Medieval Monsters by Damien Kempf and Maria L. Gilbert (review)

Containing more pictures than text, Medieval Monsters provides a fascinating glimpse at the imagery that shaped the popular imagination of monsters, legends, and demons throughout the Medieval period. With illustrations on every page, culled from dozens of illuminated manuscripts, it gives us a survey of the “category of beings that at once defies the rules of nature and fascinates the human mind” (6), which, albeit cursory, is still enough to pique anyone’s curiosity. There are no chapters to speak of; the book jumps from topic to topic, rarely devoting more than a page to any one “monster.”

The book commences with a look at various races of man “characterized by physical deformity or anomaly” (14), that were supposed, by authors such as Pliny and Herodotus, to live at the furthest reaches of the known world. Such monstrous humans include the Panotii (who use their enormous ears as blankets or wings), the pygmies (with no mouth but a tiny, round hole), and the Blemmyae (with no heads, but eyes and mouths in the middle of their chests). We are also presented with evidence of Medieval skepticism of such creatures, as in the account of John of Marignolli, who returned from his 1338 mission to China only to report that the fabled Sciopods, who used their vast feet to shade themselves from the sun, were actually no more than Indians with portable tents.

The following pages cover several miscellaneous beasts. We have Guillaume le Clerc’s account of sirens (as it comes down from Homer), an unsourced description of the unicorn, and Gerald of Wales’s twelfth-century encounter with a werewolf (who is compelled to transform every seven years, as opposed to the more familiar monthly affliction). The whale, “with bodies equal to mountains” (34), could be the sailors’ doom—if they happened to weigh anchor on its back thinking it an island—or salvation, as in the biblical story of Jonah. One of the interstitial pages depicts a centaur clad in knightly armor slaying a great boar with lance.

Several pages are devoted to the adventures of Alexander the Great. The Romance of Alexander relates how Philip’s court astrologer seduced his wife in the form of a dragon. The pages that follow present stunning images of Alexander’s encounters with dragons, griffins, and giants of various races—the one-eyed, the horse-headed, and the pelt-clothed—all drawn from the fanciful text of the aforementioned romance.

The remainder of the book addresses Christian mythology, starting with the lives of saints and biblical figures, and their run-ins with various monsters, demons and dragons. St. Dominic ignores a demon tugging at his robe. Jesus resists Satan’s temptation, and his mother pummels the Devil to recover a contract that her worshipper had decided to renege on. Saints George and Margaret each slay dragons in their own way, as does the Archangel Michael in several representations of a scene from the Book of Revelation. We also see some Archdemons, “specialists in particular sins” (79), as specified by Matfre Ermengaud in On the nature of devils (1322); Avarice receives an entire page’s treatment. The book concludes with a number of illustrations of Hell, particularly as seen in the twelfth-century Visions of the Knight Tondal and the tenth-century Exeter Book.

Although this book would hardly suffice for research purposes, as it lacks a bibliography or any sort of annotation, and the illustrations are cited only by manuscript rather than by name of text, it is certainly a book worth having on the shelf. Its vibrant, authentic illustrations and engagement with obscure primary sources should be enough to satisfy any academic’s thirst for novelty. And with its bizarre creatures and plain language, it may even spark the interest of that academic’s precocious offspring. One only wishes it were a little longer.