The Monstrous Middle Ages , livre ebook

The Monstrous Middle Ages
The Monstrous Middle Ages
edited by
B ETTINA B ILDHAUER and R OBERT M ILLS
© The Contributors, 2003
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-0-7083-1822-5
eISBN: 978-1-78683-175-0
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without clearance from the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff, CF10 4UP.
www.wales.ac.uk/press
The rights of the Contributors to be identified as authors of their Contributions have been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Abbreviations
1. Introduction: Conceptualizing the Monstrous
B ETTINA B ILDHAUER and R OBERT M ILLS
2. Jesus as Monster
R OBERT M ILLS
3. Monstrous Masculinities in Julian of Norwich’s A Revelation of Love and The Book of Margery Kempe
L IZ H ERBERT M C A VOY
4. Blood, Jews and Monsters in Medieval Culture
B ETTINA B ILDHAUER
5. The Other Close at Hand: Gerald of Wales and the ‘Marvels of the West’
A SA S IMON M ITTMAN
6. Idols and Simulacra: Paganity, Hybridity and Representation in Mandeville’s Travels
S ARAH S ALIH
7. Demonizing the Night in Medieval Europe: A Temporal Monstrosity?
D EBORAH Y OUNGS and S IMON H ARRIS
8. Apocalyptic Monsters: Animal Inspirations for the Iconography of Medieval North European Devourers
A LEKS P LUSKOWSKI
9. Hell on Earth: Encountering Devils in the Medieval Landscape
J EREMY H ARTE
10. Encountering the Monstrous: Saints and Dragons in Medieval Thought
S AMANTHA J. E. R ICHES
Further Reading
List of Illustrations

1. Lionel, the lion-faced boy ( c .1900). The Harvard Theatre Collection, The Houghton Library. By permission.
2. Lion–human hybrid. Wonders of the East ( c .1025–50). BL, Cotton MS Tiberius B.V, fol. 81r. By permission of The British Library.
3. Allegory of the phoenix. Guillaume le Clerc, Bestiaire ( c .1265–70). Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 14969, fol. 14v. Photo: Bibliothèque nationale de France. By permission.
4. Three-headed Trinity. Stone head-stop ( c .1260). Salisbury cathedral. Photo: Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art. By permission.
5. Three-headed Trinity. Psalter (thirteenth century). St John’s College, Cambridge, MS K26, fol. 9v. Photo: Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art. By permission of the Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge.
6. Monstrous Races. Bestiary ( c .1270–90). London, Westminster Abbey, MS 22, fol. 3r. © Dean and Chapter of Westminster.
7. Bird–Christ hybrid. Detail of lower marginal figure in English Book of Hours and Psalter ( c .1300). The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MS 102, fol. 56v. By permission.
8. Deposition of Christ from the Cross. The Luttrell Psalter ( c .1340). BL, Additional MS 42130, fol. 94v. By permission of The British Library.
9. Ebstorf world map ( c. thirteenth century). Reproduction from Ernst Sommerbrodt, Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte (Hanover: Hahn’sche Buchhandlung, 1891). By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.
10. Gog and Magog. Detail from north-east corner of the Ebstorf world map ( c. thirteenth century). Reproduction from Ernst Sommerbrodt, Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte (Hanover: Hahn’sche Buchhandlung, 1891). By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.
11. Bearded lady and ox-man. Gerald of Wales, Topographia Hibernica (thirteenth century). BL, Royal MS 13.b.VIII, fol. 19r. By permission of The British Library.
12. St Mark as initial M. Bury New Testament (early twelfth century). Cambridge, Pembroke College MS 120, fol. 31r. By permission of the Masters and Fellows of Pembroke College, Cambridge.
13. Ox-man idol. Mandeville’s Travels (fifteenth century). BL, Royal MS 17.c.XXXVIII, fol. 38v. By permission of The British Library.
14. The worships of Chana. Mandeville’s Travels (fifteenth century). BL, Harley MS 3954, fol. 33r. By permission of The British Library.
15. Hell’s gates locked. Winchester Psalter (mid-twelfth century). BL, Cotton MS Nero C.IV, fol. 39r. By permission of The British Library.
16. Doorway of church of St Mary and St David, Kilpeck, Herefordshire (twelfth century). Photo: Peter Evans. By permission.
17. St George and the dragon. English wooden sculpture (fifteenth century). Herbert Museum and Art Gallery, Coventry. Photo: Jenny Alexander. By permission.
18. Albrecht Dürer, St Michael in Combat . Woodcut (early sixteenth century). Photo: Warburg Institute. By permission.
19. Copy after Martin Schongauer, Temptation of St Anthony Abbot . Woodcut (early sixteenth century). Photo: Warburg Institute. By permission.
Acknowledgements

The essays in this volume arise, for the most part, from two conferences: a symposium on ‘Medieval Horror’ held at Pembroke College, Cambridge, in July 1999; and three linked sessions on ‘The Monstrous Middle Ages’, which took place at the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, in July 2001. Thanks are owed to the Master and Fellows of Pembroke College and the Leeds IMC programming committee for making both these meetings possible. We are also very grateful to the participants in those events for the lively talks and exchanges on matters monstrous. The anonymous reader for University of Wales Press made a number of additional helpful suggestions in relation to the book itself. We wish to extend special thanks to Duncan Campbell at the Press, for his initial enthusiasm and for his accommodating, efficient and friendly manner at the production stage. Finally, thanks to all our friends and colleagues who have shared – and endured – our fascination with monsters, medieval and modern.
Notes on Contributors

Bettina Bildhauer is a research fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Her research interests are focused on conceptions of bodies, femininity and horror in medieval writing and modern thought. She has published on monstrous bloodsuckers in Liz Herbert McAvoy and Teresa Walters (eds), Consuming Narratives (2002), and her book on blood in medieval German literature is forthcoming.
Simon Harris is a research associate in the Department of History at the University of Durham. Research interests have centred upon gentry society of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, particularly social and political influences. Currently his interests are concerned with the ESRC-funded research project on Settlement and Waste in the Palatinate of Durham, a summary of whose work will shortly be published in an article in the Economic History Review . He is about to commence work on an AHRB-funded project on medieval petitions in the Department of History at the University of York.
Jeremy Harte is curator of the Bourne Hall Museum, Ewell, and consultant editor to 3rd Stone , a journal of alternative archaeology and folklore. He is currently engaged in a longue durée study of supernatural encounters in the English landscape. Previous publications include Cuckoo Pounds and Singing Barrows: The Folklore of Archaeological Sites in Dorset and Dorset Legends .
Liz Herbert McAvoy currently teaches in the English Department at the University of Leicester. She co-edited, with Teresa Walters, Consuming Narratives: Gender and Monstrous Appetite in the Middle Ages , and has published widely on Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich. Liz’s research interests include representations of the female body, anchoriticism, mysticism and monstrosity.
Robert Mills is a lecturer in English at King’s College London. His research interests include medieval visual culture, late medieval literature in the vernacular and modern critical theory. His book Visions of Excess: Pain, Pleasure and the Penal Imaginary in Late Medieval Art and Culture is forthcoming. He is now working on a new project: a study of the links between eroticism and religious devotion in late medieval culture.
Asa Simon Mittman has recently received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. His dissertation is entitled ‘Living at the edge of the world: marginality and monstrosity in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and beyond’. He has published on the illuminations of the Anglo-Saxon Hexateuch and presented on topics ranging from Anglo-Saxon sculpture to nineteenth-century neo-Gothic restoration.
Aleks Pluskowski is a research fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. He recently completed a Ph.D. in the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, on human responses to wolves and their environment in medieval northern Europe. He is currently investigating wild and domestic fauna throughout medieval Europe. Other research interests include religious diversity in the Middle Ages and neo-medievalism in contemporary Western culture.
Samantha J. E. Riches lectures in the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews. An interdisciplinary cultural historian of the late medieval period, she specializes in the visual and narrative construction of sainthood, gender studies and the interplay between these areas. Her book St George: Hero, Martyr and Myth was published in 2000; she has also co-edited with Sarah Salih Gender and Holiness: Men, Women and Saints in Late Medieval Europe (2002).
Sarah Salih is a lecturer in English and American Studies, University of East Anglia. Her research is mainly concerned with later medieval writing in England, specializing to date on the topics of sexuality, virginity and gender. Recent publications include Versions of Virginity in Late Medieval England (2001), Gender and Holiness in Late Medieval Europe , co-edited with Samantha Riches (2002), and Medieval Virginities , co-edited with Anke Bernau and Ruth Evans (2003). She is now planning a large-scale survey o