Beitrage zur Europaischen
Ethnologic und Folklore
Reihe B: Tagungsberichte und Materialien
Herausgegeben von Leander Petzoldt
Band 8
PETER LANG
Frankfurt am Main • Berlin • Bern • New York • Paris • Wien

Ruth Petzoldt/Paul Neubauer(Eds.)
Demons:
Mediators between
This world and
the Other
Essays on Demonic Beings
from the Middle Ages to the Present
PETER LANG
Europaischer verlag der Wissenschaften

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme
Demons: Mediators between this world and the other :
essays on demonic beings from the Middle Ages to the present /
Ruth Petzoldt ; Paul Neubauer (Eds.). - Frankfurt am Main ;
Berlin ; Bern ; New York ; Paris ; Wien : Lang, 1998
(Beitrage zur europaischen Ethnologie und Folklore.
Reihe B: Tagungsberichte und Materialien ; Bd. 8)
ISBN 3-631-33190-8
Gedruckt mit Unterstiitzung
des Bundesministeriums fur
Wissenschaft und Verkehr in Wien.
ISSN 0930-2336
ISBN 3-631-33190-8
US-ISBN 0-8204-3574-0
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Europaischer Verlag der Wissenschaften
Frankfurt am Main 1998
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Table of Contents :
Introduction	7
Paul Neubauer and Ruth Petzoldt
The Universe of Demons and the World of the Middle Ages	13
Leander Petzoldt
Facts and Fiction: The Iconography of Demons in German
Vernacular Manuscripts	27
Norbert H. Ott
Sibylla Led Astray : Sibyls in Medieval Literature	51
Winfried Frey
The Sailor Demon of Vulcano in Antoine de La Sale's Geography
of the Demonic, L'Excursion aux	lies Lipari	65
Simonetta Cochis
Encounters with the Other World: The Medieval Iconography of
Alexander the Great and Henry the Lion	75
Norbert H. Ott
Cynocephalic Demons in Medieval Song, Legend, and Epic	101
Donald Ward
The Devil in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Florentine
Engravings	111
Ludovica Sebregondi
Medieval Answers to the Strange World Outside: Foreigners and
the Foreign as Cultural Challenges and Catalysts	133
Albrecht Classen
The Comeback of the Vampires: The History of the Motif from
Medieval Legends to Contemporary Literature	153
Ruth Petzoldt
The Demon of Loss and Longing: The Function of the Ghost in
Toni Morrison's Beloved	165
Paul Neubauer
List of Contributors	175
5

Introduction
Paul Neubauer, Ruth Petzoldt
Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou com'st in such a questionable shape
Thou I will speak to thee.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet (I.iv)
Demons have been the close companions of men and women and their
terrifying and fascinating ‘Other* since time immemorial. As mediators between
the physical here and now and the hidden realms of metaphysics they take on
diverse shapes and different names. They cannot, however, be truly individual¬
ised as single entities, because demonic beings do not exist for a purpose of
their own. They are manifestations of fears, hopes, wishes, and fantasies as
theriomophic, anthropomorphic, or concrete conceptualizations.
Their presence and their influence have been documented throughout all
cultures with narrative traditions, poetic and and pictorial systems of their own,
and especially in their developing literatures as well as evolving fine arts. This
volume presents a chronologically organized overview over select demonic
trades and traditions handed down from classical antiquity, reinterpreted and
systematized in the Middle Ages in Europe, and extending their influences to
our present and increasingly global civilization. The main focus lies on the
adaptation and reformulation of specific demonological constellations in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, combining ethnological approaches with con¬
cepts of cultural history and their reflection in the arts and in literature.
In his opening article "The Universe of Demons at the End of the Middle
Ages," Leander Petzoldt presents a survey of forms and functions of demonic
beings in the context of the Late Middle Ages, showing the particular trends
towards their encyclopedic and systematic organization in folk belief. This
fundamental analysis of demonology as a highly complex system of human pro¬
jections is based on the exposure of all forms of civilization to inexplicable and
uncontrollable natural phenomena. As an attempt to negotiate the permanent in¬
fluence of these superhuman elements on the everyday world, whole hierarchies
of spirits, angels, and demons were supposed to exist as intermediaries between
the manifest reality and its obscure and arcane causes, as benevolent and
malevolent manifestations of divine or devilish origin. L. Petzoldt exemplifies
the further development of particular demonic concepts, such as the ‘Bilwiz* or
the ‘Wild Hunt* through their reception and readaptations in the following cen¬
turies in the folk belief.
7

A corresponding and complementary synopsis of the pictorial re¬
presentation of demons is offered by Norbert Ott in his essay “Facts and
Fiction: The Iconography of Demons in German Vernacular Manuscripts “ He
underlines the close connection of scientific and analytic metaphysics with their
fictions as imagological portrayals in medieval courtly literature, in epic as well
as pictorial representation, demonstrated in many illuminated manuscripts. The
portraits selected here reflect the ontological similarity of classical heroes,
mythological figures and demonic beings in medieval literature, presenting
figures of different properties denoting the same significance for their
readers/viewers. They manifest their correspondence to influences of the Greek
and Roman Past, and the invisible presence of ghosts and demons in the context
of medieval fiction.
After these two encyclopedic approaches to demonic manifestations in
later medieval cultures, the ensuing essays analyze particular instances of de¬
monic appearences, their traditional adaptations, reconfigurations, and develop¬
ment.
Harking back to Roman traditions, Winfried Frey analyses in his article
“Sibylla Led Astray: Sibyls in Medieval Literature** the complex mysteries pro¬
phetic cults connected to the Oracula Sibyllina in antiquity and their adaptation
and new functions in medieval Christianity. The fundamental ambivalence in
recalibrating heathen myths into Christian legends is substantiated by examples
from the Sibylla Persica to the reconfigured Queen of Sheba as a medieval
Sibyl, later fimctionalized in the ‘Legend of the Rood‘~and taken up again as a
demonic element in Anti-Semitic agitation of later medieval propaganda.
As contrast to these diachronic and systematically variegated sibylline
references, Simonetta Cochis concentrates on a historically, regionally, and
functionally restricted demonic apparition in her analysis of “The Sailor Demon
of Vulcano in Antoine de La Sale‘s Geography of the Demonic, L'Excursion
awe ties Lipari.u She reconstructs La Sale*s usage of this figure in his didactic
narrative: The demon functions as wamer and he also appears as messenger
from a dead. His status as intermediary sent from the nearby portals of the hell
(Etna) is further complicated by his physical appearance as a giant sailorman.
His demonic properties, however, become apparent only after the fact. These
supernatural elements of a strange visitation are used by La Sale as moral and
educational features of his supposedly realistic travel story, exemplifying the
possibly malevolent omnipresence of transcendent elements on this earth.
Expanding La Sale‘s representational strategy in narratives on Alexander
the Great and Henry the Lion, Norbert Ott deals with the “Encounters with the
Other World** in the cases of these two heroes. The strange and fabulous figures
treated here are relocated in the mystical east, where fact and fiction mingle in
the imagined encounters with Europe‘s *Other‘-for example in Alexanders
journey to the end of the world on a throne carried by griffins. These
illustrations of historical as well as contemporary excursions into territories
unknown present figments of the human imagination as historical fact: Birdmen
8

and dragons signify the sheer wonder of a distant world, blending demonologi¬
cal properties with traditional literary motifs of medieval courtly and encyclo¬
pedic literature.
A particular instance of demons in animal shape-men with dogheads, is
reconstructed in Donald Ward‘s article “Cynocephalic demons in Medieval
Song, Legend, and Epic.44 These figures, originating in Germanic warrior
societies and there shaman traditions, populated the imagination of West
European people as an ever present menace. Many hostile assaults during the
early Middle Ages feature individuals or groups of these strange animal-human
hybrids. Their ferocity marks them as sub-human and as horrifying fighters who
are in turn demonized and ostracized. As Ward demonstrates in his essay, these
cynocephali share many properties with other demons, such as cannibalistic
witches in fairy tales, ogres of European folk tradition and literary variants of
bloodthirsty shape-shifters in medieval epics.
Turning away from these heterogeneous Germanic traditions towards the
complex Renaissance belief systems based on the received and established
canon of Christianity, Ludovica Sebregondi undertakes a systematic iconogra¬
phy of the “Devil in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Florentine Engravings.44
Her investigation concentrates on the pictorial properties of fiendish demons
and indicates a number of concepts and functions of these figures of the devil.
She develops a catalogue of related satanic types, presenting for example the
popular ‘Satyr,4 the ‘Eidolon-figure,4 the ‘gastroencephalic demon,4 the ‘devil
as tempter4 and as ‘devourer of the damned.4 Further devilish demons feature a
marked influence from Byzantine traditions or incorporate animalesque
elements. Their popularity in Florence at the end of the quattrocento reflects
forms of contemporary anxieties and apprehensions grounded mainly on
Christian concepts and myths—and embodies all related traditions into these
stylized monsters from hell.
The problematic nature of these projections is underlined in Albrecht
Classen's reflections on “Medieval Answers to the Strange World Outside:
Foreigners and The Foreign as Cultural Challenges and Catalysts.44 Calling
attention to the necessary distinction between outward monstrosity, behavior,
and internal ethics, Classen describes the function of anthropomorphic demons
such as the “werewolf with the noble heart44 from the Lai of Marie de France in
cultural terms. These foreign figures, strange shapes, and fantastic forms are
presented as moments of alienation and adaptation indicating the ambivalent
status of all outsiders from the perspective of courtly European culture. Their
re-evaluation and possible integration, however, demonstrate their basic related¬
ness and fundamental humanity, connecting them to the world and the nature of
the narrative and narrators—despite their strange, frightful and monstrous
appearance.
This connection between the perception of the ‘Other4 as freak, brute, or
demon, and the projection of hostility, malevolence , and evil as their inherent
9

motivation, likens these medieval monsters from courtly tradition to the demons
and ghosts of modernity.
Ruth Petzoldt describes the development of one such demonic figure in
her analysis of “The Comeback of the Vampires. The History of the Motif from
Medieval Legends to Contemporary Literature/4 Classifying this blood-sucking
demon as revenant, she establishes three closely related constellations of his ap¬
pearance: In medieval legends people encounter a Satanic, malevolent demon—
the recently deceased returns from his grave in order to revenge himself upon
the living. This feared and hatred figure was then used to demonize the
historical person of Vlad Tepes, known as Dracula, an important ally of the
Osmanian Emperor. The following phases of endemic hysteria based on
vampirism were declared as forms of superstition and decease by critical com¬
mentators during the Enlightenment. The vampire, however, returns 150 years
later in literary form, and evokes the stereotypical demonic properties of the
terrifying monster as well as developing at the same time the strange erotic
attraction and wishful projections of omnipotence as Count Dracula. The
growing fascination with vampires, symbols of Eros and Thanatos, illustrates
the adaptability of the demonic forms and traditions as well as the continuity of
their functions throughout distinct epochs and cultural contexts.
The contemporary utilization of demons in a still different tradition is
shown in Paul Neubauefs interpretation “The Demon of Loss and Longing:
The Functions of the Ghost in Toni Morrison‘s Beloved.“ The emblematic title
figure combines demonic qualities and psychological perceptions, elements of
African-American belief and historical insights into slavery and the problems of
emancipation. A demon and a revenant, she is also a spirit of revenge—a
poltergeist and a succubus, dividing social groups, families, and individuals
from one another. Her dominating presence has to be exorcised before personal
and social integration and communication become possible again. This
illustrates the continued influence and dominant function of demonic beings
and demonic possession, reflected in a postmodern American novel which
combines folk narrative and myths, storytelling and poetic evocation with a
theme of human suppression and racist persecution, brutal murder and ever¬
present death.
These instances of demonic presence connect antiquity, the Middle Ages,
modernity and the end of the twentieth century with these visitors from another
world-manifestations of man's fears, frustrations, and obsessions, and instances
of speculation and rationalization of an enigmatic world and its wonders and
riddles.
These superhuman and supernatural entities present us with a multitude
of forms, figures, and functions systematized into whole hierarchies of angels
and devils, ghosts and ghouls, werewolves and vampires, helpful messengers,
but mostly frightful antagonists of the humans they encounter. Their power and
omnipresence are reflected in courtly epics as well as in folk narratives, in
10

Renaissance illustrations as well as in natural histories, romantic fiction and
postmodern novels, in adventure stories, travel narratives and films. This
abundance of references to demonic beings indicates their main quality as
anthropologic constancy, confronting individuals as well as cultures with their
subconscious phobias and suppressed longings. As model explanations of that
which may not be explained in any other way they offer answers and inter¬
pretations of the ‘Other4 outside humanity as well as inside the human being.
The constant interest in the properties and purposes of demons has led to
these diverse but correlated articles, which were selected as representative
analyses of their manifestations from several series of papers read at the Con¬
ferences on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo from 1993 to 1996. The enthusias¬
tic reception of these papers demonstrated the necessity of such multifarious
investigations into the historical as well as the continuing adoption and
adaptation of elemental spirits and monsters, ghostly apparitions and our eerie
encounters with them. The present survey of approaches to and examinations of
the phenomenology of demons and demonological constructs also proves the
fruitful combination of cultural history and ethnology with regard to the many
things that are said to exist between earth, heaven, and hell.
11

The Universe of Demons and the World of the Late Middle Ages
Leander Petzoldt
The great scholar and natural scientist Theophrastus von Hohenheim,
better known as Paracelsus (1493-1541), says in his work Liber de nymphis,
sylphis, pygmaeis et salamandris et de caeteris spiritibus, published after his
death in 1566, that every human individual is both endowed with self-aware¬
ness and looking beyond his own limits as man, since he “experiences, learns
and discovers supernatural things.14 Paracelsus distinguishes here between the
“light of nature,44 plain physical and material knowledge and the “light of man
that is over the light of nature,44 and he continues as follows: “Those who search
in the light of nature talk about nature, whereas those who search in the light of
man, talk beyond nature.44 As a matter of fact man is part of nature and he is
nature—“but he is also spirit.44 Here Paracelsus implies that man has even a part
in the nature of angels. Man stands thus above nature and appears capable of
discerning its diversity. His fundamental task is to perceive the world and its
creatures, and to describe them, revealing many of the marvels of Gods crea¬
tion. True to the biblical mission from Genesis he asserts in an optimistic scien¬
tific tone impossible to repeat today: “There is nothing created which man
cannot discover.441
Going one step further in his book, Paracelsus extends man’s domain, his
abilities to recognize and describe those creatures which exist outside the “light
of nature.44
He indicates that all these demons and spirits undoubtedly exist, and he even
denotes the elemental spirits as “spirits incarnate in human shapes,442 although
they do not descend from Adam. They appear to be of human nature but they do
not possess a soul:
Though they appear as human beings, they die like the beasts, they
move around with the spirits and they eat and drink with the people....
They reside in four types of housing according to the four elements
water, air, earth and fire. Those who live in water are nymphs, whereas
the sylphs live in the air. Pygmies are the spirits of the earth, and those
of fire are Salamander.
What Paracelsus says here about the elemental spirits, characterizes the final
stage of the developing popular notion of demons which had its origins in the
Greek philosophy of nature and in a Neo-Platonism that could be characterized
as based on pre-scientific speculation. It must be pointed out here that this
scholarly tradition remained mainly outside of popular culture. There may be no
people in our human history who do not know of supernatural beings with
whom they share their environment and who help to explain the inexplicable in
human life and individual experience. The Greek philosophers attempted to get
these notions into some sort of system by placing the Daimones in-between
their gods and man, and by developing an order of precedence from god to
demon to heros and man. The basic meaning of the word ‘demon’ in Greek
13

(<daiesthai) hints at the notion of destiny allocated to everyone at birth.
Consequently demons are supernatural entities, spirits and especially guardian
spirits and companions of man. And they are mediators between god and man
as their rank reveals.
The Greek author Plutarch (46-120) therefore remarked appropriately:
“Those who have disclosed that there is a species of demons in between man
and the gods connecting one with another have solved more and bigger
difficulties“-than Plato by his theory of matter.4 This conception reveals a
systematic insight into nature and the function of demons. A belief in demons
contributes to a better comprehension of the physical world and makes the
human experience of it understandable. Sigmund Freud correctly labels the
‘invention* of the spirits and demons as the first theoretical achievement of
mankind.5
These demons stay in rather association with man. According to their
original meaning they are neutral entities or impersonal powers. In this sense
angels are mainly demons. Angels as mediators between God and man had
already been known by early Judaism. The very idea of angels might have
originated in Persia long before the appearance of Islam which then elaborated
the universe of the angels into a new sovereignty of demonic creatures. The
Greek/Latin word angelos corresponds to the Hebrew/Arab word maVak which
means ‘herald4 or ‘envoy.* In the Islamic as well as in the Christian religion
each man is said to have two guardian angels who are supposed to preserve him
from all calamities. These angels are members of an elaborate heavenly
hierarchy. The Old Testament already knows various types of angels connecting
elements from anthropomorphic demons on the one hand and from strangely
ethereal spirits on the other: The Cherubim, winged creatures somewhere in-
between man and beast, as well as the Seraphim, with their six wings—both
indicating through their names that they were originally snake-demons. Then
there are angels appertaining to the elements of wind, fire, and water. Thus
Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535) writes:
Four princes of angels rule the four winds and the four parts of the earth:
Michael governs the east-wind, Raphael the west-wind, Gabriel the
north-wind and Nariel who also is called Uriel governs the south-wind.
And the elements have their rulers too: the air is ordered by Cherub,
Tharsis rules the water, Ariel the 6earth and the fire is governed by
Seraph , or Nathaniel—as Philo says.
It is the indefiniteness and transitoriness of these and other demons, their great
variability, their transformations and the ambivalence of their character which
makes it so difficult to define their nature. Demons are creatures of speculation
and belief, and at the same time narrative protagonists: all through our known
history they were and still are phenomena of folk belief assuming concrete
forms in folk narrative.
The belief in demons and elemental spirits has been disseminated in
classical antiquity, and reached new popularity in the sixteenth, seventeenth and
14

eighteenth century both in contemporary scholarship and in popular
biographical accounts. The research in folk belief is based on the subjective
authenticity of these accounts of mainly folk narrative. From the Renaissance
up to the eighteenth century the most important sources for research in the
concept of demons and elemental spirits are therefore folk belief and the folk
legends alike as well as the natural scientific and philosophical works of the
times. It must however be stressed that any attempt of reconstructing a clear
idea of the appearance and the essence of demons, based on the legends of
demons and demonic beings and the relations of diverse encounters with them
would be idle.
The folk narratives of the eighteenth and nineteenth century as they exist
in the collections of legends, fairy-tales and tales proper present us with
contradictory and incomplete notions. As a reliable source for research into the
concept of demons, and their history and development, they are useful only in a
limited way. Therefore it is necessary to have recourse to the medieval literature
and various other historical sources. These sources also reveal only little about
the continuity of a particular belief, the frequency and the diffusion of specific
demonic creatures and their phenomenological typology Their appearance is
diversified in form and their character remains ambiguous because their forms
can change without discernible cause or clear design.
Among the earliest notions of demons are those of the spirits of the
deceased who return from the land of the dead. Most of these legends reflect
man's ambivalence towards the dead as both venerable ancestors and evil
demons, starting with the archaic death cults derived from this primary fear of
the dead. But the anxiety of man became manifest not only in the legends of the
dead returning. Aside from the belief in the dead and in demons who derived
from this belief and could be characterized as ‘cultural spirits,* nature spirits or
sprites also be appeared as far back in the early history of mankind. These are
personifications of the elements and of meteorological processes and pheno¬
mena like thunder, clouds, winds and fog. Their origin was based on an
unfolding conception of animism with its notion of the entire nature being ani¬
mated by spirits and demons. These notions have been preserved to some extent
in the folk belief even up to the present. The sheer multitude and variety of
demons in the European cultural sphere renders it virtually impossible to get
them all sorted and categorized systematically. Nonetheless, there have been
many attempts to create inclusive demonologies from the fifteenth century on in
order to organize the assumed universe of demons:
The abbot of Sponheim, Johannes Trithemius (1462 -1516), speculated
on the dynasties of spirits in his work Chronologia mystica, and in his other
volume Liber octo questionum (The Book of Eight Questions, 1515) he was
preoccupied with similar topics advancing a representational theory of these
apparitions. Of course the scholar-abbot characterizes the antique demons dis¬
paragingly as devilish monstrosities. This process of diabolisation begins early,
and reaches its final climax in the sixteenth century with Martin Luther. The
15

antique and medieval demonologies are now supplemented by the biblical
tradition of the disgraced and fallen angels--a notion that was disseminated
already in the Jewish tradition in the late-Hellenistic era and argued that the
demons were the result of those fallen angels who interbred with the ‘daughters
of mankind,’ as mentioned in Gen. 6. 1-4. Trithemius distinguishes here several
kinds of demons while adjoining them to the different elements:
There are many species of evil spirits who have various rank and file
one with another according to the conditions of the places where they
have been expelled to. First of all there is the family of devils which is
called Igneum who are fiery devils. They live in the uppermost air and
may not come down to earth before Doomsday but they always stay in
the region of the moon. They do not have any communion with the
people living on earth.
. . . The other family of devils is called Aereum who are evil sprites
living in the air under the sky near us, moving and living around us.
They could well come down to earth after taking shape in the rough air.
Thus they sometimes appear visibly before human eyes. These spirits
often make the sky overcast; they cause thunder and lightning, and they
are always inclined to ruin the living. Like humans, they demonstrate
both emotions and mobility, particularly with regard to arrogance and
envy, they seem tempted perpetually. They have neither any solid body
nor do they stay at the same place for long nor do they all have a similar
appearance. . . . The third family of evil spirits we call the devils
incarnate who have undoubtedly been relegated from high heaven to
earth because of their guilt. One part of these devils and evil spirits live
in the woodlands and forests where they play tricks on the huntsmen.
Some of them live in the open field where they puzzle the country folk
so that they lose their way. Some live in the hidden caves and caverns
whereas others who are not as fierce and enraged live close to man in
divers hiding places. They all have in various ways sense, will and grace
although one may more spiteful than the other. . . . The fourth family
and species of devils is called Aquaticum because they live at the waters.
This is a spiteful, angry, nervous, and dangerous family of the devils
who cause thunderstorms, topple ships and drown many people.7
Then, he names as a fifth species of the spirits the subterraneans who live in the
caves, in the depths. According to Trithemius this species is the most evil of all
spirits, because they continually persecute those humans who work
underground, the well-diggers and the miners. It is obvious that only a minute
part of what Trithemius says about demons has been absorbed into the medieval
folk belief. He is too involved in the antique and Neo-Platonic scholarly
tradition which he modifies only sparingly. Only the description of those
demons who live in the forests and woodlands refers to the great number of
woodland spirits, bog women, and Wild Men of the popular tradition. And the
subterranean spirits in this portrayal correspond to notions of mining demons
that were widespread in Central and Western Europe around the year 1500.
One of Europe’s first mineralogist and metallurgist, Georg Agricola
(1494-1555), argues that the existence of spirits living inside of mountains has
16

been proven by experience: In his work De animantibus subterraneis (On
subterranean creatures, 1549) he deals with various creatures and talks about a
special group of demons—namely the sprites living underground--, whom he
presents in a natural scientific context. These are mining spirits whom Agricola
describes as “little grey men.“ He includes a thorough depiction of these
inoffensive little demons:
Furthermore, there are harmless spirits who are called goblins by
Germans and Greek alike because they mimic the human folk. They
giggle as if they cannot help it, and it looks like they would do much but
they achieve nothing at all. Others call them Bergmannlein (little
miners) because of their small stature. They are dwarfs reaching a height
of only three spans. But they look like old men dressed according to the
manner of miners, wearing a smock buckled by a belt, and an apron
made of leather.8
Agricola describes their more troublesome prototype of subterranean demons in
his work De re metallica of 1556, and lists seven supernatural causes of dangers
and accidents in mines at the end of his book. These demons appear to rank
between the dwarfs and the goblins. Their behavior varies from obliging
supportiveness to mean-spirited obstruction. Agricola holds that a goblin living
inside a mountain is often to be blamed for the abandonment of mines: “The
fifth cause are the fierce and murderous demons, for if they cannot be expelled,
no one escapes from them “ 9
The demonology established by Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535) is
somewhat more differentiated. In De occulta philosophia (1531) he attempted
to reconcile Christian doctrine with the demons of classical antiquity. He
developed his system of demons as follows:
Eventually, there are spirits of the day, the night and the noon as well as
spirits living in woodlands, on mountains, on the fields and in the
houses. Hence Silvans, Fauns, Satyrs, Pans, Nymphs, Najads, Nereids,
Dryads. ... Some of these demons fall in love with women, others with
boys, and several others take pleasure in domestic animals or wild
animals. Some live in woodlands and groves, others near springs and on
meadows. So the Fauns and Lemurs can be found in the fields, the
Najads at the springs, the Potamids in the rivers, the Nymphs by the
lakes and other stretches of water, the Oreads inhabit the mountains, the
Humeads the meadows, the Dryads and Hamadryads, the Satyrs and
Sylvans inhabit the woodlands where they take pleasure in the trees and
patches of grass. Nepets and Agapets are similarly fond of flowers, tfje
Dodons of oak trees, the Palees and Fenilies of fodder and agriculture.
Many features and concepts which would play an important role in the
traditional popular narrative up to our days are already laid down by Agrippa in
his compilation, surveying the entirety of the antique and medieval literature on
demons. He concludes thus:
The demons repeatedly confessed their fall. Precipitated into the valley
of tears some wander about in the darkness of the air, some inhabit the
17

lakes, rivers and sea, and others inhabit the earth. The latter assault those
who dig wells and mines, they create gorges in the earth, shake the very
foundation of the mountains, and plague people and beasts alike. There
are some who are satisfied with ridicule and delusion and seek rather to
tease that to harm whereas others grow to gigantic size and shrink again
into tiny Pygmies. This species generally likes to transform themselves
into various shapes in order to strike fears into the human hearts. 1
The antique conceptions of the elemental spirits have had an influence up to the
late Middle Ages. At the bottom of this continued impact is the
anthropomorphic notion of nature as animated by superhuman and semihuman
creatures and powers, corresponding largely to animism. One of its main
exponents was the initially mentioned Theophrastus Paracelsus who advanced
an entire hierarchy of these elementals in his Liber de nymphis, sylphis, pyg-
maeis etc. According to his idea of cosmogonic correspondences he believed
that all elements of the microcosm have their counterparts in the macrocosm.
With this ordering of the world he also explained the desire of the demons for
human partners: As demons do not possess a soul, they seek to participate in the
human transcendence by way of marriage and intercourse with human beings.
Of the water spirits he relates the following:
They are people, indeed, but only in an outward animal manner without
soul. When they become married to human beings this means that a
female Aquarius takes a man from Adam, keeps house and brings forth.
The children take after the father because he is a human being from
Adam. Therefore the child gets endowed with a soul and thus becomes
equal to the ordinary human who possesses a soul. These women also
receive a soul by marrying a human man. . . like a pagan who asks to be
baptized, striving to obtain a soul. Therefore they come after the human
beings for such human love in order to enter into a union with them
since they are endowed with intellect and their wisdom, and only lack a
soul.12
This notion of numerous demonic creatures lusting after the love of human
beings has found several correspondences in folk narrative, such as in the
legends of the Salige and Wild Women, or on a courtly level in the tales of
‘Melusine4 and in the narratives around the human wife of Aquarius. Folk-tales
on the Salige are known widely throughout the Alpine regions from France to
Slovenia, and are of significant frequency. One of the most outstanding
attitudes of these demons is their longing for the human kindness and love.
Erotic wishful thinking, fantasies and dreams play a very important part here,
particularly when regarded from the point of modem psychology. The
fascination by a woman of unearthly beauty with whom carefree intercourse is
possible outside of all norms and social codes, a woman who not only possesses
supernatural knowledge in all matters of agriculture and farming but who could
also be hardworking, skillful and always friendly may well have inspired the
daydreams of alpine herdsmen and peasants alike, diverting them from their
strenuous everyday life.
18

Although Paracelsus depicts the elemental spirits as a species of mankind
he denies them possession of a soul. Luther goes a step further by completing
the Interpretatio Christiana, when he depicts all these demonic creatures as
more or less transformable presentations and representations of the one and
only devil. This theological interpretation, however, has not gained full
acceptance in folk belief. Many demons among those mentioned above have
retained their archaic character up to our days against all efforts of both ratio¬
nalization and diabolisation.
The medieval demonology classifying the elemental spirits according to
the four elements of water, fire, earth and air, seems to present a logical system,
but this logic derives mostly from speculations by the natural scientists of the
fifteenth and sixteenth century and, eventually, from the Romantics and their
literary adaptations in the early nineteenth century. These Sylphs and Najads,
the Undines and the Nymphs have never been true characters of the folk belief,
they rather were creations of a pre-scientific natural philosophy whose the very
material came from the demonologies of late classical antiquity.
The folk-tale proper relates numerous supernatural experiences,
encounters with the Wild Hunt, the Nightfolk, with witches and demonic
creatures of various species, ghostly manifestations and emanations, and diverse
poltergeists, Aufhocker and nightmares--in a word, phenomena that would be
classified as psychological and parapsychological today. Aside from their
unquestioned reality status in earlier cultures, these demons are psychic realities
and projections of human experiences, anxieties and hopes. They are produced
by after his own image, and then distorted into horrifying phantoms and
phantasmagorias under the impression of his anxieties and compulsions. The
encounters of man and the universe of demons, depicted in many folk-tales, are
documents of the developing human consciousness and his changing view of
the world. Therefore those conceptions of demons are closely linked to the
ideas, standards and values of different historical civilizations or specific social
groups.
An early stage of these notions and ideas is the personification of archaic
vegetation deities-described by Wilhelm Mannhardt with the collective term of
‘com demons.*13 These are vegetation demons who reside in the cornfields and
other field plantations of flax, beans, poppy, hops, etc. They appear in human as
well as in animal form such as the Roggenwolf (ryewolf)and can be of either
sex. Vegetation demons are to be found in all civilizations based on agriculture,
whereas in hunting cultures they are substituted by demonic creatures in form
of beasts or animal build. Vegetation deities may have been transferred into
these demons, who are nowadays used only as bogey men.
The waving cornfield is regarded as the presence of the com demon, and
there exist numerous proverbial sayings such as “The com-mother is in the
field.** In East Prussia people used to refer to the ‘com-mother* sitting in the
field, giving her long black tits to stray children whose suckling would lead to
their consequent death. The personifications, names and characters of these com
19

demons are exceedingly numerous: beside the corn-man and the corn-angel, the
sickle-woman (Sichelweib), the Bilmes Schnitter and the ‘tit-woman‘ (Zitzen-
weib or Langtutting) these are mainly demonic animals such as wolf, bear,
Habergeifi, boar and the ‘com-father* or ‘corn-cat.’ These beasts function also
as bogey men in order to deter the children from trespassing onto the ripening
cornfields.
One of the most fascinating and puzzling figures is the Bilwis, an
ominous character showing an extensive spectrum of regional naming. The
‘Bilwis* already appears in medieval literature, and then presents a
contradictory development by combining complex and at times conflicting
characteristics. In Wolfram von Eschenbach‘s novel Willehalm (1220) he is
mentioned in the phrasing "BilwisschuB" (shot from the Bilwis): “si wolten, daz
kein pilwisz / si da schiizze durh diu knie.“ (They wanted that no bilwis should
shoot them through their knees).14 Thus this demon is characterized as hostile
and dangerous, though not described precisely. Claude Lecouteux made out
three phases in the development of this character in popular mythology,
beginning with a little known Germanic goddess Bil, who was the personi¬
fication of the waning moon and its paralyzing effect; next appears a dwarfish
character who is able to kill man and beast alike with the shot of an arrow. In
the course of the thirteenth century this demonic creature of supernatural
powers gradually loses its identity, and becomes identified with the ‘Trud‘ and
other creatures until it is anthropomorphized into a witch figure.15
Here occurs the transition from a subhuman creature of mythological
origin into that of an anthropomorphic figure. Eventually, the ‘Bilwis* then
turns diabolical—which means that he/she becomes a transformation figure of
the devil and a witch. The last stage in the development of this demon is
reached when the ‘Bilwis* is conceived of as the benevolent and helpful corn-
spirit in the course of the sixteenth century in Northeastern Germany. At the
same time the ‘Bilwis* is known in the Bavarian and Thuringian area as a
harmful corn-demon responsible for strange arrangements of beaten-down rows
of stalks of com in the fields. In Carinthia the ‘Bilwis* is known as a demon of
the whirlwind responsible for ailing limbs and other rheumatic pains such as
lumbago.
More recent folk-tales around the ‘Bilwis* are spread mostly over the
Bavarian, Silesian, Saxonian and Thuringian areas, whereas in the Middle Ages
the notion was common to all German-speaking countries. As this development
shows, the notion of this demon is quite polymorphous, particularly when
contaminated with elements from other legendary characters. Correspondingly,
the attitudes towards the figure have changed, too. In the later stages of the
development he/she turns out a sorcerer or a witch who cuts the com with
sickles attached to his or her ankles. The ‘Bilwis* ranges now among the corn-
demons proper and shows only destructive traits. This ‘Bilwis* appears as one
of the more peculiar and mysterious creatures among the figures of folk
tradition. Its shape-shifting is characteristic of a peasant culture in so far as a
20

natural phenomenon like patterns of beaten-down stalks in the cornfields
inspires a number of mythological speculation.16
The daemonium meridianum is of a similar complexity. This is a noon-
demon, a spirit or ghost which could be described as the personification of a
physic and psychic frame of mind. The origins of the notion of a demon that
appears only before individuals at high noon emerged in the folk belief of Asia
Minor in the pre-Christian eras. In the Hebrew original of the Septuaginta
already mention is made of such a dangerous demonic creature which
threatened the people at noon (Ps. 90.6). The Latin translators called it
daemonium meridianum under the influence of contemporary demonological
beliefs. In the early thirteenth century Origines equates this noon-demon with
the notion of the Akedia (boredom, weariness, sloth) considered one of the
seven deadly sins of monastic life.
The torture of a monk by the Akedia is depicted by Evagrius Ponticus (third
century) as follows:
The monk is thinking that the sun has come to a standstill; the day
seems to be endless. He is induced by the demon to leave his cell in
order to look at the sun and to check its position. He is now overcome
by hatred for his residence, his way of living and the hard work. He
starts to think that the compassion of his companions has disappeared
and that there is no one prepared to comfort him. . .. Finally the demon
tries to induce the monk to escape. 7
Obviously, this incidence depicts the symptoms of a mental depression caused
by enforced monotony and the midday heat. Especially hermits in the Eastern
Mediterranean area had been stricken by such a depression or similar forms of
physical exhaustion, severe headaches, attacks of fever, dizziness and
obfuscation. The instigation of one and all of these symptoms was traced to the
noon-demon by a great number of contemporary Christian authors.
In ancient Gaul “the belief in the weirdness of the noon is deeply rooted
in the people.**18 Through the ages, this demon, originally indeterminate, has
developed into a clearly defined hobgoblin showing anthropomorphous traits,
and was generally known in all social strata. The midday demon always appears
at noon and indicates his evil design by disseminating weariness and lust at the
same time-as well as fear, horror and insanity.
According to more recent folk-belief this demon becomes connected with
the corn-demons, especially the corn-woman (rye-mother) or a midday-woman
who appears in the noon heat. She is considered as a terrible apparition who
enforces the midday break for field laborers. If the corn-mother should catch
one man working during noon she would ‘ask him to death.* Once caught by
this corn-mother one is only released from her domain by answering the
demon’s questions concerning e.g. the preparation and handling of flax. This
ancient motive recall the riddle of the sphinx as well as of the Anglo-Saxon
riddles.19
21

One of the principal roots of all these notions of demons lies in the
human belief in the dead and their ability to return to haunt the living—a
conception as old as mankind. It has its roots in dream-experiences as well as in
the fear of revenge from the deceased who may no longer participate in the
affairs of the living. Inexplicable clinical phenomena, such as apparent death or
coma, that keep recurring further stimulated the ambivalent attitude of man
towards death and the dead. One of the most important demonic figures of folk
belief therefore is the Wiederganger (revenant). The folk narratives know this
revenant as the dead person condemned to return from his/her grave as a demon
because of a former guilt or for a number of other reasons such as an unnatural
death. In most cases the dead reappear in those shapes they were known in
when alive -- reanimated corpses with changing material attributes. Old-Ger-
manic literature, the Icelandic sagas and the medieval tradition contain
numerous narratives around these Wiederganger, the dead reappearing in
familiar shapes to haunt the living. “The dead are creatures of flesh, sinews and
skin, they sometimes speak or kill, sometimes they call on help.“20 It is
noticeable that in this particular field pre-Christian and especially Germanic
conceptions have been preserved for a long time considering the strikingly low
number of christianized revenants. The devil and the purgatory play a negligible
role in these popular conceptions and accounts.
The most important group out of these Wiederganger are those referred
to in the Old-Norse literature, dead personae who reappear and behave just like
the living. They are to be considered the real demonic Wiederganger, the
Undead, who can also change their shape into Akephalos or into any animal
such as a dog, a horse or fire figures who appear in order to take revenge, to
atone for crimes committed or to remind the living of a sin unredeemed.
Very ancient with regard to the history of religion is the conception of the
Army of the Dead (Totenheer) or that of ghosts fighting at night. Originally,
these were warriors killed in battle who had been reanimated in order to
continue the fight—as related e.g. in the Snorra-Edda. Renward Cysat, the town-
clerk of Lucerne (1545-1614), also describes these haunts and spirits as human
beings whose life had been terminated by brute force. In his account some traits
of the Wild Hunt are merged with the specifically Swiss phenomenon of the
‘Procession of the Dead4 (Totenzug). One typical element in this procession that
belongs to the Wild Hunt, is the figure of the Warner (Warner), who tells all
approaching humans to get out of the way; to him Cysat refers to thus:
Of the curious ghost who roams at night and who is called Guott ins
Heer or Salige Liitt by ordinary people should rather be called Wuot ins
Heer (Wodan’s horde). It was believed that these were the souls of
people who had died before the appointed day and hour, which means
that they died an unnatural death. Therefore they must haunt and roam
the earth after their death, wandering from place to place until they find
again the right moment to pass away. Those who died by force carry
marks designating the manner of their death-and likewise do to the
other undead indicate their departure from life. The leader of the
22

procession always cries out “Abwag, abwag! Es kommend die Saligen!“
(Here come the souls of the dead) This procession is usually
accompanied by a band of string-musicians who play a soft but audible
tone.
The popular names of the Wild Hunt vary from country to country, from region
to region as do the names and shapes of their demonic leaders from Wode, Frau
Percht, Rubezahl to historical figures like Her odes, Hackelberg or the Roden-
steiner, who have singular legendary connections to their respective region.
Later, under the influence of Christianity, heretics, witches and sorcerers were
condemned to haunt for ever through the air under the leadership of the devil
himself or of ‘Dietrich von Bern,4 whose Arianism had been condemned as
heresy. This belief in the restlessly roaming dead is rooted in a conceptual
complex not limited to Germanic people. Greek and Roman antiquity, and their
proponents Herodot, Plinius and Pausanias already know the conception of an
army of the ghosts. Around 150 B.C., Pausanias writes referred to the plains of
Marathon as follows: “There you can perceive neighing horses and fighting
men all night long. Those who go there intending to observe it will not escape
without being punished.“22 The moment of fatal encounter with the ‘Army of
Ghosts4 can be perceived up until the contemporary folk-tale tradition.
The Wild Hunt, a somewhat secularized ‘Army of the Dead,4 shocks and
wearies the wanderer who is also tormented by visual and acoustic halluci¬
nations. The demonic figure Aufliocker23 is the result of such a combination of
fear and expectation—not even assuming a specific psychological disposition.
Sacred or magic places provoke such demonic encounters. Fears and anxieties
become concrete in the experience of nature itself: The dreaded Aufhocker
jumps on back of the lonesome and terrified wanderer taking his breath away,
riding him and hurrying him onward to the point of exhaustion. The conception
of the outward shapes of the Aufliocker, however, is drawn from the collective
mythical imagination, combining ghost-hounds, werewolves, goblins, revenants
and similar demonic beings crowding the world of popular legends
The example of the Aufliocker, and to a larger degree the example of the
Bilwis, demonstrate how imprecise all conceptions of a phenotype of these
demons remain. In most cases demons and demonic encounters assume con¬
crete form-only vaguely reflecting common assumptions of thereomorphic,
anthropomorphic and also concrete nature. Thus the conception of the Bilwis
changes through time from a dwarfish gnome in the folk mythology of the
Middle Ages to the anthropomorphic shape of a corn-demon in modem times.
This only indicates the polymorphous variety of shapes, forms, names, and
functions of these beings, and illuminates the problems in researching these
concepts and images, especially when name and shape, origin and function of
closely related demons vary from country to country, between different cultures
and societies, and over greater periods of time.24
23

Notes:
1	Theophrastus von Hohenheim (Paracelsus), Liber de nymphis, sylphis, pygmaeis et salaman-
dris et de caeteris spiritibus, Theophrastus ParacelsusWerke, ed. Will-Erich Peuckert, 5 vols.
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967), vol.3, Philosophische Schriften,
‘Prologus,4 462-463.
2	Ibid., 468.
3	Theophrastus von Hohenheim (Paracelsus), ‘Tractatus II,‘ 470-471.
4	Plutarch, Uber Gott und Vorsehung, Damonen und Weissagung (On God and Providence,
Demons and Prophecy) trans. Konrat Ziegler (Zurich et al.: Artemis, 1952). Cf. ‘The Answer
ofPythia,4 84.
5	Cf. Sigmund Freud, “35. Vorlesung: Ober eine Weltanschauung/4 (Lecture No. 35: On Be¬
lief) Vorlesungen zur Einfuhrung in die Psychoanalyse: Und Neue Folge, eds. Alexander
Mitscherlich et. al. (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1969) 586-608, esp. 592.
6	Heinrich C. Agrippa von Nettesheim, Magische Werke (De occulta philosophia), 5 vols.
(Berlin, 1921) vol.3, chapt.24, 144.
7	Cf. Will-Erich Peuckert, Deutscher Volksglaube des Spdtmittelalters (German Popular
Belief of the Late Middle Ages), (Stuttgart: Spemann, 1942), 120-122.
8	Georgius Agricola, Ausgewdhlte Werke (Selected Works), 8 vols., ed. Georg Fraustadt, vol.
6 Vermischte Schriften 7, (Berlin: VEB, Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1961), 141-
234, esp. 164.
9	Georgius Agricola, De re metallica, eds. Herbert C. Hoover and Lou H. Hoover (New York*
Dover, 1950), 218.
10	Agrippa von Nettesheim, chapt. 16,99ff.
11	Agrippa von Nettesheim, chapt. 18,112ff.
12	Theophrastus von Hohenheim (Paracelsus), ‘Tractatus III and IV,‘ 479-481.
13	Wilhelm Mannhardt, Wald- und Feldkulte (Sylvan and Agrarian Cults), 2 vols., 2d.ed.
(Berlin: Bomtraeger, 1904/1905).
14	Wolfram von Eschenbach, Willehalmt eds. Karl Lachmann and Dieter Kartschoke (Berlin
and New York: de Gruyter, 1968).
15	Claude Lecouteux, “Der Bilwiz: Uberlegungen zu seiner Entstehungs- und Entwicklungs-
geschichte,“ (The ‘Bilviz:‘ Reflections on its Origin and Development) Euphorion 82 (1988):
238-250.
16	Ibid., 246.
24

17	Cf. Dietrich Grau, Das Mittagsgespenst (daemonium meridianum) (Siegburg: F. Schmitt,
1966), 20f.
18	Ibid., 33.
19	Ibid., 22ff.
20	Claude Lecouteux, “Altgermanische Gespenster und WiedergSnger" (Old German Ghosts
and Revenants), Euphorion 80 (1986): 219-231.
21	Renward Brandstetter, RenwardCysat (Luzern: Haag, 1909), 393.
22	Karl Meisen, Die Sagen vom wutenden Heere und vom wilden Jtiger (The Legends of the
Wild Hunt and of the Wild Hunter) (Mtinster: Aschendorff, 1935), 20.
23	There is no way to translate into English the name of this demonic figure riding a human.
Regionally, however, the spirit also has the name of ‘Huckup" which sounds slightly more
familiar to English ears.
24	For further informations on individual demons and spirits from antiquity up to the present
day cf Leander Petzoldt, Kleines Lexikon der Ddmonen und Elementargeister (Pocket
Encyclopedia on Demons and Elemental Spirits), 2d. ed. (Munich: Beck, 1995).
25

Facts and Fiction:
The Iconography of Demons in German Vernacular Manuscripts
Norbert H. Ott
The Beautiful and the Good are qualities identical according to medieval
aesthetics;1 beauty was regarded as goodness materialised, as its outward ap¬
pearance. In literature and pictures the morally perfect person is thus constantly
portrayed and represented as beautiful figure: As Robert Grosseteste, Alexander
of Hales or Bonaventura have put it, the good refers to the causa finalis,
whereas the beautiful refers to the causa formalis: beauty is the disposition of
the form with resnect to the outside, truth and goodness relate to the inside of
object or subject. A fundamentally iconological concept appears as the basis of
this relation: One can only get a grasp, and literally a glance, of the whole
world, if internal and moral categories present themselves as external, visible
signs. Only the familiar can be beautiful, that is—and thus in the Christian con¬
text of man as the supreme result of creation his very image reflects the deity,
indicating that the highest truth is conceivable as perfect beauty, as e.g., Christ
in the circle of the 24 Elders of the Apocalypse, illustrated in a Nuremberg
manuscript of 1430.3 For the very same reason, evil in imagination and repre¬
sentation can only be the strikingly ugly, a manifestation of the different, the
non-human, the sub-human, signifying a disordered and therefore threatening
nature. The devils, against whom Christ defends the City of God on a miniature
in an English manuscript of about 1140,4 feature shaggy hair, animal claws, and
faces in which animal and human elements are mixed. They have horns or
strange excrescenses on their heads, animal tongues sticking out of gaping jaws^
they have tails, wings like dragons, claws or talons instead of hands and feet,
as e.g. in a Swabian paper manuscript of the first half of the fifteenth century or
a Rhenish parchment codex of 1461 (fig. I),6 both from Jacobus de Theramo‘s
Consolatio peccatorum? And even if they appear as learned jurists like the
legally inclined devil Belial, who represents hell before Judge Solomon in a
process against Jesus (fig. 2), their professional clothing cannot hide the signs
of their demonic wickedness expressed in their physical attributes.
This phenomenon is still to be found today in the cultures of popular
myth. If something breaks from the outside into the ordered world and threatens
its structure and organization, it must be recognizable as a threat in its outward
appearance, such as Nosferatu in Mumau‘s film of the same title, resembling
humans, but without any humane trait. And the threatened maiden appears in
turn as a spotless beauty, thus representing purity, which renders the human and
the inhuman easily discernible. But what if it turns out that the supposedly
wicked, the outwardly different, are not wicked at all, but capable of perfectly
humane feelings, and only appear to be strange? The well-known cinemato¬
graphic myths have played with this reversal of the familiar brilliantly: King
Kong and the White Lady behave abssoluetly stereotypically, and at the same
time break these stereotypes down when they put into question the traditional
27

dualism of good and evil, ugly and beautiful: King Kong loves, and his love
casts him in chains, and like Samson he becomes conquerable, destructible. The
film’s viewers feel the betrayal that King Kong experiences as betrayal of their
human selves, they identify with the mythical other, who at first caused fear and
horror. Watching the movie, we become King Kong, and with him we learn to
hate the exploitation of our true feelings by civilization.9
The world view of the medieval West, however, founded on the Christian
dualism of good and evil, had to stick to these traditional stereotypes. Rarely
were historical experiences of the humanity of the other formulated, of the so-
called heathen, who were only imaginable as evil, that is both black and ugly.
One exception is found in Wolfram of Eschenbach. His recognition should be
regarded as a singular human achievement of independence and as the highest
expression of his culture, but remained far from having an impact on the society
at large. To establish one's own identity one needed~and doubtless still needs—
the distance oneself from the totally other, necessary as a foil to oppose and
confront. And yet, as Isidore of Seville explains already in the seventh century,
all living creatures, the good as well as the evil, the human as well as the ‘wild,4
are God‘s children: all monstrosities are thus part of Creation, not antithetic and
contrary to nature.10 “Diabolus et alii daemones a Deo quidem natura creati sunt
boni sed ipsi per se facti sunt mali,“ (The devil and other demons are good by
the nature of the Godly creation, turned evil by their deeds) as the Fourth
Lateran Council declared in 1215.11
These non-human and non-animal creatures, which are part of creation
intermediate creatures to some extent, populating the world along with animals
and humans, are represented in numerous medieval figures; in manuscript
illuminations of all sorts of texts they take on concrete forms. Pliny the Elder
had already catalogued them in his Historia Natural is,12 and the Christian
Middle Ages drew from his catalogue of demonic creatures or monstrous races
In the following I intend to categorize the representations of such creatures
chiefly in the available iconography of vernacular texts of medieval literature
Two groups of texts and images are to be distinguished here: On the one hand
there are those that in the minds of their recipients have a pragmatic-scientific
or historical claim to truth, and on the other hand there are literary fictions—and
a quite indeterminate number of gradations between these extremes. Thomas of
Cantimpre‘s De natura rerum13 and its German adaption, the Buck der Natur by
Konrad of Megenberg,14 mark one end of the scale, the other being the courtly
romance. Between these, we find travel accounts with their intention to inform,
trying to impart knowledge of strange peoples and races from distant lands
narrative texts with a claim to historical truth like the romances concerned with
Alexander the Great-these are also accounts of travels in a sense-, and finally
texts of courtly narrative literature: the Germanic Heroic Epic with its dragons,
giants, dwarfs and savages, bordering on both historical and fictional literature.
In looking at these different genres, one has to ask in what specific function
28

demonic creatures appear in each context, what they stand for, what they
represent and allude to.
In the cosmographical collections of the Middle Ages, the peoples from
the remotest regions of the earth-cold Scythia of Northern Europe, furthest
India and Ethiopia of southernmost Africa—were in no way legendary creatures
but a concrete part of the geography.15 This is demonstrated even in the very
way they are portrayed and set out as if in diagrams, in exemplary and
catalogue-like order: the cave dwelling troglodytes, the blemmiae, whose faces
are on their breasts, and the amyctyrae, whose oversized lips serve to protect
them from the sun, the antipodes—actually antipedes--with their feet pointing
backwards, the one-footed sciopod, whose foot serves him as a sun shade, and
the four-eyed maritimi—they are all present in the illustrations of bestiaries of
the thirteenth century.16 Even in 1425, in a manuscript17 of the natural history of
Thomas of Cantimpre, all these demonic creatures are still represented as zoo¬
logical realities: the dogheaded cynocephali, the sciopods, the blemmiae and the
one-eyed cyclops. The illustrated vernacular versions of Thomas of Cantimpre's
Liber de natura rerum hand on these catalogue-like series of wondrous
creatures, just as the only illustrated manuscript of Peter Konigschlacher18 (fig.
3), or the more popular version of Konrad of Megenberg19 (fig. 4)-right down
to the print in his Book of Nature, where all monstruosities are put together on
one page (fig. 5), as in the Augsburg incunabulas created by Anton Sorg.
In the quasi-scientific geographic compendiums of the Middle Ages, the
monsters were regarded as actually existing inhabitants of the earth: the earth,
however, that lay outside of one's own Christian orbis. Like the panotii, whose
ears reached down to their feet, they bore the physical signs of the sins of their
forefathers, just as Cain's descendants, visible to everyone; they were thus
counter-images to the existing social order, which in turn appeared always
endangered by original sin. The Vienna Genesis from the second half of the
eleventh century is still more detailed in its explanation of these demonic
creatures: God had warned Adam of the risk of certain herbs for pregnant
women, but Adam‘s descendants had rejected this warning and so deformed
their own children by the consumption of such herbs.21 Now their decendants
live as a warning to Christianity at the edges of the world, as was already made
clear in the eighth century in a mappa mundi from Beatus of Liebana as
commentary to the Apocalypse. This shows a sciopod on the southern
continent, which protects itself from the strong sunlight with its huge foot. On
the great world maps of the Middle Ages—the Hereford map, the mappa mundi
from Cornwall, or the thirtheenth century Ebstorf map—they are pictured all
over a southern continent below Ethiopia.
Thomas of Cantimpre, Konrad of Megenberg and the mappae mundi-
designers, are all trying to impart the knowledge of the world
encyclopaedically—and in doing so they also report the demonic creatures on
the borders of the known world in an comparatively ‘neutral4 and ‘scientific4
manner; this style of reporting also finds expression in the iconography, where
29

the representatives of the wondrous peoples are set out as if in diagram. This
iconographic type appears stable even in a genre which, while also intending to
inform, is incorporating personal experience at the same time~the often fictious
travel accounts: John of Mandeville4 s Travels were widely disseminated from
the fourteenth century onwards in many vernacular versions24~and these
accounts of a pilgrimage in the book’s first part, the narrative of a fictional
journey of discovery in the second, may be regarded as the genre‘s paradigm
Mandeville also, so he tells us, meets representatives of monstrous peoples in
far off India~in fact he has collected them from a number of sources. The
illustrated manuscripts of the two German versions of his journey intersperse
the report with illustrations of these demons—sciopods and blemmiae for
instance (fig. 6)~which, resembling the illustrations of the scientific encyclo¬
pedias, do without any narrative elements and simply depict each mythical
creature, even though Mandeville4s text integrates his reports of them in a
narrative context. The iconography of these travelers tales thus follows the
traditional ‘scientific model4 and scarcely reflects the structure of voyage, both
in the manuscripts and the later printed editions.25 Like the hagiographically
and biblically oriented reports and their illustrations in the first part of the
joumey~for instance the ‘Tower of Babel’—the monsters of the second part are
presented with the same claim to factuality, and their iconographic truth lies
exactly in this restriction to their individual representation and the concurrent
rejection of any kind of purely scenic elements (fig. 7).
But this is not the only way to portray the extraordinary iconographically
A French manuscript of the fifteenth century, which contains Mandeville4 s
Travels together with those of Marco Polo,26 both illustrated by the same hand
integrates everything worth seeing into a scenic frame, showing the travellers
themselves as they catch sight of their amazing discoveries. It is particularly
remarkable that the pictorial models used to illustrate both works are com¬
pletely identical: for Marco Polo4s ride through the land of wonders, where he is
observed by hairy wild men, the same iconographic model is used as for John of
Mandeville and his companion upon meeting wild animals.27 But such repeated
use of traditional iconographic models is not especially surprising, it was rather
normal practice, even with the illustrations of such different texts as
Mandeville‘s fictional travel ‘romance4 and Marco Polo's much more ‘factual*
account. What is really remarkable is that portrayals of sciopods and blemmiae
find their way even into the illustrations of Marco Polo‘s report, although he
never mentions them: the authority of the iconographic tradition and the ex¬
pectation of monsters as a matter of course in a report on strange lands were
obviously stronger than the details that the text itself had to offer.2®
The meeting with the ‘other4 outside the familiar ordo takes place not
only in the bounds of factual literature like natural histories or travel accounts
but also in epic narrative literature. An intermediate position between purely
fictional texts and those with a greater claim to truthfulness is assumed by the
historical epic, in particular the genre of the antique romance, specifically the
30

history of Alexander the Great, which is also a tale of travel, particularity of
military ‘travel* in strange lands: In a fifteenth century illustrated English
manuscript29 the romance of Alexander is bound together with Marco Polo‘s
travels: to their readers both texts seemed to be of the same type. In large part
fictional and enriched with wonderful and fantastic stories, the accounts of
Alexander were still received as historia. Thus the title of Johannes Hartlieb‘s
later version of the material30 reads Die histori von dem grossen Alexander—a
true history with its proper place in the historical system of the five ‘World
Ages.‘ And the historical truth extends to the meeting of Alexander with
fabulous creatures, wild men and cyclops, even to the Greek Pseudo-Callis-
thenes31 and to Latin versions of the Historia de preliis:32 As with actual human
opponents, for instance Porus and his battle elephants, so Alexander likewise
fights with the dog-headed cynocephali (fig. 8). The vernacular versions in
particular take pleasure in these encounters with the non-human, so e.g. the
German retelling by Ulrich of Etzenbach,33 which was was inserted in large
parts into the world chronicle of Heinrich of Munchen and illustrated only
there34—an indication of the claim to historical truth even of these histories.
Alexander himself also transgresses the human limits, as can be deduced
from his appearance, recorded in his portrayal which appears at the beginning
of a fifteenth century manuscript35 of Johann Hartlieb‘s Historia (fig. 9),
introducing also the oldest illustrated print36 of the work: instead of human hair,
Alexander wears a lion‘s mane, he has eyes of two colours, and wild boars*
tusks grow from his mouth. The Alexander-romance with its descriptions and
its illustrations of monstrous creatures is in a way the link between the purely
factual interest in demonic creatures outside the human ordo, which stand there
for the foreign, the geographically different, even the threatening other, and the
portrayal of the conceptually distant as the non-human in this fictional context.
To conclude, let us look at our literary material and its iconographic
realisation: Almost all literary genres of courtly narrative in the Middle Ages
are populated by fabulous creatures and non-human beings. E.g. the ‘S^iel-
mannsepik/ where the protagonist meets the crane people in Herzog Ernst, in
Germanic heroic epics, both of the Nibelung and of the Dietrich tales, the
heroes have to fight not only with dragons and wild men, but are faced with a
genealogically established counter-world of dwarves and giants. A good third of
all woodcuts of the earliest German inclinable of the Book of Heroes, the
Strasbourg Heldenbuch of around 1472,38 portray battles with these dwarves
and giants (fig. 10). And at the Runkelstein castle near Bozen in Southern
Tyrolia (Italy), the traditional nine worthies39—the three best heroes of the three
worlds, heathen, Jewish and Christian-are complemented not only with the
three most famous heroes of the Arthurian romance, the three best known
couples of lovers from the courtly ‘Minne‘-romances, but also with the three
most famous giants, the three strongest women giants and the three most
outstanding dwarves from heroic literature.40
31

The shaping factor in the courtly ‘Minne4- and 4 Aventiure4-romance is
the polarity of inside and outside, the tension between a residence at court,
which represents the ordo of the world, and the travels through strange lands
where the knightly heroes must defend and define themselves. This outside is
the opposite of the social order, it is chaos and the counter-world, where one
meets not only one's like-knights who are also on their different but similar
way—, but also demonic creatures. At the beginning of Hartmann von Aue‘s
Iwein4] and of its model, Chretien de Troyes4 Yvain42 a central factor of
identification in the courtly romance, the aventiure, is defined: In answer to the
question, “aventiure? waz ist daz?44 (v. 527), Kalogreant relates the history of
his own aventiure, which Iwein then decides to imitate.43 An important element
of this aventiure is a wild man, the lord of wild animals, who functions as a
guardian of a magic fountain. The French manuscripts of Yvain do not illustrate
this scene,44 and the German version of Iwein is not transmitted with illustra¬
tions; but there do exist two frescoe cycles of the material, one of them the
oldest monographic testimonies in profane literature as such, the Iwein frescoes
at Rodenegg castle in Southern Tyrolia, created shortly after Hartmann's ro¬
mance.45 The cycle, which is devoted to just this aventiure of identification
begins with a wild man, surrounded by stags, dogs and wildcats (fig. 11): his
head, according to the text, was larger than that of an aurochs (“zeware im was
sin houbet / groezer dan einem ure“), with unkempt hair and beard (“verwalken
zuo der swarte / an houbet unde an barte44), his broad brow was wrinkled (“dem
ungeviiegen manne / waren granen und bra / lane ruch und gra44), his ears as
wide as a bath tub (“ouch waren im diu oren / [...] / breit alsam ein wanne44), the
nose as big as that of an ox (“diu nase als einem ohsen groz44), his mouth like a
pig4s snout (“als ein eber“).46 He is the embodiment of the ‘other world,4 in
which the knight has to complete his aventuire and brave its adversities, the
signs of the ‘outside,4 the non-order, possibly even of the sinful and the wicked
Biblical representatives of evil, Nebuchadnezzar for instance, are similarly
depicted as wild men, e.g. in a German universal chronicle47 manuscript from
around 1385 (fig. 12), which was probably illustrated in Northern Italy. The
ugly as embodiment of evil, it seems, is always a central motif in the
iconography of monsters from scientific texts to fictional literature. Symbols of
the geographically distant-and thus also threatening-world outside the known
world in the natural histories, symbols of the world outside the knight4 s courtly
society in fictional literature, these monsters and wild men live on into the early
modem world. Then and there, however, they will be handled more playfully
displayed as symbols of the world turned upside down, as a parody of normal
human behaviour,—demonstrated in numerous tapestries of the Upper Rhine on
which wild men and women behave like the heroes of courtly epic: a courtly
play in the costume of wild men.48 The dualism of good and evil, of the reason¬
able and the depraved, is here being dissolved like the social order itself.49
32

Illustrations:
eprn>rtttefr^v*i&	$Цяш4}ul
лгсо) iWfc ftitW wit iHiufjer
*~Г aaaMf
»• •
Fig. 1: The devil Belial. Jacobus de Theramo, Belial. Munich, Germany,
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 48, fol. 11v, 1461.
33

Fig. 2: Judge Solomon, Moses and Belial. Jacobus de Theramo, Belial. Munich,
Germany, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 552, fol. 178\ 1st half 15th century.
34

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Fig. 3: Monstrous races. Peter Kdnigschlacher's German version of Thomas de
Cantimpre's Z/Ъег de natura rerum. Stuttgart, Germany, Wttrttembergische
Landesbibliothek, Cod. med. etphys. 2° 15, fol. 5Г, 1472.
35

Fig. 4: Cynocephali at the miraculous fountain.
Konrad von Megenberg, Buck der Natur. Frankfurt, Germany, Stadt- und
UniversitStsbibliothek, Ms. Сапп. 1, fol. 333v, ca. 1444-49.
36

Fig. 5: Monstrous races. Konrad von Megenberg, Buck der Natur.
Augsburg incunabula, printed by Johannes Bamler 1475. Munich, Germany,
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 2° Inc. c.a. 347, fol. 284r.
37

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38
Fig. 6: Sciopod and blemmia. John of Mandeville’s Travels.
Stuttgart, Germany, Wtirttembergische Landesbibliothek,
Cod. theol. et philos. 2° 195,154v, ca. 1470-80.

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Augsburg incunabula, printed by Anton Sorg, 1480, fol. 64v.

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Fig. 8: Alexander’s fight with cynocephali. Ulrich von Etzenbach’s Alexander in Heinrich of Miinchen’s Weltchronik.
Munich, Germany, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 7377, fol. 212vbe, late 14 th century.

Fig. 9: Portrait of Alexander the Great Johannes Hartlieb, Alexander.
Darmstadt, Germany, Hessische Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek,
Hs. 4256, Г, 1461.
41

Fig. 10: A woman giant carries Wolfdietrich and his horse across the moun¬
tains.	Heldenbuch,printed by Johann Priiss in Strasbourg; ca. 1472, fol. 153r.

Fig. 11: The wild herdsman, Lord of the magic fountain. Wall-painting of Hartmann von Aue’s
u	Rodenegg castle, Southern Tyrolia, Italy, ca. 1220-30.
UJ

Fig. 12: Nebuchadnezzar as wild man. Rudolf von Ems, World chronicle
Kassel, Germany, Gesamthochschul-Bibliothek - Landesbibliothek und
Murhardsche Bibliothek der Stadt Kassel, 2° Ms. theol. 4, fol. 258v, ca. 1385
44

Notes:
1	Cf. Umberto Eco, Arte e bellezza nelV estetica medievale (Art and Beauty in Medieval
Esthetics) (Milano: Bompiani, 1987).
2	Robert Grosseteste, “Commentary on Dionysius: ‘Si igitur omnia communiter bonum
pulchrum ‘appetunt,4 idem est bonum et pulchrum’cf. Henri Pouillon, “La beauts, propri&e
transcendantale chez les Scolastiques (1220-1270),“ (Beauty as Transcendental Property in
Scholastic Literature, 1220-1270) Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litter air e du Moyen Age 21
(1946): 321. Alexander of Hales argues similarly: “Nam pulchrum dicit dispositionem boni
secundum est placitum apprehension!, bonum vero respicit dispositionem secundum quam
delectat affectionem.“ (For the beautiful appearance, reflecting of the good, is pleasant to
perceive, and in this outward reflection the inward truth becomes apprehensible), cf. his
Summa theologica, ed. Padri del Collegio S. Bonaventura, vol 1 (Quaracchi/Firenze:
Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1924), 103.
3	Nuremberg: Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Graphische Sammlung, Bredt 282/1. Cf.
Norbert H. Ott, Ulrike Bodemann, and Gisela Fischer-Heetfeld, Katalog der deutschsprachi-
gen illustrierten Handschriften des Mittelalters, Vol. 1 (Munich: Beck, 1991), no. 4.0.46. and
fig. 92.
4	Oxford: Bodleian Library, Ms. Laud. Misc. 469, fol. lv; cf. Leonie von Wilckens, “Das
Mittelalter und die ‘Wilden Leute‘,“ (The Middle Ages and the ‘Wild People’) Miinchner
Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst, 3d ser., vol. 45 (1994): 65-82, here 66 and fig. 2.
3 For the iconography of the devil cf. Beat Brenk, “Teufel,“ Lexikon der christlichen Ikono-
graphie, Vol. 4 (Rome et al.: Herder, 1972), 295-300; Luther Link, The Devil: A Mask
Without a Face, (London: Reaktion Books, 1995).
6	Reproductions courtesy Soprintendenza Provinciale Beni Culturali, Ufficio beni artistici,
Bolzano, Italy (fig, 11, photo Hubert Walder), and the cited libraries and museums (all other
photos).
7	Now in a private collection in the Netherlands and in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek,
Cgm 48 (cf. Ott, Bodemann, Fischer-Heetfeld, Katalog, nos. 13.0.21 and 13.0.16.).
8	For the text (Jacobus de Theramo's Belial) cf. Norbert H. Ott, Rechtspraxis und Heilsge-
schichte: Zu Uberlieferung, Ikonographie und Gebrauchssituation des deutschen 'Belial' (Ju¬
dicature and heilsgeschichte: The Tradition, Iconography, and Function of the German Belial)
(Munich: Artemis, 1980). Detailed descriptions of all illustrated manuscripts of Belial in the
Ott, Bodemann, Fischer-Heetfeld, Katalog, vol. 1, 22-86, nos. 13.0.1.-13.0.28.
9	Cf. Helma Sanders-Brahms, “Mythen unserer Welt,“ Kino-Movie-Cinema -100 Jahre Film
Eine Ausstellung der Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek (Berlin: Argon, 1995), 130-140.
10	Isidor, Etymologiae XI, 3: “De portends. 1. Portenta esse ait Varro, quae contra naturam,
nata videntur; sed non sunt contra naturam, quia divina voluntate flunt, cum voluntas
Creatoris cuiusque conditae rei natura sit. Unde et ipse gentiles Deum modo Naturam, modo
Deum appellant.~2. Portentum ergo fit non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura.“
Cf. Wallace M. Lindsay, Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri
45

XX, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). Cf. also Augustinus, De civitate Dei
XIV, 8.
11	Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum: Definitorum et Declarationum de rebus
fidei et morum 30. ed. (Freiburg: Herder, 1955), 428; cf. also Bernhard KOtting, “Damon,“
Lexikon fur Theologie und Kirche, 2d. ed., vol. 3 (Freiburg: Herder, 1986), 139-145, here 142
12	Ludocivus Ianus and Carolus Mayhoff, eds., C Plini Secundi Naturalis Historiae Libri
XXXVII, 6 vols. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1854-1865; reprint, Leipzig: Teubner, 1967).
13	Helmut Boese, ed., Thomas Cantimpratensis Liber de Natura Rerum (Berlin and New
York: de Gruyter, 1973).
14	Franz Pfeiffer, ed., Konrad von Megenberg: Das Buch der Natur (Stuttgart: n. p., 1861*
reprint, Hildesheim and New York: Olms, 1971).
15	Cf. Rudolf Wittkower, “Marvels of the EastJournal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes, 5 (1942): 159-187; John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art
and Thought (Cambridge, Mass, and London: Harvard University Press, 1981); Rudolf
Simek, Erde und Kosmos im Mittelalter: Das Weltbild vor Kolumbus (Munich: Beck, 1992).
16	E.g. Oxford: Bodleian Library, MS Douce 88; London: Sion College, MS ARC L. 40
2/L.28; Cambridge: University Library, MS Kk.4.25; London: British Library, MS Cotton
Tiberius B.v.
17	Formerly London: A. Chester Beatty Collection, MS 80. Cf. Friedman, Monstrous Races
fig. 7.
18	Stuttgart: Wttrttembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. med. et phys. 2° 15, fol. 51r.
19	Cf. Gerold Hayer, Konrad von Megenberg, 'Das Buch der Natur:' Untersuchungen zu
seiner Text- und Uberlieferungsgeschichte (Tilbingen: Niemeyer; 1997). Detailed descriptions
of all illustrated manuscripts in Ott, Bodemann, Fischer-Heetfeld, Katalog, vol 3, fasc. 1 and
2.
20	For the illustrated incunabulas of the Buch der Natur printed in Augsburg by Johann
Bflmler in 1475, 1478, 1481, by Anton Sorg in 1482, and by Johann Schdnsperger in 1482
und 1499, cf. Ott, Bodemann, Fischer-Heetfeld, Katalog, nos. 22.1.a.-22.If. The illustrated
Alsatian manuscripts of the Diebold Lauber workshop from the middle of the fifteenth century
also contain plates of those monstrosities, e.g. Frankfurt: Stadt- und Universit&tsbibliothek
Ms. Carm. 1, fol. 333v.; Heidelberg: Universitatsbibliothek, Cod. Pal. germ. 300, fol. 357v
and 360v.; cf. Ott, Bodemann, Fischer-Heetfeld, Katalog, nos. 22.1.7. and 22.1.9.
21	Cf. Vienna Genesis, w. 1282-1313, in Viktor Dollmayr, ed., Die altdeutsche Genesis: Nach
der Wiener Handschrift (Halle: Niemeyer, 1932); Kathryn Smits, ed., Die fruhmittelhoch-
deutsche Wiener Genesis (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1972), 135-137. The passage is also dis¬
cussed by Roy Wisbey, “Marvels of the East in the Wiener Genesis and in Wolfram‘s Parzi-
va/,“in William Douglas Robson-Scott, ed., Essays in German and Dutch Literature (London-
University of London, 1973), 1-41.
46

22	Paris: Bibliotheque nationale, ms. lat. nouv. acqu. 1366.
23 Cf. Konrad Miller, Mappaemundi: Die altesten Weltkarten, (The Oldest Maps of the
World) 6 vols. (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1895-1898), vol. 4, 45 (Hereford map), vol. 5, 59-62,
74 (Ebstorf map); John B. Harley, The History of Cartography, Vol. 1 Cartography in Pre¬
historic, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and in the Mediterranean (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1987), pi. 14 (Cornwall map); Hartmut Kugler, “Die Ebstorfer
Weltkarte. Ein europ&isches Weltbild im deutschen Mittelalter,“ (The Ebstorf Map: A
European View of the World from the German Middle Ages) Zeitschrift fur deutsches Alter-
tum und deutsche Literatur, 116 (1987): 1-29.
24	Cf. Ernst Bremer, “Mandeville, Jean de,“ Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Ver-
fasserlexikon, ed. Kurt Ruh at al., vol. 5 (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1985), 1201-
1214. Edition of the French and the English version in George F. Warner, ed., The Вике of
John Maundeuill, being the travels of Sir John Mandeville, knight 1322-1356: a hitherto un¬
published English Version, from the unique copy (Egerton ms. 1982) in the British Museum:
edited together with the French text, notes, and an introduction (Westminster: The Roxburghe
Club, 1889). Editions of the German versions cf. Eric John Morrall, ed., Sir John Mandevilles
Reisebeschreibung in deutscher Obersetzung von Michael Velser (Sir John Mandeville’s
Travel Narrative in Michael Velser’s German Translation) (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1974);
Edward Warren Crosby, ed., Otto von Diemeringen: A German Version of Sir Mandeville's
Travels' (PhD. diss., University of Kansas, 1965); Ernst Bremer and Klaus Ridder, eds. Jean
de Mandeville, Reisen: Reprint der Erstdrucke der deutschen Obersetzungen Michel Velser
(Augsburg, bei Anton Sorg, 1480) und des Otto von Diemeringen (Basel, bei Bernhard Richel,
1480/81) (Jean the Mandeville’s Travels: Reprints of the First Imprints of the German
Translations by Michel Velser and Otto von Diemeringen) (Hildesheim, Zurich, New York:
Olms, 1991).
25	For the manuscripts and prints of the German Diemeringen version cf. Klaus Ridder, Jean
de Mandevilles ‘Reisen: ‘ Studien zur Oberlieferungsgeschichte der deutschen Ubersetzung
des Otto von Diemeringen (Jean de Mandeville’s Travels: Studies in the Tradition of Otto von
Diemeringen’s German Translation) (Munich and Zurich: Artemis, 1991), 32-143; for the
illustrated prints cf. Bremer and Ridder, Jean de Mandeville, XIII-XXVIII. Also illustrated is
the 1459 manuscript in New York: Public Library, Spencer Collection, Ms. 37 , as well as two
manuscripts of the Middle Low German version (Berlin: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - PreuBi-
scher Kulturbesitz, Ms. germ. fol. 204, first half of the fifteenth century; LUneburg: Rats-
btlcherei, Hist. C. 2° 8, first half of the fifteenth century).
26	Paris: Bibliothdque nationale, Ms. fr. 2810.
27	Marco Polo: fol. 15v., Mandeville: fol. 182r., cf. Friedman, Monstrous Races, fig. 48 and
53. For Marco Polo‘s Travels cf. Ernst Bremer, “Polo, Marco,“ Die deutsche Literatur des
Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, vol. 7 (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1989), 771-775.
28	Cf. Friedman, Monstrous Races, 154.
29	Oxford: Bodleian Library. MS 264.
30	Reinhard Pawis, ed., Johann Hartliebs 'Alexander ’ (Munich and Zurich: Artemis, 1991).
47

31	Wilhelm Kroll, ed., Historic Alexandri Magni (Pseudo-Callisthenes). I: Recensio Vetusta
(Berlin: Weidmann, 1926).
32	Hermann-Josef Bergmeister, ed., Historia de preliis Alexandri magni: Synoptische Edition
der Rezensionen des Leo Archipresbyter und der interpolierten Fassungen jl, fi, (Buck /
und II) (The Latin Romance of Alexander in the Middle Ages: Synoptic Edition of Leo
Archipresbyter’s Recensions and the Interpolated Renditions) (Meisenheim am Gian: Anton
Hain, 1975).
33	Wendelin Toischer, ed., Alexander von Ulrich von Eschenbach (Tiibingen: Hiersemann
1888; reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1974).
34	Cf. Norbert H. Ott, “Ulrichs von Etzenbach Alexander illustriert. Zum Alexanderstoff
den Weltchroniken und zur Entwicklung einer deutschen Alexander-Ikonographie im 14
Jahrhundert,“ (The Illustrated Alexander by Ulrich von Etzelsbach: The Alexander-Topic in
World Chronicles and the Development of an German Alexander-Icongraphy in the fourteenth
Century) Walter Haug, Timothy R. Jackson, and Johannes Janota, eds., Zur deutschen Litera-
tur und Sprache des 14. Jahrhunderts: Dubliner Colloquium 1981 (Dublin Convention on the
German Language and Literature of the Fourteenth Century) (Heidelberg: Winter, 1983), 155»
172. For Heinrich of MUnchen cf. Norbert H. Ott, “Heinrich von Miinchen,“ Die deutsche
Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, ed. Kurt Ruh et al., vol. 3 (Berlin and New York-
de Gruyter,1981), 827-837; Gisela Komrumpf, “Die Weltchronik Heinrichs von Mtinchen: Zu
Uberlieferung und Wirkung,“ (Heinrich of Munich’s World Chronicle: Tradition and Re¬
ception) Festschrift fUr Ingo Reiffenstein, ed. Peter K. Stein, (GOppingen: Ktimmerle I9gg\
493-509.	* )y
35	Darmstadt: Hessische Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek, Hs. 4256. Detailed description in
Ott, Bodemann, Fischer-Heetfeld, Katalog, vol. 1, no. 3.3.1. Cf. JUrgen Vorderstemann
Johann Hartliebs Alexanderbuch. Eine unbekannte illustrierte Handschrift von 1461 (Johann
Hartlieb’s Book of Alexander: An Unknown Illustrated Manuscript of 1461) (GOppineen-
Ktimmerle, 1976).
36	Augsburg: Johann Bdmler, 1473; cf. Ott, Bodemann, Fischer-Heetfeld, Katalog, no. 3.3 a .
facsimile ed. by Hans Friebertshfluser, Alexander (Hildesheim and New York: Olms, 1975)	’
37	The scene is depicted in the prints and in the so-called Dresdner Heldenbuch, written in
1472: Dresden: Sfichsische Landesbibliothek, Mscr. Dresd. M 201, fol. 264v.
38	Facsimile ed. by Joachim Heinzle, Heldenbuch: Nach dem altesten Druck in Abbilduns?
herausgegeben, Vol. 1 Abbildungsband (GOppingen: Ktimmerle, 1981); Vol. 2 Kommentar-
band (ibid., 1987) (Facsimile Edition of the ‘Heldenbuch,* vol. 1: Illustrations, vol. 2-
Commentary); cf. Norbert H. Ott, “Die Heldenbuch-Holzschnitte und die Ikonographie des
heldenepischen Stofikreises,“ (Woodcuts from the ‘Heldenbuch,’ and the Iconography Qf
Heroic Epic Motivs) ibid., vol. 2, 245-296.
39	Cf. Horst Schroeder, Der Topos der 4Nine Worthies4 in Literatur und bildender Kunst (The
Topic of the Nine Worthies in Literature and the Arts) (Gdttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
1971); Norbert H. Ott, “Neun Gute Helden,“ (Nine Good Heroes) Lexilcon des Mittelalters
(Lexicon of the Middle Ages) vol. 6. (Munich and Zurich: Artemis 1993), 1104-1106.
48

40 Cf. Joachim Heinzle, “Die Triaden auf Runkelstein und die mittelhochdeutsche
Heldendichtung,“ (The Triads from Runkelstein, and the Middle High German Heroic Epic)
in Walter Haug et al., Runkelstein: Die Wandmalereien des Sommerhauses (Runkelstein: The
Summer House Frescoes) (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert, 1982), 63-99.
41	Ludwig Wolff, G. F. Benecke, and Karl Lachmann, eds. Iwein: Eine Erziihlung von Hart¬
mann vonAue, 7th ed. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968).
42	Editions in Wendelin Foerster, ed., Chretien de Troyes, Yvain 4th ed. (Halle: Niemeyer,
1912); Mario Roques, ed., Chretien de Troyes: Le Chevalier au Lion (Paris: Champion,
1982).
43 Cf. Hedda Ragotzky and Barbara Weinmayer, “Hdfischer Roman und soziale
Identitatsbildung: Zur soziologischen Deutung des Doppelwegs im ‘Iwein‘ Hartmanns von
Aue,“ (Courtly Epic and Social Identification: A Sociological Interpretation of the Double
Route in Hartman von Aue’s Iwein) in Christoph Cormeau, ed., Deutsche Literatur im
Mittelalter: Kontakte und Perspektiven, Hugo Kuhn zum Gedenken (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979),
211-253, here 216-218 and n. 10. In the Chrdtien manuscript, Princeton: University Library,
Garrett 125, the scene of Kalogreant telling his story is depicted in an initial A fol. 4o.r., cf.
James A. Rushing, “The Adventures of the Lion King: Story and Picture in the Princeton
Yvain “ Princeton University Library Chronicle, 52, 1 (1991): 31-49, fig. on page 45.
44	Only Paris, Biblioth£que nationale, ms. fr. 1433, contains fol. 65r, an illustration of the
adventure of the Magic Fountain, but without the Wild Herdsman; cf. Keith Busby, et al., eds.
The Manuscripts of Chritien de Troyes, 2 vols. (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1993), vol.
2, fig. 310.
45	Cf. Norbert H. Ott and Wolfgang Walliczek, “Bildprogramm und Textstruktur:
Anmerkungen zu den 'Iwein'-Zyklen auf Rodeneck und in Schmalkalden,“ (Pictorial Program
and Textual Structure: Remarks Concerning the Iwein-Cycles on Rodeneck and in Schmal-
kalden) Cormeau, Deutsche Literatur im Mittelalter, 473-500; Anne-Marie Bonnet, Rodenegg
und Schmalkalden (Munich: tuduv, 1986); James A. Rushing, Images of Adventure: Yvain in
the Visual Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). The second frescoe
cycle of Iwein in Schmalkalden, Thuringia, depicts in two scenes Iwein pouring water onto
the well as well as Iwein*s encounter with the Wild Man.
46	Hartmann von Aue, Iwein, vv. 425-470.
47	Kassel: Gesamthochschul-Bibliothek - Landesbibliothek und Murhardsche Bibliothek der
Stadt Kassel, 2° Ms. theol. 4, fol. 258v.
48	For the tapestries cf. Anna Rapp Buri and Monica Stucky-Schtlrer, zahm und wild’: Easier
und Strafiburger Bildteppiche des 15. Jahrhunderts (‘Wild and Tame:’ Fifteenth Century
Gobelins from Basel and Strasbourg) (Mainz: Philipp van Zabem, 1990), here 52-54; for the
wild men cf. Richard Bemheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages: A Study in Art, Sentiment
and Demonology (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1952); Die wilden Leute
des Mittelalters (The Wild People in the Middle Ages), exhibition catalogue (Hamburg:
Museum filr Kunst und Gewerbe, 1963); Timothy Husband, The Wild Man: Medieval Myth
and Symbolism (New York: Metropolitan Museum, 1980).
49

49	See Barbara A. Babcock, ed., The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society
(Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1978).	^
50

Sibylla led astray: Sibyls in Medieval Literature
Winfried Frey
The Emperor Augustus, who--for various reasons-had an interest in
either reviving old sacral institutions and customs of the Romans or
strengthening the still existent ones1, relates in Monumentum Ancyranum, chap.
7: “Pontifex maximus, augur, quindecimvirum sacris faciundis, septemvirum
epulonum, frater arvalis, sodalis Titius, fetialis fui.“ (Pontifex Maximus, augur
was I, belonged to the priestly council of the Quindecimviri and the Septemviri^
was a member of the fraternity of Arval, the sodality of Titius and the Fetials.)2
Amongst these incumbents, it was the duty of the highly esteemed Quindecim¬
viri to look after the Sibylline books. As a member of this board, Augustus
contributed much to the keeping and the filing of the Sibylline texts which were
preserved for occasional usage until the times of the Late Roman Empire.
To speak about the pre-Roman and (pagan) Roman history of the
Sibylline books is neither the occasion nor is there enough time. And by a hair's
breadth there would also have been nothing at all to say about the history of the
Sibyls after the decline of the Roman Empire. As relics of Pagan times, they
could-like so many others-have become obsolete and thus doomed to de¬
struction, had there not been a Jewish and later a Christian parallel tradition: the
Oracula Sibyllina} These prophecies and interpretations of history had been
passed off as originating from the Sibyls, and they had already been used as a
source in the apologetic works of the Early Fathers Theophilus of Antioch and
Clement of Alexandria (both later second century). The question whether the
authors and interpolators consciously monopolized both dignity and reputation
of Roman names and institutions for the Christian Apologetics and oracles, or
whether simply a current pattern had been chosen, has remained a moot point
until today.
Anyhow, these works were being elevated thereby, and attracted thus the
attention of and received recognition by such distinguished theologians as
Lactantius (ca. 240-ca. 320) and St. Augustine (354-430). Augustine, this great
Father of the Church, quotes in De Civitate Dei a passage from the prophecies
of the Erythrean Sibyl (who had come from the Oracula Sibyllina). This is an
apocalyptic passage6 whose acrostic forms the word ‘ICHTHYS‘~the well
known and by Augustine‘s time century-old word symbolizing Christ. The
Bishop of Hippo then continues:
Haec autem Sibylla sive Erythrea sive, ut quidam magis credunt,
Cumaea ita nihil habet in toto carmine suo, cuius exigua ista particula
est, quod ad deorum falsorum sive factorum cultum pertineat, quin
immo ita etaim contra eos et contra cultores eorum loquitur, ut in eorum
numero deputanda videatur, qui pertinent ad civitatem Dei.
(This Erythrean or, as others prefer, Cumaean Sibyl brings in all her singing ...
nothing that had the least to do with the adoration of false, man-made gods; on
the contrary she speaks unmistakably against them and their worshippers, so
51

that she has to be counted amongst the ones that belong to the kingdom of God
on earth.)7
The Sibyls are thus lifted out of the Roman-Pagan sphere and transferred
into the context of Christian faith. It should be emphasised that the Sibylline
texts, whose ‘Christian4 parts were definitely written after the first century, are
objectively vaticinia ex eventu (and in that respect they do not differ from the
corresponding passages in Matt. 24 and 25, and Luke 21); but it is precisely for
their reputed old age that Christian adaptation regards them as Pagan witnesses
for Christianity before the birth of Christianity: Augustine dates them back to
the Trojan War. And certainly this did not happen by mere chance: you just
have to consider the legend of the origin of Rome and its meaning, especially in
the Augustian era, and how the connection with the incarnation of God in Jesus
in the time of Augustus confirmed its authority. The Sibyls and the texts
ascribed to them become thus, without losing the dignity that has been vouched
for in the Roman tradition, somehow ‘tamed* witnesses against the Pagans and
against the Jews. They become part of the Christian-Occidental cultural canon
and serve to confirm canonical texts and their exegesis by Christian theolo¬
gians.
This beginning of the Christian Sibyl tradition determines the areas—of
Heilsgeschichte as well as of polemics~for which the Sibyls will be
‘responsible4 from now on. The topics related to the Heilsgeschichte range from
Christ4 s life on earth, from his Nativity and Passion to the Ascension, the
destruction of Jerusalem, and the eschatology. Evidence of the latter can be
found in the death liturgy of the catholic church up to the twentieth century, щ
the first stanza of the DIES IRE:“ Dies ire dies ilia / sol vet seclum in favilla /
teste david cum sibilla.“8
At first the polemics-if articulated at all~were directed at the sinfulness
of Christian people in general but also at the Jews, an outgroup to which the
polemics finally turned when the pagans as their rivals had been eliminated at
least from the Occident. The anti-Jewish polemic is inherent in (Christian^
Sibyllinic texts and has already been worded in the first book of the Oracula
Sibyllina.9
This section does not only refer clearly to the life of Jesus and the de¬
struction of Jerusalem, it quotes, in parts verbatim, the text of the Gospels and
can, therefore, --as it presupposes the knowledge of the Gospel in the Greek-
speaking world-hardly have been written prior to the second century; the anti-
Roman impetus might have originated in the Jewish tradition itself. Sibyls
according to fiction a being that is, one has to bear in mind, pagan~has had put
into her mouth all the tenets disputed between Christianity and Judaism as
Christian religious truths. Lines 324f. emphasize as prophetic truths what is
impossible to believe in Judaism: the conceptions of Jesus as Son of God and of
his divine and human double nature (conceptions not undisputed even within
Christianity).
52

Line 332 quotes Matt. 5.17: “Do not suppose that I have come to abolish
the Law and the prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to complete.44 This
could be interpreted against Judaism insofar as disbelief in Jesus as Christ was a
deviation from the tradition which was supposed not to be solved by him but to
be fulfilled—one of the central beliefs of Christians as opposed to Jews until the
Jewish-Christian dialogue at the end of the twentieth century.
The passage is followed by a selection of stages from the life of Jesus
and, after the missing link in the chain of tradition there follows the ‘prophecy4
of the Passion~in which the Jews4 guilt had been declared all along—and the
disastrous consequences for the whole world are described: Israel is uncon¬
scious, ‘blinded4 (a translation that follows Christian iconography rather than
the Greek text), and therefore does not recognise the Son of God—ox and ass in
the Christmas crib, cf. Isa. 1.3, remind us of it until today. Israel, conceived of
as a collective, tortures Jesus with slaps in the face and poisonous saliva, pro¬
vides him with vinegar and gall for drink, Israel is as blind as a mole and more
terrible than venomous snakes. The new scion (v. 383) is, of course, (heathen)
Christianity, no longer guided by prophets who are dismissed as Israel's belief
but led by sages who we are invited to identify as the Apostles and the Early
Fathers of the Church. Verses 387-389 prophesy the catastrophe of the year 70
and interprets it as a punishment for the ‘murder of God.4 The Diaspora of the
Jews is ‘predicted4 as well as their ‘roaming4 about the world. However, this is
also set into the context of the Heilsgeschichte: the restless Jews irritate the
peoples and are the cause of violent turmoils; the image of the 4 Wandering Jew4
has one of its roots here, as well as the notion of worldwide and eternal enmity
between ‘the4 Jews and ‘the4 Christians. The punishment for their responsibility
for the death of Jesus and for wrongs they will, according to Sibyllinic
prophecy, make themselves guilty of in the further course of history, is unequi¬
vocally expressed by the allusion to the ‘Parable of the Tares in the Wheat;’ as
the tares will be burned at harvest time, so ‘the Jews4 will roast in the fires of
hell.
Both areas remained connected—though without particular anti-Jewish
emphasis--, for instance in the cantus sibille, which “on Christmas Eve . . . was
sung during the second nocturne, after the sixth lection, which had been taken
from chapters 12-24 of the 18th book of Augustine's De Civitate Dei“10 or in
the liturgic drama Ordo prophetarum from around 1100, “which was performed
on Christmas44*1 —as Christmas, throughout the Middle Ages, has been seen and
understood only in connection with Christ's Passion and the end of the world.
I will leave out the texts in the traditon of Virgil in which Sibyl is
presented as a guide into and within the underworld. For my topic they need not
be considered, with the exception of one feature sometimes characterizing
Sibyls in Christian tradition, too: their demonic appearance. At the beginning of
book VI of the Aeneid, Virgil sends the Cumaean Sibyl into a visionary trance
that distorts her features:
53

cui talia fanti / ante fores subito non vultus, non color unus, / non
comptae mansere comae; sed pectus anhelum, / et rabie fera corda
tument, maiorque y^deri / nec mortale sonans, adflata est numine quando
/ iam propiore dei.
(The translation follows the German of Emil Staiger: Thus, in front of the
portals, she spoke, and her countenance altered and so did her colour. And her
hair stood on end, she puffed and panted, madness filled her breast, she seemed
to grow and her voice did not sound human any longer when the breath of the
approaching deity touched her.)
In his Eneasroman Heinrich von Veldeke, with a little stimulus from the
Roman d'Eneas, turns this significant expression of trance into a description of
the horrifying normal condition of Sibyl.
Since the thirteenth century the Sibyls (at first in the singular form or at
most the three traditional ones: the Erythrean, the Cumaean and the Tiburtinian
who had come to the West from the Eastern Roman Empire) have been
mentioned in vernacular texts-for reasons of competence, I will focus in the
following on German texts. The epos Erldsung, for instance, which dates from
the early fourteenth century and is written in the tradition of the Heilsge-
schichte, uses the passage Augustine had quoted from the Oracula Sibylline*
together with an acrostic formed from German verses to IHESVS CRISTUS
AIOS THEYSOTHER™ as evidence for den heimelichen godes rat:
Wult ir geme пй vememen, / wie ez den heiden mag gezemen, / daz sie
verkunden godes wort, / so moget ir horen wunder vort. / la die
heidenische maget / Sibilla was gar unverzaget / an dirre selben
bodeschaft. / Von gode hatte sie die kraft, / daz sie so wol gekundet hat /
den heimelichen godes rat / als ieman in der juden art. / Sie hat lutzel it
gespart, / waz wunders got hat ufgeleit, / sie enhabe iz allez vor geseit. /
Die dine sie kunftecliche sach, / in ir schrifte die maget sprach.15
(If you would like to hear how the Pagans preach the Word, you will hear
wondrous things. Because the pagan virgin Sibyl was surely present at this
prophecy. God has given her the gift to announce His inscrutable ways like
anyone of the Jewish people. All the miraculous plans of God she has foretold
She saw into the future and says in her writing.)
Following the classical model that, “in accordance with the canon of the
Attic orators4*16 knew up to ten Sibyls, the number of Sibyls increased-though
not continuously-during the Middle Ages at first to twelve, corresponding with
the holy number of Apostles, later to thirteen Sibyls, which were also
represented in iconography.
As an example of the German tradition of plays I have chosen the listing
of twelve Sibyls in the Luzerner Antichristspielxl by Zacharias Bletz from 1549
At the end of the play, when the followers of Christ and Antichrist fight for
supremacy, the character Cleophas relates in more than 100 verses all those
Sibylline prophecies that ‘prove4 the true nature of Christianity and that, so he
assumes, have already been confirmed by the course of world history. Zacharias
54

Bletz, the well-read chronicler of Lucerne, then names: “Sibilla agrippa, Sibilla
libica, Sibilla telphica, Sibilla frigia, Sibilla samia, Sibilla eiiropa, Sibilla
persica, Sibilla saba, Sibilla erittrea, Sibilla cumana, Sibilla chimica, Sibilla
thiburtia(m).“18
Cleophas ends his revue of Sibyls by challenging the followers of
Antichrist to present on their part a similar quantity of written praise attributed
to their idol. But the only response which Cleophas receives is a sneering from
Gog, an infidel who claims that the Sibylline prophecies are mere Weibertand
und Weibermarchen (old wives4 gossip and twaddle)—statements which expose
Gog once and for all as an adversary of the true Christian faith. Cleophas then
refers to the prophetic book of Joel, where it says in chap. 2.28: “Thereafter the
day shall come/ when I will pour out my spirit on all mankind;/ your sons and
daughters shall prophesy/4 He interprets this passage as the Bible—that is of
God himself—hinting at the Sibyls. For the Christian mind, the Sibyls and
their prophecies therefore are to the same extent witnesses for the truth of
Christian salvation as the prophets are. In the play, nevertheless, this is of little
help, for the tradition of the Antichrist material demands the archangel Raphael
to intervene and kill the Antichrist.
Similar to the way Zacharias Bletz lays claim to the Sibyls, they are
presented in the famous xylography with the Oracula Sibillina from the middle
of the fifteenth century.2 Here is—primarily after the French fashion21—one
Sibyl pictured at a time, holding in her hand an item symbolizing her prophecy.
Above her head or on a banderole are inscribed her name, age, origin, and
appearance, while underneath the picture her prophecy is given. Illustrations
related to the pictures show in their upper half an event of Jesus* life, which is
connected to the prophecy of the respective Sibyl; underneath it a prophet and
an Evangelist are placed with a banderole, naming the relevant passage in the
Scriptures: the Christian faith and its tradition are thus confirmed threefold. I
am going to single out two examples:
Bletz begins with Sibilla agrippa: / Sibilla agrippa one leyd / jn einem
Rosenfarwen cleyd / hatt gerett am selben ortt: / (nend war!) das
vnsichtlich wortt / wurtt betastett, angrtirtt werden, / ein bringen alls ein
wurtz vff erden. / der wiirtt trocknet alls ein platt gseytt. 7 nitt wiirtt
erschynen syn hiipscheytt. / der mutterlich lyb wurtt vmbgen on miiyen.
/ gott wiirtt in ewiger freiid pliiyen. / vom ments^en wiirtt swort tretten
on pott / vss der muotter. swortt wiirtt poren gott.
The German text is hardly comprehensible without the Latin of the xylography,
reading in the editors* translation as follows: “The invisible word will be
touched and will germinate like a root; it will be parched like a leaf on the tree
and its fragility will no longer be recognizable. And God will weep, although he
is eternal joy, and he will be trampled upon by humanity (as though he were a
felon).**23
What the audience in Lucerne seems to miss is the reference to the life of
Jesus. For we notice that the saying of the Sibyl on the right side refers to the
55

flagelation of Jesus. The banderole beside Jesus quotes Ps. 37.18 of the Vulgate:
“Ego in flagella paratus,“ (I am prepared for the scourge) down on the left
David holds up a banderole presenting the text of Ps. 128.3: “supra dorsum
meum fabricabantur peccatores“ (The plowers plowed upon my back), down on
the right St. Matthew shows a banderole displaying the words: “Iesum flagela-
tum tradidit eis“ (27.26: he had Jesus flogged, and handed him over).
My second example is the Sibilla persica: “Nim war, du vnsinigs tier
wiirst tratten / din wurtz warlich gar vssgieten / jn dem himell vnnd der erden, /
aber gott wurtt geboren werden / jn der schoss der junckfrowen zum teyl / den
heyden zuo eim ewigen heyl.24 In this case the prediction of the Nativity is
comprehensible without an illustration, but again the Latin of the xylography is
more expressive: "Take notice, you wild and senseless animal (i.e. the famous
serpent that crawls out underneath the figure), that you will be trampled upon
and the Lord will be bom in the sphere of the earth, and the body and the lap of
a virgin will be the salvation of the peoples. And his feet will be in the diseases
of mankind."25
On the upper right Sibyl shows to the Emperor Augustus the Madonna
with the child in a halo and the quotation from St. John: “antequam Abraham
fuit ego sum“ (8.58: before Abraham was bom, I was); this is very the passage
of the Sibylline texts that formed the basis for the legend of the origin of Santa
Maria in Aracoeli on the Capitol of Rome. Down on the left David points to a
banderole with the psalm-verse: “non intellexerunt in tenebris ambulant44 (Ps.
81.5: You understand nothing, you walk in the dark), and St. John holds up a
banner displaying a sentence taken from the first chapter of his gospel: “lux in
tenebris lucet“ (1.5: The light shines on in the dark) Every Christian recognised
these verses as the first ones of the last Gospel in Mass.
Not all the Sibyls that Bletz has named are shown and introduced in the
xylography in this way; but he probably followed a tradition which, though
differing in order and assignment from our xylography, still belongs to the
same. To me it seems more important, however, that Bletz can obviously rely
on his Lucemian audience being familiar with the Sibylline tradition
Nevertheless, the possibility should be considered, that an author like Zacharias
Bletz, who devised his didactic concepts with utmost care,26 has made his figure
Cleophas present and explain pictures of the Sibyls to the figure of Gog—and
thus to the audience. Another possibility would be—although the existing text
does not indicate this—that Bletz authorized the depiction of the popular ‘living
images4 together with its pictorial program because only by this means it could
have been ensured that even an audience conversant with the Sibyls would have
understood the correlation and therefore the message of Cleophas. A particular
anti-Jewish accent can neither be detected in the Erlosung— it only repeats the
traditional emphasis of what the pagans, too, prophesied for Christianity—nor in
Zacharias Bletz who in a different way uses the traditional anti-Judaism as the
driving power of his action.
56

I would like to treat two other texts which monopolize the Sibyls in dif¬
ferent ways. Both mention or stage only one Sibyl. The first text—transmitted in
varying lengths and forms since the fourteenth century—dominated the manner
in which the Sibyl was conceived of throughout the Late Middle Ages. Until
today 44 manuscripts and numerous incunabula have emerged.27 The text is
known today as Sibyllen Buck or Sibyllenweissagung. It contains a history of
mankind from Creation to the End of the World, centering on the ‘Legend of the
Rood* (Kreuzesholzlegende) and the prophecies of the Sibyls. In this version of
the ‘Legend of the Cross,* the Sibyl—it is the one mentioned above as number
thirteen-represents the Queen of Sheba or is regarded as identical with her, who
in this scene traditionally encounters King Solomon.28
Amongst other things, one motif that had already been established in
literature (e.g. in Heinrich von Veldeke) and iconography for a considerable
space of time (e.g. at the Western portal of the Cathedral of Lyon) was re-used
in the Sibyllenweissagung: It portrays Sibyl as a demon who is subjected to a
symbolic act of‘Christianizing*—as Augustine had done before.
The thirteenth Sibyl, so the story runs, has heard of Solomon‘s wisdom, of his
luxurious temple, and his equally splendid court, and she arrives to find out if
all that she had been told was true. At that time, the piece of wood that had been
cut from the tree having grown out of Adam‘s skull, and which was to become
the Holy Cross, was regarded as a useless piece of timber. Unsuitable for the
building of the temple, it served as a beam bridging a creek.29 Before her
encounter with Solomon, the Sibyl had been described as: “dy frawe was
schone vnd rich / vnd hatte ein fus, der stont glich / als er ein gense fus were. /
des schampte sy sich gar sere, / doch ging sy domit vnd stont, / als ander leuth
uff yren fussen dunt. 0 (The Lady was beautiful and wealthy; but one of her
feet was like a goose-foot, which em-barrassed her very much. But she could
walk and stand on it like other people on their feet.). Solomon invites his guest
for dinner and, as Sibyl is supposed to cross the creek:
es fuget sich, das sy solt / vbir Adams paum den steck hyn gan. / sy
pleib da stille stan,/ pis sye das holcz gar wol besach / vnd wut durch
das wasser vnd den bach / dem holcz czu eren vnd czu wirdikeyt, / das
vbir das wasser was geleyt. / vnd vmb dy ere von gotes gewalt / ward
der gense fus gestalt / eins menschen fus dem andem glich; / des frauete
da Sibilla sich?1
(...it happened that she was asked to use the bridge made of Adam‘s tree. She
stopped and examined the beam carefully—and ended up wading through the
creek in reverence for the beam that served as a bridge. Because of her
respectfulness God transformed her goose-foot into a human foot, just like her
other one; and Sibyl was happy about it').
After this symbolic de-demonizing, Sibyl—following the tradition—
foretells the Nativity of Jesus and his agony, related with a strong emphasis on
the Jewish responsibility for the killing of Christ (vv. 285-300), the rise of
Christianity to world supremacy and the decline of the Jews: they will sink to
57

the state of servitudo camere (serfs of the Royal Treasury): “dy cristen seczen
keyser vnd herschaft / vnd gewynnent gewalt vnd craft. / der juden sol werden
gar wenig / vnd miissent den cristen syn vntertenig.“32
Modelled on the end of the first book of the Oracula Sibyllina, there
follow predictions of the consequences of the Jewish Diaspora: the confusion
among the peoples. These dire consequences, however, are adjusted to the
present in accordance with the prophecies of the Tiburtinian Sibyl, who foretold
the history of the Empire, by using letter symbolism.33 The predictions clearly
refer to the controversies over the succession to the throne in the Holy Roman
Empire during the fourteenth century: King A denotes Albrecht of Hapsburg,
King H is Heinrich VII of Luxemburg, King F is Friedrich {der Schone) of
Hapsburg, King L is Ludwig the Bavarian, and finally the election of the
Emperor Karl IV is ‘predicted/34 The text ends in a long lamentation over the
trends of the times, in which the author prompts the Sibyl to say everything he
himself regards as deplorable about the period and his contemporaries: perjury,
haughtiness and unchastity, the drapery of women‘s dresses, disobedience
against the church, fashionable hats, shoes with tumed-up toes, speaking with
forked tongues, unfair judges, disturbances within the church, greed and luxury
among the aristocracy.
After this excursion into the criticism of everyday life, Sibyl returns to
her ‘proper4 task: she foretells that the final emperor—who will, of course be
called Friedrich—will conquer Palestine. This final emperor has to give way to
the Antichrist, who, professing to be the Messiah of the Jews, is at last driven
into hell by God. The only event to follow is the announcement of the Last
Judgement. In this text Sibyl, no longer a demon, has been degraded to a
handmaid of a church-orientated catechist and critic of contemporary issues
whose pen is furthermore wielded by traditional anti-Judaism. The basic points
of the polemic against the Jews are their impenitence, their hatred against Christ
and the Christians, and their murder of God.
The last charge is the most explicit, though it is no longer Sibyl who
speaks but the polemical medieval catechist himself:
er [i.e Jesus] lart dy welt dogentlich, / wy sy koment zuo himelrich / vnd
wy sy solten myden / untugend czu alien czyten / vnd auch was tugent
were / vnd wy sy got erpuetten ere. / vmb das er lert dy worhyt, / so
dotet yn dy iudischeit / vnd fingen vnd bunten vnd schlugen yn / vnd
furthen yn fur gericht hyn. / dy erputhen ym laster vnd schande / vnd
detten ym pyn mancher hande. / das leyd er alles mit gedult, / vmb das
er biisset aller menschen schult. / da ym dy juden vil leydes angedaten /
vnd valsch gezugnis iiber in hatten, / da gaben sy umb dy gerechtikeyt
syn / falsch urtel iiber yn / vnd begonde^i siinderlich marter erdencken, /
das man yn solte an ein creuz hencken.
(In his Gospel he showed the people the path to heaven, he taught them chastity
piety, and how to live their lives without sin. Because he taught the truth, he
was seized by the Jews, bound and beaten, was put on trial and murdered. They
blasphemed against him, taunted and tortured him in many ways. All this he
58

suffered patiently to redeem the world from its sins. After the Jews had tortured
him, they bore false witness because of his righteousness. And they started
thinking about a way for making him suffer an exceptionally cruel martyrdom--
to hang him on the cross.)
The anti-Jewish potential of the Oracula Sibyllina, already more
noticeable than in the late Gospels, becomes even more conspicuous in my last
example of the many uses the Middle Ages made of the Sibyls.36 The text in
question belongs to a group of Shrovetide plays by the barber, surgeon, and
poet Hans Folz, who was bom in Worms. By the second half of the fifteenth
century, he had established himself as a citizen of the city of Nuremberg-not
least by his literary work. Folz composed numerous mastersongs, poems in
rhyming couplets, and those Shrovetide plays, of which he had quite a few
printed in his own print shop, a singularity in the German history of literature.37
Written around 1490, the title of the play we are concerned with reads
Ein spil von dem herzogen von Burgund.38 It is the last in a series of three
Shrovetide plays of which it forms a terrible climax. In this series, Folz
propagates and legitimates publicly the policy of the Magistrate of Nuremberg,
which after 1470 had aimed at the expulsion of the Jews: In 1498/99 the Jews of
Nuremberg were expelled from the city with the Emperor's permission; and it
was not before the beginning of the nineteenth century that Jews were allowed
to settle in Nuremberg again.
Edith Wenzel has characterized these three plays, of which the first and
second one had been written and performed around 1474/75 , as follows:
In the play of the Alt und пей ее (The old and new bond) Folz brings the
Talmud and therefore all the sacred scriptures into discredit, a popular
and successful strategy to combat religious opponents, which has also
been used by modem anti-Semitism. In the play of Kaiser Constantinus
(The Emperor Constantine), Christian and Jewish exegesis are con¬
trasted and the Christian faith triumphs. The Spiel vom Herzog von
Burgund (Play of the Duke of Burgundy) finally unmasks the Jewish
awaiting of the Messiah as a fraud.3
In the last of the Anti-Judaistic Shrovetide plays there certainly is—in
accordance with the Shrovetide tradition—no lack of coarse, coprolalic and
obscene expressions~at the expense of the Jews. But, furthermore, it is an
Antichrist play in the tradition of the aforementioned Sibyllenweissagung,
which links Sibyl and Antichrist. Yet in this case the Sibyl does not foretell
anything; instead she tries to change the actual course of events. From the start,
the scene is a tribunal; the ‘Duke of Burgundy,4 standing for Philipp (der Scho-
ne\ son of the Emperor Maximilian I and Mary of Burgundy, who indeed had
been to Nuremberg with his father in 1491 (whether he arrived before or after
the performance, or even attended the play remains a moot point), is seated on
the stage throughout the play, at first as the representative of King Solomon. He
welcomes Sibilla, who had been announced by the Herolt (herald) as Sibilla or
pro[p]hetin (prophetess)(v. 170,2), even as ein ware profpjhetin (a true
59

prophetess)(v. 170,16). She herself claims that her sole raison d' etre is to
unmask the false statements made by the Jews that their Messiah had arrived
and is prepared to win the rule over the world. It is here already that Folz
deviates from the scenario of the original in that the scene is placed in the actual
time of the performance--a time in which the Jews again and again hope for the
Messiah4 s arrival and are disappointed again and again. But it is also a time in
which the Christian side (and in Nuremberg Hans Folz himself) fanned
anxieties over a Jewry that was rumoured to be mighty or at least to be striving
for power. The Messiah of ‘the Jews4 enters the stage together with them,
putting on a presumptious air of someone who intends to usurp the rule over the
whole world. The Schallat Jude, who plays the herald of the Jews, announces
him as follows: “Weicht auB, tret umbe und ruckt von stat! / Ir habt lang genug
innen gehabt / Gewalt, herschaft und regiment, / Das nu alles wurd sein end. .
“40 (Go away, step back, move along, long enough you have had authority,
power and the rule, it will all come to an end now. .. ) A rabbi continues:
Ir Cristen, do tret an ein ort, / Weicht in die winkel da und dort / Und
laBt uns auch herschen ein weil, / Wann er ist nit von hinn ein meil, /
Hie stet er, der fort wirt regiren, / Daran in niemant mer mag geirren. / Ir
habt gemutwillt lange zeit, / Dann ruckt zusamen und macht weit!41
(Crawl into the comers, you Christians, let us rule for a while! He that will
govern from now on, is not a mile away from here, he is already there and
nobody can stop him. For a long time you had the power to rule as you wanted
therefore huddle together now and make way!)
Sibilla interrogates him like a prosecutor and puts him to several severe
tests of his supposed omnipotence: naturally, he passes none. At the end of the
trials the Jewish pseudo-Messiah (that is the Antichrist) dies from an innocent
glass of wine, after having hurled terrible curses of pestilence and epidemic
fever at Christianity. He is, however, revived by Sibilla, not for reasons of
sympathy or mercy, but merely so as to enable him-who is, in the tradition of
Rupert von Deutz, the personification of the Jewish people altogether42—to
make a full confession of all the Jewish ‘intrigues4 against the Christians in
front of the tribunal of Christianity: “Falscher Messias, so ste auf palt, / Erzel
hie vor ganzer gemein, / Was dein anschleg gewesen sein, / GroB schalkheit und
auch zaubrei, / Das all Cristen versten dabei / Eur falsch anschleg und eur pos-
heit, / Des gib hie folligen bescheit.“43 (Stand up, you false Messiah, and con¬
fess in front of those present your perfidious and black plots so that all
Christians learn about your conspiracies and maliciousness.)
What he confesses derives not so much from the arsenal of traditional
religiously motivated anti-Judaism, but rather from the more ‘trivial4 one of the
new development of Anti-Semitism. Apart from the already mentioned Jewish
plans to gain world supremacy, he ‘admits4 at first the allegedly exclusively
Jewish practice of usury, next are the murders which Jewish doctors commit on
Christian patients (an expression of professional jealousy, since Folz is also a
surgean, a barber), and finally he confesses the alleged annual Jewish ritual
60

murder of Christian children. Although these accusations had repeatedly been
brought against the Jews since the twelfth century, they regained actuality
around 1490 because of the allegedly true case of Simon of Trent, which had
become the subject of the largest literary campaign before the Reformation.44
Usually this shedding of blood was considered a ritualised repetition of the
Jews4 killing of Christ on Golgotha and had accordingly been represented in
pictures, in Nuremberg spectacularily in Hartmann Scheders Weltchronik of
1493. In Folz‘s play, the false Messiah,who is not even the Antichrist but a
power-hungry scoundrel, who had deluded the Jews into believing that he was
Antichrist, ‘admits4 yet another motive: the annual celebration of the Nativity,
which always reminds the Jewish people painfully of the non-arrival of their
Messiah. The confession then leads up to an outrageous statement—that today
appears 'prophetic' in the worst sense: Had Sibyl not intervened, Folz makes his
false Messiah say, it would have meant: “Die ganz judischeit must sein
verdorben / Oder all Cristen darumb gestorben.“47 (Either the Jews will perish—
or all Christians must die.) Folz thus construed a necessary self-defence of the
Christian people, which was meant to justify any violence against the Jewish
minority as a preventive measure. His construction paves the way for a revenge
of apocalyptic dimensions.
Folz withdraws Sibyl from the scene on the pretext that “women having
no right to judge anyone44 (Es zim furwar keinem weibspild nicht, v. 181,8), at
least she must not watch the forthcoming shameful events, when the tribunal
expands into a camevalesque Shrovetide parody of the Last Judgement. The
Duke of Burgundy appears to have taken the seat of the Judge, iudicare vivos et
mortuosy as the Creed reads. Suddenly Pagans emerge and take up the role of
members of the jury (it seems as if Folz had in mind some at the time popular
pictures of the Last Judgement as a court of lay assessors, when he constructed
the scene). The members of this Heathen court suggest, one after another,
dreadful and repulsive punishments for the Jewish people.49 On this level of
profaned Heilsgeschichte and the equally profaned Sibyls, the revolting list of
punishments amounts to nothing less then the exclusion of the Jewish people
from the human community to all eternity, their banishment into the world of
Satan, into the realm of filth and stench.
The Sibyl of the Occidental literature and art could not have sunk any
deeper. What the fanatic catechist, author of the Sibyllenweissagung, initiated
when he renewed the insinuations of the early Christian Sibylline Oracles has
been completed by the Antisemite Hans Folz: A sublime motif, belonging to the
Ancient World and early Christianity, has been dragged through the mud of the
worst kind of antisemitic agitation.
Let us be grateful to Raffael and Michelangelo, for they have re-estab¬
lished the dignity of the Sibyls-which vindicates Christianity and is a source of
joy for all admirers of the city of Rome.
Translated by Astrid Eichhom
61

Notes:
1	Cf. Karl Christ, Geschichte der rdmischen Kaiserzeit (History of the Roman Empire)
(Munich: Beck, 1992), 158-168.
2	Hans Volkmann, ed., Res gestae divi Avgvsti: Das Monumentum Ancyranum (The Ancyra
Monument) (Berlin: deGruyter, 1957), 18.
3	Alfons Kurfess, ed., Sibyllinische Weissagungen (Sibyllinic Prophecies) (Munich:
Heimeran, 1951), 24-203.
4	“He also quotes the Sibylline Oracles as authorities on monotheism and seems to be versed
in contemporary Jewish apologetics, the argument of which he employs/4 Everett Ferguson,
ed., Encyclopedia of Early Christianity (New York and London: Garland, 1990), 895.
5	Bernhard Dombait and Alfons Kalb, eds., Sancti Avrelii Avgvstini Episcopi De Civitate Dei
LibriXXIl(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1981), bk. 18, chap. 23.
6	Kurfess, Sibyllinische Weissagungen, bk. VIII, w. 217-243.
7	Dombart and Kalb, Sancti Avrelii Avgvstini Episcopi, bk. 18, chap. 23.
8	Kees Vellekoop, Dies ire dies ilia. Studien zur Frtihgeschichte einer Sequenz (Studies on the
Early History of a Sequence) (Bilthoven: Creghton, 1978), 101; ibid, also the history of the
naming of the Sibyls.
9	Kurfess, Sibyllinische Weissagungen, bk. I, vv. 324-400.
10	Vellekoop, Dies ire dies ilia, 103.
"ibid., 102.
12	Frederic Hirtzel, ed., Vergili Maronis opera (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), bk VI vv
46-51.	’	*
13	Heinrich von Veldeke, Eneasroman (Romance of Eneas), ed. Dieter Kartschoke (Stuttgart-
Reclam, 1986), vv. 2687-2741.
14	Friedrich Maurer, ed., Die Erldsung (The Redemption) (Reprint, Darmstadt: Wissenschaft¬
liche Buchgesellschaft, 1964), w. 1771-1824.
15	Ibid., w. 1755-1770.
16	Kurfess, Sibyllinische Weissagungen, 8; cf. Engelbert Kirschbaum, ed., Lexikon der christ-
lichen Ikonographie (Lexicon of Christian Iconography), vol. 4 (Rom, Freiburg, et. al-
Herder, special editionl968), col. 150-153.
17	Karl Reuschel, ed., Die deutschen Weltgerichtsspiele des Mittelalters und der Reforma
tionszeit (The Medieval and Renaissance German Plays of the Last Judgement) (Leipzig-
Avenarius, 1906).
62

18	Reuschel, Die deutschen Weltgerichtsspiele, w. 4519-4636.
19	Ibid., w. 4648-50.
20	Paul Heitz, ed., Oracula Sibyllim: Weissagungen der zwdlf Sibyllen (The Prophecies of the
Twelve Sibyls) (StraBburg: Heitz, 1903); for its dating see Reuschel, Die deutschen
Weltgerichtsspiele, 17-19.
21	Ibid., 13f.
22	Reuschel, Die deutschen Weltgerichtsspiele, w. 4525-36.
23	Heitz, Oracula Sibyllina, 24.
24	Reuschel, Die deutschen Weltgerichtsspiele, w. 4567-72.
25	Heitz, Oracula Sibyllina, 21.
26	Cf. Winfried Frey, “Zacharias Bletz und die neue Zeit: Zum Luzemer Antichristspiel,“
(Z.B. and the New Times: Remarks on the Lucerne Play of Antichrist) Zeitschrift fur Reli¬
gions- und Geistesgeschichte 47 (1995): 126-44.
27	Amongst the incunabula is the first book printed with movable types in the German
language by Gutenberg. Cf. Kurt Ruh, ed., Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Ver-
fasserlexikon (The German Literature of the Middle Ages: Lexicon of Authors), vol. 8 (Berlin
and New York: de Gruyter, 1992), col. 1149; also discussed in Albert Карг, Johannes
Gutenberg: Persdnlichkeit und Leistung (J.G.: Character and Achievement) (Leipzig, Jena,
Berlin: Urania, 1986), 90ff.
28
Ingeborg Neske, ed., Die spdtmittelalterliche deutsche Si by 11en we issagung (The German
Sibyllinic Prophecies of the Late Middle Ages) (GOppingen: Ktimmerle, 1985). In the case of
this thirteenth Sibyl, the text of Zacharias Bletz becomes quite extensive (w. 4574-4600),
indicating that he must have known this version and assumed the same of his audience.
29	The most famous and, with regard to art history, the most precious depictions of this part of
the legend of the Holy Cross are the frescos that Piero della Francesca, painted around 1450 in
the chapel of the central choir of S. Francesco in Arezzo.
30	Neske, Die spdtmittelalterliche deutsche Sibyllenweissagung, w. 215-220.
31	Ibid., w. 240-250.
32	Ibid., w. 315-318.
33	Ibid., 16ff. Cf. Kurfess, Sibyllinische Weissagungen, 27If.
34	Neske, Die spdtmittelalterliche deutsche Sibyllenweissagung, w. 362-384.
35	Ibid., w. 867-886.
63

36	Naturally I had to select from the material and omitted those texts in which the Sibyls are
merely mentioned but play no other part than that of additional witnesses, e.g. of the
apocalypse; see the mentioning of Sibille in Karl Helm, ed., Die Apokalypse Heinrichs von
Hesler aus der Danziger Handschrift (The Apokalypse of Heinrich von Hesler from the
Danzig Manuscript) (Berlin: Weidmann, 1907) w. 18905ff.
37	Life and work are discussed by Johannes Janota, “Article Hans Folz,“ Die deutsche Liter a-
tur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, ed. Kurt Ruh, vol. 2 (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter
1980), col. 769-793.
38	Adalbert von Keller, ed., Fastnachtsspiele aus dem filnfzehnten Jahrhundert (Shrovetide
Plays from the Fifteenth Century) (Stuttgart: Litterarischer Verein, 1853), no. 20.
39	Edith Wenzel, Do worden die Judden alle geschant:' Rolle und Funktion der Juden in
spatmittelalterlichen Spielen ('And All the Jews Were Held Responsible': The Role and
Function of the Jews in Late Medieval Plays) (Munich:Fink, 1992), 254.
40	Keller, Fastnachtsspiele aus dem Junjzehnten Jahrhundert, no. 20, w. 171, 28-31.
41	Ibid., no. 20, w. 172, 1-9.
42	Cf. Horst Dieter Rauh, Das Bild des Antichrist im Mittelalter: Von Tyconius zum deutschen
Symbolismus (The Image of the Antichrist in the Middle Ages: From Tyconius to German
Symbolism), 2d ed. (Mtinster: Aschendorff, 1979), 226ff.
43	Keller, Fastnachtsspiele aus dem junjzehnten Jahrhundert, no. 20, w. 179, 16-22.
44	Cf. Alan Dundes, The Blood Libel Legend (Madison, Wise.: The University of Wisconsin
Press, 1991); Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder (New Haven and London*
Yale University Press, 1988); id., Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial (New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 1992); Rainer Erb, ed., Die Legende vom Ritualmord
(The Blood Libel Legend) (Berlin: Metropol, 1993).
45	Hartmann Schedel, Buck der Chroni/cen und Geschichten (Book of Chronicles and
Histories) (Nuremberg: Georg Alt, 1493, reprint, Munich: KOlbl, 1975), fol. 254v.
46	Cf. Andrew Colin Gow, The Red Jews: Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age, 1200-1600
(Leiden; New York; Cologne: Brill, 1995), 125fF.
47	Keller, Fastnachtsspiele aus dem filnfzehnten Jahrhundert, no. 20, w. 180, 26ff.
48	The idea of the Last Judgement as a Schdffengericht is much older. It can be found in the
corpus of sermons revised by the priest Konrad in the twelfth century. Cf his sermon Von
alien hailigen (On all the Saints) in Anton E. SchOnbach, ed. Altdeutsche Predigten (Old
German Sermons), vol. 3 (Graz, 1891; reprint, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-
schaft: 1964), no. 102.
49	Keller, Fastnachtsspiele aus dem filnfzehnten Jahrhundert, no. 20, w. 180, 2 Iff.

The Sailor Demon of Vulcano in Antoine de La Sale’s Geography of the
Demonic,
L’Excursion aux ties Lipari
Simonetta Cochis
When a moralist depicts the demonic supernatural with ambivalence,
circumspection and uncertainty, the resulting effect is doubly uncanny. In L'Ex¬
cursion aux ties Lipari Antoine de La Sale resuscitates a ghost from his past, a
mysterious sailor demon who still haunts his memory. La Sale frames this
ambiguous demonic figure within a short travel narrative that is part of a unit of
texts on world geography. It is an account of the bizarre events he witnessed
during his trip in 1407 to the Lipari Islands off the coast of Sicily while in the
service of Louis II, Duke of Anjou and titular king of Sicily. One of the first
known texts written by Antoine de La Sale, L ’Excursion aux ties Lipari pur¬
ports to explain the strange events that led the sailor demon, one of the minions
of the devil from the nearby volcanic craters believed to be the gates of Hell, to
threaten the lives of La Sale and his travel companions.
Antoine de La Sale had been attached to the House of Anjou since the
age of 14, and was to make frequent trips with or on behalf of his Angevin
patrons, in either diplomatic or military frinctions. In 1415 he took part of the
Portuguese seige of Ceuta, though most of his travels were military expeditions
to southern Italy with the Angevin dukes, as they struggled to hold the much
contested throne of Sicily. A self-educated military man turned pedagogue and
moralist, in 1435 Antoine de La Sale is officially appointed to the post of
preceptor to Rene d’Anjou’s eldest son and heir, Jean de Calabre. In this
capacity, La Sale produced several narratives to educate and entertain the young
prince and future ruler. That his writings should include travel narratives is not
surprising, since the atmosphere at the court of Anjou, with its various foreign
interests, gave it an international flavor and a penchant for geography. Travel
narratives, maps and geographies were part of Rene d’Anjou’s itinerant library,
which he kept in the wooden chests that lined the galleries of his various
residences, and which included La Sale’s own works.
Antoine de La Sale wrote for an audience who appreciated knowledge of
the world. The court of Anjou was a veritable crossroads of cultural and artistic
currents of both the North and the South, as well as the humanism of the Italian
rinascimento. Spanning the regions of Maine, Anjou, Bar and Lorraine in the
North and Provence in the South of France, the possessions and territorial
pretentions of the dukes of Anjou also led them to the Kingdom of Naples and
to Catalonia. Although marriage alliances with foreign royal houses, captivities
or exiles abroad were common among the French aristocracy, “... seuls, les
Angevins ont effectivement gouveme, longtemps parfois, des possessions
complement etrangeres au berceau de leur dynastieu (only the Angevins
effectively governed, for long periods at times, territories entirely foreign to the
cradle of their dynasty).1 In the fifteenth century, the Angevin court was
65

probably one of the French courts most liberally exposed to artistic currents and
to new ideas from across the Alps. As such, the humanist curiosity for
knowledge and the predilection for Italian themes and fashions permeated the
spirit of the Angevin court, as well as La Sale’s own writings. Geography, and
particularly the geography of southern Italy, provided a felicitous backdrop for
his disquieting story of the sailor demon.
L’Excursion aux lies Lipari is part of a triptych, the second story in a
group of three narratives held together by the common theme of geography
Two of the stories tell of alternate demonic spaces that exist within the confines
of the known universe, and within the reality of La Sale’s own travel
experiences. They are set in the exotic landscapes of southern Italy, localities
that would charm his italianate Angevin patrons. Textually, L'Excursion is
bordered on one side by Le Paradis de la Reine Sibylle, an intricately woven
and mystifying folktale about a German knight who visits an underground
court-like paradise which turns out to be a demoniacal abyss. Immediately
following L ’Excursion is a descriptive world geography narrative, fraught with
what we would see as mistakes and lacunae, but which provides an overview of
the world as it was known then, a charting which included both physical and
mythical panoramas. L’Excursion is cast as a digression, a tangent to the
geography narrative which La Sale states as his purpose for the text. Both Le
Paradis de la Reine Sibylle and L’Excursion aux ties Lipari relate events
experienced and lands visited by the author; the world geography narrative
contextualizes these two pieces and creates a link with the didactic frame
present in all of La Sale’s works, in keeping with his pedagogic role as Jean de
Calabre’s tutor.
In L’Excursion aux lies Lipari, Antoine de La Sale invests the sunny
maritime landscape of the Lipari islands with the haunting presence of a
demonic supernatural, creating a veritable geography of the diabolic. He begins
by setting the stage for his narrative within the context of the geography of the
world, such as it was known to him, and which included Earthly Paradise and
the Portals of Hell as actual locations on the planet. He summarily tells us that
Earthly Paradise is somewhere in the orient, and is inaccessible to mortals since
it is on the highest of mountains and is guarded by fierce dragons and beasts
From it, though, flow the four rivers that mix in with the oceans and give birth
to the great rivers of Europe, Asia and Africa. However, La Sale elaborates with
great detail on the Portals of Hell. In fact, the entire narrative of L ’Excursion
aux lies Lipari is given as an example of one of these orifices to Hell. La Sale
states that diametrically opposed to Earthly Paradise which is “le chief de la
terre pour si treshaulte hauteur, sont les enfers en la plus basse parfoundeur du
corps de la terre; en laquelle descourent toutes les ordures et puantises des 1Щ
elemens44 (the head of the earth because of its exceptionally elevated altitude, so
hell is at the lowest depth of the earth’s body. There seep all the filth and the
stenches of the four elements). The enemies of God inhabit Hell, those who
because of pride were condemned to eternal cruel sufferings, to bum in the
66

abyss. The flames of these infernal fires can be seen through passageways, or
portals to the pits of Hell which appear in several geographical locations. The
Lipari islands of Vulcano and Stromboli are such portals to the pits of Hell, and
they are the site of Antoine de La Sale’s intriguing brush with the demonic
supernatural.
The story begins when La Sale, traveling on a Catalan trading ship with
several other French and foreign knights and squires, arrives at the port of
Vulcano. They tie their ship’s cables to a large thin boulder in the port, known
as the Needle, and they follow the local superstition of placing wooden crosses
on the tied cables, to ward off the demonic spirits of the nearby Portals of Hell,
who were known to mischievously untie ships during stormy nights. That day,
accompanied by two other young and restless squires, La Sale attempts to climb
to the top of the crater of Vulcano, but the wind blows dark smoke in their
direction, and to escape they tumble shamefully down to the bottom of the
mountain, losing their swords in their haste. Upon their return to the ship, the
elders ridicule them, so the young men go back to retrieve their swords the next
day, only to find them scattered far from where they had left them.
In the twilight of early dusk, a most singular character approaches their
vessel, a gigantic sailor who rows towards them on a dingy, then hoists himself
up effortlessly on the ropes hanging from the ship. He announces that he has
been sent to them by the Captain of Lipari, Sir Niccolo de Lussio. The elder
skipper is astonished, since he had been told that Captain Lussio had died. The
man assures them that he is alive and well, though he had been deathly ill. They
all rejoice and offer the stranger some food and wine. As the skipper goes down
below deck to write a letter to his friend Captain Lussio, the sailors, the knights
and the squires stay above deck to stare at this bizarre messenger, who La Sale
describes from head to toe:
...tout premier, son chief estoit moult plain de gros cheveulx meslez de
blanc, recoquillez jusques es espaules, car vrayement n’estoient pas trop
bien paignez, couvers d’une vieille barrette d’un vieil drap de layne d’un
bleuf obscur moult ре11ё; le front assez ride; les yeulx moult petiz et
enfoncez, desquelz le blanc estoit comme tanne; les soursiz gros et
pelluz, meslez d’aucuns poilz blans entredeux; les joues grosses et
ridees; le nez moult large par les narines et moult plat; la bouche
tresgrande au rire que fist; la barbe noire, aucuns poilz blans, courte et
large, moult pelue, qui sur la bouche entroit dedens; le col bien court, les
espaules larges, les bras grans; les mains grans et tresmaigres et les
jointes des doiz moult pelues, les ongles longs et larges et moult plains
d’ordure entre eulz et la chair; le corps, come dist est, tresgrant, vestu
d’une jacquette a quatre pointes d’un vieil gros gris moult pelle; les
jambes longues et tresgresles selon le corps, chaussees d’uns gros
houseaux de cuir fauve moult pellez; les piez avoit grans et plas et
bonnement sur le ront.
(...first of all, his head had dense, thick hair interspersed with white, tumbling
down to his shoulders, for truly it was not very well combed, and it was covered
67

by an old skullcap of a very frayed old dark blue wool cloth. A deeply furrowed
forehead; eyes quite small and deep-set, whose whites were like tanned leather-
thick and hairy eyebrows, every other hair a white one; large wrinkled cheeks; a
flat nose, very wide at the nostrils; a huge mouth when he laughed; a black
beard with some white hairs, short and wide, very hairy, and which kept getting
into his mouth; short neck, wide shoulders, large arms; huge skinny hands with
hairy knuckles and big long fingernails crusted with filth between the nail and
the flesh; his body, as I said, was huge, dressed in a square-cut tunic of a coarse
gray fabric; long legs, scrawny for such a large body, covered in crude very
worn hose of maroon leather; his feet massive and flat, quite splayed out).
This exceptionally dirty and misshapen character mystifies his attentive
audience, since he refuses to answer any of their curious questions. Then
laughing, he tells them a most singular tale. He mocks the sailors’ superstition
of putting what he calls “ce signal** (that sign) on the cables of their ships. La
Sale notices that he does not say “the sign of the cross.” The stranger then
explains that years before these islands were at war with several peoples, the
Sicilians, the Sards, the Corsicans, the Genovese and the people of Provence
Since he spoke all these languages, the captain of Lipari had sent him out on a
mission to find out the nationality of some armed galleys that had set anchor in
the port. To lure the sailors to land in order to hear their language and determine
their origin, the giant sailor untied their ships’ cables, forcing the sailors to
come near him in order to retie them. Since that time, he points out, every
galley or ship coming to the port of Vulcano puts “that sign” on their ship’s
cables, thinking that it was demons from Hell who had untied their ships. Upon
hearing this story, the younger sailors rush off to remove the crosses they had
already put on their cables and on the cables of two other companion ships
strangely reassured by the tangible presence of the bizarre sailor. During the
night, however, their ship and the other two are tossed about in a deadly storm
their cables are untied, and they almost shipwreck on the reefs of Lipari. The
next day, they get no word from Captain Lussio of Lipari, in spite of the letter
addressed to him and entrusted to the giant sailor, who had said he was the
Captain’s messenger. Finally, as their victuals are dwindling, they send the
ship’s secretary to the port with another letter. Captain Lussio, who was indeed
alive, had never received the first letter. In fact, he had not sent the giant sailor
to see them in the first place. He tells them, laughingly, that they had certainly
been duped by one of the demons of Vulcano or of Stromboli, one of the nearbv
Portals of Hell, and he “compta pluseurs nouvelles qui sont ou sembleroient
estre meninges...44 (recounted several stories which are—or would seem to be—
lies...).4
La Sale ends his tale with this very irresolute denial of the “stories” about
the un-named, unexplainable and perhaps diabolic supernatural. He provides no
explanation, no moral of the story, he simply returns to his geography lesson
without further ado. We are left wondering if the mysterious stranger is one of
the demons from the nearby Portals of Hell, or just a big ugly fellow who
68

dropped by for some free food and wine. La Sale also refrains from commentary
throughout the narrative. In his other works, Antoine de La Sale is a skeptical,
learned narrator who often intrudes with explanations, contrasting hearsay with
book learning and disproving popular stories by citing Greek and Roman
classical authors.
He does no such thing in L’Excursion. Quite the contrary, he actually
punctuates his story with purposefully mystifying, bizarre events or images
which he does not explain, and then he continues with the narrative. For
example, when the young squires return to retrieve their swords from the slopes
of Vulcano, La Sale states that “lesquelles trouvasmes, moy especiallement le
premier, qui la laissay pres d’un busson fichee a tout le feurre. Les aultres
disoient que n’avoient pas trom^ les leurs ainsi que laissees les avoient; car
Tune estoit hors et bien loing de son feurre“ (we found them, particularly I
found mine first, having left it well sheathed by a low bush. The others said that
they had not found theirs how they had left them, for one sword was quite far
from its sheath).5 La Sale throws in this detail, then continues with the narrative
with no further explanation. Another example: La Sale notices that the
mysterious sailor does not say “the sign of the cross” but refers to it as “that
sign,” a detail rich in possibilities, but La Sale does not provide any speculation.
Yet another mystery: during the stormy night, one of the French knights, the
Seigneur de Pruilly, in his underwear, but wearing a golden belt with bells
around his waist and little pouches hanging from his shoulders, jumps into the
turbulent waters carrying two cables, narrowly missing sharp underwater rocks
that would have tom him apart. Again, La Sale provides the image but no
explanation. Another truly unnerving example: on the morning after the almost-
deadly storm, the crews of the other ships furiously cursed the crew of La Sale’s
ship, thinking that their sailors had untied the cables. How do the skippers
explain it? “Et les patrons disoient que ce n’avoient il mye fait, mais bien, par la
relacion de celui home qui estoit a eulx venu savoir quelz naives ilz estoient, les
fadrins par leur folie avoient ostees les croix, et aussi a eulz come es aultres. Au
fort, la chose s’appaisa...“ (Our skippers assured them that it was not so, but
rather that, heeding the story of the man who had come to inquire about their
identity yesterday evening, the junior seamen in their folly had removed the
crosses of their own ship and those of the other two. Finally the matter was
settled...).6 La Sale states this as if it were the most normal reason. The absence
of a critical commentary here, of an alternative explanation, is truly baffling.
Are we to assume that without crosses on the ships’ cables it was inevitable for
them to have been untied during the stormy night? Is this just the natural order
of things? La Sale does not say it, though he seems to imply it.
Let us not forget the identity of the author: Antoine de La Sale is a peda¬
gogue and a moralist, the preceptor to the future king of Sicily, and he is
spinning this very ambiguous sailor’s yam! Why does La Sale tell his story in
this way, a narrative sprinkled with enigmatic events for which he offers no

commentary, no explanation? Does he tell this story just for fun, or does it serve
a didactic purpose? Are his readers to elucidate a moral to the story?
Perhaps looking at the manuscript context of L ’Excursion aux ties Lipari
its tangible manifestation in the book, may provide us with some valuable clues
as to the author’s intent. Two manuscript editions contain this tantalizing tale.
The first is a delicately illuminated manuscript now in the collection of the
Musee Conde in Chantilly (Ms. 653 cote XIV G.29), which La Sale dedicates to
Agnes de Bourbon, the mother-in-law of his pupil Jean de Calabre, and the
sister of Jean le Bon, Duke of Bourgogne. This manuscript contains only the
three narratives mentioned above, Le Paradis de la Reine Sibylle, L ’Excursion
and the world geography narrative. The Chantilly manuscript is very beautiful9
it contains 15 miniatures and two maps done in delicate pastel colors, though
they all illustrate Le Paradis de la Reine Sibylle and not L Excursion or the
world geography narrative.
The other manuscript which contains the text, now at the Bibliotheque
Royale in Brussels (Ms. 1810-1815), contains these same three texts in the same
order: Le Paradis de la Reine Sibylle, VExcursion aux lies Lipari, and the
world geography narrative. But, here they form a thematic unit within a text¬
book by La Sale entitled La Salade, which is a compendious grouping of
diverse didactic texts intended for the instruction of Jean de Calabre. In La
Salade he covers various topics, including a moral profile of the perfect ruler
tips on military strategy, protocol for the advancement of nobles, and the
chronicles of the Kindgom of Sicily. In this textbook, L’Excursion aux lies
Lipari along with Le Paradis de la Reine Sibylle and the world geography
narrative form what appears to be the geography lesson for the prince.
These two very different books which transmit the text indicate that, at
the time of its composition, the geography unit had a dual function: an aesthetic
or pleasurable use and also a more singularly didactic one. The charming
Chantilly manuscript dedicated to Agnes de Bourbon was probably intended as
a pleasurable distraction, while the intent of La Salade, the Brussels manuscript
dedicated to Jean de Calabre, was primarily to educate. These two functions, the
pleasurable and the didactic, are emblematic of La Sale’s use of recreational
narratives for educational purposes. In this light, we can see L Excursion as a
pleasurable diversion, the recreational aspect of a proto-humanist pedagogic
program which links literary pleasure with instructional merit. In this respect
La Sale is steeped in the late medieval belief which ascribed both moral and
hygienic value to literary pleasure, as it “promotes physical and mental well¬
being,”7 the ideal condition for learning. The pleasurable results of literary
delight enhance the functioning of the higher human faculties. “A work of liter¬
ature was regarded as capable of teaching and delighting because it was con¬
sidered an object capable of causing the mental faculties to receive images and
to abstract from them, activities which result in pleasure,”8 and enhance
learning. Abstracting meaning from mental images is exactly what La Sale
70

invites his reader to do, since he does not elaborate or extrapolate any message
in L ’Excursion aux lies Lipari.
Though grouped with a more clearly recreational narrative (Le Paradis de
la Reine Sibylle), the status of L’Excursion awe ties Lipari is problematic when
viewed as part of La Sale’s recreational facet of pedagogy. The strictly factual,
matter-of-fact tone of the narrative, La Sale’s participation in the story as
character (he is the young man climbing the crater of Vulcano and losing his
sword), as spectator (he listens with awe to the giant sailor’s tale) and as
pedagogue/narrator (he is the older and wiser man looking back into his past
and telling the story), as well as La Sale’s ambivalent position about the events
he experienced, all contribute to make this a bizarre, hybrid text. The prefaces
and epilogues of the geography triptych (Le Paradis, L ’Excursion, and the
world geography narrative) lead the reader to expect some tall tales, but then
L \Excursion is presented as a factual account of real events.
The close proximity in both manuscript contexts of L'Excursion aux lies
Lipari to the more well-known (then and now) story of Le Paradis de la Reine
Sibylle has also given the shorter and more testimonial-style Excursion a
subordinate position as a recreational narrative. In the Chantilly manuscript,
none of the delicate miniatures or maps represent any of the themes of La Sale’s
adventures in the Lipari Islands. In both manuscripts L’Excursion serves as an
introduction to the geography of the world, it is ensconced within a section that
is to be the factual and descriptive cataloguing of actual regions and provinces
of the world. Whereas La Sale clearly states that he is recounting oral folktales
when he tells the story of Queen Sibyl, he solidly casts his Excursion aux lies
Lipari as a truthful and accurate personal experience. While he prefaces his
story of the Sibyl with a dedicatory paragraph to his pupil Jean de Calabre that
clearly indicates his intent to entertain, “pour rire et passer temps, vous escrips
les merveileuses choses que sont es mons de la Sibille et de son lac...“ (to laugh
and to pass the time I write to you of the marvelous things which are the
mountain of the Sibyl and its lake),9 he prefaces the world geography section
with a very different tone: “Cy commence a parler du paradiz terrestre, des
regions et principalles provinces qui sont es troiz parties du monde, et
comment, en Г isle de Boulcam, Галету nous vint tempter pour nous faire
perir“ (here I begin to talk about earthly paradise, about the regions and
principal provinces which are the three parts of the world, and how, on the
island of Vulcano, the enemy came to tempt us in order to have us perish).10 In
his epilogue for Agnfcs de Bourbon La Sale concludes the story of the Sibyl by
stating that “pour rire et passer temps, pour monstrer a chascun que le contraire,
j’ay mis tout en escript“ (to laugh and pass the time, to show everyone the
contrary, I put everything in writing),11 but he begins the world geography
section with a most interesting sign: “that sign”, the sign of the cross! “Ou nom
du Pere et du Filz et du Saint Esprit, un vray seul Dieu en III noms et en III
personnes, sans commencement et sans fin, veuil cy escrire et faire mencion“
(In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, the only one
71

true God in three names and in three persons, without beginning and without
end, I here wish to write and to mention).12 Is this Antoine de La Sale’s
exorcism of the demon he is about to bring back to life?
Though cast as a recreational narrative by its proximity to Le Paradis de
la Reine Sibylle and by its inclusion in the gift manuscript for Agnes de
Bourbon, it is difficult to establish a similar ontological status of L’Excursion
aux ties Lipari with the tantalyzing but safely explained, fully commented and
rationalized Paradis de la Reine Sibylle. Are we to explain away L'Excursion ад
a picturesque, quaint and harmless tall tale aimed at entertaining a sophisticated
and international courtly audience? Does La Sale’s vivid portrait of the
mysterious sailor de-mystify and de-demonize the diabolic? Or does La Sale’s
indecisiveness about what happened, his silence, the tauntingly provocative
details he offers without any farther explanation, do all these point to a deeper
unease, an unknown and perhaps unknowable and unavowable demoniacal
presence?
It is paradoxical that although La Sale is older and wiser when he
recounts the events he experienced in his youth, L'Excursion awe iles Lipari is
certainly not a wisdom story, though he includes it in his moralyzing didactic
textbook, La Salade. This book provides a rational and didactic medium which
makes this tale even more unnerving. What is La Sale telling us about the
nature of the diabolic? It is part of the realm of human knowledge, though it
remains unexplained. His story erupts from the well-known, charted landscape
of southern Italy just like it erupts from the rational didactic discourse of La
Salade. Its infraction of the rational, accepted universe leaves a malaise, a sense
of misgiving about this sunny and familiar world which is capable of spawning
a creature such as the sailor demon of Vulcano. La Sale is haunted by his
memory of the giant sailor. He states: “Que vous diroie? II me semble que je le
voy, toutes les fois qu’il m’en souvient44 (What shall I say? I can almost see him
every time he comes to mind).13 The sailor demon’s presence is very real. He
lives on in La Sale’s text, unexorcised, unexplained, uncanny.
72

Notes:
1	Fran^oise Robin, La Cour d’Anjou-Provence: la vie artistique sous le regne de Rene (The
Court of Anjou-Provence: The Arts under the Reign of Rene) (n.p.: Picard Editeur, 1985), 33.
2	Antoine de La Sale, La Salade, ed. Fernand Desonay (Paris: Droz, 1935), 139.
3	Ibid., 149-150.
4	Ibid., 158.
5	Ibid., 145-146.
6	Ibid., 156.
7	Glending Olson, Literature as Recreation in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca arid London:
Cornell University Press, 1982), 89.
8	Phillips Salman, “Instruction and Delight in Medieval and Renaissance Criticism,” Renais¬
sance Quarterly, 32:3 (1979): 308.
9	Antoine de La Sale, La Salade, 63.
10	Ibid., 137.
11	Ibid., 130.
12	Ibid, 137.
13	Ibid, 150.
73

Encounters with the Other World:
The Medieval Iconography of Alexander the Great and Henry the Lion
Norbert H. Ott
The Duke Anton Ulrich Museum in Brunswick, Lower Saxonia,
Germany, keeps a curved object, about 2 feet long and 4 inches wide at the
aperture, which previously was in the possession of the Brunswick Cathedral
Treasui^, and probably originates from the Near East:1 It is part of the horn of a
buffalo2, but in the Middle Ages, it was thought to be the talon from the clutch
of a griffin, that fantastic creature with the body of a lion and the wings and
claws of an eagle; a beast which could carry a man through the air, and which, it
was believed, actually did once carry the owner of this particular griffin's claw:
Duke Henry the Lion3 (Herzog Heinrich der Lowe). It was further assumed that
Henry brought the claw back to Brunswick as evidence of this adventure--
perhaps it really is a memento of his journey to the Holy Land in 1172,
afterwards kept in the vestry of the church. In 1585 Heinrich Goding, Court
artist in Dresden, took up the legend and wrote in his Carmen for the wedding
of Duke Heinrich Julius with Dorothy of Saxony: “Ein Greiffenklaw thut
hengen tiber dieses Fiirsten Grab.“4
Long before Heinrich4 s excursions East, another ruler had already made
use of the strength and aviational skills of the griffin: Alexander the Great. The
Third Century Alexander Romance, attributed to the so-called Pseudo-Callis-
thenes, who participated in Alexander's march, delighted in describing this
event, as did most of the later traditions,6 particularly the vernacular ones. Now
the oldest German language version of the tale, Rudolf von Ems‘s Alexander,
is unfinished and does therefore not contain Alexander's march to the End of the
World, his encounters with demons, mythical creatures and inhabitants of the
other world, nor does Quintus Curtius Rufus4 more historical than fantastic
biography of Alexander8 report its hero's attempt to reach the depth of the ocean
and the limits of the skies. But Ulrich of Etzenbach's9 and Johannes Hartlieb's10
versions do: Ulrich has Alexander descending into the sea in a diving bell to
“discover what wonder the sea doth carry44 (erfmden [...] waz daz mer wunder
treit, v. 42682f.), and afterwards planning to experience “the wonders the
heavens do carry, too“ (waz ouch die liifte wunder tragen, v. 24685). As
Alexander's advisors are unable to tell him how to achieve this, he takes things
into his own hands. Word has reached him of the two tame griffins of Porus,
which were trained “daz man sie mit ase zent, daz sie vlugen war man wolde“
(v. 24698Т: to be lured with carrion that they would go whither one wished). He
has a seat constructed to which the griffins are chained. Carrion is held in front
of their beaks on long poles, and when they try to reach it, they lift up the
throne with Alexander on it.
Iconographically, this scene is the most frequently attested of the
Alexander epic.11 We can find it on textiles and sculptures from the Byzantine
age, and throughout the Middle Ages it was used as a decoration for fa9ades,
75

such as in Matrice in Italy,12 and interiors or cloisters-like in Bale in Switzer¬
land13 (fig. I)14—of cathedrals and churches, often corresponding with scenes
from other narrative traditions such as Roland's fight with Ferragut,15
Theodorik‘s ‘Hollenjagd4 or Sintram‘s liberation, also in Bale.16 In the floor
mosaic of Otranto Cathedral in Apulia,17 1166, Alexanders journey through the
skies (fig. 2) is integrated in a program of biblical and mythological scenes, as it
is in more than half a dozen misericords of English churches from the
fourteenth to the fifteenth centuries.18 What made this typological motif so
popular is probably the ambiguity of its interpretation: The griffin itself, ever
since its appearance in the animal catalogue of the Physiologus19 in the second
or third century A.D., is a christologic emblem, both as a symbol of Christ and
his double nature, and also as a guardian of the grave and a reference to
resurrection and ascension.20 Alexanders journey through the skies with the aid
of the griffins has clearly positive connotations in the Byzantine world, where
ever since Eusebius the Macedonian's conquest of the world was compared with
Constantine4 s conquest of the Roman Empire.21 In the West, on the other hand
its interpretation oscillates between the negative--as a symbol of superbia—and
the positive—as a prefiguration of the Ascension of Christ.22
The scene of the elevatio Alexandri Magni per gryphos ad aerem has a
prominent place in the illustrated manuscripts of the various Alexander
Romances: in the Latin versions like the Historia de preliis23 (fig. 3), in the
French Roman d‘Alexandre,24 and in some German versions, too. But while
all three illustrated manuscripts of Johannes Hartlieb‘s Histori von dem grossen
Alexander26 portray the diving adventure, only one, the Munich Codex Cgm
581 from 1455, whose illustrations were produced by his owner Hektor
Miilich,27 shows the journey through the skies (fig. 4). In the manuscripts, the
scene does not stand alone, as it does in sculptures as a typological reference to
Alexanders ambiguous role in God‘s Plan of Salvation. Rather, in the cycles of
illustration it is integrated in a whole series of examples of unusual adventures
and encounters, serving as one instance of the discovery of the totally ‘Other4—
the limits of the world: On his journey to the end of the universe, Alexander not
only challenges the elements of air and water-in the flying and diving
episodes—, he ventures right unto the Gates of Paradise, gets the Magic Stone
and encounters incarnations of the ‘Other World4 beyond our own: the priest of
the sun- and the moon-trees, the ichthyophages, water-nymphs and unicorns
hairy giants armed with cudgels, fire spewing cynocephali, sciapodes and bird¬
headed creatures. But all these adventures are by no means fantastic tales or
romantic fictions for entertainments sake. They were considered to be truth, as
the reception of the texts and the context of the illustration show-historical
truth, the true marvels of a newly discovered and real world. For most of the
Alexander pictures do not illustrate a romance of that emperor, but a chronicle—
Heinrich von Milnchen‘s Weltchronik the intention of which it was to use
these stories to portray history as a sequence of true events in accordance with
God‘s Plan of Salvation.
76

“Hainreich von Muenichen“ or uvon payr lant," as he is called in some
manuscripts,29 compiled his compendium of the historical knowledge of his age
around the middle of the fourteenth century, his basic text following the
Christherre-Chronik and the chronicles of Rudolf von Ems and Jans Enikel,
and for the New Testament epoch, Brother Philipp1 s Vita of Mary. This basic
text is adorned with extensive passages from historical epics: New Testament
biblical poetry, excerpts from Konrad of Wurzburg's Trojanerkrieg, Otte's
Eraclius, passages from the Willehalm-in\ogy by Wolfram von Eschenbach,
Ulrich von Turheim and Ulrich von dem Ttirlin, and from Strieker4s Karl der
Grofie as well as from the Alexandreis of Ulrich von Etzenbach. Material is
only included from those works which claim historical veracity.30 Thus, the
Arthurian romance was not drawn upon-it was not taken as historical material
in Germany, in contrast to England. Incidentally, the manuscripts of the World
Chronicle of Heinrich of Munich are the only texts which offer Ulrich4s
Alexandreis with illustrations.31 The other Alexandreis-manuscripts, as far as
they contain just this text, only have decorated initials.32 The Heinrich-von-
Miinchen-manuscript of Bavarian origin from the last third of the fourteenth
century, now kept at Wolfenbtittel-containing two illustrations of the diving
and the airborne adventures (fig. 5)-, shows for instance Alexander's fight with
wild, hairy men33 and, in the same frame, his—historically correct—march to
Persepolis. The second Heinrich-von-Munchen-manuscript with an illustrated
Alexander-section, the Munich Codex Cgm 7377 of the late fourteenth century,
contains twenty fine quill drawings of Ulrich's text, among them the diving
adventure (215va.), the fight with wild men (202rab.), the meeting with the
Queen of the Amazons (203rab.), an encounter with three demonic creatures,
combined with a portrayal of a fight with wild elephants (209vabc.), encounters
with gymnosophists (21 Ore.), fire-spewing birds (21 Ova.), cynocephali
(212vbc.), cyclopses (213rabc.), and people without heads (213vbc.): All of
these are elements of a universal chronicle—integrated into other scenes of
historical veracity like Alexander's fight with Pausanias and the battle of
Gaugamela—, aimed at relating to the Heilsgeschichte and, as such, examples
for the enormity of God4s Creation, ‘exempla4 of the world beyond our own.
These sections from Ulrich's Alexander-epic were inserted into the
chronicle at those points where Alexander the Great appears in the historical
narrative, which is, biblically orientated, namely in 1. Масс. 1-10. This is the
place, too, where other chronicles tell of Alexander's adventures at the borders
of the world—other Chronicles, that is, which do not fill in their historical
narrative with (pseudo-)historical epics like Heinrich of Munich: chronicles
such as those of Jans Enikel,34 whose manuscripts also contain illustrations of
Alexander's underwater adventure35 or of his airborne journey36 (fig. 6 and 7).
The truth of the account is actually demonstrated by those aspects which,
superficially, seem untrue, unreal, merely fantastic. History in the Middle Ages,
however, is only conceivable, indeed it only exists, within the confines of the
history of salvation, of Heilsgeschichte. So events which seem to contradict
77

worldly and merely mechanical logic may be representative of the highest
truths. This also applies-to a certain extent~for another medieval figured flight
with griffins and farther adventures at the world‘s end: the above mentioned
Duke Henry the Lion‘s (Heinrich der Lowe). After this Guelph princess
pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1172, several stories about his journey to the Orient
came into circulation—the poetic romance Reinfried von Braunschweig1 for
instance, written about 1300, stories which could scarcely be historical
accounts. But are they any the less true for that? The sole manuscript which
contains the most detailed account of this story, Michael Wyssenhere's Buoch
von dem edelen hern von Bruneczwigk als er vber mer fuere38 (Book of the
Noble Lord of Brunswick as He Travelled Across the Sea) from the fifteenth
century, is the Stuttgart Cod. poet, et phil. 2° 4 of 1471 to 1474, illustrated with
nine colored pen-drawings, probably originating in the Southern parts of
Franconia along the River Main.39 This codex also contains Jean de Mande-
ville‘s Pilgrimage in Otto of Diemeringen4s translation-despite the fabulous
tales and encounters with demonic beings woven into in the narrative, this text
was read as a true account of the journey. Even Christopher Columbus had it
with him when he set sail.40
Michael Wyssenhere, an author attested only here, relates the story of the
noble Lord of Brunswick and the honors he gained through his journey to
foreign countries: He once had a dream telling him to visit the Holy Grave
Right away he bids his wife farewell and leaves her half of a golden ring, taking
the other half with him. The Duke and his entourage board a ship and are soon
caught by a tempest, which drives them on an unknown course. In a lull they
land, but the entire crew, save two members, starve to death. In this dreadful
situation the Lord‘s horse is slaughtered and skinned. Soon a griffin is enticed
by the stench (fig. 8); it bears the carcass off to the young in its nest, whereupon
the Duke has himself sewn into the horse* s hide, armed with his sword, and he
too gets carried away to the griffin* s nest. Here he frees himself from the hide
slays the griffm‘s brood and climbs down from the extreme height of the nest
using the claws of the young griffins as climbing irons. While, wandering
through the wilderness, he encounters a lion fighting with a dragon. He slays
the dragon, and the lion, from which he takes his nick-name, follows him
faithfully. Heinrich builds a raft, and on this they are drawn inside a hollow
mountain, and finally to a castle inhabited by beaked people. After the exchange
of some heated words, Heinrich, aided by the lion, fights the beaked men
Continuing on their journey, they encounter the so-called Wodan's Horde
Wotan‘s wild hunt, a relic of Germanic mythology reinterpreted as Christian
demonology. One of the demons informs the Duke that his wife is about to get
wed again, for after such a long period of absence she thinks he must have died
By imploring God's strength—“by gottes crafft“—the noble Lord invokes the
demon to bear himself and the lion home. First the Duke, then the lion is
transported to the door of his home castle. The condition is that if on the second
journey the demon finds the Duke sleeping, Heinrich will forfeit his soul to
78

him. The Duke actually does fall straight asleep, but his trusty lion sees him
from the sky and begins to roar so loudly that the Duke awakes, and the demon
must leave him. The Duke and the lion are bidden to enter the castle, where his
wife's wedding celebration is already under way. Here he recounts his
adventures; at first he does not reveal his identity, but when he sends the
Duchess his half of the ring, she recognizes him at last. They both live together
in happiness for many years, and when the Duke dies, the lion lies down
grieving on his grave and expires too. And therefore, it is said, the famous
Brunswick castle lion41 was cast as a monument to this faithful beast.
This sequence of illustrations from a 1471 manuscript, written and
illustrated by judge Hans of Gochsheim in Mudau in the Odenwald, is not the
only iconographic variation on this theme. Several episodes are recorded on two
sections of a tapestry, produced around 1460 to 1470 in the Rhineland and now
kept in the Historic Museum of Bale in Switzerland.42 The scenes are woven
back-to-front--so the text is in mirror-writing, and the scenes run from right to
left: On the right Duke Heinrich taking leave of his wife in front of the castle; in
the center the sea journey; adjacent to the left the griffin, about to carry away
the Duke sewn into a horse’s hide (fig. 9), and on the far left Henry freeing
himself with a knife. The second section of the carpet shows the lion fighting
the dragon, with the Duke coming to his aid; in the center the lion as Duke
Heinrich4 s trusty companion, and on the left the construction of the raft.
The series will scarcely have ended here, it presumably continued until
the Duke's home coming, as does the manuscript version, and as the third
iconographic example of Heinrich of Brunswick's adventures, the frescoes at
Karden on the Moselle, dating from around 1497 43 also do. Sixteen scenes can
be seen today, fourteen complete and two only partially preserved; at least four
more are still covered up. The Heinrich-series in one room corresponds to a
sequence in a neighboring room, featuring the story of Susanna: Susanna as the
model of a virtuous lady is matched to Heinrich as a famous hero. The rooms
were probably adorned with the frescoes for the wedding of Philipp of Eltz and
Elizabeth of Pirmont in 1497: We find both families1 coats of arms on the walls,
Pirmont in the Susanna series and Eltz in the Heinrich series. In the eighteenth
century the building passed into the ownership of Karden Collegiate Convent,
being used as the Convent school, and the paintings vanished under a layer of
plaster, from which they were not freed until 1951 and 1973.
The series begins with the Duke and a companion bidding their wives
farewell, then boarding ship, crossing the sea, braving the storm, and the scene
where the Duke's page sews him into the horse's skin, then Henry's fight with
the dragon and the lion's rescue, the construction of the raft, and life in the
wilderness with the lion helping the Duke hunting. There follow scenes with the
Duke and the lion traveling on the raft, then entering the hollow mountain, and
the fight with the bird-men (fig. 10). The scene of the Duke's arrival at a
banquet is only partly preserved-possibly his wife's wedding brought forward
in the series, or one part of the demon's narration of this wedding. At last we
79

see Heinrich standing in front of the demon of Wodan ‘s Horde, who will take
him home. Then the next scene, again only partly preserved, showing the
Duchess taking her half of the ring from a jewelry box, then a couple
embracing--the Duke and the Duchess with the lion-and two couples on their
way to a banquet.
Most of the narrative motifs of this tale of Heinrich der Lowe and his
encounter with the Other World have nothing to do with contemporary reality,
but are rather taken from literary texts with long traditions: The fight with the
dragon and a noble lion‘s gratitude to the knight who comes to its aid can be
found in Chretiens Yvain or Hartmann von Aue‘s Iwein?A The bird-men are a
motif occurring in Herzog Ernst?5 and they even appear in illustrations in the
so-called Dresdner Heldenbuch,46 and the griffin episode is known from the
tale of A Thousand and One Nights as well as Herzog Ernst: Prints of the latter
text are illustrated with woodcuts of the griffin carrying away the Duke sewn
into a horse’s hide (fig. 11), and of those of his struggle with the bird-men47.
As mentioned above these narratives and their illustrations claim to attest
a truth beyond everyday reality. This claim to be true can be inferred not only
from the fact that the Duke-of-Brunswick-epic and the travelogue of Jean de
Mandeville are bound together in the same manuscript, but also from such
iconographic details as the Saxon horse in the coat of arms on the ship's sails in
the Karden frescoes. Unreal as it may seem to us, however distant, however
beyond our own world the bird-men or Wotan‘s demons may appear for us
here they are Truth nonetheless—Truth as experienced by a real member of the
House of Guelph, as clearly demonstrated by the griffin1 s claws which Henry
the Lion brought back with him from his adventures and which are there for all
to touch and see. In the fifteenth century Alexanders underwater and airborne
adventures are even adopted into the biblical iconographic sequence of a
northern Franconian illustrated bible48 (fig. 12). And can there be-at least for
mediaeval man—a truth more profound than that of the bible? It is the truth of
miracles, the reality of curiositas, that is narrated in the texts and made visible
in the pictures of Alexander as well as in the pictorial sequences on Henry the
Lion. Here we can already gather what was to become the model per-ception of
the world in early modem times in royal ‘Kunst- und Wunderkammem4— art-
and couriosity-collections-: a most varied, multifaceted, categorically orga¬
nized model of perception of the world which transcends the telos of mere
utility and integrates into the process of perception the deviations and marvels
of creation, not even neglecting free play as the highest of all modes of
thought.49
But even in those times not everybody admired this model of perception
of the world, of ‘Welterkenntnis.1 In 1595 a reader of the Stuttgart Wyssenhere
manuscript wrote on folio 2v.: “Wer gem marlein horen wil, / Klein wahrheit
und der Uigen vil, / Der nem difl buch hier fur die handt, / Daraufl wird ihm
gantz wol bekant, / Die liigen groB, die wahrheit klein.“ (He who wants to hear
80

curious stories, little truth, and many lies, should take this book in hand, and he
will find great lies and little truthfulness).
81

00
to
Fig. 1: Alexander the Great’s journey through the skies.
Bale, Switzerland, cathedral, capital of the choir, end of 12th century.
Illustrations:

Fig. 2: Alexander the Great’s journey through the skies.
Otranto, Apulia, Italy, cathedral, floor mosaic, 1166.
83

Fig. 3: Alexander the Great’s journey through the skies.
Historia de preliis J2. Leipzig, Germany, Universitatsbibliothek,
Rep. II4° 143, fol. 101r, end of 13th century.
QA

Fig. 4: Alexander the Great’s journey through the skies. Johann Hartlieb, Alexander.
oo	Munich, Germany, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 581, fol. 133v, 1455.

Fig. 5: Alexander the Great’s journey through the skies. Ulrich von Etzenbach
Alexander, in Heinrich von Miinchen's World Chronicle.
Wolfenbuttel, Germany, Herzog August Bibliothek,
Cod. Guelf. 1.5.2. Aug. 2°, fol. 129va, 2nd half of the 14й1 century.
86

Fig. 6: Alexander the great’s journey through the skies.
Jans Enikel, World Chronicle. Munich, Germany,
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 5, fol. 180vb, late 14th century.
87

«Кзпй*1оше
k le-wtiW' rttt^rftnifmOrt»tutt- шш
Fig. 7: Alexander the Great’s diving adventure. Jans Enikel, World chronicle.
Stuttgart, Germany Wiirttembergische Landesbibliothek,
HB XIII 6, fol. 253rb, early 14th century.
88

Fig. 8: The griffin carries away a horse’s carcass. Michel Wyssenhere,
Bouch von dem edelen hern von Bruneczwigk. Stuttgart, Germany,
Wiirttembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. poet, et phil. 2° 4, fol. 94r, 1471-74.
89

Fig. 9: The griffin carries away Duke Heinrich sewn into a horsehide.
Left part of a tapestry of the Heinrich legend, Rhineland.
Bale, Switzerland, Historisches Museum, 1460-70.

Fig. 10: The Duke's fight with the bird-men. Mural painting of the
Heinrich legend. Karden on the Moselle, Germany, ca. 1497.
91

Fig. 11: Duke Ernst fighting with the bird-men. Print of Herzog Ernst by Anton Sorg,
Augsburg, Germany, ca. 1476. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 2° Inc. s.a. 665, fol. 16v.

Fig. 12: Alexander the Great’s journey through the skies. Bilderbibel.
Nuremberg, Germany, Stadtbibliothek, Cent. V,
App. 34“, fol. 144v, 2nd half of the 15lh century.
93

Notes: *
1	Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, MA L 4. Cf. Jochen Luckhardt et al., eds.
Heinrich der Lowe und seine Zeit: Herrschaft und Reprdsentation der Welfen 1125-1235.
Katalog der Ausstellung Braunschweig 1995, (Henry the Lion and His Times: Rule and
Repretesentation of the Guelphs, 1125-1235. Exhibition Catalogue, Brunswig 1995) vol. 3
(Munich: Hirmer, 1995), 119.
2	In the eighteenth century it was believed to come from a chamois or an antilope.
3	Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, ca. 1129/30-August 6th, 1195. Cf. Karl
Jordan, Heinrich der Ldwe, 2d ed., (Munich: Beck, 1980); Odilo Engels, “H. d. L6we.“ Lexi-
kon des Mittelalters, vol. 4 (Munich and Zurich: Artemis, 1989).
4	“A griffin* s talon does hang over this Prince‘s [Henry‘s the Lion] grave**; cf. Paul
Zimmermann, “Heinrich Gddings Gedicht von Heinrich dem L6wen,“ (H. Gdding’s Poem on
Henry the Lion) Beitrdge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache undLiteratur 13 (1888), 278-
310 [edition of the text]; Hans-Joachim Behr, “Das Nachleben Heinrichs des L6wen in der
Literatur des Spdtmittelalters,** Luckhardt, Heinrich der Lowe und seine Zeit, vol. 3, 9-14
esp.l2f.
5	Callisthenes, a peripatetic philosopher, nephew of Aristotle, accompanied Alexander on his
expeditions and wrote an account, which is lost. Paris: Bibliothfcque nationale, ms. gr. 1685
the oldest-fictional and fantastic—source of Alexander* s the Great history attibutes the text to
him erroneously. The name Pseudo-Callisthenes was first used by Isaac Casaubon in a letter
to Joseph Scaliger of August 15th, 1605. Ed. in Wilhem Kroll, Historia Alexandri Afagni
(Pseudo-Callisthenes). 1: Recensio Vetusta (Berlin: Weidmann, 1926). Cf. Reinhold
Merkelbach, Die Quellen des griechischen Alexanderromans (Munich: Beck, 1954).
6	For all derivates of Pseudo-Callisthenes cf. David J. Ross, Alexander Historiatus. A Guide to
Medieval Illustrated Alexander Literature (London: The Warburg Institute, 1963), 5-65; for
the medieval traditions cf. George Cary, The Medieval Alexander (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1956; reprint, 1967).
7	Victor Junk, ed., Rudolf von Ems, Alexander. Ein hOfischer Versroman des 13. Jahr-
hunderts, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1928-1929).
8	John C. Rolfe, ed., Quintus Curtius Rufus, Res gestae Alexandri Macedonis (Cambridge
Mass.: Cambridge University Press and London: William Heinemann, 1946).
9	Wendelin Toischer, ed., Alexander von Ulrich von Eschenbach (Ttibingen: Hiersemann
1888; reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1974).
10	Reinhard Pawis, ed., Johann Hartliebs Alexander ‘ (Munich and Zurich: Artemis, 1991).
11	For the iconography of this scene in manuscript illuminations, sculptures, mosaics, textiles
etc. cf. Chiara Settis-Frugoni, Historia Alexandri magni elevati per gryphos ad aerem•
Origine, iconografia e fortuna di un tema (The Story of Alexander the Great’s Flight Through
the Air: Origin, Iconography and Tradition of a Theme) (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per Ц
Medio Evo, 1973).
94

12	See e.g. Borgo San Donnino, Northern Italy, Cathedral, relief, ca. 1180 (cf. Roger Sherman
Loomis, “Alexander the Great's Celestial Journey,“ Burlington Magazine 32, 178 (January
1918): 136-140; ibid. 32, 183 (June 1918): 177-185, here fig. N.); Oloron-Sainte-Marie, Dept.
Basses-Pyrdndes, France, tympanon, end of twelfth century (cf. Kingsley A. Porter,
Romanesque Sculpture of the Pilgrimage Roads, 10 vols. [Boston: Marshall Jones Company,
1928], fig. 461).
13	Bale, Cathedral, capital in the choir, 2d half of the twelfth century (cf. Loomis,
“Alexander,“ 178 and fig. 2); Moissac, Cathedral, capital in cloister, twelfth century (cf.
Porter, Romanesque Sculpture, fig. 282).
14
Reproductions courtesy Historisches Museum Basel (photo Maurice Babey: fig. 9);
Kunstgewerbeschule Zurich (fig. 2), and the cited libraries and museums (all other photos).
15	E.g. Matrice, Molise, Southern Italy, Santa Maria della Strada, tympanon, ca. 1148 (cf. Rita
Lejeune and Jasques Stiennon, La ligende de Roland dans Part du moyen age, 2 vols.
[Brussels: Arcade, 1966], 96f.).
16	Together with Sintram‘s liberation in B&le, and with Theodorik‘s “Hdllenjagd" in
Remagen, Rhineland, relief on portal, early thirteenth century (cf. Rainer Budde, Deutsche
romanische Skulptur [Munich: Hirmer, 1979], nos. 212, 213). For the combinations of the
Alexander motif with Roland or Theodorik cf. Nobert H. Ott, “Epische Stoffe in
mittelalterlichen Bildzeugnissen,“ Volker Mertens and Ulrich MUller, eds., Epische Stoffe des
Mittelalters (Stuttgart: Кгбпег, 1984), 449-474, here 462-465.
17	Cf. Chiara Settis-Frugoni, “II mosaico di Otranto: modelli culturali es scelte iconografiche,“
Bulletino dell'istituto storico italiano per il medio evo e Archivio Muratoriano 82 (1970):
243-270; Walter Haug, Das Mosaik von Otranto: Darstellung, Deutung und Bilddokumenta-
tion (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert, 1977); Carl A. Willemsen, Das Rdtsel von Otranto
(Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1992). Alexander's airborne adventure is also depicted in the floor
mosaic of Trani cathedral in Apulia, twelfth century, cf. Settis-Frugoni, Historia Alexandri
magni, 289 and fig. 99.
18	Wells Cathedral, ca. 1330; Gloucester Cathedral, ca. 1345 (2 misericords); Lincoln
Cathedral, ca. 1370; Chester Cathedral, ca. 1390; Cartmel Priory Church, late fourteenth
century; Darlington, St Cuthbert, ca. 1430; Whally, St Mary, ca. 1440; Beverley, St Mary. ca.
1445. Cf. Settis-Frugoni, Historia Alexandri magni, 325-330; Loomis, “Alexander," 178;
Christa Grttssinger, The World Upside-down: English Misericords (London: Harvey Miller,
1997), 150-152.
19	Francesco Sbordone, ed., Physiologus Graecus (Milan et al.: Societas ‘Dante Alighieri,'
1936; reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1976), 147-256.
20	Cf. Eduard Hollerbach and Gdza J&szai, “Greif,“ Lexikon der christlichen lkonographie,
vol. 2. (Rome et al.: Herder, 1970), 202-204.
21	Cf. Klaus Wessel, “Alexander d.Gr. in Kunst und Literatur: Byzanz,“ Lexikon des Mittel¬
alters, vol. 1 (Munich and Zurich: Artemis, 1980), 354.
95

22	Cf. GUnther Binding, “Alexander d.Gr. in Kunst und Literatur: Westen,“ idem., 354-355-
Oskar Holl, “Alexander der GroBe,“ Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, vol. 1, 94-96.
23	Editions of all versions cf. Hermann-Josef Bergmeister, ed., Historia de preliis Alexandri
magni: Synoptische Edition der Rezensionen des Leo Archipresbyter und der interpolierten
Fassungen J, J2, fi (Buck I und II), (Meisenheim am Gian: Anton Hain, 1975); Gustav
Landgraf, ed., Die Vita Alexandri Magni des Archipresbyters Leo (Historia de preliis) nach
der Bamberger und dltesten Miinchener Handschrift zum ersten Mai herausgegeben
(Erlangen: Palm, 1885); Friedrich Pfister, ed., Der Alexanderroman des Archipresbyters Leo
(Heidelberg: Winter, 1913); for illustrations of the airborne adventure e.g. Leipzig-
Stadtbibliothek, Ms. rep. II 4°, fol. 101r., late thirteenth century; Paris: Bibliothfcque
nationale, ms. lat. 8501, fol. 48v., early fourteenth century.
24	Editions cf. The Medieval French Roman d‘Alexandre, eds. Milan S. LaDu et al., 7 vols.
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1937-1978). Also Langston P. Peckham and
Milan S. LaDu, eds., La Prise de Defur‘ and the ‘Voyage d‘Alexandre au Paradis Terrestre ‘
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1935). Illustrations of the airborne adventure e.g.
Paris: Biblioth6que nationale, ms. fr. 786, fol. 60v., middle of thirteenth century; ibid., ms. fr.
790, fol. 81v., middle of fourteenth century; Oxford: Bodleian Library, Ms. Bodl. 264, fol
80v.: ‘Alexander getting into his carriage,* and 81r., ca. 1340.
25	For the illustrations of the German versions cf. David J. Ross, Illustrated Medieval
Alexander-Books in Germany and the Netherlands: A Study in Comparative Iconography
(Cambridge: The Modem Humanities Research Association, 1971).
26	Darmstadt: Hessische Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek, Hs. 4256, Swabia 1461; Munich*
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 581, Augsburg 1455; New York: The Pierpont Morgan
Library, M. 782, Augsburg ca. 1460; cf. Norbert H. Ott et al., eds., Katalog der deutsch-
sprachigen illustrierten Handschriften des Mittelalters, vol. 1 (Munich: Beck, 1991), nos
3.3.1., 3.3.3., 3.3.4. Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 338 (Ott, Katalog, no. 3.3.2 )
has only 27 blanks instead of illustrations.
27	Cf. Ott, Katalog, no. 3.3.3. For Mtilich cf. Werner Albert, “Mtilich, Hektor.“ Die deutsche
Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, ed. Kurt Ruh, 2d. ed., vol. 6 (Berlin and New
York: de Gruyter, 1987), 738-742, for his illustrations cf Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt
Schwdbische Federzeichnungen: Studien zur Buchillustration Augsburgs im XV. Jahrhundert
(Berlin and Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1929), 34-39 and 198-199.
28	Norbert H. Ott, “Heinrich von Mtinchen,“ Verfasserlexikon, vol. 3 (1981), 827-837; Gisela
Komrumpf, “Die Weltchronik Heinrichs von Milnchen: Zu Oberlieferung und Wirkung “
Festschrift fur Ingo Reiffenstein, ed. Peter K. Stein, (Gdppingen: Kilmmerle, 1988), 493-509*
29	E.g. Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 7330, fol. 123rb.
30	Cf. Norbert H. Ott, “Kompilation und Zitat in Weltchronik und Kathedralikonographie
Zum Wahrheitsanspruch (pseudo-) historischer Gattungen,“ Christoph Gerhardt et al., eds
Geschichtsbewufitsein in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters: Tilbinger Colloquium 1983
(Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1985), 119-135.
96

Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 7377, Bavaria or Austria, late fourteenth
century; Wolfenbtlttel: Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 1.5.2. Aug. 2°, Bavaria, 2d.
half of the fourteenth century. Cf. Norbert H. Ott, “Ulrichs von Etzenbachs Alexander
illustriert. Zum Alexanderstoff in den Weltchroniken und zur Entwicklung einer deutschen
Alexander-Ikonographie im 14. Jahrhundert,44 Walter Haug et al., eds., Zur deutschen
Literatur und Sprache des 14. Jahrhunderts: Dubliner Colloquium 1981 (Heidelberg: Carl
Winter, 1983), 155-172.
32	Bale: Offentliche Bibliothek der University, E II 2, Bavaria, 1322; Frankfurt: Stadt- und
Universittitsbibliothek, Ms. germ. qu. 4, Northern Baden, ca. 1425; Stuttgart: Wttrttem-
bergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. poet et phil. 2° 34, fourteenth century; Wolfenbtlttel:
Heizog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 2.1. Aug. 2°, Central Germany, fourteenth century.
All manuscripts described in Ott, Katalog, vol. 1, nos. 3.2.1., 3.3.2., 3.2.4., 3.2.6.
33	Fol. 129rab. The other illustrations of such unusually encounters are: ‘The Diving
Adventure4 (128r.), ‘The Magic Stone4 (128v.); ‘elevatio4 (129v.), ‘Alexander Meets the
Giants, Cyclops and Dwarfs4 (130r.), ‘Alexanders meets Sciapods, Bird-men, Cynocephali
and Nymphs4 (130vab.).
Philipp Strauch, ed., Jansen Enikels Werke (Hannover and Leipzig: Weidmann, 1891
andl900; reprint, Dublin and Zurich, 1972).
Augsburg: UniversiUltsbibliothek, Oettingen-Wallerstein Cod. I. 3. 2° II, fol. 147rb.,
147vb.; Heidelberg: Universitatsbibliothek, Cod. Pal. germ. 336, fol. 152r; Kassel: Gesamt-
hochschul-Bibliothek - Landesbibliothek und Murhardsche Bibliothek der Stadt Kassel, Fol.
Ms. theol. 4, fol. 263r; Malibu: The J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. 33, fol. 220va.; Munich:
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 5, fol. 179vb., 180ra., 180rb.; Ratisbon: Thum und
Taxis'sche Hofbibliothek, Perg. Ill, fol. 108va., 109ra.; Stuttgart: Wtlrttembergische Landes¬
bibliothek, HB XIII 6, fol. 253rb., 253vb.; Vienna: Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod.
2921, fol. 194rb.
Augsburg: Universitatsbibliothek, Oettingen-Wallerstein Cod. I. 3. 2° II, fol. 148rb.;
Heidelberg: Universitatsbibliothek, Cod. Pal. germ. 336, fol. 155r.; Kassel: Gesamthochschul-
Bibliothek - Landesbibliothek und Murhardsche Bibliothek der Stadt, Fol. Ms. theol. 4, fol.
264va.; Malibu, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. 33, fol. 221rab.; Munich: Bayerische
Staatsbibliotek, Cgm 5, fol. 180vb.; ibid., Cgm 250, fol. 184v.; Ratisbon, Thum und
Taxis'sche Hofbibliothek, Perg. Ill, fol. llOrb.; Stuttgart: WUrttembergische Landes¬
bibliothek, HB XIII 6, fol. 254va.; Vienna: Osterreichische Nationalbibliotek, Cod. 2921, fol.
195vb..
37	Cf. Alfred Ebenbauer, ‘‘‘Reinfried von Braunschweig4,44 Verfasserlexikon, vol. 7 (1989),
1171-1176. Edition cf. Karl Bartsch, ed., Reinfried von Braunschweig (Ttlbingen: Literari-
scherVerein, 1871).
38	Cf. Norbert H. Ott, “Wyssenhere, Michel,“ Literaturlexikon, ed. Walther Killy, vol. 12
(1992), 460; facsimile and transcription cf. Iris Dinkelacker and Wolfgang Haring, eds., Eyn
buoch von dem edeln hern von Bruneczwigk als er uber mer fйоге (GOppingen: Kdmmerle,
1977).
97

39	The manuscript contains 239 coloured pen drawings, mostly in Mandeville‘s journey, cf.
Klaus Ridder, Jean de Mandevilles Reisen:' Studien zur Uberlieferungsgeschichte der deut-
schen Ubersetzung des Otto von Diemeringen (Munich: Artemis, 1991), 97-100; Wolfgang
Metzger, “Greifen, Drachen, Schnabelmenschen-Heinrich der L6we in erzahlenden
Darstellungen des Spatmittelalters,44 (Griffins, Dragons, Bird-Men: Henry the Lion in Late
Medieval Narratives) Heinrich der Lowe und seine Zeit, vol. 3, 15-25 (all nine drawings re¬
produced here).
4U Rudolf Simek, Erde und Kosmos im Mittelalter: Das Weltbild vor Kolumbus (Earth and
Cosmos in the Middle Ages: The Pre-Columbian View of the World) (Munich: Beck, 1992)
52-74.
41	For the Braunschweig Bronze Lion, ca. 1163/69, now Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich
Museum, cf. Peter Seiler, “Der Braunschweiger Burgl6we~Spurensicherung auf der Suche
nach den kilnstlerischen Vorbildem“ Heinrich der LOwe und seine Zeit, vol. 2, 244-255.
42	Bale: Historisches Museum, Inv.-No. 1902.7, formerly Luzem, Collection Meyer-am Rhyn
Cf. Leoni von Wilckens, “Zwei Bildteppiche mit Szenen aus der Sage von Heinrich deni
Lowen,“ (Two Tapestries with Scenes from the Legend of Henry the Lion) Heinrich der Lowe
und seine Zeit, vol. 3, 115-117; Metzger, “Greifen, Drachen, Schnabelmenschen;“ Betty
Kurth, Die deutschen Bildteppiche des Mittelalters, (The Medieval German Tapestries) vol. 1
(Vienna: Anton Schroll & Co., 1926), 14 and. 244-245; vol. 2, pi. 165.
43	Karden, Moselle, wall-paintings on lime plaster, formerly school of the Karden chapter-
house, now private property. Cf. Wolfgang Metzger, “Wandmalereien zur Sage von Heinrich
dem Ldwen in Karden an der Mosel,“ (Frescoes from the Legend of Henry the Lion in
Karden, Moselle) Heinrich der L6we und seine Zeit, vol. 3, 117-119; Metzger, “Greifen
Drachen, Schnabelmenschen,“ ibid.; Wolfgang Stammler, “Herzog Ernst und Heinrich der
L6we,“ id. ed., Wort und Bild: Studien zu den Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Schrifttum und
Bildkunst im Mittelalter (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1962), 77-81.
44	Cf. Georg F. Benecke, Karl Lachmann, and Ludwig Wolff, eds. Iwein: Eine Erzdhlung von
Hartmann von Aue, 7th ed. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968), vv. 3828-3922. The scene is depicted
in the Iwein wallpaintings in Schmalkalden, Thuringia, first half of the thirteenth century, cf
Anne-Marie Bonnet, Rodenegg und Schmalkalden (Munich: tuduv, 1986), fig. 47.
45	Cf. Hans Szklenar and Hans-Joachim Behr, “Herzog Ernst,“ Verfasserlexikon, vol. 3 1170
1191.
46	Dresdner Heldenbuch, written in 1472 in Nuremberg by Kaspar von der Rh6n for Duke
Balthasar of Mecklenburg, cf. Dresden: SSchsische Landesbibliothek, Mscr. Dresd. M 201
illustration fol. 264v.
47	E.g. Augsburg, Anton Sorg, ca. 1476; ca. 1478; ca. 1485. Cf. Albert Schramm, Der
Bilderschmuck der Friihdrucke, (The Ornament in Early Imprints) vol. 4: Die Drucke von
Anton Sorg in Augsburg (Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1921), 6-7, fig. 242-271.
48	Nuremberg: Stadtbibliothek, Cent. V, App. 34a, fol. 143v. and 144r. (‘Underwater
Adventure4), fol. 144v. (‘Airborne Adventure4). Cf. detailed description of this manuscript in
Ott, Katalog, vol. 2, no. 15.4.5.
98

49	Cf. Horst Bredekamp, Antikensehnsucht und Maschinenglauben: Die Geschichte der Kunst-
kammer und die Zukunft der Kunstgeschichte (The Longing for Antiquity and the Belief in
Machinery: The History of Art Collections and the Future of Art History) (Berlin:
Wagenbach, 1993).
99

Cynocephalic Demons in Medieval Song, Legend, and Epic
Donald Ward
In his Historia Langobardorum, written around 790, Paulus Diaconus
relates how the nation of the Vinnili—who were later to be known as the ‘Long-
beards’ or Langobards—found their progress on their migration southward im¬
peded by the nation of Assipiti who threatened the migrants with war if they
continued their invasion. It was then that the leader of the Vinnili spread the
rumor that their army included a contingent of furious ‘dogheads* who were
vicious, bloodthirsty beasts who could rip their enemies to shreds with their
teeth and drink their blood.1 Indeed, the rumor had it, that if they were not pro¬
vided with their fresh blood, the beasts would in their fury drink their own
blood.
The tradition of equating Germanic warriors with wild beasts and specifi¬
cally with dogs and/or wolves is well documented. Many of the migrating Ger¬
manic tribes were known to have had warrior societies of young males who
donned wolfskins and presumably masks so that they might be transformed in
spirit into wild beasts. In Old Norse these warriors were called ulfhednar or
‘wolf-hides,’ a term that is reminiscent of the parallel figures of the berserkr,
that is, of ‘bear skins.’3 Indeed the very name of the tribe in Paulus’s report^
Vinnili, is from the Germanic participle, winnig meaning ‘howling with rage,’
and a similar tradition is preserved in other tribal or dynastic names such as the
Hundingas, Ulfingas, Ylfingar, and the Old English healf hundingas.5
In his Gesta Karoli Magni Imperatoris (ca. 885), Notker Babulus
describes the attacking Norsemen as being aided by dogheaded warriors, that is,
warriors “cum cynocephalis.“6 Indeed, there is parallel evidence of such cults of
wolf/dog-warriors among Celtic and other Indo-European peoples, indicating
that this tradition is quite ancient.7 Although , it may be true that the Proto-
Indo-Europeans knew such practices and the attendant myths, the tradition of
nations of dogheads is by no means limited to those nations who speak
languages related to the Indo-European. Similar traditions are widespread in
East Asia and in Pacific-rim regions, including North America, as Wilhelm
Koppers has shown.8
One of the earliest European reports on the existence of dogheads dates
from the eleventh century in Adam von Bremen’s Ecclesiastic History of Ham¬
burg. Adam describes the creatures he calls cynocephali as barking, howling
half-humans with a dog's head where the breast should be, and which he claims
to have seen in Russia.
Most of those who sought to describe the fauna and peoples of the world
never doubted the existence of such things as basilisks, dragons, centaurs, and
the like, and so it was also with the dogheads. Hrabanus Maurus, for example,
speculates whether the dogheads were humans descended from Adam or wild
beasts, and this argument continued to be debated among later theologians.10
One fascinating legend that was disseminated by learned theologians told that
101

St. Christophorus (or St. Christopher) was himself a doghead, having been born
in a nation of the creatures located at the end of the world in the Far East of
Asia.11 Others sought to explain that he became a doghead, because he was so
handsome he was constantly pursued by nubile maidens and prayed to God to
make him ugly, lest he commit a mortal sin. His wish was granted.12 However,
most of the traditional beliefs and narratives about the dogheads thrived in the
regions stretching from Finland in the eastern Baltic Sea in the North, down to
the shores of the Aegean Sea in the South. The nations of these regions
invariably focused on the armies that attacked them from the East. There was a
pronounced degree of xenophobia in the accounts that saw the armies of such
exotic peoples as the Avars, the Huns, the Mongols, and finally the Turks
populated largely by two-legged beasts with the heads and fangs of dogs.
The Finns, for example, told that when Russian armies attacked them
repeatedly in wars, they were always led by ‘Dog-Snouts,’ who had a sharp
sense of smell, ‘as sharp as that of the finest hunting hounds.’ They were short
creatures who looked very much like humans, but had only one eye in the
middle of their foreheads. They were savage and bloodthirsty as their sense of
smell led them to the hiding places of their victims. When they found them
Russian soldiers held them down, as a doghead took out a hollow tube with
which he stabbed his victim to then suck out his entire supply of blood.13
The neighboring Estonians provide us with additional information about
the homeland of the Dog-Snouts. They live at the border at the end of the world
behind a great mountain range. These mountains provide a barrier between the
realm of the dogheads and that of the human world. If the dogheads should
succeed in crossing these mountains, it would mean the end of the human race
for they would soon kill and eat everyone in the world. They are so powerful
that there is no way humans could resist them effectively. The Estonians call
them Koerakoolased (var.: Koerakoonud, Koerakoonukad) in northern Estonia
and Peninuki or pininona-rahvas in the South.14
The traditions of doghead stories have thrived well into the twentieth
century especially among the Slavic nations that were once part of or bordered
the former Austro-Hungarian empire, that is, among Slovene speakers in
southern Carinthia, Slovenia, and among western Croatians. The object of these
xenophobic traditions among these peoples was invariably the Turks.
These stories feature the Pesoglavci. the dog-headed people. These are
fierce warriors who were of human form except that they had dogheads. In
some accounts they were said to have had only one eye. These cynocephalic
traditions, as well as those of other nations, have been investigated in
magnificent fashion by Leopold Kretzenbacher in 1968. A South Slavic song
recorded around 1900 reflects the chilling nature of the Doghead4 s assaults: “I
once possessed eight sons, / all of whom I married off, / and also soon had eight
grandchildren. / Dogheaded Turks then invaded, /and they ate all eight of my
sons / and gobbled up all eight of my daughters-in-law, / in addition to all eight
of my grandchildren.“l5
102

Other narratives from this region tell of these bloodthirsty beasts who
prefer to hunt down Christians and to eat their flesh and drink their blood. Like
vampires, they can smell Christian blood from afar. They often dragged off
their prey to underground caverns where they roasted them alive over fires.
They would often rape the women captives and then yoke them to plows to use
them as draft animals to till the soil. Some of the males were put in cages and
fattened so that they could be eaten on special feast days. On one such holiday,
the dogheads went to church while one mother—a witch-stayed home to
prepare dinner. She released the fattened prisoner and invited him into her
kitchen where she directed him to mount a small wagon and offered to pull him
around the room. The man pretended ignorance, and asked her to show him how
to mount the wagon. After she climbed in, he opened the oven door and pushed
the wagon into the oven where she was cooked. Not only is this episode remi¬
niscent of the famous motif in the folktale of Hansel and Gretel, the fact that
this witch is a demonic cannibal, rather than the village crone of the folk legend,
offers us an example of a stratum of demonic belief that is earlier than the more
recent beliefs in village witches. For this witch is a cannibalistic ogre who is a
member of a tribe of similar beasts.
The prisoner, after he dispatched the demon, had to make his escape. He
found some bottles made of dried gourds with which he fashioned himself a
kind of life vest that permitted him to float down the river and away from the
realm of the dogheads while the water succeeded in covering his scent. Floating
away down a river or climbing a tree are the two methods of escape that are
most often successful in this narrative tradition as it exist through time and
space.
Kretzenbacher adduces a number of tales in which fugitive Christians are
able to escape detection by hiding in a stream or river. A tale collected in
southern Carenthia early in this century tells the story of Miklova Zala, a young
bride from the village of St. Jakob in Rosen Valley.
When the Turks invaded the valley in the second half of the fifteenth
century, they abducted the young bride and delivered her to the Turkish Pasha
in Constantinople. He became enamored of his young captive and asked her to
convert to his religion so they could marry. She refused, and in the seventh year
of her captivity, when she was sitting in the garden, she began singing a lament
of her unhappy life. She was overheard by an old gardener, himself a prisoner,
who spoke to her. She recognized him as her uncle who was also from St.
Jakob. They decided to flee and went north to the Danube River. When the
Pasha learned of their flight, he sent the dogheads in pursuit who followed the
scent of their Christian blood. When the fugitives came to the Danube, they
entered the water where they hid under the roots of trees that grew along the
bank. They continued to do so everyday and traveled only by night, and thus
escaped detection and were able to make it back to their village.
A shorter version of the tale from lower-Carinthia tells of the pair‘s flight
from the dogheads, but only the girl is able to escape, as the man is tom to
103

shreds by the pursuing beasts.17 In a variant collected in the twentieth century,
the captive maiden is the daughter of a miller. She makes her escape by stealing
four horses all loaded with gold. Her successful escape makes her father a
wealthy man.18 A nineteenth-century variant of the story reports that the
daughter of a smith, after her abduction by the dogheads, managed to escape.
Pursued by twelve dog-headed warriors, she comes to her father*s smithy, but
her father is gone and the building is sealed up. The smithy is, however
equipped with a water wheel, and she is able to enter the structure through a
small opening behind the wheel. The dogheads follow her scent to the mill, but
as they try to enter through the small opening one at a time, she finds a large
axe with which she lops off the heads of her pursuers one by one until all twelve
are dead.19
Those familiar with European folktales might well note that this final
motif is also known in tale type 956B. The Clever Maiden Alone at Home Kills
the Robbers Kretzenbacher has, in showing that the maiden is pursued by
dogheads in 45 Slavic variants of this tale type, demonstrated that the
introduction of the robbers into this tradition is most probably a secondary
development as has occurred time and again when supernatural traditions
become rationalized.21
If we look at the core elements of the legend of the dogheads as they are
told by Slovene and Croatian peoples, we can see that the basic story is one of a
pair of captives, male and female, who decided to flee their dog-headed captors.
After they raid the dogheads' treasury and load the gold onto horses, they flee
northward to the Danube River. They cover their scent by hiding in the waters
of the river by day, and they travel by dark of night. When they arrive at the
border of their homeland, the dogheads have caught up to them, but the
fugitives are able to position themselves at a site where they are partially
protected by a narrow opening through which the dogheads are forced to enter
one at a time. This auspicious situation enables them to slay all of the pursuers
and to return triumphantly with their gold to their homeland.
Anyone familiar with medieval heroic literature, will recognize that this
plot summary corresponds essentially to the content of the epic story of Walther
of Aquitania and his bride Hildegund that has come down to us in several
forms. The most complete version is a tenth-century Latin epic, Waltharius
written in Latin hexameters by the monk Ekkehard, probably of St. Gallen, in
the Old English fragment of Waldere, also from the tenth century, in the
thirteenth-century fragments of the Middle High German Waltherliet and finally
in the Norwegian Thidreksaga, also from the thirteenth century. Missing, how¬
ever, from each of these epic works is the reference to the Huns as dogheads.
Basically the story of Walther of Aquitania is that of a young prince who
had been a hostage at Attila's court since childhood; also at the court was the
Frankish hero Hagen. The story obviously reflects the period during the
Germanic migrations when the Huns had conquered several Germanic peoples
and assimilated their members into their own society. The Huns were especially
104

interested in bringing Germanic military leaders into their fold who contributed
substantially to the Hunnish conquest of additional peoples.22 And it is
precisely in this role that young Walther serves in the poetic tradition, for the
young prince becomes the valiant and triumphant leader of Attila’s army.
Also at the court was the young princess Hildegund, who was also one of
the Germanic hostages. The story that emerges parallels the Slavic legends of
the captives of the dogheads in most of the details. The princess, who also
comes from Aquitania and is homesick, meets Walther in a garden and falls in
love with him. As they reminisce together about their homeland, they agree that
it is now time to flee and return home.
During a drinking bout that Attila puts on in the great hall, Walther and
Hildegund encouraged Attila and his warriors to over imbibe, and after the
Huns had drunk themselves into a stupor, the pair fled on a stolen horse laden
with treasure. The Latin epic tells how they flee to the Danube and proceed
westward while avoiding all inhabited regions. They travel only by night to
escape detection and hide during the day in forests and thickets. The stealth
they show represents a kind of blind motif, for since they are not being pursued,
there is apparently no reason . for them to hide. The explanation for this
inconsistency is offered by the Thidreksaga-as well as in other sources-which
tell how Hagen leads a group of twelve Hun-warriors in pursuit of the pair. In
the Waltharius, by contrast the pursuit does not begin until after Walther and
Hildegund have crossed the Rhine with their great treasure, but the hunt is lead
by Hagen who has since also fled from Attila*s court and returned to his lord,
Gunther, king of the Franks. Here, as in the Thidreksaga, Hagen leads a party of
twelve knights, but they are all Franks and not Huns. Gunther, who has received
word of their great treasure from the ferryman who took them across the Rhine,
is greedy for this great hoard. He accompanies Hagen and the twelve knights in
their chase which ends when both parties arrive at the pass of Wasgenstein in
the Vosges Mountains of Alsace. The rocky pass, which incidentally still is a
landmark today, features a natural archway through which only one man could
pass at a time, an auspicious situation for Walther who is able to dispatch his
foes one by one as they come through the opening.
There is, incidentally, a consensus of Walther-specialists that the pursuit
by the Huns represents the older and more valid version of the story, and that
the insertion of the Franks into the action was prompted by the popularity of the
Nibelungen tradition in the West.23 That the pursuit by the Huns was once part
of this epic narrative is indicated by several pieces of evidence, internal and
external. For example, in the Latin epic, when the pair discovers that they are
being pursued, Hildegund immediately infers that the pursuers are Attila’s
Huns, indicating perhaps the original form of the story. Similarly, in the the
Middle High German fragment of Waltherliet, after the principals’ return to
Aquitania, messengers arrive from Attila’s court to inform Walther’s father that
“Walther ist von dem kunige so gescheiden, daz es die Hiunnen immer muzen
klagen“ (Walther took leave from King Attila in such a way that the Huns will
105

bewail it for evermore). This statement means that there had been a battle
during which Walther slew a group of Attila‘s warriors. This suggests that the
pair of fugitives were hunted down by a posse of Huns, presumably twelve in
number, and that Walther succeeded in slaying them all. As has already been
mentioned, the most convincing evidence for this original pursuit is provided by
the Thidrebaga in which it is told that the fugitives are pursued immediately by
twelve Huns who are led by Hagen. Finally, in the Latin Waltharius, when
Attila and his men awake on the morning after their revelry and discover that
their treasury has been emptied, and that the prince and princess have fled, the
king flies into a rage and promises a fortune in gold to those who can pursue
them and return them and the hoard to his court. This episode seems to confirm
that a pursuit by the Huns indeed took place.
The striking similarity of the literary variants of the Walther story with
the Slavic story of the escape from the dogheads indicates that the two
traditions are indeed closely related to one another. Missing from all literary
treatments of the Walther epic, however, is the pursuit by the demonic creatures
with the heads of dogs that characterize the Slavic variants of the story. There
is, however, sufficient evidence showing that there once existed a tradition in
which the Hun warriors and their leaders were demonized by being depicted as
dogheads. The Goth Jordanes, for example relates the story of how the Huns
were monsters who were produced through the cohabitation of a she-wolf with
a sorcerer,24 a story that was retold by Croatians and western Serbs.25 A four¬
teenth century history of Attila’s feats tells of how Attila’s mother was locked
in a tower by her father with only her dog as a companion. There she later gave
birth to Attila who was a wild creature, half man and half dog.26
A fifteenth-century Vita Attilae attributed to Juvencus Coelius Calanus
Dalmata, bishop of Pec^the earliest biography of Attila, depicts the king of the
Huns as cynocephalic.27 And in more recent times, Slovenian folklore has
preserved the depiction of Attila‘s warriors as dogheads.28
There is thus sufficient evidence attesting to the popular process of
demonization of Attila and his warriors that resulted in their depiction as
vicious dogheads. If my suggestion that the flight of Walther and Hildegund is
essentially the same as the legend of the flight from the dogheads is valid, then
we are left with the puzzle of why the singer-poets of the Walther-story
eliminated all references to the dog-headed Huns. An answer to this question is
provided by looking at the story of Walther against the social political world of
its own time, in this case in the Age of the migrations. During this period the
Huns were quite successful in their conquest of western lands and peoples. For
example, they routed the Ostrogoths and conquered the Visigoths. They
furthermore accepted the conquered peoples into their own nation. Thus there
were many Visigoths who served as generals of Attila’s army and others who
served the Hunnish king as counselors and advisors. Indeed, this relationship
must have been a very cozy one, for the very name by which we know this king
of the Huns even to this day, is itself the Gothic name given to him by the
106

conquered Goths, for Attila is Gothic for ‘little father.’ This special relationship
resulted in the fact that those peoples who served Attila had in general a
positive evaluation of him and his people. Indeed, it has long been known that
there were two distinct, wildly divergent images of Attila the Hun in this
period.29 For those peoples who lived on the periphery of Attila’s conquests and
who greatly feared being the next victims of his expansion, he and his Huns
were demonized into wild dogheads who craved the blood and flesh of
Christians. But for those peoples who were enlisted into Attila’s ranks, their
‘little father’ was an admired heroic figure. These Germanic peoples who
occupied the center of Germanic expansion were also the ones who perpetuated
the images of their heroic figures in lays and epics. Among these peoples it
would have been impossible to depict Attila and his men as demonic dogheads
who would pursue and try to kill a pair of Christian lovers. Their singers thus
simply eliminated the very core of die legends. There is, however, a sufficient
number of elements alluding to the original plot that permit us to infer the
existence of this powerful story of the dramatic flight from evil to freedom.
107

Notes:
1	Paulus Diaconus, Pauli Historia Langobardorum, ed. Georg Waitz (Hannover: Hahn, 1878).
2	Cf. Otto Htffler, Kultische Geheimbunde der Germanen (Frankfurt: Diesterweg, 1934).
3	Leopold Kretzenbacher, Kynocephale Ddmonen siidosteuropdischer Volksdichtung
(Cynocephalic Demons in East European Folk Tales) (Mtinchen: Rudolf Trefenik, 1968), 87-89.
4	Johann A. Schmeller, Georg C. Frommann, Bayerisches Worterbuch, 2 vols. (Mtinchen:
Oldenburg 1872-1877; reprint, Aalen: Scientia, 1961), sub verbum “winnig,“ vol. 2, 929.
5	Kretzenbacher, Kynocephale Ddmonen, 83.
6	Ibid., 90.
7	Donald Ward, “Attila, King of the Huns in Narrative Lore,“ in Franz H. Bauml and Marianne
D. Bimbaum, eds. Attila: The Man and His Image (Budapest: Corvina, 1993), 28-44.
8	Wilhelm Koppers, “Der Hund in der Mythologie der zirkumpazifischen Vblker/4 (The Dog in
the Mythology of Pacific-Rim Peoples) Wiener Beitrage zur Kulturgeschichte, 1 (1930): 359-
399.
9	Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae pontificum, ed. Bernhard Schmeidler
(Hannover: Hansche Buchhandlung, 1917), 247f.
10	Kretzenbacher, Kynocephale Ddmonen, 39-46.
11	Walter Loeschke, “Neue Beitrage zur Darstellung des kynokephalen hi. Christophems in Ost-
europa/* (Recent Contributions With Regard to the Representation of the Cynocephalic S
Christopherus in Eastern Europe) Forschungen zur osteuropdischen Geschichte, 5 (1957)- 3g
59.
12	Kretzenbacher, Kynocephale Damonen, 61.
13	Lauri Simonsuuri and P.-Liisa Rausmaa, eds. Finnische Volkserzahlungen (Finnish Folk
Tales) (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968), no. 520.
14	Jonas Balys, “Dogheaded People/4 in Maria Leach, ed. Standard Dictionary of Folklore
Mythology and Legend, 2 vols. (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1949), vol. 1,319f.
15	Friedrich S. Krauss, Slawische Volksforschungen: Abhandlungen iiber Glauben, Gewohn-
heitsrechte, Sitten, Brduche und die Guslarenlieder der Siidslawen (Research on Slavic Folk¬
lore: Essays on Belief, Manners and Customs, and the Guslar Songs Among Southern Slavic
People) (Leipzig: W. Heims, 1908), 157.
16	Kretzenbacher, Kynocephale Ddmonen, 13f.
17	Georg Graber, Sagen aus Kdrnten (LegendsfromCarinthia) (Leipzig:Dieterich, 1914), 36If.
108

18	Johann Reinhard Blinker, Schwanke, Sagen und Marchen in heanzischer Mundart
(Anecdotes, Legends, and Fairy Tales in Heanzic Dialect) (Leipzig: Deutsche Verlagsaktien-
gesellschaft, 1906), 112f.
19
Else Byhan, Wunderbaum und goldener Vogel: Slowenische Volksmdrchen (Wonder Tree and
Golden Bird: Slovene Folk Fairy Tales) (Kassel: E. Roth, 1958), 149-151.
20	Antti Aame and Stith Thompson, The Types of the Folktale, 2d rev. ed. (Helsinki: Academia
Scientiarum Fennica, 1961), 339.
21	Kretzenbacher, Kynocephale Ddmonen, 18.
22	Herwig Wolfram, “The Huns and the Germanic Peoples,” in Bfiuml and Bimbaum, Attila, lb-
25.
23	Hermann Schneider, “Das Epos von Walther und Hildegunde,” (The Epic Tale of W. and H.)
Germanisch-romanische Monatsschriji 113 (1955): 119-130. Cf. also Hendrik W. Kroes, "Die
Walthersage," (The Walther-Legend) Beitrdge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und der
Literatur [Halle], 77 (1955): 77-81.
24 Cf. The German Legends of the Brothers Grimm, ed. and trans. Donald Ward (Philadelphia:
Ishi, 1982), no. 380.
25	Kretzenbacher, Kynocephale Эйтопеп, 23.
26	Nicola da Casola, La Guerra d'Attila: Poema franco-italiano, ed. Guido Stendardo, 2 vols.
(Modena: Society Tipografica, 1941), vol. 1. Cf. also Pio Rajna, "L'Attila di Nicola da Casola,"
Romania 37 (1908): 80-110, esp. 89-93.
27	Marianne Bimbaum, “Attilas Renaissance in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” in BMuml
and Bimbaum, Attila, 82-96, esp. 90.
Kretzenbacher, Kynocephale Damonen, 25.
29 Helmut de Boor, Das Attilabild in Geschichte, Legende und heroischer Dichtung (The Image
of Attila in History, Legends, and Epic Poetry) (Bern: Literarische Gesellschaft, 1932).
109

The Devil in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Florentine Engravings
Ludovica Sebregondi
The devils of the Middle Ages lend themselves easily to typological
subdivision. As Oswald Erich demonstrated, they can be distinguished into
‘types’ fixed by iconographic theme, and into ‘types’ determined by the period
during which they were created.1 Those of the Renaissance, instead, are so
numerous and varied that it seems difficult to attempt to define or classify them.
There are several reasons for such an abundance of devils. One is that there was
a proliferation of anthropomorphous devils; another that ancient prototypes
continued to survive even when new ones were added to, or associated with,
them; and, thirdly, that representations of the devil varied according to period,
location, and artistic technique. In this study I will try to circumscribe at least
part of this ‘Pandemonium’ of Renaissance devils by examining the various
‘types’ (that is, the different iconographic categories) to be found in Florentine
engravings of the second half of the fifteenth century and the first decades of
the sixteenth. The images I will examine thus share the medium, the location,
and, to a certain extent, the period in which they were created.
Among the most common types of devils one can list the ‘satyr devil,’ the
‘devourer of souls,’ the ‘gastrocephalic devil or the one with many faces,’ the
‘Eidolon,’ the ‘tempter,’ the ‘animalesque devil,’ and the ‘ridiculous devil.’ In
Italian fifteenth-century art some of these types are not connected to a specific
iconography, but appear in a variety of representations ranging from the Last
Judgment, to the Temptation of Christ, from the lives of the Saints to a variety
of imagined or ‘realistic’ scenes.
The most common type of devil is the so called ‘satyr devil.’ This has re¬
mained the Devil of western tradition to this day. It is a creature with human
semblance, but endowed with horns, a tail and hoofs on the model of Greek and
Roman representations of satyrs, fauns, or the god Pan. The devil appeared in
the West under this guise from the twelfth century on, and as such it engendered
so many derivations that they overwhelmed all other infernal families. To this
day at least one of its three basic characteristics (horns, tail and hoofs) is a
fundamental signal used to identify the devil in a picture. Other important
elements in this type of devil are animal ears, ruffled hair or a goat-like beard.
All these elements are found in the billy-goat, a symbol of lasciviousness as far
back as the Greeks. It is also possibly to draw close links between the satyr of
ancient theater and the devils that appears in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century
religious theater (the Sacre rappresentazioni). These factors helped to introduce
among the people the satyr/billy-goat figure as a prototype for the Christian
devil, thus making the passage from the Pagan to the Christian figure natural
and logical, both iconographically and mentally, among the cultured as well as
among the illiterate population.
An example of the ‘satyr devil’ type is found in an engraving illustrating
the volume Predica dell arte del Bene morire (Sermon on the Art of Dying
111

Well), a sermon by the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola published in
Florence by Bartolomeo de‘ Libri shortly after it had been delivered on
November 2nd, 1496. This work belongs to a very popular genre of medieval
literature: the Altercatio or Disputatio, that is, the duel between God and Satan
over a soul in danger of death that is saved at the last moment by an angelic
intervention. This contention for the soul's final destiny at the moment of death
enjoyed great success among German artists who illustrated German Ars
moriendi with woodcuts that clearly corresponded to their texts4 aim of in¬
stilling fear of death among believers.2 Savonarola's treatise, on the other hand,
has a different purpose: it offers advice to its readers on how to save their souls
by behaving well in life and by always keeping in mind the thought of death.
This, Savonarola claims, will eventually lead believers to die well.
Figure 1, taken from Savonarola‘s Sermon on the Art of Dying Well? is a
clear reference to the words used by Savonarola to when urging his audience to
consider the inevitability of death-something that would then lead them to love
God, fear Sin, and thus to escape Hell and merit Paradise. In this image Death
depicted as a long-haired skeleton carrying a scythe, is depicted in the act of
showing Hell and Paradise to a young man. With its raised right hand Death
points at a scroll that reads “O QUA SU“ (Either up here), while with its left
hand it points at another scroll that reads “O QUA GIU“ (Either down here). In
the lower part of the woodcut there are several satyr-like devils. They have
human bodies covered with shaggy hair, animal horns and ears, pointed goat
beards, and private parts covered with goatskins. The satyr-devils in this partic¬
ular illustration do not have a tail, though devils in other engravings in this
volume do have such a feature.
Two other animal parts characterize these ‘satyr-devils.4 The first are the
claws that appear so frequently in this type of illustrations. They can be
explained by having recourse to the belief that devils grasped, clutched and held
souls tightly, functions that required a predator4 s sharp claws. Bat wings
branching out from the devils* shoulders were a second distinctive animal
feature. The association between the devil and the bat is testified in Christian
literature as early as the first century. In Western art these membranous wings
first appeared around 1223 in Bianca of Castile's Psalter.4 Bat wings seemed
iconographically appropriate for the Prince of Darkness and they rapidly spread
in Europe. In Italy they appeared for the first time in the devils at Christ's left in
the mosaic ceiling in the Baptistery of Florence (ca. 1260-75).5 As Baltrusaitis
indicates, the devil's new attribute comes from the Far East, particularly from
China, where it had already appeared in the eleventh century. In Florence, bat
wings soon became a very common element in the representation of the devil
Often in the space between membranes the wing structure reveals ribs that
connect to form circles, a feature derived from oriental models. Such wings
decorated with medallions are also ascribed to the gigantic Satan in Fig. 1 who
at the center of the lower semicircle-alluding to subterranean life after death—*
is depicted in half-length. This is again a ‘satyr-type’ devil, with powerful, hairy
112

chest and arms, shown holding two sinners in his hands—a man and a woman.
Satan, easily recognizable by his wide-open mouth and large eyes, appears to
have another face on his abdomen, an element we will discuss below.
Another woodcut from Savonarola* s Sermon on the Art of Dying Well
shows how the devil can be an insidious threat (Fig. 2).7 The illustration depicts
the beginning of an illness and the devil*s attempt to banish the idea of death
from the sick man so as to catch him unprepared at the fatal moment. The sick
man is depicted still dressed and resting on a lettuccio (day couch, or day bed),
a natural situation for the beginning of an illness, not under the bed sheets on a
lettiera (a real bed), as in the case of someone who is quite ill.8 A devil, seen in
profile, raises his left arm over the sick man‘s head and leans on the lettuccio s
arm. This devil can be identified by the hair around the central part of its body,
so long that it almost forms a short skirt, by its drooping feminine breasts (an
iconographic detail borrowed from the oriental tradition), by a tail, horns and
bat wings. Two smaller devils are situated next to the standing figures: one
kneels at the left of the woman, while the other is partly hidden by the doctor.
They are bald and their horns are almost upright.
In dealing with the devil one is naturally led to wander into the reign of
the damned, where the Prince of Darkness rules, a journey whose foremost liter¬
ary prototype is Dante*s Divine Comedy.9 As in nearly all other cases when the
devil is depicted, here, too, the satyr-type is prevalent. Even the infernal
‘devourers of the damned’ are actually giant satyrs with horns and ruffled
fleece. The depiction of the devourer-devil enjoyed an impressive development
south of the Alps. The first representation of the damned being eaten ‘alive’ is
to be found in the mosaics of Torcello, set between the end of the eleventh and
the beginning of the twelfth century, The greatest fantasy is displayed in the
mosaics of the Last Judgment in the Baptistery of Florence, attributed to Coppo
di Marcovaldo and dated about 1260-75. It is clear that this powerful image also
greatly influenced Giotto in his depiction of the Last Judgment in the Scrovegni
Chapel in Padua (1303-1305).
In the fourteenth century the theme of the devouring devil continued to
exert its attraction. The most significant representation appears in the Last
Judgment of the Camposanto in Pisa, in a work by Buonamico Buffalmacco,
datable to ca. 1332-42.10 An inscription on the upper left reads: “QUESTO E
LINFERNO DEL CHAPO SANTO DI PISA“ (This is the Hell of the Campo
Santo of Pisa). An engraved copy of this fresco (Fig. 3) was executed in about
1460-80 by an anonymous Florentine engraver and survives in several copies.
The giant figure of Lucifer appears to be a mixture of various devil types. The
body corresponds to that of classical satyrs. The large-mouthed face, with its
powerful teeth, recalls the head of a Gorgon—also a classical reference. Its
three-faced head, a motif developed at the end of the thirteenth century, turns
Lucifer into a demonic inversion of the Christian Trinity. Viewed from the
front, Lucifer is seen in the act of devouring three damned sinners, hanging
partially out his three mouths. A fourth sinner is thrown out through another
113

mask located in the genitals. This Lucifer is clearly a ‘gastrocephalic’ devil, that
is, a devil with a supplementary face on its belly.
The devil with a frightening face on its abdomen appears in Western art
as early as the beginning of the thirteenth century in an illumination from the
Psalter of Canterbury (ca. 1200).12 The gastrocephalic type, which generally has
a ‘human* appearance, undergoes important variations over time. By the end of
the thirteenth century a repetition of the faces spreads to the impure parts of the
devil‘s body (genitals, thighs, breast) or to the joints (elbows, shoulders, knees)
until each major protuberance is transformed into a face. While intensifying the
devil‘s monstrosity, this phenomenon also illustrates the devil‘s bestiality since
the head, which is the seat of intelligence, is displaced downward towards the
impure parts of the body. According to BaltruSaitis, the positioning of the face
on the devil‘s belly and knees was influenced and determined by masks of
ancient and of Chinese warriors. In a free interpretation (Fig. 4) of the fresco in
the Camposanto of Pisa, that most probably predates by several years the image
mentioned above, Lucifer appears as both ‘devourer of the damned’ and
‘gastrocephalic.’13 This image distinguishes itself from the later engraving by
its vertical position, the insertion of scrolls that identify some characters and
their sins, and by a major expressive freedom evident mainly in the torturing
devils.
A new type of devil emerges in the fourteenth century—the ‘tempter
devil.’ This figure depicts a fiendish deceiver who, in order to swindle its
victims better under cover of devotion, assumes a disguise that conceals at least
part of its monstrosity. In order to inform the spectator, the artist allows some of
this creature‘s devilish attributes to appear through its clothing. Girolamo
Savonarola4s Compendio di Revelatione (Outline of Revelation) tells of an
imaginary journey undertaken by the Dominican friar in order to bring a gift to
the Madonna.14 During the trip, Savonarola encounters the demon (Fig. 5). The
subject of this woodcut—whose style is akin to that of Bartolomeo di Giovanni—
matches the text perfectly: walking towards Paradise, the friar is followed by
four allegorical figures and engages ‘the Tempter* in a discussion. Savonarola
opens his arms wide in front of the devil who, though disguised as a Dominican
complete with rosary at his belt, is nevertheless recognizable by its horns and
claws.
Alongside devils with classical or Western prototypes, there were also
devils with Byzantine antecedents. The so-called ‘Eidolon type’ was the one
who survived the longest. This was a shady figure, small and delicate, generally
winged, floating in the air, depicted either as a human being, a bird or a dragon
In western representations from the ninth century on, the Eidolon came to
depict a spirit that torments people. Choosing this iconographical image for
scenes of exorcism became almost obligatory because the Eidolon was such a
little figure that it could easily fit in overcrowded compositions where evil
spirits were to come out from the mouth of the possessed.
114

The Eidolon could also be used for depictions of the Passion story, (Fig.
6) as we see in a Florentine engraving of 1511 illustrating the Rappresentatione
della Passione di lesu Christo (Representation of Christ’s Passion).16 The story
is divided in two parts. In the first, two devils work to drive Judas to despair
until he commits suicide by hanging himself from a tree. The small devil figures
exhibit some of the characteristics of the satyr-type, such as the horns, bat
wings, claws and hairy body, but they are reduced to small silhouettes. The
same characteristics, but in larger dimensions, can also be seen in a woodcut
(Fig. 7) from the volume Miracoli della gloriosa vergine Maria (Miracles of the
glorious Virgin Mary).17 The scene tells the story (very common in the Middle
Ages) of a painter who, while painting the Virgin*s face, was thrown off the
scaffolding on which he was working by the devil, envious of such beautiful
work, only to be saved by the Virgin who stretched out her hand from the
painting and caught him.
The fantastical and animalesque devil type probably developed in close
connection with the so-called ‘Temptations of St. Anthony/4 In the life of St.
Anthony the Abbot, written by St. Athanasius as early as the second half of the
fourth century, there is hardly an episode without a devil in it. Furthermore,
while demons are barely described in the works of the Fathers, in this case,
instead, the literary text provides a wealth of detailed suggestions for a
depiction of the Tempter. Although the text does not identify any specific type
of devil, the figurative arts seem to have been struck by the words
“phantasmatibus ferarum ac eius modi** (under various disguises and fantastical
forms—wild animals—or similar), taking them as an invitation to let fantasy
elaborate on this theme. In Germany, especially, there was particular interest for
the image of a fantastic devil completely devoid of human elements and com¬
posed exclusively of reptilian or other animal parts, as in the famous engravings
of the temptations of St. Anthony by Martin Schongauer or Lucas Cranach.
The woodcut (Fig. 8) on the last page of La rappresentazione di sancto
Antonio abbate (The Representation of St. Anthony the Abbot),18 executed by a
Florentine artist of the second half of the quattrocento, depicts a great variety of
devils. On the left there is a bald devil with drooping breasts, a hairy body,
eagle‘s claws, donkey*s tail, and a bird‘s beak. Behind it one seems to recognize
(not without some difficulty in trying to find analogies from the animal world)
devils with pig or calf heads and claws from various birds of prey, all of which
generates fantastic monsters pieced together from a variety of animal parts.
The devil‘s own bestiality in turn imprinted itself iconographically on
other animals, such as the wolf, fox, dog, monkey or unicorn, all of which
acquired satanic connotations. Isidor of Seville speaks of the unicorn already in
the seventh century, while Rabano Mauro considers it a devilish animal. A
single horn in the middle of the head - exactly like the unicorn or the narwhal -
characterizes the devil that appears between the sails of a vessel in a 1460-80
Florentine engraving of S. Nicholas, patron saint of sailors (Fig. 9).19 The Evil
One has raised a tempest that is hurling the ship against the rocks, but St.
115

Nicholas, who has been invoked by the sailors, appears and sends the demon
away. The engraving gives the devil other animalesque attributes, such as bird
wings and large donkey (?) ears. The combination of single hom and large ears,
noted by Baltru§aitis in oriental monsters, illustrates how in this particular devii
elements from different cultures are drawn together and fused.
More evident animalesque characteristics are found in the demon trodden
underfoot by St. Catherine of Siena in a Florentine engraving dated 1460-70,
now at the British Museum (Fig. Ю).20 The scenes from the life of Catherine on
either side of the central figure of the saint refer to, and explain, her attributes.
Her power over the demon is evident in her act of stepping on it, and is
reconfirmed in the “Vision of the infernal torments44 and in the “Redemption of
an obsessed woman44 vignettes at the sides. The devil under St. Catherine has a
simian face, a gorilla nose, small round eyes, and horns turned in opposite
directions from each other. It also has a spotted, hairy body, bird-like wings,
and a tail that curls at its end. Both its upper and lower limbs are depicted as
claws.
According to Oswald Erich, the diffusion of the ‘ridiculous devil’ in Italy
and in France is much rarer and more discreet than in Germany.21 This is a cor¬
rect observation, but examples of ‘ridiculous devils’ within an Italian context
are not lacking. There is a satirical purpose in a little known and icono-
graphically very interesting engraving dated ca. 1460, depicting a combat be¬
tween women and devils (Fig. 11). Its style is akin to that of the representation
of the planets attributed to Baccio Baldini or Maso Finiguerra. 2i The scene
takes place in front of a Renaissance building where six women, dressed
according to the courtly fashion of the time, have immobilized a devil, who can
be seen in the background, by chaining it at the neck and wrists. Its body
exhibits human features and is covered with spotted hair, while its fingers have
very long nails. The devil is shown uttering the words: “O Mala Chonpagnia“
(Oh, Bad Company). A second devil, also chained, is lying on an embroidered
cushion. It, too, has a human body, but in this case it is hairless and has a very
narrow waist. A second face, smiling, appears on this devil's lower belly and
two other faces on each of its knees. This devil also has goat-like hoofs, hands
with very long fingers, a protuberance on top of its head, and an animalesque
face with a crushed nose, a large tongue, and enormous round ears. Five of the
women rage against him, two of them beating him with sticks, two holding the
chains firmly, and one whipping him with a scourge similar to the one used by
contemporary flagellants. A dwarfrfool mocks the demon by holding his mouth
open with both hands and sticking out his tongue at him. Behind this scene a
woman with a whip utters “Aspetta u poho44 (Wait a minute) and chases a big
demon who escapes moaning “Oi me, Oi me44 (Woe me, woe me). Apart from
its principal face, this fleeing devil's hairy body reveals four more faces, all
lion-like, and all with their mouth open and tongue hanging out. It has been
suggested that the subject of this engraving could be drawn from Prudentius4
Psychomachia and represent the seven Virtues fighting against the seven Sins
116

According to this interpretation, for example, the crowned woman would depict
Charity. Unfortunately, however, this engraving shows only three, not seven
devils, only six, not seven women, and, furthermore, it includes an unaccounted
dwarfyfool. It is inconceivable that any of the six women could be one of the
Virtues or even a saint because none of them has a halo. It is more probably that
the purpose of the engraving is satiric, not moralistic. The subject is most
probably connected to the theme of female malice, which can get the better
even of the devil, and the motif of old age that shows herself much more clever
and perfidious than the demon.23 Whatever the interpretation, an ironic and
sarcastic intent is clearly evident in this engraving, thus illustrating the presence
in an Italian context of those ‘ridiculous devils* who do not frighten anybody
and do not have a moralistic aim, but, being soundly beaten and defeated, elicit
only disdain and laughter.
Although engravings do not indicate the color in which such devilish
figures were imagined (we know from paintings that devils were most often
imagined to be brown, though sometimes green, red, gray and black devils also
appear), they do offer their artists and their viewers a very significant
expressive medium.25 Nearly all the engravings presented had a devotional
purpose that was meant to stimulate the viewer* s interest. The artists, therefore,
used a style that was simple enough for everyone to understand, and conformed
themselves to the widespread schemes and to well known iconographic models.
There is no doubt, therefore, that the devils in these engravings correspond
accurately to those populating the collective imagination of Florentines at the
end of the quattrocento.
Translated by Konrad Eisenbichler, University of Toronto
117

Illustrations:
Fig. 1: Woodcut from Girolamo Savonarola, Predica dell arte del Bene morire
Firenze, Bartolome de’ Libri, 1496. (Photo: Gustave Gruyer, Les illustrations'
des ecrits de Jerome Savonarole, publies en Italie au XVe et au XVIe siecle et
les paroles de Savonarole sur Vart. Paris: Libraire de Firmin-Didot, 1879, p.67)
118

Fig. 2: Woodcut from Girolamo Savonarola, Predica dell arte del Bene morire,
Firenze, Bartolomeo de* Libri, 1496. Florence, Italy, Private Collection.
119

Fig. 3: The Inferno of the Camposanto of Pisa, Florentine. Florence, Italy, Private Collection, about 1460-1480.

Fig. 4: The Inferno of the Camposanto of Pisa, Florentine.
Florence, Italy, Private Collection, ca. 1460-1470.
121

Fig. 5: Woodcut from Girolamo Savonarola, Compendio di Revelatione, Firenze, ad instanti di Piero Pacini, 1496.
(Photo: Gustave Grayer, Les illustrations des ecrits de Jerome Savonarole, 139)

Fig. 6: Rappresentazione della Passione di Iesu Christo, Firenze, ad instantia di
—	Francesco di Giovanni Benvenuti. Florence, Italy, Private Collection, 1511.
ю
u>

Fig. 7: Miracoli della gloriosa vergine Maria, Firenze, Bartolomeo de* Libri. Florence, Italy, Private Collection, 1520.
tMft—Н»

ю
Fig. 8: La lappresentazione di sancto Antonio abbate. Firenze, Bartolomei de* Libri, 1490.
(Photo: Paul O. Kristeller, Early Florentine Woodcuts, with annotated list of Florentine illustrated books.
London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1897, fig. 45).

126
Fig. 9: S. Nicholas, patron of Sailors, Florentine.
Florence, Italy, Private Collection, about 1460-80.

Fig. 10: S. Catherine of Siena with four scenes from her Life,
Florentine, about 1460-1470.
127

Fig. 11: Combat Between Women and Devils, Florentine, Italy, about 1460 (Istanbul?).

Notes:
Oswald Erich, Die Darstellung des Teufels in der christlichen Kunst (The Representation of
the Devil in Christian Art) (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1931).
On the Ars moriendi cf. Alberto Tenenti, 11 senso della morte e Vamore della vita nel
Rinascimento (Francia e Italia) (The Sense of Death and the Love of Life in Renaissance
France and Italy) (Torino: Einaudi, 1957), and Enrico Castelli, 11 demoniaco nell'arte (The
Demonic in Art) (Milano: Electa, 1952), 102-114.
Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Cust. E.6: Girolamo Savonarola, Predica dell arte
del Bene morire (Sermon on the Art of Dying Well) (Firenze: Bartolomeo de' Libri, 1496),
fol. 6v. Cf. Gustave Gruyer, Les illustrations des icrits de Jirome Savonarole, publics en
Italie au XVe et au XVIe siecle et les paroles de Savonarole sur Part. (Paris: Librairie de
Firmin-Didot, 1879), 65-69; Max Sander, Le livre a figures italien dipuis 1467jusq' a 1530
(The Italian Illustrated Book from 1467 to 1530), vol. 3. (Milano: Hoepli, 1942), 1181, n.
6815; and also Immagini e azione riformatrice: Le xilografie degli incunaboli savonaroliani
della Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze (Images and Reform: The Woodcuts in the Savonarola
Incunabula at the National Library in Florence) Catalogo della mostra a сига di Elisabetta
Turelli (Florence: Alinari, 1985), 55-59.
Jurgis BaltruSaitis, Le Moyen Age fantastique. Antiquites et exotismes dans PArt gothique
(The Fantastic in the Middle Ages: Antiquity and the Exotic in Gothic Art) (Paris: Colin,
1955), 152-153.
Cinzia Consoli, “II Giudizio Finale del Battistero di Firenze e il suo pubblico,44 (The Last
Judgment in the Florentine Baptistry and its Public) Quaderni medievali 9 (1980): 55-83;
Lorenzo Lorenzi, “La presenza del Maligno neH'oreficeria fiorentina del Quattrocento,44 (The
Presence of the Evil One in Florentine Goldsmithery of the Quattrocento) Antichita Viva 32:3-
4(1993): 65-72.
BaltruSaitis: Le Moyen Age fantastique, 156-162.
Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Cust. E.6: Girolamo Savonarola, Predica dell arte
del Bene morire, fol. 12r. Cf. Gruyer, Les illustrations des icrits de Jirome Savonarole, 69-
72.
On the difference between “lettuccio44 and “lettiera44 cf. Peter Thornton, The Italian
Renaissance Interior (1400-1600) (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1991),148-153.
Cf. Dantes Gottliche Komddie in sieben Jahrhunderten, geschrieben, gedruckl, illustriert
(Dante’s Divine Comedy over Seven Centuries-Written, Printed, Illustrated) Ausstellungs-
katalog (Frankfurt and Milano: Pizzi, 1988), and Eugene P. Nassar, Illustrations to Dante's
Inferno (Toronto and London: Associated University Press, 1994).
10	Jdrome Baschet, Les justices de Pau-dela Les reprisentations de Penfer en France et en
Italie (XHe-XVe siecle) (Justice in the Afterlife: The Representation of Hell in France and
Italy, 1200-1600) (Rome: Ecole Fran9aise de Rome, 1993), 191-194 (Torcello), 206-208
(Firenze), 622-624 (Padova), 293-348 and 624-627 (Pisa).
129

11	Cf. Arthur M. Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1. (London: publ. for The National
Gallery of Art, Washington, by Bernard Quaritch Ltd., 1938), 49, A.I.59; Jay A. Levenson,
Konrad Oberhuber, Jacqueline L. Sheehan, Early Italian Engravings from the National
Gallery of Art (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1973), 42-43.
12	Paris, Biblioth£que Nationale. MS Lat. 8846, fol. llv. Cf. Thomas Wright, A History of
Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art (London, 1875), Italian transl. Storia della
caricatura e del grottesco nelVantichita e nel medioevo (Lecce: Argo, 1994), 105-107.
13	Cf. Hind, Early Italian Engraving, 1,49, A.I. 60.
14	Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Sav. 146: Girolamo Savonarola, Compendio di
Revelatione (Firenze: ad instantia di Piero Pacini da Pescia, n.d.), fol. llv.; cf. Gruyer, Les
illustrations des ecrits de Jerome Savonarole, 137-139; Sander, Le livre a figures italien , vol.
3, 1171, n. 6761; and also Immagini e azione riformatrice, 61-68.
15	Cf. Erich, Die Darstellung des Teufels, 43-50; and Helmut Hundsbichler, “Der Damon im
Bildzeugnis des Mittelalters,“ (The Picture of the Demon in Medieval Represetations) Der
Damon und sein Bild: Berichte und Referate des 3. und 4. Symposions zur Volkserzahlung in
Brunnenburg/Sudtirol 1986/87, eds. Leander Petzoldt and Siegfried de Rachewiltz (Franldurt
et al.: Lang, 1989), 1-18, esp. 8.
16	Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Banco Rari 183.16: Rappresentatione della
Passione di Iesu Christo (Representations of the Passion of Jesus Christ) (Firenze: a petitione
di Francesco di Giovanni Benvenuti, 1511) fol. n.n. Cf. Paul O. Kristeller, Early Florentine
Woodcuts, with Annotated List of Florentine Illustrated Books (London: Kegan Paul, Trench
Triibner and Co, 1897), 63, n. 178a; Sander 1075, n. 6241; and also Sacre Rappresentazioni
manoscritte e a stampa conservate nella Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze (Sacred
Representations: Manuscripts and Imprints at the Central National Library in Florence), Anna
M. Testaverde and Anna M. Evangelista, eds. (Florence: Giunta Regionale Toscana, 1988)
83-84, n. 219. Ernst and Johanna Lehner, Devils, Demons, Death and Damnation (New York*
Dover Publications, 1971), 76: “Hanging of a farm woman declared by the Inquisition to be
possessed by demons, from Rappresentazione della Passione (Florence, 1520).“
17	Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale: Palatino, Inc. L.7. 46. Miracoli della gloriosa
vergine Maria (Miracles of the Glorious Virgin Mary) (Firenze: Bartolomeo de‘ Libri, June
1500) fol. 9v. Cf. Kristeller, Early Florentine Woodcuts, 106, n. 269; and Sander, Le livre a
figures italien, vol. 2, 741, n. 4322.
18	Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Banco Rari 189. La rapresentatione di sancto
Antonio abbate (The Representation of Saint Antony, Abbot) (Firenze: Bartolomeo de‘ Libri
ca.1490) fol. lOv. Cf. Kristeller, Early Florentine Woodcuts, 11, n. 30a; Sander, Le livre d
figures italien, vol. 3, 1051-1052, n. 6133; and Sacre Rappresentazioni manoscritte e a
stampa, 105, n. 286.
19	Hind, Early Italian Engraving, 1, 50, A.I. 62.
20	Cf. Hind, Early Italian Engraving, 1, 51, A.I. 66, and Lidia Bianchi and Diega Giunta,
Iconografia di S. Caterina da Siena, vol. 1: L ‘immagine (The Iconography of St. Catherine of
Siena, 1: The Image) (Roma: Citta Nuova, 1988), 205, n. 228.
130

21 Erich, Die Darstellung des Teufels, 82-83.
2 Hind, Early Italian Engraving, 1, 64-65, A.II. 6; cf. also Evelina Borea, “Stampa figurativa
e pubblico dalle origini all'affermazione nel Cinquecento,“ (Figurative Printings and their
Reception from their Origin to their Affirmation in Sixteenth Century Italy) Storia dell'arte
italiana, vol. 2, 1 (Torino: Einaudi, 1983), 319-413, 341-342. This engraving is also very
similar in character to the “Fight for the Hose“ (Hind, Early Italian Engraving, 63-64, A.II.5).
Giuseppe Cocchiara, II diavolo nella tradizione popolare italiana: Saggi e ricerche (The
Devil in Italian Popular Tradition: Essays and Enquiries) (Palermo, 1945), 227-228; Sara F.
Matthews Grieco, Ange ou diablesse: La reprisentation de la femme au XVIe siecle (Angel or
Devil: The Representation of Women in the Sixteenth Century) (Paris: Flammarion,1991),
340-341.
Erich, Die Darstellung des Teufels, 88-90.
Cf. Diables et Diableries: La reprisentation du diable dans la gravure des XVe et XVIe
siecles, Cabinet des estampes (Devils and Devilry: The Representation of the Devil in the
Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries Engravings in the Printing Cabinet of Geneva) (Geneve:
Cabinet des estampes, 1976).
131

Medieval Answers to the Strange World Outside:
Foreigners and the Foreign as Cultural Challenges and Catalysts
Albrecht Classen
Halloween is one of the most favorite celebratory events in the lives of
American children and also many adults. People dress up in scary costumes and
decorate their houses in strange fashion. The more horrifying the masks and
dresses are, the more pleasing they appear for those searching for the thrill of
escaping the ordinary and to enter a new dimension, or, for some at least, to be
allowed to do what social standards normally prohibit. There are many reasons
why Americans celebrate this particular day at the end of October and why they
allow the youngsters to play out their fantasies, or, for that matter, why
Germans celebrate the Shrovetide season, and Brazilians enjoy their Mardi
Gras, to mention just two other examples of similar cultural events. However
we might perceive it, the confrontation with the ‘the Other* as enacted during
these special days represents a powerful strategy employed by a large section of
modem society to open a window towards a foreign world which rationality
claims does not exist.
The same observation applies, mutatis mutandi, to horror movies, to
dress-up parties, but also to adventurous travels, to life-threatening types of
sports, and other activities which interrupt the flow of everyday life and provide
us with radical alternatives to human existence. The entire American and
Russian space programs from the 1960s through the 1980s, and the continuing
search for life in the universe, even the current attempts to establish space sta¬
tions and to reach out to Mars seem to fall into this category, that is, the quest
for novelty, for excitement, for escaping the normal and the hope to discover
new dimensions. The belief in UFOs satisfies, of course, the same need, how¬
ever, with a more devious and horrifying twist,1 reflecting psychological effects
(fear of the unknown and the incomprehensible) brought about by the con¬
sequences of modem technology and science on irrational minds.
The hermeneutic dialectics of norm and the extraordinary, of standard
and deviation, of self and other, are significant cultural aspects which can be ex¬
tremely helpful for the analysis of any kind of human culture at any time.
Fundamental features of a culture come to light in the contact zone with another
culture, or when this culture is threatened in its existence. According to Roger
Bartra, the European culture came about through the identification of ‘the
Other,’ the alter ego which was identified as a monster, the ‘non-us’.4
Ferdinand de Saussure once remarked, discussing the characteristics of lan¬
guage, that any value—and here he talked about linguistic signs as values—is
determined by negativity or by what it is not. There are other criteria to define a
value, but the general notion is certainly correct and also applies to culture at
large. A people is defined not so much by what it is but rather by what
distinguishes it from other people. A literary text reveals its really important
features when compared with others. A particular kind of food dish is certainly
133

definable by what it is not. This does not, of course, free us from establishing
also a positive definition, but negativity certainly represents one of the most
meaningful and far-reaching criteria in any area of hermeneutic ontology.5 The
etiology of things and events is set in motion by a need to distinguish them
from others, hence to attribute them a form of individuality.
These are modem thoughts, certainly, developed within the context of
modem science and theory, but perhaps they also might help us to further our
understanding of medieval culture. Recently, for instance, attempts have been
made to identify the individual in the Middle Ages because that age might have
had more in common with us today than previously believed.6 In this paper I
will explore the concepts of negativity, of ‘the Other’ and its confrontation with
‘the Self as investigative tools to unearth anthropological elements underlying
medieval thinking which define this culture more than others.
But did medieval authors discuss such global cultural questions at all; did
they have any sense of what this dialectic of ‘self and ‘other’ could have
meant? The academic discipline of xenology is only very young, established
about fifteen years ago,7 and has so far extended to the discussion of the Middle
Ages not more than in a few tentative investigations.8 Nevertheless, even a
superficial glance at some medieval literary texts quickly reveals the profound
impact which the confrontation with ‘the Other* had on the European culture
during that time period, both in terms of concrete opponents--e.g., Mongols—
and in terms of psychological ‘Otherness.’ Although Christianity, and therefore
also a very strong xenophobic attitude seem to have characterized the Middle
Ages, this impression can easily be deconstructed with the help of a number of
significant literary documents. Friedrich Heer, for one, coined the provocative
term the ‘open Middle Ages’: “In the twelfth, and to a large extent still in the
early thirteenth century, Europe had the characteristics of an open society.”9
This thesis has been confirmed by other medievalists, some of whom looked
for example, at traveling and travelers in the Middle Ages, and others at the
interaction between Christians and Jews.10 This ‘openness’, however, mostly
concerned the relationship of Western with Eastern Europeans, of the Western
with the Eastern Church, and of the Christians with the Moslems.
How open-minded were medieval people in face of the absolute foreign¬
ness? How did they perceive other races, minorities, the uncivilized world
nature, and, finally, monsters? What were, actually, monsters? And what
function did they fulfill in medieval art and texts? Curiously, although medieval
Europe was profoundly dominated and influenced by the Christian Church
monsters or monstrous creatures were almost an integral component of the
average person’s mental horizon. Monsters were depicted in many illustrated
manuscripts; monsters gazed down upon the viewers from towers and roofs of
churches and castles (gargoyles); monsters populated, as travel accounts
reported, the Eastern world of Asia, and monsters even lurked in the forests out¬
side of the noble courts and challenged the knights and their ladies.11 Monsters
were not an invention of the Middle Ages, though an invention they were,
134

instead we can trace their roots to the Greek Antiquity, first recorded by the
writers Ktesias of Knidos and Megasthenes. Ktesias did not mention actual
sightings, but created mental images which have, since then, offered
“alternative, symbiotic, and supplemental modes of perception.”12 Monsters
thus entered the stage of European mentality from very early on, and have in¬
fluenced our minds since then, as they stand for difference in every respect of
this word, although the basic elements of monsters, with the coming of the
modem age, have been transformed and projected outside of our world into
space where extraterrestial beings threaten human existence.
Especially Marco Polo, but much more fanciful and imaginative than
him, John Mandeville populated the Eastern World with monsters, which both
writers had derived from their reading of classical literature. Polo kept a rather
critical stance towards monsters, whereas Mandeville felt no constraints to
refantasize his readers’ minds with highly grotesque images of monsters.
Whereas St. Augustine had declared the monsters to be as much a part of the
divine creation illustrating God’s providential power (De civitate dei, X, XVI,
vii, XXI, viii), later theologians and writers deviated from this perception,
erecting new epistemological barriers between the known and the unknown to
titillate their readers’ mind.13
We all know that monsters do not exist. Medieval travelers also never
encountered monsters, although for them many creatures and people seemed to
look like monsters, as their fantasy was preconditioned to perceive many
strange phenomena as monsters. Nevertheless, most medieval people believed
in monsters and were confirmed in this believe through the learned treatises by
the Church fathers and many other scholars such as St. Gregory.14 Surprisingly,
however, literary monsters often appear in a very different light than monsters
in travel accounts. Why, we might ask, do monsters play such a significant role
in heroic epics and also courtly romances when the entire narrative focuses on
the personal development of its protagonists and the condition of human
society?
One general answer, though not fully satisfactory, would be that monsters
represented the deep-seated fear of medieval people who constantly faced
multiple dangers and were not able to understand many phenomena which
occurred in their lives.15 Not surprisingly, Christopher Columbus, like many
other travelers after him, quickly identified observations he had made in
America with reports about monsters in the mystical East (e.g., those by
Mandeville), thus giving concrete physical shape to the subliminal fear he and
his contemporaries were subjected to in face of the completely unknown
world. It seems doubtful, however, that medieval people always and every¬
where experienced fear and let themselves be influenced by alleged dangers and
threats. Even if Jean Delumeau might be right in his assumption that the
medieval world was “une cite assi6gee” (a city under siege), as the subtitle to
his book reads, we need to register his own self-limitation to the time period of
the fourteenth through the seventeenth century: “Dans Г Europe du debut des
135

Temps modemes, la peur, camouflee ou manifestde, est presente partout(At
the dawn of modernity, fear, either hidden or manifest, is rampant in Europe)17
Significantly, Delumeau does not explicitly refer to monsters, instead deals with
the fear of Satan, of witchcraft, of the Turks, etc., that is, concrete aspects
imposed on the individual through the institution of the Church or a military
threat such as the Turks. Although monsters did not disappear with the end of
the Middle Ages, they were by and large replaced by magic and magicians,
witches and witchcraft, and these forces seem to have exerted many times more
fear than any medieval imagination of monsters ever did. Perhaps we need to
ask ourselves whether these monsters actually represented fear or were sup¬
posed to explain the sources of fear, or whether their function was quite differ¬
ent.18
Marie de France provides a key answer to some of these questions with
her intriguing lai “Bisclavret” (late twelfth century) in which a courtly knight
regularly transforms into a werewolf until his wife finds out about this, has her
lover steal the clothes, and thus forces her husband to stay a werewolf until the
clothes are retrieved and Bisclavret is given a chance to change in private back
to his human shape. Undoubtedly, this noble werewolf displays no similarities
with the traditional monsters half animal and half human, which devour people
alive. Instead, Marie here presents a highly sympathetic image of a werewolf
who is not killed by the king when his hunters have chased him down because
he humbles himself before the king and begs him, in a courtly fashion, for
mercy. The king spares his life because he is able to interpret this behavior as a
(divine?) sign: “Drive back all the dogs and see that no one strikes it! The beast
possesses understanding and intelligence.”19 Moreover, once Bisclavret lives at
the king’s court, he gains the love of everyone: “and so noble and gentle a beast
was it that it never attempted to cause any harm” (70). The situation changes,
however, rapidly as soon as the new husband of his wife appears at court, whom
Bisclavret attacks viciously, and later, when the king visits the wife, whose nose
he bites off, thus marking her and her offsprings for many generations to come
as perpetrators.
How are we to understand this curious lai within the context of the
monster tradition? What impact does the shape-shifting have on Bisclavret, and
what does it mean for his wife? Significantly, at the end of the lai the person
who had regularly taken on the form of a monster seems to have returned to
society for good, whereas his wife, who had challenged the monster and had
tried to eliminate it entirely, is both expelled from courtly society and has lost
her nose, that is, she has become monstrous herself. Marie indicates very clearly
that this beast does not act like a normal werewolf, although its outer form
triggers the traditional fear which people feel in face of such an uncanny
creature. Bisclavret is saved from being killed because he displays, despite his
monstrous appearance, courtly behavior and reveals to be noble in his heart. His
wife, on the other hand, who has betrayed her husband in the name of love, and
had forced him to stay in his monstrous shape for more than a year, demon-
136

strates a rather negative character and is therefore condemned to bear the sign
of the monster in her own face. In other words, this monster emerges as a para¬
doxical symbol of true courtly values and demonstrates the importance of a
noble heart able to penetrate the surface of ‘the Other’ and perceive its human
elements. Marie refers to a werewolf because it represents the perhaps most
hideous creature, and as such truly forces the courtly reader to examine the
meaning and importance of external appearance versus the internal quality or
character. Despite its outer form, the werewolf, that is, Bisclavret, proves to be
the truly noble person, whereas his beautiful wife, noble in appearance, fails the
ultimate test and loses both her nose and also her social status.
Several similar tales composed in England and France follow the same
concept as developed by Marie de France, such as the Middle English alliter¬
ative poem William of Palerne and the Old French poem Guillaume de Palerne.
In both romances a werewolf, who first frightens the protagonists, soon turns
out to be a savior and the true representative of noble behavior. He might not
assume the center position in either narrative, but he certainly fulfills the role of
a “humane and human .. . tricky servant.. .* a positive figure who is identified
with God and grace throughout the poem.”2(5 Hinton is certainly correct in that
Bisclavret and the enchanted knight turned werewolf in these romances do not
serve the same function and assume quite different roles, yet, nevertheless, as
medieval monsters these creatures force us to redefine the term “monster” and
to see them in their specific medieval context. All three authors indicate that
they were fully aware of the traditional features of a werewolf, otherwise
Bisclavret’s wife, for instance, would not have reacted the way she did, that is,
trembling in fear and filled with disgust at the thought that her husband turned
into a monster for several days every week. When hunters come near the
werewolf, they try to chase him down and kill him; in “Bisclavret” this happens
by accident, in William of Palerne the werewolf chooses, on behalf of God, to
turn into the object of the chase to cover for the protagonists. Hinton might be
correct in that this monstrous creature in the English romance functions as a
tricky servant, as an “eiron,” but irrespective of this particular role the werewolf
still evokes the same fear in people’s hearts when they encounter him. Never¬
theless, as indeed all three authors emphasize, this fear turns out to be unneces¬
sary as this werewolf acts even more humanely and honorably than most mem¬
bers of the courts. In other words, in this context the monster emerges as a
powerful metaphor for the need to practice tolerance and to train one’s per¬
ceptive skills in the interaction with other people and the environment. Not
everything is exactly what it looks like, as the truth really rests in the creature’s
heart, not in its skin. Perhaps this might also be a good explanation for the
thousands of gargoyles which populate almost every medieval church and many
other buildings and served as visual illustrations of people’s nightmares and
concept of hell.21
In a very different context, the scholar Peter Abelard argued, in one of his
letters addressed to Heloise, along the same lines in his discussion of black
137

women in comparison with white women, pointing out that “adversity may
properly be indicated by black, and she is white within her bones because her
soul is strong in virtues.”22. Undoubtedly, Peter had no particular respect for
black people and was not advocating anti-racism, as black skin and the appear¬
ance of black people seemed to him, like for most medieval people, the sign of
evil; instead he refers to the fundamental aesthetic notion of beauty resting in
the transcendental.23 His argument, however, based on The Song of Solomon 1,
4-6, points in the same direction as the three narratives discussed above,
namely, despite a repulsive exterior, a person’s true value rests in the heart, in
the spirit, or in the soul:
The Ethiopian woman is black in the outer part of her flesh and as
regards exterior appearance looks less lovely than other women; yet she
is not unlike them within, but in several respects she is whiter and
lovelier, in her bones, for instance, or her teeth. . . . And so she is black
without but lovely within; for she is blackened outside in the flesh
because in this life she^uffers bodily affliction through the repeated
tribulations of adversity.
This is not to equate the werewolf with the Ethiopian woman, but the com¬
parison serves as a means to clarify one of the essential aspects of medieval
hermeneutics, and thus also of ethics and morality. The confrontation with ‘the
Other’ brings out the deeply seated fear in man of the unknown, and forces him
to question what this fear represents, and whether this fear is justified.
Moreover, for Thomas Aquinas, blackness in the Ethiopians’ skin was the result
of an accidental mixing of elements and had nothing to do with the soul or the
person as such. Although not specifically advocating tolerance, Aquinas, at
least in his scholastic discourse on matter and the elements, prepared the foun¬
dation for an open-minded approach to people from other races.25 The use of the
specific monsters in vernacular courtly literature so far discussed informs us
that, indeed, medieval culture was not simply xenophobic, despite certain
highly influential ideologies creating a hostile attitude towards foreigners
especially non-Christians, and seems, at least in some respect, to have been a
more open-minded society than the early modem world when radical and far-
ranging steps were taken to eradicate the foreigners, such as Jews, witches, and
American Indians.26
Above I have referred to Marco Polo’s and John Mandeville’s accounts
only in passing, but we do not really need to examine their texts more closely in
the light of our present observations because both reported what the European
audiences more or less wanted to hear and simply reaffirmed general notions of
the foreign without providing any specific means for verification. Polo was a bit
more critical than Mandeville, as he primarily wrote for a mercantile audience
interested in the economic assets offered by the Asian markets, but his account
still contained so many fantastic features that most people discredited it as a
product of his imagination.27 Mandeville obviously realized the problems Polo
had experienced and took a different turn by not paying any attention to ques¬
138

tions of verisimilitude and veracity, instead harped exclusively on the monster
and thus made his readers believe what he had said. There is no critical
examination of the monsters, not even an attempt to cast them as symbols of
human behavior. In fact, as Campbell observed, “Mandeville did not invent a
taxonomy; instead, he shaped a fiction."28 By sharp contrast, both the
scholastics and vernacular authors such as Marie de France and the composers
of the English and French romances mentioned above had a very different
understanding of the symbolic meaning of the werewolf and members of other
races and skillfully incorporated this motif of ‘Otherness’ in their epistemo¬
logical discourse. This function, once more, can be summarized as being the
instrument for the individual to learn the deepest truth about itself, which is the
duplicity of human existence with an external and an internal dimension, and
the absolute need to understand as much about the inside as possible and to
cope with the outside in an appropriate fashion.
Contemporary with Marie de France, an anonymous pre-courtly Middle
High German poet composed the verse narrative of Herzog Ernst which quickly
became one of the ‘bestsellers’ in medieval and early modem times.29 Here as
well we encounter a highly complex image of ‘the Other’ and of its interaction
with the European protagonist. For our purpose suffice to know that the hero
has to leave Germany because of wrongful charges against him, and embarks on
an adventurous journey through many countries in the mystical East where he
meets not one, but a whole list of strange beings, and eventually returns home
safely. Some of the monstrous races approach him in a hostile manner, others
accept him as a leader of their own armies and honor him with the rank of a
duke. There is no werewolf in this poem, but some of the monsters, closely
modeled after the traditional images provided by the encyclopedists and
scholastic writers since antiquity and the early Middle Ages,30 reveal that they
serve the same function and fulfill the same purpose as Marie’s enigmatic and
enchanted creature Bisclavret, or Alphouns, the transformed prince in William
of Pal erne
Monsters are like symbols, they contain a multifaceted range of meanings
for the reader, as they can represent both ‘evil’ and ‘good.’32 They can be a
hermeneutic and an aesthetic challenge, or they can serve as a negative image of
the self. This image, however, might also reveal the opposite, that is, the
negative self, whereas ‘the Other’ could turn out to be the truly positive. This is
the case in Herzog Ernst as the duke first experiences a series of dangerous and
exotic adventures with the crane people whose architecture and culture reflect
the Europeans’ projection of the mythical East in its luxurious dimensions, but
then expresses great contempt and disdain for the crane people, the Grippians,
with whom he has his first encounter. Since their behavior towards a kidnapped
Indian princess stands in stark contrast to courtly norms and ideals, Ernst and
his friend Wetzel attempt to liberate her, but cannot prevent her death when
they are discovered. The ensuing battle seems to confirm that the opponents are
not worthy for these two knights, but once they have left the city, having killed
139

scores of the enemy, they suddenly face the aristocratic Grippians who have
arrived for the planned wedding. With these people they get into a very
dangerous situation and barely survive. A closer analysis would reveal that the
narrator does not harbor particularly negative feelings towards these monsters
or any other foreign beings, instead simply criticizes them for their unnoble
behavior and ridicules their poor fighting habits. The crane people inside the
city are not worthy opponents, although their physical culture (architecture)
seems to be more advanced than that of the Europeans. Significantly, Herzog
Ernst would not have had any problem accepting the marriage proposal by the
Indian princess despite the fact that she is not a Christian, but she dies from her
wounds. Her description of her parents and her home country indicates that the
religious difference would not have been a barrier between the two people, as
the Eastern Indians seem to have been inspired by the same noble values as
Duke Ernst and his fellow men (3536-3547). By contrast, the Grippians acted as
pirates and kidnappers who murdered her entire family and all her friends
(3550-3557), and therefore are negatively cast as monsters. In this case their
inner self is represented by the outer appearance, and Ernst’s confrontation with
‘the Other’ necessitates from him to fight them with all his might. As crane
people are easy prey for these heavily armored knights, they have no problem
cutting off their heads from their long necks (3627f.), but they have trouble with
the many arrows shot at them (3656-3663). A real danger approaches the
travelers therefore only in the form of the Grippian army arriving outside of the
city wall whom the narrator calls “wigande” (3714, warriors). This means that
they are not courtly knights, but fight like the old heroes we know from the
sagas and epics, in this case using nothing but bows and arrows. Nevertheless
their large number—12,000~and splendid equipment—“rich unde her” (3718
valuable and powerful)-make them formidable opponents to whom Ernst and
his men almost succumb. The strength of these Grippians is not diminished by
their crane-like appearance, although we must assume that they belong to the
same “monstrous” race. However, because their use of long-distance weapons
(arrows) makes the battle conditions uneven and unfair, the narrator indicates
once more, that in this case external appearance is to be equated with inner
values.
Yet, at a later time, the opposite seems to be the case when Ernst and his
last few companions arrive in the country of the Arimaspians (4505). Although
the inhabitants also conform to the traditional imagery of monstrous races in the
world of the East-they have only one eye and are called “Cyclopes”33—, the
narrator quickly asserts their noble character and their very European moral and
ethical standards. Ernst and his men are welcomed in a chivalric fashion and
receive all the honors due to them, then they learn the new language and
develop a good friendship with these strange-looking people. Although
monsters in their external appearance, they turn out to be admirable and
pleasant people in no particular way distinct from the Christian population of
European. They are, however, threatened by hostile monstrous armies against
140

whom Ernst gains one victory after the other, before he eventually returns
home, accompanied by a selection of representatives of each monstrous race. In
this he imitated many royal rulers who surrounded themselves with exotic
animals (“monsters”) as a display of their power and rank.34.
Once again, what is the symbolic nature of these monsters, apart from
their simple entertaining function both within the narrative and outside in terms
of the audience’s enjoyment? First of all, Herzog Ernst presents a wide array of
monster types and forces us to distinguish between them both as creatures and
as fighters. Secondly, there are evil monsters who deserve, in Ernst’s eyes, to be
killed, and there are good monsters who are simply a different kind of people,
though none of them is baptized. Undoubtedly, they are no equals to Ernst and
his people in terms of chivalry and personal qualities. Irrespective of this
difference, all monsters serve Ernst to demonstrate his strength, boldness, and
skill as a knight and ruler of his people. But the monsters as people signal to the
audience that, just like in the case of the werewolf, the external appearance is no
guarantee in the evaluation of a person’s character and values. The Arimaspians
clearly demonstrate that their physical features do not reflect on their inner self,
whereas the Grippians are evil within and look ridiculous on the outside.
Neither of these people, of course, is christianized, and thus would not be
acceptable on the stage of the European courtly life. Therefore Ernst returns
home where his true destiny awaits him, that is, to regain the emperor’s grace
and to be reinstituted as the Duke of Bavaria and probable heir to the imperial
throne.
What role did his escapades in the East and the encounter with the
monsters play for his personal development? To what extent did they help him
to recover his former status and to be reintegrated in courtly society? First of
all, the emperor had unjustly forced him out of the country believing the false
advise of a jealous councilor (673ff.). For the audience, however, his innocence
is evident, and so his unfair victimization. His encounter with the monsters,
however, provides a number of literary strategies to profile Ernst both as a
crusader (1814) and as a new St. George who rescues abducted virgins (the
Indian princess). For the Arimaspians he functions as their savior, and for the
Christian ruler of St. Jerusalem as the divine instrument to defeat the heathens
(5688ff.). From a structural point of view, the monstrous people serve the same
purpose as all the other forces in this narrative, each of them supporting Ernst to
bring out the best in himself and to prove that he is a true leader of his people.
On a different level, nevertheless, we also observe that some of the monsters,
both through their behavior and their noble character, clearly defeat the general
Western concept of the non-Christian, non-European races as monstrous in
body and mind, and on this level they, just like the werewolf, appeal to the
audience to be tolerant and to look into the heart of ‘the Other’ before they
make a judgment.35 Despite its clearly horrifying features, the monster, at least
within the literary context, emerges as a significant signal for the audience to
accept the unknown, ‘the Other,’ before they make an unfounded judgment. The
141

monster is not a creature which has to be eliminated, rather, on the contrary, it
serves as a catalyst to bring out the best in the person encountering it or as a
symbol of the true meaning of nobility, hidden behind the screen of ugliness
and fear 36
One of the most intriguing examples, although considerably modified in
comparison to the werewolf and the monsters living in the mystical East, can be
found in the fourteenth-century alliterative English romance Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight where the conflict between the Arthurian court and the magical
power of its opponent, Morgan le Fay, is carried out by means of the monstrous
appearance of the Green Knight and his attempts to defeat the court’s prime
representative, Sir Gawain.37 The Green Knight is not a monster in the narrow
sense of the word, but his appearance provokes as much fear and he seems to be
as outlandish as any monster would be. He is neither equipped with ordinary
knightly armor--he arrives with nothing but an enormous ax (208)~nor does his
body function as the body of a normal human being. As part of his challenge of
the court, he allows Gawain to chop off his head, but in return expects from him
to let the same happen to him one year later. The Green Knight picks up his
head, talks to the court with the help of his severed part, and rides off as if this
amputation did not bother him: “so that the fire from the flint flew from the
horse’s hooves./To what country he galloped none there could know/Any more
than they were aware from where he had come” (459-461). Undoubtedly,
despite his human shape and human speech, the Green Knight is as much a
monster as the werewolf in Marie’s lai and the Arimaspians in Herzog Ernst
representative of ‘the Other’ in a life-threatening confrontation. In other words
Sir Gawain, as much as the protagonists in the previous tales, through the
interaction with the monster, is called upon to learn more about himself and the
world outside, because the monster humbles him and teaches him a lesson in
critical self-examination.
Both the green color and the mysterious survival of the Green Knight
require from us to analyze the symbolical function of the ‘monster’ who, one
year later, turns out to be Bercilak de Hautdesert in whose castle in reality rules
Morgan, Gawain’s aunt. She wanted to scare the Arthurian court, and plotted to
have Bercilak carry out the dangerous game “To tempt the pride, to perceive if
there were truth/In the rumors of renown of the great Round Table” (2457f.). Of
course, Gawain had failed to some extent as he had accepted and hidden
Bercilak’s wife’s green belt, a symbol of life (2368) and allegedly a means for
him to survive the game, and for that reason the Green Knight had nicked him
in his neck with the awesome ax. The red blood squirted forth from his wound
and hit the white snow, and opposite from him he faced the green monster
which, altogether, created the color combination representing the birth of Christ
or a form of baptism, as a number of critics have argued,38 referring, for
instance, to Gawain’s profound sense of relief and sense of new life (2320f.).
Most important, though, it seems that Gawain’s wound is the source of his own
recovery, because from here on Arthurian chivalry has proven itself despite the
142

slight weakness on Gawain’s part who had not returned the belt as had been
agreed in the contract with Bercilak. Again, it is his love for life which reveals
Gawain’s greatest strength and weakness, and his opponent does not want to
blame him for that (2368). Ultimately, this fear of death is the truly human
element of Gawain, and highlights the fundamental characteristics of Arthurian
knighthood. Fierce strength in chivalric battle and love of life coalesce to create
the most human and thus also the most ideal personality within the court. These
two elements come to light, however, only through the appearance of the
monster’ and his devilish challenge which Gawain meets in more than one
sense of the word.
Of course, the medieval audience would have known that such magical
tricks did not exist, and likewise that green knights did not roam the country
offering such ominous games to play. The narrative, however, utilizes the
imagery in order to highlight the essential point of the tale. As a monster
Bercilak de Hautdesert represents the total opposite of a courtly knight,
symbolized both through his green color and the ax. By means of both tokens,
though, Bercilak also indicates that ‘the Other’ is as much part of the self as any
other component of courtly society. Gawain gains more insight about himself
through this wager than he ever would have had through any kind of chivalric
tournament or joust. Because Gawain embarked on his journey deeply lamented
by the court, he has not only lived up to his own word which he had given
Bercilak a year ago, he also accepts his own frailty and thus humanness. These
are significant observations which the narrator conveys to us through the use of
the symbolic monster. In fact, Bercilak quickly reveals his own identity once
the test has been passed, and explains the function of the game he had played.
Gawain returns to the Arthurian court with the knowledge of how much he had
failed, and does not respond to the laughter about the game and Gawain’s
recovery. The reasons for this seem obvious, but the real message lies hidden.
He who has seen the monster has to accept his own transformation. Gawain
returns, yet nevertheless he does not return unscathed. As the court decides to
accept the green belt as its own symbol, they all begin to accept the monster
within themselves and hence life’s fragility and ambivalence which prevent
even their best champion to achieve human perfection.39
Two final examples might serve to illustrate the peculiar function which
monsters, apart from simply representing the mysterious East (Mandeville) and
a warning about the evil in man in theological terms (e.g. gargoyles), assumed
in courtly literature. In the first case, it is not a monster in the narrow sense of
the word, but a creature with horrifying features and ominous powers which
challenges the opponent, threatens his existence, and forces him to avoid false
shortcuts in his behavior, self-deception, and wrong decisions. Cundrie, the
Grail messenger, plays a major role in Parzival’s life, Wolfram von
Eschenbach’s protagonist in the eponymous romance.40 When she appears the
first time, she quickly destroys Parzival’s happiness and expels him from the
court because of his failure to have asked the crucial question in the presence of
143

the Grail king. Although the narrator calls Cundrie a “maiden” (312—here I will
always refer to the paragraphs), he has closely modeled her in the image of a
monster: “She had a nose like a dog’s, and two boar’s teeth stuck out from her
mouth. . . . Cundrie had ears like a bear’s, and no lover could desire a face like
hers, hairy and rough” (313f.). Moreover the narrator identifies her as a
“sorciere” (312) who serves as the carrier of bad news: “the source of sorrow,
the oppressor of joy” (314). But almost like a new Fay Morgana, she also excels
through her learning, knows the languages of Latin, French, and Arabic (312),
and possesses a great eloquence, as if she were a model for the Green Knight
later to appear at King Arthur’s court in the Middle English romance. Her utter
lack of female beauty sharply contrasts with Parzival’s aesthetically pleasing
appearance, but just as the Green Knight undermines Sir Gawain’s self-
confidence, she deconstructs, both through her monstrosity and her learning,
wisdom, and audacity, but particularly through her knowledge of the hero’s
previous failure, the ideal world of the court. Once she has spoken and
lambasted Parzival for his silence—“You bar to all salvation, you curse of bliss”
(316)-she immediately leaves the court without any greetings, mysteriously
disappearing and making room for the next ominous messenger arriving at
Arthur’s court who will threaten Gawan’s earthly existence (319f.). Metaphor¬
ically speaking, Cundrie fulfills a parallel function to the werewolf in Marie’s
lai and the Ethiopian woman in Abelard’s discourse. Similarly as these
‘monsters,’ Cundrie is hideous on the outside, but pure and noble on the inside
and excels through her loyalty and learning (312f.). Her ugly features
symbolically threaten society, but not simply because of the fear and disgust
which they evoke, but because they reveal the duplicity of the courtly ideals and
the falseness of the Arthurian world, until now best represented by the Red
Knight, Parzival: “What help to him now was his brave heart, his manliness and
true breeding?” (319). His beauty and manly appearance have not served him to
understand in the slightest what he was facing in the Grail castle and what was
expected of him. In fact, Cundrie’s horrible figure reminds everybody at court
that things are not always the way how they appear on the outside. Cundrie
destroys the Red Knight, so to speak, and forces him to leave the save haven of
King Arthur’s court, and consequently even that court itself has to break up and
let its individual members go (313). This move represents the critical moment
of the hero’s greatest misery, a misery which even leads him to denounce God
(332). If, at this point, his external appearance were in any sense a reflection of
his soul, he would have known something about God and would have continued
to belief in him. In other words, Cundrie has tom to pieces his mask and
exposed him to the true demands of this world. Since he is not truly prepared
for this challenge, he has to abandon the path which he had followed so far and
begin to search for the Grail again. The confrontation with the ‘monster’ takes
Parzival back to ground zero, but this time the new beginning is preconditioned
by sorrow: “Their parting gave both a cruel partner-sorrow” (332).
144

Significantly, both Parzival and Cundrie later return to the Arthurian
court when the moment has arrived for Parzival to absolve Anfortas from his
suffering and to reinstitute the world of the Grail by assuming its throne. This
second meeting indicates dramatic changes which have occurred since, as both
acknowledge each other for the first time. He has learned his lesson and is on
the way to ask the fateful question: “Uncle, what is it that troubles you?” (795).
Whereas before Cundrie appeared to represent the absolute opposite to the
world of the courts, signaled through her monstrous features, now she is
described as a courtly maiden who begs the protagonist for his forgiveness
because of her previous condemnation of his actions or rather inaction. The
narrator stresses her nobility, though not hiding her still ugly face (781), and
transforms her, like the Green Knight had turned into Bercilak de Hautdesert,
and the werewolf had regained the shape of Bisclavret, into an admirable lady
who stands with dignity in front of the court and proclaims, as the Grail’s mes¬
senger, that Parzival is the chosen leader to replace Anfortas. The court gazes at
her in awe and hails her arrival: “‘Cundrie la sorciere has come!”’ (784),
whereas before, at more gloomy times, she had appeared, in the viewers’ eyes,
as nothing but a monster. Parzival calls her “lady” (783) and asks her for
advice, then even follows her lead to Munsalvaesche. After the salvation has
occurred and the protagonists have dispersed, Cundrie continues to serve as
messenger and thus enables the two Angevin brothers Parzival and Feirefiz,
now the uncontested rulers over the Eastern and Western worlds, to maintain
communication (823).
Cundrie never was a monster in the classical tradition, but functionally
she clearly assumed such a role within Wolfram’s narrative as her ugliness and
challenge of Parzival provide the essential means to catapult him out of the
comfortable but stale world of King Arthur into a lonely existence of the
‘knight errant,’ and then, further along, back to the court, but now ready in body
and mind to carry out his predetermined task and assume the throne of
Munsalvaesche.
Almost as a medieval Dorian Grey, Parzival was forced to look into the
mirror represented by Cundrie to perceive the ugliness of his heart. Similarly as
in Oscar Wilde’s novel, this mirror, Cundrie, does not, to continue with this
metaphor, reflect the viewer’s shining surface, instead reveals to him the
essence of his heart.41 The monster appears at court when the court and its
protagonist Parzival feel the most confidence, and demonstrates to them how
much they are victims of their self-illusion. The monstrous appearance of the
female figure does not, as Ingrid Kasten has argued, create distance between the
Christian and the Heathen world, but rather represents the key catalytic element
for the hero to rip the veil blinding him for his innermost mission and purpose
in life, to begin with the process of self-analysis, and to learn the basic truth of
his own life, hidden behind the surface of the beautiful body.
Chaucer relied on a similar strategy in his “Wife of Bath’s Tale,” our last
example, in that he has another Cundrie, the ugly lady, confront the rapist
145

knight whose life depends on his ability to find an answer on the question
“What thyng it is that wommen moost desire” (1007).43 The narrator uses the
words “A fouler wight ther may no man devyse” (999) to identify her, indeed,
as a monster, radically undermining the courtly aesthetics of physical beauty.
Nevertheless, it is her wisdom which preserves the knight’s life, and it is her
inner values which she presents as her greatest strength, basing her arguments
on the Bible, scholastic treatises (Boethius), and vernacular literature (Dante).
Nobility is not an inborn power automatically inherited from the forefathers, but
a gift from God: “Thy gentillesse cometh fro God allone” (1162), hence a
monstrous appearance does not necessarily mean a monstrous soul. Once the
knight has accepted her teachings and has fully acknowledged her as his wife,
her monster-like features disappear and she transforms into a beautiful lady.
To conclude, Marie de France’s werewolf was no real werewolf because
he enjoyed a noble heart; Herzog Ernst encountered many different monsters,
but he quickly learned that only some of them were evil, others were good
people, although neither of them conformed to Christian, European expectations
of how human beings were supposed to look like. In fact, the conflict between
Ernst and the German emperor indicated that his own ruler was more a monster
at heart than the monstrous ruler of Aramaspia was in body. Wolfram von
Eschenbach presented Cundrie with her repulsive features to teach his audience
a lesson about true nobility. In comparison with Parzival she was the ugliest
creature at court, and the future Grail king the most beautiful knight, but the
close analysis revealed that, in terms of their characters and spiritual
development, he was actually the ugliest, and she the most beautiful. In this
respect Wolfram created an image of ‘the Other’ which finds profound
confirmation in Abelard’s and Thomas Aquinas’ teachings about the black
Ethiopian woman. Finally, Chaucer similarly followed this line of argument by
presenting the ugly lady in the Wife’s tale who turns out to be a truly learned
and beautiful person, both within and then even outside, once the knight has
acknowledged her superiority and has accepted her as his wife.
The literary monsters discussed in this paper differ vastly in their forms
and features, but they all serve the same purpose to express a very specific
message about ethics and epistemology. There are many other fascinating
examples of good monsters and evil people in medieval literature, and so also
many explanations provided by patristic, scholastic, and courtly authors,44 but
wherever we turn, we often-though not always-discover the same narrative
intentions to open the audience’s eyes for the inner truth of things and for the
deceptiveness of the external appearance, whether as monsters or as people
from different races. In this sense, Friedrich Heer’s claim that the medieval
world was an ‘open society’ can be confirmed with the help of these literary
motifs. It would be a fascinating project to explore, from here on, how we
would have to interpret the many monsters whom we meet in medieval
sculptures, murals, tapestry, and other art form. But then we also would have to
take a very close look at modem superstition and folklore, where we might,
146

after all, find the same monsters in our mind who populated the mental horizon
of medieval people.
147

Notes:
1	Daniel Cohen, A Modern Look at Monsters (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1970),
204ff.
2	Theo Sundermeier, Den Fremden verstehen: Eine praktische Hermeneutik (To Understand
the Foreign: A Practical Hermeneutics) (Gdttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995).
3	Albrecht Classen, “Das Fremde und das Eigene: Neuzeit” (The Foreign and the Self: The
Modem Age), Europdische Mentalitdtsgeschichte: Hauptthemen in Einzeldarstellungen
(European History of Mentality: Major Themes in Individual Studies), ed. Peter Dinzelbacher
(Stuttgart: Кгбпег, 1993), 429-450.
4	Roger Bartra, Wild Men in the Looking Glass: The Mythic Origins of European Otherness,
trans. Carl T. Berrisford (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1994), 7 and 208f.
5	Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (Notes from his Lectures at the
University of Geneva 1906-1917), eds. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye (London:
Duckworth, 1983), 116f.
6	Jan A. Aertsen and Andreas Speer, eds., Individuum und Individuality im Mittelalter (The
Individual and Individuality in the Middle Ages) (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1996).
7	Alois Wierlacher, ed., Kulturthema Fremdheit: Leitbegriffe und Problemfelder kulturwissen-
schaftlicher Fremdheitsforschung (Culture Theme Foreignness: Key Terms and Areas of
Problems in Cultural Xenology) (Munich: iudicium, 1993).
8	Alfred Ebenbauer, “Das ‘Christliche Mittelalter’ und der ‘ProzeB der Zivilisation’: Eine
Skizze,” (The ‘Christian Middle Ages’ and the ‘Process of Civilization’: A Sketch) Gegen-
wart als kulturelles Erbe: Ein Beitrag der Germanistik zur Kulturwissenschaft deutschspra-
chiger Lander, ed. Bemd Thum (Munich: iudicium, 1985), 5-26; Burkhardt Krause, “Interkul-
turelles Erbe: Europaisches Mittelalter und Ethnologie,” (Intercultural Heritage: Medieval
Europe and Enthology), ibid., 55-83.
9	Friedrich Heer, The Medieval World: Europe 1100-1350, trans. Janet Sondheimer (New
York and Toronto: Mentor, 1962), 17.
10	John Y. B. Hood, Aquinas and the Jews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press
1995).
11	Ludwig Schrader, ed., Alternative Welten in Mittelalter und Renaissance (Alternative
Worlds in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance) (Dtlsseldorf: Droste, 1988).
12	Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “The Limits of Knowing: Monsters and the Regulation of Medieval
Popular Culture,” Medieval Folklore, 3 (1994): 1-37, esp.l.
13	Richard Bemheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages: A Study in Art, Sentiment, and
Demonology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952).
14	Cohen, “The Limits of Knowing,“ 25.
148

15	Vito Fumagelli, Wenn der Himmel sich verdunkelt: Lebensgefuhl im Mittelalter (When the
Sky Gets Dark: Emotions in the Middle Ages), trans. Renate Heimbucher-Bengs (Berlin:
Wagenbach, 1988).
16	Valerie I. J. Flint, The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1992); Магу B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World:
Exotic European Travel Writing, 400-1600 (Ithaca et al.: Cornell University Press, 1988),
169f.
17	Jean Delumeau, La peur en Occident: XlVe - XVllle siecles (The Fear in the West: Four¬
teenth to Seventeenth Centuries) (Paris: Fayard, 1978), 31.
18
Peter Dinzelbacher, “Angste und Hoffnungen: Mittelalter,” (Fears and Hopes: The Middle
Ages) Europdische Mentalitdtsgeschichte: Hauptthemen in Einzeldarstellungen (European
History of Mentality: Major Themes in Individual Studies), ed. Peter Dinzelbacher (Stuttgart:
Кгбпег, 1993), 285-294.
19	Marie de France, The Lais of Marie de France, trans. and introd. Glyn S. Burgess and Keith
Busby (London: Penguin, 1986), 70.
20	Norman Hinton, “The Werewolf as Eiron. Freedom and Comedy in William of Pale me,"
Animals in the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays, ed. Nona C. Flores (New York and London:
Garland, 1996), 133-146, here 144.
1 Jenetta Rebold Benton, “Gargoyles. Animal Imagery and Artistic Individuality in Medieval
Art,” Animals in the Middle Ages, ed. Flores, 147-165.
22 Abelard, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. and introd. Betty Radice (London:
Penguin, 1974), 139.
Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, trans. Hugh Bredin (New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1986), 9.
Abelard, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, 138f.
Hood, Aquinas and the Jews, 195.
Andreas Mielke, Nigra sum et formosa: Afrikanerinnen in der deutschen Literatur des
Mittelalters (I Am Black and Beautiful: African Women in Medieval German Literature)
(Stuttgart: Helfant, 1992); Josd Rabasa, Inventing America: Spanish Historiography and the
Formation of Eurocentrism (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993).
7 Albrecht Classen, “Marco Polos II Milione/Le Divisament dou Monde'. Der Mythos vom
Osten,” Ulrich Mtiller and Werner Wunderlich, eds., Herrscher, Helden, Heilige, vol. 1 of
Mittelalter Mythen (The Middle Ages: Myths) (St. Gallen: UVK Fachverlag fUr Wissenschaft
und Studium, 1996), 423-436.
28	Campbell, The Witness and the Other World, 141.
149

29	Herzog Ernst: Ein mittelalterliches Abenteuerbuch (Herzog Ernst: A Mediaval Book of
Adventures), ed. Bernhard Sowinski (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1979).
30	Claude Lecouteux, Les monstres dans la litterature allemande du moyen age: Contributions
а Гetude du merveilleux medieval (The Monsters in German Medieval Literature: Contribu¬
tions to the Study of the Medieval Fantastic) (Gdppingen: KUmmerle, 1982).
31	Albrecht Classen, “Multiculturalism in the German Middle Ages? The Rediscovery of a
Modem Concept in the Past: The Case of Herzog Ernst,” Multiculturalism and Represen¬
tation: Selected Essays, eds. John Rieder and Larry E. Smith (Honolulu: College of Lan¬
guages, Linguistics and Literature, University of Hawaii, 1996), 198-219.
32	Jurgis BaltruSaitis, 11 medioevo fantastico: Antichita ed esotismi nell'arte gotica (The
Fantastic Middle Ages: Antiquity and the Exotic in Gothic Art), trans. F. Zuliani e F. Bovoli,
introd. Massimo Oldoni (Milan: Adelphi Edizion, 1973).
33	Bartra, Wild Men in the Looking Glass, 26-29.
34	Karl Hauck, “Tiergarten im Pfalzbereich,” (Animal Parks in the Royal Courts) Deutsche
Konigspfalzen, vol. 1. (Gdttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963), 30-74.
35	Stefan Hohmann, Friedenskonzepte: Die Thematik des Friedens in der deutschsprachigen
politischen Lyrik des Mittelalters (Concepts of Peace: The Topic of Peace in Medieval
German Political Poetry) (Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: BOhlau, 1992), 284.
36	Michael Dallapiazza, “Hafllichkeit und Individuality: Ans&tze zur Oberwindung der
Idealitat des Schdnen in Wolframs von Eschenbach Parzival,” (Ugliness and Individuality:
Attempts to Overcome the Ideal of the Beautiful in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival)
Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift Jur Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 59, 3 (1985)-
400-421.
37	Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Dual-Language Version, ed. and trans. William
Vantuono (New York and London: Garland, 1991).
38	Vantuono, ed., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 210.
39	Ivo Kamp, “Magic, Women, and Incest: The Real Challenges in ‘Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight’,” Exemplaria 1, 2 (1989): 313-336, here 332.
40	Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, trans. and introd. Helen M. Mustard and Charles E.
Passage (New York: Vintage Books, 1961).
41	Dallapiazza, “Hafilichkeit und Individualist,“ 421.
42	Ingrid Kasten, “HaBliche Frauenfiguren in der Literatur des Mittelalters,” (Ugly Females in
Medieval Literature) ed. Bea Lundt Auf der Suche nach der Frau im Mittelalter: Fragen,
Quellen, Antworten (Looking for the Medieval Woman: Questions, Sources, Answers)
(Mtlnchen: Fink, 1991), 267.
150

43	Geoffrey Chaucer, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. Fred N. Robinson, 2d ed. (Oxford,
London, Melbourne: Oxford University Press 1957).
44	Herfried Vtigel, Naturkundliches im 'Reinfried von Braunschweig: ’ Zur Funktion natur-
kundlicher Kenntnisse in deutscher Erzdhldichtung des Mittelalters (Natural Sciences in
‘Reinfried von Braunschweig:’ The Function of Scientific Knowledge in German Medieval
Narratives) (Frankfurt et al.: Lang, 1990), 5-90.
151

The Comeback of the Vampires:
The History of the Motif from Medieval Legends to Contemporary Literature
Ruth Petzoldt
More than ever, the ‘vampyre’ seems to be present everywhere today in
countless films, in novels, stories, and even in research publications addressing
this fascinating phenomenon of the revenant. This historical overview over the
popular-and later literary-tradition of the vampire starts with a phenomeno¬
logical description of the blood-sucking demon and his different properties.
Then a look at the first appearance of vampires in medieval legends, at the
most famous of vampires, the historical figure of Dracul Vlad Tepes, and at the
fictional character, Bram Stoker* s Count Dracula, illuminates the historical
high points of enthusiasm for vampires, before the advent of contemporary
vampires in literature and films.1 A concluding resume will reveal that this
demonic figure and motif can be interpreted as a projection of subconscious
fears of sexuality and death, and a longing for omnipotence and an eternal life.
Vampires are Wiederganger, the dead returning, reanimated corpses, in
popular belief phantoms of recently deceased, keeping their familiar appear¬
ance when they come out of their grave.2 This characterization excludes all
other cannibals or necrophagous demons like werewolves,3 zombies, mum¬
mies, as well as witches, such as the Russian Baba Yaga, the Austrian Perchta,
or the succubus Lilith4, destroyer of infants from Jewish legends. Vampirism
recalls the bloodthirsty gods of death from Greek antiquity, like the Lamia, a
blood-sucking child-robber.5
The vampire‘s ability to change its outward appearance can lead to a
confusion of motifs with animal-men, such as ghouls, fauns, and werewolves.
In cases of acute vampirism, such as reported in the years 1731-32 from
Serbia, people claimed that they could identify a vampire in almost any animal
in their environment~in blood-sucking parasites such as fleas or bugs, as well
as in dogs, pigs, or toads.7
This motif of the life-threatening demon, who comes from another
world, from the kingdom of the dead, and sucks blood, can be found in almost
every folklore tradition in the world: From the Haitian Zombies to the Indian-
American Windigo, a flesh-eating, wintry demon.8
In older research this difficulty of defining the vampire in contrast to
other demons is particularly apparent, as is the differentiation of forms and
types in the specific case of the literary motif, that uses the vampire as a blood¬
sucking, malignant demonic figure in a metaphorical way.9 Most research
works on the figure of the revenant are dealing with the Gothic novel and
pursue a psychological and sociological interpretation of this literary motif.10
In addition, we know of several cases of individuals persecuted in the mass
media as vampires, such as mass-murderers like Fritz Harmann or the fictitious
necrophagous Hannibal Lector in the film Silence of the Lambs. Kim Newman
combines in his version and continuation of Bram Stoker’s Victorian Dracula-
153

novel titled Anno Dracula from 1992 the Science Fiction aspect of a spreading
vampirism with the Gothic horror-story of a serial killer of vampires (called
Silver Knife or later Jack the Ripper).11 Into this category also fall the figure of
the extraterrestrial vampire and his humanoid victims, and those cases, who
turned into vampires because of a blood decease (reminiscent of AIDS). These
cases are excluded from the following analysis.12
The so-called Nachzehrer, a special kind of revenants,13 are mostly but
not always vampires. They can be identified acoustically by their loud
lipsmacking in their graves, where they eat their shrouds and sometimes even
their own bodies~by now corpses. They are vampires when sucking the blood
of their relatives, usually murdering them; some folk tradition have it that
these demons possess deadly sympathetic powers. Other demons have the
following characteristics and traits in common with vampires, as “dead people
who frighten, who exploit and ruin the living, who father monsters with their
surviving wives, who bring illness and death44 to the living.14 Further fantastic
and pseudo-scientific qualities have been added in the literatures of the
nineteenth and twentieth century. There are elaborate rituals and numerous
objects for protecting people from vampires and for protecting dead persons
from becoming such revenants. These procedures are often characterized by
ruthless brutality, demonstrating the sheer horror this figure inspires in
others.15
There are about a dozen typical qualifications for these vampires, which
developed from demonic characterizations and evolved into literary and
metaphorical attributes—but all in all it is hard to tell the difference between
ordinary men and vampires based on their outward appearance:
-	The corpse of the vampire does not show any kind of decomposition or of
rigor mortis, it looks fresh, healthy, and rosy like the body of a sleeping
person, a little pale, with ruby lips and dark shadows under the eyes. Upon
opening their coffins they are usually encountered with their eyes open-fixing
their pze upon their next victim; or at least the left eye (the ‘evil eye‘) is
open.16
-	They feature long sharp canine teeth, clawlike finger-nails and a superhuman
strength.
-	They can transform themselves into animals, such as wolves, cats, bats, and
even rats, and they regularly communicate with such wild animals and often
give orders to these creatures of the night.
-	They are able to fly through the air, to climb vertical walls, to vanish from
views, to move by moon-beams or as fog.
-	In front of a mirror they show no reflection.
-	They hate day- and sunlight, strong smelling garlic, the sign of the cross and
other symbols of Christian religion, elements that can be used as measures
against them.
154

-	They have to suck blood from either man or animal (vertebrates) for
sustenance; this is their sole source of nourishment as they need no other food
or drink.
-	Their victims are turned into vampires when killed by one or forced to drink
their blood.
-	Vampires seem to live eternally and spend their active hours ‘alive4 from
dusk until dawn, and from dawn until dusk they reside in a coffin or cellar or
in any other dark and sheltered place.
-	It is extremely hard to get rid of vampires. The only way to kill him or her is
to drive a stake through their hearts, or by decapitating them and putting their
heads between their legs~a procedure marked by a lot of bloodshed and by
rather drastic protestations of the victims—here the vampires. To put garlic in
the mouth of the demon and to bum the corpse afterwards is also believed to
be sufficient.
In popular tradition a lot of precautionary measures have been handed
down, usually to prevent the transformation of a dead body into that of a
vampire: the corpse has to be buried face down, or he has to be decapitated, or
the tendons and muscles of his legs have to be cut, or else nails have to be
driven through his heart, his hands and his feet.17 Further fantastic and pseudo¬
scientific properties have been added in the nineteenth-and twentieth-century
literature, particularly with Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) and other novels of
Black Romanticism.
In early sources, in myths and folk tales, the vampire motifs and stories
are rarely differentiated from similar aspects related to the symbolic meaning
and the importance of blood.18 In the eleventh song of Homer's Odyssey
(eighth century B.C.) such an instance of blood transferring new life to dead
persons is included. Phlegon in his “small treatise on wonderful events" refers
to a revenant in the story of a loving union between the dead Bride of
Amphipolis and her unsuspecting groom (first century).19 This renevant was
later called the “Braut von Korinth“ (The Bride of Corinth) in a Goethe
poem.20 But this title figure, who is referred to as one of the first modem
vampires in literature (1797), is not a vampire according to our narrow
definition, since Goethe did not describe any blood-sucking activities, but told
a story of a loving union between a dead bride and living groom. Her desire to
be close to him is so limitless that it had to be rendered in these dramatic
terms: “noch den schon verlomen Mann zu lieben und zu saugen seines
Herzens Blut“ (to love the man already lost and to suck his heart's blood),
which has to be read metaphorically.
Thus the phenomenon per se had long been known before the word
vampire was established in European languages.21 The first revenant of
medieval literature to share characteristics with a vampire is found in William's
of Newburgh Historia Rerum Anglicarum (1198). He tells of an Englishman
killed in an accident, and buried without the last rites. This man appears at
night in his village and brings illness, pestilence, and death to the his former
155

neighbors. When his grave is opened, his corpse is found fresh and full of
blood~“like a leech.“ His heart is extracted and his body is burnt, thus saving
the village. Other medieval records of revenants are found in England at the
end of the twelfth century, in Germany around 1336/1337, and in Bohemia,
where a revenant was reported as having howled terribly while being staked in
1336-a reaction not typical for vampires only in such a situation.22
One of the first records of the word ‘vampire’ is to be found in Some
Queries and Observations on the Revolutions in 1688, and its Consequences
(1741), written in 1688 by Charles Forman. In the seventeenth century, the
term appears in English, German, French, and Magyar. The various theories of
its etymology reflect the multicultural range of the phenomenon. The term
‘vampire’ is derived from the Serbian tales about vampirism, a concept in turn
borrowed from Slavic, Hungarian and Greek sources (Serbian upirina means
ghost, monster). It was used at the same time metaphorically to designate an
exploitative, malevolent and greedy person.
The historical figure of Count Dracula living from 1431 to 1476, was the
son of Vladislaus Dracul--the name Dracula refers to the dragon's order, he
belonged to, but ‘dracul* also means ‘evil’ in Serbian. He was nicknamed
Tepes, which means ‘one who stacks people’ or simply ‘The Impaler’. In 1447
Vlad Tepes tried to regain the throne of his father in Walachy/Romania with
the help of the Turks. In 1460 he became reconciled with his former foes, the
Christian Hungarians, and struggled from now one with them against Turkey.
Dracula fought in bloody encounters—with cruel reprisals in Transylvania until
his capture in 1462, when he had gained too much power—at least from the
point of view of his allies. They accused him of betrayal and of secret contracts
with the Muslims, using forged evidence, and his well known cruelty,
particularly the staking of his enemies to prove their allegations.23 From this
point on the impression of the Draculas as diabolical and bloodthirsty monsters
appears determined, although his allegedly brutal acts hardly exceeded the
limits of contemporary warfare. References to this Count Dracula as to the
“wilden wiiterich Dracole wa^de“ (wild brute Dracula, the army commander
and prince of Transylvania; reflected a tradition, established during the
medieval religious wars and used by the Catholic Church in Rome
respectfully, to proclaim an opponent as revenant, an ally of the enemy, the
Osmanian Empire, thus including the legends of the vampire to their own
ends.25 The metaphorical transformation of Dracula has been very popular, and
was functionalized as Histori in the pamphlets from fifteenth- and sixteenth-
century Exemplum-liteTature. Here particular regional traditions as well as
imported elements were tainted with special religious or political interests,
such as those first reported in Dorn Augustin Calmet's Dissertation sur les
apparition des Esprits, et sur les vampires ou les revenants de Homgrie, de
Moravie etc. (Dissertation on the Appearence of Ghosts and of Vampires or
Revenants etc.) of 1746.26
156

Again in 1732 some cases of Serbian vampirism were widely related
throughout Europe, but now the phenomenon was classified as superstition,
and analyzed as disease; influenced by the Enlightenment the bodies of alleged
vampires were exhumed and medical explanations were provided. Taking into
account psychological consequenses of these aberrations attempts were made
to explain these superstitious folk believes as primitive attempts to justify
incomprehensible diseases or disturbingly strange events.27 Vampirism as a
symptom had already lost its diabolical connotations and many imaginative
embellishments, 8 and was now diagnosed as a blood disease. A visitation by a
vampire described from the perspective of a delirious invalid was interpreted
as a symptom of his illness and not as a real appearance of a renevant:
“Mortuus non mordet44 (The Dead does not bite!) is the slogan of these
modems.
The Enlightenment demonstrated a rationalistic and critical handling of
such superstition and beliefs in the existence of vampires; in 1772, for
example, Voltaire parodied common pseudo-theological explanations of the
phenomenon by describing these monks who exploited the poor population of
France as the only bloodsuckers, who really exists.29 However, aside from
such a dispassionate view on the pathology of ‘vampirism,4 the superstitious
concept of individuals reincarnated as vampires stayed alive in folk belief,
especially in South-Eastern Europe. A mainly imaginative and figurative
meaning of this concept of vampirism in turn dominated the European
literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth century.
To sum up this development we can say that the metaphor of the bloody
sucking demon, the transformation of the historical figure of Dracula, has been
widely received and was functionalized in the didactic exemplum-literature of
the fifteenth and sixteenth century~a metaphor re-employed, as it is so often
the case in superstitious motifs, in rituals for warning and as preventive^
measures as well as indictment in a political, legal or moral context. It shows
the deep fascination and fear of mankind with the fundamental topics of
human existence: life and death--and sexuality. The inevitable power and
nearness of death to the living seems to be transferred to a supernatural being,
a borderliner between death and life, a human being, who is both dead,
dragging men into its grave as a Nachzehrer. The phenomena of vampirism
now change from the traditional folklorist motif of legends to the fictional
literary topic and its adaptation in romantic, modem, and contemporary
literature: the danger of the vampire is still mortal, but he appears now as an
exploiter of human emotions, as an intellectual and sexual danger. And the
ambivalence of the figure-gaining more in fascination than fear—grows in the
following centuries. The personal reincarnation of Dracula happens again in
John Polidori‘s story about The Vampyre in 1819 with its seductive title figure
named Lord Ruthven—a story based on Lord Byron's “Fragment,44 and “The
Giaour44 published 1835-and 80 years later followed by Bram Stoker's literary
adaptation of the vampire-legend.30 Attempts to fill this gap through references
157

to exotic, non-European parallels, and motifs of vampirism in the continuous
popular traditions in several East-European countries, make it obvious that the
vampire-phenomenon has to be seen in its historical and social contexts. It is
only in the nineteenth century, supported by the authors of Gothic Novels and
the morbid literature of the so-called Black Romanticism1 that fictionalized
vampire figures step out of the framework of independent folklores and
legends, to turn into the figure of the bloodthirsty aristocrat of specific allure
well-known today. Especially Anne Rice in her postmodern novels presents a
multifarious, ambivalent and individualized set of vampires, describes their
fate through the centuries and drafts a fabulous genealogy of vampires origi¬
nating in Ancient Egypt.32
Our knowledge about vampirism is largely established and determined
through this literary tradition, above all through the already mentioned
Dracula of Bram Stoker, who then turns into the stereotypical character of the
absolutely wicked, utterly unscrupulous, sadistically perverted, bloodthirsty
vampire of popular fiction. A short overall overview this well known character
has to compare such popular literary revenants as Stoker* s Count Dracula and
Anne Rice‘s Vampire Louis.
Today, the narrator's perspective has changed from that of the victim-
such as Stoker‘s Jonathan Harker in his diary of 1897, Sheridan le Fanu‘s
young narrator in Carmilla of 1872—or that of the morally good person
struggling against evil powers such as the two protagonists in Stephen King's
novel Salem‘s Lot to the presentation of the story from the vampire‘s point of
view, like Anne Rices Louis, the narrator as partner being interviewed.33 This
last mentioned character is developed as and provides an ambivalent role
model for the reader. From now on the vampire is no longer an outwardly
demonic character, the unindividualized personification of evil—as he was in
the traditional stories and in the film genre, from early films such as the classic
versions with Bela Lugosi as Dracula (1930), the silent movie of NosferatuM
by Friedrich Mumau (1922), up to its readaptation by Werner Herzog (1979)
in a film with the same title and motifs. In contemporary literature from the
mid-seventies up to the present, the revenant appears much more human, more
likable, he looses his bestial traits and his/her animal behavior. Looking into
the psyche of these protagonists leads to the unfold of an extreme conflict
between personal desires and social responsibilities, egotistical hedonism and
human altruism: e.g. Anne Rice‘s vampires Louis and Lestate are antagonists
demonstrating these conflicts, Kim Newman‘s hero is the very old, but always
young, ‘good vampire’ Genevieve, who kills the bad vampire Dracula. Adolf
Muschg, for example, invented a character in his allusive and original Erzie-
hungsroman eines Vampirs (Educational Novel of a Vampire), a figure who
tries to live in the normal human society with all his mental strains, his
emotional conflicts and moral scruples, and he decides to use his capabilities
as a vampire by working as “sucking therapist.**35
158

The female vampire~the male one seems to dominate both literature and
tradition~is typified by erotic and sexual connotations and appears negatively
as a demonic woman who ruins, degrades, kills the men and in the not so rare
lesbian relationships the women she seduces. This eternally young, and
irresistibly attractive ‘vamp’ tempts men, and sucks their blood as her live-
force—like the boabhan sith, the “kissing cousins of the Irish banshee who
appeared from nowhere to dance with young hunters in the moonlight—and
drained their blood in the process.4*36
In Elfriede Jelinek‘s most recent novel Die Kinder der Toten (The
Children of the Dead) from 1995, the punitive aspects of vampirism, both for
the vampire and his/her victims, are depicted very explicitly in their didactic
and moralistic functions.37 Jelinek presents a group of the living dead, tourists
who have been killed in a bus accident in a typically nice Austrian village.
These vampires can hardly be distinguished from the average people living
there, people who seem physically present, but are already emotionally and
inwardly dead. Jelinek presents her satiric criticism of modem society in a
language sometimes grotesque, often obscene and artificially exaggerated with
a very aggressive intention of satirical unmasking—similar to Kim Newman4s
novel, which takes place in an apocalyptic London in its political and social
moribund situation as an allegory of our contemporary society.
In Stephen King‘s horror thriller evil is omnipresent under the calm,
nice, innocuous surface of a small American town, which is characterized by
hidden cruelty, daily egoism and cynicism, ignorance and a pervasive emotion¬
al emptiness of life. This becomes the real home of contemporary Dracula as
the personified evil of the human soul, present even before he appears in
person. These literary characters, ambivalent, variable and not any longer
easily accessible, both fascinate their readers and at the same time disgust
them.
The revenant of the predominantly Slavic superstition, and the literary
and fictional vampire serve as mirror-images of forbidden or unutterable
human longings.38 Vampires combine the ambivalent archaic and intellectual
elements of the human personality from medieval times up to our days. Their
erotic attraction, which associates sexuality and death, satisfaction and
punishment in a paradigmatic Freudian model of‘Id, Ego and Super-Ego’-and
very often interpreted in this way-promises an ecstatic union in love and
death, a union that means at the same time the loss of love (and life) through
death. The consequent depiction of the vampires4 ‘eternal life’ as demonstrated
in Rice‘s novels shows here their so-far unrealized possibilities, their chances
to gain an immense store of knowledge and wisdom; on the other hand,
however, the readers are invited to imagine the corresponding solitude and
feeling of utter isolation and loneliness in the case of an individual, who is
doomed to live through eternity.
The representation of the vampire developed from the strange and
oriental ‘historic’ Dracula of the Exemplum-pnntings to a stereotypical picture
159

of a cruel monster in films and popular fiction. But this picture gained much
more individualized, more human and ambivalent traits in the literary works of
the last twentyfive years; now the typical vampire with his murderous pathos
and the archaic, simplistic character causes a rather comic effect and thus has
been parodied in films such as Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire
Killers in 1967, Andy Warhol4s “chilling and comic, decorative and
disgusting44 Dracula of 1973,39 and Mel Brooks4 Dracula of 1995.
The renewed interest40 in vampires in the last twenty years also reflects a
basically pessimistic and morbid attitude towards our contemporary Western
culture, our future and our traditional values, a metaphorical concentration on
the combination of Eros and Thanatos reformulated in the sentence 44we kill
what we love.“41 Another aspect of contemporary interpretations of the
vampire figure highlights the revenant as the fascinating and strange figure of
the Other, a foreigner in our daily life and world, an outsider, who crosses the
borders between life and death, and who cannot be forced to follow our shared
rules and mores, since he/she remains an anarchistic character. This makes the
vampire an object for psychological identification, as a visitor from an outside
world, from far away and long ago (either from Transylvania or Egypt or
similar ancient places)—suggesting an insurmountable distance in his existence
as a borderliner. The vampire remains a contradictory character, whose
cyclical nature is indicated by his categorizations as Wiederganger!revenant*
he combines and recombines his contradictions in different functions and
contexts—he is lascivious and cruel, sensitive and full of ardent desire
excessive in his greed and charismatic in his attraction.
The vampire's particular greed for life, which is held to be one of his
basic traits, seems to be rather human after all—despite its fatal consequences
for his environment—a quality he shares with our human existence on earth.
160

Notes:
Anne Rice‘s vampire-chronicles of the seventies and eighties as well as recent films about
vampires, such as Interview with a Vampire, Coppola*s Dracula, or Abel Ferrara’s film The
Addiction show the popularity--and at last the financial success-of vampires in films (cf.
Alain Silver and James Ursini, The Vampire Film: From Nosferatu to Bram Stoker's Dracula
[New York: Limelight Edition, 1993]).
2	Cf. Susanne PUtz, Vampire und ihre Opfer: Der Blutsauger als literarische Figur (Vampires
and their Victims: The Bloodsucker as a Literary Figur) (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 1992), 15.
3	The question ‘vampire or werewolf is answered in Jan L. Perkowski, The Darkling: A
Treatise on Slavic Vampirism (Columbus: Slavica Publishers, 1989), 37ff. Perkowski presents
historical variants of vampire figures and compares different terms from the Serbo-Croatian
from vampir to upirina (32), but concludes, that “Serbo-Croatian vukodlak and vampire are
synonyms.** There is no evidence, however, that the first term “has ever meant werewolf in the
English sense“(51).
4	Different myths and legends are told about Lilith: She was the first wife of Adam, but would
not acknowledge Adam, the man, as her superior in creation. She left him, was turned out of
Paradise, and became the wife of Devil, the queen of demons—the first ‘vamp’. She was a
night demon, a succubus, who lies with men in their sleep, a demonic lover. She developed
into a Lamia-like creature, who envied women their children and stole them.
5	Lamia was a human woman beloved by Zeus, but his jealous wife Hera kidnapped her
children, so that she became crazy, lost her beauty and turned in the end into a blood-sucking
child-stealer.
6	Ghoul signifies a demonic being--in the Arabic world a personification of the deadly terror
of the desert—that feeds on human bodies, either corpses stolen from their graves or on
children. It inhabits lonely places, especially graveyards. Greek fauns are the crazed com¬
panions of Bacchus. These demons as well as those mentioned above have some important
characteristics in common with the vampire.
7	Cf. Stefan Hock, Die Vampyrsagen und ihre Verwertung in der deutschen Literatur (1 he
Vampire Legends and their Adaptation in German Literature) (Berlin: Alexander Duncker,
1900), 25f.
8	Louise Erdrich wrote a poem with the title and the motif of the ‘Windigo,4 adopting a
Chippewa story; the following comment is added:‘*The Windigo is a flesh-eating, wintry
demon with a man buried deep inside of it.“ Cf. Helen Vendler, Poems, Poets, Poetry: An
Introduction and Anthology (Boston: Bedford Books, 1997), 65.
9	Cf. Hock, Die Vampyrsagen. However, Hock commingled several different types of demons.
Examples from Old Norse, English and German legends are collected and presented in their
respective historical context in Claude Lecouteux' Fantdmes et rtvenants au Moyen Age
(Phantomes and Revenants in the Middle Ages) (Paris: Imago, 1986).
10	Cf. Carol Senf, The Vampire in the Nineteenth Century English Literature (Bowling Green
State University: Popular, 1988); Plltz, Vampire und ihre Opfer, 9ff.
161

11	Kim Newman, Anno Dracula (London: Simon & Schuster, 1992).
12	Margaret L. Carter includes in her book a list of 31 variants of vampires, vampirism, and
similar demonic creatures in vampire fiction-in order to classify the vampires into a strange
race of supernatural beings, either Aliens, who are humanoid or nonhumanoid; “intelligent
bats or batlike or bat-winged humanoids** (45); “energy-draining predator, otherwise known
as a psychic sponges, or other intangible ‘products’ of sentient victims** (46); or the “robot,
android, or cyborg vampire** (47), cf. M. Carter, ed., The Vampire in Literature: A Critical
Bibliography (Ann Arbor and London: UMI Research Press, 1989).
13	The term revenant is used here as a synonym for the living dead, individuals returning from
their grave-and in this context for all vampires; as in Hanns BSchthold-StUubli and E.
Hoffinann-Krayers, eds., Handwdrterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens (Concise Dictionary
of German Superstitions), 10 vols. (Berlin, Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1927-1942), vol.6, col. 812ff.
They use the term: “eine besondere Klasse der WiedergUnger“ (a special class of revenants).
14	Cf. Dieter Harmening, Der Anfang von Dracula: Zur Geschichte von Geschichten (The
Beginning of Dracula. The History of Stories) (WUrzburg: KOnigshausen & Neumann, 1983)
62.
15	Cf. Klaus Hamberger, Mortuus non mordet: Dokumente zum Vampirismus 1689-1791
(Documents about Vampirism) (Vienna: Turia & Kant, 1992), 62.
16	Cf. Bftchthold, Handwdrterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, vol. 6, col.818.
17 Cf. Hock, Die Vampyrsagen, 27ff. and PUtz, Vampire und ihre Opfer, 17f. The measure last
mentioned could be interpreted as a blasphemic allusion to Christ. Like other examples of
inversions of normal life, the existence of the living dead can be understood as parody of the
Christian Resurrection.
18	Cf. the chapt. on “The Blood Taboo** in Anthony Masters, The Natural History of the
Vampire (London: Rupert Hart-Davies 1972), 151-156.
19	Cf. PUtz, Vampire und ihre Opfer, 23.
20	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Die Braut von Korinth,** in Goethes Werke, ed. Erich
Trunz, Hamburger Ausgabe (Munich: Beck, 1981), vol.l, 268-273, w. 120-126.
21	Cf. Katharina M. Wilson, “The History of the Word vampire,“ Journal of the History of
Ideas, 46 (1985): 577-583; Johann Knobloch, “Alb und Vamp: Die Internationalist des Aber¬
glaubens,“ (Alps and Vamps: The Internationalism of Superstition) Sprachwissenschaft, 14
(1989): 282-284, which demonstrates both the widespread reference to the word ‘vampire*
and to the experience of vampirism in European languages and in Europe.
22	Cf. Bachthold, Handwdrterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubensy 181; PUtz, Vampire und ihre
Opfer, 15; Dieter Sturm and Klaus Vtilker, eds. Von denen Vampiren oder Menschen-
Saugern: Dichtungen & Dokumente (About the Vampires or Suckers-of-Men: Fictions and
Facts), 2 vols. (Munich: Hanser, 1968). Historical documents are collected in the 2d vol.
167ff. A great number of sources, legends, lore, from Old Norse folk tales to lores from
162

England, Germany and Eastern Europe are collected or are referred to in the works mentioned
by C. Lecouteux, K. Hamberger, S. Hock.
23	Cf. Harmening, Der Anfang von Dracula, 16ff.
24
Ibid., 96. This was printed in a woodcut (print H), Nuremberg, 1499. Now Bukarest:
Muzeul de Istorie a R.S. Romania.
25	Cf. PUtz, Vampire und ihre Opfer, 181.
First published in Paris, 1746; new edition, Einsiedeln, 1749.
Cf. Hamberger, Mortuus non mordet, 14.
28	Ibid., 11.
29
Cf. Ptltz, Vampire und ihre Opfer, 18f. That Germany’s Minister of Finance, Theo Waigel,
has been given the nickname ‘Waigula: Der UnersUttliche’ (Waigula: The Insatiable) in 1996
is a very recent example for the metaphorical use of the word ‘vampire’ and as its synonym
‘Dracula’.
John William Polidori, “The Vampyre,“ New Monthly Magazine 11 (April 1819). George
Gordon Lord Byron, “Fragment of a Novel,“ Three Gothic Novels, ed. Everett F. Bleiler (New
York: Dover, 1966). And “The Giaour; A Fragment of a Turkish Tale,“ Lord Byron, The
Complete Poetical Works, ed. Jerome J. McGann, vol. 3 (Oxford and New New York: Oxford
University Press, 1981), 39-82. Bram Stoker, The Annotated Dracula, ed. Leonard Wolf
(London: New English Library, 1976). The first famous female vampire Carmilla appeared
already in 1871, in Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla,“ cf. Best Ghost Stories ofJ. S. Le Fanu, ed.
Everett F. Bleiler (New York: Dover, 1964), 274-339.
Cf. Mario Praz and his various collections of allusive vampire-metaphors in his book La
cane, la morte e il diavolo nella letterature romatica (Love, Death and the Devil in Romatic
Literature) (Florence, 1930; 3d reprint, Florence; Sansoni Editore, 1948). It deals with the
gothic novel and its impact on romantic fiction. He established the term ‘Black Romanticism.4
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire: Book one of the Vampire Chronicle (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1976), The Vampire Lestate (New York: Ballantine Books, 1986), The
Queen of the Damned (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988).
Stephen King, Salem‘s Lot (New York: Doubleday, 1975).
34
The film had to get a different title than Dracula because of copyright problems. Max
Schreck played the title-figure. Nosferatu is developed from nevratul that means literally ‘the
unclean one’ and Romanian ‘the devil’, cf. Radu R. Florescu and Raymond T. McNally,
Dracula, Prince of Many Faces: His Life and his Time (Boston, Toronto, London: Little,
Brown and Co., 1989), 7.
Adolf Muschg, Das Licht und der Schltissel: Erziehungsroman eines Vampirs (The Light
and the Key: Educational Novel of a Vampire) (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1984).
163

36	Cf. Nina Auerbach, Our Vampire, Ourselves (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
Cf. also the female and lesbian vampire of “Carmilla
37	Elfriede Jelinek, Die Kinder der Toten (The Children of the Dead) (Frankfurt a.M.:
Suhrkamp, 1996).
38	Cf. Ptttz, Vampire und ihre Opfer, 166.
39	Cf. Silver, The Vampire Film, 147.
40	Products of the intensive interest in vampires are e.g. the Vampir Lexikon by Erwin J&nsch,
(Augsburg: SoSo, 1996), a collection of fiction, films, authors and blood-sucking creatures of
the last 200 years. In August 1997 an international Centennial Celebration of Dracula took
place in Los Angeles, organized by the ‘Transylvanian Society of Dracula and The Count
Dracula Fan Club.’
41	This sentence has been coined by Oscar Wilde in his “Ballad of the Reading Gaol“ of 1898,
The First Collected Edition of the Works of Oscar Wilde, ed. Robert Ross , vol. 10, The
Poems of Oscar Wilde (Reprint, London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1969), 315-345: “Yet each
man kills the thing he loves . . . “ (316)~and becomes the main thesis in Nina Auerbach’s
work.
164

The Demon of Loss and Longing:
The Function of the Ghost in Toni Morrison's Beloved
Paul Neubauer
In contrast and comparison to the preceding articles, this essay takes a
closer look at the Afro-American tradition of demonology and at a form of
demonic possession in the context of contemporary African-American syncre¬
tism, integrating the historically readapted belief structures of Yoruba magic,1
its animism and totemism, with the rational compartmentalization of obsession
and demonology, exorcism and liberation of Christian belief. Brilliant instances
of adapting this specifically African-American tradition of demonology with
their corresponding tales of demonic possession and their mode of oral presen¬
tation, that is the use and the function of the syncretistic African-American folk
traditions of ghosts and demons, can be seen in the work of one of the best
known and most esteemed of recent African-American novelists, Nobel laureate
Toni Morrison. Though her other narratives also feature ghostly appearances,
their presence is nowhere as prominent as in the plot, theme and imagery of
Morrison's fifth novel, titled Beloved} Here she draws heavily on a shared
heritage of folk belief3 and folk mythology,4 and uses these elements and
themes towards an end both moral and aesthetic: her novel is dedicated to those
estimated sixty million dead Africans, who were killed aboard the slave-trading
ships en route to the Caribbean and the United States, a story ultimately
untellable in any novel. These millions of victims are the 'real' ghosts who
provide a background of unimaginable horror for the tale proper, a dimension of
suffering as unpresentable in terms of literary or pictorial re-presentation as the
German camps of extermination, or the recent ethnic slaughter in collapsed
Yugoslavia.
In Beloved, Toni Morrison narrates a tale in several voices, presenting
some ex-slaves who resettled during the Civil War and post-Civil War years in
a small community on the outskirts of Cincinnati. Her main character is a
woman who was chased from the only place she could call a home—even if it
was not much of one: Sethe, a young female slave, at the age of eighteen
already mother of three and pregnant with her fourth child, barely escaped from
a Kentucky plantation ironically called ‘Sweet Home.’ Brutally beaten by her
owners, she nevertheless managed to cross the Ohio with the help of members
of the Underground Railroad, delivering her baby on that way. Reunited with
her other children and her mother-in-law, she is-after only one month of
freedom—tracked down by slave hunters and claimed by her old owner. In this
critical situation, cornered like a beast, she reacts in an unforeseen way: in order
not to let her children fall into slavery again, she attempts to 'deliver' them in
the only way she sees open to her by trying to kill them herself rather than hand
them over to these ‘hunters of men.' She actually cuts the throat of her older
daughter in front of her persecutors, and is in turn jailed in Cincinnati instead of
being returned to ‘Sweet Home.’ These incidents are unearthed again in the
165

novel, recounted and re-encountered after an interval of eighteen years, when
the story of Sethe is reconstructed from the differing but interrelating points of
view of herself, her younger daughter Denver, and her old friend and new lover
Paul D in the time present of the narrative, the years 1873 and 1874.
When Paul D, former slave and ex-convict, first enters Sethe‘s rented
house on 124 Bluestone Road, he is confronted with “a pool of red and undu¬
lating light that locked him where he stood,“5 the manifestation of the murdered
baby's ghost, which had returned to haunt the living, her mother Sethe and her
sister Denver.6 This poltergeist, a spiteful and energetic but invisible little
demon, plays all kinds of pranks: from shattering mirrors and turning over slop
jars to imprinting its two tiny hands on a fresh cake or crumbling soda crackers
in order to leave a white line next to the door sill, the ghost has made its
presence manifest, throwing steaming pots from the stove, smacking passers-by
on their behinds, playing with sounds and lights and setting up pools of intense
negative emotion in different parts of the house. As a result its victims have
been further separated from the community surrounding them, the small black
neighbor-hood already outraged over Sethe*s turning against her own children
and now alienated by the poltergeist's haunting of 124. The house is shunned by
almost all neighbors, leaving the women inside the frustrated victims of its
whims.7 Denver, Sethe‘s only remaining child in the house, had in her utter
loneliness even taken to regard this demon as company and as her only
playmate, an almost pleasant enchantment in her world of make-believe, except
for those instances when its violence gets too vicious, such as when their dog
‘Here Boy‘ is suddenly picked up and slammed against the wall so hard that
two of its legs are broken and an eye dislocated. Paul D, however, immediately
upon his arrival in the house, takes on this ghostly confrontation and exorcises
the demon in a duel of shouting, shaking and pounding, during which a good
part of the kitchen is destroyed. The poltergeist now appears banned.
The expulsion of this baby visitor from “the other side,“ as it is referred
to by the members of Cincinnati’s black community,8 is not final. Only a few
weeks after this strange exorcism, a new visitor shows up at Sethe‘s home, a
slender young black woman without a proper name, no place of origin and no
clear destination. One sunny afternoon she is waiting in the yard when the
three—Sethe, Paul D., and Denver—return from their first outing together. She
just came out of the river behind 124, is fully dressed, soaking wet and
apparently deadly tired, featuring a smooth, new skin and long black hair; the
only name she gives is ‘Beloved,4 co-incidentally the one name Sethe had
engraved on the headstone for her dead daughter. She is taken in by Sethe
against Paul D's misgivings, and welcomed by Denver, who treats her as her
longed-for companion. It is Denver who regards her from the start as a new
manifestation of their familiar haunt,10 the expelled poltergeist returning now in
the flesh and ready to avenge herself on the mother who killed her as well as on
the man who chased her out of her house.11 Aside from Beloved4s features and
her mysterious appearance out of nowhere, there are further indications of a
166

telling difference from the people she stays with, symptoms which allow for
Sethe, Paul D and Denver to arrive one after the other at the same conclusion:
Beloved came out of the water, the traditional boundary between the domain of
the living and the land of the dead, crossing this border in what appears to be a
desperate search for her own mother, her face, her smile. Upon first meeting
Sethe, Beloved has already chosen: “She is the one I need. You can go but she
is the one I have to have“ she tells Denver during one of their interviews.12
Then Sethe in turn begins to regard Beloved as reincarnation of her dead
daughter, associating the surprising incontinence of her bladder when first
laying eyes on the young woman with a ‘rememory1 of the birth of Denver
while she herself was on the run-and combining it with another strange
incident, Beloved‘s surprising inquiry about her ‘diamonds,4 a set of glass
earrings she had used to attract her infant daughters attention, but neither
mentioned nor shown to anybody ever since.14 While Beloved fits the mold of
Sethe‘s expectations and Sethe fills the design of Beloved‘s needs, Paul D is
now pushed out of the house; slowly and deliberately Beloved4s presence
alienates him from Sethe and his own plans for both of them.15 She drives him
from Sethe4 s side and comes to visit him at night when he stays in the cold
room in the shed, forcing him to have sexual intercourse with her; Paul D
submits, disgusted with himself and fascinated at the same time. Beloved has
thus turned the house back into the haunted isolation of its poltergeist days,
but her flesh and blood presence is asking for more them the former quiet
resignation of its residents. Sethe is now giving in to Beloved4s increasingly
obsessive demands on her attention, her time, her love, regarding her guest as
both a form of atonement and as the only possible source of forgiveness of her
own suppressed guilt. Excluding the outside world and forcing Paul D out of
the house, Beloved's dominating presence leaves the three women to each
other‘s wiles and whims.17 And Beloved grows still more demanding, physi¬
cally, and particularly emotionally, requiring all of Sethe's energy for herself
and in the end also excluding Denver from their almost symbiotic co-exist¬
ence.18 Her sheer longing for Sethe, her face, her look, her attention, grows to
such parasitic proportions that the older woman is giving up her work, neglects
her house, her care for herself and her daughter, and in the end her own will ot
life. Beloved‘s unsalable hunger19 corresponds to Sethe's own endless longing
for the daughter she killed in order to save her from slavery, with her need to be
finally absolved of this crime, and with her own lifelong desire for her mother.
The possessiveness of these voices expressing their traumatic and
traumatizing hopes and fears reaches an intensity that mirrors the outside
world4 s impression of frightful ghost talk emanating from a haunted house: “1
am Beloved and she is mine“21 becomes the leitmotiv in these vocal orches-
trations—which reaches a climax with the repeated usage of the possessive form
in the short chapters presenting Beloved's own voice, her associative and
deeply suggestive monologues recalling the Middle Passage, the slave ships and
their dead. This stunned and stunningly poetic articulation, reminiscent of but
167

more lyrical than Benjy's in Faulkner‘s The Sound and the Fury, also
demonstrates her lack of a full identity or a developed personality. The phrase
“You are mine** becomes the refrain of an increasingly musical discourse, a
form of ritualized calling to each other rather than a real conversation.23 Sethe
seems to be enjoying her personal guilt trip while Beloved constantly asserts
herself as the true center of the household, demanding and getting whatever she
wants.24 Denver is forced to take over the role of provider and organizer from
her mother, and when she secures a small job, the crisis reaches its climax. In an
almost surreal showdown presented in a matter-of-fact tone, Sethe mistakes the
owner of the house she lives in, Edward Bodwin, who is also Denver*s new
employer, for another white man-hunter coming to take Beloved away from her
again. At the same time, a group of women from the local black community had
gathered in front of 124 in order to deal with Sethe‘s demon25 The two
instances~Sethe‘s freak attempt to kill the white intruder, and the thirty black
women approaching her home to rid it of her ‘haint‘—coincide: Denver stops
her mother just before she can use the ice pick she is wielding against Bodwin,
but Beloved is lost again: feeling forsaken by the mother-figure she had
attached herself to so excessively, this possessive visitor decides on the spur of
the moment to return in exactly the way she came: Beloved goes back to the
waters she stepped out of a jjear ago, disappearing into the river, and is neither
heard from nor seen again?6 After this second successful excorcism by the
black community, Sethe is calmed again by Paul D, who also returns the way he
left, from the shed to the kitchen, and then to her bedroom. Even the mutilated
dog which had left as soon as Beloved appeared has returned. And the house is
quiet again.
This highly patterned narrative presents itself as a tale told in several
circular movements, Beloved‘s ‘life cycle* being the most obvious-coming out
of the water and returning into it—, cycles reflected in Paul D‘s moving out of
and back into Sethe‘s house as well as in his chasing the ghost out of it and
being in turn turned out by the revenant—and in Sethe* s attempt to save the dead
daughter who has returned to her when she is afraid of losing her again.27 The
circularity of the tale and its sub-tales,28 temporal and spatial circles, physical
and psychological tracks and turns, and the correspondence of these patterns
with the main actors* perceptions, open up the text at the same time, allowing
for a plurality of readings, presenting several compatible avenues to the story
told. The structural devices of orality, the repetitiveness of the narration*s
cyclicality, the multiplicity of voices and their differing but interrelated stories
counterpointed and connected in the progressing narrative, gradually unfold the
suppressed dimensions of each persona* s history. This naming of the repressed
the re-call or re-memory, is embedded in the simultaneity of materialistic and
supernatural belief systems—phenomena seem explicable at both supernatural
and natural planes, combining physical and metaphysical dimensions and
properties. Thus each action and each cogitation is based on several levels of
motivation-the ghost could generally be explained away as manifestation of
168

psychological problems, problems that get out of hand when allowed to grow
out of proportion.29 But the recurrence of metaphors of the dead and their wish
to return, and of images of drowning and the drowned, establishes a web of
allusions, a sub-text evoking the killed slaves, the denied lives and hopes of
families, generations, a whole race of man.30 Thus the demon(s) we encounter
are not of the blood-sucking kind, but they absorb emotions and will power,
feeding on bad conscience, repressed memories, inhibited feelings, forbidden
lust and impossible longings. ‘Beloved,1 the ghostly visitor from the other
side, becomes a truly strange attractor in this novel—she is demon and
poltergeist, exorcised and returning in the flesh, messenger from the horrors of
the slave-trade, a vengeful revenant, offering atonement and punishment, a well
as a playmate and a succubus, and in the end the scapegoat of the whole black
community, who find a basic solidarity in acting against her overpowering
possessiveness, terminating her haunting of 124 Bluestone Road. Beloved is
also the less-than-human and more-than-human voice from the common history
of all American slaves, the voice of the survivor of the Middle Passage, a
collage of memories of abduction, captivity, exploitation, abuse, mass murder
and abandonment; unable to tell her story, she evokes this common past and
collective trauma in her singular focus on her lost mother. This utter self-
centeredness renders her both enigmatic and emblematic, a figure answering in
different ways to the various needs and longings of those she encounters.
The story and its mode of telling hark back to Afro-American tradition, to
black folk beliefs and its African heritage, integrating basic strategies of oral
folk narrative, such as fugitive tales, family sagas and the many stories of
manhunt, enslavement, capture and forced removal, separation and abduction,
mistreatment and slaughter. Here we encounter the basic belief in spirits and
demons handed down from the Yoruba tradition,33 African animism and
totemism, belief in the continued connection of close family relations even with
the deceased, and in particular the belief in the power of the dead to return if
they died frustrated or are not taken care of properly. This syncretistic co¬
existence of folk tradition, animistic spirituality and Christian religion,
especially of the Southern Baptist variety, provides Morrison with a texture of
allusions and the multifaceted metaphor of the ghost, the dead taking possession
of the living, the past returning to haunt the present, the repressed coming back
with a vengeance, a metaphor evoking the roots of the black culture alluded to,
and reminding us that the murdered slaves remain part of the culture of Afro-
Americans, ghosts of a past which can never be fully exorcised, which will keep
returning just as we keep returning again and again to the dark tales of our
personal or national heritage.
Thus Beloved, a spirit of revenge and reunion, is fed by a memory, or re-
memory as it is called in the novel-the memory of the boats: the fate of the
hundreds of thousands of slaves ‘being brought over4--transferred from one
state of existence into another, from humanity into slavery—and more often than
not, being transferred from life to death. This transportation is of course
169

reflected in the transgression of the dead into the land of the living—where the
demon is held at bay only by the active commitment of the African-American
community~the symbolic level of this story of loss and longing which
Morrison has established in understated sophistication, fusing cultural context,
historical setting, moral outrage and its postmodern artistic realization35 in the
figure/image of the ‘haint,‘ the unruly and restless demon, possessive and
obsessive, feared and, above all else, called forth as ‘Beloved* and thus turned
into the story‘s very palimpsest.36 The demon, both an inverted mirror for the
protagonists and an emblematic representation of personal as well as racial
history, is finally exorcised from the story*s surface, but her absence itself
evokes the very unrepresentability of loss and longing, alludes to the novel‘s
dominant desires for a connection of the presence with the past and for the
possibility and stability of self-identity, and appears as catalyst for the
articulation of guilt and repression, alienation and traumatisation without
incorporating them—she just represents their reflections.
170

Notes:
1	A close look at the many deities, cults and rituals of Yoruba religion, including the concepts
of the returning life energy of the deceased in bodily form, their re-birth, and their re-memo¬
ries of former stages of existence, is presented in Baba Ife Karade‘s Handbook of Yoruba
Religious Concepts (York Beach, Maine: S. Weiser, 1994).
2	First published in 1987 by Alfred A. Knopf in New York. The following quotes are taken
from the Penguin paperback edition of 1988 (New York et al.).
3	Bernard W. Bell calls attention to the Toni Morrison‘s family tradition of telling ghost
stories in “Beloved: A Womanist Neo-Slave Narrative; or Multivocal Remembrances of
Things Past,“ African American Review 26 (1992): 7-15. He argues further, that the 28
unnumbered minisections of the three parts of the book recall the usual number of days in a
menstrual cycle, thus identifying a further level of cyclicality of the novel.
4	This use of folk narrative is reflected in the fragmentary structure of the narration and its
concomitant repetitiveness, a feature stressed in Deborah Ayer Sitter4 s essay “The Making of
a Man: Dialogic Meaning in Beloved,“ African American Review 26 (1992): 17-29.
5	Morrison, Beloved, 8.
6	Carol E. Schmude in “The Haunting of 124,“ African American Review 26 (1992): 409-416,
regards the poltergeist as expression of Denver‘s anger against her mother, caused by Sethe‘s
infanticide.
7	“Outside a driver whipped his horse into a gallop local people felt necessary when they
passed 124.“ (4).
8	Baby Suggs for one identified this ghost as “just one raising hell from the other side. And
Denver tries to impress the newly arrived Paul D with her insistence:	We have a ghost here,
she said, and it worked.44 (13).
9	The namelessness both of her dead daughter and the young woman who appears as her spirit
reembodied leads supports both the blending of the two figures into one and the varied ontolo¬
gical status of the very person of Beloved, who belongs to both worlds and presents herself as
the embodiment of psychic properties as well as the reflector of psychological fixations,
above all of Sethe4s personal guilt complex, which turned through its repression into a trauma.
10	“Denver kept watch for the baby and withdrew from everything else. Until Paul D came.
But the damage he did came undone with the miraculous resurrection of Beloved.44 (105).
11	Denver inquires: “What’s it like over there, where you were before? Can you tell me?4 And
Beloved provides her with a fitting response: “Dark," Said Beloved...“ (75).
12	Morrison, Beloved, 76.
13	“Like a faint smell of burning that disappears when the fire is cut off or the window opened
for a breeze, the suspicion that the girl’s touch was also exactly like the baby’s ghost
dissipated. It was only a tiny disturbance anyway... “ (99).
171

14	“Sethe jingled the earrings for the pleasure of the crawling-already? girl, who reached for
them over and over again.44 (94).
15	“She moved him. Not the way he had beat off the baby’s ghost-all bang and shriek with
windows smashed and jelly jars rolled in a heap. But she moved him nonetheless, and Paul D
didn’t know how to stop it because it looked like he was moving himself. Imperceptibly,
downright reasonably, he was moving out of 124“ (114).
16	“Now 124 was back like it was before Paul D came to town-worrying Sethe and Denver
with a pack of haunts he could hear from the road.44 (170). This is Stamp Paid’s impression,
who has held a longtime interest in the well-being of Denver and Sethe and cannot get to them
as much as he tries: 440n Bluestone Road he thought he heard a conflagration of hasty voices-
loud, urgent, all speaking at once so he could not make out what they were talking about or to
whom. The speech wasn't nonsensical, exactly, nor was it in tongues. But something was
wrong with the order of words..." Six times Stamp Paid tried to get into the house-but simply
could not.
17	Sethe addresses Beloved now that they are secluded from the world outside: “I can forget it
all now because as soon as I got the gravestone in place you made your presence known in the
house and worried us all to distraction. I didn’t understand then. I thought you were mad with
me. And now I know that if you was, you ain’t now because you came back here to me and I
was right all along: there is no world outside my door. I only need to know one thing. How
bad is the scar?44 (184).
18	“But once Sethe had seen the scar, the tip of which Denver had been looking at whenever
Beloved undressed-the little curved shadow of a smile in the kootchy-kootchy-coo place
under her chin-once Seth saw it, fingered it and closed her eyes for a long time, the two of
them cut Denver out of their games.44 (239).
19	Beloved anti-social behavior, her total lack of self-control is identified as ‘unadulterated
narcissism4 by David Lawrence in “Fleshly Ghost and Ghostly Flesh: The Word and the Body
in BelovedStudies in American Fiction 19 (1991): 189-201. He writes: “In her insistence on
absolute possession of her mother, Beloved resurrects the slavemaster‘s monopoly over both
word and body: ‘You are mine.444 (217).
20	44My plan was to take us all to the other side where my own ma’am is . . . You came right
back like a good girl, like a daughter which is what I wanted to be and would have been if my
ma’am had been able to get out of the rice long enough before they hanged her and let me be
one.44 (203).
21	Morrison, Beloved, 210.
22	Proving again that only poetry can provide an artistic form of addressing that which cannot
be told in the way of plain referentiality—the singular voice of poetic speech calls attention to
the suffering which cannot be told or shown, demonstrating in its formal overdetermination
and referential elusiveness the very strains of the witness between her experiences and their
re-call.
172

23
This form of pattern and repetition is stressed in Maggie Sale's article on “Call and
Response as Critical Method: African-American Oral Tradition and Beloved,“ African
American Review 26 (1992): 41-50.
24	“When once or twice Sethe tried to assert herself—be the unquestionable mother whose
word was law and who knew what was best-Beloved slammed things, wiped the table clean
of plates, threw salt on the floor, broke a windowpane. She was not like them. She was wild
game.“ (242).
25	tt
The news that Jenay got hold of she spread among the other coloredwomen. Sethe's dead
daughter, the one whose throat she cut, had come back to fix her. Sethe was worn down,
speckled, dying, spinning, changing shapes and generally bedeviled. That this daughter beat
her, tied her to the bed and pulled out her hair. It took them days to get the story properly
blown up and themselves agitated and then to calm down and assess the situation." (255).
26	She is changed only in her physical appearance—from the slender girl into a pregnant
woman: “The singing women recognized Sethe at once and surprised themselves by their
absence of fear when they saw what stood net to her. The devil-child was clever, they thought.
And beautiful. It had taken the shape of a pregnant woman, naked and smiling in the heat of
the afternoon sun. Thunderblack and glistening, she stood on long straight legs, her belly big
and tight. Vines of hair twisted all over her head. Jesus. Her smile was dazzling." (261).
A similar repetition of pattern appears in Denver's attempts to save first Beloved from her
mother, then her mother from Beloved, and finally Edward Bodwin from Sethe's ice pick.
28
Cf. Philip Page, “Circularity in Toni Morrison's Beloved “ African American Review 26
(1992): 31-39.
Thus Elizabeth B. House argues in “Toni Morrison's Ghost: The Beloved Who Is Not
Beloved," Studies in American Fiction 18, 1 (1990): 17-26, against her supernatural
provenance and cites Stamp Paid's tale of a locked-up house—and sex-slave in the vicinity
who had escaped. Stamp Paid, however, is also the main source of information on the ghosts
and their voices emanating from 124 Bluestone Road, thus undermining a purely naturalistic
perspective. Cf. n. 16 above.
30 Paradigmatically presented in the water imagery connecting Beloved-Sethe-Denver, who
are combined in the theme of death and the crossing over from life into death and—in
Beloved's case—her return back to the land of the living, alluding to the imagery of birth,
rebirth, mothering and caring, the giving and receiving of the gift of (human) life.
Stephanie A. Demetrakopoulos argues in “Maternal Bonds as Devourers of Women's
Individuation in Toni Morrison's Beloved?1 African American Review 26 (1992): 51-59, that
Sethe's guilt recreated Beloved and sustained the ghost. She explains this as “Enantiodromia,
the principle that any natural force suppressed will have gained demonic force by the time it
finally bursts forth."
32
William R. Handley places Beloved in the center of his analytic construct of allegory and
mourning, simultaneously present and absent and thus a bridge between past and present, in
his essay "The House a Ghost Built: Allegory, Nommo, and the Ethics of Reading in Toni
Morrison's Beloved,“ Contemporary Literature 36, 4 (1995): 676-701.
173

33	Handley also stresses the African concept of потто, the magic power of the word to call
things into being as another element of Morrison's use of Afro-American traditions.
34	Barbara Hill Rigney calls Beloved a spirit neither benign nor evil in ‘“A Story to Pass On:‘
Ghosts and the Significance of History in Toni Morrison* s BelovedHaunting the House of
Fiction: Feminist Perspectives on Ghost Stories by American Women, eds. Lynette Carpenter
and Wendy K. Kolmar (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991) 229-235.
35	Its multiperspectivity reflects the post-modem concept of the fundamental constructedness
of all experience and thus of all the perspectives in the novel-individual and cultural, personal
as well as traditional, and their different recombinations.
36	Linda Krumholz correctly identifies Beloved as a trickster figure who defies narrative
closure and thus acts as focus and irritation for the reader throughout the narrative process of
the novel. Having fulfilled her ‘mission* in the text, she leaves , and in her absence remains as
inexplicable negative presence for the reader. Cf. “The Ghosts of Slavery: Historical Recovery
in Toni Morrison*s Beloved “ African American Review 26 (1992): 395-408.
174

List of Contributors:
Albrecht Classen is Professor of German at the University of Arizona. He has
written and published extensively on many and diverse aspects of medieval
German literature and culture, translated original German literature and edited
several scholarly works. His latest publications include Canon and Canon
Transgression in Medieval German Literature, ed. id. (Goppingen: Kummerle,
1993)	and “Sexuality in the Middle Ages: An Exploration of Mental History on
the Basis of Literary Evidence,“ Neohelicon, 22,2 (1996): 9-51. Since 1990, he
is coeditor of Mediaevistik, and since 1992 he is editing Tristiana.
Simonetta Cochis is Assistant Professor of French and Spanish at Transylvania
University in Lexington, Kentucky. She has lectured and written on medieval
comic theatre, on French narratives of the fifteenth century (particularly
Antoine de La Sale), and she has performed in several medieval and
Renaissance French farces with the scholarly group ‘French Farce in Action.4
One of her current projects, “The Bishop of Fools,“ will be published in Fools
and Jesters in Literature, Art, and History, ed Vicki Janik (Westport: Green¬
wood, forthcoming, 1997).
Winffied Frey is Professor of German at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-
University in Frankfurt, Germany. His many publications include books and
articles on Middle High German poetry and epic, didactic and travel literature,
and in particular on the image of Jews in medieval German literature. He is the
editor of Otte‘s Eraclius (Gdppingen: Ktimmerle, 1983) and coeditor of the
three-volume literary history Einfuhrung in die Deutsche Literatur des 12. bis
16. Jahrhunderts (Introduction into German Literature from the Twelfth to the
Sixteenth Century) (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1979-82).
Paul Neubauer is currently Assistant Professor of American Literature and
Cultural Studies at the University of Regensburg, Germany, and has studied and
taught at the University of Alberta at Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Vanderbilt
University at Nashville, Tenn., and Brown University at Providence, R.I., USA.
His latest publication was a monograph on the critical discussion of postmodern
American novels in the German-speaking countries (Frankfurt et al.: Lang,
1994)	.
Norbert H. Ott is responsible editor and chief author of the Katalog der
deutschsprachigen illustrierten Handschriften des Mittelalters (Catalogue of
the German Illuminated Manuscripts of the Middle Ages) at the “Bayerische
Akademie der Wissenschaften,“ Munich, Germany; two of its eight volumes
have appeared since 1991. In numerous other publications he reflected the
relationship between the verbal and visual arts in the Middle Ages and analyzed
their many mutual influences.
175

Leander Petzoldt is Professor of Ethnology and Chair of the Department of
European Ethnological Studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. He has
published widely on folk mythology and popular legends, folk tradition and
narratology. His latest publications include Damonenfurcht und Gottvertrauen
(Fear of Demons and Trust in God) (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-
schaft, 1989) and Marchen, Afythos, Sage: Beitrage zur Literatur und Volks-
dichtung (Fairy Tale, Myth, Legend: Essays on Literature and Folk Narrative)
(Marburg: Elwert, 1989).
Ruth Petzoldt studied Germanic Languages and Literature, Philosophy, and Art
History at the Universities Innsbruck, Austria, and Regensburg,Germany, where
she earned her M.A in 1994. She was enrolled in the Ph.D.-Programm at the
University of California, Los Angeles, and is now completing her doctoral
thesis on the drama of German Romanticism at the University of Munich,
Germany. Her last publications include an article on the literary satire in
Goethe's farce “Gotter, Helden und Wieland“ in Wirkendes Wort 45, 3 (Decem¬
ber 1995): 406-417, as well as review essays in the New German Review: A
Journal of Germanic Studies in 1995/96 and 1997.
Ludovica Sebregondi holds a doctorate in Art History from the Universita di
Firenze (1981). She is the author of many articles on art and art commissions in
Florentine confraternities and of two books on this field (the latter one
published as Tre comfraternite fiorentine, (Three Florentine Confraternities)
Florence: Salimbeni, 1991). She was co-curator of two exhibitions in Florence.
Her most recent publications are 11 Mito di Firenze (The Myth of Florence) and
Toscana Granducale (The Grand Duchy Tuscany) (Rome: Editalia, 1996),
written and edited with Paolo Viti and Raffaella Zaccaria, and Santa Croce
sotteranea (Subterranean Santa Croce) (Florence: Citta di Vita, 1997).
Donald Ward is Professor Emeritus of German and Folklore at the University of
California, Los Angeles, coeditor of Fabula. He has been a Visiting Professor at
the Universities of Gottingen, Freiburg, Germany, and most recently (1995-96)
at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Two of his most recent publications are
the article “Fin de Siecle. Fin de Millenium: Folk Belief and Narrative at the
End of an Era,“ in Folk Narrative and World View, ed. Leander Petzoldt
(Frankfurt et al.: Lang, 1996) , 835-834, and the essay “Superstition44 in Jan
Harold Brunvan, ed., American Folklore: An Encyclopedia (New York et al.:
Garland, 1996), 690-697.
176

Band
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beitrAge zur europAischen ethnologie und folklore
Herausgegeben von Prof. Dr. Leander Petzoldt
Reihe A: Text© und Untersuchungen
1	Helge M.A. Weinrebe: M&rchen - Bilder - Wirkungen. Zur Wirkung und Rezeptions-
geschichte von illustrierten MSrchen der Bruder Grimm nach 1945.1987.
2	Peter Strasser: "Ein Sohn dee Thales". Franz Josef Vonbun als Sammler und Editor Vor-
arlberger Volkserzfihlung. 1993.
3	Leander Petzoldt/lngo Schneider/Petra Strong (Hrsg.): P£ri. Uber das Leben in einem un-
gardeutschen Dorf. 1993.
4	Gottfried Kompatschen Volk und Herrscher in der historischen Sage. Zur Mythisierung
Friedrichs IV. von Osterreich vom 15. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart. 1994.
Reihe B: Tagungsberichte
1	Leander Petzoldt/Siegfried de Rachewiltz (Hrsg.): Studien zur VolkserzShlung. Berichte
und Referate des ersten und zweiten Symposions zur Volkserzdhlung Brunnenburg/SQd-
tirol 1984/85.1987.
2	Leander Petzoldt/Siegfried de Rachewiltz (Hrsg.): Der D&mon und sein Bild. Berichte und
Referate des dritten und vierten Symposions zur Volkserz&hlung Brunnenburg/Sudtirol
1986/87.1989.
3	Leander Petzoldt/Stefaan Top (Hrsg.): Dona Folcloristica. Festgabe Шг Lutz ROhrich zu
seiner Emeritierung. 1990.
4	Leander Petzoldt/Siegfried de Rachewiltz, Ingo Schneider, Petra Strong (Hrsg.): Das Bild
der Welt In der Volkserz&hlung. Berichte und Referate des fQnften bis siebten Symposions
zur Volkserzfihlung Brunnenburg/SOdtirol 1988-1990.1993.
5	Leander Petzoldt/lngo Schneider/Petra Strong (Hrsg.): Bild und Text. Internationale Kon-
ferenz des Komitees Юг ethnologische Bildforschung in der Soci6t6 internationale pour
Ethnologie et Folklore (SIEF). 2.-6. Oktober 1990 in Innsbruck, Bratislava 1993.
6	Leander Petzoldt/Siegfried de Rachewlltz/Petra Strong (Hrsg.): Studien zur Stoff- und Mo-
tivgeschichte der Volkserz&hlung. Berichte und Referate des achten bis zehnten Sympo¬
siums auf der Brunnenburg/Sudtirol 1991-1993. 1995.
7	Leander Petzoldt (Hrsg.): Folk Narrative and World View. Berichte und Referate zum 10.
Intemationalen KongreB fQr Volkserzflhlungsforschung (ISFNR) in Innsbruck 1992. (1 Bd.
in 2 Teilen). 1996.
8	Ruth Petzoldt/Paul Neubauer (Eds.): Demons: Mediators between This World and the
Other. Essays on Demonic Beings from the Middle Ages to the Present. 1998.