Fantastic beasts and where to find them: the Romanesque capitals of St Kyneburgha's church, Castor, and the local landscape (original) (raw)
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The dominant literate culture of early medieval England – male, European, and Christian – often represented itself through comparison to exotic beings and mon- sters, in traditions developed from native mythologies, and Classical and Biblical sources. So pervasive was this reflexive identification that the language of the mon- strous occurs not only in fictional travel narratives, but at the heart of construc- tions of the native hero as well as the Christian saint. In these constructions we read the central contradiction in this literature: the monster must be ‘other’ and yet cannot be absolutely so; on the contrary, the monster remains recognizable, familiar, seductive, and possible. In this essay, we discuss textual sources for the early medieval monstrous, sources ranging from Pliny to Augustine and Isidore. As we survey early medieval texts dealing with the monstrous in genres including catalog, epic, and hagiography as well as visual depictions in manuscript illustration and the mappaemundi, we consider historically particular cultural and political motivations for the representation of the monstrous in these texts, among them the early Christian conversions and shifting national boundaries.
H-France Review, 2021
Recent trends in critical animal studies, or the animal “turn,” have inspired increased interest in the medieval book of beasts. Bestiaries from the Middle Ages provide insight into human understanding of the relationship between mankind and the natural world. At the origin of medieval bestiaries are the second-century CE Physiologus (a Christian didactic text written in Greek containing allegories of beasts, stones, and trees) and textual recensions through the centuries, most notably by Isidore of Seville.[1] Illuminated manuscripts offer a glimpse into the quotidian lives of women and men as they understood medieval Christendom. The beasts that fill these pages act as “memory hooks” as viewers and auditors learn the nature and significance of each animal as an allegorical lesson of orthodox Christian conduct.[2] Just as a dog tongue cures a wound by licking it, so does the priest cure the wounds of sinners through confession and penance.[3] The ubiquity of equine creatures with a long, spiralling horn in contemporary popular culture is just one sign of the enduring legacy of medieval beliefs about the unicorn.
The Naming of the Beasts: Natural History in the Medieval Bestiary. Wilma George , Brunsdon Yapp
Isis, 1993
clerical cupidity is based in large part on some clerics' denial of the rights of the poor. This is not only criminal; it is sacrilegious. Geoffrey's own conversion was stimulated by just such an exhortation: Bernard's sermon on conversion to the clerics at Paris. Geoffrey's response was to embrace monastic life. But, with this exegetical treatise, Geoffrey followed his master in offering to clerics a high view of the dignity of their calling and the need for a fundamental reform of their lives in order to embrace their vocation worthily. Geoffrey's work is faithful to Bernard's anthropology and ecclesiology, and, like Bernard, Geoffrey shows himself so steeped in Scripture that he expresses himself in biblical language even when not quoting virtually every book from Genesis to Revelation. But Geoffrey also stamps this Cistercian spiritual tradition with his own erudition and insight. Geoffrey's work was well chosen for inclusion in the Sources Chretiennes series; Rochais has done a splendid job in presenting it. Those concerned with the intellectual, spiritual, and ecclesiastical life of the late twelfth century will profit from this volume.
Aesthetics of Evil in Middle Ages: Beasts as Symbol of the Devil
Religions
Since the very origin of art, human beings have faced the challenge of the representation of Evil. Within the medieval Christian context, we may find many beings which have attempted to convey the power of the devil. Demonic beings, terrifying beasts, fallen angels or even Satan himself can be frequently found and appear in many forms. They can be seen in chapitols, stained glass windows, codices … Our aim is to evaluate different creatures, animals and monstruous hybrids, which represent the efficient presence of the devil. We base our evaluation on some bestiaries, natural history books and encyclopedias from the XII and the XIII century, like the Bestiaire from Philippe de Thaon, Pierre de Beauvais, Guillaume le Clerc, or the so-called Cambridge Bestiary as well as the one from Oxford, the Livres dou Tresor from Brunetto Latini, the Liber monstrorum de diversis generibus, L’image du Monde from Gossuin, the Bestiario moralizzato di Gubbio, and of course, the Physiologus. Natural b...
Ritual Landscapes in Pagan and Early Christian England
2017
This article explores some of the complex relationships which existed between topographic patterns and social organization in early medieval England. It argues that group identities were not entirely elective in character and random in their boundaries, but were to a significant extent shaped by the structures of the natural landscape. The same was true of the places which particular groups found significant in ritual terms, as meeting places and burial grounds. This is a cross-disciplinary study, in that it applies models developed by English local and regional historians, which are normally used in a later medieval or post-medieval context, to throw light on the character of the location of early medieval ritual sites. More specifically, employing Alan Everitt’s “river and wold” concept, we examine the commonality of the landscape settings of pagan Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, and later Christian churches. We suggest that the broadly analogous patterns of location they displayed arose ...
This paper was presented at the 53nd annual meeting of the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2018. Comments and constructive criticism invited.
Nature, whether in the growth of crops, the Word of God, or the unknown depths of the woods, was an inescapable facet of medieval life. So too, however, was dissemination of accounts of phenomena that were decidedly out of step with “Nature.” A collection of tales scribbled into the margins of a manuscript from Byland Abbey in Yorkshire (Royal MS 15 A. xx at the British Library), offers a glimpse into the distinction between the natural and the unnatural in the medieval mind. Many a historian has painted the premodern world as one of holy and unholy (i.e. Christian and unchristian) forces, working for and against the benefit of the human souls. But in analyzing these tales, or exempla, it quickly becomes clear by the people in these stories and their interactions with the supernatural that the natural and the unnatural were not fixed categories in the medieval mind. For with public sermons came belief in occult rituals, with this world came the otherworld, and with monastic morality tales came the oral traditions that preceded them. From suspiciously necromantic ghost-summoning rituals, spectral entities who act like trolls, and the christening of dead infants under existential duress, to the appearance of demons to the guilty, the unceremonious (and unchristian) dumping into the mire of restless dead, and the phantasmagoric nature of the undead’s unnatural flesh, there appears to be more melding of beliefs than fragmentation—a constant negotiation and exploration of the paranormal, as opposed to a rejection of it. Close qualitative analysis of some the tales from Byland Abbey, as well as a consideration of the folklore and Christian doctrine that are inextricable from their foundation, this research seeks to suss out to what degree belief in these entities helped to restore Nature’s balance, and to what degree they subverted it. A look at such an enigmatic collection of stories and beliefs raises the question: in the medieval context, what is natural, anyway?
2017
It is the aim of this paper to extend previous research and explore the relationship between Middle Ages’ mythology and the universe of Rowling by comparing some of the creatures in common, in addition to proposing hypotheses on how to interpret them. By careful analysis of Bestiaries and of all the seven Harry Potter novels, my paper embraces the thought that the wizarding universe is, indeed, strongly influenced by the author’s knowledge of the notions that medieval society had on animals and that this knowledge is very intelligently used to provide a deeper meaning to her creation.
Ritual Landscapes in Pagan and Early Christian England, with Tom Williamson (UEA)
Fragments, 2017
This article explores some of the complex relationships which existed between topographic patterns and social organization in early medieval England. It argues that group identities were not entirely elective in character and random in their boundaries, but were to a significant extent shaped by the structures of the natural landscape. The same was true of the places which particular groups found significant in ritual terms, as meeting places and burial grounds. This is a cross-disciplinary study, in that it applies models developed by English local and regional historians, which are normally used in a later medieval or post-medieval context, to throw light on the character of the location of early medieval ritual sites. More specifically, employing Alan Everitt’s “river and wold” concept, we examine the commonality of the landscape settings of pagan Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, and later Christian churches. We suggest that the broadly analogous patterns of location they displayed arose from networks of contact and communication engendered by the configuration of drainage basins and their watershed boundaries. We also identify the conceptual difficulties involved in separating out the recurrent influence of such patterns from simple long-term “continuity” in the importance of particular places.
Maps and Monsters in Medieval England
2006
This study centers on issues of marginality and monstrosity in medieval England. In the middle ages, geography was viewed as divinely ordered, so Britain's location at the periphery of the inhabitable world caused anxiety among its inhabitants. Far from the world's holy center, the geographic margins were considered monstrous. Medieval geography, for centuries scorned as crude, is now the subject of several careful studies. Monsters have likewise been the subject of recent attention in the growing field of 'monster studies', though few works situate these creatures firmly in their specific historical contexts. This study sits at the crossroads of these two discourses (geography and monstrosity), treated separately in the established scholarship but inseparable in the minds of medieval authors and artists.