born in the year 573 B. C. (309) presaged the defeat of the Persians. A
child without arms (316) and the tail of a fish instead of legs, born in
Thrace in 601 A. D., was ordered to be killed. In 854 A. D. a boy attached
to a dog was born (352, see the illustration). This happened in the days
of Lotharius Caesar, duke of Saxony, who soon thereafter died. In 858 A.
D. (353) a monstrosity of mixed shape was born and all kinds of
misfortunes followed. Twins united at the loins born in England in 1112
are brought into connection with a victory of King Boleslaus of Poland and
the death of Waldrich, duke of Saxony. He carries his chronicle beyond
1543[242] in which year a human monstrosity was born at Cracow, with
flames starting out of the eyes, mouth and nose, with horns on its head,
with the tail of a dog, with faces of apes on its breast and legs, with
the eyes of a cat and with claws. It lived for four hours, cried
'Vigilate, Dominus Deus vester adventat' and expired. The point of view
throughout is the time-honored one that the monstrosity is a =monstrum=--a
sign sent by an angered deity, just as on the other hand as a trace of the
pristine ignorance of the processes of nature, the belief continued to
prevail that such monstrosities were due to the intercourse of women with
demons--either wilfully accomplished by the woman, or without her
knowledge. Martin in his _Histoire des Monstres_ devotes an entire
chapter[243] to illustrations of this belief, which is advocated as late
as the year 1836 by Goerres[244], the Professor of Philosophy at the
Munich University, and even as late as the year 1864 by Delaporte in a
book on the devil[245]. Such a belief which involves the possibility of
pregnancy without the ordinary sexual intercourse and which has left its
traces far and wide[246] in the religious history of mankind must have
acted as a powerful agent in maintaining also the belief in all kinds of
monstrosities that could never have occurred. The demons naturally could
do anything, and thus a very simple theory was evolved to account for such
monstrosities and which supplemented the older one[247] that accounted for
the simpler hybrid beings as due to the intercourse of a human being with
an animal. The cooperation of the demons, moreover, was a natural
correlative to the belief that deviations from the normal course of things
were omens. Even Christian theology found no difficulty in assuming that
God permitted a demon to exercise his power over those who had through sin
forfeited the Divine protection, with the result that in many cases the
unfortunate mother was brought before a tribunal and not infrequently
suffered death for the sin of intercourse with some demon. Martin's work,
above referred to, also furnishes abundant evidence of the persistency
both of the belief in monsters and of their being regarded as omens even
in the scientific world down to a very late date. He tells the story[248]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account