Monsters and Grotesques in Medieval Manuscripts

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Summary: Monsters in High Places
Review: Some of the monsters that medieval artists drew along the edges of manuscript pages were based on real animals, such as lions and whales. But many were made up from reading ancient and biblical writings. Respected writers, such as Aristotle, Ctesias, Herodotus and Homer in Greek, and Pliny the Elder and Solinus in Latin, saw foreign lands, forests and wildernesses as dangerous places. They thought of people, in such faraway lands as Ethiopia and India, either as deformed creatures looking somewhat human or as monsters.

Christianity spread by letting be whatever parts of other cultures didn't get in the way of what Christians believed. So St Augustine of Hippo accepted these stories. But he saw these monsters as having souls in need of being saved.

But it didn't matter if it was monks or, later on, professionals outside the church who copied and did the artwork. Artists and writers, particularly in medieval England, France and the Netherlands, were just as accepting as those who had gone before. The Universal History and The Wonders of the East on the one hand, and the Byzantine and Tiberius psalters on the other, were all known for monsters.

And monstrously ugly on the outside meant bad on the inside. For the final battle in the biblical book of the Apocalypse was between St Michael's good army of beautiful angels and Satan's bad of ugly dragons and monsters. Readers and viewers in the Middle Ages felt that they had to take sides in this fight. So they often scratched, slashed or smudged the faces of those drawn as doing evil in medieval manuscripts.

Joining monsters at the end of the 15th century were grotesques, as having parts from animals, humans and plants. They were based on cave drawings of mythical monsters. This art was in a palace of Emperor Nero that was rediscovered in 1488. So, for example, grotesques showed up on the edges of pages in the Book of Hours for Bonaparte Ghislieri, a wealthy resident of Bologna.

Author Alixe Bovey is an excellent starting point. Her user-friendly writing gives perfect examples of the MONSTERS AND GROTESQUES IN MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS. Her book works well with Janetta Rebold Benton's HOLY TERRORS and Jennifer Dussling's GARGOYLES. She paves the way for John Block Friedman's THE MONSTROUS RACES IN MEDIEVAL ART AND THOUGHT and A G Smith's GARGOYLES AND MEDIEVAL MONSTERS, both harder to start with first.