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Saint and Monster, Saint as Monster: Exemplary Encounters with the Other
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Extract
The concept of the monstrous is tremendously powerful as a cultural signifier of Otherness, not least when it is embodied into a physical form such as a dragon or other fantastical and threatening creature which can be clearly contrasted with a human hero. A wide range of saints’ narratives — written and visual — which emanate from the Middle Ages include an encounter with a monster; the motif offers an excellent opportunity to present the saintly figure with a foil, not only in simple terms of good human versus evil beast, but also by demonstrating the contrast between the civilized nature of a form of perfected humanity and the untamed wilderness which is the natural habitat of monsters.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2011
References
1 For fuller discussion of the place of the monstrous in medieval understandings, and an extensive bibliography on the topic, see Bildhauer, B. and Mills, R., eds, The Monstrous Middle Ages (Cardiff, 2003).Google Scholar
2 Versions of the lives of St George, St Michael and St Martha may be found in Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. Ryan, William Granger, 2 vols (Princeton, NJ, 1993), 1: 238–41 Google Scholar; 2: 201–10; 2: 23–6 respectively.
3 For the life of St Carantoc, see Doble, G. H., The Saints of Cornwall, 4 vols (Llanerch, 1960-5, repr. 1997-8), 4: 31–52.Google Scholar
4 For the life of the Blessed Ammon, see Waddell, H., Beasts and Saints (London, 1934), 8–12.Google Scholar
5 For the life of St Hilary, see de Voragine, Golden Legend, trans. Ryan, 1: 87–9.
6 For a transcription of the life of Mac Creiche, see Plummer, C., ed., Miscellanea Hagiographica Hibernica, Subsidia Hagiographica 15 (Brussels, 1925), 53–91.Google Scholar
7 See, e.g., the definitions of monstro and monstrum in Smith, W. and Lockwood, J., Chambers Murray Latin-English Dictionary (Edinburgh, 1976, first publ. 1934), 444.Google Scholar
8 For St Margaret’s legend, see de Voragine, Golden Legend, trans Ryan, 1: 368–70. St Perpetua had a vision of a hideous dragon guarding a ladder, strewn with knives and swords, which reached to heaven; see de Voragine, Golden Legend, trans. Ryan, 2: 342.
9 Cf. my ‘St George as a Male Virgin Martyr’, in Riches, S.J. E. and Salih, S., eds, Gender and Holiness: Men, Women and Saints in Late Medieval Europe (London, 2003), 65–85.Google Scholar
10 See my ‘Virtue and Violence: Saints, Monsters and Sexuality’, in Harper, A. and Proctor, C., eds, Medieval Sexuality: A Casebook (London, 2007), 59–78.Google Scholar
11 Jankulak, K., The Medieval Cult of St. Petroc (Woodbridge, 2000).Google Scholar
12 De Voragine, Golden Legend, trans. Ryan, 2: 23—6.
13 See my ‘Virtue and Violence’.
14 Waddell, Beasts and Saints, 8.
15 De Voragine, Golden Legend, trans. Ryan, 2: 184.
16 Ibid. 1: 267.
17 Notably, this monster is not presented as a direct embodiment of sin but rather as a prophylactic against sin: this is a clear example of the wide range of meanings which can be attributed to dragons and similar beasts. For further discussion, see my ‘Encountering the Monstrous: Saints and Dragons in Medieval Thought’, in Bildhauer and Mills, eds, Monstrous Middle Ages, 196–219.
18 This description is found in ‘The Life of Senán Son of Gerrgenn’, in Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore, ed. Stokes, Whitley (Oxford, 1890), 213.Google Scholar
19 MS Z 4.5.5, fols 3r-3v. See Macquarrie, A., ‘Vita Sancti Servani: The Life of St Serf’, Innes Review 44 (1993), 122–52 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; I am grateful to Simon Taylor for drawing this text to my attention.
20 Macquarrie, ‘Vila Sancti Servani’, 147–8.
21 This distinction is intriguing, for one widely accepted definition of a dragon is that it is a large serpent that is frequently endowed with wings. It may be that the author here means something different — more Other? — with this usage, and this points up the useful ambiguity of the concept of dragons.
22 It is also worth noting that the trope of making the sign of the cross is presented as an alternative to a more physical means of defeating a monster in some versions of the life of St George, including the earliest written account of the dragon legend, from the twelfth century, though this quickly gave way to a physical combat. See my St George: Hero Martyr and Myth (Stroud, 2000), 25. Meanwhile, in the vita of St Martha the blessing acts as a prelude to a properly physical death: as noted above, the saint subdued the Tarasque by making the sign of the cross and asperging it with holy water, and then stood aside so that the people could kill it with sticks and stones.
23 Breviarium Aberdonense, ed. Blew, W., Club, Bannatyne (London, 1854), 430Google Scholar; a digital version of this text is available at <http://www.archive.org/details/breviariumaber9603cathuoft>.
24 Imagery of the soldier of Christ occurs in a variety of places in the New Testament, including a reference to the ‘breastplate of faith and charity’ in 1 Thess. 5: 8.
25 Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, MS 2324—40, fols 87—98; this was transcribed in 1634 from a copy made in 1528; see Plummer, Miscellanea. I am grateful to Gilbert Markus for the reference.
26 The invocation of a monstrous badger conjures up quite a curious image. It can perhaps be interpreted as a means of localizing this embodiment of the Other by reference to something with which local people would be familiar; it is known that any new concept must have some recognizable aspect in order to be meaningful. A useful analogy can be drawn with the German term unheimlich, which is usually glossed as ‘uncanny’. The word contains the term heimlich, which carries implications of security and familiarity. The element ‘un-’ gives us an opposite meaning, of course, but the term makes clear reference to something which is known and familiar. Similarly, the concept of the monstrous badger draws upon the known world, but indicates that what is being described is far beyond any real-life badger. Whilst they do not threaten people, badgers are known for their destructive power, particularly towards hedgehogs and other small mammals, and it could be that this aspect is being invoked here. In the same way, the ‘gnats having horny beaks’ mentioned in the narrative of St Serf in the Black Valley may be intended to invoke the midges of the Scottish Highlands: small but menacing, and almost certainly familiar to the audience of the tale. I am indebted to Simon Taylor for drawing this reading of the episode to my attention.
27 Plummer, Miscellanea, 76.
28 St George’s dragon is the obvious example of a monster which spreads contagion: it was initially fed sheep, and then humans, as a means of persuading it to stay away from the city of Silene and hence protecting the inhabitants from its breath; see, e.g., de Voragine, Golden Legend, trans. Ryan, 1: 238.
29 Plummer, Miscellanea, 81.
30 Ibid. 82.
31 Ibid. 73.
32 This self-identification as a monster is a trope which can also be found in wider society, outside the discourse of saints’ narratives. For example, the heraldic popularity of dragons derives to some extent from the same concept, for dragon-slayers were thought to absorb the powers of their defeated foe and this force could be passed on to future generations of the same family. In this way the saint’s narrative seems to be in step with a more general understanding of the roles played by monsters in medieval culture. On the topic of dragon-slaying in relation to heraldry, especially where the story of a dragon-slayer in an earlier age arises in order to explain pre-existing family imagery, see Simpson, J., British Dragons (Ware, 2001).Google Scholar