The Epistemology of the Monstrous in the Middle Ages

Lisa Verner

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780415972437
• eBook ISBN: 9781135873059
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This book studies the phenomena of monsters and marvels from the time of Pliny the Elder through the 14th century.

Chapter One

The Ancients

The Middle Ages inherited from the classical world not only a tradition of monsters and marvels, but also a culture of knowledge that relied heavily on authority and the ability to catalogue and organize all things. While accepting the general principles of auctoritas and organization, the early Middle Ages, from around the fall of Rome in 410 A.D. until the early twelfth century, replaced or adjusted the specific authorities and methods of organization they used in order to reflect the Christian, instead of the pagan, perspective. This change is manifested particularly in the categories of the monstrous and the marvelous where changes in their functions, sources and organizing principles in early encyclopedic, pseudo-zoological, and geographical writings can be traced. These changes do not necessarily represent a shift in fundamental ways of thinking, since reliance on authority and a compulsion to catalogue and organize this world remain primary concerns from the age of Pliny (A.D. 23–79) until the Norman Conquest and the subsequent intellectual revolution of the twelfth century. But these changes do demonstrate authoritative and organizational replacements of the pagan by the Christian, and these replacements will later become modified themselves in the allegorized monsters and marvels of late medieval narratives.

This chapter will focus on the journey from Pliny’s Natural History (A.D. 77) through the analogic reconstruction of nature in the Physiologus (second century A.D.) and into the early encyclopedic tradition as epitomized by Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies (circa A.D. 636). The focus on Pliny will provide the reader with a pagan encyclopedic background with which to contrast the early Christian encyclopedic works, which often drew on the Natural History. In many ways the exhausting attention to details and the slavish reliance on auctoritas in both Christian and pagan works point to profound similarities between the two ages under consideration. However, the changes that do take place—the new religious significance given to apparently meaningless details and the transfer of authority from human agents to God in the emerging Christian tradition—set the course for the trajectory of thought that will dominate consideration of the monstrous until at least the twelfth-century renaissance.

Pliny the Elder’s Natural History functioned as “a standard work of reference among the English” (Ogilvy 222) and also on the continent (Healy xxxvii) during the early Middle Ages and beyond. Although “the Natural History was a big book to copy, and complete manuscripts are not numerous” (Haskins 112), one might say the same of the Bible, and yet the dissemination of its separate books did not lessen the influence exerted by its complete form. While it is true that the Middle Ages saw the fragmentation of the books of the Natural History and their subsequent independent circulation, the reader should bear in mind that, according to the Dictionary of the Middle Ages’ entry on encyclopedias and dictionaries, “[o]f the three encyclopedists of ancient Rome—Varro, Celsus, and Pliny—only the work of Pliny has survived whole to modern times, and … only he had an influence on medieval encyclopedists.” Pliny “survived whole” sometimes in complete manuscripts as well as fragments, and some fragments are actually very large sections. Bede, for example, had about half of the books of the Natural History, yet he at least partially “derived his conception of an ordered universe from Pliny” (Chibnall 61). By the eighth century complete or mostly complete copies had made it to Ireland (Chibnall 61), and complete manuscripts were “readily available” (Chibnall 74) in the later Middle Ages, arguing for the survival of copy texts from earlier periods. In this way Pliny influenced later encyclopedists, such as Isidore of Seville, Cassiodorus, and Hrabanus Maurus, on both the microcosmic and macrocosmic levels: “they not only drew details from it but also imitated its organization, beginning with the heavens, then moving to earth, man and other animals, plants, and minerals—that is, down the chain of being” (Dictionary of the Middle Ages). So popular did Pliny become that by “the end of the ninth century” he could be counted among those authors “so well entrenched in the literary and educational tradition and so thick on the shelves of the libraries that their survival was no longer in question” (Reynolds and Wilson 100–1).

On the microcosmic level, the monstrous material, because it “appealed powerfully to the mediaeval love of the marvellous” (Haskins 112), comprised some of the most popular excerpts and served as the source for many of the monsters and marvels that so fascinated later Christian writers. Wittkower comments that “[o]ne of the main sources for the mediaeval lore of monsters was Pliny’s Historia naturalis (finished 77 A.D.)” (166). Pliny’s influence was thus felt in specific areas, such as the study of monsters and marvels, as well as in the overall structure of medieval encyclopedias, and this specific monstrous knowledge directly affected both Isidore (Brehaut) and the author of the Physiologus (Curley, Notes 68–92).

The title Natural History could mislead the reader if s/he adheres to modern assumptions about this term, including its implication of objective scientific observation. Although Pliny “had a naturally scientific mind,” he “had no considerable first-hand knowledge of the sciences and was not himself a systematic observer” (Rackham ix). If Pliny did not observe systematically, he did compile and arrange the observations, both faithfully recorded and shamelessly fabricated, of others, and it is this arrangement with which this study is interested. Pliny’s subject matter is, in his own words, “sterilis ma-teria, rerum natura, hoc est vita” (“a barren one—the world of nature, or in other words life”) (pref. 13; trans. Rackham). Referring to the intended audience of the Natural History, Pliny says “humili vulgo scripta sunt, agrico-larum, opificum turbae, denique studiorum otiosis” (“it was written for the common herd, the mob of farmers and of artizans [sic], and after them for students who have nothing else to occupy their time”) (pref. 6; trans. Rackham). In spite of such a modest assertion, Pliny dedicated the Natural History to the emperor Titus (Healy xiii), and his great work, “a systematic account of all the material objects that are not the product of man’s manufacture” (Rackham viii-ix), was something never attempted before, as he admits: “nemo apud nos qui idem temptaverit invenitur, nemo apud Graecos qui unus omnia ea tractaverit” (“there is not one person to be found among us who has made the same venture, nor yet one among the Greeks who has tackled single-handed all departments of the subject”) (pref. 14; trans. Rackham). In embracing a task of this magnitude, Pliny consciously rejects specialization, abstraction and artistry in favor of a wide scope of inquiry, concreteness and the natural world in which most people spent the majority of their time (pref. 14–16; Healy xix).

So Pliny composed an encyclopedia, one that would remain popular and influential for over a thousand years, possibly because of its underlying but unstated principle: all things on earth are knowable and can be catalogued. This principle operates through the Natural History on the levels of organization and authority. Pliny’s method of organization can be described as, for lack of a better term, encyclopedic. That is, Pliny observes the earth from above, as it were, and sees the material world as a series of concentric circles. Moving from the outermost circle to the innermost, the reader travels from the largest material thing to the smallest and least important in the material hierarchy. Pliny reduces these circles to a linear progression in the Natural History’s table of contents, which Healy has usefully and mostly accurately divided into five categories of decreasing scope (Healy vii-viii). Healy has titled the first section “The Universe and the World,” and this section includes books 2–6, referred to respectively as “Astronomy,” “Spain and Italy,” “Europe and Britain,” “The Continents of Africa and Asia,” and “The Black Sea, India and the Far East.” Book 2, “Astronomy,” could perhaps be more accurately titled “Space, the Planets, and the Earth,” for Pliny begins by demarcating his subject matter as the knowable material of the universe:

Mundum et hoc—quocumque nomine alio caelum appellare libuit cuius circumflexu teguntur cuncta, numen esse credi par est, aeternum, inmen-sum, neque genitum neque interiturum umquam. huius extera indagare nec interest hominum nec capit humanae coniectura mentis. (2.1)

The world and this—whatever other name men have chosen to designate the sky whose vaulted roof encircles the universe, is fitly believed to be a deity, eternal, immeasurable, a being that never began to exist and never will perish. What is outside it does not concern men to explore and is not within the grasp of the human mind to guess. (trans. Rackham)

Having thus limited his scope, Pliny works his way down, so to speak, from the planets and stars to the earth itself, its size, its shape, and the influence of celestial bodies upon it. Once firmly earthbound, he then explores the surface of the earth, this time working outward from the areas most familiar to him, Spain and Italy, to those farthest away from Roman civilization, Africa, Asia, India and the Far East.

After disposing of geography, Pliny moves on to consider what Healy calls “Zoology” in books 7–11: “Man,” “Land Animals,” “Creatures of the Sea,” “Birds,” and “Insects.” Very generally speaking, Pliny organizes animals in terms of their decreasing importance or position in his human-centered hierarchy of living things: “Principium iure tribuetur homini, cuius causa vide-tur cuncta alia genuisse natura magna” (“The first place will rightly be assigned to man, for whose sake great Nature appears to have created all other things”) (7.1; trans. Rackham). He then moves on to the area of “Botany” in books 12–18, which includes trees, fruits, viticulture and agriculture. The section Healy titles “Materia Medica” (books 20–32) might easily have fallen under the category of botany as well, since this section includes chapters on flowers, herbs and wild plants. However, Pliny spends a great deal of time discussing the medical uses to which plants can be put and also discusses medicine in general, the medical uses of aquatic creatures, magic, and superstition. Still, such subjects remain well within the realm of the material world. Healy’s final division, “Mining and Minerals,” treats only the inanimate world of stones and metal and the uses to which they can be put, such as sculpture, painting and architecture. For Pliny, the physical world exists to provide humankind with material to make human life possible and enjoyable, whether it be animals for food, plants for medicine, or stones for building and art. Pliny’s universe is human-centered, in a very literal way: the humans are foremost among living things on the earth, and anything beyond the earth is not to be considered. Moreover, no relationship is posited between the things in and on the earth and the celestial world above.

The concentric organization of the material universe, rendered here in a written and thus linear format, encloses and contains all physical knowledge; it is encyclopedic. The knowledge contained in such an encyclopedia, however, does not derive from Pliny’s own observations. The copious amount of material found with the Natural History could not possibly come from the experience of any single individual, so Pliny has naturally relied on outside authorities for his information. He goes to great lengths to document the authorities he uses in his exhaustive table of contents, which comprises all of the Natural History’s first book. In his table of contents, Pliny first provides a summary of the material to be found in each book by subsection and refers to this summary as “continen-tur” (1). Then, having broken up each book into sections, he provides a list of sources for each book, designating this list as “ex auctoribus” (1). These extensive lists contain the names of virtually every ancient historian, scientist, and poet whose work remains extant, as well as the names of many whose work is lost. Pliny himself claims to have consulted “voluminum … duorum milium” (“two thousand volumes”) (pref. 17; trans. Rackham). From these, he has collected 20,000 facts from a hundred authorities into thirty-six volumes (pref. 17). Healy notes that this is “a rather conservative estimate since no fewer than 146 Roman and 327 foreign authors are quoted” (xvii). Ironically, this encyclopedic table of contents, which provides the reader with both a model for the known universe and the means of accessing comprehensive knowledge of all parts of the universe, makes it possible for the reader to ignore every subject except the one s/he is seeking, as Pliny explained to Titus in the closing of his introduction (pref. 33). Having collected, catalogued and organized the most important facts about the physical and knowable universe, Pliny fashions a system whereby the reader will not actually have to read all these facts. This method “fixes” knowledge in its proper place from which small bits can be extracted, used, and returned to their places as needed. In a final bow to authority, Pliny completes the preface itself with these words: “hoc ante me fecit in litteris nostris Valerius Soranus in libris quos έποπτίδων inscripsit” (“This plan has been adopted previously in Roman literature, by Valerius Soranus in his books entitled Lady Initiates”) (pref. 33; trans. Rackham). Even concepts of organization have sources that must be acknowledged in order for knowledge itself to be comprehensive and reliable.

Pliny’s comprehensive and “reliable” collection includes a myriad of material on both monsters and marvels, which was later used by St. Augustine (Orchard 105), Isidore of Seville (Brehaut 47), Aldhelm (Lapidge and Rosier, Notes 247), and the author of the Liber Monstrorum (Orchard 87), among others. Observe what Pliny says about a few of the more popular and recurring monsters and marvels of the Middle Ages, beginning with the Blemmyae. In book five on Africa and Asia, Pliny includes them in a description of races found in the African interior, where they are simply one strange race among many: “quidam solitudinibus interposuerunt Atlantas eosque iuxta Aegipanas semiferos et Blemmyas et Gemphasantas et Satyros et Himantopodas” (“In the middle of the desert some place the Atlas tribe, and next to them the half-animal Goat-Pans and the Blemmyae and Gemphasantes and Satyrs and Strapfoots”) (5.8.44; trans. Rackham). Pliny then describes the Blemmyae in a single sentence: “Blemmyis traduntur capita abesse ore et oculis pectori ad-fixis” (“The Blemmyae are reported to have no heads, their mouth and eyes being attached to their chests”) (5.8.46; trans. Rackham). Pliny does not comment on the Blemmyae except to note their physical peculiarity and apparently feels no need to interpret their deformity in any way; they simply exist, and he has assigned them to their proper place in the African interior.

Pliny also locates Pygmies but records their existence in two places in book six on India and the Far East. Near the river Indus, “Pygmaei traduntur” (“there is said to be a race of Pygmies”) (6.22.70; trans. Rackham), and also “quidam et Pygmaeorum gentem prodiderunt inter paludis ex quibus Nilus oriretur” (“some writers have actually reported a race of pygmies living among the marshes in which the Nile rises”) (6.35.188; trans. Rackham). Once again Pliny fails to comment on the monstrous race in question, and in this case he does not even describe them. Like the Blemmyae, they are fitted into place and made part of the known world, becoming accessible to all who can read. However, in another section, book seven on human beings and their varieties, Pliny goes into more detail about this diminutive race:

… quos a gruibus infestari Homerus quoque prodidit. fama est insid-entes arietum caprarumque dorsis armatos sagittis veris tempore uni-verso agmine ad mare descendere et ova pullosque earum alitum consumere, ternis expeditionem earn mensibus confici, aliter futuris gregibus non resisti; casas eorum luto pinnisque et ovorum p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One The Ancients
• Chapter Two The Anglo-Saxons
• Chapter Three The Bestiary
• Chapter Four Mandeville’s Travels
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index