found in the lowest region of Hell and best exemplified, as we shall see, by Satan himself.

Classical and Biblical Sources

The three-headed dog of Greek mythology, Cerberus, is the guardian to the entrance to the classical underworld of Hades.  Of course, as always, Dante draws freely from the Aeneid (book VI) mostly, but also fromOvid’s Metamorphoses IV.  Cerberus’ three mouths are always on the ready in order to fill the bottomless pit of his belly, and his grotesquely clawed hands grab his infernal human prey, tearing them eternally to pieces.  Cerberus is a monster of voracity guarding the voracious souls sloshing about in the filthy mud, as in life they sloshed away banqueting and overeating.

The Infernal Law of Contrappasso

Here the law of contrapasso(a perversely fitting punishment for a soul’s sin), as we can easily surmise, lies in the image of the damned who, having lived and devoured gluttonously like beasts, are condemned to be punished eternally to be torn to pieces, flayed and quartered in the rain, by the resident devils and the guardian monster.  Incisive as always, Sinclair, in his fine prose translation of Dante’s Inferno, comments:

The tearing of the spirits by Cerberus may well express the miseries, continued and magnified in eternity, which are the normal consequences of gluttony, and the din of his triple barking in their ears, their own howling, the bitter, pelting sleet, the stench in which they lie, are all a grotesque contrast to the luxurious banqueting which have been their chief joy.(Sinclair 94)

Along with the beastly vitality of Cerberus we also have in this third circle the first hint of the man-beast representation in Inferno, a motif which will henceforth be frequent, especially in the lower regions of Hell.  While an imposing figure in classical mythology, Dante transforms Cerberus, as Durling points out (p. 108), into the monstrous personification of gluttony and a demon, thus debasing him in turn into a monstrous animal with human semblance deafening the air around with his triple and constant barking, and his mauling his victims.

Of course, one shouldn’t forget the revisionist stance that underlines Dante’s avowed program of rewriting and thus reinterpreting classical literature in order to suit the Christian providential spirit of salvation predominant in Italy in the 14th century.  Upon noticing the intruders (note the precision of observation on the part of our poet) the monster acts in the manner congenial to such beasts, but Virgil is able to quiet him down (this time not with harsh words, as he did with both Charon and Minos) by throwing

gobbets of earth down each voracious throat.(v. 25)

Interestingly, in the Aeneid, it is the Sybil that placates the “gran vermo” Cerberus (the great worm) by throwing some sort of honied cake at the beast (Dante incidentally will use “vermo” also for Satan in the abyss of Hell). As one would expect, the commentaries abound as to what this Dantean variant of throwing earth might signify.

Check Your Understanding

1. For the geography of his Inferno Dante draws most freely from

Works Cited

Doré, Gustave. 1832-83. “Cerberus (Kerberos) - Extract to G. Doré in Dante, Inferno: Canto 6.” *Dante’s Inferno.*Retrieved from: https://www.wikiart.org/en/gustave-dore/the-inferno-canto-6

Sinclair, John, D., translator. *Inferno.*By Dante Alighieri, Oxford University Press, 1961.

Durling, Robert. M., translator.  Inferno. ByDante Alighieri, Oxford University Press, 1996.

8e. Plutus

The Great Enemy of Humanity

Required Reading Break

• Pinsky, Robert, translator.Inferno. By Dante Alighieri, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996.Read vv. 1-13 of Canto 7 (p. 53)p. 316 (Notes)

(Doré, G., 1832-83)

Canto 7, vv. 1-13

In Canto 7 (vv. 1-13), having descended to the boundary of the fourth circle of Hell, where the avaricious or greedy and the squanderers are punished, Dante and Virgil have to confront the demonic monster Plutus, “the great enemy” (last verse of Canto 6) of humanity.  Great enemy mainly because, in Dante’s mind, riches are the great scourge and the ruin of humanity. Canto 7 starts ex-abruptowith a line of cryptic words yelled by this demon and likely meant to dissuade the pilgrim Dante from undertaking this perilous journey. Their sense seems to have been understood by the great sage Virgil (“who knew”), while Dante, as well as we the readers, still have a difficult task at interpreting them properly.

Possible Interpretations of Language

For some Italian commentators like Momigliano these seemingly nonsensical utterances have a Greek and Jewish flavour to themand may perhaps allude to the Babel-like confusion that reigns overall in Hell (the reference is to the Biblical accounts of the confusion of languages at Babel), while for others they signify a satanic hymn to Satan as God. Yet others opine in favour of some arcane infernal incantations.

A Side Note

If you are unfamiliar with the following terms, check out the resources at the following links to build some foundational knowledge about these terms.

Tower of Babel

For instance, “aleppe”seems to derive from the Hebrew “aleph” and denotes also the number one, while “Satàn” (aside from its obvious linguistic association) means “enemy” in Hebrew (as noted above, Plutus is labelled by the poet as the enemy).  Whatever the case, this is certainly considered one of the most satanic verses in all Inferno. Except for his angry “swollen face” (highly poetic the comparison with the “sails swollen with wind” that quickly collapse at Virgil’s scolding words), his “clucking voice”, and his “devouring rage”, Plutus is not described physically (Virgil does indict him, however, as an “accursed wolf”, a reference perhaps to the she-wolf of the “selva oscura”,the dark wood, the wasteland of the first Canto).  Indeed, the she-wolf is almost always connected to avarice in the myriad commentaries on Inferno, something confirmed in PurgatorioCanto 20, v 10, where the beast is explicitly identified as a symbol of greed. In fact, in v 10 of this Purgatorial Canto which deprecates greed (one of the major evils of our world) Dante makes finally explicit reference to the association greed/she-wolf by exclaiming: “cursed be you, ancient she-wolf.”

Plutus’ Inarticulateness

The inarticulateness of this savage beast and the Latin poet’s mention of the providential reason for the pilgrim’s journey, not to mention the heavenly victory (Revelation 12, v. 7-9) over the rebellious infernal forces, seem to say as much or more than the sketchy details about Plutus’ beastly appearance and monstrous demeanour.

And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.Holy Bible, Rev. 12.7-9

In fact, if there seems to be little vitality in the demon Plutus, compared to the previous monsters so far encountered, there is certainly a great degree of monumental stupidity about him.  An inarticulateness and stupidity which foreshadow in many ways those of the supreme monster of evil, Satan.  Indeed, Plutus is indistinguishable and anonymous as a monster as the meaningless jabbering he spurts out and as the nondescript victims he torments. Plutus is the pagan god of wealth and so Dante, in plucking him from the often misread pages of mythology, places him in his medieval Christian architecture of Hell to guard the prodigal and the miserly.  Again, he debases the somewhat dignified and majestic standing this god of riches had maintained throughout centuries of literary and artistic canon, transforming him into a demonic monster, and the sinners he guards over and torments, through the implacable law of contrapasso, into senseless dancers in their greed and in their dissipation.

Check Your Understanding

1. Plutus is the great enemy of humanity because of his

Works Cited

Doré, Gustave. 1832-83. *“Plutus” found in “The Divine Comedy: The Inferno”.*Retrieved from: http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/dore/dante/5.html

Holy Bible, The New King James Version. Bible Study Tools, https://www.biblestudytools.com/nkjv/. Accessed 11, November, 2020.

Momigliano, Attilio, ed. Inferno. By Dante Alighieri, Firenze: Sansoni Editore, 1945.

8f. Phlegyas

The Monstrous Sentinel of the Styx

Required Reading Break

• Pinsky, Robert, translator.Inferno. By Dante Alighieri, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996.Read vv. 13-25 of Canto 8 (p.61)p. 317 (Notes)

(Doré, G., 1832-83)

(Delacroix, E., 1822)

Canto 8, vv. 13-25

In Canto 8 (vv. 13-25), having descended to the banks of the swamp-like river Styx (the fifth circle of hell), Dante is horrified at seeing thewrathfulmangling each other, while, beneath the infernal river’s slime, hide the slothful whose presence is indicated by the bubbles on the river’s infested and muddy surface.  Having come to the foot of a high tower, the poets notice a rapidly moving little boat rushing toward them, its angry monstrous boatman, Phlegyas, cursing and yelling as he’s deceived into thinking that Dante (or perhaps Virgil) is an “evil soul” to be punished under the infernal contrappasso of the circle he guards over.

Medieval War Scene between Christian Crusaders and “Infidels”

Commentators still speculate as to whom the imprecation in the singular (“evil soul”) is directed, whether to Virgil or Dante.  Some suggest that the demon Phlegyas is not only the guardian of the marsh; he also acts as a sentinel, making sure that no aggressors may slip in through the lower regions of Inferno unnoticed.  This would explain the two mosque-like towers of the infernal city of Dis, the walled citadel of fire (which the poets must somehow enter in order to continue their salvific journey), signalling each other with fire lights at the presence of the two arrivals, thus prompting the boatman’s quick response in approaching the new arrivals (vv 1-6).  This is not only a typical medieval war scene between opposing Italian city states that Dante would have been familiar with but also a popularized version of Catholic Crusadesagainst dissidents in the medieval period, one of which Dante himself would have witnessed as a child.

A Side Note

If you are unfamiliar with the following term, check out the resources at the following links to build some foundational knowledge about these terms.

• TheCrusades

In usual fashion, Virgil placates the demoniacal boatman’s ire by admonishing him not to shout in vain but to ferry them across the marsh.  The bent-up rage of the monster is quieted in humiliation and the two poets are able to board the boat.  It’s interesting to note that in this particular encounter Virgil does not use the usual formula of divine will or providential plan in order to placate the demon or monster, something which, as expected, is cause for much critical speculation.

Classical Sources

In Greek mythology Phlegyas was the king of Thessaly who avenged his daughter’s rape by the god Apollo by burning the god’s temple at Delphi.  As Durling suggests (p. 135), Dante associated the character’s name with the Greek root word for fire.  Apollo eventually killed Phlegyas, imprisoning him in the pit of the classical underworld.  Virgil remodels his figure and reputation by casting him as an exemplary figure in Aeneid VI where, as a somewhat miserable spirit in Hades, the shade teaches all souls to study justice and to honour the immortal gods.  Dante degrades him by reinventing him as a monstrously furious guardian of the fetid swamp where the souls of the wrathful and the slothful are immersed.  While Dante is normally able to stroke with a word or two (at times a verse or two, at times more) a poetically and potent dramatized drawing of the physical appearance of the infernal monster guardians he encounters, in this instance we have to rely on the fury and violence of the damned themselves in the Styx in order to imagine properly the presence of the guardian who represents the monstrous personification of the collective sin therein punished.  And so we also discern Phlegyas’ monstrous appearance from the words Dante uses when he is finally able to recognize an old compatriot of his who surfaces from underneath the filth of the river “coated with mud” and “so brutally foul.” Artists and painters throughout the centuries have also been able to portray the monster from the violence of the words (“now get out”) that he angrily spits out to the poets, having ferried them across the Styx.

Check Your Understanding

1. Dante associated the name of Phlegyas with

Works Cited

Dante Alighieri. Inferno.  Robert M. Durling, ed. and transl. (poetry). New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Delacroix, Eugène. 1822. Dante and Virgil in Hell. Louvre Museum, Paris. Retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Barque_of_Dante#/media/File:Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix_-_The_Barque_of_Dante.jpg

Doré, Gustave. 1832-83. *The Styx-Phlegyas.*Retrieved from: https://www.wikiart.org/en/gustave-dore/the-styx-phlegyas

8g. Geryon

The Fraudulent Monster

Required Reading Break

• Pinsky, Robert, translator.Inferno. By Dante Alighieri, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996.Read vv.  1-26 (p. 135) and vv. 70-127 (pp. 139-141) of Canto 17pp. 330-331 (Notes)
• Durling, Robert, M., translator.Inferno.  Dante Alighieri, Oxford University Press, 1996.pp. 560-563 (Additional Notes 6)

(Doré, 1832-83)

Canto 17, vv. 1-26, vv. 70-127

In Canto 17 (vv. 1-26, 70-127), in the seventh circle of hell (violent and usurers flayed by the eternal rain of fire) we witness the appearance of one of the most monstrous figures in Dante’s Inferno.  At the end of the preceding Canto, having reached the edge of the precipice, the deafening sound of an immense waterfall flowing into the infernal abyss almost drowning their speech, Virgil takes the cord that had been around Dante’s waist and tosses it into the abyss.  It is a lure to attract Geryon.  And true to his violent and fraudulent nature the monstrous form looms from below, swimming through the air.

The meaning of this cord has been and continues to be one of the interpretative cruxes of Inferno.  One thing, however, almost all commentators seem to agree on is that the cord in medieval symbolism often represents fraud.  As such it attracts the demonic Geryon, convinced he’s about to entrap the cursed soul.  In fact, the end of Canto 16 acts as an entry point into Canto 17 as the monster at the end of 16 is in prey mode, certain he’s about to gain another victim, symbolically another soul to be cast into hell. The suspense which had closed Canto 16 turns into the horror at the start of Canto 17 as the horrible monster, the filthy image of fraud (“fraud’s foul emblem”) which makes the whole world stink, is explicitly described by Virgil, this time with more attention than the quick dramatic touches he devoted to previous monsters.  As we shall see in the next segment with Satan, there reigns an indecipherable silence on the part of this demon.

The Usurer’s Appearance

Geryon has the face of an honest trustworthy man, the rest of the body beastly, ending in a scorpion-like stinging tail.  In Greek mythology Geryon is a giant with three heads and three bodies, eventually slain by Hercules. Pinsky (p. 330) reminds us that Dante invented a new, more grotesque form of the demonic monster for his Inferno, perhaps inspired by the locusts described in Revelation 9, 7-10.  Dante takes the lead, as far as the name and triplicity of the monstrous body, from the Aeneid, and some of the evil attributes from popular medieval legends.But, as Sinclair points out, our poet essentially reinvents the monster by giving him, as stated,

a gracious human face, predacious clawed feet, the body of a subtle serpent marked with enticing knots and circlets, the ready, swinging tail pointed with a sting.Sinclair 222

Perched on the edge of the abyss, the demoniacally imposing figure of Geryon, its poisonous tail hidden and hanging in the emptiness ready to snatch its cunning usurer’s venom, clearly recalls the obscure machinations the fraudulent 14th-century Florentine usurer weaves in order to catch and damn his prey.

Geryon’s tripartite monstrous body is meant to signify (as always, the number 3 has a particular symbolic valence in the entire Divine Comedy) a satanic version of the Christian trinity, prefiguring the degraded and depraved humanity of Malebolge, Dante’s medieval invention of the evil pouches in Hell.  At the end, upon Dante’s return from the circle of the usurers, Geryon (whose name is finally pronounced in v. 87) is given stern directions (with a multitude of mythical allusions to flawed flights) by Virgil on how to properly descend the two poets to the bottom of the infernal abyss.  Geryon obeys the orders of the master of good reason to the letter but, remaining angry and disillusioned at his useless transport (didn’t gain any souls for Hell), unloads the poets and his bent-up frustration by vanishing “like an arrow from the string.”

Check Your Understanding

1. In medieval symbolism, a cord often represented:

Additional Resources

Friedman, John B. “Antichrist and the Iconography of Dante’s Geryon.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtault Institutes. 1972. 35: pp. 108-22.

Works Cited

Doré, Gustave. 1832-83. “Geryon.” *Dante Alighieri’s Inferno.*Retrieved from: http://www.worldofdante.org/pop_up_query.php?dbid=I037&show=more

Sinclair, John, D., translator. *Inferno.*By Dante Alighieri, Oxford University Press, 1961.

8h. Satan

Supreme Evil

Required Reading Break

• Pinsky, Robert, translator.Inferno. By Dante Alighieri, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996.Read vv.  31-68 of Canto 34 (pp 297-299)pp. 354-355 (Notes)
• Durling, Robert, M., translator.Inferno.  Dante Alighieri, Oxford University Press, 1996.pp. 576-577 (Additional Notes 13)pp. 580-783 (and Additional Notes 16)

(Doré, G., 1832-83)

Canto 34, vv. 31-68

In the last Canto 34 of Dante’s Inferno(vv. 31-68), where the ultimate sin of treachery against secular or political authority and divine grace (the ideal order of a just world for Dante) is punished, we come face to face with the supreme evil, Satan (or Lucifer) (vv. 31-68).  As stated earlier, Hellis formed by nine increasingly deeper and decreasing circles leading to the centre of the earth. As we descend with the two poets we witness horrible signs of a progressive degeneration which the monster guardians who patrol these various circles tend to personify through the increasingly grotesque distortions of their human form.  Dante obviously is dealing with the nature and the gravity of sin and how it monstrously perverts both our body and intellect.  The greater the sin, the more morally debased it is, the deeper it will descend in the order of things.

Deep Hell Does Freeze Over…

In the ninth and last circle of hell, dunked in the frozen lake of Cocytus with all who betrayed their benefactors, utterly beastly and totally inarticulate, lies half-immersed in ice the supreme sinner, rebellious Satan himself, who was once God’s prime angel in Heaven, and the most gracious.  Now “the emperor of the realm of grief” (v. 31) is monstrously deformed and ugly.  Marguerite Mills Chiarenza notes:

…he is covered with hair like an animal; he has bat-like wings whose flapping freezes the bottom of Hell solid with their wind; and possesses three weeping faces smeared with the blood of the three souls he chews and scratches: Brutus, Cassius, and Judas.Mills Chiarenza 52

Privileging images of cannibalism here at the centre of the earth where Satan lies frozen from the chest downward (reminiscent of the monster Geryon whom the poet sees only half as he hangs perched at the edge of the precipice) Dante is horrified at the sight of the supreme evil.  Satan is monstrously, yet imposingly, gigantic. So gigantic that from a distance Dante had thought he was looking at a whirling windmill.  Three enormous sets of wings, six dolorous eyes crying in their rage, three bloody mouths eternally munching on the three greatest traitors of mankind make this an incomparably frightening sight.  He is indeed the supreme monster par excellence.  The monstrous figure of Satan come mostly from medieval painting and architecture, as well as from legends based on medieval angelology, and on the Biblical stories describing the expulsion from Heaven of the rebellious angels.  Dante would have been acutely aware of such things, just as he was attentive to the weekly medieval sermons during Mass often depicting the horrors of sin and the lure of Satan (or Lucifer).  The Trinitarian aspects of the supreme demonic monster are, of course, a satanic parody of the Trinity.  Satan is the depth of corruption.  There cannot be any type of communication here, as we have seen with other monsters, albeit in truncated, almost irrational, ways. Here reigns frozen silence, beneath the bestial ignorance of the supreme evil, and Virgil signals to quickly depart, for “…we have seen the whole.”

The Three Supreme Traitors

In his idealistic view of world order, as he makes clear in some of his other works, a world equally divided between a just emperor (who would direct us properly while on earth) for political order, and a just Pope (who, as the representative of Christ and his Church, would lead us in our salvific mission) for spiritual order, Dante considers Brutusand Cassius as the worst traitors of the former (they betrayed Caesar, emblem of world order for our poet), while Judas betrayed Christ.  Again, this is pretty much in keeping with the medieval cultural, religious, and social milieu, not to mention some of the Patristic readings (Church Fathers and theologians), which shaped the Florentine poet.

Additional Resources

• Durling, Robert. “Deceit and Digestion in the Belly of Hell.”Allegory and Representation: Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1979-1980. Stephen J. Greenblatt, ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1981. pp. 61-93.
• Freccero, John. “The Sign of Satan.”Modern Language Notes. 1965. 80: pp. 11-26.

Check Your Understanding

1. The satanic three faces of the emperor of Hell signify

Once you have completed reviewing all of this week’s content, return to the module page.

Works Cited

Doré, Gustave. 1832-83. “Satan.” *Dante Alighieri’s Inferno.*Retrieved from: http://www.worldofdante.org/pop_up_query.php?dbid=I636&show=more.

Mills Chiarenza, Marguerite. The Divine Comedy: Tracing God’s Art.  Twayne Publishers, 1989.

Module 9: Wild People

Ann Marie Rasmussen (German Literary Studies, University of Waterloo)

This module introduces you to perspectives from the discipline of art history , providing tools and perspectives that will help you to better see and understand the enormously rich and varied visual cultures of the Middle Ages. Many students may think of art history as a kind of taxonomic discipline , in which a person learns about the hallmark features of different styles of art from the past–Romanesque, Gothic, and so on. There is nothing wrong with this approach and it is especially valuable if you want, for example, to look at urban environments with new eyes. Whether you are in Toronto or Paris, mastering this approach gives you the skills to identify and date buildings and other urban structures, exploring questions about what the people and organizations who commissioned and built

9a. Who or What Are Wild People?

Introducing Wild People

This course calls the monsters in this module wild people, and indeed the figure on the module landing page, Wild Family, shows a man, woman, and child. Wild women feature in medieval stories, as is discussed in the article by Sarah Westphal-Wihl, but medieval images of wild women (and for that matter, wild children) are less common and so this module, which is concerned with visual culture, focuses on wild men.

The term “wild men” or “wild man” is much more common than “wild people.” (If you wish to undertake a database, image, or google search, then use the terms “wild men” or “wild man” first.) The term “wild men” partly reflects the older and now outdated usage of the word “man” or “men” as universalizing terms referring to all human beings, but it also reflects the fact that most medieval images of wild people show furry humanoid creatures with penises, making it obvious that their bodies are male. As we shall be exploring in this module, the connotations of wildness bound up in the images of wild men were often understood in the Middle Ages as belonging to a domain of power that was gendered masculine.

How To Recognize a Wild Man

In medieval visual culture, wild men, women, and children are easy to spot.  The same size and with the same anatomy as human beings, wild people were covered from head to foot with fur and so, like animals and beasts, they went unclothed. Wild people inhabited forests, apparently living off hunting and gathering; I have yet to see or read of medieval wild people who were imagined cultivating crops, and only rarely are they shown using any tool other than the ubiquitous wooden club which is the wild man’s most common attribute. Like human beings and indeed, like many mammals, wild people were imagined to be living in small family groups; the wild people in the figure on the module landing page, Wild Family, are a kind of nuclear family as are the wild people in the figure Alexander the Great Encounters Wild People.

(Unknown, c. 1400-1449)

(Unknown, c. 1450-1460)

There was a specific word, now archaic, in Middle English for a wild man: wodewose (with lots of variant spellings, including woodwose). The first element, wode, of this compound noun is an older form of the modern word, wood, meaning forest; the meaning of the second element is less clear but it probably derives from a noun related to modern German Wesen, meaning a living creature. The manuscript page from The Taymouth Hours fol. 62r (see figure) has a woderose at the bottom of the page, which is shown in Detail from Taymouth Hours fol. 62r. Take a close and careful look at the Old French caption, written in red ink:

Et tient le wodewose & rauist un des demoyseles collaint des fleurs.[And the wodewose is here and is ravishing a maiden who is plucking flowers]MS M.782 fol. 276v, c. 1450-1460

Note that this Latin language religious manuscript features a visual program of wild men in some of its margins and that this image has a caption written in French that uses an English word. We have here a succinct example of the multilingualism of medieval England.

The figure of the wild man is related in various ways to other monsters already studied in this course. Like werewolves, wild men live in the forests and the wilderness, away from human civilization, although, unlike werewolves, they do not shapeshift into an animal (see Werewolves Module). Late medieval wild men also overlap with the figure of the giant, as giants are often furry and scantily clothed (if not naked) and are often shown fighting with clubs (see the Giants Module) (see the figure The Homo Selvadego). Wild men show up among the satirical monsters of the Middle Ages as well, including those in the Roman du Fauvel fol. 34r., shown in the figure here (also see the Satirical Monsters Module).

(Unknown, c. 1325-1350)

The Taymouth Hours, fol. 62r. Latin Book of Hours (use of Sarumi), Latin prayer for the Virgin Mary. 1325-1350, England, 194 folios, parchment, copiously illuminated, 11.5 x 17 cm. London, British Library, Yates Thompson MS 13, ff. 62r. (Unknown, c. 1325-1350)

(Romeri c. 1400-1499)

(de Fauvel, R.,  c. 1318-1320)

Wild men are also related to the Green men found in medieval sculpture and architectural ornament, identified through foliated and bearded faces emerging from vine-like tangles of vegetation (see the Cadney Green Man figure). One of the most famous medieval stories featuring a wild-man-like figure is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an early fourteenth-century work of Middle English alliterative verse which is discussed in the Required Reading by Susan Crane (which you’ll read in a later section of this module). As is indicated by the title, its green man has lost many of his wild man qualities; he is a knight. Beyond the fact that he lives in a trackless wilderness, is green like the verdant forest rather than furry like forest animals, and possesses the magical ability to be decapitated and then reattach his severed head, the Green Knight is in virtually every other way the mirror, or double, of Sir Gawain and the other Arthurian knights whose feast he joins, uninvited, on New Year’s Day.

(Croft, 2013)

How Ancient is the Figure of the Wild Man?

Wild men also overlap with a host of mythical woodland beings inherited from classical times: fauns, satyrs, and pan-like creatures. Learned writers of the Middle Ages would have been familiar with these mythical creatures from the works of the classical authors and from the Old Testament. In the Book of Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylonia is humbled by God through seven years of madness. During this period he lived among wild animals,

driven out of human society and (he) ate grass like an ox. The dew fell on his body, and his hair grew as long as eagle feathers and his nails as long as bird claws.Daniel 4:33, in the Good News Translation, Catholic Edition

Nebuchadnezzar only regains his sanity when he acknowledges the sovereignty of a single deity, Jehovah or God, as has been preached to him repeatedly by the prophet Daniel.

How might we think about the existence of wild men figures across time and culture? Does it represent a form of continuity, and if so, what kind? As you have seen in the Giants Module, modern scholarship and science reject the nineteenth-century folkloric notion that there was a substrate of “pagan” belief percolating unchanged for centuries among European peasants. The figure of the wild man is not inherited from a pre-Christian past and handed down unchanged for centuries. This hypothesis flies in the face of scientific evidence (see the Giants Module), of historical evidence, which teaches that medieval Christianity was a near universal belief system in medieval Europe that nevertheless differed in many ways from its modern institutional descendants, and of historical thinking, which teaches that traditions are continually being made and remade, and that arguments for ancient origins or traditions are not fact but claims that are advanced for specific purposes in any present.

If it is intellectually unproductive to think of the figure of the wild man as simply being derived from older traditions, what approaches might be taken by students who wished to pursue this question further? The modern discipline of psychology is a scientific field of inquiry but some of its subfields such as Freudian and Jungian thought, usually more prominent outside of the modern departments of psychology than within them, have suggested models for thinking about universals of human culture are ultimately derived from human cognition, emotion, and social development. Approaches from the modern discipline of anthropology offer especially robust theories for thinking about alterity and similarity in human cultures.

The Madness of Nebuchadnezzar. Latin Commentary on the Book of Revelation by Beatus of Liébana (730-785), manuscript illumination on parchment, the mad Nebuchanezzar. Early 13th century, Burgos (ES), 167 leaves, parchment,  44 x 30.5 cm.  Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS NAL 2290 f. 19r.  (Beatus, c. 1200-1250)

This module approaches wild men in medieval visual culture from a historical perspective. As we carefully describe and analyse medieval wild men across a range of material and cultural contexts, we will be attending closely to the sophisticated ways in which medieval images of the wild man reflect and refract medieval knowledge and medieval thought and society.

Is the Wild Man Really a Monster?

To what extent are medieval wild men monsters at all? This question is raised implicitly in the title of the Required Reading by Lindquist and Mittman, “In a Furry Mirror.” The title implies that when medieval people looked at wild men, they knew that they were seeing and reflecting on creatures who doubled themselves. Reflecting on the vexed relationship between wild men and human beings is an important part of this module. Here are offered some further thoughts on this topic.

In many medieval images, stories, and performances, it seems as if wild men and human beings are different branches of the same big dysfunctional family. Wild men are strong and ferocious, but they are also innocent, in the sense that they are natural creatures. In the later middle ages, wild men often represented a kind of libidinous freedom, animal-like in the sense that their strength and sexuality was unconstrained by social norms and conventions. The unfettered sexuality of the wild man could represent erotic freedom and pleasure, but it could also be seen as a danger. The threatening aspect of the wild man was enacted in the marginalia (small drawings in the margins of medieval manuscripts) of the religious, Latin-language manuscripts shown here, sometimes in narrative sequences that proceed over several pages. The British Library has an older blog post about these wild men stories, in which wild men pursue human women in what the blog post calls “wooing” or courtship stories, although we might be more likely to call this attempted rape.

(Beatus, c. 1300-1340)

The Smithfield Decretals, fol. 72r. Latin decretals of Gregory IX with gloss of Bernard of Parma (the “Smithfield Decretals”), manuscript illumination on parchment,. Ca.1300-1340, Southern France (probably Toulouse),314 folios, parchment, copiously illuminated,  ca. 28.5 x 45 cm (text space). London, British Library, Royal MS 10 E IV, f 72r. (Beatus, c. 1300-1340)

The wild men in the marginalia of the Taymouth Hours and the Smithfield decretals re-appear on successive pages in ways suggesting narrative sequences told in pictures. In these stories, the human women are saved from the wodewoses by human men who sometimes slay the woodwoses, rather in the manner of Saint George, for example, saving the lady from a dragon. The threat of a wild man is different, however, than the threat of a dragon, because in this imagined world, intercourse and therefore offspring between human and wild people is possible, and even natural. There is an ambivalence or ambiguity about the strength and potency of wild men. The clerics for whom the manuscripts of the Taymouth Hours and the Smithfield Decretalswere made might have disparaged the implicit violence and sexuality of wild men, but secular men might have been more positive about claiming the drive, freedom, and strength of the wild men. Who knows if there might be a wild man in your lineage, and would that be such a bad thing?

Required Reading Break

Please now read the following.

• Sherry C. M. Lindquist and Asa Simon Mittman, “In a Furry Mirror,” inMedieval Monsters: Terrors, Aliens, Wonders (New York: The Morgan Library & Museum, 2018), pp. 118-121.

Additional Resources

The following is a supplementary resource on the behaviour and habits of Wodewoses.

• Mary Wellesley, “A Field Guide to Wodewoses” British Library, 2016, https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2016/09/a-field-guide-to-wodewoses.html

Check Your Understanding

1) Which book of the Old Testament features the mad, or wild, King Nebuchanezzar II of Babylonia?

2) What are medieval marginalia?

Works Cited

Beatus. c. 1200-1250. “The Madness of Nebuchadnezzar.” Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des manuscrits. NAL 2290. Beatus. Commentaire sur l’Apocalypse. Retrieved from https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10507217r/f40.item?lang=EN

Beatus. c. 1300-1340. “The Smithfield Decretals, fol. 72r.” The British Library. Royal MS 2 B VII. London. Retrieved from https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-smithfield-decretals

Croft, Richard. 2013. “Photograph of ‘Green Man’, a 13th Century corbel in All Saints’ chancel arch.” Geograph. Green Man. Cadney. CC-BY-SA-2.0. Retrieved from https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3574012.

de Fauvel, Roman. c. 1318-1320. “Wild Men in a Saterical Allegorical Verse Attributed to Gervais du Bus and Raoul Chaillou de Pesstain.” Gallica. MS Francais 146 f.34r. Retrieved from https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8454675g/f83.item#

Romeri, M. c. 1400-1499. Photograph of Fresco entitled ‘Homo Salvadego di Sacca’. Wikipedia, Lombardy. CC-BY-SA-3.0. Retrieved from https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sacco_-_Homo_Selvadego_(8).jpg

Unknown. c. 1325-1350. “Latin Prayer for the Virgin Mary.” The British Library. The Taymouth Hours. London. Retrieved from http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/SetupViewerHandler.ashx?ref=yates_thompson_ms_13_fs001r

Unknown. c. 1450-1460. “MS M.782 fol. 276v.” The Morgan Library & Museum. German textual miscellany. New York. Retrieved from: http://ica.themorgan.org/manuscript/page/179/159801

Unknown. c. 1400-1449. “Wild man with club over his shoulder.” Radboud University (Kunara). Langbroek, collectie Familie Van Beuningen, inv. 2522. Nijmegen.

9b. Looking at Wild People

Introduction to Close Looking

Visual analysis is based on observation and description. This section of the module offers you a template, called the close looking template. It provides definitions of the most common qualities art historians look for and describe when studying images and objects and it also suggests useful questions to ask yourself when you are looking at a medieval object or work of art. The close looking template is modelled on the close reading template from the Werewolves Module. Its purpose is to suggest ways to approach and carry out the description of a medieval object by setting out the categories of description upon which visual analyses typically rely.

Close Looking Template

Here are definitions of features and qualities upon which visual cultural analyses most commonly rely.

**Medium(s):**Physical materials in which the object is executed.

Formal characteristics: For example, design, line, color, light, composition, form, space, expression.

Narrative structure: Is there a story or stories told, implied or referred to?

Viewer: What was the relationship of the viewer/user to the object? (did s/he hold it, play with it, wear it, look at it when doing a particular activity). Does the object situate the viewer in space in specific ways? What happens when the viewer moves close to, or farther away, from the object?

Context: where was it placed, used or viewed? (there may be more than one context); what is its possible relationship to other objects and/or texts? What function(s) might it have served? (Remember that notions and assumptions about vision itself constitute part of the context of an object.)

Here are the questions or steps that will help you look closely at a medieval work of art or object. The steps for close looking are as follows.

• Describe the object in 35 words or less.  The purpose of this step is to give general direction to your analysis.
• Paraphrase each aspect of the object, using the above list.
• Observe and describe what is interesting or puzzling or opaque in each aspect of the object. In general: note the surprising, make the comfortable complex, explore the difficult and record your process of discovering meaning. Ask and explore questions you cannot answer!
• Now summarize the object again, having gone through steps 2 and 3.  What is it “about?”  To whom is it directed?  Why is it important?
• How might this object fit into and, in turn, affect, the larger context(s) from which it is taken?

An Example of Close Looking: The Tapestry ofDer Busant

Der Busant. Upper Rhenish tapestry, woven with linen warp and wool, silk, linen, cotton, and metallic wefts, two scenes from Der Busant (The Buzzard). 1480-1490, Strasbourg (FR), 79 x 113 cm.  New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985.358. (Unknown, c. 1480-1490)

• Blue, white, brown, red tapestry depicting princess on horseback, man, and furry wild prince on all fours, surrounded by trees, plants, unicorn, and birds, with bands with words. (28 words).
• Each of the three figures occupies approximately a third of the tapestry, separated by the inscriptions framing the French princess. The middle high German inscriptions are allude to the written tale. The fleeing princess says to the man (who is a miller, as is explained in the story), “I ask and beseech you, for God’s sake, to give me shelter,” and the miller replies “Willingly, though as a poor man I can offer you nothing honourable (i.e. in keeping with your high station in life).” This tapestry was woven. Even though it is not very big it is clearly a fragment from a larger tapestry that probably told the whole story, and it must have taken an incredibly long time to set up and then weave the whole thing.While this late medieval tapestry is in excellent condition, the colours would have been much brighter when it was first created. These strong colours would have been incredibly expensive to produce. Many of the dyes would have been imported, as was the case with red dye from Spain, and deep colours took longer to produce. The metallic wefts, including gold and silver thread, would have shone in the sunlight, bringing light into the room where this tapestry hung. In the Middle Ages, all tapestries were the preserve of the wealthy, as the materials and the final product were made entirely by hand. Although this tapestry is not large enough to cover a wall, it was likely hung alongside others; fragments of other scenes from the tale exist in European collections.  If the commissioner had multiple dwellings, tapestries had the added benefit of being an easily portable art form.
• What is puzzling about this object is why a wealthy person in the late Middle Ages (likely an aristocrat, cleric, or merchant) chose to invest so much money in a scene from a work of fiction. I thought that most medieval people were interested in tapestries that focussed on biblical themes, but this one illustrates a relatively recent work of literature (classical scenes only become common in the early modern period). Did the commissioner simply like the subject, or did she or he have a personal connection to the tale? It is likely that the commissioner was a member of the elite, whether an aristocrat or wealthy merchant. What kind of an occasion might have been appropriate for commissioning such an object? A wedding, perhaps? After allDer Busantis a love story with a happy ending.
• This tapestry was only accessible by the wealthy, who would likely have been familiar with the tale.Der Busanttells the story of an English prince, who turns into a wild man, and his lover, a French princess hiding from her betrothed (the king of Morocco). Although the prince is eventually cured and the two have a happy ending, during his wild period the princess disguises herself as a skilled needleworker in a rural mill. Perhaps it is this characteristic of fine needlework that inspired the tapestry.
• Through this object, it becomes possible to examine the visual spaces of the dwellings of the wealthy because tapestries like this one would have been common features in the homes of nobles, successful merchants, and powerful clerics. Creating both a beautiful and warm interior, tapestries were both objects of comfort and ostentatious displays of wealth. They were luxurious and exclusive, and this tapestry is a particularly fine example, including expensive dyes and metal wefts.

The depiction of the tale, with its themes of courtly heroism and romance, may have served as a model for viewers. Even though he is transformed for part of the tale into a wild man, the prince is heroic, saving the princess from an undesired marriage. The princess, faithful to her lover alone (see the unicorn, symbol of virginity), is directly disobeying those who have arranged her marriage, yet her pursuit of love is portrayed as courageous. She provides an interesting comparison to real noblewomen of the late Middle Ages, many of whom would have entered into political marriages at young ages. The last depicted character, the miller, provides an interesting look into how the aristocracy viewed the lower classes because the man is humble and honourable, offering the princess refuge in her moment of need. Both in its visual and its textual forms, Der Busant is part of a long medieval story tradition in which love ultimately triumphs over all obstacles.

While this tapestry can be used as a gateway to explore the culture surrounding wealth in the late Middle Ages, it is important to remember that fixed images do not have fixed meanings. The remarkable survival of this piece indicates that it was reinterpreted multiple times. Someone looking at it today is unlikely to assume it has anything to do with courtly romance and heroism, because the woman appears to be fleeing from the crowned wild man. To us, the wilderness looks more like a garden, perhaps reminiscent of the Garden of Eden.

Modern symbols of luxury—a yacht, an expensive car, an exclusive vacation—are different than in the past. Tapestries are no longer symbols of wealth in western culture. The Industrial Revolution created mechanized weaving, embroidery, and dyeing and so a tapestry could be produced on a mass scale at a small fraction of the cost of a medieval one. And while handmade tapestries are still expensive, they are used in terms of art alone, serving no function in keeping a room warm.

Check Your Understanding

1) Which is not a formal characteristic of art?

2) Is the “Der Busant” tapestry woven?

Works Cited

Unknown. c. 1480-1490. “Der Busant.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met Collection. New York. Retrieved from https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection

9c. Material Contexts

Modern Contexts

We can only gesture here towards the most important modern contexts for medieval art: the modern practices of preserving, collecting, conserving, curating, and displaying medieval works of art and visual culture that have survived into our times. We tend to think of museums—themselves inventions of the modern age—as typical settings for medieval art. How a medieval object made its way into a museum is often a fascinating piece of history in and of itself. That journey must have started with the medieval object being removed from the setting for which it was made, and perhaps changing settings and hands many times. Many medieval objects reside in private collections still, and sometimes, if you are very fortunate, you can see a medieval work of art in situ, that is to say, still in the place (often a church) for which it was purpose-made hundreds of years ago.

Medieval Spaces

As we look at the images of wild men in this module, it is critically important to first imagine the spaces for which these representations were initially intended. The stone-carved green men(as depicted in the earlier figure, Cadney Green Man), for example, can be found in medieval cathedrals, often on pillars far above the height of the human eye, where they are but one example of many kinds of exuberant visual art. The artists and craftsmen who made these stone-carved green men are anonymous, as are the manuscript illuminators, fresco painters, and badge makers, indeed everyone who produced one of the wild men you see here, with the exception of the final image.

Medieval Materials

We provide here a brief discussion of the materials from which the image and objects featured in this module were made; it is not an exhaustive overview of the medieval media and materials in which one can find images of wild men.

Parchment, Vellum, and Paper

There are many manuscript illuminations featuring wild men in this module (e.g., see the first section of this module). Manuscripts (also called codices) were made from either parchment or (from the 1300s on) from paper. Parchmentis a general term applied to any animal hide prepared for writing; the most common types in medieval codices are calf, sheep, and goat.  Vellum, deriving from the French “veau” (in English “veal” or “calf”), is thus a specific type of parchment. In the medieval preparation process for parchment (a process still followed today), all hides were soaked in a salt and lime brine for several days before being de-haired, stretched, and dried. The skins were then cut to size (either by the producer or the buyer) and marked with lines. Medieval paper was made from linen rags, a material that created a far stronger product for quills. The creation process of medieval paper firstly required the fabric rags to be washed and soaked in a strong solution for several days.The disintegrating pieces were beaten in cold, clean, water before being left to ferment, a step repeated until the mixture resembled a water-logged pulp. Rectangular wire frames were dipped into the pulp, and the wet sheets were pressed between layers of felt before being hung up to dry. The final step saw the paper lowered into size (animal glue often made from leftover scraps of vellum) to make it less absorbent. The paper was then pressed again and sometimes even polished.

The process of creating a book was laborious. Usually, the book was first designed, meaning that a plan was made for which texts to include, which allowed for an estimate of the amount of parchment (or paper) and other materials needed to complete the manuscript. The vellum or paper had to be purchased or made, collected, and cut to size. The layout was designed, with spaces reserves for large initials or illuminations, and then each folio was scored with lines. The texts were then written with ink and quill. followed by the creation of highlighted letters or red lettering and finally, if planned, illuminations. Each step was carried out by specialists. Finally, the manuscript was bound, another task carried out by specialists. Medieval manuscripts have plenty of unplanned additions, however: scribbles, doodles, comments, pen marks, new folios sewn in, and more, and these can date to the original scribes, illuminators, owners, or readers, or to subsequent owners of the codex.

For our purposes, it is critically important to study the contexts in which images of wild men appear. What kinds of texts does the manuscript contain? What languages is it in? For whom was it intended? Answering these questions can provide fascinating und unexpected contexts for the images of wild men.

Wodwose surrounded by dogs. Marginalia from Queen Mary Psalter, Latin psalterr, fol. 173r. featuring Psalm 70:7-13. 1310-1320, London/Westminster, 196 folios, vellum, copiously illumininations, 17.5 x 27.5 cm.  London, British Library, Royal MS 2 B VII, f. 173r.fol. 173r.

(Unknown, c. 1310-1320)

Queen Mary Psalter, fol. 173r. Latin psalterr, full page featuring Psalm 70:7-13. 1310-1320, London/Westminster, 196 folios, vellum, copiously illuminated, 17.5 x 27.5 cm.  London, British Library, Royal MS 2 B VII, f. 173r. (Unknown, c. 1310-1320)

Oil on Panel

Panel broadly refers to painting executed on a rigid support, which in the Middle Ages were wood panels that had been sawed, planed and sized from specific, suitable trees, usually close-grained hardwoods. There were no standard sizes so deciding on the size, shape, and number of wooden panels for a composition was part of the artistic process. Medieval altarpieces often used multiple panels (hence the terms diptych, meaning two-panelled, and triptych, meaning three-panelled), while late medieval portraits normally used single panels. There is one example of an oil painting in this module, the Portrait of Oswolt Krel by Albrecht Dürer (see the figure here). It is a triptych done on wood. Prior to the application of paint, the wood would have been prepared by a member of Dürer’s workshop. The first step in this process included the removal of all gum and resin through boiling or steaming. The panel would then have been coated with size and gesso, a cover that would have smoothed the surface and helped to prevent splitting once the paint and wood had fully dried.

Portrait of Oswolt Krel by Albrecht Dürer, flanked by wild men holding the heraldic arms of Krel, a German merchant (on left) and his wife, Agathe von Esendorf (right), oil on oak panel, 1499, Germany, central panel, 50 x 39 cm; side panels, 50 x 16 cm. Munich, Alte Pinakothek, WAF 230. (Mortel 2012)

While oil painting in Europe can be traced back to the twelfth century, the expert use of it in Netherlandish art in the early fifteenth-century allowed it to become a dominant painting medium by Dürer’s age. Previously, egg tempura had been used as a medium. Using oil as a medium means that the pigments (including those described in the British Library article in Additional Resources) are suspended in drying oils such as linseed oil. The advantages of painting with oil included the fusion of colour tones and the creation of crisp lines, a quality easily seen in the fur of Dürer’s wild people (see the figure titled, Portrait ofOswolt Krelby Albrecht Dürer). Oils also allowed for opaque, translucent, and transparent painting.

Fresco

Fresco painting, in which water-based pigments are applied to wet plaster, was common in the Middle Ages. The process of creating a fresco began with the preparation of the wall, where a sand and plaster mixture was troweled on before the artist transferred a cartoon outline (preparatory drawing) in charcoal.  A thin final coat of plaster was then added and smoothed, a surface to which paint was applied while this final layer is still wet. This period lasted only hours, making fresco painting a difficult art form to master.  Adding to this, mistakes could not be corrected through overpainting because this would require a new layer of plaster. Painters had to be very skilled and usually worked in sections, as is the case in the wild man fresco from Sacco, Italy (see figure, The Homo Selvadego).

Carved Stone

Medieval stone carvers required both physical strength and precision. Very hard, stone is nevertheless brittle due to its crystalline structure, and so it is far more difficult to carve than wood. Stone carvings were created by expert craftsmen who, despite dedicating a lifetime to the mastery of their craft, often remain anonymous. Fine medieval stonework often survives today in a weathered and often plain, white state, so it is important to remember that these sculptures were once highly polished, painted, and even gilded.

(Croft, 2008)

(Unknown,  c. 1236-1245)

Some faded traces of what these works would have looked like in the Middle Ages survive, as is the case for the famous smiling angel of Reims Cathedral.

These surviving colours provide a small glimpse into the bright tones of an age which we often associate with cold, natural stone.

Required Looking Break

Follow this link to view a reconstruction of the medieval colours of Amiens Cathedral:

• Wow! Medieval Cathedrals Used to Be Full of Brilliant Colors.

Tapestries

Stone walls were cold and so the dwellings of the wealthy were often hung with woven tapestries, which provided both beauty and warmth. Tapestries were the preserve of the rich throughout the Middle Ages; their creation was incredibly labour intensive and they required far more material than other traditional forms of art. Of these materials, threads were the most prominent and could be made of wool, linen, silk, and fine metals (including gold thread).

Required Reading Break

Read this article about the process of creating a medieval tapestry by the MET:

• How Medieval and Renaissance Tapestries Were Made

If you wish, connect it to the tapestry depiction of the wild prince from Der Busant (see Der BusantTapestry).

Engraving

In the craft of engraving, a tool is used to gouge sharp lines into a metal plane, a technique which appears to have evolved from goldsmiths and became popular in Germany in the 1470s (although first appearing in the 1430s). Albrecht Dürer, perhaps the most famous engraver of all, was born to a family of goldsmiths in 1471. His expert grasp of the medium is clearly seen in his Coat of Arms with a Skull(see figure)*,*where the woman wearing a bridal crown, is embraced from behind by a muscular, bearded wild man.

As well as advertising his talent, the expert detail of Dürer’s piece orients the viewer’s interpretation by using the memento mori(“remember death”) theme with the skull on the shield.

Throughout his life, Dürer used engraving as a means to economic success as an artist because the medium allows for multiple prints to be created from the same plate.

Albrecht Dürer, engraved print, woman embraced from behind by a wild man, in front of them imaginary heraldic imagery. 1503, Nüremberg, paper, 24.3 x 17.9 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 19.73.113. (Dürer 1503)

Required Watching Break

Watch this video by the Clark Art Institute to examine Dürer’s engraving process:

ClarkArtInstitute. “Inside Albrecht’s Studio - Engraving.” [Video.] YouTube. 3:31. (November 17, 2010). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf4sH8iCOPw.

Medieval Badges

While Dürer’s engravings may have reached larger audiences than manuscripts, frescos, tapestries, and paintings, medieval badgeswere the most accessible images for regular people in the Middle Ages. Although a handful of badges survive that were made of precious materials and aimed at the wealthy, the vast majority of badges were made of lead-tin alloy, which is inexpensive. These pewter badges were mass-produced by pouring molten pewter into stone molds, and the resulting objects were cheap to buy. The majority of surviving badges were religious in nature. They featured an image of a saint or relic that was linked to a specific holy site. Such religious badges were mainly produced for pilgrims. Secular badges were also produced for a variety of political and cultural purposes, and some of these were bawdy. Badges of wild people are secular badges that are often bawdy or vulgar, as the figures Wild Man with Club**,** Naked Wild Man Wearing Hood, and Wild Man in Rectangular Frame suggest. The contexts to which they might have belonged are discussed in the next section.

(Unknown, c. 1375-1424)

(Unknown, c. 1375-1424)

Check Your Understanding

1) What is vellum?

2) What is the main difference between medieval and modern paper?

3) Which of the artworks below is a triptych?

Additional Resources

Examine this step-by-step explanation by the British Library of how medieval illuminated codices were created and watch the accompanying videos:

• How to make a medieval manuscript.

Works Cited

Croft, Richard. 2008. “Foliate ‘Green Man’.” Geograph. July 11. Accessed December 2020. CC-BY-SA-2.0. https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/880094.

Dürer, Albrecht. 1503. “Coat of Arms with a Skull.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met Collection, Fletcher Fund, 1919. New York. Retrieved from https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/336220.

Jones, Susan.  “Painting in Oil in the Low Countries and Its Spread to Southern Europe.”  The MET, October 2002.  https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/optg/hd_optg.htm.

Keys, David.  “The Way Medieval Craftsmen Made the First Pocket Bibles.”  The Church Times, November 27, 2015. https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2015/27-november/news/uk/the-way-medieval-craftsmen-made-the-first-pocket-bibles.

Lemeneva, Elena.  “Materials and Techniques of Manuscript Production: Paper.”  Medieval Manuscript Manual.  Accessed December 2, 2020.  http://web.ceu.hu/medstud/manual/MMM/paper.html.

Mortel, Richard. 2012. “Photograph of ‘Portrait of Oswalt Krel’, Oil on Panel portrait by Albreched Durer c. 1499.” Flickr.com. October 25. Accessed December 2020. CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0. https://www.flickr.com/photos/prof_richard/8207413583/in/photostream/.

Tcherikover, Anat.  “The Fall of Nebuchadnezzar in Romanesque Sculpture (Airvault, Moissac, Bourg-Argental, Foussais).”  Zeitschrift Für Kunstgeschichte 49, no. 3 (1986): 288-300.  Accessed November 8, 2020.  doi:10.2307/1482358.

Thompson, Wendy.  “The Printed Image in the West: Engraving.”  The MET, October 2003. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/engr/hd_engr.htm.

Unknown. c. 1310-1320. “Queen Mary Psalter fol. 173r.” The British Library. Royal MS 2 B VII. London. Retrieved from http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=royal_ms_2_b_vii_f001r

Unknown. c. 1236-1245. “Reims Cathedral Smile.” Needpix.com. Accessed December 15, 2020. https://www.needpix.com/photo/download/641600/reims-cathedral-smile-angels-french-gothic-architecture-portal-statues-religious-worship.

Unknown. c. 1375-1424. “Wild man with bare genitals wearing hood.” Object number 00594. Radboud University. Kunera. Nijmegen. Retrieved from https://www.kunera.nl/kunerapage.aspx?From=Default

Unknown. c. 1400-1449. “Wild man with club over his shoulder.” Radboud University (Kunara). Langbroek, collectie Familie Van Beuningen, inv. 2522. Nijmegen. Object number 13656. Retrieved from  https://www.kunera.nl/kunerapage.aspx?From=Default

Wellesley, Mary.  “A Field Guide to Wodewoses.”  British Library: Medieval Manuscripts Blog, September 21, 2016. https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2016/09/a-field-guide-to-wodewoses.html.

9d. Cultural Contexts

Stories of Wild Men and Wild Women

Wild men and wild women are not the protagonists of their own stories in the Middle Ages, in the way that, for example, Arthurian knights or martyred saints are, but they feature regularly in many tales and long-form stories across languages and cultures. In stories, wild people are sometimes helpers and sometimes foes. What matters in this module is that narratives about wild women and men often differin salient ways from the dominant images of wild men in medieval visual culture.

Medieval narratives explore the problem of the wild double in their own way. One difference, for example, is the simple fact that wild women are more common in stories than in visual programs. This simple fact reminds us that while visual and narrative cultures coexist in the same time and place and may even be created for and enjoyed by the same audiences, visual and narrative cultures represent discrete cultural domains. We cannot treat their themes, motifs, and values as being interchangeable but rather must treat each as a potential context for the other. We must also remember to set aside our modern expectation that images on a page illustrate something that is going on in the text. In medieval manuscripts, image and text are sometimes narratively independent of one another, as we have seen with the images of wild men in religious and theological manuscripts. We are reminded to ask ourselves careful questions about the relationship between text and image in a medieval manuscript, such as whether the visual program, for example, might represent commentary on or a kind of diversion and relief from the text.

Appearance

In one group of popular medieval German stories, the protagonist Dietrich of Berne frequently battles giant-like wild men, forest- and cave-dwelling creatures who are the implacable foes of human beings and who resemble the more fearsome wild men of visual culture. In some stories the physical appearance of wild men and wild women is described in racialized ways, with dark skin and what are termed moorish features. The best known example of this kind of wild man appears in medieval French and German stories about an Arthurian knight named Yvain (Old French) or Iwein (Middle High German), which were written around the year 1200. On his first adventure, Yvain/Iwein encounters in the forest a wild man who is described in racialized terms. This unnamed wild man is a powerful figure who is the sovereign of the forest realm and guardian of the forest beasts. He is intended to seem threatening or at any rate, frightening, but in fact he is not Yvain/Iwein’s foe. Rather, he helps Yvain/Iwein find the adventure of the fountain, which is the first of a series of important adventures for Yvain/Iwein.

Medieval frescoes depicting the beginning of the Yvain/Iwein story were painted in the first decades of the thirteenth century in the Italian castle at Rodenegg (or Rodank) in a region that was linguistically and culturally German. The frescoes were discovered and restored in 1972-73 by Nicolò Rasmo, who did not attempt to reproduce parts of the frescos, such as the entire lower half of the wild man’s body, that had been entirely destroyed by the passage of time.

The figure of the Wild Man of Rodenegg shows the wild man in the Rodenegg frescoes pointing to the viewer’s left. The image has a dual purpose. It shows the wild man doing what he does in the story: giving directions. The gesture also directs the viewer to the next visual frame in the fresco’s pictorial sequence. Here a damaged image shows Iwein framed by trees and initiating the adventure by pouring water on the fountain.

This wild man looks formidable and wild, with a broad, naked chest and unruly red hair. Are his features racialized, and to what extent might the choices made here be those of the restorer, who would have known the medieval sources? In many medieval stories the physical appearance of wild women draws on a variety of racial, gendered, age-related, or ability stereotypes to create a female figure who is considered loathsome, that is to say, unappealing and frightening.

(Stullkowski 2006)

This appearance often conceals other characteristics, however. The female Grail messenger, Cundrie, who plays a key role in the Perceval (French) and Parzival (German) stories, is also a wise woman with a formidable education and outstanding intellectual skills. The “loathsome ladies” of various other tales often have magical abilities. Sometimes they turn out to beautiful young women who have been disguised (or have disguised themselves) as loathsome ladies in order to test their lovers (see the Required Reading by Westphal-Wihl in this section).

Transformation

The transformation of the loathsome lady, who is a kind of wild woman, into a beautiful maiden is a standard trope in stories featuring wild women. Another kind of transformation typical for stories of wild men is one in which the human, male protagonist goes mad and lives like a wild man in the woods until his sanity is restored. There is a version of this motif in the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament, as was mentioned previously. In Yvain/Iwein, the adventure of the foundation leads the hero to win in combat the hand of a wealthy and powerful widow, only to be repudiated by her after a year because he has abandoned his duties as a ruler in order to go about tournamenting with his chivalric buddies. After being publicly shamed and humiliated for his irresponsible behavior, Yvain/Iwein loses his mind and runs naked into the forest, where he lives like a wild man (in this case, like a beast) until he is cured and embarks incognito on a perilous quest to win back his wife’s love.

In a thirteenth-century short German story, The Buzzard (Der Busant), an English prince and French princess elope and endure many adventures before they are happily reunited. The adventures, which are in part due to the actions of a thieving bird (hence the story’s title), include an interlude in which the English prince goes mad and lives in the forest like a wild man. A late medieval tapestry featuring images from this story has survived (see the figure  **Der Busant,**in a previous section of this module). Note the flowery crown on the wild man’s head, which clarifies that the wild man represents the princely protagonist; the other male figure is a poor man who shelters the lost French princess. One of the most interesting aspects of the image of the prince-gone-mad wild man is that he has the furry body typical of visual depictions of wild men, and is shown running on all fours like a beast. This posture is otherwise rare in visual depictions of wild men, even though, as will be discussed next, their postures usually suggest movement of some kind.

Embodying Wild Men

The wild men on medieval badges are usually shown in odd poses, their legs bent, crossed, or lifted in some way. These postures gesture towards another visual sphere of medieval culture in which wild men had a place: the realm of performance and spectacle. Here medieval wild men broke out of the representational confines of the pages of books or painted and tapestried walls. Instead, they came to life, embodied in practices of public and private performance.

Public rituals and festivities, including public processions, were ubiquitous in late medieval urban life. Important religious ceremonies such as those for Easter or for the commemorating local saints, often spilled into the streets with plays and solemn liturgical processions. As we shall see, some religiously themed events, such as shrovetide, included decidely secular pastimes such as street games, costumed parades, and ribald plays. Secular events as various as the public dispensation of justice in public trials, punishments, and executions, the weddings and funerals of the great lords, the diplomatic visits of lords, ecclesiastical princes, or representatives from other cities often included public-facing events that mixed secular and religious features, There was variation in these performances across medieval Europe because they were locally realized and responsive to local traditions. Every institution or household of means staged appropriate rituals and festivities for momentous occasions, from the convents, monasteries, parish churches, and great cathedrals, to the noble and patrician houses great and small, to the urban guilds and civic rulers of the cities. Many of these festivities were private, but depending on the occasion some included public-facing events, which ranged widely in size and scale. Some were integrated into the framework of larger, recurring urban festivities; some centered on the initiating institution or household alone; some were political actions that emerged in response to political pressures. Some took an afternoon, others a week; some fed fifty guests, others five thousand or more; some relied on “homegrown” entertainment, with song, plays, and pageantry being produced by those who staged the entertainment, while in other cases entire troupes of skilled artists were hired; some were solemn and serious while others were wild and ribald. Some aspects of these festivities, processions, and rituals fit into a wider medieval traditions of transgressing social boundaries on special occasions, and it is here that wild men had their place. There were (at least) two kinds of festivities, carnivaland charivari, in which men dressed up as wild men and participated in wild men games, took part in processions, and performed wild dances.

Carnival

Carnival, also known as Shrovetide, is still celebrated in many parts of the world. In liturgical terms, it traditionally precedes the Easter season. All across medieval Europe, carnival included public processions, public and private festivities, and various kinds of games and performances ranging from morally edifying to obscene. In German-speaking lands, wild men performances and games were an integral part of carnival. Every year in Nuremberg the butchers and upper-class youths dressed up as wild men to perform the Schembart run, called in German Schembartlauf. This processional event involved performing a grotesque dance in front of a woman, who would crown one of the dancers king. The literary scholar Eckehard Simon discusses other typical wild man performances such as the wild man hunt and the wild man dance:

First attested in 1338 in the Swiss town of Aarau, this ritual [the wild man hunt] involves revelers chasing after one of their own, who is covered only with ivy leaves, or hair, the mythical savage from the wood, and putting him in chains or mock-killing him. … In 1435, Basel entertained its church council with a wild-man dance. It featured twenty-three fellows with hair, half red, half green, falling to their feet, who danced while bashing each other with clubs stuffed with tow.Simon, “Carnival Obscenities,” p. 199

The surviving wild man badges (see figures titled, Wild Man with Club, Naked Wild Man Wearing Hood, and Wild Man in Rectangular Frame) show a man whose body is covered with fur and who is usually clutching a cudgel while holding an odd or enigmatic posture. The textual evidence helps us to decode these postures as indicating movement of some kind such as hopping or dancing. The badges must be alluding to these ambulatory enactments of wild men. The relationship between the badges and the wild man performances at carnival or charivari is unclear, however. Some of the wild man badges have been found in regions of the Low Countries where shrovetide activities such as those described above were common; Wild Man in Rectangular Frame is from Stralsund in northern Germany, where carnival was similarly celebrated. But who commissioned or wore a wild man badge, and why? Were there wild men guilds? Could such a badge have been a gift? These questions continue to puzzle scholars.

Charivari

Who dressed up as a wild man? Nineteenth century assumptions that it was men of the lower classes who did so are unfounded, although they are long-lived and still believed by some today. Medieval elites were deeply involved in the public festivities and theatrics described in this module, from sponsoring and organizing them to enthusiastically participating. In the carnival evidence cited above, the performers are non-noble, urban elites who are members of corporations and craftsmen guilds. Masquerading as a wild man was part of noble traditions as well. Best known among these festivals were wild man dances, or performances, as a part of charivari.

In the Middle Ages, charivari was a boisterous, noisy, mock serenade or dance that was performed on the occasion of a remarriage or an “unsuitable” marriage, typically performed by young men who were either disguised (perhaps as wild men) or cloaked in darkness, and who could often be appeased by being given money for drink. The Required Reading in this section by literary scholar Susan Crane provides an excellent discussion of charivari. For our purposes, what matters is that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, charivari interludes were popular with elites and often featured wild men.

A fictional representation of a charivari wild man dance appears in a German-language manuscript from around the year 1400. It illustrates the German version of a medieval prose romance, Pontus and Sidonia*,* which was translated from French by the archduchess Eleonore of Austria in 1456. The story follows the romance of Pontus, the son of a Galatian King, and Sidonia, a daughter of the King of Brittany, who is betrothed to Genelet. At the wedding of Sidonia and Genelet, Pontus and his men disguise themselves as wild men and create a charivari (from the perspective of the story, the proposed marriage is unsuitable because Sidonia is in love with Pontus). The wild men wear greenish costumes whose “scales” probably attempt to represent bunches of tow or shrubbery–fur or vegetation?–and as noisemakers they have bells tied to their limbs (see figure, Charivari in Pontus and Sidona).

Charivari in Pontus and Sidona. German manuscript illumination on parchment, detail of Pontus and his men, dressed as wild men, performing at the wedding of Sidonia and Genelet above a section of the prose romance. C. 1475, Workshop of Ludwig Henfflin, Stuttgart (Germany), 140 leaves, paper, 131 colored pen drawings, 30,1 x 21 cm. Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, cpg 142, fol. 122r. (Unknown, c. 1475)

Perhaps the most famous medieval charivari event, however, was a real one that ended in disaster. At a wedding feast held in 1393 in honor of the remarriage of one of the French queen’s ladies in waiting, the French king Charles VI and five of his male courtiers dressed up in elaborate wild men costumes made of linen soaked in resin into which flax had been attached, which made the costumes shaggy. Disaster struck when a torch accidentally set on fire first one and then rapidly all of the resin-soaked costumes. Four of the wild men perished; one saved himself by jumping into a vat of wine. Charles VI survived because of the quick thinking of his cousin, the Duchess of Berry, who had called him over to ask his identity, and is said to have thrown her skirts over him to protect him. This terrible mishap was included in Jean Froissant’s Chronicles, from which the figure, Bal des Ardents (the ball of the burning men) is taken.

Bal des Ardents. Manuscript illumination of nobles dressed as wild men catching fire in 1393 at court of Charles VI of France, in Jean Froissart, Chroniques. C. 1470-1472, Bruges (The Netherlands), 200 folios, parchment, 12 large and 39 small minatures plus copious decoration, 420 x 315 mm. London, British Library, Harley MS 4380, f. 1r. (Harley MS 4380, f. 1r, c. 1470-1472)

Required Reading Break

Now complete the following readings.

• Susan Crane, “Wild Doubles in Charivari and Interlude,” chapter 5 ofThe Performance of Self:  Ritual, Clothing, and Identity in the Hundred Years War(Philadelphia: University  of Pennsylvania Press, ), pp. 140-74.
• Sarah Westphal-Wihl, “Wild Women,” inWomen and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, edited by Margaret Schaus (New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 836-37.

Check Your Understanding

1) Is the unnamed wild man the enemy of Yvain/Iwein?

2) What is the occupation of the man who shelters the princess in Der Busant?

3) During the disastrous Bal des Ardents of 1393:

Works Cited

Eckehard Simon, “Carnival Obscenities in German Towns,” Obscenity: Social Control and Artistic Creation in the European Middle Ages, ed Jan Ziolkowski (Brill 1998), pp. 193-213, here p. 199.

Harley, Froissart. c. 1470-1472. “Chroniques, Vol. IV, part 2 f.1.” The British Library. Harley 4380. Bruges. Retrieved from https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=7232&CollID=8&NStart=4380

Stullkowski. 2006. “Photograph of fresco depicting a scene from “Iwein” by Hartmann von Aue Schloss Rodenegg c. 1200-1299.” Wikimedia Commons. May 24. Accessed December 2020. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iweinwaldmensch.jpg.

Unknown. c. 1475. “Pontus und Sidonia.” Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg. Cod. Pal. germ. 142. Stuttgart. Retrieved from https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg142/0249

9e. Albrecht Dürer’s Portrait of Oswolt Krel

Looking Closely at the Portrait of Oswolt Krel

Portrait of Oswolt Krel by Albrecht Dürer, flanked by wild men holding the heraldic arms of Krel, a German merchant (on left) and his wife, Agathe von Esendorf (right). 1499, Germany, oil on oak panel, central panel, 50 x 39 cm; side panels, 50 x 16 cm. Munich, Alte Pinakothek, WAF 230. (Mortel 2012)

Before you begin reading this summary I ask you to read the caption of the figure, Portrait of Oswolt Krel, one more time and note the size of this masterpiece of portraiture painted by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). Take a tape measure, if you like, and compare the size of the portrait of Oswolt Krel, with its side panels, to the size of any art you might have on your wall. In your mind, transfer Dürer’s portrait to your wall and contemplate its size and impact there.

At the end of module 9 we encounter a work of art that fits a modern understanding of the term: a masterpiece created by an artist whose name we know, who counts as one of the great artists of the Western world, and who pioneered new forms of visual representation. As the art historian Joseph Leo Koerner wrote in the cover description of his famous study of Dürer’s self-portraits:

The self-portrait has become a model of what art is: the artwork is the image of its maker, and understanding the work means recovering from it an original vision of the artist.Koerner, 1993

Between Medieval and Modern

The life and art of Albrecht Dürer straddle the medieval and the early modern periods. His innovative self-portraits and his self-consciousness as a great artist point decisively towards the future, but at the same time, a work such as the Portrait of Oswolt Krel is embedded in medieval practices of visual meaning-making, as an analysis of its use of wild men makes clear.

The Portrait of Oswolt Krel was an expensive work of art. Created in oil and made with two wings that can be closed over the middle panel, it was painted by Dürer when he was not yet thirty years old but already a rising international star. The portrait was probably commissioned by the sitter, Oswolt Krel (1460-1534) (also spelled Oswalt or Oswald), a wealthy merchant from Lindau who resided in Nuremberg for a number of years. Krel likely sought out Dürer for this work.

A wealthy and powerful merchant commissions a portrait of himself from a well-known, radical, up-and-coming artist of the city where he resides. Krel must have known where he would hang the painting, but where might that have been? I have asked you to imagine this painting on a wall in your home. I hope you will agree that in terms of size the painting would fit your space well. The painting is clearly not one of those huge, greater-than-life-size oil paintings one encounters in museums that were made for large public buildings or enormous palaces. Its size indicates that the Portrait of Oswolt Krel was intended for a smaller room of some kind. At the same time, the portrait has an aggressive quality that demands attention and invites comment and discussion. The fact that the painting can be opened and closed underscores its theatrical qualities and suggests that it was opened for specific occasions. It is plausible to speculate that Krel had well-furnished representative spaces, used for business meetings and the like, that were typical for his way of life.

Let’s look at the painting. In the middle panel we see an adult man in the prime of life sitting in front of a red background or curtain, with a woodland setting on the left. The man’s brown, curly hair flows around a severe, yet compelling and vigorous face. His mouth set in a straight line, the sitter glances pugnaciously to the right. He is bare-headed and clothed in a white pleated shift and a sumptuous collared black robe that is thrown over one shoulder with its fur lining draped down to his waist, all worn so that his bare upper chest is exposed, upon which rests a black and gold necklace of some kind whose end is concealed underneath the clothing. The sitter’s right hand rests on the painting’s frame as though on a window sill, while his large, muscular left hand, with its signet ring, holds the fur firmly in a fist.

In fact, the sitter is present in the painting as an individual three times. First, there is the life-like visual portrayal. Second, the sitter is present linguistically; his name is painted at the top of the red panel together with the year in which the painting was made. Third, the sitter is present in the symbolic system of heraldry via the coat of arms that belonged uniquely to him: the wild man on the viewer’s left holds Oswolt’s coat of arms; the wild man on the viewer’s right holds those of his wife, Agathe von Esendorf.

The Wild Men in Dürer’s Painting

Much could, and has, been written about this painting, but we are going to focus on the wild men. How many wild men are there in this painting? Each wing shows a wild man displaying all the traditional medieval features of the type: furry, naked, hopping or dancing, and holding a club. The wild man on the viewer’s left holds Krel’s coat of arms, which also features a wild man or giant. That makes three wild men, so far, and I would argue that Krel himself is the fourth.

I call your attention to the wild man holding Krel’s coat of arms. The features of this wild man echo the sitter’s, and he glances in the same direction. The backdrop across which Krel is posed is half curtain and half forest. Krel’s body is visible (the naked chest) and his expression is fierce. (In addition to being a powerful force in Nuremberg commerce, Krel was a known rowdy who was once imprisoned for his unruly behavior at a Fastnachtspiel [carnival play].) And, Krel is wearing fur.

Fur has multiple associations, as we have seen. Naked, furry wild men are innocent, in the sense that they are natural creatures. Fur can represent potential animality, which is in itself neither good nor bad. Art historian Joseph Koerner reminds us that in the Middle Ages,

…fur [was] a statement of status, a badge of wealth, power, and distinction…Koerner 171, 1993

In this portrait, Dürer is using the motif of the furry wild man to individuate Krel and to underline Krel’s physicality, forcefulness, and powerful presence. At the same time, Krel is shown holding the fur drape tightly closed, asserting his will and controlling his wild tendencies.

Krel clutches his fur in a manner suggesting not only the sitter’s victory over his baser instincts but also his lingering alliance with these powers of the earth.Koerner 170, 1993

Dürer, who used fur in other portraits, including self-portraits, here uses the wild man motif and its association with fur to create a new, heroic ideal that celebrated the power of assertive, creative, masculine animality.

Check Your Understanding

1) How does Albrecht Dürer differ from the other artists in this module?

2) Who was Oswolt Krel?

3) Which type of space was the Portrait of Oswolt Krell likely intended for?

Once you have completed reviewing all of this week’s content, return to the module page.

Works Cited

Joseph Leo Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).

Mortel, Richard. 2012. “Photograph of ‘Portrait of Oswalt Krel’, Oil on Panel portrait by Albreched Durer c. 1499.” Flickr.com. October 25. Accessed December 2020. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/prof_richard/8207413583/in/photostream/

Module 10: Medieval Conceptions of the Devil

Andrew Stumpf (Philosophy and Theology, University of Waterloo)

This module follows the approach of the famous Christian theologian, Thomas Aquinas, in seeking to understand the contribution of both sources (reason and faith) to a theological account of the devil. In paying special attention to the writings of a particular historical theologian in a particular historical period, this module uses historical theology , the branch of theology that studies the historical discussion and development of key theological ideas. Because the particular theologian considered here was a Christian theologian who himself engaged with Jewish and Muslim thinkers as well as “pagan” philosophy, this module will focus on the topic in light of the contents of Christian faith, but in dialogue with other thought-systems. In particular, the devil will be considered in relatio

10a. Situating Devil-Theology

Biblical Sources

(Pacher, c. 1471-1475)

This page explains diabology (the study of the devil) as a theological topic, and considers some of the main sources for medieval diabology. It also distinguishes theological accounts of the devil from other sorts of representations of the devil in popular culture and religion.

Historically, Christian theology has held a very high view of Scripture, that is, the writings considered as sacred in both the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the New Testament. These writings contain numerous portrayals of the devil, beginning with the serpent who tempted humankind to turn from God in the garden of Eden, according to Genesis 3:1-7. That text does not mention the devil or Satan by name, but interpreters of the passage have almost unanimously understood the person of the devil to be at work in or through the serpent. In the last book of the Christian Bible, the book of Revelation (or Apocalypse), the serpent appears again, this time clearly identified:

And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.Revelation 12:7-9, NRSVCE

The passage just quoted contains or alludes to many of the key biblical data theologians had to consider in giving an account of the devil. The biblical authors considered the devil to be the adversary of both God and human beings. The devil was an angelic being, created by God, who rebelled and fell from his exalted place in heaven, taking a large number of other angels with him (patristic and medieval theologians read Ezekiel 28:11-19 as giving further information about this). In relation to human beings, the devil’s goal is to destroy, and his main method is deception. The author of the Gospel of John reports Jesus’ characterization of the devil as follows: “He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44, NRSVCE). We see the devil at work in prompting Judas Iscariot to betray Jesus (John 13:27), and in tempting Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11). The Lord’s Prayer famously teaches Christians to pray, “…do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one” (Matthew 5:13), suggesting that the temptations of the devil (the evil one) are a constant concern for believers. Finally, from the perspective of New Testament authors, the devil should be considered a defeated foe – already substantially defeated by Christ through his death by crucifixion (see Hebrews 2:12), and to be defeated with finality at Christ’s second coming (Revelation 20:10). Clarifying exactly what powers the devil continues to have and exercise in the time in-between the first and second coming of Christ is one of the many thorny problems for diabology.

(Master, c. 1413-1415)

(Unknown, c. 1430)

Gambling with the Devil?

The book of Job in the Hebrew Bible contains a particularly interesting account of the devil’s relationship to God. Here the devil appears under the name “Satan,” taken from the Hebrew word meaning “adversary.” The first chapter begins by presenting Job as a very upright person, who was also very wealthy and had many children. “One day,” say verses 6 and 7, “the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. The LORD said to Satan, ‘Where have you come from?’ Satan answered the LORD, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.’” Already this text raises many questions. Should we read this as a literal or a historical account, or should we read it as metaphorical or poetic? If it is meant as a poetical account or a wisdom narrative, can we learn anything from it about the ways of the devil and the devil’s interactions with God? Why does Satan appear to be included in the council of heavenly beings that meet with the LORD? And why does God permit him to roam around the earth?

Things quickly get stranger. The LORD asks Satan, “ ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.’ Then Satan answered the LORD, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.’ The LORD said to Satan, ‘Very well, all that he has is in your power; only do not stretch out your hand against him!’ So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD” (Job 1:8-12). The first oddity is that God seems to be boasting to the devil – why would God do that? But next, we see Satan giving counsel to God, and God listening! Finally, God and the devil seem to be involved in a wager here, with Job’s life and well-being at stake. Satan ends up getting permission to take the lives of Job’s children and then to afflict Job with terrible sores and physical suffering. And yet, “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing” (Job 1:22).

A somewhat similar story of Job (Ayoub) appears in the Quran (see Quran 21:83-84 and 38:44). These accounts of Job have given Jewish, Christian and Islamic thinkers much to ponder. In particular, they raise profound questions about the causes of suffering and who should be seen as responsible for it. As we will see, medieval theologians invested much energy in responding to the problem of evil and the problem of suffering, and these problems continue to be much discussed today (Book of Job, New Revised Standard Version Bible, Catholic Edition).

Interpretation and Tradition

Of course, biblical texts and accounts need to be interpreted if we are to say what they mean or how they might be relevant to us. In a sense, this is where Christian theology begins – with the effort to understand what Christians should believe and what they should do on the basis of the teachings recorded in the biblical documents. (Parallel statements can be made about Jewish or Muslim theologies in relation to their own set of holy texts.) For Christians, the Scriptures form a set of canonical documents understood to have authority for faith (what to believe) and for life (how to live). But Christians in the medieval period were, just as Christians are today, the inheritors of a long tradition of biblical interpretation and commentary that included certain key teachers understood to be authoritative. Medieval theologians were highly sensitive to this tradition, and engagement with the authoritative teachers of the church was understood as a basic obligation for this discipline.

From the beginning and throughout its history, the mainstream church had to define its views (the teachings of Christ and his apostles) over against alternative perspectives that deviated in significant ways. Further complicating the situation, as the Christian faith grew and spread over the centuries, it incorporated an increasingly wide diversity of people groups (including Celtic, Germanic, Slavic and older, pre-Christian Mediterranean and Anglo-Saxon). These “pagans” who had now become Christians naturally blended their previous beliefs and traditions with the Christian story. The results did not always align well with received apostolic teaching. In order to clarify, communicate, and defend the “truths of the Christian faith” against heresy, church leaders and church councils formulated creeds and doctrinal statements. In this way an orthodoxy was established, and standards were set up for judging who was “inside” and who was “outside” the faith.

(Unknown, n.d.)

Creeds and Councils

The first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine (272-337), convened the first ecumenical council of the Christian church at Nicea in 325. His purpose was to help early church leaders respond to questions raised by the Arians (followers of Arius of Alexandria) who claimed that Christ was not equal to God but was one of God’s creatures. This council denounced Arianism as a heresy and produced the Nicene Creed, which stated that Christ was of one substance with God the Father. This creed was modified at the second council, held at Constantinople in 381.

Later ecumenical councils took place at Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), Constantinople (553 and 680-681), Nicea (787) and Constantinople (869-870). These councils aimed to unify Christianity and combat heretical views, but they also dealt with practical and political questions, like the authority of bishops and the financial support of people conscripted to work in the church. After the “Great Schism” of 1054, which split Christendom into the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Roman Catholic) churches, councils were no longer held together. The Protestant Reformation in the 16th century brought further division into Western Christendom. The teachings of the Reformers, including Martin Luther, were condemned by Roman Catholics at the Council of Trent, held between 1545 and 1563. From the perspective of the Catholic church, there have been twenty-one ecumenical councils in total, the most recent of which were the two Vatican Councils in 1870 and 1962-1965.

The church councils most important in regard to Christian teaching on the devil were the Council of Braga (561), the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and the Council of Trent. Fourth Lateran, the most important council in the Medieval period, was convened under Pope Innocent III in 1215. At this council, dualist heresies propagated by the Cathars (see Russell, 1984, pp. 185-190 for detailed discussion) and others were addressed in Canon 1, which stated, “The devil and the other demons were indeed created by God good by nature but they became bad through themselves; man, however, sinned at the suggestion of the devil.” By contrast to the dualists, the same conciliar statement affirmed monism, the position that God the Trinity is “the one principle of the universe, Creator of all things invisible and visible, spiritual and corporeal, who from the beginning of time and by His omnipotent power made from nothing creatures both spiritual and corporeal….” Concerns about the conflict between (heretical) dualism and (orthodox) monism informed the way theologians of the late Medieval period approached the topic of the devil, and what they chose to focus on in their respective diabologies (Fourth Lateran Council, 1996).

Theological Diabology and Other Views of the Devil

Required Reading Break

Read the below chapter on medieval theologians’ views of the devil from a book by a medieval historian.

• Jeffrey, Russell. “The Devil and the Scholars,” inLucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages, Cornell University Press, 1984, pp. 159-207.

Medieval theologians strove to formulate their teachings within a nexus of authorities including biblical texts, theological commentary from patristic and other preceding theologians, and conciliar statements formed in opposition to heresies. The major theologians often got involved in controversies over doctrinal matters as the church sought to address the latest issues. With the rise of Universities and scholasticism in eleventh- and twelfth-century Europe, theological accounts were also increasingly constrained by methodological considerations. Scholastic theologians in the high middle ages were required to produce biblical commentaries and to comment on the primary theological textbook, the Sentences of Peter Lombard (1095-1160). In both their theological treatises and their public academic disputations, they tended to proceed dialectically, dealing with one statement after another by carefully examining and weighing arguments in favour of and against the statement in question and proceeding to a resolution.

(Heliodorus, c. 100 BCE)

(Fortuna and Ursem, c. 500BC -  1050 AD)

Ordinary people living in the middle ages generally formed their conception of the devil from numerous sources, incorporating pre-Christian folklore traditions (for instance the Greco-Roman and Celtic horned fertility gods Pan and Cerunnos) and popular religion as expressed in art and in preaching. Jeffrey Burton Russell writes,

Popular Christianity tended to present a vivid, frightening Devil. The domination of early medieval learning by monks meant that the colorful ideas of the desert fathers predominated, with their fierce emphasis upon the ubiquity and tangibility of demons. And the homilists dwelt upon the appalling for the explicit purpose of terrifying their auditors into good behavior…. Folkloric and popular definitions are never drawn so clearly as those of theology (which are blurry enough); the folkloric Devil shades off into other concepts such as the Antichrist, giants, dragons, ghosts, monsters, weranimals, and ‘the little people.’ Over generations folklore established a number of trivial points: what clothes the Devil wears, how he dances, how cold and hairy he is, and how he may be tricked or evaded.Russell, 1984, p. 63

Popular stories of the lives of saints, used by preachers as examples for edification, told of overcoming intense demonic attacks. The image below depicts St. Anthony of Egypt (251-356), the most famous of the desert fathers, being accosted by gruesome demons in various animal and semi-human forms.

By contrast, scholastic theologians employed reason and sometimes abstract logical argumentation and cosmological speculation about the nature of the devil and his relation to God, the world and human beings. “In asking how Lucifer fell,” says Russell, “we ask how evil initially entered the cosmos, and we can confront the nature of evil abstracted from historical or mythological circumstances” (Russell, 162). For example, Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) used the free choice of the devil to explain how evil entered the world and to absolve God of responsibility for moral evil. According to this account, the devil, having sinned freely without any cause or explanation, then tempted the first human beings, who also freely sinned. This original sin of the first human parents brought disharmony and alienation from God into the human race. Incapable of repaying the debt incurred through our sin, God, by offering God’s self in Christ, restores humanity to harmony with God. Russell contends that in describing salvation this way, scholastic theologians made the role of the devil relatively superfluous (Russell, 170-172). Further, although the devil did tempt Adam and Eve, they could have fallen without this temptation. In contrast to popular accounts which put the devil at centre stage, theological accounts of both human sin and human salvation can be given without any necessary appeal to the devil.

(Grünewald, c. 1510-1515)

When we examine Thomas Aquinas’s diabological theology in relation to the problem of evil later on in this module, it will be important to try to see to what extent the devil still plays an important theological role. Russell discusses Aquinas’s views on evil and the devil (see pp. 193-207). After a more in-depth look at the problem of evil (the next module page), we will examine Aquinas’s views for ourselves (the third module page).

Check Your Understanding

1) What is diabology?

2) Scholastic medieval diabologies differ from popular medieval depictions of the devil (in religion or in art) in that they…

Works Cited

Grünewald, Matthias. The Temptation of St. Anthony (detail). Unterlinden Museum at Colmar. Isenheim Altarpiece. Alstace, France, c. 1510-1515. Retrieved from: https://www.wikiart.org/en/matthias-grunewald/the-temptation-of-st-anthony-detail-1515

Master, Boucicaut. The Story of Adam and Eve. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Paris, France. c. 1413-1415. Retrieved from: http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/105151/boucicaut-master-the-story-of-adam-and-eve-french-about-1413-1415/?artview=dor136236&dz=0.6391,0.7410,1.53

Fortuna, R. and Ursem, K. (Photographers). The Gundestrup boiler, the inner plates. Nationalmuseets Samlinger, Denmark. c. 500BCE-1050AD. Retrieved from: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fsamlinger.natmus.dk%2FDO%2Fasset%2F5324

Fourth Lateran Council. [Statements taken from] The Internet Medieval Source Book at Fordham University (1996). Retrieved from https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/lateran4.asp

Heliodorus. Pan and Daphnis (Sculpture). Naples Museum of Archeology, Naples, Italy. c. 100 BCE. Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PanandDaphnis.jpg

Pacher, Michael. Saint Wolfgang and the Devil. c. 1471-1475. Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saint_Wolfgang_and_the_Devil.jpg

Russell, J. B. Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages. Cornell University Press, 1984.

The Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. (1993). New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition

Unknown. n.d. Icon depicting the First Council of Nicaea. Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nicaea_icon.jpg

Unknown. The Fall of the Rebel Angels. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Avignon, France. c. 1430. Retrieved from: http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/4617/unknown-maker-the-fall-of-the-rebel-angels-french-about-1430/?dz=0.5000,0.7187,0.43

10b. Diabology and the Problem of Evil

The Philosophical Problem of Evil

The problem of evil arises for anyone who wants to hold that the following four statements are all true:

• God is able to prevent evil from occurring;
• God is perfectly good;
• God knows everything;
• Evil exists.

As an example of evil, let’s take the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima by American President Harry Truman on August 6, 1945. The act of bombing Hiroshima can be understood as evil from a few different angles. For one thing, this act caused massive amounts of harm and suffering to the people of Hiroshima. It is traditional to distinguish natural evil, that is, evil in the form of pain and suffering, from moral evil, the evil of the will that chooses things that are morally wrong. In deciding to drop the bomb, Truman and his advisers arguably acted with deplorable disregard for the lives of the civilians who would become sick and die from the explosion or from the ensuing radiation poisoning. Their act, therefore, was morally evil.

(Caron and Levy, 1945)

If God is perfectly good, we would expect that God would not want anything evil to exist, and so would try to prevent evil in either of its forms (natural or moral) from occurring. For instance, a perfectly good God would not want the atom bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima, wanting neither the suffering of the bombing victims nor the morally evil choice that preceded it. Now it may be that God is perfectly good but is not able to prevent evil. In that case, we can understand how the existence of evil is compatible with the existence of God; God does not want the bomb to be dropped, but God does not have the power to stop the Truman administration from dropping it. Medieval historian Jeffrey Russell argued that the dualist heresy of the Cathars involved this sort of response to the problem of evil; it arose from an effort “to save the goodness of God by limiting his power, to account for the conflict between good and evil that we observe in life, and to respond to the conflict between the two that we perceive within ourselves” (Russell, Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages 187). In other words, the Cathars tried to show how evil is compatible with a perfectly good God by presenting God’s power (and hence, God’s ability to prevent evil) as limited by the power of the devil.

On the other hand, it could be that God is able to prevent evil, but does not want to prevent it – in other words, God might desire evil. If God wanted evil to occur, then we could see how the existence of a God who could prevent evil is compatible with the existence of evil; God could have stopped the bomb, but God either wanted the bomb to be dropped or didn’t care whether or not the bomb was dropped. In either of the two scenarios described here, evil is compatible with God’s existence. A third way of making evil consistent with God is to say that can prevent evil and wants to do so, but does not know that dropping the atom bomb involves evil.

For the Christian theist (or any other theist who holds that statements 1 through 4 above are true) evil is not compatible with God in either of these ways. For such theists, God is capable of preventing evil and perfectly good and knows all things. But how then can evil exist? More strongly, it seems that the existence of evil – something we are all aware of – shows that a perfectly good God who is capable of preventing evil cannot exist. And that, at a first approximation, is the problem of evil. It is an ancient problem, first appearing in the writings of the Greek Philosopher Epicurus in the third century BC, and has been discussed in every age since that time.

Required Reading Break

Read the below article by a contemporary theologian explaining why the problem of evil is a problem that theologians must face.

• Herbert, McCabe, OP, “The Statement of the Problem,”God and Evil in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, New York, NY, Continuum International Publishing Group (2010): 1-12.

The Theological “Problem of Evil”

For the theist, of course, denying the existence of God is not really an option. God’s existence is a basic starting point for the Christian theologian because God’s existence is revealed to us and is to be accepted in faith. But in the face of the problem of evil, it seems as though the believing theist and theologian owe us a theodicy, that is, an explanation of where evil comes from and of how it can exist alongside God. There have been many attempts to reconcile evil with the existence of an all-knowing, perfectly good and almighty God. Russell describes the influential account of Pseudo-Dionysius as follows:

Since God is good and all that comes from God is good, all that exists will return to him. Here Dionysius was faced with a dilemma: a thoroughgoing monist position that maintained that even evil was part of God and must, however transformed, return to God in the end would compromise the goodness of God; on the other hand a dualist position that evil is a principle independent of God would compromise God’s omnipotence. Neither position fit the Christian tradition. Evil cannot come from God, since it is a contradiction of God, and it cannot be an independent principle, since all that is comes from God. Evil is therefore literally nothing in itself. It is merely a deficiency, a lack, a privation in what is. Good comes from the one universal cause; evil from many partial deficiencies. Evil is a lack of good: it has no substantial being but only a shadow of being.Russell, 34-35

Monism, whose name comes from the Greek word monas (“one”), is the position that everything, including evil, comes from God. At first glance, this would seem an attractive position to a theologian, since it reflects the belief that God created everything that exists (other than God’s self). But as Russell points out, the idea that evil originates in God entails that God is not perfectly good. Another position, dualism (from the Greek duo, meaning “two”), was available to other religions such as Manicheanism, a movement stemming from its founder, Mani, who lived in the 3^rd century Persian Empire. According to dualism, the cosmos is governed by two independent and basically equal principles or deities, one evil and the other good, neither of which created the other. For dualism, there was no problem of explaining how evil could be compatible with a good Creator, but Christian theologians could not take this way because it undermined the belief in a single, Almighty Creator of all things.

Russell notes that the logic of Christian theological thought in this area gravitated almost by necessity to the claim that evil doesn’t really exist. And such a position could be supported by a powerful analogy: just as darkness is not something real in itself but is the absence of light, so evil is not a positive reality but is merely a lack of goodness. In one way or another, the idea of evil as nothingness can be found in medieval theologians from Augustine all the way through to Aquinas and then well into modern and contemporary theologies. In the next section of this module we will be considering Aquinas’s account in-depth.

Evil and the Devil

Given the attention paid to the devil in the biblical texts (see the previous page of this module), it is clear that no Christian theological account of evil would be complete without showing the relation between evil and the devil. But if evil is nothingness, then what can we mean by saying that the devil is evil, or that the devil tempts us to do evil? Another module in this course [the module on demons by Gabriel Niccoli] touched on the way the link between the devil and nothingness played itself out in a famous late-medieval literary representation of the devil. In his Divine Comedy, Dante locates Lucifer in a frozen lake in a dark cave at the center of the earth, the lowest place in the entire cosmos, where he acts like a black hole sucking down all goodness, life, and colour into the cold darkness (Russell, Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages 216-233). Dante’s devil is ugly, futile, empty, blind and stupid, isolated and shut off from reality, and filled with meaningless hatred. He is the very opposite of the beautiful expansive light, openness and freedom of the Creator, whose love is infinite and whose justice and truth govern the cosmos, bringing life and sustaining community.

(Doré, c. 1861-1868)

But if the devil and evil are identified with nothingness, what are we to make of the seemingly real and palpable threat of both? Here we have located one of the central tensions involved in attempting to give a theological account of evil. Certain key Christian doctrines seem to require that we understand evil as some sort of non-being. But other important Christian teachings urge us to be on constant alert against the very active and potentially devastating works of the devil and his demons. It is now time to turn to an attempt to bring both aspects together by one of the greatest theologians of the medieval period.

Check Your Understanding

1) According to the philosophical problem of evil, God’s existence is incompatible with the existence of evil because

2) Why did Christian theologians conclude that evil is nothing or non-being?

Works Cited

Caron, G. R. and Levy, C. (Photographers). Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. United States Department of Energy, Washington D.C. Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atomic_bombing_of_Japan.jpg

Doré, Gustave. The winged demon in his icy lair. Mary Evans Picture Library. La Divina Commedia. London, Great Britain, c. 1861-1868 (Doré) (Doré). Retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante%27s_Satan#/media/File:DVinfernoLuciferKingOfHell_m.jpg

Russell, J. B. (1984). Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages. Ithaca, NY, England: Cornell University Press.

10c. The Devil and Aquinas’ Theory of Evil

Who is Thomas Aquinas?

Here we will examine a theological case study, focusing on the role of the devil in Thomas Aquinas’ solution to the problem of evil. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), an Italian son of an influential father, at the age of nineteen joined the intellectually high-powered Dominican monastic order. He eventually completed the highest degree in theology and taught at the University of Paris. He grew to become one of the greatest Christian theologians of all time and was canonized as a saint and acclaimed as a Doctor of the Church. Aquinas continues to exert a powerful intellectual influence on contemporary theologians. He is also recognized as one of the greats in the history of Western Philosophy. It seems fitting, then, to use Aquinas as a “case study” to illustrate the philosophical-theological method in application to our topic.

Thomas Aquinas had his own share of experience resisting the devil’s temptation. His family opposed his decision to lead a religious life. To compel him to take a more “worldly” path, they had the young Aquinas locked in a castle for a year, and reportedly even sent in a prostitute to help lure him away from his devotion, which of course included a vow of celibacy. According to the story, Aquinas drove her away with a hot fire iron.

In his voluminous theological writings, Aquinas had much to say about the nature of angelic beings, including the fallen ones, of whom Lucifer was understood to be the chief. But to understand his view of the devil, we have to situate his diabology within the larger context of his attempt to grapple with the nature of evil, its origin and its place within creation. So what did Aquinas have to say in response to the theological problem of evil?

(Gessi, c. 1588-1649)

Aquinas’sDe malo(On Evil)

In the last decade of his life, Aquinas put together a work entitled Disputed Questions Concerning Evil (commonly called De malo and abbreviated as QDM from the Latin title, Quaestiones disputatae De malo). This work contains the edited results of a disputation that took place sometime between 1266 and 1269 and was organized by Aquinas as part of his regular work as master and professor of theology. After being corrected and edited, the De malo was published between 1270 and 1272. I have decided to focus on the De malo rather than Aquinas’s more famous works, the Summa Theologiae and the Summa Contra Gentiles because the De malo tends to present the key arguments concerning evil in a more complete form; if you wish to read his treatments of similar topics in other works, you can find references to the relevant sections in the “Additional Resources” section of the landing page for this module.

Example

The De malo consists of sixteen “questions” (topics), each broken down into “articles” (sub-topics or sub-questions). Each article contains the following elements: it presents

• a disputed statement, then
• a list of various objections to the position Aquinas will take, followed by
• another, shorter list of authorities in favour of Aquinas’s position,
• a detailed presentation of Aquinas’s own resolution of the problem, and lastly
• Aquinas’s replies to each of the objections raised in (2).

Your assigned reading contains only selections from the De malo, and focuses on the statements of Aquinas’s positions – the main bodies of the articles (4). The following chart, derived from the headings in Jean Oesterle’s English translation of the QDM (Oesterle), outlines the work’s thematic structure:

Q1: The Nature of Evil (5 articles)

A1: Whether evil is something?

A2: Whether evil exists in good?

A3: Whether good is the cause of evil?

A4: Whether evil is properly divided into punishment and fault?

A5: Whether punishment or fault has more of the nature of evil?

Sin (Questions 2-15)

Q2: The Nature of Sin (12 articles)

Q3: The Cause of Sin (15 articles)

A1: Whether God is the cause of sin?

A2: Whether the action of sin is from God?

A3: Whether the devil is the cause of sin?

A4: Whether the devil can induce man to sin by internal persuasion?

A5: Whether all sins are suggested by the devil?

Q4: Original Sin (8 articles)

Q5: The Punishment of Original Sin (5 articles)

Q6: Human Choice / Free Will (1 article)

Q7: Venial Sin [as opposed to mortal sin] (12 articles)

Q8: The Capital Vices [deadly sins] (4 questions)

Q9: Vainglory [Pride] (3 articles)

Q10: Envy (3 articles)

Q11: Acedia [Sloth/Laziness/Apathy] (4 articles)

Q12: Anger (5 articles)

Q13: Avarice [Greed] (4 articles)

Q14: Gluttony (4 articles)

Q15: Lust (4 articles)

Q16: On the Demons (9 articles)

A1: Whether the demons have bodies naturally united to them?

A2: Whether demons are evil by nature or by will?

A3: Whether the devil sinned by desiring equality with God?

A4: Whether the devil sinned or could sin in the first instant of his creation?

A5: Whether the free will of the demons can return to good after sin?

A6: Whether the devil’s intellect is so darkened after sin that he can fall into error or deception?

A7: Whether the demons know future events?

A8: Whether the demons know the cogitations of our hearts?

A9: Whether demons can transform bodies by changing their form?

A10: Whether demons can move bodies locally?

A11: Whether demons can change the cognitive part of the soul by changing the internal and external sense powers?

A12: Whether the demons can change man’s intellect?

The chart lists all the articles for questions 1 and 16 only, and the first five articles for question 3, since those will be our focus. As you can see, Aquinas pays most attention in this work to sin (moral evil) in human beings; fourteen of the total sixteen topic areas (“questions”) are concerned with this. But the first question (on the nature of evil) gives the basic outline of his metaphysical solution to the problem of evil, and the last question (on the demons) and some of the articles in question 3 enable us to bring the devil and other demons into connection with that problem. The following summary of Aquinas’s account of the devil in relation to evil, based on the relevant articles from the QDM, is not meant as a substitute for reading the texts for yourselves, but as a synthetic guide to the main points contained in them. Reading Aquinas for the first time can be quite daunting; my hope is that these summaries will help you to focus on the main points being made in the text.

Required Reading Break

Thomas, Aquinas, On Evil, R. Regan trans., B. Davies, ed., Oxford University Press (2003).

Please note: I have made the entirety of each article available to you, but you need only to read the “Answer” section of each one, where Aquinas states his own position.

• pp. 55-87.
• pp. 141-157.
• pp. 435-474.
• pp. 490-495.
• pp. 503-513.

Evil in General:De maloQuestion 1

Together, the five articles that make up Question 1 present Aquinas’s metaphysical conception of evil. Aquinas was not innovative in saying that evil is nothing – he inherited this idea from his theological predecessors including Pseudo-Dionysius (late 5^th to early 6^th centuries) and Augustine (354-430). But it is important to see what exactly Aquinas meant in saying that evil is nothing; here he does make an original contribution. For Aquinas evil should be understood as a privation, that is, a real lack of goodness in something that ought to possess that goodness.

Evil as Privation (Articles 1-3)

The first article of Question 1 asks whether evil is anything at all, and Aquinas argues that evil itself is not an entity (a real being), though evil things (the things that we can properly call evil) are entities. To understand this we first have to say what “good” is. Aquinas follows Aristotle (“The Philosopher”) in defining the good as what is desirable. And, he thinks, since evil is contrary to what is desirable, it can’t be a being. This is because Aquinas thinks being and goodness always go together, so that if something is a being, then it is good, and if something is good, then it is a being. The reason for this is that all being has been created by God, who is the supreme good, and who is ultimately desired in and behind all desire. But the supreme good can only produce good things. It follows that whatever exists is good, and we can only speak of evil as a sort of non-being.

In his reply to the first objection, Aquinas spells out more fully what he means by calling evil a non-being or non-entity: “what is evil… absolutely… consists of something being deprived of a particular good that is required for its perfection. For example, sickness is evil for an animal because it deprives the animal of the balance of fluids that is required for the perfection of the animal’s existing” (On Evil, 59). The sick animal, insofar as it exists, is good. But we can call it a “bad” animal insofar as it is lacking something important that it needs to exist as the kind of animal it is. Similarly, Aquinas writes, “blindness itself is not an entity, but the subject that blindness befalls [that is, the eye] is” (ibid). Because the blind eye exists, it is good, but it is also “evil” in a certain respect, namely because it lacks the ability to see, which is a perfection that belongs to the eye according to its nature.

(Rembrandt, 1653)

Evil, then, is parasitic on goodness, a thought Aquinas develops further in his response in Article 2. In fact, without good things that can lack perfections proper to them, there could be no evil. Again, an existing human being is good insofar as it exists. But when an existing human being lacks virtue (an intellectual or moral perfection), then evil (the lack of virtue) exists in a good thing. And the lack in question is a real fact that makes itself felt – for instance, a cowardly person who lacks the moral virtue of courage will act in ways that differ greatly from the way a courageous person will act.

Aquinas writes in article 3 that insofar as evil can be said to have a cause, it is always caused by something good. Since the deficiencies that constitute evil are neither desirable nor in accordance with the natures of things, they cannot have what Aquinas calls “intrinsic” causes, but only “accidental” causes. In other words, evils arise as deviations from the order of nature or of reason, as established by God. For instance, when a person makes a morally evil choice, the will of that person fails to use “the rule of reason and God’s law” (On Evil, 71). Aquinas compares the will that freely chooses evil to a carpenter who cuts a piece of wood without using a ruler. Just as a carpenter makes a fatal mistake in cutting without the measuring bar, so “the moral fault of the will consists in the fact that the will proceeds to choose without using the rule of reason or God’s law” (On Evil, 72). The will making the choice, insofar as it exists, is a good thing; its evil consists in a deficiency – acting without attention to the rule of reason or God’s law. And so the causal source of the evil (the disregard for the rule) is something (the human will) that was created good and was ordained to good activity by God. Aquinas uses the example of a person who engages in adultery; in this case the will chooses something good (sensual pleasure) but disregards the order of God’s love and justice (that this act is unloving toward and involves an injustice against the spouse). The adulterer is without excuse because “although not willing the evil itself as such, [they] still prefers to fall into the evil than to be without such a good” (On Evil, 74).

Kinds of Evil (Articles 4 and 5)

Having considered the nature of evil in a general way, Aquinas now (in article 4) divides evil into types. He acknowledges three kinds of evil: (1) moral wrong or sin, (2) punishment for sin, and (3) natural evil or suffering (caused, for example, by earthquakes, forest fires, etc.). Unlike many contemporary authors who write about the problem of evil, Aquinas pays very little attention to the third type. His reason for focusing on moral wrong and punishment is that these are the kinds of evil relevant to rational creatures insofar as they are rational. These two types of evil differ in that moral wrong is actively willed, and punishment is suffered but unwilled, by rational creatures (On Evil, 77). Punishment, for Aquinas, involves the rational creature’s suffering of harm that is ordained by God (“divine providence”) as a way of “rectifying moral fault” (On Evil, 78). A question that remains open here is whether Aquinas would ultimately subsume type (3) under type (2), as though all sources of suffering in the world (at least as they affect human beings) should be considered to be, in one way or another, forms of punishment for sin.

In article 5 Aquinas seeks to show that, of these two types of evil, moral wrong is more evil (“has more of the nature of evil”) than punishment. In support of this position, Aquinas notes that we call people evil because they have evil wills and act in morally wrong ways, not because they suffer punishment (On Evil, 83). We can also see this from the fact that, because God is perfectly good, God cannot commit moral evil or cause it in others, but God can cause punishment. Punishment is not evil in itself (it is an expression of God’s justice intended to rectify sin) but only evil for the person who experiences it. And any evil introduced by an expert artisan (such as God is) in order to avoid another evil must be less evil than the evil that is avoided. But God introduces punishment so that moral wrong will be avoided (On Evil, 84). That concludes my summary of Aquinas’s first question, on the nature and the kinds of evil in general.

The Cause of Moral Evil:De MaloQuestion 3

The central issue of Question 3 concerns the cause of human sin – the first of the two types of evil distinguished in Question 1, and the one that is more properly called “evil.” Who is responsible for the fact that human beings sin? Is it God (articles 1 & 2), the devil (articles 3-5), human beings themselves (articles 6-15), or is it some combination of these?

Articles 1 and 2: Is God Responsible for Human Sin?

We might think that God is responsible for human sin for the following reasons (roughly paraphrasing some of the objections in the first article): God created human beings, including the free will by which they choose to sin and the drives that move them to sin, so God is ultimately responsible for sin (objections 4, 5, 16, 18). Furthermore, human beings need God’s grace to do what is right, so if God does not provide this grace, then God is responsible for their sin (objections 8, 9, 15). Aquinas answers that God, being supremely good, cannot sin or cause anyone else to sin. God cannot cause others to sin because of the way God’s causal activity works in relation to created things. God is the ultimate goal of every creature. And on Aquinas’s understanding of causation, all causes in some way make their effects “like themselves,” as when heat makes other things hot or when a commander orders soldiers to carry out her orders. So, he writes,

…it belongs to God to direct everything to his very self and so not to divert anything from his very self. But he himself is the supreme good. And so he cannot cause the will to turn away from the supreme good, and the nature of moral wrong, as we are now speaking about it, consists of turning away from that good. Therefore, God cannot cause sin.On Evil 144

In response to the objections, Aquinas argues that sin does not flow from human free will or from the other human powers or drives as created by God, but instead from a deficiency in them, for which God is not responsible. And further, people fail to receive grace because they turn away from it, not because God fails to supply it. As originally created by God, human beings were not inclined toward evil, and the inclination toward evil that we now experience in ourselves is the result of our own prior sin, something for which, again, God is not responsible.

We must say, however, that there is a sense in which acts of sin do come from God, as Aquinas states in his response in article 2. For acts are things that exist, and everything that exists comes from God. And further, God is the “first mover,” the ultimate source of every motion in the universe, whether the motion of material things or of spiritual things.

(Blake, 1794)

How then can we avoid saying that God is responsible for the sinful acts of human beings? Here is how Aquinas puts it:

… God, since he is the first source of the movement of everything, moves certain things in such a way that they also move their very selves, as in the case of those with the power of free choice. And if those with free choice be properly disposed and rightly ordered to receive movement by God, good acts will result, and we completely trace these acts to him as their cause. But if those with free choice should defect from the requisite order, disordered acts that are acts of sin result. And so we trace what regards the activity of those with the power of free choice to God as the cause, while only free choice, not God, causes what regards the deordination or deformity of those with the power of free choice. And that is why we say that acts of sin come from God, but that sin does not.On Evil 148

In this way Aquinas seeks to hold together the core theological teaching that God creates and sustains all things with the claim that the free will of creatures, and not God, is responsible for moral evil.

Articles 3-5: The Devil and Human Sin

But what about the devil? Can we shift the blame for sin from human beings to a demonic source? Aquinas argues in article 3 that although the devil “can cause sin as one who disposes or persuades internally or externally, or even as one who commands… he cannot cause sin as an efficient cause” (On Evil, 151). In other words, the devil never has direct control over the human will; he can make things appear good to us, but we are never necessitated by such persuasion to choose those things. Aquinas has more to say about the nature of the devil’s persuasion in article 4. In his view, the devil can persuade us “externally” or “visibly,” by actually appearing to us and speaking to us in some form, as in the gospels he appears to Christ in order to tempt him. But the devil also has the ability to persuade us “internally” or “invisibly,” not by directly putting thoughts into our minds, but by making “impressions on the internal sense powers” (On Evil, 155). The idea here is that the fallen angels (the devil and his demons) retain their angelic ability to control matter, and can therefore exercise control over physiological aspects of our brains (what Aquinas refers to as “internal vapors and fluids”), thereby manipulating our emotions and passions and making impressions on our imagination. According to article 5, because the devil tempted the first human beings to sin, he is indirectly involved in all human sin. And yet the devil’s active persuasion is not directly involved every time people sin; human beings can sin simply “due to the freedom of human beings to choose and to the corruption of the flesh” (On Evil, 158).

To sum up, God creates human beings who have the potential to sin, but is not causally responsible for their sin. And the devil’s persuasion is involved directly or indirectly in every human sin, and yet the devil cannot force anyone to sin. Due to space constraints we cannot delve any further into such interesting topics as original sin, the nature of free will, or the seven deadly sins, all of which are covered elsewhere in the QDM. Instead, we continue the theme of the devil, skipping forward to the final question, composed of 16 articles and containing the most sustained presentation of diabology in Aquinas’s writings.

(Breughel the Elder, 1558)

Evil and the Devil:De MaloQuestion 16

Unlike popular portrayals of the devil in the art and religion of the Middle Ages, Aquinas has little to say about what the devil and his demons (“devils” in the plural in Regan’s translation) are like. In the sixteenth question of QDM, he considers this in a single article (article 1) which focuses on whether or not demons have bodies. After that come five articles each concerned in some way with the sin of the demons (articles 2-6), followed by a treatment of the extent and nature of their power or ability (articles 7-12), and in particular their ability to affect human beings. Because my focus is on the devil in relation to Aquinas’s theory of evil, I will only be touching on selections from question 16 most relevant to this theme.

Article 1: Body-less Devils

Aquinas argues, in article 1, that devils do not have bodies, though he notes that this “does not matter much for the doctrine of Christian faith” (On Evil, 439). Those who believed devils to have bodies tended to think of them as “ethereal” or composed of air. But, Aquinas points out, air is not a suitable material for bodies given its lack of definite limits or shape, which bodies require. Nor would air be able to provide any living creature (such as a devil) with sense organs. (Aquinas’s reasoning here makes use of the relatively primitive chemistry available in his day, but the point could be transposed into our own context.) But sense organs are the basis of embodied life. So “no ethereal material substance can be alive. And so we say that devils do not have bodies joined to them by nature” (On Evil, 440). Instead, Aquinas takes them to be (like all angels, whether fallen or not) pure spirits – immaterial beings that have intellect and will but no bodily senses. So when we think of them as interacting with human beings, we have to imagine them causing matter to move and take shape “simply at the command of their will,” in the same way that “the human soul moves the body joined to it by intellect and will alone” (On Evil, 443). This, then, is how they operate when they tempt or persuade human beings in the ways discussed in the previous section.

Articles 2-5: The Sin of the Devil

The point of article 2 is to establish that the devils were created good, and so the natures originally given them by God are good, but that they became evil by using their will to choose in a way that did not “follow the ordination of a higher rule, namely, God’s wisdom” (On Evil, 449). As we saw to be the case with human sin, the sin of the angels did not consist in desiring evil itself, but in choosing something they perceived as good for themselves in disregard of the rule established by God. More specifically, they sought to attain their own good “by their own power and not by God’s grace, and this exceeded the due measure of their status” (On Evil, 450). How could a pure intellect let itself make such a mistaken choice? Aquinas tells us that it was not that they made a false judgment but that they were unable to comprehend adequately the infinite wisdom of God’s governance. Article 3 makes still more clear what the devil desired when he sinned. Simply put, he desired equality with God. But Aquinas shows that the devil could not have desired absolute equality with God since he would have known that is impossible – no created being could ever become the transcendent Creator. Further, a rational creature would not want to become God because that would mean ceasing to exist as the individual creature it is. At root, the devil’s desire, says Aquinas, was to be equal to God in the sense of being perfect and happy through his own nature rather than having to be dependent on the grace of God for these things (On Evil, 456).

Next, in article 4, he considers the timing of the devil’s sin – since the angels are immaterial and to some extent eternal beings, their way of knowing and their decision making is different than ours. The options, then, are (1) that the devil sinned in the first moment of his creation, or (2) that the devil sinned after the first moment of his creation. Aquinas opts for (2) based on considerations about angelic knowledge – it would have taken time for the angels to move from a natural knowledge of their own nature, which would give them no reason to sin, to contemplation of God who is supernatural, that is, above their own nature and the nature of any created thing (On Evil, 464). Finally, article 5 establishes that after sinning once, the devils cannot by free choice return to good. Unlike human beings, who have the option to repent of their sin, the sin of the devils is a once-for-all event. This follows, again, from the distinctive nature of knowledge and will in angels. The evil angels choose to turn away from God, and the good angels choose to turn toward God, and from that moment on both are irrevocably fixed in their choice.

(Blake, 1825)

Articles 8, 11, 12: The Devils’ Power

Earlier the question arose, given the non-being or nothingness of evil, how and to what extent the devils have power over human beings. In articles 8, 11 and 12 Aquinas elaborates on the preliminary answer he gave in question 3 by delineating more fully the powers possessed by the devils. He argues in article 8 that the devils do not have direct knowledge of our interior thoughts. Since angels know the whole natural world much more adequately than we do, and since our minds are part of the natural world, we might expect that they know our minds and thoughts even better than we ourselves know them. In response to this, Aquinas says that the devils can know our thoughts only by the outward signs we show (from our words or from our emotional responses, as when our faces go pale from fear or blush from shame) (On Evil, 492-493). Only God (in addition to the person doing the thinking), knows a person’s interior thoughts directly or experientially.

As noted earlier, and as discussed again in article 10 of the question we are now considering, the devils have the ability to move matter by direct acts of will, and through this are capable of producing various material effects – though only as far as God permits, as in the story of Job the devil was only allowed to work within limits. An implication of this, covered in article 11, is that the devils can affect our powers of knowing. They can make human beings perceive things by actually presenting material objects to their sense organs, and they can also make us imagine things that aren’t really there by affecting our inner power of imagination, which is itself embedded in the matter of our brains (On Evil, 507). They do this second thing by manipulating “vapors and fluids”; we might translate this as the neuro-electricity and biochemical flow involved in the sensory processing centres of our brains, or something like that. On Aquinas’s view, the human intellect is an immaterial power of knowing truth. Can the devils affect our higher intellectual powers as well? Aquinas tells us, in his response in article 12, that they can do so through the way they affect our senses and imagination. And they do so, of course, to tempt us. “Devils,” he writes, “arrange forms of the imagination whether to desire sin, namely, as the things human beings apprehend induce them to pride or some other sin, or to prevent true understanding itself, as things apprehended lead human beings into doubts that they do not know how to resolve, and then into error” (On Evil, 511).

That concludes our brief summary of Aquinas’s diabology, within the context of his theological treatment of evil in the QDM. In light of what has been said, does Aquinas’s diabology help him to explain evil? The answer has to be both yes and no. According to the story told by Christian faith and teaching, the way things turned out, the devil – who sinned first – was involved in persuading and tempting human beings to sin, and continues to this day to actively persuade and tempt in various ways. The influence of the devils on us has to be understood as very real, given that they can make us see things and even manipulate our imagination to some extent. So in that sense diabology helps explain moral evil and its ensuing punishment. But at the same time the answer is “no,” because human beings can sin even without the direct influence of the devil. And as much as the devils can act to persuade and make impressions on us, they cannot enter into the inmost sphere of the human person – the heart and the will – to make us sin. If they were to gain direct control over a person’s will (as Aquinas does consider to be possible in the case of demonic possession), they would still not be causing us to sin, since the resulting acts and choices would not then be our own.

Conclusion

Aquinas clearly accepts all four of the statements that generate the problem of evil: God is perfectly good, God is able to prevent evil, God knows everything, and yet there is evil. Elsewhere, in his famous treatment of God’s existence in Summa Theologiae, part I, question 1, article 3, Aquinas responds to an objection that claims that God can’t exist because there is evil in the world. Since, according to the objector, God is (by definition) infinite goodness, if God did exist, then all evil would necessarily be annihilated. Aquinas replies, citing Augustine, with the simple point that it is “part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good” (Summa Theologiae, I.1.3.ad1). Why does God allow evil? Why did God create the world, knowing the devil would fall and lead human beings astray? Why does God continue to allow the devils to tempt human beings to sin today? We may not be able to answer these questions to our own satisfaction, but given what we do know about God, we know that God allows all these things to happen for a good reason, in order that in the end there may be greater good in the universe. From the perspective of faith, we have a basis for trusting in God, even while we remain greatly disturbed by the existence of evil as we and others experience it.

Coming back to the overall structure of the De malo, we have to note that the compatibility of a good, almighty and all-knowing God with the evils of suffering was not the problem that truly vexed Aquinas. For him, the real problem of evil is the problem of avoiding evil in our own actions. This helps to explain why so much of this treatise on evil is given over to explaining what sin is (both original sin and sin as chosen by us), what kinds of sin there are, the relation of free choice to sin, and what are the deadliest of sins. In this module we did not have the time to go into these topics in-depth. But we saw that Aquinas is clear that sin (moral evil) is our own responsibility. We cannot blame it on God, though God created us, because God created us good and our defection from good is our own responsibility. And we cannot blame our sins on the devil or the other demons because, although they have power to tempt us, they do not have the power to move our will to sin – only we have that power within us. According to Aquinas, the two kinds of evil we need to concern ourselves with are moral evil and punishment, the latter being God’s response, in God’s justice and desire for our good, to moral evil, in the hope of turning us from the evil path. In conclusion, we might say that for Aquinas, it is not the devil outside us that we most need to worry about, but the devil inside us.

(Botticelli, c. 1490-1494)

Check Your Understanding

1) For Aquinas, to characterize evil as a privation means that:

2) According to Aquinas’s theory of moral evil, responsibility for human sin rests with:

3) Which of the following states something about the devil’s role (or the role of the devils, plural) in Aquinas’s theory of evil?

Once you have completed reviewing all of this week’s content, return to the module page.

Works Cited

Aquinas, T. (2003). On Evil. (B. Davies, Ed., & R. Regan, Trans.) New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Blake, William. 1794. The Ancient of Days. British Museum, London. Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_a_Prophecy,_copy_D,_object_1_(Bentley_1,_Erdman_i,_Keynes_i)_British_Museum.jpg

Blake, William. The Fall of Satan. The Tate Gallery. Illustrations to The Book of Job: Engravings 1823–6/1874. London, 1825. Retrieved from: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-the-fall-of-satan-a00027

Botticelli, Sandro. Saint Augustin dans son cabinet de travail. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sandro_Botticelli_-_St_Augustin_dans_son_cabinet_de_travail.jpg

Bruegel the Elder, Pieter. The Seven Deadly Sins: Pride (Superbia). The British Museum. Published by Hieronymus Cock, Museum number 1880,0710.639. London, 1558. Retrieved from: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1880-0710-639

Gessi, Francesco. The Temptation of St. Thomas Aquinas. Musei Civici Reggio Emilia, Bologna, Modena, Italy. c. 1588-1649. Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gessi_Tentazione_di_san_tommaso.JPG

Oesterle, J. (1993). St. Thomas Aquinas: On Evil. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Rembrandt. Aristotle with a Bust of Homer. Metropolitan Museum of Art. room 637, Accession number 61.198. Amsterdam, 1653. Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rembrandt_-_Aristotle_with_a_Bust_of_Homer_-_WGA19232.jpg

Module 11: Political Monsters

Norm Klassen (Theology and Literary Criticism, University of Waterloo)

11a. Confronting Monsters in a Literary Way

LookingAtor LookingWith?

This module looks at two texts that serve almost as book-ends to medieval English literature. That fact alone reveals pretty quickly how different the meanings of the word “medieval” can be. The first poem, Beowulf, was probably composed in the Midlands or the north of England in the eighth century, though the sole manuscript of the poem dates from the late tenth century. Its form of English is known as Old English; learning it is like learning a new language.

Beowulf concerns events of Germanic forbears who still lived in the lands of the Danes and Geats (associated with present-day Denmark and Sweden), and so from a time still earlier than the eighth century. The second, The Canterbury Tales, was written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the last fifteen years or so of the fourteenth century. It is written in a very different form of English, the changes owing to differences in time as well as place. Chaucer’s English is known as Middle English and can be learned relatively easily, though it is more difficult than Shakespeare’s. The word “medieval,” one learns pretty quickly in medieval studies, covers a multitude of times, places, texts, languages, events, imaginative conceptions, and so on.

Those differences might make one think that each has to be understood “on its own terms,” and so it does, but that phrase needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales are both cultural artefacts, human artefacts. Not only do they therefore bear some family resemblance to one another, but to us as well as their inheritors and interpreters. As a good twentieth-century philosopher of interpretation puts it, when one posits an “I” and a “thou” – that is, a difference between the self and the object of interpretation, one assumes simultaneously a “deep common accord”:

There is nothing like an “I and thou” at all – there is neither the I nor the thou as isolated, substantial realities. I may say “thou” and I may refer to myself over against a thou, but a common understanding always precedes these situations. We all know that to say “thou” to someone presupposes a deep common accord. Something enduring is already present when this word is spoken. When we try to reach agreement on a matter on which we have different opinions, this deeper factor always comes into play, even if we are seldom aware of it.(Gadamer, 7–8)

This commonality makes itself accessible through the imagination, which is important for the historian, the literary critic, and the scientific researcher alike.

In the matter of politics, the question (not put to Chaucer or to the anonymous Beowulf-poet, but to the subject matter itself) – how can and ought we live together? – puts us in touch with voices from the past, often in surprising ways. This is the deep challenge of all intellectual work, asking productive questions of reality itself. In the opinion of the philosopher of interpretation I just cited, it is this ability that distinguishes the true Socratic thinker from those who simply want to manipulate ideas to their own advantage. The latter “can think of nothing at all to ask” (Gadamer 13). (In Socrates’ day, these people were known as the Sophists, and they eventually killed Socrates for corrupting the youth with his way of thinking.)

We might assume that we don’t have the Sophists’ problem. After all, we can think of plenty of political monsters in our own time: in other words, we think we can identify the problem of monstrosity elsewhere, in someone else. But what questions are actually being posed, besides ones like, “I wonder who will win the next election?” or “I wonder what the world will look like in five years’ time?” Questions of this sort differ substantially from the kind being posed by Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales when they appeal to monsters. With these medieval texts, we want to ask questions which begin along the lines of, “How does such-and-such-reality represent a threat to life together?” In one case, it’s a fabulous monster, in the other, a historical tyrant. In both, the monster draws attention to the value and the possibility of enduring life together.

Defamiliarization

Monsters, it should be noted, aren’t all bad. Not only do we occasionally like a good scare, the monstrous can unsettle us, and that can be a good thing. It can jolt us out of our complacency. To use an important “literary” word, it can defamiliarize our reality so that we can see dimensions that have become obscured (Milbank, 29–55). We get used to looking at things in the same old way and lose touch with their reality. Poetry specializes in the activity of seeing familiar things in a new way. That doesn’t make it private and subjective (at least in the popular sense of the word). As Seamus Heaney, a great translator of Beowulf, once said,

Heaney and Helmet. Seamus Heaney, an important translator of Beowulf, holds up medieval helmet.

(Diary of an Autodiadact, 2020)

…literariness as such is not an abdication from the truth. The literary is one of the methods human beings have devised for getting at reality…. Its diversions are not to be taken as deceptions but as roads less travelled by where the country we thought we knew is seen again in a new and revealing light.(Heaney, 4)

Monsters may be a diversion, but they are not necessarily a deception. Monsters can serve as a “revealing light.”

So here you are, a non-specialist, with every bit as much right as anyone else, to ask deeply human questions in your own way along with what medieval texts have asked in their own way, in common reflection on a reality that has monstrous dimensions (for good, and for ill).

Check Your Understanding

Defamiliarization means realizing that:

Works Cited

Diary of an Autodiadact. 2017. Beowulf - Translated by Seamus Heaney. May 15. Accessed July 14, 2020. http://fiddlrts.blogspot.com/2017/05/beowulf-translated-by-seamus-heaney.html

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. “The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem (1966).” Philosophical Hermeneutics, translated by David E. Linge, Berkeley, 1976, pp. 3–17.

Heaney, Seamus. “Eclogues in Extremis: On the Staying Power of Pastoral.” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 103C (2003), pp. 1–12.

Milbank, Alison. Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians: The Fantasy of the Real. T&T Clark, 2007.

11b. A Monstrous Threat to Community in Beowulf

Context

Beowulf is a long poem—over three thousand lines long. We can’t read it all here, though it is well worth one’s doing so! In fact, the whole corpus of extant literature written in Old English  (works written between the middle of the fifth century and the 1066 Battle of Hastings) only amounts to about as much as a week-end edition of the Toronto Star. I want to focus on the episode involving the monster Grendel. He attacks the hall built by Hrothgar, who then seeks help from Beowulf; the latter comes across the sea from the land of the Geats and confronts the monster the next time he attacks, ripping off his whole arm, leaving him to die when he flees back to the “mere-pool” from which he came.

Before we get into some of the main features of that episode, though, we should be mindful of the context. A glance at the whole can help us with specifics. J.R.R. Tolkien, who was a trained philologist and professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford University, once wrote an essay about Beowulf called “The Monster and the Critics.” He has this to say about the poem as a whole:

(AP Images, n.d.)

In its simplest terms it is a contrasted description of two moments in a great life, rising and setting; an elaboration of the ancient and intensely moving contrast between youth and age, first achievement and final death.(108)

I love the simple elegance of this sketch, given with emphasis on a human life and heroic achievement. In all, Beowulf faces three monsters: Grendel; Grendel’s mother (or “dam”) (1250–1649), and then, “half a century” (2206) later, “the hoard-guarding Dragon of a high barrow” (2210; 2206–3034). We will look only at the first one, Grendel.

Required Reading Break

Now please read the following selection of Beowulf in any modern English translation.

• Lines 1–851

Being-Unto-Death

The opening of the poem establishes two important contexts and questions. The first context is that of lineage, which brings with it reflection on the preservation of a society and the point of such an activity, as of life itself. Such pondering is brought up directly as the concluding aspect of the death of the character Scyld Shefing, forbear of Hrothgar, the Dane who builds Heorot and who will need Beowulf’s help. Scyld’s body is sent off in a boat with a hoard, and the poet reflects,

Men under heaven’sshifting skies, though skilled in counsel,cannot say surely who unshipped that cargo.(49–51)

The lines remind me of Canadian philosopher George Grant’s succinct statement,

Nobody can make another man’s philosophy for him…. A man must do his own believing as he does his own dying.(37)

Beowulf opens up this anguished question at the heart of human experience.

The beginning of the poem opens up another question too, the difference Christianity makes to the poet’s culture. The Beowulf-poet’s reflections on Christianity are measured and assured, but not triumphalistic; they are hopeful, but not oblivious to persisting problems. The references to religion are sometimes general, sometimes more specifically Christian. The poem makes its first general references to the transcendent with the phrases “under the heavens” (8), “sent them by God” (14), and “the life-bestowing / Wielder of Glory” (16­–17). The summary “At the hour shaped for him Scyld departed, / the hero crossed into the keeping of his Lord” (26–27) is less ambivalent than the already-mentioned uncertainty about the identity of the one in Shipping and Receiving, but the tradition remains obscure. Other passages, though, draw explicitly on the Judeo-Christian tradition and locate the poem’s metaphysical concerns within it. God is not only the giver of gifts (70) but the “Creator” (105); the source of monsters is set within the story of Genesis specifically:

This unhappy beinghad long lived in the land of monsterssince the Creator cast them outas kindred of Cain. For that killing of Abelthe eternal Lord took vengeance.There was no joy of that feud: far from mankindGod drove him out for his deed of shame!From Cain came down all kinds misbegotten– ogres and elves and evil shades –as also the Giants, who joined in longwars with God. He gave them their reward.(103–13)

Required Reading Break

Other references to hell (eg 178), the “Prince of Heaven” (181), “grace” (317), “Holy God” (382), and the general claim that “The Almighty Lord / has ruled the affairs of the race of men / thus from the beginning” (700–702) further establish a mythic contrast of good and evil in Christian terms. Beowulf himself becomes a muted Christ-figure in the tradition of the warrior saviour (Christus Victor) illustrated so magnificently by “The Dream of the Rood.”

(Skelton, n.d.)

The poem locates the problem of evil in a human context in two distinct ways, one external to the society itself but the other internal to it. For one, Grendel and the other monsters, it tells us, all “came down” from Cain, who had committed the first murder. But the poem is ambivalent about another source of evil with a much more proximate location. The poem, while celebrating an “Almighty” God, is anything but triumphalistic. At the end of the description of the hall built by Hrothgar, the poem sounds the following note of foreboding:

The time was not yetwhen the blood-feud should bring out againsword-hatred in sworn kindred.(83–85)

The poet is ambivalent about the relationship between the Christian metanarrative and the prevailing local culture of retribution and fatedness, expressed in the terms “wergild” and “wyrd” that run through that culture. A metanarrative is a controlling story by which a culture explains significant features of reality to itself, including: where have we come from; where are we going; what’s wrong; what’s the solution; what time is it? The weight of history (including, ironically, the history yet to come) lies heavily on this poem. Not incidentally, “wyrd” (fatedness) gives us Shakespeare’s “weird sisters,” the witches of Macbeth who can (cryptically) see what is to come. “Wyrd” also yields the modern notion of the weird, which might be awkward, embarrassing, uncanny, or monstrous. Further questions that emerge in the poem include that of the relationship between freedom and fate. Do we control our futures as individuals and as communities, or is everything that is to be already written in the stars? Given the violence in the story, both on Grendel’s part and on Beowulf’s, one might ask another, related question: is the future going to be violent no matter how we confront it?

Check Your Understanding

Which of the following details from the poem indicates the influence of the Judeo-Christian scriptures on “Beowulf”:

The Hall of Heorot

The description of the building of Heorot sets up the poem’s main point about the threat that Grendel represents. The hall embodies the building of culture, human creativity interwoven with the activity of a Creator-God. (Such co-creativity is why Tolkien famously refers to human artists as “sub-creators” (“On Fairy Stories,” 51)). Hrothgar builds “a huge mead-hall” (68). There he shares “the gifts God had bestowed on him” (70) “with folk young and old” (71). This is the place of gifts and is associated with the power of speech:

Heorot he named itwhose word ruled a wide empire.He made good his boast, gave out rings,arm-bands at the banquet.(77–80)

Heorot is the heart of the society of Beowulf, where words bring things into being and are aligned with deeds: “he made good his boast.” At its best, society is marked by generosity, flourishing, conviviality, and of course drinking and story-telling!

This is what Grendel threatens. He represents an existential threat to political flourishing:

So the company of men led a careless life,all was well with them: until One beganto encompass evil, an enemy from hell.(98–100)

At its best, Heorot is the place of “sorrow forgotten / the condition of men” (118–19). Grendel comes right into the heart of the hall: “he grasped on their pallets / thirty warriors, and away he was out of there” (121–22). His effect is the opposite of what the people experienced beforehand: “night’s table-laughter turned to morning’s / lamentation” (127–28). Perhaps the greatest effect of his acts of violence is the one most easily overlooked:

It was not remarked then if a man lookedfor sleeping-quarters quieter, less central…Each survivorthen kept himself at safer distance.(137–38; 141–42)

The society is riven; people retreat into themselves, a denial of the very meaning of existence in heroic society, which is manifest in a complex network of ties and interrelationships. A carpet page, such as those from the Lindisfarne Gospels, illustrates an outlook that emphasizes such rich connections. The poem Beowulf itself, like those carpet pages, represents the interwovenness of life: in being a poem of epic length, comprehensive in scope, interlaced by alliteration, and marked by the rhythmic movement of beat and caesura (pause). The very existence of the poem is an affirmation of sociality.

(Matthew Cross Carpet Page f 26v, c. 8^th century)

Check Your Understanding

A potent physical symbol of life together in early medieval society is:

This monstrous terrorizing is what the hero Beowulf sets to rights. Physically, he destroys the monster by dismembering him. He also vindicates himself, fulfilling the promise of his reputation as “for main strength of all men foremost” (95) and making good on his request “that I alone may be allowed, with my loyal and determined / crew of companions, to cleanse your hall Heorot” (431–32). But Beowulf’s achievement is expressed in other terms as well. Old English poetry is highly structured. The episode of the killing of Grendel is carefully nested in mirroring actions and speeches on either side of the central action to resolve the threat to Heorot. Whereas Grendel brings chaos and random destruction, Beowulf restores the possibility of order. It’s not just that the winners get to tell the history, though that is also true, it’s that the poet gets to organize events, and the place is restored where the telling of stories can take place.

There’s an unfortunate irony here. The structure of the poem is primarily an oral one. The fact that our knowledge of the poem comes to us through a single manuscript, BL MS Cotton Vitellius A xv fol. 132a–201b, a manuscript that survived a major fire, is something of a miracle. At the same time, the manuscript bespeaks the lostness of the sort of society that could produce it.

The story is not only one of loss, though. Imaginative works like Tolkien’s The Hobbit perpetuate meditation on the nature of heroism and the monstrous, while it and The Lord of the Rings remind us of the importance of fellowship and of social bonds.

This is the first page of BL MS Cotton Vitellius A xv fol. 132a–201b, the only surviving manuscript copy of Beowulf. (Beowulf Manuscript, c. 901)

The Fellowship of the Ring, the primary antagonists in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series, are here depicted in a still shot from Peter Jackson’s 2001-2003 film adaptations of the famous novels

(Jackson, 2001)

It is well-known that, for Tolkien, technology and industry represent a monstrous threat to the placid quietness of shire life in Middle Earth (Jacobs). As nostalgic as his vision may be, he is struggling valiantly to remind us of dimensions of being of which we have lost sight. The retrieval of the medieval world, not only by writers like Tolkien but in various ways (one thinks especially of video games), suggests an openness to change on our part, as well as a tacit recognition of the presence of the past within us. It may be the case that, in our fascination with medieval monsters, we perceive a relatively safe space to consider threats that are closer to hand. It may also be true that we find there a vision for a solution that is so surprising that it might seem to us fantastical, outrageous, or even monstrous. The extent to which the medieval political vision strikes us as a threat may reveal to us as in a magic mirror the deformed shape of our own political discourse. Be careful when you go looking for monsters. You may not like what you find.

Works Cited

AP Images. J.R.R. Tolkien. n.d. https://www.britannica.com/biography/J-R-R-Tolkien/images-videos.

“Beowulf 2.0.” Translated by Aaron K. Hostetter. *Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry Project,*https://anglosaxonpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/beowulf-2-0/

British Library. “Beowulf Cotton MS Vitellius A.XV.f132r.” https://www.bl.uk/britishlibrary/~/media/bl/global/dl%20medieval/collection%20items/beowulf-cotton_ms_vitellius_a_xv_f132r.jpg

Brown, Jonathan. “Listen! Beowulf opening line misinterpreted for 200 years.” Independent, 5 November 2013, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/listen-beowulf-opening-line-misinterpreted-for-200-years-8921027.html

Chaucer, Geoffrey. f. 1r (General Prologue). Canterbury Tales. c. 1400-1410. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens*. mssEL 26 C 9.*Ellesmere. Accessed on 15 July 2020. https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p15150coll7/id/2367.

“The Dream of the Rood.” Translated by Aaron K. Hostetter. Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry Project,  https://anglosaxonpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/dream-of-the-rood/

Heaney, Seamus. “Punishment.” The Norton Introduction to Literature, edited by Kelly J. Mays, portable 12th ed., W.W. Norton, 2017, pp. 636–37.

Jackson, Peter. “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.” [image still]. New Line Cinema and WingNut Films, 10 December 2001. Found in Fellowship of the Ring (group). Fandom. Accessed on 15 July 2020. https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Fellowship_of_the_Ring_(group)

Jacobs, Alan. “Fall, Mortality, and the Machine: Tolkien and Technology.” The Atlantic, 27 July, 2012, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/fall-mortality-and-the-machine-tolkien-and-technology/260412/

“Macbeth Polanski 1971 Witches Opening.” YouTube, uploaded by MrsWyachai, 14 February 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZcFnZ2ZMR0

Matthew Cross Carpet Page f 26v. The Lindisfarne Gospels. c. 8^th Century. The British Library. Accessed on 15 July 2020. < https://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/lindisfarne/popUps/carpet1pop.html

Skelton, J.R. “Grendel.” https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Stories_of_beowulf_grendel.jpg

Tolkien, J.R.R. “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” Joseph F. Tuso, ed. Beowulf. Norton, 1975, 105–13.

11c. Tyrannical Monsters in The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales

We turn our attention now to political monsters in The Canterbury Tales, a late fourteenth-century work by Geoffrey Chaucer. Perhaps unsurprisingly, by this point in English literary history political monsters have a much more realistic feel to them. Our aim, however, is not to draw up a superficial list of comparisons and contrasts between an early and a late medieval work. Those are quickly evident enough. The goal, rather, is once again to open ourselves up to what one thinker calls “the world of the text” (Ricoeur 99–100) and to catch resonances not only with the Beowulf-poet’s questions, but with ours as well. In this way, we make both of these medieval works our own: we enter into a dialogue with both of them about a matter that concerns us all. We look with them both in the direction in which their question prompts us to look.

Being-Unto-Death II

The Canterbury Tales consists of a story-telling contest set in spring, while the people who are doing the tale-telling are on pilgrimage towards Canterbury. They are pilgrims. Chaucer, imagining himself to be a pilgrim, one “with ful devout courage” (1.22) (with a truly devout heart), joins a group of “nine and twenty” when they come into the pub where he is staying. He’s something of a Strider figure, but not for long. He has a chat with them “everichon” (1.31) (every one), and agrees to join them. Subsequently, the host of the pub in which they are staying suggests the contest and joins them.

The Ellesmere Manuscript. These are the opening lines of The Canterbury Tales in the Ellesmere ms (Ellesmere 26.C.9), one of two manuscripts dating to within ten years of Chaucer’s death. (Chaucer, c. 1400-1410)

Additional Resource

If you really want to go above and beyond, here’s a link to a new app that allows you to follow along to a reading of the General Prologue in Middle English with accompanying modern translation that appears simultaneously. It’s very cool!

• Interactive Version ofThe Canturbury Tales

For an actual reconstruction of the tale-telling trip, check out the following story.

• Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales 2012 – a multimedia pilgrimage

A Knight kicks things off and tells a tale set in ancient Greece. This is a striking choice of time and place. A long time ago, the literary critic Joseph Westlund pointed out that

The pagan outlook, and the strong sense of man’s tragic position, make the tale especially suitable for the beginning of pilgrimage(Westlund 527)

Detail from the Ellesemere Manuscript. A page of the Ellesemere manuscript containing the opening lines of the Knight’s tale and accompanied by an illustration of a knight on a horse. (Chaucer, c. 1400-1410)

This quotation is packed with perceptive observations. For one, Westlund notices that the entire tale gives a sense of “man’s tragic position.” That includes Theseus, who for many years was taken by readers to be an ideal, heroic figure, much like the tale-teller (the Knight). In some ways, the Duke of Athens is an ideal figure, but that’s part of the problem. His role, it turns out, is more ambivalent than that. Secondly, Westlund notices that the whole tale is set in a pre-Christian context. And thirdly, he rightly emphasizes the pilgrimage motif. The tale-tellers are first and foremost on pilgrimage together. We can’t just generalize this pilgrimage in vague, symbolic terms. It belongs to a specific historical setting, one in which pilgrimage symbolizes the Christian story of the meaning of the universe and our place as humans in it. The tale tellers are a fellowship. As such, they represent life together. In ancient Greek thought, philosophical reflection on politics was based on the polis, by today’s standards a relatively small political entity. For a poet like Chaucer, that entity could be reduced to an even smaller symbolic group, a haphazard pilgrimage fellowship of thirty people (plus the Host who accompanies them). They collectively represent all three medieval estates of society – those who fight, those who pray, and those who work – as well as figures within each estate, ranging from ideal to less ideal ones, who make up society (Sadlek, 91).

Strange though it may seem, it is important to recognize that this pilgrim fellowship is, for Chaucer, the people of God. For Chaucer, what society (in general) ought to look like, and ultimately does look like, is people united in identity by being on pilgrimage toward God. Being destined for God is part of how Chaucer would define what society is. In this way, his political thought is both alike and unlike that of the ancient Greeks. Like them, he offers a comprehensive and philosophical vision. It’s full of realistic figures and touches of the everyday, while simultaneously a full-on reflection on life together and the meaning of politics. Unlike ancient Greek thought or, more accurately*, in conversation with and in response to* the earlier philosophical outlook, Chaucer proposes a richer understanding of what life together is and means. His vision as a Christian poet depends on a proper understanding of the difference Jesus makes to the world.

Additional Resource

Chaucer’s perspective on life together radically calls into question the modern division of life into public and private, where religion is consigned to the realm of the private. For a discussion of the problems involved in dividing the world into public and private realms, or separating facts and values, see:

• Eagleton, Terry.After Theory. Basic Books (2003): 131–37.

Canterbury stands in for Jerusalem as a pilgrimage destination, and Jerusalem allegorically represents the heavenly Jerusalem, or simply heaven. Chaucer has his last tale-teller, a Parson, refer to this destination explicitly:

“And Jhesu for his grace wit me sendeTo shewe yow the wey in this viageOf thilke parfit glorious pilgrimageThat highte Jerusalem celestial.”

“And Jesus for his grace send me witTo show you the way in this tripOf that perfect glorious pilgrimageTo that place called celestial Jerusalem.”(10.48–51)

As the editors of The Complete Poetry and Prose of Geoffrey Chaucer put it in their notes, “This allusion [Jerusalem celestial] to Revelation 21.2  lends a clear allegorical dimension to the journey to Canterbury” (348 n to l. 51).

In saying that Christianity provides a more satisfying picture of reality, including political reality, than ancient Greece on its own, Chaucer stands in a medieval tradition that includes people like Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) and the great Italian poet Dante (c. 1265–1321). Medieval intellectuals did not so much see the ancient Greeks as wrong but as seeing through a mirror dimly (to borrow, as they often did, a famous biblical phrase) (Lewis 10–12). I want to give an example from Dante of this practice of building on Greek thought because it is directly relevant to how Chaucer presents political monsters.

Dante adored the ancient writer Vergil, a Roman rather than a Greek writer, but a pagan nonetheless. Vergil once wrote a poem, an eclogue, that includes some lines that sound like a prophecy of the coming of Christ:

Now the Virgin returns, Saturn’s reign returns,now a new offspring is being sent down from high heaven.The boy soon to be born, with whom at last the ironShall cease and a golden people arise through all the world.(585)

Lots of details here sound like they could presage the gospel story of Christ: the role of a Virgin (the Virgin Mary?); an offspring sent from heaven (the Christmas story of the birth of Jesus?); setting things right and establishing a “golden people” (the beginnings of the Christian Church and the promise of the Apocalypse?). Vergil lived and wrote before the birth of Christ and had as his patron the emperor Octavian (or Augustus). The baby of his eclogue probably has something to do with this court. Furthermore, the figure of Saturn is associated with the return of a golden age and with a golden people. People like Dante read the eclogue as a prophecy almost as weighty as a biblical one. Dante makes Vergil his personal guide through the universe in his most famous poem, The Divine Comedy. It’s another pilgrimage poem of sorts, though on a more cosmic scale than Chaucer’s. But, for Dante, because Vergil is pre-Christian, the pagan poet cannot show heaven to his Christian counterpart. (For that, Dante will need a Christian guide, his beloved Beatrice.) This cultural trope shows the role of Saturn in the medieval imagination and the artistic sense of a comprehensive pilgrimage involving movement from a pagan Greek mentalité to arrival or the anticipation of arrival within a Christian one.

Check Your Understanding

Which of the following statements is most true of the symbolic meaning of pilgrimage for Chaucer in “The Canterbury Tales:?

Required Reading Break

Read Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Knight’s Tale,” especially:

• Lines: 859­–1032,
• Lines: 1649–1913,
• Lines: 2684–2881.

Tyranny in “The Knight’s Tale”

Now, where is Chaucer’s political monster in all this? For Chaucer, the monster is the tyrant. The Knight’s Tale begins with Theseusvanquishing the tyrant who has taken over Thebes after the battle for control of that city between the sons of Oedipus. Both of those sons died; their uncle Creon now rules Thebes. Creon, as the editors of Chaucer’s works remind us, “was the medieval stereotype of a tyrant” (Allen and Fisher 30 n to l.938). When he takes over, the wives of the fallen dead complain to Theseus that he is behaving, well, tyrannically. Specifically, he does not allow them to bury their dead. That is why Theseus vanquishes Creon. As duke of Athens, his victory represents the triumph of reason over dysfunctionality that Thebes and Creon symbolize in Greek mythology.

With Theseus’s victory, it looks like tyranny has disappeared as a problem. As readers have increasingly voiced in recent years, however, Theseus himself has worrying traits. His “rationality” begins to look like the bureaucratization and micro-management that modern writers like Kafka satirize in their works. A certain kind of rationality very quickly becomes monstrous. That’s the problem with Theseus. He is constantly controlling activities and events. After the defeat of Creon, he razes Thebes to the ground, returns to Athens, and…nothing happens. The narrator says that there’s nothing to tell:

And ther he lyveth in joye and in honourTerme of his lyf; what nedeth words mo?

And there he lives in joy and in honourFor the duration of his life; what’s the need formore words?(1028–29)

For a poet who celebrates life together as the flourishing of tale-telling and the inhabiting of language, this quietness is more than a little disquieting.

When something does happen – “This passeth yeer by yeer and day by day / Til it fil ones…” (This goes on year by year and day by day / Until it happened once…”) (1033–34) – Theseus spends the rest of this long tale trying to regain control. We are told that he is “busy” (1007, 1883, 2853); at one point he is presented as “a god in trone” (2529); and after a tragic disruption of his well-ordered world that forces him to contemplate the reality of death, he has a long monologue and orchestrates a closing marriage. He keeps trying to show the world that he is in control, but is he? And if he is, maybe that’s the problem. He looks like he might turn into a tyrant himself, if he isn’t one already. In fact, the two problems might be related. The failure to be able to control death, and the inability to control events in general, ironically and seemingly inevitably produce the impulse to try too hard to control one’s environment.

Who is responsible for the death that upsets Theseus so much? Saturn:

Out of the ground a furie infernal sterteFrom Pluto sent at requeste of Saturne

Out of the ground an infernal furie shot upFrom Pluto sent at Saturn’s request…(2684–85)

Additional Resource

For a very good introduction to the twofold understanding of Saturn in the Middle Ages, check out:

• Raymond Klibansky et al., Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art,Nelson, 1964.

This Fury upsets the horse that bears the knight who has just won the hand of the woman who was at the heart of the event that upset Theseus’s ordered world. Behind the Fury is Pluto, and behind Pluto is Saturn.

We have seen that Saturn is associated with the possible return of a golden age. He’s also the god of “shit happens.” He is the Titan who eats his children when he is told that one of them will usurp his power. (This comes up in the module on giants, as you may have noticed.) Numerous works of art have depicted this side of Saturn. Here are two of my favourites:

(Francisco de Goya, 1819-1823)

(Rubens, Peter Paul, 1636

For Chaucer’s part, he puts the following speech into Saturn’s mouth:

“My deere doghter Venus,” quod Saturne,“My cours, that hath so wyde for to turne,Hath moore power than woot any man.Myne is the drenchyng in the see so wan;Myn is the prison in the derke cote;Myn is the stranglynge and hangyng by thethrote;The murmure and the cherles rebellyng;The groynynge and the pryveeempoysonyng.I do vengeance and pleyn correccioun,Whil I dwelle in the signe of the leoun.Myn is the ruyne of the hye halles,The fallynge of the toures and of the wallesUpon the mynour or the carpenter.I slow Sampsoun, shakynge the piler;And myne be the maladyes colde,The derke tresons, and the castes olde;My looking is the fader of pestilence.”

“My dear daughter Venus,” said Saturn,“My course, that has to turn so wide,Has more power than any man knows.Mine is the drowning in the see so dark;Mine is the prison in the dark hut;Mine is the strangling and hanging by thethroat;The murmur and the cherls’ rebelling;The groaning and the secret poisoning.I do vengeance and full punishmentWhile I dwell in the sign of the lion.Mine is the ruin of the high halls,The falling of the towers and of the wallsUpon the miner or the carpenter.I slew Sampson, shaking the pillar;And mine are the maladies cold,The dark treasons and the plots old;My looking is the father of pestilence.”(1.2453–69)

As I say, Saturn is the god of shit happens. The repetition of the word “myne” gives the passage a steady, ominous drum beat of impending doom.

In the Middle Ages, plagiarism was no big deal. In fact, people believed so strongly that everything harmonized eventually anyway that ultimately there was only one story that was in the process of unfolding. There are parts of the Knight’s Tale that aren’t original to Chaucer; he borrowed them from an Italian poem called Il Teseida. (This news can be somewhat disappointing to English majors.) One of the elements that is original to Chaucer’s telling is Saturn. That these allusions weren’t there in his source indicates their importance to Chaucer. Saturn is integral to his version of the story.

On the one hand, Chaucer is deeply sympathetic to the Greek sense of the monstrous dimension of life. It manifests itself most meaningfully in politics, our life together. Tyranny represents the greatest threat to a happy life, which in the ancient world is lived out in togetherness with others. Exile is literally a fate worse than death. For the Greeks, there is another aspect to the monstrous too, on the level of fate, the action of the gods, the presence of suffering in the world. In both aspects, there is something irresolvable and unanswerable about human existence that tinges it with sadness. Saturn represents these dimensions of the monstrous.

Significantly, Saturn in the long quotation above claims “I slow Sampsoun.” Samson is a judge, or political leader, in Hebrew Scriptures. He has a chequered life, but he is no tyrant. He is, rather, a type of the figure of Christ. (Remember that, in the time in which the Knight’s Tale is set, the time of ancient Thebes and Athens, Christ has not yet appeared.)

Samson leads the Jewish nation, the people of God, and rescues them from the oppression of the Philistines, at least for a while. He is a leader pointing towards the perfect leader, the one around whom the pilgrim community will gather and who will give it its identity. The most ominous detail in Saturn’s statement of full disclosure is his declaration that he killed Samson. He is essentially claiming that there is ultimately no hope in the world. Saturn, in this passage, is a pre-Nietzschean nihilist.

Yet (getting now to my other hand) for Chaucer, as a medieval thinker, the figure of Saturn is also associated with the hope that is realized in the Judeo-Christian tradition. We have seen how the story of Vergil’s poem saturates the poetic imagination*. Saturn at one and the same time points to a limitation in the Greek way of thinking about the world and to the possibility of its being overcome*. That overcoming, though, will not happen in the world of the Knight’s Tale, only in the pilgrimage project that contains it.

Additional Resource

For further discussion on typology and its significance, see the following two articles, both from the same edited volume:

• de Lubac, Henri. “Spiritual Understanding.” inThe Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Classic and Contemporary Readings, edited by Stephen Fowl, Blackwell, 1997, pp. 3–25.
• Steinmetz, David. “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis.” inThe Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Classic and Contemporary Readings, edited by Stephen Fowl, Blackwell, 1997, pp. 26-38.

Check Your Understanding

For Chaucer, Saturn is important because:

Other Tyrants inThe Canterbury Tales

The theme of the monstrous tyrant is one to which Chaucer returns at least three other times in the course of The Canterbury Tales. Perhaps the most obvious, and the nearest analogue to the Knight’s Tale, is the Physician’s Tale. It opens with a reference to the ancient classical writer Livy and proceeds to tell that ancient historian’s political story about arbitrary rule, of which he is anxious. As in the Knight’s Tale, Chaucer makes an allusion to a story in the Hebrew Scriptures about a very imperfect leader. Other medieval Christian writers retell Livy’s story too, but Chaucer’s updates draw particular attention to the figure of Mary, who gives birth to Jesus. Chaucer is once again pointing in the direction of a different narrative tradition to suggest a future hope for the resolution of political anxiety.

(Unknown c. 1450-1500)

(Hooper 1868)

Two other tales take a similar tack. In one, the Clerk’s Tale, a marquis and his people live in an apparent fantasy land of happiness, except that the people are worried that the marquis has no wife and no heir. The people convince him to marry, but after he does he goes off the rails and the people support him in his grotesque behaviour. The marquis arbitrarily decides to tempt his young wife to see just how faithful and obedient she is. He monstrously takes from her first their daughter and then their son and ultimately pretends to abandon her for another woman. Throughout, the young wife remains passive and submissive. This tale, with its threefold trial structure, has deep folklore elements, so we aren’t invited to look too carefully into issues of complicity, not to mention PTSD. Rather, here again we have a female figure associated with Mary and with good political rule. This is how the story describes her:

Though that hire housbonde absent were, anonIf gentil men or othere of hire contreeWere wrothe, she wolde bryngen hem aton;So wise and rype words hadde she,And juggementz of so greet equitee,That she from hevene sent was, as men wende,Peple to save and every wrong t’amende.

Even if her husband was absent,If noble men or others of her countryWere angry, she would unite them,Such wise and opportune words had she,And decisions of such great equity,That she was heaven sent, so men thought,People to save and every wrong to amend.(4.435–41)

(Hooper 1868)

The leader becomes a monster, testing his wife absurdly, and his people support him willy-nilly (where have we seen that in recent years?). The wife, meanwhile, is as if “from hevene sent” and has the right words. She is the model of what appropriate rule could look like. She represents political hope.

That’s the issue in another tale, too, the Second Nun’s. On the surface, its teller is too ardent in her faith and too zealous in her apologetics. Before she starts her tale, she asks the Virgin Mary for help in telling it. In doing so, Chaucer puts into her mouth some lines of poetry that come directly from Dante. (Remember what I said about shameless copying in the Middle Ages?) Some of the lines that Chaucer lifts from Dante read as follows:

Withinne the cloistre blisful of thy sydisTook mannes shap the eterneel love and peesThat of the tryne compas lord and gyde is,Whom erthe and see and hevene out of releesAy heryen; and thou, virgine wemmelees,Baar of thy body­—and dweltest mayden pure—The creatour of every creature.

Within the blissful cloister of your sidesTook man’s shape the eternal love and peaceThat of the triune compass lord and guide is,Whom earth and sea and heaven without ceaseIndeed praise; and you, spotless virgin,Bore of your body—and remained maiden pure—The creator of every creature.(8.43–49)

(Hooper 1868)

Mary bears in her womb “the creator of every creature,” as well as the “lord and guide” of the universe. These lines anticipate a description of the tyrant that appears in the tale itself, which comes from a very different source. Chaucer cleverly mashes together two different sources to create a sharp contrast.

At the heart of the tale is a battle between a saint and a tyrant. St Cecilia stands up to a tyrant, Almachius, and accuses him of being a blowhard, “lyk a bladdre ful of wynd” (8.439) (like a bladder full of wind). Subsequently, he gives the command to burn her in her house in a bath of flames; when that doesn’t work, he instructs his servant to cut off her head. Things get pretty grotesque. The henchman can’t quite sever her neck “atwo” (528) and she clings to life for three days. She makes good use of the time, at least:

Thre days lyved she in this torment,And nevere cessed hem the feith to techeThat she hadde fostred. Hem she gan to preche,And hem she yaf hir moebles and hir thing,And to the Pope Urban bitook hem tho…

Three days she lived in this tormentAnd never ceased to teach them the faithThat she had fostered. To them she began topreachAnd to them she gave her furniture and herthingsAnd to Pope Urban she took them…(8.537–41)

The repetition of the word “hem” (them) is insistent. The focus is on the people. The passage will go on to say that they become a local gathering of the religious community that survives her martyrdom. Once again, Chaucer has chosen a story that contrasts the tyranny of a political monster with the life of the people of God.

The heroine of this story, St Cecilia, herself has words with which to confront the tyrant, but Chaucer’s real stroke of genius is to contrast the image of the tyrant as a bladder full of air with the image he borrows from Dante of Jesus in the womb of Mary. Jesus in the Gospel of John is called the Word: “In the beginning was the Word…” (Jn 1:1). If Almachius is a bladder full of empty words, Mary is full of the Word who for Chaucer, as for Dante, is the true sovereign over all of life.

For Chaucer, the most concerning monster is the tyrant. He is a political poet, concerned about the ever-present possibility of political arrangements sliding into authoritarianism and, ultimately, tyranny. Amid the realities of his lived experience and as someone with a view to both cultural history and to political philosophy, Chaucer provides a vision of hope that such monsters can indeed be vanquished. The vision he imagines looks a lot like a democratic society, functioning with warts and all.

Works Cited

“Ab Urbe Condita Libri.” University of Washington, http://courses.washington.edu/rome250/gallery/earlychristianimages/urbecondita1.jpg

CantApp: The General Prologue. An Edition in an App. Edited by Richard North, Barbara Bordalejo, Terry Jones and Peter Robinson. Scholarly Digital Editions, Saskatoon, 2020. www.sd-editions.com/CantApp/GP

“Cecilia Beheading.” https://catholicsaintmedals.com/wp-content/uploads/cecilia-beheading.jpg

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Complete Poetry and Prose of Geoffrey Chaucer. Edited by Mark Allen and John H. Fisher, 3rd ed., Wadsworth, 2012.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. f. 1r (General Prologue). Canterbury Tales. c. 1400-1410. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. mssEL 26 C 9. Ellesmere. Accessed on 15 July 2020. https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p15150coll7/id/2367.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. f. 10r (Knight’s Tale). Canterbury Tales. c. 1400-1410. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. mssEL 26 C 9. Ellesmere. Accessed on 15 July 2020. https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p15150coll7/id/2367.

Eliot, Henry. “Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales 2012 – a multimedia pilgrimage.” The Guardian, Friday 4 May 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/may/04/chaucer-canterbury-tales-2012-multimedia

Goya, Francisco. “Saturn Devouring His Son.” 1819–1823. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Devouring_His_Son#/media/File:Francisco_de_Goya,Saturno_devorando_a_su_hijo(1819-1823).jpg

The Holy Bible. NRSV, Zondervan, 1989.

Hooper, W.D. 1868. “The Clerk” In The Canterbury Tales, ed. F.J. Furnivall, by Geoffrey Chaucer. The Chaucer Society. Retrieved from: http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/canttales/clerk/clerk1.gif

Hooper, W.D. 1868. “The Physician.” In The Canterbury Tales, ed. F.J. Furnivall, by Geoffrey Chaucer. The Chaucer Society. Retrieved from: http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/canttales/woodcuts/doctor.gif

Hooper, W.D. 1868. “The Second Nun.” In The Canterbury Tales, ed. F.J. Furnivall, by Geoffrey Chaucer. The Chaucer Society. Retrieved from: http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/canttales/woodcuts/secnun.gif

Klibansky, Raymond, et al. Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art. Nelson, 1964.

Lewis, C.S. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Cambridge UP, 1964.

Ricoeur, Paul. “Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation.” Essays on Biblical Interpretation, edited by Lewis S. Mudge, Fortress, 1980, pp. 73–118.

Rubens, Peter Paul. “Saturn.” 1636–1638. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Devouring_His_Son#/media/File:Rubens_saturn.jpg

Sadlek, Gregory M. “Visualizing Chaucer’s Pilgrim Society: Using Sociograms to Teach the ‘General Prologue’ of the Canterbury Tales.” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching, vol. 8, no. 2, 2000, pp. 77-97.

Unknown. c. 1450-1500. “Illustrated Title Page of Livy’s History”. University of Oregon Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives. Lucius Annaeus Florus, Epitome of Roman History and Sextus Ruffus, Contents of Livy’s History of Rome. Burgess Collection MS 1*.* Rome. Retrieved from: https://library.uoregon.edu/ec/exhibits/burgess/ms1.html

Vergil. “Eclogue IV.” The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Purgatorio. Edited and translated by Robert M. Durling, introduction and notes by Ronald L. Martinez and Robert M. Durling, Oxford UP, pp. 584–87.

Westlund, Joseph. “The Knight’s Tale as an Impetus for Pilgrimage.” Philological Quarterly 43 (1964), pp. 526–37.

11d. Reflection: The Monstrous and Creative Freedom

The Monstrous and Creative Freedom

The monstrosity of political tyranny has implications for storytellers. In their own way (as was noticed in the discussion of Beowulf), tale-tellers imitate God. They create imaginative worlds in which their characters move around. One question that arises is, Are those characters free? Are we?

The standard thinking in the medieval Christian worldview is that people are, indeed, free. This idea comes under pressure from time to time, both within Christianity and from outside of it. One common dissenting view is that humans are merely the products of their material environment. The chemistry within them may foster the illusion of personality and of freedom, but they are really nothing more than the by-product of a deterministic, mechanical, and impersonal universe. From within Christianity, the notion of creaturely freedomcomes most under pressure shortly after the close of the Middle Ages. Reformation-era thinkers such as Martin Luther, John****Calvin, and (especially) some of Calvin’s followers, severely question the notion of freedom in practical, everyday terms.

For the creative writer working with the standard Christian understanding that humans are free, the task then is to replicate such freedom in their creative works. I used to think that this was merely a poetic way of talking, a rhapsodic flight of fancy, creative licence. However, I have come to see that it goes hand-in-hand with a particular view of the relationship between the Creator and the created universe, and that all creators participate in the sort of activity by which they themselves came to be created. This, at least, is the view of Tolkien, and it is the view of writers like Dorothy Sayers as well. Both of them were excellent medievalists. Dorothy Sayers wrote the following about artists:

(The Dorothy L Sayers Society, c. 1950)

Nor is the creative mind unpractical or aloof from that of the common man. The notion that the artist is a vague, dreamy creature living in retreat from the facts of life is a false one – fostered, as I shrewdly suspect, by those to whose interest it is to keep administrative machinery moving regardless of the end-product. At the irruption of the artist into a State department, officialdom stands aghast, not relishing the ruthless realism which goes directly to essentials. It is for the sacrilegious hand laid on the major premise that the artist is crucified by tyrannies and quietly smothered by bureaucracies. As for the common man, the artist is nearer to him than the man of any other calling, since his vocation is precisely to express the highest common factor of humanity — that image of the Creator which distinguishes the man from the beast.(Sayers 128)

Sayers wrote plays, detective fiction, and the translation and notes for a standard Penguin Classics edition of The Divine Comedy.

The impulse to replicate freedom lies behind the saying common in courses on creative writing, “Show, don’t tell.” The imitator of the God of freedom cannot propagandize, they can only propose a world for their readers and their characters to inhabit. One of the best discussions of this issue that I know of occurs in a book about Dostoevsky, whose approach closely resembles Chaucer’s. The book is by Rowan Williams, who was once the Archbishop of Canterbury, so there’s another link in my argument to The Canterbury Tales (if you’re looking for one!). Williams is both a theologian and a Fellow of England’s Royal Society of Literature for his work in the arts.

(National Assembly for Wales, 2012)

The Dostoevskian novel is … an exercise in resisting the demonic and rescuing language. It does this by insisting on freedom – the freedom of characters within the novel to go on answering each other, even when this wholly upsets and disappoints any hopes we may have for resolutions and good endings, and therefore also the freedom of the reader to reply, having digested this text in the continuing process of a reflective life. It enacts the freedom it discusses by creating a narrative space in which various futures are possible for characters and for readers. And in doing so it seeks – in the author’s intention – to represent the ways in which the world’s creator exercises “authorship,” generates dependence without control.(Williams 12)

Williams begins with the demonic or the monstrous. In this context, it is the opposite of freedom. The latter has to do with language, with the ability to answer back, to reflect and to say more (for instance, in a good essay). A good writer, like the Beowulf poet, or Chaucer, or Dostoevsky, creates “a narrative space in which various futures are possible.” In their hands the narrative itself, whatever it may be, is an invitation into freedom.

For the Beowulf-poet, for Chaucer, and for Dostoevsky, the monstrous is ultimately the denial of freedom. It represents a lurking threat in the political sphere and is an issue that the artist must parry as well. Its opposite is rhetorical wisdom and the freedom to say more. If the monstrous, positively, is defamiliarization, then the monstrous can be an expression of such freedom. In art and in politics alike, speech properly generates responsiveness and further tale-telling. For Chaucer and for the Beowulf poet alike, our words resonate with the creative energy of the universe itself and with its Creator, who addresses and sustains it with his Word.

Check Your Understanding

1) The notion of freedom through dialogue means:

2) Which of the following is a manifestation of the demonic (or the monstrous) in language:

Once you have completed reviewing all of this week’s content, return to the module page.

Works Cited

National Assembly for Wales (CC BY 2.0). “Williams visiting the National Assembly for Wales.” 26 March 2012. Flickr. 26 July 2020.

Sayers, Dorothy L. M**an: The Creating Creature. Christian Letters to a Post-Christian World. Eerdmans, 1969, pp. 67–129.

The Dorothy L Sayers Society. “Dorothy Leigh Sayers [photograph].” c. 1950. The Dorothy L Sayers Society. photograph. 26 July 2020. https://www.sayers.org.uk/.

Tolkien, J.R.R. “On Fairy-Stories.” Essays Presented to Charles Williams, edited by C.S. Lewis, Eerdmans, 1966, pp. 38–89.

Williams, Rowan. “Introduction.” Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction, Baylor, 2008, pp. 1–14.

Module 12: Conclusion

Steven Bednarski (History, University of Waterloo)

12a. Final Summary

Medieval People and their Monsters

This course has differed from almost any other Arts course by demonstrating, within one semester, how a broad variety of academic disciplines operate. This may be the first time you have been exposed to the different ways that professors conduct their own research. For continuity in this course, these approaches have all been centred around a common theme: medieval monsters. This subject has also served to introduce you more generally to the Middle Ages – a topic about which all of the authors of this course are quite passionate! Using monsters to educate you about medieval society enabled us to achieve one of the primary goals of this course: to demonstrate how we can come to understand historical cultures not just by looking directly at the ordinary, but also at what they considered extraordinary. The characteristics of monsters could vary widely. Some, like giants and dragons, manifested as larger-than-life creatures out of myth. Others, such as summoned spirits or ghosts/revenants, represented a connection – for good or ill – with a supernatural realm. Still other tales, say of werewolves and wild people, served as dire warnings of humans transformed into less “rational” beings. Medieval authors, artists, and musicians also used “monstrous” characters to make broader satirical and political statements. And in still other examples, monsters took on the form of those figures most feared by medieval people: demons and the Devil himself. Such constructions of the “monstrous” all give us insight into the medieval worldview. Studying monsters, thus, can illuminate for us how their “otherness” reflected medieval peoples’ conceptions of normality.

We make our own monsters, then fear them for what they show us about ourselves.Carey and Gross, 2011

Scholars and their Disciplines

Most importantly for this course, the modules have demonstrated to you how an interdisciplinary field of research functions. In the introduction, you were introduced to some background on the Middle Ages and Medieval Studies in general. The course modules then presented a holistic picture of medieval society by exposing you to a broad and varied overview of different disciplines, each with its own methodologies, datasets, and perspectives. There are many ways to study past cultures. Some scholars utilize a range of sources or methods in order to analyze the context beyond what one type of document may reveal. This could mean, for example, drawing on tools from such disciplines as archaeology, anthropology, or geography. Other scholars, in contrast, demonstrate expertise in one source or type of sources to show finer detail. This requires an intimate knowledge of a specific subject and close reading of the relevant sources, based on clear disciplinary guidelines. Still other scholars look for common themes or ideas across time and space. This often involves comparing and contrasting the same type of source through different eras, regions, or authors. All of these approaches, and more, are encapsulated within the broad umbrella of Medieval Studies program at the University of Waterloo – the core mission of which is cross-disciplinary collaboration.

The paragraph above is just a quick overview of some of the perspectives that you have encountered in this course. They are all much more complex than this brief summation implies, of course; they each have their own strengths and weaknesses, and those can change based on the subject, context, and the types of source material available. The availability of sources alone can vary widely. For example, see the Medieval European Manuscript Production graph below.

Note: you can customize your view of the graph below by selecting a “Grouped” or “Stacked” view, as well as by selecting or removing which country’s data is included. Hover over the colour-coded sections of the bar graph to view the estimated results for each country’s manuscript production.

[Interactive chart]

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Medieval European Manuscript Production. Shows estimated numbers of manuscripts produced in Europe between the sixth and fifteenth centuries. Results are colour-coded based on country of origin. Note: this does not mean that nearly all of these survive today, only that at least that many were created (as far as we know). The actual numbers produced are likely higher. (Roser, 2013).

(Buringh and Van Zanden, 2009)

This should give you some idea of how the availability of primary material varies widely based on chronology and geography. Scholars who study the British Isles, say, have far fewer medieval records to use than those who look at France or Italy. The same variability applies to chronology. Compare the numbers of manuscripts from the early (sixth to eight centuries), the high (ninth to twelfth), and the late (thirteenth to fifteenth) Middle Ages. These are just some of the many things that scholars must consider when selecting a time and place to study.

Now, it is your task to craft a well-argued essay that utilizes all that you have learned in this course.

By this point in the course students should be able to:

• identify and differentiate a variety of disciplinary approaches associated with the broad field of Medieval Studies,
• describe and explain how those different approaches, by studying medieval monsters, provide insight into medieval society and how these insights can apply in the present day,
• demonstrate understanding of the importance of diverse types of primary sources and replicate how experts engage them using disciplinary and multi-disciplinary methodologies,
• summarize, appraise, and distinguish between scholarly debates, discussions, or problems within Medieval Studies, and
• construct a methodology and communicate a thesis/argument effectively, drawing on evidence from primary and secondary sources.

Showing What You Have Learned

The final essay for this course gives you the opportunity to combine all of the skills you learned this term through the Short Writing Assignments and incorporate concepts and disciplinary approaches from across the modules. It is a significant and rigorous assignment, though hopefully you will all enjoy writing it. This is your chance to show off all of the skills and knowledge that you’ve acquired this term!

For this assignment, you should demonstrate the ability to:

• formulate a thesisand provide structured support,
• incorporate academic support, drawing on resources from the course,
• situate their thesis within a broader context, drawing connections across modules and resources in the course.

Be sure to craft a strong thesis and stick to it throughout the essay, while providing clear supporting evidence based on course concepts. You should make extensive use of information from readings and supplementary sources provided in this course. Remember to situate the argument within a broader context and keep in mind how different disciplines would approach the topic. Consistent and accurate formatting and grammar also help make your points more effective. See the Final Writing Assignment document for more information.

Final Thoughts

Thank you all for being part of this special course designed by all the faculty of the Medieval Studies program at the University of Waterloo. We greatly enjoyed putting together this course for you and we hope that you all benefitted from such a range of expertise. We are all passionate about the Middle Ages and we each find our own ways to study it and to show our research. Hopefully, this will inspire you all to appreciate and enjoy Medieval Studies as well. As all scholars do, we owe a great debt to those who came before and provided us with much of the foundational knowledge and methodological tools that we have tried to impart on you here. In this way, you can continue to pass it forward to the next generation. As the saying goes, we are all merely dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants.

While made most famous by Isaac Newton’s quote, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants,” it was originally a medieval metaphor.

For over eight hundred years this expression has inspired scholars to build on the foundations of their predecessors, as we hope this course inspires you to do the same.

Sitting on the Shoulder of a Giant. Medieval manuscript representation, c. 1410, of a Greek myth wherein the blind giant Orion carries his servant Cedalion on his shoulders, in order to act as his eyes. (Unknown, c. 1410)

Works Cited

Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten Van Zanden. “Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, a Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.” The Journal of Economic History, vol. 69, no. 2, Jun., 2009, pp. 409-445.

Carey, Mike, and Peter Gross. The unwritten, Vol. 1: Tommy Taylor and the bogus identity. New York, NY: Vertigo Comics, 2011.

Roser, Max. 2013. “Books.” OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from:  https://ourworldindata.org/books [CC BY-SA 4.0].

Unknown. c. 1410. “Rosenwald 4, Bl. 5r.” Library of Congress. Retrieved from: https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbc0001.2006rosen0004/?sp=4.