The Edges of the Medieval World

From the Peripheries to the Centres and Back Again: Visual Culture and the Edges of This World

FROM THE PERIPHERIES TO THE CENTRES AND BACK AGAIN: VISUAL CULTURE AND THE EDGES OF THIS WORLD Gerhard Jaritz Fabulous creatures and savage barbarians were the most significant beings from the edges of the world that could be encountered in a variety of sources in different historical periods.1 They appeared in ancient Greek and Roman thought, in the texts of early Christian authorities, and in literary, historical and scientific works by medieval and early modern authors, often illustrated to clarify the message and increase its effect. Such creatures lived far away – at the end of the seas, in the East, in India, Africa and, later, also in the Americas. The monocoli, for instance, were swift one-legged beings that could protect themselves from the heat of the sun in the shade of their big foot, and the phanesii, also called panotti (fig. 1),2 had huge ears in which they wrapped themselves against the cold – based on Pliny, who relates that in an area off Scythia, called the “AllEars Islands,” the natives had large ears that covered their whole bodies. From the High Middle Ages onwards particularly, a kind of popularisation and broader dissemination of these beings can be traced in written texts as well as in visual representations. An early example of this public popularisation and familiarisation is the 1 From the large amount of secondary literature, see generally, e. g., Rudolf Wittkower, “Marvels of the East. A Study in the History of Monsters,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): 159-197; Heinz Mode, Fabulous Beasts and Monsters (New York: Phaidon Press, 1973); John C. Allen, “Lands of Myth, Waters of Wonder: The Place of the Imagination in the History of Geographical Exploration,” in Geography of the Mind: Essays in Historical Geosophy, eds. David Cowenthal and Martyn J. Bowden (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 41-61; John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981); Maria Aranda and Maryse Vich-Campos, eds., Des mostres. Actes du colloque de mai 1993 à Fontenay aux Roses (Fontenay-St. Cloud et al.: École Normale Supérieure, 1994); Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150-1750 (New York: Zone Books, 1998); Ulrich Müller and Werner Wunderlich, eds., Dämonen, Monster, Fabelwesen (St. Gallen: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 1998); Claude Lecouteux, Les monstres dans la pensée médiévale européenne, 3rd ed. (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1999); Michaela Schwegler, „Die Darstellung von Wundertieren auf frühneuzeitlichen Einblattdrucken,” Fabula 43 (2002): 227-250 . 2 Detail from the end-thirteenth-century Hereford Mappa Mundi: http://204.204.253/myth/panotti.htm (last access September 15, 2008). GERHARD JARITZ 22 tympanon of the central portal of the Benedictine abbey church of Saint Mary Magdalene at Vézelay in Burgundy (c. 1130). There, the peoples and monstrous creatures from the edges of the world represent the pagans to be converted to Christianity. Visible among them are Siamese twins, figures with the snouts of pigs, and two dog-headed creatures beside wild men (fig. 2).3 Fig. 1: A creature with long ears The bestiaries and then the popular natural historical encyclopedias of the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period took these creatures and constructed their visual representations based on the descriptions of the authorities, who sometimes gave only scarce information. In a Hortus Sanitatis, printed in 1497, for instance, the Cephos and Centrocota appear (fig. 3);4 Pliny says only that the Cephos lived in Ethiopia and had feet and legs like humans. The artist created a humanlike naked male figure with the head of a bloodhound. Pliny and Solinus stated that the Centrocota had the body of a donkey, a breast and legs like a lion, a broad mouth going from one ear to the other, and a human-like voice. Thus, the descriptions often offered greater freedom for the visual representation of the creatures. The Draconcopedes (fig. 4),5 following Thomas of Cantimpré’s Liber de natura rerum (1230-1245), is represented as a serpent with the face 3 Images of Medieval Art and Architecture, France: Vézelay, Benedictine Abbey Church of Sainte Marie Madeleine, Peoples on Tympanum of Central Portal in Narthex: http://vrcoll.fa.pitt.edu/medart/menufrance/vezelay/portals/vezmportalpeoples.html (last access September 15, 2008). 4 Hortus Sanitatis, Strassburg: Johannes Prüss d.Ä., 1497, Tractatus de animalibus, cap. xxxviii. 5 Hortus Sanitatis, Tractatus de animalibus, cap...