SISPERFUJ para los Postulantes

this type of behaviour. The killing of abnormal infants may have been regarded as euthanasia, or as the equivalent of ‘therapeutic’ abortion, as they placed too great a burden on society. Throughout the early modern period, monsters were routinely exhibited in the public view and were seldom killed or concealed. Unless we suppose that observers enjoyed being horrified and wanted opportunities to show their disgust - and there is no evidence for behaviour of this kind - other explanations for why people were prepared to travel, pay money to see, and buy and keep images of monstrous births must be sought. I suggest that the reaction to intermediates was more complex than terms such as ‘horror’ and ‘repugnance’ suggest. Attitudes to monsters were as ambivalent as the monsters themselves. Intermediacy between human and animal, intersex, and physical deformities are all characteristics that have been revered as well as tabooed.^^ ‘One-in-two’ was ‘scandalous, unthinkable, and much to be desired.

Truth under the veil

The ambiguity of monsters suited them to use in emblems: a use that would have been readily appreciated at a time when emblem books and visual allegories were commonplace. The use of monstrous births as emblems does not imply that the monsters themselves were inventions. In his stucÿ of seventeenth century imagery, Praz has emphasised that emblems (for which he uses the term ‘devices’) were expected to utilise genuine properties of their constituent elements: ‘[o]ne would, however, be mistaken in thinking that the device-writers were ready to take up any fable; on the contrary they insist upon the exclusion of the f a b u l o u s . H e quotes from the Italian scholar Scipione Bargagli:

In the main subject o f the devices there can be n o room , according to m y firm belief, for mere fictions; since w e must deal w ith real things and w e have to explain and prove them ... th ose will be rightly blamed w h o have made and will continue to make use o f the false properties o f things universally know n to be false.

T h e p elica n fe e d in g its b r o o d w ith its o w n b lo o d is a v a lid e m b le m o n ly i f th is is, o r is b e lie v e d t o b e, w h a t a p elica n actually d o e s.

An important early text in Renaissance emblematics was Horus Apollo’s Hiero^y[hca^ a

work purporting to explain Egyptian hieroglyphs, discovered in 1419 by a Florentine

99 Sir James George Fraser noted that some animals were regarded as both 'unclean' and ‘divine’: The Golden Bough. A study in M a^ and rdiffm (London, Macmillan, 1913), part 5, vol. 2, p. 24,

100 Jacques Gelis, History o f Onidhddo. Fettdity,preg7oncy and birth in atriy modem Europe (Polity Press, Oxford, 1991), p. 269.

101 Mario Praz, Studies in Seventeendj-Gentury Im a ^ (Rome, Edizione di Stoiia e Letteratura, 1964), p. 68. 102 (d. 1612) whom Praz regarded as ‘one of the chief authorities on devices’ in sixteenth century Italy. The quotation is from his D dlebrpresse (Sienna, 1578).

monk and circulated in manuscript before being printed in 1505 by Aldus. Hieroglyphs appealed to the Renaissance love of codes, hidden messages and secrets, as well as to the interest in ‘arcana,’ the wisdom of the ancients. This work was translated into many languages and, it has been suggested, inspired other emblematic works such as the

Hyprierotmiadm Poliphili by Fra Francesco Colonna.^°^ In a 1600 edition of this work under

the title of Le Tableau des Riches... Francois Beroalde wrote:

this A uthor... follow s the manner o f the A ncients w h o veiled any kind o f philosophical tm th w ith certain agreeable figures w hich attracted m ens hearts, either to detain th em upon the husk o f what offered itself, or to strive to open that which hid the inner beauty in order to enjoy it, thus both pleasing the vulgar and satisfying those desirous o f perfection,

Monstrous births undoubtedly pleased the vulgar. Some explanations for the changing iconography of the monster of Ravenna have already been offered, and the final, ‘standard’ image of this monster seems to invite an emblematic interpretation, not least because characters and symbols have been added to it - one way of creating emblems from pictures. Almost any existing picture could be adapted for use as an emblem in this manner: Goosen van Vreeswijk (1626-C.1689) provided emblems for his alchemical work by adding symbols to existing and unrelated illustrations.

The hermetic tradition provides alternative readings of the hermaphrodite. The Greek god Hermes (Mercury, who holds the Caduceus)^°^ united with Aphrodite, the goddess of femininity, who bore the man-woman Hermaphrodite. Alchemists represented the union

of masculine and feminine by the so-called hermetic androgene or rebis. The Rosarium

Philosophorum of 1550 illustrated the androgene, the product of the union of sol and luna (sulphur and mercury), as a dicephalic human body with concealed, and therefore ambiguous, genitalia. This image would have been as familiar as the depictions of conjoined twins of opposite sexes, which were also hermaphrodites. A later alchemical

work, Atlanta Fu^iens (Maier, 1618, emblem 33) depicted the hermaphrodite as a dicephalic

twin with one male and one female head and male and female external genitalia. Nature could imitate art:

[ajnd though ‘tis a fiction o f the Poets that the son begotten o f the Adultery o f Mercury and V enus was b oth male and fem ale... yet w e see in Nature som e truth

103 Published by Aldus in 1499. 104 Klossouski de Kola, op. c it, p. 12.

105 The snake is another symbol of duaUty, see the discussion of dualistic animal symbols in; Christopher Lawrence, T he healing serpent - the snake in medical iconography’ Ulster Medical Journal vol. 47 (1978), pp. 134-140: 138-40.

under the veil o f these Fables. F or the greatest part o f insects and m any perfect animals have the use o f either sex.^°^

In Symbola Aureae Mensae (Maier, 1617) the androgene holds the letter Y, a sign that: ‘[t]he androgene or Rebis (the double thing) results from the conjunction of the twin Principles, obtained with the help of the double saline mediator of which the Y is a s y m b o l . T h i s Y also appears on the breast of the Ravenna monster, where it acquired another meaning:

‘[b]y this figure Y, & the crosse, they were two figures of salvation, for Ypsilon signifieth

vertue: the Crosse sheweth that al those... wil retume to Jesus Christ...

Accounts of monsters were intended to present them as emblems of the combination of two natures. Anencephahcs were described as having the head of a frog, a creature that, being amphibious, combined elements of earth and water (the Egyptian god Nau, represented as frog-headed, was also androgynous, shown sometimes as male and sometimes as f e m a l e ) . A child with a facial cleft was said to have a leopard’s head. This unusual choice of comparison with an animal that most readers would never have seen (why not a cat?) may be explained by the hybrid nature of the leopard (leo-pardus, a hybrid between a hon and a panther):

A m ongst beasts, Leopards, Mules, D oggs, and m any others, partake o f tw o different natures; the Bat is betw een a beast and a bird, as Frogs, D ucks, and other amphibious creatures, partly fish, and partly Terrestrial Animals. T he Bouaretz is a plant and an animal; the M ushrom e is betw een earth and a plant.’

Descriptions of monstrous births drew attention to their dual nature both anatomically, for example through emphasis on shared organs in conjoined twins, and emblematically, through the use of symbols of duality from the world of alchemy or by the suggestion of human/animal intermediates.

Early modem writers made the distinction between actual cases and stories, or ‘poetical’ accounts:

...th ere was a mayden childe h om e, having foure legs, foure armes, tw o bellies, proportionable joyned to one back, one head w ith tw o faces, the one before, & the

106 Renaudot, op. c it, p. 578.

107 Klossouski de Rola, op. a t, p . 114. 108 Fenton, op. a t, fol. 13%;.

109 Ad de Vries, Dictionary o f Symbols cmd bnc^ry (Amsterdam, North-HoUand, 1984), pp. 204-5. 110 Renaudot, op. c it, p. 578.

other behind, like to the picture o f Janus: the like o f this with tw o several faces under one scull, I never read before in any Chronicle, except by way o f a Poeticall report.

Although they do not fulfil the expectation that emblems used real objects, the emblematic use of monstrous births is however especially well seen in these rare poetical accounts, which were created especially to serve as emblems. The following example, from Batman’s

The Doome W am mgAll Men to the Judgement... is, like all visual emblems, not an attempt to deceive, but an invitation to discover a hidden meaning, and the account opens with improbable details that signal immediately its ‘poetical’ nature:

...a m aid nam ed Ida^ aboute the age o f 77 yeares, never suspected by the inhabitantes for any stayne or dishonestye, she was at this age married to one George, o f the age o f 60 yeres. Being married aboute 12 m oneths, shee was found with child to the great admiration o f many: at the laste shee was delivered o f a m anne chylde, having three armes, three legges and very terrible to beholde, he hadde three faces, as it were in one head, and in the one o f his hands a bloody crosse: In the night tym e there was a shyning lighte aboute the Childe, and aboute his heade a bloodye Sunne and a half m oone. There resorted to see this straunge Chylde a verye greate multitude, am ong whiche pressed a blynde Mayde o f the age o f fifteene yeres, that was h o m e blind, w h o by the touching o f this sayd m onster was presentlye healed, and hadde her perfecte sighte: and another that was b o m dum m e, at the sighte o f the Ch)4de was restored to hys speeche. Some sayde it was an illusion o f the Devill: som e sayde it was done by sorcerye or witchcrafte. T he Chylde at the laste opened hys m outh and sayde: You urideevers greate plagæ s shall fa ll on you all, O wo that you recewed life. H e sayde m oreover that in the yere one thousand five hundred eightie and eight the worlde shall stand in so extreame a state, that the people w hich live in those dayes shall tremble and quake for feare, and having ended these wordes he departed and spued forth flames o f fyre, in so m uche that the standers by were hurte and scorched therewith, whereupon ensued such a pestilence, that in three dayes there died 8 o f the beholders: they carying the Child to the burial, it sodainly vanished from them , n o man k new which way.

The monster is depicted with three faces, surroimded by an aureole of the stm’s rays (Fig. 6). The symbohc sun and moon on either side of its head, sol and luna, recall the imagery of the hermetic androgene. The monstrous child has a threefold anatomy suggesting the Trinity, and its very presence is sufficient to work miracles (a good reason for going to see it). A person bom blind is healed (recalling John 9, 1-3 - a key text in interpretations of

monstrous births) and a final fiery assumption and vanishing away (as on the road to

Emmaus) point even the least perceptive of readers to the monster as an emblem of Christ.

111 Edmund Howes, Armales, or, a gaiercdl chrwide ofEngland / Begun by John Stow. Ccntmced and augn&rted with matters jbrraigie and domestique, andent and rrtxkrrK, m to the end o f this present yære, 1631. (London, A. Mathewes, 1631), p. 1006.

Ch a p t e r 2 — Br o a d s i d e s a n d o t h e r e p h e m e r a l l i t e r a t u r e

Som e low zy ballad? I cannot choose but laugh A t these p o o r squitter p u lp s/

The Hterature describing birth defects in early modern Europe can be divided into scholarly pubHcations such as books, theses and sermons, and popular Hterature such as broadside ballads, canards and advertisements. These two categories are by no means independent as they have a shared content and, potentially, a common readership: many cases in the ephemeral Hterature subsequently appeared in books, and students of birth defects probably acquired some of their material directly from the popular Hterature. Although readers of baUads were assumed by some later commentators to have been poorly educated, the audience for ‘popular’ Hterature of the period is far from clear, and the concept of ‘popular’ and ‘eHte’ cultures has been criticised for ignoring the multi-stratified nature of society, with its large numbers of middling groups, and for making the assumption that particular types of culture necessarily correspond to particular social groups.^ Popular culture is perhaps best defined simply as being open to everybody^ and the potential readership for ballads was probably quite wide. PubHcation was rapid: a baUad printed on 5th November described conjoined twins bom on 26th October (Appendix 1, 1664b). These ephemeral pubHcations demonstrate two uses of monstrous births, as historical examples of divine intervention and as moraHty emblems.

Broadsides

Ballads or broadsides, so caUed because they were printed on only one side of the paper, came into existence around the end of the fifteenth century, perhaps as a development from buUs and other official notices which were cheaply printed and widely disseminated. In England itinerant baUad-mongers sold their wares at a halfpenny or a penny a sheet, attracting a crowd by singing their ballads to popular tunes. Broadsides had a variety of formats but the usual layout included a large woodcut illustration with subjoined verses and/or prose text. Some of the verses had suggested song tunes but it is difficult to imagine anyone singing those dealing with monstrous births, although the seUer may have declaimed them dramatically to attract customers. Readers probably expected a famiHar format and the rhyming and scanning verse could have helped them to foUow the text. Broadsides first appeared in Europe around the