Marvels of the East. A Study in the History of Monsters
Author(s): Rudolf Wittkower
Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes , 1942, Vol. 5 (1942), pp. 159-
197
Published by: The Warburg Institute
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/750452
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MARVELS OF THE EAST
A Study in the History of Monsters
By Rudolf Wittkower
"Vous vous etonnez que Dieu ait fait l'homme si bornd,
peu heureux,
Que ne vous etonnez-vous qu'il ne l'ait pas fait plus bornd, plus
ignorant, plus malheureux."
VOLTAIRE
The following pages are concerned with a strictly limited aspect of theinexhaustible history of monsters, those compound beings which have
always haunted human imagination. The Greeks sublimated many instinctive
fears in the monsters of their mythology, in their satyrs and centaurs, sirens
and harpies, but they also rationalized those fears in another, non-religious
form by the invention of monstrous races and animals which they imagined
to live at a great distance in the East, above all in India. It is the survival
and transmission of this Greek conception of ethnographical monsters which
will here be studied.
But even the history of this one trend in the conception of monsters cannot
yet fully be written, for the "Marvels of the East"'1 determined the western
idea of India for almost 2000 years, and made their way into natural science
and geography, encyclopaedias and cosmographies, romances and history,
into maps, miniatures and sculpture. They gradually became stock features
of the occidental mentality, and reappear peculiarly transformed in many
different guises. And their power of survival was such that they did not die
altogether with the geographical discoveries and a better knowledge of the
East, but lived on in pseudo-scientific dress right into the I7th and I8th
centuries. In order to illustrate the fluctuating history of this tradition it will
be necessary to lay before the reader a great bulk of material, which may seem
bewildering but which may serve to convey an impression of the impact which
the Marvels made on the European mind.
i. The Sources of the Indian Monsters
It was the Greeks who were responsible for the western conception of
India. The earliest surviving report of India is by Herodotus.2 But his
I wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Otto
Kurz and other friends who have generously
helped with bibliographical notes and other
suggestions. Some of the material which had
been collected before the war could unfortunately
not be checked under present con-
ditions.
1 This is the title given by Montague
Rhodes James to an early mediaeval tract
about the wonders of the East; Marvels of the
East. A full reproduction of the three known
copies. Oxford, printed for the Roxburghe
Club, 1929.
2 Bk. IV, 44. Herodotus' other remarks
about India are condensed in Bk. III, 97-Io6.
Herodotus wrote his History towards the end
of his life, in the second half of the 5th century
B.c. His account on India was probably
based on that of Hekataios of Miletus (written
about 500oo B.c.) who in his turn drew on
Skylax's report of a journey made c. 515 B.c.
The classical sources about India have been
159
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16o RUDOLF WITTKOWER
knowledge of that country was s
the beginning of the 4th century
by Ktesias from Knidos who had
Artaxerxes Mnemon of Persia.' A
by later authors his work has un
version of the 9th century A.D.
who had probably a still stron
himself.
In any case, it is certain that
stamped as the land of marvels.
the East which had been current from Homer's time onwards and added
many new ones, including tales of the weather, of miraculous mounta
diamonds, gold, etc. He populated India with the pygmies, who fight
the cranes ;2 with the sciapodes, a people with a single large foot on w
they move with great speed and which they also use as a sort of umb
against the burning sun ;3 and with the cynocephali, the men with dogs' h
"who do not use articulate speech but bark like dogs."'4 There are hea
people with their faces placed between their shoulders ;5 there are people w
eight fingers and eight toes who have white hair until they are thirty
from that time onwards it begins to turn black; these people have ear
large that they cover their arms to the elbows and their entire back.
certain parts of India are giants, in others men with tails of extraord
length "like those of satyrs in pictures.' 7 Of fabulous animals he des
the martikhora with a man's face, the body of a lion and the tail of a scorp
collected, translated and commented upon in
different works published byJ. W. McCrindle.
His sections dealing with Herodotus are in
Ancient India as described in Classical Literature,
Westminster 19o01, p. I ff. Cf. also the article
Herodotus in Paulys Real-Encyclopddie, Suppl.
II, 1913, c. 430. On the earliest Greek
sources about India cf. Wilhelm Reese, Die
griechischen Nachrichten fiber Indien, Leipzig
1914. Christian Lassen, Ind. Alterthumskunde,
Bonn 1849, II, p. 621 ff. "Geschichte des
griech. Wissens von Indien" is still very
useful. For the first part of this article cf. also
H. G. Rawlinson, Intercourse between India and
the western World. From the earliest Times to the
Fall of Rome, Cambridge 1926.
1 Cf. J. W. McCrindle, Ancient India as
described by Ktesias the Knidian, 1882. Reese,
p. 7 if. Ktesias returned to Greece in 398/7
B.c. where he wrote his 'Ivatx&. Cf. article
Ktesias in Paulys Real-Encycl. XXII, 1922,
mainly c. 2037 f.
2This famous story appeared first in the
Iliad III, 6. Herodotus III, I16, IV, 13,
although himself incredulous, reported on the
authority of Aristeas' 'Ap&osLicta that
the one-eyed Arimaspi, inhabitants of the
North, were the enemies of the griffins, and
said that the Scythian word Arimaspi means
"people with one eye" (IV, 27). Both traditions
remained alive and reached the Middle
Ages which represented either a dwarf-like
race or cyclopes as fighting the birds.
3 For earlier references to the sciapodes by
Skylax, Hekataios and Herodotus cf. Reese,
op. cit., p. 49. Pliny VII, ii, 23 calls this race
also Monocoli and this name remained the
alternative for Sciapodes.
4 Ktesias gave the first elaborate account
of this people. See Reese, op. cit., p. 75 f-
5 Transmitted through Pliny, Hist. nat. VII,
ii, 23 and then repeated over and over again.
6Skylax first mentioned the people with
large ears (cf. Reese, op. cit., pp. 49, 51). For
Megasthenes (see below, p. 162, note 6)
they were different from the people with
eight toes on each foot.
SKtesias 33This
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MARVELS OF THE EAST 161
the unicorn and the griffins which g
sheep, he asserts, are of prodigious siz
In 326 B.c. Alexander the Great inva
the western conception of India complet
were still so vague that, when he firs
he had reached the sources of the Nile3-a confusion between India and
Ethiopia which goes far back into the past and existed throughout the greate
part of the Middle Ages.4 Alexander took with him numerous scientists to
describe his expedition and the countries through which they passed. As a
result several works were written which have been lost, but which appear
condensed in later authors.5
The most important book on India was, however, produced after the end
of the campaigns. Its author, Megasthenes, was sent about 303 B.c. by
Seleucus Nicator, the heir to Alexander's Asiatic empire, as ambassador to
the court of Sandracottus (Chandragupta), the most powerful of the Indian
1 Ktesias 7 says that the name "martikhora"
means in Greek &v0ptxocpq&yoq, i.e.
man-eater, which is correct, the derivation
being the Persian mard= man and khora-=eater. Cf. McCrindle, Ktesias, op. cit., p. 12.
See also Pausanias, Boiot. IX, 21, 4 and the
detailed account in Aelian, De natura animal.
IV, 21. Ktesias was the first to locate and
describe the unicorn. The belief in its existence
was widely accepted after Aristotle, hist.
an. II, ) (501 a), had followed Ktesias' tale.
Ktesias blended his story about the griffins
with that reported by Herodotus (III, 102 ff.)
about the gold-digging ants. Cf. C. Robert's
analysis in Paulys Real-Encl. XIV, 19I2, c.
1920 (s. v. "Gryps").
2 Ind. 13 and Aelian, De nat. anim. XVI, 2.
3 Arrian, Anab. VI, 1, 2; Strabo XV, i, 25
(696). Cf. McCrindle, The Invasion of India by
Alexander the Great, 1893, p. 131 f., Paulys RealEncl.
Suppl. IV, 1924, c. 558 (s. v. "Geo-
graphie").
SThis confusion seems to be traceable to
Homer (Od. I, 23 f.) who divides the Ethiopians
into those who live at the world's end
towards the setting of the sun or towards its
rising. Later authors use the words "Indians"
and "Ethiopians" almost as synonyms.
Ktesias frequently calls the Indians Ethiopians.
With Herodotus and Hekataios the
sciapodes dwell in Ethiopia, Pliny finds the
martikhora in that part of the world, etc.
Cf. the compilation of the relevant material
in E. A. Schwanbeck, Megasthenis Indica, Bonn
1846, p. I ff. After a period of comparative
enlightenment the confusion gets even worse
during the decay of the Roman Empire. So
the anonymous author of the Itinerarium
Alexandri Magni, written in 345 A.D., says:
"India taken as a whole, beginning from the
north and embracing what of it is subject to
Persia, is a continuation of Egypt and the
Ethiopians . . ." (cf. McCrindle, Class. Lit.,
op. cit., p. 153). Eusebius in his Chronicon
(325 A.D.), mentions to the 5th year of
the government of Amenophis that the
Ethiopians left the Indus and settled in
the neighbourhood of Egypt. This was repeated
by Isidore (Etym. IX, 2, 128) whose
report about the three peoples inhabiting
Ethiopia, the Hesperii in the West, the Garamantes
in the centre and the Indians in the
East, reappears with a number of later
authors, e.g. Gervase of Tilbury (Otia imperialia,
ed. Leibnitz, 1707-1I, II, p. 759)The
same division exists in Roger Bacon's
Opus Majus (x1267), ed. J. H. Bridges 1897, I,
p. 312, who specified now, however, that the
Ethiopian Indians were called Indians because
of their nearness to India. (Still repeated
by Pierre d'Ailly, Tmago Mundi, 14x0o,
ed. E. Burton, 1930, p. 360 f.) In fact,
Ethiopians and Indians appear as neighbours
or were mixed up in most of the mediaeval
maps. About the confusion of the three Indies
in 13th century travellers' reports cf. Yule,
Cathay and the Way thither, London 1914, II,
p. 27 f. Valuable material for the whole
question is to be found in John Kirtland
Wright, The geographical Lore of the Time of the
Crusades, New York 1925, p. 302 ff.
5 McCrindle, Invasion of India, op- cit., p. 7 ff.
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162 RUDOLF WITTKOWER
kings who resided at Patalipu
Megasthenes' treatise survives
Aelian and others.2 Megasthen
statements about the geography
political institutions, its natural p
this report was unsurpassed in rel
centuries to come, Megasthenes
fabulous races and animals.
He not only repeated the old tales but added considerably to the lis
We hear of serpents with wings like bats, of winged scorpions of extraord
size;4 he repeats from Herodotus the story of the gold-digging ants ;5 he k
of the people whose heels are in front while the instep and toes are t
backwards,6 of the wild men without mouths who live on the smell of roa
flesh and the perfumes of fruit and flowers.7 The Hyperboreans, he r
live a thousand years;8 there are people who have no nostrils, with the
part of their mouth protruding far over the lower lip,9 and others wh
dog's ears and a single eye in their forehead.10
Megasthenes' report on India remained unchallenged for almost 1500 yea
Through the political confusions in the East direct contact by land between
West and India was made difficult. Owing to the emancipation of Bac
and Parthia from the Seleucid Empire (about 250 B.c.) and the disrupt
Chandragupta's Maurya dynasty (about 185 B.c.) the land-route to
was almost closed. Communications, however, were never wholly interr
even after the foundation of the Sassanid Empire in 226 A.D.1 Meanw
1 The implications of the dating of Megasthenes'
embassy fully discussed by O. Stein
in Paulys Real-Encl. XXIX, 1931, c. 231 f.
2 Cf. K. Mtiller, Fragmenta historicorum
Graecorum, I848, II, p. 397 ff. The earlier
collection of the fragments of Megasthenes by
Schwanbeck (see above, p. 161, n. 4) was
used by McCrindle for his translation: Ancient
India as described by Megasthenes and Arrian,
1877.
3 Mainly in Strabo XV, i, 57 and II, i, 9
and Pliny, Hist. nat. VII, ii, 21-30.
SAelian, De nat. anim. XVI, 41.
5 These animals are the size of foxes, and
fiercely attack people who try to carry off the
gold. The accounts of Megasthenes and other
authors about the ants are most circumstantial.
Herodotus (III, 102) asserts that some
specimens were preserved by the Persian
king, and Arrian in his Indika XV, 4 quotes
Nearchos, the admiral of Alexander's fleet,
who reported that "he had seen several of
their skins which had been brought into the
Macedonian camp." (Cf. also Strabo XV,
i, 44.) Even in the i6th century one of these
ants was said to have been sent by the Shah
of Persia to Sultan Soliman at Constantinople.
Cf. E. H. Bunbury, A History of Ancient
Geography, London I879, I, p. 230; Jules
Berger de Xivrey, Traditions tiratologiques,
Paris I836, p. 263.
6 Cf. above p. I6o, note 6. The report that
these people have eight toes on each foot only
in Pliny VII, ii, 23. They were lator identified
with the Antipodes. Cf. below, p. I82.
SAll authors agree that these people live
near the source of the Ganges. Pliny VII, ii,
25 calls the race Astomi.
8 These happy people, belonging to the
oldest mythological conceptions of Greece,
were generally located in the farthest north.
Their opposite number in Sanscrit literature,
the Uttarakurus, also inhabit the northern
regions. Cf. McCrindle, Megasthenes, op. cit.,
p. 78.
9 Strabo calls this race Amukteres and Pliny
Sciritae.
1o Strabo XV, i, 57 calls them Monommati.
Other cyclopic people are the Arimaspi, cf.
above, p. I6o, note 2.
1L Cf. The Cambridge History of India, vol. I,
1922, PP- 59 f-, 425 f., 5I6 f., etc.; Arthur
Christensen, L'Iran sous les Sassanides, Copenhagen
I936, p. I22. For the whole question
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MARVELS OF THE EAST 163
the sea-route to southern India grew steadily
the first century A.D., a captain, Hippalus, disc
monsoon for navigation, merchandise from
Empire on a considerable scale.' However, this
in the hands of the Arabs.2 The lack of direct
an expansion of geographical and ethnologic
Roman authors of the last centuries B.c. and
continued to transcribe faithfully the by the
Thus, the knowledge of India in the Hellenist
sequently in the early Middle Ages was based
Ktesias and Megasthenes.
How was it possible, it will be asked, that s
of Megasthenes, not to mention Ktesias and o
to accept the fabulous stories which have been
to have been manifold. In some cases, as for i
the cyclopic races,5 the Greeks brought with
to those of the Indians; they may have had
times beyond our historical reach.6 In othe
of trade between the Roman Empire and
India, cf. E. H. Warmington, The Commerce
between the Roman Empire and India, Cambridge
1928.
1 Cf. McCrindle, The Commerce and Navigation
of the Erythraean Sea; being a Translation of
the Periplus Maris Erythraei . . . 1879, ?57;
Wilfrid H. Schoff, The Periplus of the Erythraean
Sea, 1912, pp. 45 f., 227 f. The Periplus,
written by an anonymous writer
probably about 6o-8o A.D. gives the first
account of the discovery of the monsoon. Cf.
the discussion of the trade route by sea in
Bunbury, op. cit., II, p. 470 ff. and of the
trade policy of the Roman Empire in the
centuries before and after our era in M. Cary
and E. H. Warmington, The Ancient Explorers,
London, 1929, p. 73 ff., and K. A. Nilakanta
Sastri, Foreign Notices of South India from
Megasthenes to Ma Huan, Madras 1939.- P. 4 f.
2 Mainly after the 2nd century A.D., cf.
Cary and Warmington, op. cit., p. 84. But
even at the time of the Periplus cargoes
changed hands about six times, cf. Schoff, op.
cit., p. 228. The caravan trade remained also
in oriental hands, cf. Rostovtzeff, "The Near
East in the Hellenistic and Roman Times,"
Dumbarton Oaks Inaugural Lectures, Cambridge
(Mass.) 1941, p. 35.-
3 Cf. the considered statement in the Cambr.
Hist. of India, op. cit., p. 425.
4 The belief in the existence of dog-headed
creatures is known to us in all parts of Asia,
in China as well as in Java and Siberia, in
Egypt as well as in America and Europe. Cf.
the material collected by Henri Cordier, Les
monstres dans la le'gende et dans la nature, Paris
I890, with further references; idem, Les
voyages en Asie au XIVe siecle du Frere Odoric de
Pordenone, Paris 1891, pp. 206-17; idem, Ser
Marco Polo. Addenda, London 1920, p. o109 f.;
W. Klinger, "Hundsk6pfige Gestalten in der
antiken und neuzeitlichen Uberlieferung,"
Bull. international de l'Acad. Polonaise des sciences
.. Cl. d'hist. et de phil. 1936, pp. I 19 if-
5 One-eyed races, familiar to the Greeks as
the Cyclopes, are mentioned in the Mahabharata
and in other Indian epics, cf. Schwanbeck,
op. cit., p. 70 and McCrindle, Megasthenes,
op. cit., p. 77. To have only one eye
seems to have been in India the symbol of the
barbarian. As late as the I5th century an
Italian traveller, Nicol6 Conti, reported,
that the Indians say "that they themselves
have two eyes and that we have but one, because
they consider that they excel all others
in prudence." (Mario Longhena, Viaggi
in Persia, India e Giava di N. de' C., Milan
1929, p. 179.) In this detached symbolical
form the device occurs also in English literature,
cf. Joseph Glanvill, The Vanity of Dogmatizing,
1661, p. 129: "We judge truth to be
circumscrib'd by the confines of our belief . . .
and . . . repute all the rest of the world
Monoculous."
6 Klinger, op. cit., has shown that the cynocephali
were originally probably chtonic
demons, traces of which have been preserved
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164 RUDOLF WITTKOWER
thought they found in India-probably
tions such as satyrs and sirens. Sometim
The description of the griffin was obvio
which were current in Greece." Sometim
at the bottom of the story. It has been e
and Megasthenes' unicorn is the Indian
people still attribute the power of prot
this animal-the same power which Ktes
But the majority of the fabulous stories
borrowed from the Indian epics. Megast
knowledge of some of the marvels to th
no reason to distrust the reports of the
An example may show how his concepti
were quite unknown to western mythology
in the Indian epics, particularly the M
people who cover themselves with their
camel-eared," others "people having han
having the ears close to the lips."5 For
barous tribes had long ears, and the stor
ears was still current in Hindustan in th
the Sanscrit has also been discovered in t
ants. The gold collected in the plains of
monly known as "Pipilika," signifying
due to the shape of the gold-dust brought
or pangolins while they were excavating
may have been seen by the Greek autho
in folklore adaptations of the early myth.
About the diffusion of the myth of one-eyed
creatures cf. Paulys Real-Encycl. XXII, c. 2346
with further references.
1 Aelian, De nat. anim. IV, 27 gives from
Ktesias a detailed description including the
colour of feathers, wings and neck, and goes
on "its head is like the representations which
artists give in paintings and sculptures." It
is quite probable that Ktesias' account was
based on Persian representations of the griffin
with which he must have become familiar
during his stay in Persia.
It may also be recalled that Ktesias refers
to pictures of satyrs in the description of
tailed men, cf. above, p. 16o.
2 Cf. Steier s.v. "Nashorn" in Paulys RealEncycl.
XXXII, 1935, c. 1780 ff. It may also
be noted that the figure of a unicorn occurs
frequently on seals from Mohenjo-Daro (John
Marshall, Moh.-Daro and the Indus civilisation,
London 1931, II, p. 382 ff. and pl. CXV) and
that the unicorn was familiar to the civilizations
of the Near East.
Hennig, "Der kulturhist. Hintergrund der
Gesch. vom Kampf zwischen Pygmien und
Kranichen," Rhein. Mus. f. Philologie, N.F. 81,
1932, p. 20 ff. believes to have found the
ethnographical basis of the pygmy legend.
In some cases perhaps too realistic explanations
have been sought. The people without
mouths who live only on smell were according
to H. Hosten ("The mouthless Indians,"
Journal and Proceedings As. Soc. of Bengal VIII,
1912, p. 291 ff.) Himalayan tribesmen who
used strongly smelling fruits and vegetables
as remedy against height-sickness.
3 Strabo XV, i, 57.
4 Lassen, Ind. Altertumskunde, op. cit., II, p.
651.
5 Cf. Schwanbeck, op. cit., p. 66; McCrindle,
Megasthenes, op. cit., p. 75-
6 Ibid., loc. cit.
SCf. Bunbury, op. cit., p. 257; Reese, op.
cit., p. 69 f. O. Peschel, Abhdl. Zur Erd-und
Vblkerkunde, Leipzig 1877, p. 41 ff.; Hennig
in Rheinisches Mus.f. Philologie, N. F. 79, 1930,
pp. 326-332. A new satisfactory explanation
of all the details of the story by George Jennison,
Animals for Show and Pleasure in Ancient
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MARVELS OF THE EAST 165
It may not now seem so strange that e
Megasthenes should have believed the fa
remembered-played only a negligible part
of his own Greek inheritage and were too w
literary tradition to be disregarded.1
2. An Enlightened Interlude
It is characteristic of the progressive scient
they themselves turned against the stories
races. Censure by a number of later autho
is perhaps Strabo, whose Geography was wr
However Strabo's merits as a geographer m
in dealing relentlessly with old superstition
Generally speaking, he says,2 the men wh
India were a set of liars. Deimachos holds
was like Megasthenes, ambassador at an I
Megasthenes comes next; while Onesikrito
and Nearchos (Alexander's admiral) with o
to stammer a few words of truth . . . Th
men with ears large enough to sleep in, m
noses, with only one eye, with spider leg
ward . . .
and he goes on with the whole list of absurdities reported by earlier authors.
No less refreshing is what the learned Aulus Gellius has to say about 150
years later in his Noctes Atticae.3 He had studied in Athens, and on his way
back to Italy he strolled along in the streets of Brindisi and found in a bookshop
some old Greek works "full of marvellous tales of things unheard of and
incredible, but written by ancient authors of no small authority." After
recording the superstitious beliefs found in them concerning the existence of
cynocephali, sciapodes, pygmies, etc., he thus concludes:
Rome, Manchester I937, pp. 190-93. An
interesting, though erroneous, attempt of explanation
was made by A. F. Graf von
Veltheim, Von den goldgrabenden Ameisen und
Greifen der Alten, Helmstidt 1799.For
other translations from the Sanskrit see
Lassen, Schwanbeck and McCrindle.
' The Indian conceptions of monsters made
their way also into China, where they can be
traced long before our era. Berthold Laufer
("Columbus and Cathay," Journal of the
American Orient. Soc. 1931, pp. 87-104) said
that the Chinese "had outlined a complete
picture and a fixed scheme of geography
and ethnography of wondrous nations as
early as the 6th century A.D." Cf. also Bazin
in Journ. asiat., 3 s6r., VIII, 839, pp. 337-82
F. de Mely, De Perigeux au Fleuve Jaune, Pari
1927, p. 21 ff. The fabulous races in the co
mography of Piri Re'is, were published by
Kahle in Beitrdge zur histor. Geographie, Kultu
geographie, Ethnographie und Karthographie, vor
nehmlich des Orients, ed. H. von MZik, Leipzi
and Wien, 1929, pp. 60-76. Kahle has shown
that the monstrous nations described by th
Turkish author of the I6th century can b
traced back to a pre-Christian Chinese source
(Shan Hai King, between 1122 and 249 B.c.)
2 Strabo II, i, 9. Translation after Mc-
Crindle.
3 Gellius IX, 4. Gellius' miscellaneous
work was written c. 169 A.D.
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I66 RUDOLF WITTKOWER
The books contained these and many similar
them down I was seized with disgust for such
contribute neither to adorn nor to improve life.
While some enlightened men of the Hellenisti
tales about marvels,' Strabo had nevertheless to
almost exclusively on Megasthenes and other wr
more than 300 years of geographical research
had hardly been increased.
The main progress lay in another field. Fr
geography had developed into a true science. It
Aristotle who proved that the earth was a sphe
century B.C. Eratosthenes, the head of the gre
employed a modern astronomical method for m
of the earth,3 and that about 350 years later Pt
work, determined the location of places by means
It is true that most of his mathematical locations were not the result of
astronomical calculation, but had been determined through measuring
comparing itineraries. But he drew up ex post long tables in which he
down in degrees and parts of degrees the position of every place know
him. Six of the eight books of his Geography consist of such tables and w
them his map of the world can be reconstructed.
Ptolemy came near to a precise geographical description of the worl
it was then known. But the parts concerning India demonstrate tha
knowledge of that distant country was still very inadequate. Above all,
made the old mistake of letting the coastline run from the mouth of the In
almost due east and he also greatly overestimated the size of Ceylon.5 S
with Strabo's practical geography and Ptolemy's mathematical geogr
Hellenism had achieved a rational conception of the world in which the In
marvels had no place. But here the development of scientific geogra
breaks off for no less than 1200 years. From the 5th century A.D. onwa
when East and West became definitely separate entities, Eratosthenes, St
and Ptolemy were almost completely forgotten. The Latin West, witho
knowledge of the Greek language, lost for a time direct contact with Gr
scholarship of the past.
3. The Heritage of Antiquity and the Christian Standpoint of the Middle Age
One of the main sources for the mediaeval lore of monsters was Plin
Historia naturalis (finished 77 A.D.). Pliny's work is a vast uncritical colle
of miscellaneous material, and the geographical parts have been censure
the most defective portions of the whole. It is in line with this unscient
1 Other critical authors quoted by James,
Marvels, op. cit., p. 36.
2De caelo II, 14.
3 Cf. Bunbury, op. cit., I, p. 615 if.
4 The best English edition of Ptolemy's
work by E. L. Stevenson, Geography of
Claudius Ptolemy, New York, 1932.
5 Bunbury, op. cit., II, p. 642, discussed the
difficulties of reconstructing correctly Ptolemy's
map of India.
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MARVELS OF THE EAST 167
approach that Pliny-unlike his Greek contemporar
the miraculous stories related by earlier authors. He in
races of India with the following words: "India an
Ethiopians--characteristically enough, they appear her
particularly abundant in wonders . . ."
But the Christian writers of the Middle Ages gave p
to yet another author. He is Solinus who in the 3rd c
Collectanea rerum memorabilium,2 large parts of which a
an emphasis on remarkable and strange occurrences, o
This vast storehouse of wonders is cast in a geographi
something of the great wealth of the Greek tradition
century A.D. brought about a further narrowing of ge
with the works of Macrobius3 and Martianus Capella.4
his geographical material largely from Pliny and Solin
in misconceptions and geographical mistakes but displ
of geographical mythology which includes, of cour
fabulous races.6 The importance of Martianus Cape
most popular sources of the Middle Ages, hardly need
writers had to rely for their geographical material on
which sound judgment and exact knowledge were rep
and fanciful stories, curiosities and marvels.
But Christianity could not simply swallow this geog
graphical heritage of pagan antiquity. It had to be br
the authority of the Bible. The way to reconcile the m
doctrines was shown by St. Augustine. Chapter 8 of t
Civitas Dei is entitled: "Whether certain monstrous races of men are derived
from the stock of Adam or Noah's sons?"7 The Christian outlook was founded
upon the words in Genesis (9, 19): "These are the three sons of Noah: and
of them was the whole earth overspread." Augustine's answer is given with
cunning ingenuity.
1 Pliny VII, ii, 21: "Praecipue India
Aethiopumque tractus miraculis scatent."Here
Pomponius Mela should also be mentioned,
who in 41 A.D. finished a rather
pedestrian treatise on geography-de situ orbis
-in which the marvels have their full share.
Although Mela was much read and quoted
during the Middle Ages his influence cannot
be compared with that of either Pliny or
Solinus.
2 Critical edition by Mommsen, Berlin 1895
(2nd ed.). Cf. also the chapter on Solinus by
C. R. Beazley, The Dawn of modern Geography,
London 1897, I, pp. 246-73.
3 Geographical remarks mainly in his commentary
to Cicero's Somnium Scipionis, ed. F.
Eyssenhardt, Leipzig 1893, Lib. II, ch. 5 f.
About Macrobius' geographical views cf.
George H. T. Kimble, Geography in the Middle
Ages, London 1938, p. 8 f.
4 De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, ed. F.
Eyssenhardt, Leipzig 1866. Cf. Kimble, op.
cit., p. 9 ff. Capella's geography is to be
found in his 6th book on geometry.
5 Cf. Mommsen's Solinus, index locorum,
p. 243 f. and Paulys Real-Encycl. XXVIII,
1930, c. 2010.
6 Cf. for instance ? 6o05 ff. Antipodes, 664
Hyperboreans, 665 Amazons, 674 Blemmyae
with head in breast, Satyrs, Himantopodes
who crawl instead of walking, all in the
interior of Africa after Pliny V, 8, 46; 695,
697 Pygmies and giants in India, etc.
7 "An ex propagine Adam vel filiorum Noe
quaedam genera hominum monstrosa prodierint."-The
following is a paraphrase of
Augustine's text.
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i68 RUDOLF WITTKOWER
He argues: the stories about fabulous race
be the simplest way out. If, however, these
human; certainly some authors would descri
of men and be even proud of their ingenuit
that they are animals.' If, on the other han
human, then they must be descended from
strous births in individual races, so in the w
strous races. As no one will deny that the
descended from that one man so all the mo
to that first father of all. Man has no right
races. For God, the creator of all, knows w
to be or to have been created, because he see
which can contribute to the beauty of the w
individual case to prove the general one, Au
suggests that God may have created fabulous r
that the monstrous births which appear am
His wisdom.
Augustine's subtle deductions were accepted by all the writers of the
Middle Ages. Isidore, in his encyclopaedic work, the Etymologiae (written
probably between 622 and 633), simply stated that monstrosities are part of
the creation and not "contra naturam."2 His material, largely dependent on
Solinus,3 appears in a chapter entitled De Portentis. In accordance with the
plan of the whole work he begins with an etymological explanation of
"portenta," that is to say, signs which portend and foretell the future.4 He
then deals first with individual monsters and after that with the monstrous
races. Yet he never mentions under the single items what the monstrosity is
supposed to portend. The monster as magical prodigy-this idea is, of course,
thoroughly classical and points back via Rome and Greece to Babylonia.5
1 An Ethiopian species of monkeys was
called sphinx in antiquity, cf. W. C. McDermott,
The Ape in Antiquity (The John Hopkins
University Studies in Archeology, No. 27),
Baltimore 1938, pp. 67 f., 84 f.
2 Migne, Patr. Lat., 82, c. 419. Lib. XI, c.
3, I: "Portenta esse ait Varro quae contra
naturam nata videntur; sed non sunt contra
naturam, quia divina voluntate fiunt . .."
3 Cf. Index locorum in Mommsen's Solinus,
p. 245 ff.
4 Cap. 3, 2: "Portentum ergo fit non contra
naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura.
Portenta autem, et ostenta, monstra, atque
prodigia, ideo nuncupantur, quod portendere,
atque ostendere, monstrare, atque
praedicere aliqua futura videntur . . ."
5 A wealth of material published by B.
Meissner, "Babylonische Prodigienbuicher,"
Mitt d. Schlesischen Ges. f. Volkskunde XIIIXIV,
Breslau 1911, p. 256 ff. (Festschrift
Univ. Breslau); F. Lenormant, La divination
et la science des prisages chez les Chaldeens,
Paris, 1875, pp. 103-26, chap. 7: "Pr6sages
des naissances monstrueuses"; L. Dennefeld,
Babyl.-Assyr. Geburts-Omina, Leipzig
1914. A few examples from the birth omens
may show the correspondence of the races
with the Babylonian portents. If a child
is born "that has no mouth, the mistress of
the house will die,-whose nostrils are absent,
the country will be in affliction, and the house
of the man will be ruined,-that has six toes
on each foot, the lord will rule over the
country of the enemy, etc." (Lenormant, pp.
107, II I, and Dennefeld, p. 51 ff.). Greek and
Roman divination was less based on monstrous
births than on natural phenomena on
the earth and in the sky, cf. A. Bouch&Leclercq,
Histoire de la divination dans l'antiquiti,
Paris 1882, IV, p. 74 ff. ("Procuration
des prodiges") and Daremberg-Saglio, Dict.
des Antiquitis III, p. 292 ff. (s.v. Divinatio).
Still, Livy, Tacitus, Suetonius and others
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MARVELS OF THE EAST 169
But as his material was taken from the geog
of ancient knowledge there was no literar
allusion contained in his explanation of the t
religious standpoint. And indeed, Isidore's
strosities lay in the encyclopaedic plan of hi
the reader is led from the Holy Trinity th
to man himself, and here the fabulous ra
the distant parts of the globe; after that the
The same purely descriptive enumeratio
after Isidore's example occurs almost with
divergencies in encyclopaedias, cosmograp
following centuries. The long list begins w
of Aethicus of Istria, a fabulous descriptio
mythology, probably after Isidore and So
in the cartography of the Middle Ages.
appears verbally in Hrabanus Maurus' en
the whole work is a copy of the Etymologiae
But it is noteworthy that in his chapter on
from a mystical or allegorical explanation
It is not the purpose of this paper to tr
Ages in which the marvels made their a
opinion, temperament and imagination of
The importance that had been attached to
the fact that we find them in all the great e
centuries: in the Imago Mundi, attributed
Gauthier of Metz's Image du Monde (I24
imperialia,6 in the popular encyclopaedia
abound with reports of auguries from miraculous
births. Julius Obsequens, an author
probably of the 4th century A.D., collected
from Livy the material for his Liber prodigiorum,
which contains the Roman prodigies
from 190-12 B.C. listed together with the
events which they foreshadowed. About
Obsequens' rediscovery in the i6th century
cf. below, p. I86, note 7.
1 Based on Cicero, De nat. deorum II, 3, 7.
2 H. Wuttke, Die Kosmographie des Istrier
Aithikos, Leipzig 1853. Cf. Bunbury, op. cit.,
II, p. 7o5; Beazley, Dawn, op. cit., I, p. 355 if-.;
Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and experim.
Science, London 1923, I, p. 6oo ff. About
Aithikus' influence on cartography cf. Miller,
Mappae Mundi, IV, 1896, p. 47.
3 Migne, PL. CXI, c. 195, Lib. 7, 7.
Isidore's text was, however, supplemented by
a short paragraph at the end in which the
Prophets are quoted to show that portents
fortell "aliquid de futuris."
4 Migne, PL. 172, Lib. I, 8: Paradisus;
chap. i i: De India; chap. I2: De Monstris;
chap. 13: De Bestiis. Written c. I ioo. The
geographical parts depend largely on Isidore,
the marvels of India on Solinus. Sources and
influence of the Imago Mundi discussed by
Doberentz, "Die Erd-und Vl61kerkunde in der
Weltchronik des Rudolf von Hohen-Ems,"
Zeitschr. f deutsche Philologie XII, I88o, p.
298 ff.
5 In verse, chiefly dependent on the Imago
Mundi. This work was very popular and
amongst other translations is an English one
by William Caxton, The Mirrouer of the Worlde,
published in 1481. Cf. Sarton, Introduction to
the History of Science, 1931, II, p. 591. About
the influence of the Image du Monde cf. CharlesVictor
Langlois, La vie en France au moyen-dge,
Paris 1927, III, p. I5i ff. For Italian versions
of the Imago Mundi and the Image du Monde cf.
F. L. Pulle, "La cartografia antica dell'
India," Studi Italiani di filol. Indo-Iranica V,
I905, Appendix I.
6 Written c. I211 for Emperor Otto IV.
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x 170 RUDOLF WITTKOWER
written between 1220 and 1240,1 in the widely read Trd
Brunetti Latini from the I260's,2 as well as in Vincent o
encyclopaedia of the later Middle Ages.3 The "Mirabilia
chapter of Pierre d'Ailly's Tmago Mundi of I4Io.4 W
historiography. Adam of Bremen included in his histo
Hamburg down to the year 1072 a cosmography of n
transplanted the fabulous races to these parts of the world
the world chronicles from Rudolf of Ems in the 1I3th6 to
the 1I5th century,7 and in the natural histories from t
of Cantimpre8 to Conrad of Megenberg's Book of Na
The third part of this encyclopaedia, which
includes the marvels, is largely borrowed
from the letter of Fermes to Hadrian (see
below, p. 172). The two texts printed side by
side by James, Marvels, op. cit., p. 41 f.
1 De proprietatibus rerum. A full list of the
marvels in the I8th book on animals. Pliny,
Solinus and Isidore seem to be the main
sources, but for the martikhora (18, 69)
Aristotle is cited. Apart from the great
number of Latin printed editions between
1470 and 16o i, Bartholomew's encyclopaedia
appeared in French, English, Spanish and
Dutch translations in the I5th and I6th
centuries. Cf. Lynn Thorndike, History of
Magic, op. cit., II, p. 401 ff. Robert Steele,
Medieval Lore, London 1893 (excerpts from
Bartholomew with notes).
2 Written in French during his exile. The
popularity of this encyclopaedia is shown by
the fact that apart from the great number of
MSS three Italian editions appeared between
I474 and 1533. The marvels form part
of the sections on geography and natural
science, book I, 4 and 5. Brunetti's main
source is Solinus. Cf. Thor Sundby, Della vita
e delle opere di Brunetti Latini (translation by
Rodolfo Renier), Florence 1884, p. 99 f.
3 Written about 1250. The monsters are
treated in great detail in the Speculum Naturale,
Lib. 31, cap. 118-127 (ed. 1624, vol. I, c.
2387 ff.), mainly based on Solinus and Isidore.
The Speculum Historiale contains a short
and a long passage about the marvels (vol.
IV, c. 24 and c. 131) : (a) after the dissemination
of the human race, Lib. I, cap. 64: "De
India et eius mirabilibus," and (b) amongst
the exploits of Alexander the Great, Lib 4,
cap. 53-60: "De mirabilibus quae vidit
Alexander in India," copied chiefly from the
Epistola Alexandri (cf. below, p. 179).
4 Ed. E. Buron, Paris 1930, p. 264 ff. "De
Mirabilibus Indie." The sources are Pliny
and Solinus.
5 Gesta hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum,
MG. SS. VII, p. 373 (IV, 12) Hyperboreans
in Denmark and Sweden, p. 375 (IV, 15)
Amazons, cynocephali, anthropophagi and
others after Solinus, also p. 379 (IV, 25) and
passim. Cf. Beazley, op. cit., II, pp. 514-48;
Manitius, Gesch. d. lat. Lit. d. Mittelalt., II,
1923, p. 398 ff.
6 Written 1250-54, based on Honorius
Augustodinensis' Imago Mundi; cf. Doberentz,
op. cit. (above, p. 169, note 4). G. Ehrismann,
Rudolfs von Ems Weltchronik (Deutsche Texte
des Mittelalters XX), 1915, mainly vv. 1417-
1848.
7 Cf. below, p. 182 f.
8 De natura rerum, written between 1228 and
1244. The third part contains the marvels,
published by Alfons Hilka, Liber de monstruosis
hominibus Orientis, (Festschr. z. Jahrhundertfeier
d. Univ. Breslau. Herausgeg. vom
Schles. Philologenverein) Breslau I9I I, pp.
153-165. Cf. also F. Pfister in Berliner philolog.
Wochenschrift, Sept. 7, 1912, c. 1129 ff. who
gives a valuable summary of the literary
transmission of the monster stories. Cantimpri
is largely dependent on Jacques de Vitry
(cf. below, p. I8o).
9 Megenberg's Buch der Natur, written c.
1350, is a free translation after Cantimpr6's
De natura rerum (a translation into Flemish
had already been made in the second half of
the I3th century by Jacob van Maerlant). A
great number of MSS of Megenberg's work
are preserved and it was printed seven times
in the 15th century alone. Cf. Helmut Ibach,
Leben und Schriften des Konrad von Megenberg
(Neue Deutsche Forschungen, Abtlg. Mittelalterl.
Geschichte, vol. 7), Berlin 1938, p.
58 if.
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MARVELS OF THE EAST 17i
of the calibre of Albertus Magnus' and Roger Bacon2 fell under their
spell.
4. The Pictorial Tradition
The literary transmission from Ktesias and Megasthenes through Pliny
and Solinus to Isidore and down to Vincent of Beauvais and the encyclopaedists
of the later Middle Ages was not the only way in which the western
world came into contact with the Marvels of the East. We know that pictures
of the fabulous races existed in antiquity. St. Augustine mentions a mosaic
in the harbour esplanade of Carthage with elaborate representations of
monstrous peoples.3 This pictorial tradition can be retraced though many
of its mile-stones seem to be lost.
The first links in this reconstruction are the works of late classical authors
themselves. We have good reason to believe that an early illustrated Solinus
existed, and it is also not unlikely that Martianus Capella manuscripts
were illuminated at an early date though no fully illustrated manuscript has
so far come to light.4 But the Italian miniatures of a Solinus of the 13th
century5 in many ways point back to an archetype of the 6th-7th century A.D.
(Pls. 42a, 48a). The greater number of the illustrations appear to be copies
after a 9th century Solinus which must have had qualities similar to those of the
Vatican Cosmas Indicopleustes. This is borne out by the spaceless arrangement
and the loose assemblage of figures and groups, by the insertion of the
numerous explanatory inscriptions, as well as by the frames, on the lower
edges of which figures and animals are standing. Also the modelling of the
figures, their 'top-heaviness,' their meagre legs and their characteristic profiles
1 De animalibus libri XXVI (ed. H. Stadler,
Mtinster 1916-20). Written in the I250'S.
Although Albertus Magnus was extremely
critical he accepted for instance the martikhora
(Lib. 22, 120). He tells the story of the
gold-digging ants, but concludes on a critical
note: "sed hoc not satis est probatum per
experimentum" (Lib. 26, 21). The main
source for books 22-26 was Thomas of
Cantimpre.
2 Bacon, in the geographical section of his
Opus Majus (1267) selected with great discrimination
from his main sources, Pliny,
Isidore and Aethicus. But there still appear
the Hyperboreans, the Indian people who
live a hundred years and the Amazons. He
also accepted other geographical myths: the
sources of the Nile in Paradise (cf. below
p. I81I), the kingdom of Prester John (cf.
below, p. 18I1) and some of Alexander's exploits
(cf. below, p. 179). Cf. ed. by J. H.
Bridges, Oxford I897, I, pp. 291, 304, 308,
310, 319, 354, 361, 364, 368.
3 De Civ. Dei XVI, 8: "Hominum vel quasi
hominum genera, quae in maritima platea
Carthaginis musivo picta sunt, ex libris depromta
velut curiosioris historiae." Pliny
VII, 3, 34, recorded that "Pompey the Great
among the decorations of his theatre placed
images of celebrated marvels. . . by eminent
artists."
4 An illustration of Minerva in the Ioth
century Vienna MS. cod. 177 is of purely
mediaeval invention (cf. Saxl, Verz. astrol. und
mythol. ill. Handschr. des latein. Mittelalters, II,
Heidelberg 1927, p. 79, fig 3), just as the
miniature from Remigius' commentary to
Martianus Capella (9th century) from c. I Ioo
in Munich, cod. lat. 14271 (cf. Panofsky and
Saxl in Metropolitan Museum Studies IV, 1933,
p. 260, fig. 39). But R. Uhden, "Die Weltkarte
des Martianus Capella," Mnemosyne
III, 3, 1936, p. 98 ff. was able to show
that the map in the Liber Floridus in Wolfenbittel
(1I2th century) reproduces the original
world map by Martianus Capella.
5Milan, Ambrosiana, cod. C. 246 inf. The
discovery of this MS. is due to F. Saxl.
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172 RUDOLF WITTKOWER
disclose a prototype with the stylistic pec
Now it has been shown that the latter are
framed pictures of 6th century strip c
is perhaps therefore not too daring to sug
Solinus illustrations. Moreover, there ar
contained late Egyptian features. Folio 3
scene in which a seated ape ("Scimia")
("Saturis") (P1. 48a).2 A similar grouping
from innumerable Egyptian examples,
the jackal-headed Anubis, and the stacc
figures still betray something of the Egy
A second class of illustrations has su
exclusively with the Marvels of the Eas
seems to go back to the 4th century A.D.
the Greek. It is written in the form of a le
to the Emperor Hadrian, and pretends
remote East.4 Three other similar treat
modifications mainly taken from Isidor
ioth centuries.5 Through the interest i
Great's Anglo-Saxon version of Orosius
lay public in England and were therefo
The best illustrations have come to ligh
Museum of about 100O A.D.7 The pictur
rectangular frames and the types and stru
classical quality. Moreover, they some
1 Kurt Weitzmann, Die Byzantinische Buchmalerei
des 9. und io. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1935,
p. 4 f.
2Cf. below, p. 191 about the survival of
this group in later monuments.
3 Another group in the same manuscript
(f. 34r) shows the fight of dragon and elephant,
which is also a feature of the Physiologus-Bestiary
tradition. One pair of dragons
appears with necks twisted round each other,
a motive familiar from Sumerian seals (cf.
Delaport, Cat. des cylindres orientaux du Mus. du
Louvre, Paris 1920, P1. 64, 9). This motive
may have been introduced with the Arab
transmission of oriental prototypes-as is the
case in the mosaic pavement in Reggio
Emilia and other I Ith and I2th century
monuments-and may therefore belong to
the later additions to the original Solinus.
However, it is not unlikely that such eastern
elements formed part of the original manu-
script.
4 The text printed by H. Omont, "Lettre
a l'Empereur Adrian sur les merveilles de
I'Asie," Bibl. de l'Ecole des Chartes LXXIV,
1913, P-. 507 ff. after a MS. of the 9th century
(Paris, B. N. Nouv. acq. lat. o1065, f. 92v-95).
Cf. also E. Faral in Romania XLIII, 1914,
p. 367 ff.
5 The earliest of the tracts, "Marvels," was
published by James, Marvels, op. cit., p. 15 ff-.,
together with the text of the second tract
(p. 37 ff.) the "Epistola Premonis regis ad
Traianum Imperatorem" which is a shortened
replica of the same archetype as the
"Marvels." The last tract, "De Monstris et
bellvis," was edited by Moritz Haupt, Opuscula,
I876, II, p. 22I ff. The relationship of
these tracts to each other has been discussed
by James, pp. 9 ff-., 33 ff-
6 The text of the "Marvels" in Brit. Mus.
MS. Tiberius B V is in Latin and AngloSaxon,
Vitellius A XV only in Anglo-Saxon.
7James, op. cit., illustrates the pictures of
three MSS: (i) Brit. Mus. Vitellius A XV.
About IOOO, (2) Tiberius B V; between 99I
and ioi6, (3) Oxford, Bodl. 614. Early 12th
century. Although all three texts are identical,
the illustrations follow two different
pictorial traditions. The pictures of 3 appear
to be copied from 2 or to go back to the same
archetype; 2 is much superior in quality.
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[Ii ~~ ine
a-Solinus MS. Italian, I3th Century. Milan, Ambrosiana,
cod. C. 246 inf., f. 57r (p. 171)
7R
-N 1,
Al
Ul.
5L
b-Hrabanus Maurus. Italian, c. 1023. Montecassino,
cod. 132, f. 166 (pp. 173, 185)
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onltavt6
a-"Marvels," English, c. 0ooo.
British Museum, Tiberius B V, f.
83v (p. 173)
T
17?
20
Kin
e low.-
egn
IN
b-"Marvels," English, c. iooo. Brit.
Mus., Vitellius A XV, f. Io04r (p. 173)
c-Pe
Tympan
Ab
7777 :
. .....
d-"Gigantes" from
Hereforl Map, 13th
cent. (p. 175)
............)::iii
f40
I VY,
e-Kazwini MS. I280. Munich, cod. arab. 464, f. 21Iv
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MARVELS OF THE EAST 173
creature where the text describes an 'Eastern' non-classical monster. So an
ancient centaur (f. 82v) illustrates the words "men down to the midd
wild asses, with birdlike legs."' While this is a valuable hint as to the
tion of the pictures from an antique model, more definite conclusion
drawn from another inaccuracy. The specimen of the race with lon
(fol. 83v, P1. 43a) has his snakelike ears wound round his arms, but t
says that these people "have ears like winnowing fans; at night the
one and cover themselves with the other.'"2 It is obvious that the p
derived from a different source from the text.
The illustration in the British Museum manuscript Vitellius A XV (fol.
Io4r, P1. 43b) shows this man, as one expects to find him, with fan-like ear
And this type is to be found again in the realm of monumental art in the
famous 12th century tympanum at Vezelay. Here three representatives of
this race appear, father, mother and child, the last demonstrating ingenious
how, in accordance with the text, the ears may be arranged for sleepin
(Pl. 43c).
These two different pictorial types have their origin in different translations
by Greek authors from the Sanskrit. Skylax, writing in the 6th century,
B.c., called this race Wxr-voc, i. e. people with ears as large as a winnowing
fan,3 and added that they sleep in their ears, while Ktesias said that their ears
cover the arms as far as the elbows.4 The picture of the Tiberius B V coincides
with the description given by Ktesias, and the text with that of Skylax; as the
Latin authors are in this case general and vague,5 it must be assumed that a
pictorial formula based on Ktesias' text had been evolved in Greece.
Still another pictorial type of this race exists in the I I th century Hrabanus
Maurus in Montecassino (P1. 42b).6 The ears of this specimen hang down to
the ground like huge palm leaves. Although this picture could be an ad hoc
interpretation of Hrabanus' own words,7 it corresponds exactly to the text of
Megasthenes8 and may reflect a much older type. There is general agreement
1 "Homodubii qui usque ad umbilicum
hominis speciem habent, reliquo corpore
onagro similes, cruribus ut ayes..."
2 "Aures habentes tanquam vannum.
quarum unam sibi nocte substernunt, de alia
vero se cooperiunt, et tegunt se his auribus."
3 Cf. above, p. I6o, note 6.
4 Cf. above, p. i6o. Ktesias has no name for
this race.
- Solinus 19, 8 (Mommsen, p. 93): The
Phanesii live in Scythia "quorum aures adeo
in eflfusam magnitudinem dilatentur, ut reliqua
viscerum illis contegant nec amiculum
aliud sit quam ut membris membra vestiant."
-Isidore I I, 3, I9: "Panotios apud Scythiam
esse ferunt, tam diffusa magnitudinem
aurium, ut omne corpus contegant." The
first half of this sentence depends on Solinus,
the second on Pliny VII, ii, 30.
6 Cod. 132, fol. 166. The MS. was executed
c. 1023 in Montecassino. Cf. Amelli, Miniature
sacre e profane dell'anno io23 illustranti
l'Enciclopedia medioevale di Rabano Mauro, Montecassino
1896.
The 15 races shown here do not follow
exactly the sequence of the text. They are
from left to right: Androgyni (dextram
mamillam virilem, sinistram muliebrem
habentes), cynocephali, cyclopes, Lemniae
in Lybia (oculos in pectore), alios oculos
habentes in humeris, Artabaticae in Aethioppia
(proni, ut pectora, ambulare dicuntur),
satyri, Panotii (see last note), Sciopodes,
Antipodes, Hippodes, Pygmies (two representatives),
centaur, onocentaur, hippo-
centaur.
SCorresponding to Isidore's text quoted in
note 5 on this page.
8 In Strabo XV, i, 57, who says that these
people have ears reaching down to their feet.
He calls the race Evcroxoitr, i.e. those wh
sleep in their ears.
12
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174 RUDOLF WITTKOWER
that the Hrabanus in Montecassino is an
Hrabanus of the 9th century and the depe
models has been stressed.' Moreover, Pa
only the text but probably also the illustr
Isidore,2 that, in other words, the late an
able in the Montecassino manuscript. A
from the early to the I I th century man
comparison of the Montecassinensis wit
Vatican (P1. 42c).3 But on the other han
of the stability of the old types.
A further, and perhaps the most imp
marvels going back to classical prototyp
On these the representation of marvel
map of the last quarter of the 13th cen
example. Here we find pictures of the f
all over the globe.4 India and Ethiopi
the sciapodes, the pygmies and giants,
and the unicorn. North of India, in S
islands, there are horse-hoofed men, peop
Hyperboreans and also the Arimaspians
is inhabited by satyrs and fauns, by pe
their head in their shoulders and breast
etc.5 The accompanying texts are larg
figures are similar to those of the Solinus
illustrations.8 But it is not likely that the
of them; they have probably another p
It seems that by far the greatest n
directly or indirectly on the famous map
Augustus, had had designed and wh
1 Cf. Adolph Goldschmidt, "Frihmittelalterliche
illustrierte Enzyklopdidien," Vortrdge
der Bibl. Warburg i923-24, p. 217 f.
2 Panofsky and Saxl, Diirer's "Melencolia I"
(Studien der Bibl. Warburg II), 1923, p.
125 ff. Saxl, in a still unpublished paper, has
gone more fully into this problem.
3 Pat. lat. 291, f. 75v. German, 1425. Cf.
Paul Lehmann, "Fuldaer Studien," Sitzungsber.
Bayer. Akad. Philos.-philol. u. hist. Kl. 1927,
2. Apart from the more naturalistic conception
of the figures, the strip composition has
been given up, the order of monsters has been
slightly rearranged and the choice of races
has somewhat changed. We see now: Cynocephali,
cyclopes, Lemniae, oculis in humeris,
alii labro subteriore prominente, alii concreta
ora esse modico tantum foramine, calamis
avenarum haurientes pastus, Panotii, Artabaticae,
satyri, sciopodes, probably pygmies
showing one instead of 7 in a hole (sub uno
caule), hydra.
About other illustrated Hrabanus MSS cf.
Lehmann in Zentralblatt f. Bibliothekswesen
LV, 1938, pp. 173-181.
4 Cf. Konrad Miller, Mappae Mundi. IV.
Die Herefordkarte, Stuttgart 1896. W. L. Bevan
and H. W. Phillott, Mediaeval Geography. An
Essay in illustration of the Hereford Mappa Mundi,
London 1873, is still very useful.
5 The two other main examples with a full
display of these marvels are the large Ebstorf
map from 1284 (cf. Miller, op. cit., V, 1896)
and the I3th century Psalter map of the
Brit. Mus. (Add. 28681; Miller III, 1895,
p. 37 ff-.).
6A full analysis of the sources in Miller,
IV, p. 47 ff. Next to Solinus, Isidore and
Aethicus have been used.
7 For instance the dragons with twisted
necks, cf. above, p. 172, n. 3-
8 For instance the sciapod.
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MARVELS OF THE EAST 175
portico of Vipsania in Rome.' But whether t
all the main features familiar to us from med
eastern orientation, painted symbols for town
written commentaries, and the pictures of fa
could only have been a link between Greec
example may make this evident. In the Heref
the inscription "Gigantes" two dog-headed me
metrical group (P1. 43d);2 it is clear that inste
at each other. Now the fabulous races form par
scripts also. Manuscripts of Kazwini's cosmogr
I3th century, exist in which some of the repre
an astonishing similarity to the western types,
cephali group of the famous Kazwini in Munic
sources the cynocephali have no articulate spee
barking.4 The grouping together of two of the
to bear out this idea, and it cannot be doubted
behind the Kazwini and the Hereford pictures
mately have been Greek5; it spread on the on
the East, and possibly through illustrations on
very similar cynocephali group is to be foun
V6zelay (P1. 43f). The monsters are here arran
but they still reveal the same source of ins
Kazwini groups.
From all this material the conclusion can be drawn that there must have
1 Miller, op. cit., VI, 1898, pp. io8 and
143 ff. reconstructed this map with all the
paraphernalia of the large mediaeval maps.
Detlefsen, Ursprung, Einrichtung und Bedeutung
der Erdkarte Agrippas (Sieglin, Quellen u.
Forschungen XIII) 19o6, pp. I13-17. refuted
any influence of Agrippa on mediaeval cartography.
But modern investigations have
shown that Miller was probably nearer the
truth. Cf. R. Uhden, "Zur Herkunft und
Systematik der mittelalterlichen Weltkarten,"
Geographische Zeitschr. XXXVII, I931, pp.
321-40. A detailed analysis of the pictures
would, it seems, strengthen Uhden's case.
2 There was a tradition which identified
the cynocephali with the giants. Cf. Klinger
(above, p. 163, note 4) p. 119 iff. Cristophorus,
the giant, was said to be a cynocephalus,
"Sanctus de Cynocephalorum
oriundus genere," (Acta Sanctorum, July 25,
p. 139), cf. also Ratramnus' Epistola de Cynocephalis
(Patr. Lat. CXXI, c. 1155); P.
Saintyves, "Saint Christophe successeur d'
Anubis, d'Hermes et d'Heracles," Revue anthrop.
XLV, 1935, mainly p. 319 if. In Isidore
(XI, 3, 13-I5) the description of the cynocephali
follows immediately after the giants.
The cynocephali proper appear on the Hereford
map in the north of Europe (cf. Miller,
p. 18), also as a barking group but sitting.
The northern tradition goes back to Aethicus
c. 28, p. 15. Cf. the material collected by
Wuttke, Aethicos, op. cit., p. XIX ff.
3 Cod. Arab. 464, f. 211iv. This is the
earliest Kazwini MS. known to us, written
in 1280; cf. Buchthal-Kurz-Ettinghausen in
Ars Islamica VII, 1940, p. I62.
4 Cf. above, p. 16o.
5 The group may have a still older pedigree,
being perhaps derived from a Babylonian
'antithetical' model. Saxl in Islam III, 1912,
p. 151 ff. could retrace the representations of
planets in Kazwini's cosmography to Babylonian
sources.
6 It is, of course, not impossible that the
type reached the West through Byzantine
MSS, but none of the western MSS show
the cynocephali as a group. Cf. Tikkanen,
Die Psalterillustr. im Mittelalter, p. 56;
Strzygowski, Der Bilderkreis des griech. Physiologus,
p. 85; Dalton, Byzant. Art and Archeology,
1911, p. 161.
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x176 RUDOLF WITTKOWER
been a large stock of classical marvel illustrations.' Th
Ages through different channels: the maps of the world,
the illustrated Solinus and probably the illustrated Is
material which, together with the literary transmissi
the minds of the people and proved so influential
mediaeval thought.
5. The Fabulous Races Moralized. Their Part in Mediaeval
From about the 12th century onwards the marvels
field of religious art. The fabulous races were the prod
"is righteous in all his ways and holy in all his works
part of the mission of the apostles to bring them th
expressed in the tympanum at V6zelay, which represe
to the apostles on Ascension Day: "Go ye therefore, a
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of th
Ghost" (Matt. xxviii, 9).3 Rays go out from the fingers
to the foreheads of the apostles, and in reliefs below and
all the peoples to whom the apostles preached the Gos
Amongst them are the fabulous races from the border
descendants of Adam,4 are capable of redemption.5 M
representations of the apostles bringing the word of Chr
were a Byzantine conception which can be traced back to
It may be added that the seated Christ of the Ascensio
a Syrian type, that the cynocephali from VWzelay
manuscript, and that recently a 12th century Syria
published7 which shows the conception of the tympa
traction. A king and a cynocephalus stand here for the
Gospels were preached. It is not impossible, therefo
of V6zelay may have drawn for his composition on a
Minor.
Though the elaborate programme of V6zelay is unique, the marvels were
a favourite subject in Cluniac churches; we find specimens on the column
in the Abbey of Souvigny, on capitals of the (destroyed) church of Saint-
1 It may be noted, that the original of the
Physiologus illustrations can now be dated
back as far as the 2nd to 4th century A.D.
(cf. Helen Woodruff, "The Physiologus of
Bern," The Art Bulletin XII, I930, p. 242).
2Psalm cxlv, I7, quoted by Hrabanus at
the end of his chapter on "De Portentis."
3 Cf. Abel Fabre, "L'iconographie de la
Pentec6te," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, I923, ii,
p. 39 if. against E. Male, L'Art religieux du
XIIe sidcle en France, 1924 (2nd ed.), p. 326 ff.
4 The views of St. Augustine on this point
were confirmed by writers of later times, cf.
Ratramnus' letter (9th cent.) in Patr. Lat.
CXXI, c. I 153 if-
5 According to apocryphal legends St.
Thomas and St. Bartholomew preached in
India and St. Matthew in Ethiopia. This was
repeated by mediaeval authors in different
ways. Gervase of Tilbury, to quote one instance
(Otia imp. ed. Leibnitz, 1707-I I, vol. I,
p. 911), says that St. Bartholomew preached
in "India superior," St. Thomas in "India
inferior," and St. Matthew in "India
meridiana."
6 Op. cit., p. 328 f.
7 H. Buchthal in Journal R. Asiatic Soc.,
1939, p. 613 ifThis
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MARVELS OF THE EAST 177
Sauveur at Nevers, in the western doorway
Lazare at Autun, on a capital of St.-ParizeIn
England a rich collection of monstrositie
appears during the later Middle Ages. And
to have been often represented on mosaic p
centuries. The best example has survived in
rato where they appear together with t
Apocalypse and a representation ofJonah3;
is too fragmentary to disclose its iconograp
The interpretation of a number of monst
times not easy, for it has to be established wh
ceived his material through the geographic
the Physiologus and its derivatives, the Be
century onwards the marvels were incorpor
in this way the two branches-the encyc
had sprung from the same antique roots, w
sphere the marvels were invested with an a
the Physiologus-Bestiary character. In a 13
minster Chapter Library,4 for instance, th
the giant for pride, the cynocephali typ
people who cover themselves with the lowe
ing to the word of the psalm: "Let the mischi
(P1. 44c).5
It is not surprising that the idea of looking at the monsters as 'moral
prodigies' was evolved in the later Middle Ages when the allegorical aspect
and interpretation of the world, as conceived by M. Capella and other late
antique authors, was extended into a comprehensive system. This is the time
1 The whole material collected and analysed
by Male, op. cit., p. 323 f.
2 The relevant material has been collected
by Francis Bond, Wood Carvings in English
Churches. I. Misericords, 191io; M. D. Anderson,
Animal Carvings in British Churches, Cambridge
1938; and by G. C. Druce in his
fundamental study, "Some abnormal and
composite human Forms in English Church
Architecture," The Archaeological Journal,
LXXII, I915, pp. 135-186.
3 Aus'm Weerth, Der Mosaikfussboden in St.
Gereon zu Coln, Bonn 1873, p. 20 f.; Venturi,
Storia dell'Arte It. III, p. 420 ff.
4 MS. 22. The fabulous races on fols. iv
and 3r (P1. 44c), cf. J. A. Robinson and M. R.
James, The MSS of Westminster Abbey, Cambridge
1909, p. 77 ff. and Druce, op. cit., p.
135 if. and plates I and 2. M. R. James, The
Bestiary, Oxford 1928, p. 22 ff. lists five
Bestiaries with fabulous races: No. IO (Sion
Coll.), No. 36 (Fitzwilliam Mus. 254), No. 37
(Cambridge Univ. Libr. Kk. 4. 25), No. 38
(Westminster 22), No. 39 (Bodl. Douce 88),
all dating from the 13th century.
Further bestiaries incorporated only the
martikhora and the satyr (cf. below, p. 191),
others the story of the gold-digging ants (cf.
above, p. 162, note 5). See Guillaume Le Clerc.
Le Bestiaire, ed. R. Reinsch, Leipzig 1890, p.
91 ff. and Druce, "An account of the
Muppvmxowv or Ant-lion," in The Antiquaries
Journal III, 1923, p. -354 if-
5 Psalm cxl, 9. The page here illustrated
shows the triple-headed giant, pygmy, sciapod
and 4 Brahmins in a cave; cf. Druce's
comment to these figures.
At the same time or even earlier other
monsters were invested with allegorical significance.
They are composite creatures of
different animals, each part of which signifies
that virtue or vice for which the special
animal was renowned. Cf. an example in
A. Katzenellenbogen, Allegories of the Virtues
and Vices in Mediaeval Art, London 1939
(Studies of the Warburg Inst. io), fig 61.
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178 RUDOLF WITTKOWER
which saw moralizations of the Bible and of
of antiquity, of history and science. This
used for their sermons the stories of the G
collection of moralized fables and tales which had an unrivalled success down
to the 16th century. In such a collection the marvels could not of course be
omitted. The 175th tale "De mirabilibus mundi" contains a full account of
them. The people with the long lower lip appear here as symbols of justice,
those with the long ears listen to the word of God, the cynocephali are the
preachers who ought to be coarsely clad just like the dog-headed people,
and the headless monsters are the symbol of humility, and so on.'
It appears that, unlike the immutable Christian allegories of the Physiologus
tradition, such late mediaeval moralizations are interchangeable and
attach to the moral values of human society.2 This was carried to the point of
using the marvels as material for satirizing contemporary failings. In a
French 14th century translation of Thomas of Cantimpr6's Liber de monstruosis
hominibus3 such a commentary was added to the original scientific text, and
the cynocephali with their inarticulate barking are now the symbol of calumny,
and the people without heads are the lawyers who take excessive fees in order
to fill their bellies.
In view of the complexity of the material it is at present impossible to
trace exactly the infiltration of the visual heritage of antiquity into the 13th,
14th and I5th centuries. The monsters of the Westminster Bestiary, for instance,
are thoroughly 'modernized' specimens of the old stock, and a 15th
century manuscript of Thomas of Cantimpre's Liber de monstruosis hominibus4
shows most of the fabulous races in Flemish bourgeois costume (P1. 44a). Here
also influences from outside the monster tradition seem to be traceable. The
anthropophagus appears eating a naked human being. This is the traditional
occupation of the god Saturnus who is shown in innumerable manuscripts-astrological
and mythological-in a similar pose devouring one of
his children.
The woodcut illustrations of the many early editions of Megenberg's Book
of Nature (P1. 44b)5 show certain types, such as the sciapod with the webbed
1 Cf. Hermann Oesterley, Gesta Romanorum,
Berlin 1872, p. 574 ff. Oesterley cites in his
introduction 138 manuscripts of the Gesta, but
not all of them contain the chapter on the
"mirabilia." 23 Latin editions were printed
during the I5th century alone. The "Gesta"
appeared in French, English (9 editions
during the I6th and 17th centuries), German
and Dutch translations. Cf. bibliography in
Grasse, Gesta Romanorum, Leipzig i905, II,
p. 307 if.
2 The change from the mystical to the
moral allegorization can be followed up in
the Bestiaries themselves, cf. Goldstaub and
Wendriner, Ein Tosco- Venezianischer Bestiarius,
Halle I892, pp. 4, 6 ff., 207 iff. and passim.
3 Publ. by A. Hilka, "Eine altfranz6sische
moralische Bearbeitung des Liber de monstruosis
hominibus orientis aus Thomas von
Cantimpr6, De natura rerum," Abhandlungen
d. Ges. d. Wiss. zu Gittingen III, 7, I933. MS.
Paris, Bibl. Nat. fr. i5io6, with miniatures
which I was unable to consult.
4 Bruges cod. 411. The page shows representatives
of the anthropophagi, cyclopes,
sciapodes, of the people with their head in
shoulders and breast, people who subsist on
their sense of smell, people with six arms,
amazons and women with long beards. The
race with 6 arms, borrowed from the
Romance of Alexander, obviously goes back
to Indian models which had reached Europe.
5 Illustration to the I2th book combining
fabulous people with marvellous fountains,
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44
tl t( ...... ........ f -i i 0.
m t f rffni
Ga lletifit t i t i :- (15< s -i -i- - A fill MCI i
0 1tiii iiii oiiii p f~ i i tP
} tui n ~tfont m i iqumepanesof m~te h774a
a-Thomas of Cantimpre. Flemish, i5th
cent. Bruges, cod. 41I1 (P-. I178)
A .
.~, ,
b-Megenberg
(p. 178)
in,
c-Bestiary, English, I3th century. Londo
minster Libr., cod. 22, f. 3r (p. 177)
al
d-Monstrum acephalon.
From Aldrovandi, 1642
(p. 189)
11
vi
Al
Shotilders. And before there AP
e-Headless Man. From
Bulwer, 1653 (p. I- 192)
got
gottlen
.... otgr iner ohfat otraa
f-Cynocephali.
From Mandeville,
Augsburg 1482, f.
g' (p. 196)This content downloaded from
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MARVELS OF THE EAST I79
foot, the bearded woman and the monster with six arm
those in the Bruges manuscript of the Liber de monstruosis
This indicates that just as Megenberg's text was a translat
the illustrations too were taken from the same author. M
are naked and in their delightful naivete far from the
illustrator, and their arrangement reveals that an older
has here been turned into a uniform picture-the same t
could be found from the Montecassinensis to the Vatican Hrabanus. It is
therefore almost certain that these woodcuts preserve a good deal of
original 13th century Cantimprd illustrations.'
One of the most important sources of inspiration during the Middle A
was the "Romance of Alexander" which contains under the guise of the g
king's adventurous campaigns many of the Indian fables. The original ha
been written in Greek ;2 in the early Middle Ages translations into every
ceivable language followed, and in the middle of the Ioth century it
recast by the archipresbyter Leo of Naples. It is this version, commo
called the Historia de proeliis, which was of the greatest importance for
future spreading of the Romance and on which most of the translations
the vernacular down to the 14th century depend.3 In addition the letter
Alexander to Aristotle on the Marvels of India4 had a wide circulation, w
was current as a separate work by about 800oo A.D., and which was used o
and over again until it appeared in print in I499 and several times through
the 16th century.
A number of the Alexander manuscripts is adorned with a wealth
miniatures which show conspicuously all the fantastic creatures encounte
shown top right hand corner. This woodcut
which appeared first in Bdmler's edition,
Augsburg 1475, was either used or copied in
the other editions of the 15th century, cf.
Richard Muther, Die deutsche Biicherillustration
der Gothik und Friiahrenaissance, Mtinchen 1922,
I, Nos. 43-45, 171, 269, 323. Two illustrated
Megenberg MSS are in Heidelberg, Univ.
Bibl. pal. germ. 30oo (c. 1440-50) and pal.
germ. 31 (c. 1450-60), cf. H. Wegener,
Beschr. Verz. der deutschen Bilderhandschr. d.
spdten Mittelalters.. . Leipzig 1927, pp. 42 f.,
48 f.
1 It must, however, be mentioned that two
other illustrated Cantimpr6 MSS show also
isolated pictures like the Bruges MS., but in
all three MSS the single types of monsters
follow different traditions. Cf. MS. Breslau,
Stadtbibl., cod. Rehdig 174, c. 1300; publ.
by Hilka (cf. above, p. 170, n. 8) and MS.
Prague, Metropolitan Libr., L. I I, f. 5v-53v,
dated 1404, cf. Podlaha, Topogr. d. hist. u.
Kunst-Denkmale im Konigr. Bdhmen, II, 2,
Prague 1904, p. 212, figs. 236, 237.
2 Dated by Adolf Ausfeld, Der griechische
Alexanderroman, Leipzig 1907, p. 237 ff., c.
200 B.c., but by W. Kroll, Pseudo-Kallisthenes,
Berlin 1926, 3rd century A.D.
3 The original version of archipresbyter
Leo's text published by F. Pfister, Der
Alexanderroman des Archipr. Leo (Slg. mittellatein.
Texte 6), Heidelberg 1913. Its history
has been traced and the many poetical adaptations
have been published in the fundamental
work by Paul Meyer, Alexandre le Grand dans
la litte'rature franfaise du moyen dge, Paris 1886.
For the tradition in England cf. Pfister, "Auf
den Spuren Alexander's in der alteren
englischen Literatur," Germanisch-Romanische
Monatshefte XVI, 1928, p. 8I ff. Cf. also The
Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, ed.
F. W. Bateson, I, 1940, p. 142 ff. For the
interrelation of the Historia de proeliis and the
marvel treatises cf. James, Marvels, op. cit.,
p. 35 if-
4 Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem. Cf. Pfister,
Kleine Texte zum Alexanderoman (Slg. vulgarlateinischer
Texte 4), 1910. Cf. also Thorndike,
op. cit., I, p. 555 if.
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i8o RUDOLF WITTKOWER
by Alexander in Asia.' One exam
of archipresbyter Leo's version m
to visualize these adventures (P1
for creative artists to show the
manuscript in Brussels3 let lo
picture of Alexander's fight agai
side of the horrifying encounter,
tale character of his text. Alexan
mental decoration of the palaces
them represented in two grea
one of them there appear Alexa
bottom of the sea, and the figh
headless monsters (P1. 45c).
Just as the maps of the world
so for the Middle Ages the Rom
attributed amongst other classical
who had taken part in Alexande
as the most important source
Historians did not hesitate to em
into their works. Frutolf of Mich
Epistola ad Aristotelem into his w
it was probably through him th
Freising.5 Even writers of conte
indispensable sources for the en
de Chartres wrote his history of
drew on Pliny and Solinus for th
and the martikhora, and adduced
material.6 The most conspicuo
worked into his history of the
an abundant collection of marve
which the Alexander romance pl
1 Cf. e.g. the MSS of Le Roman de to
chevalerie by Eustace or Thomas of Kent
13th century), Meyer, op. cit., II, p. 2
A number of illustrated Alexander MSS of
the I4th and I5th centuries discussed by
Druce, Arch. Journal, I9I5 (op. cit.), p. I37 f.
Cf. also Bodley 264, publ. by M. R. James,
1933.
2 Leipzig, Universitatsbibl. cod.
CCCCXVII. Rep II. 40. 143, f o103v. Cf. R.
Bruck, Die Malereien in den Handschriften des
Kinigreichs Sachsen, Dresden 1906, p. 176 ff.
3 Bibl. Royale cod. 110 40, f. 73. Cf. E.
Bacha, Les trWs belles miniatures de la Bibl. r. de
Belgique, Paris I913, P1. 2 (another page of
the same MS.).
' Made in Tournai in I459, cf. A. Warburg,
Gesammelte Schriften, I932, I, p. 247.-
6 For Frutolf cf. M. Manitius, Geschichte der
lat. Lit. des Mittelalters III, Miinchen I931, p.
351. MG. SS. 6, p. 70 ff., a long chapter: "De
mirabilibus rebus, quas Alexander vidisse
dicitur."
Otto of Freising, however, in his Chronicon
(II, 25), written mid-I2th century, was
obviously sceptical; his reference is short:
"... qui scire vult, legat epistolam Alexandri
ad Aristotelem. . . in qua pericula eius quae
passus est . . . et multa quae tam mirabilia
sunt, ut etiam incredibilia videantur, diligens
inquisitor rerum inveniet" (MG. SS. 20, p.
155)-
6 Fulcheri Carnotensis Historia Hierosolymitana
(1095-11 27), ed. H. Hagenmeyer, Heidelberg
1913, pp. 780, 783 f., 815, etc.
7 Historia orientalis seu Hierosolymitana. The
marvels mainly appear in the later parts of
Book One. Vitry makes an interesting remark
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p~Z9E~
/ A~0f At~ ~f
a-Alexander Romance, 13th cent.
Leipzig, Universititsbibl., cod. I43,
f. I03 (p. 18o)
, /
b-Alexander Romance, I3th cent. Brussels, Bibl.
f. 73r (p. I8o
-77
"In
00"
al,
ti "AN
;;K go,
F,
RE, '.X..
F.. ql I - aii
:i:
e:;:.
jr-
kx'W
"w's
AXi q,
:g
pr... dly
.... .... .
?ln dkill
v
g
'N'
Z
c-Alexander Romance. Detail of Tapestry. Tournai, 1459. Rome,
Palazzo Doria (p. 18o)
.... . . ...... .
. . . ..
V7
...............
P2 Ir,.. 1?
iq.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
?M - -a . ... .
Ar
74
... .... ... xe?k .?? . . ...
d-Livre des Merveilles, late I4
(pp. 185,
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MARVELS OF THE EAST 181
But the impression made by the
their share in the making of hist
historical mystification which excit
and found an echo in Europe down t
great Christian kingdom of Prester
of his realm occurs in Otto of Fr
I2th century. In I 164 the Byzant
letter from this imaginary ruler wh
and survives in many copies.' It co
power and wealth of Prester Joh
nently in the narrative which is
current about the East at the tim
convince people of the existence of
that the marvels existed in those
Prester John became not only a st
the strongest impulses for the exp
more news about Prester John, mis
of Europe expected to find in this C
against the Saracens. In fact, ever
nected with him and he was even
The letter of Prester John pictur
and this had a special appeal to m
India and the Paradise. Accordin
borders of the world and this was
in Genesis (ii, 8): "And the Lord
It is therefore habitual in medi
extreme East; and there it remain
right into the 16th century.4
about his sources: "Tous les d6tails qu
viens de rapporter, en interrompant un
moment mon recit historique, je les ai
emprunt6s soit aux &crivains orientaux et a
la carte du monde, soit aux ecrits des bienheureux
Augustin et Isidore, et aux livres de
Pline et de Solin." (Quoted from the translation
by Guizot in Coll. des mimoires relatifs a
l'histoire de France, I825, vol. 22, p. 223). This
shows that for Vitry the mappae mundi were
sources for historical information. About
Vitry's sources cf. also Doberentz in Zeitschr.
f d. Phil., op. cit., p. 426 ff. and Pfister in
Berlinerphilol. Wochenschr., Sept. 7, 1912, c. 1232.
1 All the sources about Prester John were
collected by F. Zarncke in Abhandlg. der
philol.-hist. Classe d. kgl. Sdchsischen Ges. d.
Wissenschaften VII and VIII, 1876-79.
Zarncke discussed 96 MSS with the letter of
PresterJohn. Cf. also the references in Thorndike,
Hist. of Magic, op. cit., II, p. 236 ff.
(Prester John and the Marvels of India).
2 Cf. the material published by Zarncke,
op. cit., VII, pp. 947-io28, and by Langlois,
Vie en France, op. cit., III, pp. 44-70. I have
to refrain from following up the story into
that field, just as in the case of the Romance
of Alexander. I must also omit the many
references to the marvels in English literature
of the 16th and 17th centuries. Much
material for one side of this question can be
found in P. Ansell Robin, Animal Lore in Engl.
Literature, London, 1932.
3 Cf. Zarncke, op. cit., VIII, p. 7 if. An
attempt of interpreting the letter by Prester
John as a political utopia was made by L.
Olschki, "Der Brief des Presbyters Johannes,"
Historische Zeitschr. 144, 1931, pp. 1-14, cf. also
his Storia letteraria delle scoperte geografiche, 1937,
p. 194 iff. Cf. also the contributions by Yule,
The Book of Ser Marco Polo, London 1903, I,
pp. 231-37, Wright, Geographical Lore, op. cit.,
pp. 283-86, and Kimble, Geography, op. cit.,
p. I28 ff.
4 Most complete collection of the material
by Arturo Graf, Miti, leggende e superstizioni del
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182 RUDOLF WITTKOWER
One of the most heated discuss
the existence of the Antipodes. S
ridiculed the notion that there are
i.e. on the other side of the glo
belief in them was banned as
scendants of Noah's sons have re
Christ bring salvation to all man
rest?2 But there was an inconsis
refused to believe in the existence
of the world,3 but mentioned
chapter on monstrosities. By a m
word &vt~0~sE, i.e. with the feet
turned backward whom the G
race led its dual existence thro
everywhere between Ceylon a
(P1. 47a) 5 without the contradic
6. Monsters as Portents. Hum
Although during the 14th cent
of Hesse mark the beginning of
and credulity in monsters,6 the
In fact, even the enlightenment
the geographical expansion and t
not lead to a noticeable break in
larity during the 15th and 16th
Megenberg's Book of Nature, Bar
the Gesta Romanorum, modern au
to the old superstitions. Hartma
followed the old Isidorian patter
medio evo, Turin 1892-3, I, pp. 1-238. "I1
del Paradiso terrestre." Cf. also Pull6, La
cartografia antica dell'India, op. cit., II, p. 8o ff.
A valuable r6sume in Wright, op. cit., pp.
71 f., 261 ff. Cf. also E. von Dobschtitz, "Wo
suchen die Menschen das Paradies?" Mitt.
d. Schlesischen Ges. f. Volkskunde XIII-XIV,
1911-12, pp. 246-55, and S. Baring-Gould,
Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, 1901, pp.
250-65: "The Terrestrial Paradise," with
material also from the I7th-I9th centuries.
As late as 1842 Sir W. Ouseley read a paper
before the Literary Society in London about
the situation of Eden.
About other elements of mythical geography
cf. Olschki, Storia lett., op. cit., pp.
142-63 with further references.
1 De civ. Dei XVI, cap. 9.
2 An exhaustive study of the whole question
by Giuseppe Boffito, "La leggenda degli
antipodi," in Miscellanea di studi critici ed. in
onore di Arturo Graf, Bergamo 1903, pp. 583-
6oi. Cf. also Wright, Geogr. Lore, op. cit., pp.
55 if-., 159 f-, 385 f-, 429-
3 Etym., IX, 2: "Jam vero hi qui Antipodes
dicuntur, eo quod contrarii esse vestigiis
nostris putantur, ut quasi sub terris positi
adversa pedibus nostris calcent vestigia, nulla
ratione credendum est.. ." Cf. also XIV, 5-
4 Cf. above, p. 162, note 6. Isidore, Etym.
XI, 3, 24: "Antipodes in Libya plantas versas
habent post crura, et octenos digitos in
plantis."
5 Bodl. 614, f- 50r.
6 Cf. Thorndike, op. cit., III, p. 457 and
passim.
7 Ptolemy's geography was first translated
into Latin by Jacobus Angelus, c. 1400oo-14o6.
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MARVELS OF THE EAST 183
did not advance much beyond the Speculum h
is in keeping with this conservative spirit tha
opens with a complete list of the fabulous
tradition they appear as the offspring of
about them on the ancient authors, above al
and Isidore,2 and accompanied his text by
taken from current models. The success of this work and of its innumerable
illustrations was very great, and the influence of the chapter on monsters considerable;
it can be found in works like Sebastian Franck's Chronicle of 15313
and right into the second half of the 16th century.
The opinions of two outstanding cosmographers of the 16th century, the
Frenchman Andre Thevet and the German Sebastian Miinster, may show
further how difficult it was to discard the legacy of classical authority. Thevet
(1502-90) was "historiographe et cosmographe du roi" under Catherine de
Medici and Charles IX. In 1571 and 1575 he published a Cosmographie
universelle, in two voluminous folios, and in looking through them one readily
accepts his assurance given in one of his books: "Je puis assurer que la plupart
des bibliotheques, tant frangaises qu'etrangeres, ont 6te par moi visitees, a
celle fin de pouvoir recouvrir toutes les rarites et singularites.'4 In the introduction
to the cosmography he mentions, characteristically enough, Solinus
as his favourite model. Although his position and prolific pen made Thivet
a figure of importance, he was in his own time and later attacked for ignorance
and credulity.5 Yet he did not accept all the stories of marvels recorded by
previous writers.6 His method is, however, all the more dangerous when he
speaks as an eye-witness. One example of it may be given. "When I travelled
on the Red Sea," he says, "some Indians arrived from the mainland. . . and
they brought along a monster of the size and proportion of a tiger without a
tail, but the face was that of a well formed man."7 This creature is, of course,
illustrated in the text (P1. 47f)-but is it a pure product of Thevet's imagination?
Thevet saw probably an anthropoid ape, but for its description and
illustration he used the old pattern of the martikhora which on its mythical
journey has lost its tail.8 The martikhora from the Hereford map (P1. 47d)
1 Liber Cronicarum, Nfrnberg 1493, f. 12rov.
Second ed. Augsburg 1499. German ed.
Nirnberg 1494, Augsburg 1496, 1500.
2 He also quotes the Greek sources, but his
knowledge of them probably came through
Pliny. It may also be noted that Schedel
made use of the cosmography by Aethicus
which was known to him in a MS. of 754 A.D.
Cf. Manitius, Gesch. d. lat. Lit., op. cit., I, 191 I,
p. 233. But Schedel's immediate source wasas
is well known-Filippo Foresti's Supplementum
Chronicarum, Bergamo 1483 (and many
later editions), on which also Giuliano Dati
drew extensively in his very rare book on the
marvels of India, Il secondo Cantare dell'India,
Rome, 1494/5. In this work, however, the
fabulous races, who appear in delightful
woodcuts, are used as a pretext of moral and
devotional expositions. Cf. L. Olschki, "I
'Cant~iri dell'India' di Giuliano Dati,"
Bibliofilia XL, 1938, pp. 289-316.
3 Chronika, Zeitbuch und Geschichtsbibel, Strasbourg
1531. In the ed. of 585, p. 23 f. His
list of fabulous races follows Schedel closely,
but he transferred the people with long ears
from Scythia to Sicily!
4 In Vie des hommes illustres.
5 Cf. Mor6ri, Le Grand Dictionnaire histor.,
1759, X, p. 139-
6 Cf. vol. I, pp. 390, 442 f.
7 Vol. I, p. 52.
8 Ktesias described it with the tail of a
scorpion, cf. above, pp. 16o, I61, n. i.
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184 RUDOLF WITTKOWER
is proof enough to show that Thivet fol
reference to the tiger in Thevet's text i
lected the words of Pausanias: "The anim
the Indians the martikhora, but by the G
tiger."5
Sebastian Miinster (1489-1552) from Ingelheim was one of the most widely
read authors of the Renaissance.3 As professor in Basle this true polymath
taught Hebrew, Theology, Geography, Astronomy and Mathematics. His
copious Cosmographia, first published in German in 1544, contains a description
of all countries and peoples, their laws and institutions. This work,
which also appeared in Latin, French and Italian translations,4 was one
of the standard encyclopaedias for the layman right through the I7th and
even in the i8th century. Muinster still accepted the story of the goldguarding
griffins and many other fabulous tales, but he is hesitant about
the monstrous races. "The ancients have devised," he says, "many peculiar
monsters which are supposed to exist in India. . .. However, there is nobody
here (i.e. in the West) who has ever seen these marvels. But I will not interfere
with the power of God, he is marvellous in his work and his wisdom is inexpressible."5
Yet by inserting illustrations of the fabulous races, which are
partly dependent on Schedel, the visual appeal favours belief in what is left
open to doubt in the text.6
Muinster's text and the rather naive woodcuts of his work enjoyed great
popularity. His blocks were used by other authors and in other contexts.
The picture with the fabulous races reappeared in 1554 in Johann Herold's
Heydenweldt, which consists mainly of a translation of Diodorus Siculus into
German. The woodcut (P1. 46h) from Miinster shows a grotesque assembly of
the most conspicuous absurdities: to the left the sciapod, then the cyclops,
the man with his head in his breast and the cynocephalus. The small creature
1 Representations of the martikhora were
common during the Middle Ages. As
has been mentioned (p. 177, note 4) the
martikhora is a feature of a group of
bestiaries with text from Solinus; examples:
Cambridge, Univ. Libr. II, 4. 26, f. 15v (12th
cent., ill. in James, The Bestiary, op. cit.) and
Cambridge, Corpus Christi Coll. 53, f. I93v
(I4th cent., ill. in James, A Peterborough
Psalter, op. cit.). Early specimens of the martikhora
on the column of Souvigny Abbey,
ill. in MAle, op. cit., p. 324, and in the mosaic
pavement of the Cathedral of Aosta, cf.
Aus'm Weerth, op. cit., p. I5 ff.
Boitt. IX, 21, 4. Pausanias thinks that the
false reports were circulated "amongst the
Indians owing to their excessive fear of the
beast."
3 About Minster cf. F. Gundolf, Anfdnge
deutscher Geschichtsschreibung, Amsterdam 1938,
pp. 53-65.
4There appeared at least 46 different
editions. Frangois de Belleforest made
Munster the foundation of his Cosmographie
universelle, Paris 1552 ff. An English abstract
was published by Richard Eden, A briefe
collection gathered oute of the cosmographye of S.
Munster, 1572 and 1574.
5 Ed. Basel 1545, P- 752 f.
6 Repetitions of pictures throughout the
book illustrate different stories. After the
fabulous races had appeared in India (p.
750 ff.) they were mentioned again and
illustrated as possibly existing in Africa (p.
8o8 ff.). There were, of course, a number of
other I6th century cosmographers who accepted
the existence of monstrous races, e.g.
Gemma Frisius, De principiis astronomiae et
cosmographiae, Basel 1530, pars III, cap. 26.
"De India." Frisius was a follower of
Copernicus. Cf. Thorndike, op. cit., VI
P. 275.
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46
a-Capital, St.-Parize-leChattel,
I I13 (?) (pp. 177, 185)
b-Beatus Apocalypse,
12th cent. Paris, B.N.,
Nouv. acqu. lat. I366
(p. 185)
c-Sens, Cathedral, Grand Portal. 13th
cent. (p. 185)
I,
X41
d-Detail from Hereford
Map. 13th cent.
(p. 185)
n
itrn ?eptemtbrionw0aicv
e-Mandeville, Augsburg
1482, f. e IOv (p. 185)
f-Schedel, Liber Cronicarum, 1
(pp. 185, 196)
....dd
4afmbt~cin4tjmfc
i ..........
4 ;w~cc.m4#........
(f+b++ .... /=+t++O~c;++
g-Lycosthenes, 1557
(p. 185)
h--Herold, Heydenwelt, 1554 (p. 184) i-Mennel, Tractatus, I503. Vienna, Nat. Bibl. cod.
4417*, f. 9v (p. I188)
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MARVELS OF THE EAST 185
in the centre is a fusion of the pygmy
regular feature in manuscripts of the m
Herold lived at Basle like Sebastian Munster. A third member of this
circle has a claim to be mentioned in this connection, namely Conrad Wolffhart,
known under his Greek pseudonym Lycosthenes, who lectured in Basle
from 1542 onwards on grammar and dialectics. His literary activity had a
much wider range. In 1557 he published a large folio with the title Prodigiorum
ac ostentorum chronicon, which appeared in the same year in a German translation
by J. Herold, the author of the Heydenweldt. This book deals exclusively
with marvels all over the earth in chronological order, it is a universal
chronicle of monstrosities and wonders. Even more than in Miinster's book
identical woodcuts were used to illustrate marvellous events widely separate
in time and space. The woodcuts were mainly based on the two works by
Schedel and Miinster. But these books themselves were no more than links
in the old monster tradition. Lycosthenes' sciapod (P1. 46g), for instance,
was copied from that of Schedel (P1. 46f). Schedel's sciapod in turn can
be retraced step by step through 15th, 14th, i3th and 12th century monuments
(Pls. 46a-e, 45d)2 to the Hrabanus of Montecassino (P1. 42b), and thus
to its classical source.
Lycosthenes' work leads away from cosmologies and encyclopaedias and
back into the world of magic. The subtitle to each book of the German edition
runs: "About the unfathomable wonders of God, which he has created with
a particular significance . . . since the beginning of the world in the form of
peculiar creatures, monsters, phenomena in the sky, on the earth and in the
sea as an admonition and a horror for mankind."3 While the Augustinian
conception had made the monsters acceptable to the Middle Ages and monuments
like the tympanum at VWzelay had given them their due share in the
creation, while the later Middle Ages had seen in them similes of human
qualities, now in the century of humanism the pagan fear of the monster as
a foreboding of evil returns. We are faced with the curious paradox that the
superstitious Middle Ages pleaded in a broadminded spirit for the monsters
as belonging to God's inexplicable plan of the world, while the 'enlightened'
period of humanism returned to Varro's "contra naturam" and regarded
them as creations of God's wrath4 to foreshadow extraordinary events.
1 The bicephali were mentioned by Isidore
and often illustrated, e.g. in the Milan
Solinus (f. 40v) with the inscription cinocephali;
cf. also the woodcut in Megenberg's
Buch der Natur (P1. 44b).
2 15th century: Mandeville, Augsburg
1482, cf. below, p. 196-Mid-I4th century:
Livre des Merveilles, Paris B. N. cod. fr.
281o, cf. below, p. 196-I3th century: Hereford
map; Sens Cathedral, Grand Portal, as
part of an encyclopaedic programme.-End
12th century: Map in Beatus Apocalypse,
Paris, B. N. Nouv. acq. lat. I366, cf. Neuss,
Die Apokalypse des hl. Johannes in der altspanischen
und altchristlichen Bibel-Illustration, 1931,
p. 49.-Probably I I 13: St.-Parize-le-ChAtel,
capital. Cf. Kingsley Porter, Romanesque
Sculpture of the Pilgrimage Roads, Boston 1923,
p. 120, ill. 25.
3 "Von unergriindtlichenn wunderwercken
Gottes, die er syd anbeginn der Welt in
seltzamen gesch6pffen, missgeburten, in
erscheinungen an dem himmel, auff der
erden, in den wassern den mentschen zur
anmahnung, schrecken, mit sondern bedeutungen
und nachgedencken ffirgepracht."
These subtitles do not appear in the Latin
edition.
4 This idea was widely spread by popular
pamphlets, cf. Hans Fehr, Massenkunst im r6.
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i86 RUDOLF WITTKOWER
Lycosthenes is an exponent of ideas which havin
revived in the circle of the German emperor M
immediate and widespread, and they brought t
which had had no place in the official mediaeva
A. Warburg has brilliantly interpreted the
milian's circle' resulting in the collections of pr
for Maximilian's secretary Blasio Holtzl (1502)2
emperor himself (1503). Previously Sebasti
Maximilian his augury about the monstrous sow
which is so well known through Diirer's 'scient
ordinary births were now connected with extraord
eclipses of the sun and comets, and linked with
power of the stars. Luther himself saw an omen
Frederick the Wise in the appearance of a rainbo
a child without a head and another with invert
remained alive in Protestant circles. Publication
Jobus Fincelius5 were made up to foster antipa
cyclopaedic collection ofmirabilia by Johannes Wo
and re-edited in 1671,6 is the most comprehens
stitious trend in Protestantism.
From the early I6th century onwards an ever increasing number of prophetic
treatises based on monsters appeared in all European countries. Aldus
Manutius, the Venetian publisher who more than any other man was responsible
for the dissemination of the finest classical scholarship, also unearthed
and published in 1508 the chronicle of prodigies by the 4th century writer
Julius Obsequens which was later re-edited by Lycosthenes.7 Authors like
Pierre Boaistuau8 and Marcus Frytschius9 and even physicians like Jacob
Jahrhundert. Flugbldtter aus der Slg. Wickiana,
Berlin, 1924, p. 14 if.
1 Gesammelte Schriften, II, p. 522 f.
2 Prodigiorum ostentorum et monstrorum quae
in saeculum Maximilianeum inciderunt quaeque
aliis temporibus apparuerunt, interpretatio. I502.
As MS. in the University Libr. at Innsbruck,
cf. H. J. Hermann, Die ill. Handschr. in Tirol,
1905, No. 314.
3 Vienna, N. B. cod. 4417*: Tractatus de
Signis, Prodigiis, & Portentis antiquis et Novis.
SWarburg, op. cit., p. 522, note 2.
5 Wunderzeichen. Warhafftige beschreibung und
griindlich verzeichnus schrecklicher Wunderzeichen
und Geschichten 1517-1556, Jena 1556.
6 Lectiones memorabiles. A vast collection of
chronologically arranged excerpts from other
authors. Warburg characterized this sort of
historiography "dass sie die Weltgeschichte
gleichsam auf Schienen ablaufen lasst, an
denen die Weltmirakel wie Wirterhiuschen
stehen."
SCf. above, pp. 168-9, n. 5. Printed together
with the letters of the younger Pliny,
etc. There followed 12 new editions before
Lycosthenes published the treatise, together
with the De prodigiis by Polydore Vergil and
the De ostentis by Camerarius, in Basel 1552.
The interest in classical prodigies did not
slacken. J. G. Graevius included in his
Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romanorum, 1696, vol.
5, P- 758 ff., a lengthy treatise by J. C.
Boulenger, De Prodigiis, with a systematic
arrangement of a vast material, cf. mainly
cap. 16: "Monstrosi parti" and cap. 17: "De
Androgynis, et Monstris."
8 Histoires prodigieuses les plus memorables qui
ayent estd observdes, depuis la NativitM de Jesus
Christ, jusques a nostre siecle, Paris, 156o. This
book which is richly illustrated was a great
success. More than Io editions appeared after
i56o as well as translations into Spanish,
Dutch and English. E. Fenton published the
last under the title Certaine Secrete Wonders of
Nature, London 1569.
9 Catalogus prodigorum, miraculorum, atque
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MARVELS OF THE EAST 187
Rueff,' Ambroise Pare,2 and Cornelius Gemma
with political events. One or two examples m
these works. The famous monster born in
never left out in any monster treatise for alm
regarded as a portent of the devastation of Ita
interpretation of the monster as well as its p
accepted by a host of able scholars as above r
Boaistuau who protested that he had not inc
but only data supported by the authority of f
foreboding of the peace between Venice and G
with four legs and arms.5 The same story wit
in Pard, Fenton and others. However, this mo
is hardly distinguishable from that described b
164 A.D. and illustrated in Lycosthenes' editio
empiricist who went out of his way to profess in
monsters are sent by God "for the punishin
repeated Boaistuau's story in the middle of the
time adduced the six-armed people mentioned
to prove that the multiplication of limbs can
"because there are many Nations who appe
Redundancy."
Most of these prognostications were based o
vidual monsters rather than on monstrous rac
into a somewhat different field. However, wri
the individual monsters and the monstrous r
the tower of Babel "the whole earth was of on
(Gen. xi, i), "and from thence did the Lord sc
face of all the earth" (Gen. xi, 9). Only the
originate and by implication also the indiv
reason that Lycosthenes gives in his first book
have come to life after the dispersion of mank
onwards the individual monsters and porte
Cornelius Gemma linked up the creation of mo
lonian cataclysm" and the existence of individ
At the same time imagination was so much f
ostentorum, tam coelo quam in terra, in poenam
scelerum, ac magnarum in Mundo vicissitudinum
significationem, Nuremberg 1563.
1 De conceptu et Generatione hominis, 1554. An
article about "J. Rueff und die Anfiinge der
Teratologie," in Janus 30, 1926, was not
available to me.
2Deux Livres de Chirurgie, Paris 1573. An
English translation of the works by Pare by
Th. Johnson, London 1634.
3 De naturae divinis characterismis; seu Raris et
admirandis spectaculis, causis, indiciis, proprietatibus
rerum. Antwerp 1575. Cf. Thorndike,
op. cit., VI, 1941, p. 406 ff. Cf. also other
material ibid., p. 488 ff.
SOp. cit., p. 95v: "j'ay protest' plusieurs
fois que je me rempliray mes 6critz d'aucune
chose fabuleuse, ny d'histoire aucune, laquelle
je ne verifie par autorit6 de quelque fameux
auteur Grec, ou Latin, sacr6 ou prophane."
5 Ibid., p. 1I38v.
6p. 69.
7 Anthropometamorphosis: Men Transformed:
or The Artificiall Changling, London 1653 (Ist
ed. 1650), pp. 34 ff-, 300 f.
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188 RUDOLF WITTKOWER
and the pictorial tradition that many of the in
sented in the shape of a familiar type. Jakob
historical survey of prognostics, shows, among m
a dog-headed monster which was supposed to h
emperor Louis the Pious in 814.1 The creature
cynocephali of the monster tradition (P1. 46i)
picture with the seated monarch taking stock o
to have been derived from illustrations of the Alexander Romance. This
monster was for Mennel a sign of the vacillating character of people du
that particular epoch.
7. The Dawn of Science and the Fabulous Races
The works by Jacob Rueff, Cornelius Gemma, Ambroise Pare and ot
are not histories or annals like those of Schedel, Mennel, Lycosthenes
Wolf-they are concerned with a systematic study of monstrosities,
branch of natural science for which the term teratology has been gene
accepted.2 From the 16th century literature of this kind sprang up in
country of Europe in ever increasing quantities. The technique was to
together material known from classical and post-classical sources, to arr
it methodically and interpret it with the new weapons of anatomical a
biological research. But the sober and scientific approach was often ov
shadowed by the indiscriminate discussion of the available 'cases': myt
logical creatures, imaginary monsters and general descriptions in liter
were allowed to rank on the same level as direct observations, and a num
of standard illustrations were repeated in scores of books for more th
century to represent different monsters.3
It would make a fascinating study to describe the success and failur
these 16th and 17th century scholars. Some of them saw interesting pro
1 Cf. above, p. 186, note 3. Fol. 9v. The
inscription reads: "Anno Cristi IXcXIIII
monstrum habens Caput Caninum et cetera
membra sicut homo presentur Ludivico. Et
bene potuit monstruosam statum significare
huius temporis ubi homines sine Capite quasi
canes latrando hinc inde vacillabant." The
year 914 is a slip and must read 814; the last
picture treated a portent under Charlemagne.-Mennel's
text was taken verbally
from Werner Rolevinck's Fasciculus temporum,
a popular universal history, which was first
printed in Cologne in 1474 and had an extraordinary
success; 3o editions and different
translations appeared during the 15th century.
Cf. also Vincent of Beauvais, Spec. Nat.,
Lib. 31, cap. 126 (ed. 1624, c. 2392).
2For the history of teratology cf. above all
Jules Berger de Xivrey, Traditions tiratologiques,
Paris, 1836; Isidore Geoffroy St.Hilaire,
Histoire genirale et particulihre des
anomalies, Paris 1832-37, 3 vols.; Ernest
Martin, Histoire des monstres, 188o; Cesare
Taruffi, Storia della teratologia, Bologna 1881-
94, in vol. I the most comprehensive study
of the history of teratology (p. 152-75 about
the fabulous races); Ernst Schwalbe, Die
Morphologie der Missbildungen des Menschen und
der Tiere, Jena 1906 ff., I, pp. 5-21 "Geschichte
und Literatur der Teratologie." Cf. also
bibliography by Grasse, Bibliotheca Magica et
Pneumatica, Leipzig 1843.
3 Eugen Hollander, Wunder, Wundergeburt
und Wundergestalt, Stuttgart 1921, pp. 61-83,
treated the question of objective representations
of monsters from a medical point of view
and came to the conclusion that the earliest
prints tried rather more than the later ones to
give an accurate picture of individual mon-
strosities.
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47
a-Antipode. Oxford,
Bodl. 614, f.
5or (pp. 182, 189)
b-Schedel, Liber Cronicarum, 1493
(p. 189)
c-"Homo pedibus aversis,"
Aldrovandi, 1642 (p. i189)
d-Martikhora. From Hereford Map.
I3th cent. (p. 183)
e-Martikhora. From Topsell, Historie of fourfooted
beasts, 1607 (p. 191)
f-Thevet, Cosmographie universelle, 1571 (p. 183)
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MARVELS OF THE EAST 189
which still engage the scientist to-day. Th
causes of individual monstrosities was tackl
although one cannot expect satisfactory answe
known about embryology, not to speak of ho
the material gathered for the critical minds of t
examples may suffice to show how progress w
logical tradition continued.
A number of scientists group the monstrosi
the body in which the irregularity occurs. H
follow each other in long-winded chapters.
and the spirit encyclopaedic. The German
Grafenberg brought together a massive folio
under each item excerpts from various autho
the material from classical sources and such w
overshadows the few real observations. In a
collections by Henri Kornmann2 the fabulous
equal importance with individual monsters an
chapters about the people with their head in
the people with long ears, etc., before the disc
single parts of the body begins.
The fabulous races also appear one after t
accompanied by learned texts in the classical w
vandi's Monstrorum Historia of 1642.3 His "Ho
but the Antipode of the marvel treatises and
copy of the Schedel-Lycosthenes figure (P1.
errors of nature regarding the form of the hea
headless monster, is shown which, Aldrovand
franca on November I, 1562, with its eyes and
may well serve to illustrate that even such indiv
vandi's own lifetime were represented in the
(P1. 44d, cf. 44b). More surprising than the liken
less race is the fact that this monstrous embryo
these illustrations-in the form of a grown-u
appeared in Aldrovandi it was already a cli
1 Observationum medicarum rariorum libri VII,
Frankfurt I6oo. Later ed. I604 (Freiburg),
1609 (Frankfurt), 1644 (Lyons), 1655 (Frankfurt).
Single volumes on the head, the breast,
etc. appeared during the I58o's and I590's
before the general edition of 16oo.
2 De miraculis vivorum seu de variis hominum,
Frankfurt 1614. Later ed. Opera curiosa,
Frankfurt 1694.
3 Aldrovandi (1522-1605), a scholar of
immense learning but somewhat more credulous
than one would expect a man of his
calibre to be-he accepted all the old
authorities including Solinus and even Mandeville-endeavoured
to lay the foundation
of a modern Historia naturalis. It is characteristic
that for him a work on monsters had
to form part of a comprehensive natural
history. Of his whole work only 3 folios
appeared during his life-time, the rest were
edited from his manuscripts and with additions
by his pupils. About A.'s life and work
cf. Giovanni Fantuzzi, Notizie degli scrittori
Bolognesi, Bologna 1781, I, p. 165 if.; about
his scientific method cf. J. V. Carus, Geschichte
der Zoologie, Mtinchen 1872, p. 290 ff. and
Thorndike, op. cit., VI, p. 276 ff.
13
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190 RUDOLF WITTKOWER
illustration which had been published
repeated in numbers of other books.
A second more progressive, but slightly e
a classification according to the biologica
Their mind was focused on the Aristotel
happen contrary to nature and at random
in nature and the desire to discover its f
under the weight of literary authority an
in this field like the Swiss J. Rueff and t
enough, did not even escape from the bel
they regarded God's will or rather His
monstrous births. Caspar Bauhin (1560-1
great reputation from Basle, who gave in h
involved table with all the reasons for mon
of the stars and the winds in addition to
causes. The purest revival of Aristotelian vi
Liceti, the author of one of the best kno
for a time a professorship of Aristotelian p
with the critical and experimental spirit o
refutes explicitly prognostic qualities of mo
them and describes much from his own e
falls short of his intentions and he only uses
Meanwhile new systematizing efforts o
other fields of science. Edward Wotton o
credited with one of the first modern class
totle,4 still included in his treatise De diffe
1552) the monstrous animals from India a
of Pliny and Solinus, gave a full account
Swiss contemporary, the immensely learn
one of the humanists with whom the writt
ment and observation. His vast Historia A
encyclopaedia of the zoological material t
all the legendary animals of classical auth
enjoyed an enormous success. In England
arranged by Edward Topsell, which appea
in 1658.6 The cynocephali, satyrs and sph
1 De gen. anim. IV, 4, 770b, 9-I9. Edd. J. A.
Smith and W. D. Ross.
2De Hermaphroditorum monstrorumque partuum
Natura, Oppenheim 1614 (2nd ed. 1629), cf.
mainly p. 59 if.
3Padua I616; 2nd ed. I634; 3rd ed. by
G. Blasius with an appendix from the work
of Tulp (cf. below, p. I91) 1665; 4th ed.
I668; French translation by Jean Palfyn,
Leyden 17o8. Modern French ed. by F.
Houssay, De la nature des causes des diffrences
des monstres d' aprks F. L., Paris I937.
4 Cf. Carus, Gesch. d. Zoologie, op. cit., p.
265 f.
5 pp. 49v.-50, cap 66: "Multiformes hominum
effigies, & mira quaedam de hominibus
alia." pp. 7I'-72, cap 9I: "De monstrosis
quibusdam aliis animalibus in India aut
Aethiopia prognatis."
6 The historie of fourfooted beasts . . . collected
out of all the volumes of Conrad Gesner, I607. The
2nd ed. was edited by J. Rowland.
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MARVELS OF THE EAST 191
ape.' A very detailed chapter is devoted to the
of the medical use which can be made of its h
martikhora still follows Ktesias, while the illust
with the pictorial tradition.3
With the accretion of zoological material during
stage was reached in the rivalry between classic
vation. One example may show how scientists tr
the old knowledge. Dr. Tulp, the Amsterdam
immortal through Rembrandt's "Anatomy Lesso
tionum Medicarum Libri Tres4 a few monstrosities which he had himself dissected
and which he reproduced in pictures of rare precision. He also shows an
excellent engraving of an ape with the inscription: "Homo sylvestris-Orangoutang"
(P1. 48d).5 In a long chapter entitled "Satyrus Indicus" Tulp came
to the conclusion that either satyrs do not exist, or, if they do, they must be
the animal shown in the plate.
This identification has an interesting genesis. Ktesias had compared a
tailed race in India with satyrs.6 Pliny went a step further and located tribes
of satyrs in India as well as in Ethiopia and in one case classed them amongst
the apes.7 In this respect he was followed by Solinus who placed the satyrs
in Ethiopia.8 Consequently the illustrated Solinus in Milan shows in one
picture ape and satyr together (P1. 48a).9 The Pseudo-Hugh of Saint Victor,
whose treatise De Bestiis became so important for the Bestiaries, accepted
Solinus' classification of apes almost verbatim.'0 Therefore in Bestiaries with
the text of Solinus the "satiri monstruosi""' follow directly after the "simiae."'2
And there are Bestiary illustrations in which the Solinus formula survived
(P1. 48b).' The same tradition was still alive in an Italian Bestiary of the 15th
century (P1. 48c), 14 but the picture was now translated into the easy-going
1 2nd ed., pp. 7, 8, 10o, 14. This classification
is based on classical sources, cf. McDermott,
The Ape in Antiquity, op. cit., pp. 36 f., 67 f., 79 f.
and was kept alive throughout the Middle
Ages, cf. p. 168, n. I and below, pp. 191-2.
2 Ibid., p. 551 if.
3 Ibid., p. 343 f.
4 Amsterdam 1641I.
5 p. 274 ff., cap. 56, P1. 14. The specimen
was, in fact, a chimpanzee, cf. Carus, op. cit.,
p. 340.
6 Cf. above, p. 16o.
7V, 8, 46; VII, 2, 24 and o30; VIII, 80,
216; X, 93, I99.
8 27, 6o (ed. Mommsen).
9 Fol. 37r, cr. above, p. 172.
10 Written early I2th century. PL. I77, c.
62, Lib. II, I2: "De Simiis."
11 "De satiris monstruosis," heading in
Brit. Mus. Harl. 3244 (early I3th cent.), cf.
Druce, Archaeol. Journ. I915, p. 157, James,
Bestiary, p. 17, No. 22.
12 1I2th century: Brit. Mus. Burney 527, cf.
Mann in Anglia VII, p. 448; Oxford, Bodl.
Ashmole 15II1, f. I9r and the later copy
Douce 151, f. 15r, cf. James, Bestiary, p. 14,
Nos. 15, 16; Cambridge, Univ. Libr. II. 4.26,
f. Iov-IIr, cf. James, p. 38 f.-I3th century:
Oxford, St. John's Coll. 61, f. I2v, cf. James,
p. 18, No. 28.--I4th century: Cambridge,
Corpus Christi Coll. 53, f. I92r, cf. James,
A Peterborough Psalter and Bestiary, 1921, Nos.
15, I6.
13 Oxford, Bodl. 764, f. I7v and Brit. Mus.
Harl. 4751, f. i iv, both late 12th century.
James, Bestiary, p. 15, Nos. 18, I9, says that
"these two copies stand alone."
14 Rome, Vat. Urb. lat. 276, f. 51r. Stornajolo,
Cod. Urbinates, I885, I: "Petri Candidi
de omnium animalium naturis... ad illustrissimum
principem D. Ludovicum Gonzagam."
Luzio-Renier in Giornale stor. d. lett.
ital. XVI, 1890, p. 147 f. identified the author
as the humanist Pier Candido Decembrio.
The MS. is datable by means of a letter of
1460 in which Lodovico Gonzaga asked the
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x192 RUDOLF WITTKOWER
manner of the Italian Renaissance; moreover, the
mythological and the ape his zoological shape. This se
germ of subsequent development. The complicated tra
16th century writers to attempts at proper classifica
the beginning of the 17th century, treated this quest
detail than any other author.' He came to the con
the Italian miniaturist-that there are two classes of sa
ones; both classes have to be divided into two subsec
either men or a species of apes; fictitious satyrs are eith
acal. Dr. Tulp, with the mind of the practical man, m
all this complex analysis, but in accordance with the g
science2 still tried to harmonize textual tradition with factual observation.
Meanwhile the increase in anthropological and ethnological knowledg
during the 16th and 17th centuries could not fail to lead to new reflection
about the old fabulous races. A most surprising line was taken by John Bulwer
who has made his name as a pioneer of the deaf and dumb alphabet. H
accepted the existence of monstrous nations, but explained their deficienci
as artificial for "men have taken upon them an audacious art to forme an
new shapen them."'3 In no other work, to our knowledge, did the divergen
claims of the written word and of sober and unbiased judgment lead to suc
peculiar results. It was indeed difficult for Dr. Bulwer to disregard Sir Walt
Raleigh's detailed report4 about the Ewaipanoma, the headless nation livin
in the jungle of the Amazon, even if he was prepared to cast doubt on th
accounts of similar races given by Pomponius Mela, Solinus, St. Augustine,5
Mandeville and others. Accurate observation of the native custom of artificial
bodily changes like tattooing, enlargement of lips and the lobes of the ears
induced him to think "that it is an affectation of some race to drown the head
in the breast";6 and one is not surprised that he visualized this race in its
classical shape (P1. 44e). John Bulwer's pragmatic approach to the problem
of monsters foreshadows the attitude of 19th century scholars.
While thus in medicine, zoology and anthropology old and new values
were in the balance, the end of the 17th century brought about a complete
change of approach to our particular problem. Scepticism about the existence
of fabulous races had, of course, always been alive. Rabelais, equipped with
a wide knowledge of classical sources, had treated the matter with sharp
irony.7 But there is a new spirit in a treatise, full of common sense, published
author to have his work illustrated. Cf. also
E. Ditt, "Pier Candido Decembrio," Memorie
del R. 1st. Lombardo di science e lettere, Cl. di
lettere, etc. XXIV, ii, 1931, p. 24.
1 Op. cit., pp. I40-92: "De Satyris."
2Cf. Thorndike, op. cit., VI, p. 254 f.
3 Op. cit. (p. I87, note 7), introduction.
4 Quoted by Bulwer, p. 20. Sir Walter
Raleigh, The Discovery of Guiana (1595) (in
Hakluyt, Principal Navigations X, I904, p.
406 f.) states explicitly that he had not seen
these people, "but I am resolved that so many
people did not all combine or forethinke to
make the report."
5 St. Augustine's apocryphal Sermo 37 Ad
Fratres in eremo was often quoted as proof that
he saw-travelling as Bishop of Hippo in
Ethiopia-many men and women without
heads and with eyes in their breasts.
6 Op. cit., p. 24 if.
7 Pantagruel (lib. V, caps. 30, 31) meets
the most fantastic monsters, ethnographical,
mythological and imaginary ones, in the
"pays de Satin, tant renomm6 entre les pages
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48
'Olt!
a-Ape and Satyr. Milan, Ambrosiana,
cod. C. 246 inf., f. 37r
(PP-. 172, 191)
U. g. r.MR. ... )I i
Ii
b-British Museum, Harley 4751, f. I Iv. I2th cent. (p. 191)
i i ii i i i i ' .............. .. ....l
N'Na
c-Rome, Vat. U
Lii~ HI.
d-"Homo Sylvestris." From Tulp,
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MARVELS OF THE EAST 193
in 1663 "to the discouraging of a super
nature" by John Spencer, Master of Co
won fame as the founder of compara
year after the Royal Society had receive
tative body, which finally banished all m
research solely on experiment and exact
8. Monstrosities in Popular Image
Most of the authors mentioned in the
world of scholars and their books were
spite of this their ideas reached, often
street.' The better educated public knew
it got its information on natural history.
like that by F. W. Schmucken3 provide
words of John Spencer) there never w
weakness and easiness of the multitude.
educated and most superstitious section
pamphlets. After the invention of print
tise monstrosities far and wide. The reaso
tions, satire, political and religious prop
can always rely on the attraction of the
pamphlets was frequently borrowed fro
adapted to the newsreel character req
may suffice.
In Schedel's list of monsters appeared
and long beak (P1. 49a) whom he had taken
The same monster was published after S
thenes (P1. 49b), and later by Aldrovan
monster was also presented to the pu
(P1. 49d.).5 According to the inscription, b
the remotest parts of Africa where this
that this monster owed its existence to
de cour."
Benedetto Varchi, the Florentine humanist,
declared in a lecture read in I548 to the
Florentine Academy that the monstrous races
"siano cose favolose." (Lezzione sopra la
generazione de' Mostri, in La prima parte delle
Lezzioni, Florence 1560, p. 92 ff.)
1 A Discourse concerning Prodigies: wherein the
Vanity of Presages by them is reprehended, and their
true and proper Ends asserted and vindicated, Cambridge
1663, p. 104.
Shakespeare probably used the old encyclopaedia
of Bartholomew the Englishman
in the edition of 1582, reissued after the
English translation by John of Trevisa
(Westminster I495).
SFasciculi admirandorum naturae accretio. Oder
der Spielenden Natur Kunstwercke in verschidenen
Missgeburthen, Strasbourg I679-I683.
4 "In Europe are very beautiful men; but
they have a crane's head, and neck, and beak.
These designate judges, who ought to have
long necks and beaks, in order that what the
heart thinks may be long before it reaches
the mouth." Translation by Charles Swan,
revised ed. by Wynnard Hooper, London
1877, p. 340. Here the Turkish Tales (II, p.
364) are quoted as the source of the Gesta.
5 First published by Eugen Hollainder,
Wunder, Wundergeburt und Wundergestalt in Einblattdrucken
des 15. bis r8. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart
1921, p. 292.
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194 RUDOLF WITTKOWER
and pygmy story, the process being that t
certain features of the bird. A similar
166o (P1. 49e)1 and here, characteristicall
member of a whole race but an individua
Madagascar where it is said to have been
Milleraye. The text goes on to say that i
will be exhibited in Paris. The imagin
descendant of Homer's, Ktesias' and Meg
East and India has become the show-piec
have sold very well, for in 1664 another
it had undergone a double metamorphos
(P1. 49f) and has become a tartar whom
in this very year.2 Labelled in this way
Holland.3 And more detailed information was now available. Count Serin
had captured it in the month of February 1664 and it was taken prison
Hungary fighting, of course, with the Infidels against the Christians (P1. 4
From the English pamphlet the monster migrated back into 'literature
was recorded by James Paris du Plessis in his Short History of Human Prodig
having been on view at "Ye Globe in the ould Baily in February I66
After it had haunted in turn Italy, France, Germany, Holland and En
for almost a century, it sank into well earned oblivion.
9. The Marvels in Travellers' Reports
The classical conception of India as the land of fabulous races and mar
kept its hold on Europe right into the 15th and I6th centuries. At that
the outlook began to change. The Indian marvels were by no means
carded, but they lost their connection with India and were located in
parts of the world. Moreover, they were re-vitalized in prognosticatio
teratological treatises and popular imagery. With the increase in geogra
knowledge due to the reports brought back by travellers, it was no lo
possible to maintain the old views about India, and yet people were unw
to renounce the Indian monsters which had a grip on man's mind as persist
as that of the Apollo Belvedere.
But the reports by travellers, though finally decisive in revolution
our conception of the inhabited world, did not further the advance of natu
science, ethnology and geography in a straight line.6 They were al
1 Ibid., p. 291.
2 Ibid., p. 290.
3 Pamphlet in 4 languages with Dutch in
the first place. Copy British Museum, Print
Room.
4 Copy British Museum. A poem about
the monster at the foot of the print should be
sung to the tune of "The Gallant London
Apprentice," or "I am a Jovial Bachelor."
5 Cf. C. J. S. Thompson, The Mystery and
Lore of Monsters, London 1930, p. 149.
6 The marvels remained a feature of the
maps for a very long time. A few hints must
suffice. The Borgia map (mid-15th century,
Miller, op. cit., III, p. 148 f.) shows the
"montes Yperborei" in the north with griffins
and tigres, and horned people live in India,
etc. Walsperger's map of 1448 (Miller III,
p. 147 ff.) populates the north and Ethiopia
with a long list of fabulous races. In Andrea
Bianco's map of 1436 (Miller III, p. 143 ff.)
Paradise and the realm of PresterJohn appear
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49
a--"Crane-Man," from
Schedel, 1493 (p. I93)
d4n/4bea gig banm traer
b-Lycosthenes, 1557
(P. 193)
fomxos*re & cllo Gruis
c-Aldrovandi, 1642 (p. I93)
OWN .: . ....... ...........................E
d-Italian Pamphlet, 1585 (p. I93)
?? ?*tt ?v
------- ...
DEN MU044%
rm "VIA kftnk?m bw
+
e-Pamphlet, Cologne 166o (p. 194)
p 4;
!i i~iiii~iii~ii,: i ' !'Aft
INi ;i
f-German Pamphlet, Cologne 1664
(p. -194)
The Prodigious n.1O.V;,S TF9Z40R,
The Monftrous Tartar.BWing a trtcRelation ofAln m-hcad of Monft ,-which %am taken in
M i,, 4r by the|ivincible Vd. o, and Matchit h Man-hood of the No'lW
to Sro i Se (ccm G ,6,l oftche le oI' ses 49clt icth e aW.,
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g-English Pamphlet, 1664 (?)
(p. 194)
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MARVELS OF THE EAST 195
without exception a curious mixture of so
tion. These men, from the Dominican an
century to Columbus and Fernao de Magell
with a preconceived idea of what they wo
were learned; they had a knowledge of cla
Christian encyclopaedias, their treatises o
they had seen on their maps the wondrous n
to which they were travelling-in short, thei
hood with stories of marvels and miracles
believed in them.' Most of them reported abo
many located Paradise. Friar Jordanus pla
and Ethiopia,2 John of Marignola believ
Pordenone found it 50 days west of Catha
journey professed to have reached it in the e
thought until his death that he had disco
convinced that he had passed near it.6 Th
fabulous races, pygmies and giants, cyclo
heads. Friar Jordanus mentioned the unic
with his own eyes in the Holy Land and still
van Linschoten said of the rhinoceros that
corne.'7 Giovanni Pian del Carpini reporte
in Asia, together with the people without
heads and the cynocephali in Africa. Still in
Martin Behaim's famous globe of I492 sciapodes
are to be seen in central South Africa
and sirens, satyrs, cynocephali appear in the
inscriptions while Prester John is the emperor
of India. Behaim quotes as his sources mainly
Ptolemy, Marco Polo and Mandeville, but
Pliny, Pomponius Mela, the Romance of
Alexander and others were also used, cf. E. G.
Ravenstein, Martin Behaim, London 1908, pp.
59, 62 f., 71. Finally Gio Matteo Contarini
in his map of 1506 populates India with
cynocephali and people without heads, cf.
A Map of the World designed by G. M. Contarini.
Engr. by Francesco Roselli 1506.
Printed by order of the Trustees, Brit. Mus.,
1924, P-. 9.
1 It is interesting to find this corroborated
by the regulations made by William of Wykeham
for the students of New College, Oxford:
"When in the winter, on the occasion of any
holiday a fire is lighted for the fellows of the
great hall, the fellows and scholars may, after
their dinner or their supper, amuse themselves
in a suitable manner with singing or
reciting poetry, or with the chronicles of
different kingdoms and the wonders of the
world." Cf. Cooley, The History of Maritime
and Inland Discovery, London I830, I, p. 229.
Cf. also the chapter "Portenti e meraviglie"
in Olschki, Storia lett. delle scop. geogr., 1937,
p. 2 I ff.
2 Yule, The Wonders of the East by Friar
Jordanus (Hakluyt Soc.), 1863, p. 43. Friar
Jordanus stayed in India from about 132o
onwards.
3 P. Anastasius van den Wyngaert, Sinica
Franciscana, Florence 1926, I, p. 531 f. Yule,
Cathay, op. cit., III, p. 169. Marignola's
mission in the East lasted from 1338 to 1353.
It may be noted that he was otherwise very
critical with regard to the monstrous nations,
cf. Wyngaert, p. 545 f.
4 Everyman's Library, Vol. 812, pp. 267,
270. Odoric's journey, full of marvellous
events, lasted from about 1314-1330.
5 Graf, Il mito del Par. terr., op. cit., p. 3.
The journey was supposed to have taken place
about 1400.
6 A. P. Newton, Travel and Travellers of the
Middle Ages, London 1926, p. 165 f. Olschki,
Stor. lett., op. cit., p. I17. Here and passim detailed
analysis of Columbus' mythical geo-
graphy.
SA. C. Burnell and P. A. Tiele, Hakluyt Soc.
LXXI, ii, I885, p. 9.
8 Wyngaert, op. cit., pp. 60, 74. Carpini
was entrusted by Pope Innocent IV with a
diplomatic mission to the Mongolean court.
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196 RUDOLF WITTKOWER
Polo found them on the Andaman Islan
Jordanus on islands between Africa and
a friar Benedictus Polonius discovered th
on the West Indian Islands,6 and they
Herberstein's Rerum Moscovitarum com
with the other fabulous races. It was com
the Antipodes,8 and in his account of M
passage occur amazons, pygmies, and p
at home were busy collecting and brin
wonderful experiences of these travell
Jean Le Long published such a collectio
of exquisite illuminations, which were of
marvel types (P1. 45d).10
So far no mention has been made of
who left a long narrative of a journey to
14th century which, as is now well known
long story of marvels and fabulous tal
disposition of the human mind that it w
success of all descriptions of travels. It
manuscripts and from the end of the 1
languages and in innumerable edition
woodcuts." The picture of the sciapod f
shows how strictly these illustration
One of the few unusual representations
little oxen on their heads (P1. 44f). This
the dog-faced people live in an island ne
1 Yule, Ser Marco Polo, op. cit., II, pp. 309I2
and Cordier, Addenda, 1920, p. I09.
2Wyngaert, op. cit., p. 452.
3 Yule, Jordanus, op. cit., p. 44.
4 Yule, Cathay, op. cit., IV, p. 93. H. A. R.
Gibb, Ibn Battuta. Travels in Asia and Africa.
z325-1354, London 1939, P. 272. The
Mohammedan Ibn Battuta, one of the
greatest travellers of all times, began his
journeys through the then known part of the
world in I325.
5 Travelled I245, cf. Wyngaert, op. cit., p.
I38.
6 Olschki, op. cit., p. 22.
7German ed. Basle 1563, p. 91 (Ist ed.
Latin 1549, German 1557). Cf. also G.
Hennig, "Die Reiseberichte iuber Sibirien,"
Mitt. d. Vereins f. Erdkunde, 1905, p. 26I ff.
Siegmund Freiherr von Herberstein (1486-
1566) was a German diplomat iih Moscow.
His mention of fabulous races goes back to a
report which had reached him.
8 Cf. the letter by B. Castiglione to the
Marchioness of Mantua, April 15, 1524; cf.
Boffito, "La leggenda degli antipodi," op. cit.
9 Camillo Manfroni, Relazione del primo
viaggo intorno al mondo de Antonio Pigafetta,
Milan 1928, pp. 248, 253, 258.
10 Paris, B. N. fr. 281o. Publ. by Omont,
Le Livre des Merveilles, Paris (1907). Copy of
the late i4th century made for Philip the
Bold, Duke of Burgundy. P1. 45d, f. 29v, is
one of the illustrations to Marco Polo showing
monsters from the country of the "Merkites."
Characteristically, Marco Polo only mentions
this tribe as being very wild. It was located
by Yule, The Book of Ser M. P., 1903, I, p. 271,
south-east of the Baikal.
11 The original Mandeville, written in Liege
in about 1355 has not been preserved, but
more than 300 Mandeville MSS are known.
His main source was the marvellous report of
Friar Odoric. Cf. A. Bovenschen, "Johann
von Mandeville and die Quellen seiner Reisebeschreibung,"
Zeitschr. d. Gesellschaft f. Erdkunde
zu Berlin XXIII, 1888, pp. i177-306.
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MARVELS OF THE EAST 197
fore they always wear upon the forehe
token that he is their god."'
The real and imaginary travellers of t
brought back these stories and inevitabl
home. For men like Aldrovandi and the
centuries these eye-witnesses were stil
authorities. On the other hand people sl
fictitious and trustworthy matter in the
Raleigh, and the belief in the existence
shaken in the 14th century.2 But instead
writers now located the marvels in the
Abyssinia, from times immemorial a f
the kingdom of Prester John,3 Para
Africa,4 just as the sciapodes and many
porary exile there.5 It was also in the inte
19th century rediscovered Ktesias' race
Monsters-composite beings, half-hum
thought and imagery of all peoples at a
been credited with the powers of a god or
have had their share in mythologies and
nostications. In the Marvels of the East this old demonic inheritance was at
the same time preserved and made pseudo-rational. But their ethnological
shadow existence sank back into the sphere of magic whenever the innate aw
of the monster came to the fore. The Greeks gave to some of these primev
conceptions visual forms which were generally accepted for 1500 years. Th
shaped not only the day-dreams of beauty and harmony of western man b
created at the same time symbols which expressed the horrors of his real
dreams.7
1 Odoric, cap. 24.
2 The better knowledge of India and the
East made itself felt already during the 13th
century. In Genoa a society for the promotion
of commerce with India was founded in
1224, cf. PullS, La cartogr. antica dell'India, op.
cit., p. 63. For commercial interrelations at
a somewhat later period cf. Friedrich Kunstmann,
Die Kenntnis Indiens im 15. Jahrh.,
Miinchen I863, p. I ff.
3 Mainly in the 14th and I5th centuries
after the search in Asia had been unsuccessful,
cf. Hennig, Terrae incognitae, Leiden 1938,
III, p. 69, Olschki, Stor. lett., op. cit., p. 200oo ff.
idem in Bibliofilia I938, p. 297 f. A valuable
chapter, in which the Portuguese contribution
of the I5th and I6th centuries is discussed,
by E. Denison Ross, "Prester John
and the Empire of Ethiopia," in Newton,
Travel and Travellers of the M. A., 1926, pp.
174-194.
4 Pull', op. cit., p. 8o0 ff.
5 Cf. above, p. 194, note 6 and A. Rosenthal
in this Journal I, p. 258 f.
6Tailed men always stimulated the imagination
of travellers. Marco Polo found them
in Sumatra, others in Borneo, Formosa,
Paraguay and New Guinea. Cf. C. J. S.
Thompson, The Mystery and Lore of Monsters,
I930, p. 22 f., and S. Baring-Gould, "Tailed
Men," in Curious Myths of the Middle Ages,
I901, pp. I45-I6o, who also collected folklore
material and the I9th century reports.
SS. Freud, "Mythologische Parallele zu
einer plastischen Zwangsvorstellung," Internat.
Zeitschr.f. drztl. Psychoanalyse IV, 1916-i 7,
p. I I o f. S. Ferenczi, "Gulliver Phantasies,"
The internat. Journal of Psycho-Analysis IX,
1928, p. 283 ffThis
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