Fantastic Beasts of the Medieval Mind

When we think of dragons, giants, or unicorns, we often find ourselves imagining them in a medieval setting. We think of tales of knights, castles, and fair maidens. Perhaps the image of Saint George and the dragon springs to mind. But how did people who lived in medieval times view these fantastic beasts? Where would they have encountered their stories or seen their images?

If we visit a medieval church, we might see images of some of these creatures carved into the stonework. Alternatively, we might see colourful illustrations of them in the margins of medieval manuscripts. Indeed, their images appear everywhere—but what of their stories?

Fantastic Beasts in Stories

Many tales concerning mythical creatures were inherited from classical times, having found their way into medieval culture through writers such as Ovid. Others came from cultures such as the Welsh and Irish Celts, the Saxons, and the Vikings. Tales of giants appear in both Celtic and Germanic traditions in the early medieval period. Stories of gryphons, centaurs, and unicorns date back to classical times.

Such influences were picked up by medieval writers and reimagined in the context of their age. A most obvious example is the classic tale of Saint George and the Dragon. Writers of Arthurian lore, such as Chrétien de Troyes, would draw on older tales of such beasts and weave them into their romances. Thus, we see giants appearing in Chrétien’s Erec and Enide and a dragon in his tale of The Knight and the Lion.

However, on balance, stories of such creatures appear less frequently than we might imagine. The ‘mythology’ of these beasts relied as much—if not more—on illuminations, carvings, and a type of book known as a bestiary.

The Medieval Bestiary

Bestiaries took the form of encyclopaedias of the natural world, with entries for an array of beasts. Often, entries detailing real animals were interspersed with entries relating to mythical creatures. Bestiaries had existed since classical times, but it was during the Middle Ages that they reached the height of their popularity.

Mythical creatures such as griffins and dragons were usually presented as living in distant lands. In a world that still contained large regions that were unexplored or poorly known to Europeans, it was not unreasonable to suppose that such beings might live there. The fact that no European had seen one was explained by the belief that they lived in some far-off wilderness. And, of course, for many Europeans, the griffin would have seemed no more exotic or unfamiliar than the giraffe.

One of the most famous examples of a bestiary is Isidore of Seville’s The Etymologies. Isidore did not always take the existence of such creatures at face value. He sometimes expressed doubts about their reality (such as with sirens). On the other hand, he accepted the existence of the phoenix as readily as that of the crocodile. Indeed, his entry for the griffin appears sandwiched between the entries for elephant and lynx.

The Dragon

Dragons have an ancient history that long pre-dates medieval times. They appear in classical myths in various forms. Jason’s many-headed hydra arguably represents a type of dragon. Perhaps more significant, however, is the dragon that fights the Greek hero Cadmus, as described in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This work was very popular in medieval Europe, and the image of the dragon described therein strongly influenced how dragons came to be depicted. This dragon is described as a great serpent, and, rather than breathing fire, it belches forth poisonous vapours.

A more familiar image of the flying, fire-breathing dragon might be found in the early medieval Anglo-Saxon tale of Beowulf. This dragon is much closer to how we often depict these beasts today. Nevertheless, the image of a dragon that breathes poison or spreads plague and pestilence was very common in medieval times. Saint George’s dragon was of this kind.

The 13th-century saint’s hagiography, The Golden Legend, mentions that it was an ancient folk custom at this time to burn animal bones on a bonfire at midsummer. According to medieval folk tradition, this was done to drive off plague-bearing dragons.

Dragons were usually depicted as utterly evil, as well as a potential source of pestilence. This was in no small part because Satan is described as the Great Dragon in the Bible. In the medieval mind, the dragon often represented the ultimate evil protagonist.

King Arthur faces a giant in this engraving by Walter Crane.

The Giant

Giants appear in early Celtic stories, as well as in Germanic traditions. To a medieval audience, these creatures were typically seen as savage brutes. They conjured up images of wild pagan forces—savage and uncivilised, prone to bloody outbursts of violence.

In the early 12th century, Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote the History of the Kings of Britain. It is famous as the first major work of Arthurian lore, but it also includes tales of giants.

Geoffrey tells us that when the ancient ancestors of the Britons first arrived on Britain’s southern shores, they found that Cornwall, more so than elsewhere, was plagued by giants. He tells us that the early British settlers were attacked by a group of these brutes led by a ‘particularly repulsive one’ called Gogmagog. The name ‘Gogmagog’ is derived from the biblical Gog and Magog (who appear in the Book of Revelation as allies of Satan at the end of days).

Gogmagog is described as huge and capable of ripping oak trees out of the ground with his bare hands. The British hero, Corineus, wrestles with Gogmagog in a final, climactic confrontation. After a fierce struggle, he eventually manages to hurl the giant off a cliff into the sea.

The Griffin

Descriptions of griffins that found their way into bestiaries, such as Isidore’s work, owed much to earlier classical writers.

Griffins were often thought to live in a remote region of Russia or Ukraine—perhaps near the Urals or between the Black and Caspian seas. They are depicted as living in this region on the medieval Mappa Mundi. These were, supposedly, ancient Scythian lands.

The classical writer Herodotus claimed they shared this land with a race of one-eyed folk called Arimaspians. The Arimaspians supposedly stole gold from the griffins, thereby incurring their wrath. Isidore reports that griffins were indeed fierce creatures, apt to attack both men and horses.

In the medieval Romance of Alexander, griffins were described as drawing a kind of flying chariot for the king. And in Dante’s Divine Comedy, they are shown as being used as a flying steed by one of Dante’s characters. Since ancient times, griffins had been considered noble beasts—some even called them the king of beasts.

Sirens swimming in sea.―Bestiary (Bodl. 764), fol. 74v

The Mermaid

The mermaid is very much a creature of the Middle Ages. Earlier classical tales spoke of supernatural beings associated with the sea, such as nereids and sirens. However, none of these creatures matched the image of a mermaid that we might recognise. The mermaid evolved from the ancient nereid to acquire a characteristic fish-like tail. Such an image may have originated from the Semitic fertility goddess Atargatis, who once transmuted herself into a fish. Since Atargatis was associated with love and fertility, the medieval mermaid may also have inherited her reputation for dangerous allure from this ancient goddess.

Certainly, mermaids were often depicted as capricious and potentially dangerous in medieval times. Love between a mermaid and a human man was often doomed, and, at worst, the hapless fool might be led to a watery doom.

Mermaids could, however, sometimes act benevolently—warning their human friends of impending storms or helping them find good fishing grounds.

Images of mermaids often appear in medieval manuscripts and church carvings. One such image, dating to the 15th century, appears on a bench in the little church at Zennor in Cornwall. Here, the mermaid is shown with a mirror and comb—a common medieval depiction. Such an image symbolised the sins of pride and vanity and was meant to serve as a warning to medieval observers.

Wild men support coats of arms in the side panels of a portrait by Albrecht Dürer, 1499 (Alte Pinakothek, Munich).

The Woodwose

The image of the wild man, or woodwose, is very common in medieval art. These characters also frequently featured in medieval entertainments performed by troupes of masked players. At a medieval summer fair, you might well witness a parade of players that included a woodwose character. The woodwose would often run around chaotically, pretending to scare off the children. He was a well-known medieval bogeyman character.

Wild men were thought to live deep in remote wildernesses, far from civilisation. They were men, but unlike civilised men, they were covered in grey hair or fur. They were usually thought incapable of speech and unable to use any more than the most rudimentary tools. They were utterly savage—more like wild beasts than men—and, worst of all, they were ignorant of God.

Medieval depictions of these men show them abducting fair maidens to ravage or, worse, children to raise as their own. Some tales even accused these creatures of cannibalism. They were the lurking bogeymen of the wild. In many ways, the woodwose represented everything a cultured medieval man feared becoming: savage, uncultured, and ignorant of God.

End of an Age

Creatures such as the woodwose, the unicorn, and the mermaid remain uniquely medieval beings. Depictions and tales concerning them reached the height of their popularity during the High to Late Middle Ages. However, as the early modern age began, their cultural significance began to decline. It was just about plausible to believe in the existence of unicorns, griffins and dragons in a world that was only poorly explored. But as more and more of the world was mapped, it became ever clearer that there were fewer and fewer uncharted places left where such creatures might be hiding. As a result, the great bogeyman of the early modern age ceased to be the dragon (whom no one ever saw) and instead became the witch hiding within the community.