Fallen animals: art, religion, literature 9781498543965, 9781498543972, 1498543960

Citation preview

Fallen Animals

Ecocritical Theory and Practice Series Editor: Douglas A. Vakoch, METI Advisory Board: Bruce Allen, Seisen University, Japan; Hannes Bergthaller, National Chung-Hsing University, Taiwan; Zélia Bora, Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil; Izabel Brandão, Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil; Byron Caminero-Santangelo, University of Kansas, USA; Simão Farias Almeida, Federal University of Roraima, Brazil; George Handley, Brigham Young University, USA; Isabel Hoving, Leiden University, The Netherlands; Idom Thomas Inyabri, University of Calabar, Nigeria; Serenella Iovino, University of Turin, Italy; Daniela Kato, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan; Petr Kopecký, University of Ostrava, Czech Republic; Serpil Oppermann, Hacettepe University, Turkey; Christian Schmitt-Kilb, University of Rostock, Germany; Heike Schwarz, University of Augsburg, Germany; Murali Sivaramakrishnan, Pondicherry University, India; Scott Slovic, University of Idaho, USA; J. Etienne Terblanche, North-West University, South Africa; Julia Tofantšuk, Tallinn University, Estonia; Cheng Xiangzhan, Shandong University, China; Hubert Zapf, University of Augsburg, Germany Ecocritical Theory and Practice highlights innovative scholarship at the interface of literary/cultural studies and the environment, seeking to foster an ongoing dialogue between academics and environmental activists. Recent Titles Fallen Animals: Art, Religion, Literature edited by Zohar Hadromi-Allouche Ecological Thought in German Literature and Culture edited by Gabriele Dürbeck, Urte Stobbe, Hubert Zapf, and Evi Zemanek The Horse in Literature and Film: Uncovering a Transcultural Paradigm by Francisco LaRubia-Prado Water in Medieval Literature: An Ecocritical Reading by Albrecht Classen Sustainability and the City: Urban Poetics and Politics edited by Lauren Curtright and Doris Bremm Ecocultural Ethics: Critical Essays edited by Rayson K. Alex, S. Susan Deborah, Reena Cheruvalath, and Gyan Prakash Critical Ecofeminism by Greta Gaard Writing the Earth, Darkly: Globalization, Ecocriticism, and Desire by Isabel Hoving Ecological Entanglements in the Anthropocene edited by Nicholas Holm and Sy Taffel

Fallen Animals Art, Religion, Literature Edited by Zohar Hadromi-Allouche

LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2017 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hadromi-Allouche, Zohar, editor. Title: Fallen animals : art, religion, literature / edited by Zohar Hadromi-Allouche. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, 2017. | Series: Ecocritical theory and practice | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017033659 (print) | LCCN 2017036880 (ebook) | ISBN 9781498543972 (Electronic) | ISBN 9781498543965 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Fall of man. | Human-animal relationships--Religious aspects. | Christianity and the arts. Classification: LCC BT710 (ebook) | LCC BT710 .F36 2017 (print) | DDC 233/.14--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017033659 TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

Introduction: All Creatures High and Low: Seeing Fallen Animals in Religion and the Arts Diane Apostolos-Cappadona and Zohar Hadromi-Allouche

ix

Opening Note: The Snake in the Garden of Eden Robert A. Segal 1

2

3

4

5

6

“To see what he would name them . . . ”: Naming and Domination in a Fallen World Brian Brock From Ursus Diabolus to Ursus Ex Machina: The Ambivalent Legacy of Biblical Bears in Christian Art and Hagiography Eric Ziolkowski Jonah and His Fish: The Monstrification of God’s Servant in Early Jewish and Christian Reception History Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer “Who Has the Most Faults?”: Animal Sinners in a Late Byzantine Poem Kirsty Stewart “The Author Laughed in a Cat’s Voice”: Aesop and Humanism in William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat Rachel Stenner Do Monkeys Know about Their Origin?: Narratives of Animals Emerging During Fall in an Islamic Context Constantin Canavas v

xxi

1

23

47

71

89

107

vi

Contents

Epilogue: We Fall into the Humanimal: A Conversation between Kate Walters and Penny Florence Kate Walters and Penny Florence

123

Index

141

About the Contributors

149

Acknowledgments

The editor is grateful for the generous support of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, thanks to which this volume began with a workshop in 2015 at the University of Aberdeen. I am grateful to my colleagues across the College of Arts and Social Sciences for their support and encouragement, and particularly Áine Larkin, who has been my partner through the most challenging parts of the Fall project(s). Cover image: Kate Walters (2016), Spirit Horse (watercolour, 47x56cm). Reproduced by kind permission of the artist.

vii

Introduction All Creatures High and Low: Seeing Fallen Animals in Religion and the Arts Diane Apostolos-Cappadona and Zohar Hadromi-Allouche

The premise of Fallen Animals is that somehow and in some way the Fall of Adam and Eve as related in the Bible has affected all living beings from the largest to the smallest, from the oldest to the youngest, regardless of gender and geography. The movement from the blissful arena of the Garden of Eden to the uncertain reality of exile altered in an overt or nuanced fashion the attitudes, perceptions, and consciousness of animals and humanity alike. Interpretations of these reformulations as well as the original story of the Paradise Garden have been told and retold for millennia in a variety of cultural contexts, languages, societies, and religious environments. Throughout all those retellings, animals have been a constant presence positively and negatively, actively and passively, from the creation of birds, fish, and mammals to the agency of the serpent in the Fall narrative. Thus there has been a perhaps implicit awareness that not only the paradisiacal serpent but also all the animals were transformed by the Fall. While a variety of English-language dictionaries and encyclopedias agree on the thin line distinguishing the terms transformation and metamorphosis in relation to animals, i.e., “metamorphosis is the process of transformation from an immature form to an adult form in the natural animal life cycle,” and dependent upon one’s interpretative lens, animals may be seen as untouched by the Fall or hampered by fallen humanity. The Classical practice of endowing animals with human characteristics, or identifying them as embodiments of values and ideas such as power, ix

x

Diane Apostolos-Cappadona and Zohar Hadromi-Allouche

wisdom, and courage either in recognizable animal forms, or as emblematic companions of humans, especially heroes and saints, was predicated upon mythological and literary sources. These books included the Physiologus, a second- or third-century Alexandrian anthology of idiosyncratic stories about real and mythical animals that drew upon the natural histories of Classical Greece and Rome, and Aristotle’s Historia Animalia, a book on natural science that compiled and systematized everything then known about animals. Additional sources included the Physiologus Latina, Homer’s Iliad, Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. All of these texts were identified as foundational to the evolution of the medieval bestiaries whose popularity was second only to the Bible and that detailed the history, legend, natural characteristics, and symbolism of over one hundred animals. The bestiaries were both elaborately illuminated and served as a source for the development of the complex iconography of medieval art in which moralizing parallels between animals and humans were drawn. When animals were engaged as visual and verbal instruments for religious allegory and moral pedagogy, the bestiaries and medieval devotional texts became standard resources. While animals continued to be incorporated as emblems and symbols in works of religious art throughout the Renaissance and into the Early Modern world, they were also beginning to be recognized within the context of the Renaissance interest in naturalism so that close and accurate representations of animals began as a subject in and of themselves. As the Age of Exploration expanded the boundaries of the then known world into Asia, Africa and the new worlds of Australia, and North and South America, depictions of those locales were characterized by the local flora and fauna. As the Early Modern world morphed into the ages of science and industrialization, visual images of animals were subject to the new lenses of the sciences, veterinary medicine, zoology, animal husbandry, and eventually the 20th-century’s endangered species lists. Thereby the animal symbolism of the Classical Mediterranean basin that transformed into the emblems and visual metaphors of Western Christian art had been incorporated into the evolving landscape, and still life paintings of the Early Modern period not only became subject matter in their own right but were categorized as created by animal painters from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Thereby artists such as the American John James Audubon (1785–1851), the French painter Rosa Bonheur (1822–1899), and the British painters Edwin Henry Landseer (1802–1873) and George Stubbs (1724–1806) focused their careers as animal painters. The continuing secularization of Western culture that began with the Reformation, if not the Renaissance, led in the 20th century to the introduction of the wildlife artist like the American sculptor James Earle Fraser (1876–1953), the British artist

Introduction

xi

Gary Hodges (b. 1954), and the American painter Lanford Monroe (1950–2000). The technological innovations of the 19th and 20th centuries that moved the arts from the arenas of painting and sculpture into the new realms of photography, cinema, and television, and eventually to animation, digital images, video games, and computer art all incorporating animal narratives and imagery, and brought renewed life to some well-known animals including Black Beauty and Winnie-the-Pooh, and innovative presentations of newer animals like Kung Fu Panda and the Penguins of Madagascar. These presentations of animal narratives provide varied perspectives on the meaning and results of the Fall through the lenses of loss, despair, and salvation for individual animals (or species) as well as the emotional and physical relationships between animals and humans. Anna Sewell’s now classic defense of animal welfare Black Beauty (1877) resulted in better treatment for those horses pulling cabs throughout London. Beauty had experienced a carefree life as a young colt only to suffer as a London cab horse until returning to the country in retirement. The novel became a model for the mutual exchanges between animals and humans so that Beauty reacted with kindness when treated kindly, love when loved, and disrespect when maltreated. The pedagogical and literary popularity of the original novel is witnessed not only by the copious print editions but also by the numerous cinematic and televised versions beginning in 1917 through the present day. Although initially identified as an “unlikely hero,” the panda named Po is the star of one of the most successful animated movies. He survives a series of physical and spiritual tests to fulfill what appeared to be an unattainable dream to become a Ku Fu Master. Thereby Po became a critical and financial success by not simply garnering awards and devoted fans; Kung Fu Panda grew into several movie sequels, a television series, and holiday specials. Po’s story and his later exploits were as much morality tales as they were action-packed adventure stories. The unlikely Po tried and failed (read fallen) as he attempted to become a Kung Fu Master. However, his determination led to his realization that becoming a Kung Fu Master was not simply measured by physical prowess. Rather, when he rescued the Dragon Scroll, Po recognized that the journey was its own reward for the foundation for the sense of faith and self-confidence required of a Kung Fu Master. The muchdesired Dragon Scroll was actually a blank reflective surface (read mirror) that allowed Po to see inside himself and for others as “special.” Thereby Po came to learn that being true to himself was a sign of his becoming a Kung Fu Master, especially as the final sequence of the film portrays Po with Master Shifu once again eating dumplings. After both his trials and his falls, Po had risen to become his true self, and, as throughout his story, food was both his comfort and the symbol of his identity

xii

Diane Apostolos-Cappadona and Zohar Hadromi-Allouche

Yet, the earliest imaginings, either visually or textually, of the deities in the religions and cultures of the Mediterranean basin were either anthropomorphic (human in shape), theriomorphic (animal in form), or therianthropic (hybrid animal and human figures) in appearance. In these latter two presentations, the animal legends merged with the realities of living animals as companions, guardians of home and the herds, sources of food and clothing, and alternatively as dangerous enemies. Whether real or imaginary, animals were ambiguous figures symbolizing power and brute force, virtues and vices, and the Sacred and the profane. For example, the dog often believed to be the first animal to be domesticated (read tamed) could be recognized as representative of fidelity and courage as well as of pollution and evil. Building upon these Classical precedents biblically based art, especially during the Early Christian/Late Antique periods into the Renaissance, assimilated emblematic, fantastic, legendary, and real animals into the visual and textual narratives that became the cornerstones of Western culture, especially in their Christian and Islamic formulations. Throughout the Bible there were regular references to animals, sometimes positive and sometimes negative. Created by God, animals roamed the Garden, flew through the sky, or swam in the oceans, and were named by Adam. They were his initial companions in the Garden until the woman became his helpmate. Depending upon the translation, one of the animals, the serpent (or the snake) played a central role in the first tragedy of human history when it “orchestrated” the Fall. As a result, if not by implication animals like the rest of God’s creation were tainted alongside the first man and woman, and thereby identified as “fallen.” The serpent in particular was punished for its role in the drama of the Temptation. Just as Adam and his male descendants were condemned to labor in the fields, Eve and her female descendants to labor in childbearing, and the first couple and all of their descendants to death, the serpent was sentenced to a lifetime of crawling on the ground instead of standing upright like a human. This move of the serpent from a vertical posture upon its two feet to a horizontal one of crawling (read slithering) on the ground with or without any feet is a verbal and visual symbol for a typical dictionary definition of a fall as a move from a higher level to a lower one, typically rapid and without control. Yet this iconological commentary while informative may be all too dry and cerebral when considering the significance of animals in religion and the arts, whether those animals can be deemed fallen or not. Or rather is it that humanity is fallen and so perceives animals as fallen also when the reality may be that animals are more sincere and humane even in response to the violence that humans wreck on them. Is there anything more terrifying than the bone-chilling sound of that gunshot and then the absolute silence in the Disney movie Bambi (1942)? Or more compassionate than when the wise

Introduction

xiii

elder stag comes to take the orphaned little fawn to the care and nurture of the herd? Were the Classical Greeks precise in their understandings that animals like the horse were in some way immortal creatures? The Hippoi Athanatoi were considered the offspring of the four Anemoi (winds) and hence their speed and strength as they flew through the sky to traverse the earth. Greek mythology, like Roman mythology, about the horse was tinged with reality as the story of the winged Pegasos born from the neck of the monstrous Medusa and Alexander the Great’s powerful warhorse Bucephalus garnered popular honors and depiction in all the arts from vase painting and sculpture to poetry and drama. More mundane was Xenophon’s (c. 430–c. 354 BCE) authoritative “how-to manual” On Horsemanship (c. 350 BCE) and the text eventually entitled Hippiatrica, which was the classical Greek Corpus Veterinaria that was a compilation of seven Late Antique manuals made available in the late 5th/6th century CE. And yet one asks are there any more poignant lines in all of poetry than this passage from Homer’s Iliad (Book XVII, 426–439): But the horses of Aiakades standing apart from the battle wept, as they had done since they heard how their charioteer had fallen in the dust at the hands of the murderous Hektor. In truth Automedon, the powerful son of Diores, hit them over and over again with the strike of the flying lash, or talked to them, sometimes entreating them, sometimes threatening. They were unwilling to go back to the wide passage of Helle and the ships, or back into the fighting after the Achaians, but still as stands a grave monument which is set over the mounded tomb of a dead man or lady, they stood there holding motionless in its place the fair-wrought chariot, leaning their heads along the ground, and warm tears were running earthward from underneath the lids of mourning horses who longed for their charioteer . . .

Later, when challenged by the still grief-stricken Achilles that their negligence might have resulted in Patroklos’s death, Hera provided the blonde Xanthos with a voice. In his retort to the Greek hero, the horse advised that it was the god Apollo and Destiny who killed Patroklos, and then prophesized Achilles’ demise before the equine’s voice was silenced by the Furies (Book XIX, 400–418). The artistic romance, if you will, with the horse took on new heights in the Middle Ages as the Code of Chivalry transformed men into “knights in shining armor” and “handsome princes” riding horses. The memory of Alexander the Great’s Bucephalus lived on in Roland’s Veillantif and El Cid’s Babieca, both of whom played significant roles in the legends of these medieval heroes and in the great literature associated with them, Le Chanson de

xiv

Diane Apostolos-Cappadona and Zohar Hadromi-Allouche

Roland and El Cantar de Mio Cid, respectively. Babieca in particular was famed for the last ride of the Cid in which his dead body was saddled upon his faithful charger who led his troops into the decisive battle freeing Valencia from Islamic rule. After that momentous event, Babieca allowed no other rider. The early Renaissance general Erasmo di Narni was memorialized in one of the finest of all equestrian sculptures in Western cultural history, Donatello’s Gattamelata (1453: Piazza del Santo, Padova). In this great bronze statue, the victorious general is dignified in his riding posture as he sits upright and elegantly astride his powerful horse as he clutches the reins in his right hand and holds the staff of authority in his left. The artist’s emphasis here is on the strength both moral and physical of the general as he controls his magnificent horse with one human hand. The fundamental perception is that the physical weight of this horse is several times that of the man known as Gattamelata, so his ability to both lead and control his horse is a symbol of his superiority and military prowess. Despite the corporeal beauty of this horse, it has no name or any significance in the story of Gattamelata except to accentuate the dominion of the man over the animal. Hence I have carefully referred to it as an equestrian and not an equine statue. As both the cultural history and the arts have fast-forwarded in the West, there have been new presentations of the relationship between the horse and human beings through the new media of cinema and television, from the memorable movie adaptations of My Friend Flicka (1943) and National Velvet (1945) to the television cowboys of the 1950s and 1960s including Roy Rogers’ ever-faithful Trigger, the Lone Ranger’s Silver, and the Cisco Kid’s Diablo. The 1995 novel by Nicholas Evans and ensuing 1998 film The Horse Whisperer drew attention to the special bond between horse and rider as both Pilgrim and Grace undergo a devastating fall with the corresponding loss of faith and the realities of physical injury. Despite the deaths of their fellow horse and rider, Gulliver and Judith, in this same fall, Grace’s mother Annie recognized that the physical and spiritual recoveries of both her daughter and her horse were so completely intertwined that she refused to euthanize Pilgrim who was so severely traumatized by this fall that he had become uncontrollable. Instead, Pilgrim and Grace travel with her mother to a horse ranch where a prominent “horse whisperer” resided. By this point in both the story and the film, the religious overtones become apparent through the names of the horses and their riders, the relationship between physical and spiritual healing, the need for a healer (read shaman), and the required journey to a site of healing. Just as Pilgrim and Grace fell together, Tom, the “horse whisperer,” supports them in their mutual journey overcoming anger, fear, and physical trauma to rise to a new (read renewed) life of love, faith, and companionship.

Introduction

xv

Further, the magnificence and emotive energies of the horse, especially in relation to the love between horses and humans, has most recently been affirmed in the presentation of Joey from Warhorse. Originally written to help children learn about World War II, the 1982 story by the master of juvenile and animal literature Michael Morpurgo became a popular stage play from its opening in 2007 and then a critically successful and popular movie in 2011. As story, film, and stage play, Warhorse tied together history and the relationship between the horse and his human family into a narrative of war (emphasizing the human), love (signifying the bonds between animals and humans), and the transfigurations of this special horse through his experiences of despair, physical trials, moral disaster, and the terrors of war. Thanks to the invention of the Internet and the popularity of contemporary social media, the emotions and sensitivities that animals bring forth in human beings has become a very public and daily, if not hourly, experience. So, for example, with a guarded sense of anticipation tinged with sadness, many individuals checked in daily on the care and hoped-for progress of the extraordinary racehorse known as Barbaro. This magnificent horse had won the 2006 Kentucky Derby in a record-shattering 6-and-1/2-lengths display of speed and strength in beautiful motion. With bated breath worldwide fans of horse racing considered the possibility of a Triple Crown winner for the first time since 1978, when Barbaro suffered a traumatic injury shattering twenty bones in his right hind leg after a false start to the Preakness Stakes. As he was removed from the track with the trembling help of his jockey, Barbaro was placed into an equine ambulance and rushed to the Equine Intensive Care Unit at the New Bolton Center of the University of Pennsylvania. There he underwent several surgical procedures, intensive water therapies, and other excellent treatments to try to rescue his shattered leg. Daily, if not hourly, bulletins were posted on a special website entitled “Friends of Barbaro,” where extraordinary replies were posted from individuals suffering from terminal illnesses and disabled children who found solace and support in watching Barbaro’s therapy. Regular news bulletins and stories followed every step of his recovery until the tragic morning of January 29, 2007, when the inevitable happened and Barbaro was euthanized as the result of a case of the dreaded and untreatable laminitis. News of his passing spread internationally and resulted in mass outpourings of grief among fans of horse racing, stable owners, jockeys, sportswriters, and the many “Friends of Barbaro.” Memorials were raised in his memory including the establishment of a special Chair in Equine Medicine, scholarship/fellowship funds at varied veterinary schools, and research funds for laminitis. The inevitable books and television documentaries followed as did a monument at Churchill Downs and the renaming of a significant race at Pimlico Race Course. So while his own story ended in tragedy, Barbaro became a symbol of a heroic struggle with physical trauma and illness, and

xvi

Diane Apostolos-Cappadona and Zohar Hadromi-Allouche

an inspiration to many terminally ill adults and children. There were even websites and programs that came close to a “religion” and/or “church” of Barbaro. All this outpouring of emotional and financial support for a horse not actually known by all the individuals whose lives he touched but with whom he had created a strong bond thereby also reflected an improvement from the normative practice of a severely injured horse being shot and forgotten. Similarly, the Internet and social media have helped to expand both our knowledge of and bonding with endangered species such as the Giant Panda. The initial gift of friendship during President Richard M. Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 resulted in the pair of Giant Pandas known as Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing arriving at the National Zoo that same year. News coverage, especially in the metropolitan Washington area, and later in the other US, European, and Canadian cities with zoos to which Giant Pandas came to live, was steady especially whenever there was the potential arrival of a cub. However, it was not for a generation, and at the National Zoo not until the December 2000 arrival of a new Giant Panda couple Tian Tian and Mei Xiang, that cubs were born and expanded the international panda population. The development of the twenty-four-hour panda cams accessible via the Internet and zoo websites resulted in regular access for adults and children to monitor both the daily activity of these unique animals as well as the births and growth stages of these special cubs. Reflecting their Chinese heritage and the cooperative veterinary care between American and Chinese panda specialists, the traditions of the 100-Day Naming Ceremonies and birthdays have been followed. The public has participated, both adults and especially children, in the selection of the names of these cubs. Their naming ceremonies and birthday celebrations have become both media and diplomatic events. As with Barbaro, extraordinary bonds have been formed between these animals and the humans who either visit them at their zoological habitats or watch them on the panda cams. As we learn more about these select creatures, watch their daily activities and health concerns, we reflect upon the role of the animal-human relationship within the contemporary preservation of animal species from extinction. The current status of many species like that of the giant panda has moved down the scale from critically endangered to endangered, so that animals with the support of humans rise above potential extinction to a new state of preservation. Somewhere in this mysterious space within the animal-human relationship is the mutuality of the Fall and Salvation. Reflecting upon these varied presentations in the arts, we can contemplate that the theme of this present volume is one relating animals to humans through the physical, spiritual, and moral dimensions of the Fall, and the hoped-for recovery through renovation and renewal. Through these artistic representations, we perceive that the physical fall of animals has been con-

Introduction

xvii

trolled by or mirrors human actions just as the spiritual and moral aspects of narrative, cinematic, and visual images of the metamorphoses of animals have provided venues for transformed human perceptions and attitudes. So it may be that the Modern Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933) has resolved my conundrum about Fallen Animals in his reflection on the aforementioned passage from Homer’s Iliad. In his poem The Horses of Achilles, Cavafy related that When they saw Patroklos dead —so brave and strong, so young— the horses of Achilles began to weep; their immortal nature was upset deeply by this work of death they had to look at. .... .... But it was for the eternal disaster of death That those two gallant horses shed their tears.

For it is perhaps in their recognition of and participation in the experience of death and dying, grief and sorrow, that animals have come to know and to become familiar with being part of fallen nature. The present volume on the innovative theme of Fallen Animals adds a new and cutting-edge dimension to the growing bibliography on animals and religion. Listed here are some of the more recent and pertinent titles that are solidifying this larger topic into an interdisciplinary field of scholarship in its own right. The preface to this volume is a reflective paper by Robert A. Segal, who revisits the biblical narratives of Paradise. In “The Snake in the Garden of Eden” Segal examines the origins and characterization of the snake in the Garden, and offers a new, more egalitarian understanding of the complex relationships between the divine, human, and animal in the Garden of Eden before the Fall. Also Brian Brock seeks in chapter one to reconstruct the initial, unfallen interaction between humans and other animals in Paradise. Well aware of the contemporary exploitative relations between humans and animals, “‘To see what he would name them . . . ’: Naming and Domination in a Fallen World” is an attempt to highlight human responsibilities towards other creatures. Through linking the biblical creation account with the modern philosophical emphasis on the role of language in shaping human ethical sensibilities, the human, biblical, primeval activity of giving names, to each other and to other creatures, is closely examined. Brock engages with contemporary critiques of the name giving depicted in Genesis, which understand it as akin to the colonial naming of the new world. Drawing on the reflections of Walter Benjamin on the naming of animals in Genesis, he attempts to distinguish between the non-exploitative dominion which the primeval history seems to

xviii

Diane Apostolos-Cappadona and Zohar Hadromi-Allouche

evoke and the domination that it seems to link with fallen ways of putting words to things. The Edenic scene also serves as the leaving point for the second chapter of the book, which looks at animalistic transfiguration. Eric Ziolkowski’s “From Ursus Diabolus to Ursus Ex Machina: The Ambivalent Legacy of Biblical Bears in Christian Art and Hagiography” first characterizes the bear figure in Cornelis van Haarlem’s painting Adam and Eve in Paradise as located among other dubious animals. This portrayal is in line with the mostly negative representations of bears in the Bible. Ziolkowski then moves on to demonstrate the highly ambivalent legacy of biblical bears in later literature, hagiography, and visual art. Often depending on the prevalence or scarcity of actual bears in the regions their portrayers inhabited, bears can be depicted either as bloodthirsty and demonic and as punishments for human sin or as protectors of certain saints, emblematic of loyalty and even devoutness. Chapter three presents a more substantial transformation, albeit in the opposite direction (from good to evil), in regard to another biblical animal: Jonah’s fish. In “Jonah and His Fish: The Monstrification of God’s Servant in Early Jewish and Christian Reception History,” Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer traces the “fall narrative” of Jonah’s fish through Jewish and Christian history of exegesis. The fish, who begins its journey in the biblical book of Jonah as God’s obedient servant, turns over time into a symbol of death, a monster, and even the Devil. Outside the Bible, a happier destiny has met the Byzantine donkey, who is the protagonist of a late Byzantine poem. In chapter four, “‘Who Has the Most Faults?’: Animal Sinners in a Late Byzantine Poem,” Kirsty Stewart examines a late Byzantine vernacular poem entitled The Synaxarion of the Honourable Donkey. Written in the politically unstable Byzantium of the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, the poem relates the crimes and repentance of its three animal protagonists, the Fox, Wolf, and Donkey. Alongside the religious allegories and political interpretations, the poem contains literary association of each animal with particular sins. The chapter looks at these different layers of interpretation, all colored by the unusual outcome of the poem, as the Donkey (unlike the Fox and Wolf) manages to overcome his traditionally perceived characteristics. This transformative process is interpreted as hinting at the possibility of salvation. Chapter five examines a different kind of transformation, that of humans into animals. In “‘The Author Laughed in a Cat’s Voice’: Aesop and Humanism in William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat,” Rachel Stenner discusses William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat (c. 1552), a satirical prose narrative about speaking felines, and one scholar’s attempts to understand them through alchemy. These attempts seem to also make him develop feline characteristics. Human and animal characteristics interchange in this work, which also

Introduction

xix

ascribes to animals qualities that at the time were regarded exclusively human, such as speech. Similar to the previous chapter, here too the work under discussion utilizes animal figures symbolically, this time in order to express Baldwin’s critique of the Roman Catholic Church. His chatty, diabolic, cannibalistic, and deviant cats signify the ills of Cat-holic religious practices. The blurred lines between humans and animals that are suggested by Baldwin’s talkative cats are explicitly crossed in chapter six. In “Do Monkeys Know about Their Origin?: Narratives of Animals Emerging During Fall in an Islamic Context” Constantin Canavas examines the image of monkeys in Islamic canonical texts, starting with the Qur’ān, and moving on to other religious and literary texts well known in Muslim societies. According to the Qur’ān, God has punished some Israelites who did not observe the Sabbath by turning them into monkeys. The monkey as a fallen animal appears in several argumentative paths of theological debates and exegetical texts, as well as other literature. The chapter then moves on to compare this fallen image of monkeys in Muslim societies with tales from a Muslim society that is embedded in a cultural environment with particularly positive connotation of the monkey—namely, the Hui minority in China. Finally, a completely reverse perception of animals, humans, fall, and transfiguration emerges from the epilogue, “We Fall into the Humanimal: A Conversation between Kate Walters and Penny Florence,” which explores the works of the artist Kate Walters. This conversation between Walters and the art historian Penny Florence defines the relationship between humans and animals in terms of fall, however a fully positive one. Walters refers to both physical and symbolic fall, with an emphasis on the feminine principle and its representations in the human and animal spheres, and the connections between the two. The Fall of humans into animals, the humanimal, is depicted as fully a positive, saving, empowering process, in which it is the animal who supports the human, thus challenging the conventional view of the human-animal relationship. Diane Apostolos-Cappadona Georgetown University Zohar Hadromi-Allouche University of Aberdeen

Opening Note The Snake in the Garden of Eden Robert A. Segal

This essay argues against the common view that in the West, though by no means in the East, the gap among humans, gods, and animals is clear-cut and insurmountable. The differences are assumed to be of kind, not degree. God is assumed to have qualities that humans do not, and humans are assumed to have qualities that animals do not. I want to use the case of the snake in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3) to reject any easy differentiation of God from humans from animals. I contend that the “fall” of the snake is identical with that of Adam and Eve: it is a fall not merely from a higher state to a lower one but from a god-like status to a non-god-like one. At the same time the fall is a fall from what had been and from what would have continued to be a divine or nearly divine state. I will start with God and humans, as typified by Adam and Eve, and then turn to God and animals, as typified by the snake. GOD AND HUMANS Not only is there assumed to be a divide between humans and God, but also the divide, it is assumed, cannot be overcome. Humans cannot become gods. In fact, the most egregious sin in the West is the attempt by humans to become gods, epitomized by the vain efforts of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3). The hiatus between humans and gods is assumed to apply as fully to polytheistic religions as to monotheistic ones. For ancient Greeks, those who dared to seek divinity were killed for their hubris. Those who directly challenged

xxi

xxii

Robert A. Segal

the gods, such as Tantalus and Sisyphus, were often consigned to eternal punishment in a section of Hades that was later incorporated into Tartarus. 1 The West does permit exceptions, but they are assumed to be exceptions. In the ancient world the grandest exception was Heracles (Hercules), who, while born to Zeus, was still mortal, accomplished superhuman feats of strength, outmaneuvered death in his last three great feats, and was rewarded with immortality by Zeus for his yeoman service. 2 Yet for some ancient writers, such as Herodotus, Heracles’s very stature meant that he had been born a god, so that his case was the proverbial exception that proved the rule. Greeks did establish cults to worship human heroes, but only after their deaths. Humans who can become gods are not necessarily heroes. But heroism constitutes an in-between category that narrows the divide between humans and gods. Heroes are humans who, in usually just a single, if varying, respect, are so exceptional as to be god-like. In Christianity the grandest exception to the divide between humanity and divinity is, of course, Jesus (in Judaism the Messiah is believed to be a mere human, descended from King David). Yet even Jesus’s capacity to be at once fully human and fully divine is taken to be a paradox, and a paradox difficult to maintain in practice. Throughout its history Christianity has veered between making Jesus merely an ideal human being, as in the Victorian period, and making him a sheer god, as in ancient Gnosticism. Consider the Hebrew Bible. God is not omniscient, omnipotent, singular, or nonanthropomorphic. And humans can become gods. I am not concerned with later philosophical interpretations of the Bible, interpretations going back to Philo. I am concerned with popular religion as found in the Bible. The difference between God and humans is merely a difference of degree. God knows more than humans but is not all-knowing. God is more powerful than humans but is not all-powerful. There is more than one god. God, one or more, has human qualities of all kinds, mental and physical alike. Overall, the Hebrew God is like Homer’s gods. Subsequent philosophical characterizations of God are as distant from the biblical depiction as Plato’s characterization of Homeric gods, let alone of his creator god in the Laws, is from Homer’s, and also Hesiod’s, depictions of the gods. Even if the difference between God and humans is only of degree, the difference can still prove insurmountable. The issues are separate. But it turns out that the divide is not insurmountable, which is why God must continually fend off the threat of humans’ becoming divine themselves. God is Not Omniscient God does not anticipate the sinning by Adam and Eve and the need to evict them from Eden (Genesis 3). God does not anticipate the disobedience of all

Opening Note

xxiii

humanity save Noah and the need to destroy the world and then to re-create it (Genesis 6–9). God scarcely knows whether Noah’s descendants will be any better than present humanity. God thus creates the rainbow as a promise never again to destroy the world, no matter how humanity behaves (Genesis 9:8–17). God is Not Omnipotent God does not, in either of the creation stories (Genesis 1–2:4a or 2:4b–25), create ex nihilo. Instead, God organizes raw materials into an orderly world. God fears the building of the Tower of Babel lest humans reach God and thereby threaten God (Genesis 11:1–9). God forbids the making of graven images lest they, as idols, be used magically against God (Exodus 20:4–5). God forbids the taking of his name in vain for the same reason (Exodus 20:7). The Israelites cry out for a human king because God has failed to defeat the Philistines (1 Samuel 8). A king, while human, is thus expected to be even stronger than God. God is Not Singular God may be the chief god, but he is not the only god. When, in Genesis 1, God declares, “Let us create man in our image” (Genesis 1:26; translation by the author), he is not speaking in the royal “we,” which he never uses of himself alone. Rather, he is addressing fellow gods. When, again, God uses the first-person plural to announce the eviction of Adam and Eve from the Garden (Genesis 3:22), he is likewise addressing fellow gods. The Bible takes for granted that each nation has its own god. The contest between Aaron and Pharaoh’s magicians is over the strength, not the existence, of each side’s god or gods (Exodus 7). The same is true of the contest between Elijah and the priests of Baal (1 Kings 18). The earth in Genesis 1 is commanded by God to produce living things, so that the earth is a deliberative, living figure in her own right (Genesis 1:24). In Proverbs the goddess Wisdom creates the world alongside God (Proverbs 8:22–31). God is Anthropomorphic God sees, hears, talks, breathes (Genesis 2:7), rests (Genesis 2:2), and eats, enjoying the smell of Noah’s sacrifices (Genesis 8:21) and later consuming part or all of priestly sacrifices. God has a body, and it is visible. Otherwise Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:6) and later the Israelites at Mount Sinai would not have to look away out of fear of seeing God. God is male. There is no neuter gender in biblical Hebrew. At the same time the “image” of God in which humans in Genesis 1 are made is not merely physical but sexual: it is the division into male and female sexes (Genesis 1:26–27).

Robert A. Segal

xxiv

Either God is androgynous, or some of the fellow gods are female. God has the same array of emotions as humans, ranging from happiness to anger and even jealousy (Exodus 20:5). God initially resides in a physical place, even if, like Britain’s Royals, he has more than one home. God resides in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:8). God later resides in the Ark. Otherwise the taking of the Ark by the Philistines (1 Samuel 4) would not be discombobulating for the Israelites. Ezekiel sees God on his throne in heaven (Ezekiel 1:26–28). Humans Can Become Gods God throws out Adam and Eve because they can become gods (Genesis 3:22). In the Garden of Eden story divinity means knowledge and immortality, no more. God halts the building of the Tower of Babel lest the builders reach God and thereby presumably equal him (Genesis 11:1–9). When God takes the people’s demand for a king as a repudiation of him, God is elevating the king to equality with God (1 Samuel 8:7). And what characteristics does the first king, Saul, harbor? He is the tallest man in Israel in one source (1 Samuel 10:23) and the handsomest as well in another (1 Samuel 9:2). In religion generally, gods are gods because they are bigger, stronger, kinder, wiser, or better-looking than humans. The difference is of degree, not kind. The biblical God himself may not be pre-existent, for the Bible begins in medias res, with God already existing. God’s own immortality may depend on his eating from the Tree of Life. Otherwise why not just cut down the Tree? In short, the Hebrew Bible assumes no straightforward, let alone insurmountable, divide between humans and God. Humans who can become gods are not necessarily heroes. But heroism constitutes an in-between category that narrows the divide between humans and gods. Heroes are humans who, in usually just a single, if varying, respect, are so exceptional as to be god-like. Just as the boundary line between humans and gods in the Hebrew Bible is blurry, so is the line between animals and gods and also the line between animals and humans. Take, as the grandest example, the snake in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). GOD AND ANIMALS The snake is categorized as a wild creature, not as either a human or a god. True, the snake is deemed the craftiest creature in the garden, but that difference among animals is simply one of degree. The snake in its pre-fallen, natural state talks, thinks, and deliberates. Presumably, the only way the snake knows the contents of the Tree of

Opening Note

xxv

Knowledge is by having eaten from it himself. (That is likely as well the way God knows the contents.) But then the snake is naturally half-divine. He lacks only immortality, if in fact he is mortal. The snake is smarter not only than Eve but also than God, whom he outwits. Contrary to later, especially Christian interpretations, God does not anticipate what the snake and in turn Eve and Adam will do. Otherwise God would not have to scurry to evict Adam and Eve. The punishment of the snake is that he will now crawl on his belly rather than walk upright, and that females will hate him. For the hatred to occur, the snake must get evicted as well. Presumably, the snake loses his ability to speak and, if for that reason only, cannot communicate with humans. The snake is reduced to just another wild creature. In Christianity the snake is Satan, who is more than an animal and even becomes a son of God. But in the Hebrew Bible the snake is merely an animal, however extraordinary he is. Satan in general plays a far smaller role in Judaism than in Christianity, and in Judaism the real beginning is in Genesis 12, when God chooses Abraham (then Abram) to be the founder of his chosen people. But the very differentiation of the biblical snake from later Satan underscores the looseness of the boundary between animals on the one hand and humans and gods on the other. The snake falls from an elevated status to an ordinary one, but that fall is not the natural state of the snake. Had Eve resisted the snake’s temptation, the snake would presumably have continued to reside in the garden, and with all his human-like and god-like talents intact. And maybe the snake is eligible to return to Eden insofar as the post-Edenic ideal is a near-return to the original state. In sum, the natural, pre-fallen state of humans, animals, and God in the Garden of Eden is one of near equality. NOTES 1. Homer, Odysseus. Richmond Lattimore, tr. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1968), XI:582–600. 2. Apollodorus, The Library. J. G. Frazer, tr., two vols., Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann; Cambridge, UK: Harvard University Press, 1921), III.vii.7.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Apollodorus. The Library. J. G. Frazer, tr. Two vols. Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann; Cambridge, UK: Harvard University Press, 1921). Homer. Odysseus. Richmond Lattimore, tr. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1968).

Chapter One

“To see what he would name them . . . ” Naming and Domination in a Fallen World Brian Brock

My interest in this essay is not so much on “fallen animals” taken on their own but in exploring the ethical implications of the alienated state of intercreaturely relationships that has typically been emphasized in Christian readings of human-animal relations after the Fall. These Christian accounts of the Fall I take to be essentially concerned with narrating the violence that characterizes human-animal relations in order to combat it. My aim is to suggest that there remains something to be gleaned of moral interest today from the decision of the authors of the first chapters of the biblical book of Genesis to introduce this question not by depicting an interaction between humans and other animals in the fallen condition, but an unfallen one. What follows if we begin this way? Given that neither the authors of this text nor we as readers existed in an unfallen state beyond violence and sin, what follows from such an attempt to come to terms with our enmeshment in exploitative relations by an imaginative approach to the same relations untouched by the Fall? This paper is an attempt to indicate the reasons why we might continue to take this entry point seriously today as a sensitive way of delving into the ethical responsibilities of human beings in the created realm, implicated as we already inevitably are in various institutionalized forms of inter-animal violence. In an interdisciplinary and interreligious context it is worth stating explicitly why such a focusing on the unfallen act of naming might be useful for flanking several conceptual cul-de-sacs characteristic of contemporary ethical thinking about human-animal relations. During the modern period the dominant framework among Western Christians for framing the human-animal relation has been the command to have dominion of Genesis 1:28. This 1

2

Brian Brock

command has been taken as establishing human responsibility for oversight of the rest of the planet, animals included. 1 Though this oversight includes the right to use all creatures (excepting humans) for human purposes, the claim that this relation has been established by God is understood to place important limitations on cruelty to other creatures. The ethical question that results is thus: “How can humans utilize other animals without causing them undue distress?” In this formulation, however, any more fundamental questioning of the right of human beings to use animals for their own ends is taken firmly off of the table. A range of significant work by Christian theologians and secular philosophers over the last few decades has chipped away at this dominant settlement by criticizing all attempts to rank humans above or as more valuable than other animals. 2 A common move here is to draw an analogy between racism and speciesism, both taken to be illegitimate valuations of one’s own group over others. This repudiation of all human claims to superiority over animals substantially reorganizes the ethical field. This renders the ethical question for human beings as: “How can we respectfully inhabit the natural world with other animals?” Most proponents of this position repudiate all killing and eating of animals, often going as far as refusing to have, or to discipline, household pets. 3 A middle position has emerged between these extremes in the animal rights movement, which seeks to expand the legal rights of animals within the institutions of human law. 4 Those taking this position grant the observation of holders of the dominion position that humans seem to be the only animals who have constructed legal systems complete with law enforcement. The claim of the advocates of species equality is also granted that animals should not be treated as ontologically inferior beings. Advocating tolerance between citizens in Western liberal societies, advocates of this middle position suggest that advocates of the other positions can be at least partially satisfied by ascribing legal personhood to (typically higher intellectually functioning) animals in order to give them greater protection from harm. Here the ethical question is understood to be, “How can we expand the protective boundaries law affords to sentient beings who suffer injustice?” While in this short sketch I have emphasized the points of proximity between these three broad trajectories, in more fundamental terms they represent incommensurable conceptual universes as displayed in their markedly different visions for the future of human-animal relations: the first is essentially satisfied with the status quo, the second is radically opposed to it and aims at a totally altered landscape of human-animal relations, and the third seeks to deflate such disputes by positioning them as typical (and so resolvable) conflicts between citizens of modern liberal societies whose political visions are finally not incommensurate. My aim in this paper is to bring the issues at stake into view in a fresh way in order to break the stalemate that

“To see what he would name them . . . ”

3

seems to have been reached in these debates, and my preference is to do so in a manner that brings the question closer to the lived lives of modern Westerners. It is here that I think the biblical traditions’ interest in the human act of naming and calling by names is ethically suggestive. Human beings do constantly give names to animals, and use their names. Words like the following illustrate the scope of the issues at stake: “Corned beef,” “Fido,” “free range chickens,” “pest exterminators.” We occasionally sense a resistance to giving individual names to animals destined to factory slaughterhouses, a resistance we know is somehow an attempt to protect ourselves from distasteful moral knowledge about what we do to them. Those more cruelly inclined, might, as did one farmer in Ireland in repeated acts of totemic spite, give cattle destined to be slaughtered the names of hated rival football players. Other farmers, we know, name their animals out of deep care for the particular needs of each beast. It is characteristic of our contemporary world to speak of fully functionalized factory animals by reference to their “parts” (“pass the eggs, please”), at the same time that we enact highly anthropomorphized relationships to pets and cartoon animals. Some also sense that this odd polarization is related to the total loss of the form of relation that was once the dominant one in the West—with domesticated work animals. 5 This suggests that another part of our problem relating to animals stems from the withering of day-to-day familiar relationships with animals in which reciprocity was constitutive and therefore both highly tangible and valued. We can now see how it is a matter of everyday occurrence that the names we use for other animals articulate in various ways our ethical presuppositions about them. My overall aim in this paper is therefore to ask how we (contemporary Westerners and more particularly, but not exclusively, Christians) might consider our ongoing activity of naming as a forum in which we can come to terms with the gaze we turn on the entities of the world. A more reflexive approach to our talking about animals needs to be fostered, and I propose to do so by drawing attention to the ways our speaking, and especially our naming, is a pivotal moment in which we turn our gaze toward animals and by then speaking loop them into our cultural domain. Taking some hints from the work of Walter Benjamin, I want to suggest why drawing attention to the ways in which names anchor traditions of relations between humans and animals promises to help dissolve the conceptual and political impasses that have become characteristic of contemporary animal welfare debates. Perhaps most promisingly, it is an approach that brings the question of our comportment toward animals into the most mundane domains of everyday life. The ethical question that orients this inquiry is this: How are we to escape the solipsistic tendency simply to project our designs onto animals? Whether or not we think it is licit for humans to use animals for their own designs (for

4

Brian Brock

food or otherwise), and even if we are to hold an ethically minimal position of eschewing the infliction of wanton cruelty on other creatures, we will need to surmount our human tendency to “read” animals’ bodies in ways that simply project our desires onto them. I therefore want to ask how we might take animals seriously as animals, that is, as creatures with agencies and discrete forms that exist beyond our agendas for them. By looking at the human act of naming we draw attention to a moment in our relation to other animals that is fraught for many reasons, not least because of the power differential upon which it rests. In surprising contradistinction to the modern sensibility that justice will only be achieved when human beings treat other beings as their equals, the biblical story asks us to consider another proposal: that the term “Fall” is not essentially about power differentials but rather names the concrete co-option of other beings for our self-referential designs. In order to make Benjamin’s position intelligible I will make three preliminary moves. The first will be to outline the main features of the biblical account of the naming of the animals and introduce some of the starting points of the Christian tradition’s appropriation of the tale. A second will be to trace how contemporary theologians have begun to draw on the story of the naming of the animals to address contemporary worries about anthropomorphism, speciesism, and the instrumentalization of animals. The main segment of the paper will trace Walter Benjamin’s highly creative appropriation of this tradition, before closing by summarizing the ethics that this tradition proposes to fallen humans who wish to resist the unthinking exploitation of other creatures. GENESIS, FALLEN NAMING, AND RECIPROCITY One of the central preoccupations of the authors of the primeval histories is to depict in a negative light the exploitative co-option of other beings. This, the primeval story suggests, is one of the central effects of the fallen condition. A clear progression is laid out from Cain’s jealous murdering of his brother (Genesis 4:2–8) to Lamech, the first human to accrue two wives and boast of his prowess at murder (Genesis 4:23–24). The taking of wives by the “sons of God” (Genesis 6:2) finally provokes God to express grief at having created such wicked and violent beings as humans (Genesis 6:5–6). Even the flood, however, does not seem to stem the progression of sin, and Noah’s descendants build a great Tower in their desire to “make a name for ourselves” (Genesis 11:4). As the culmination of the Babel narrative in the desire to “self-name” indicates, the Genesis narratives evince a clear interest in the activity of human naming as revealing the essence of certain acts or entities. The Fall, it seems to suggest, must also be understood as penetrating the way people give

“To see what he would name them . . . ”

5

names, this domain too having become a forum for domineering and selfreferential acts of exploitative claiming of other bodies. Eve’s naming of Cain (which means “I have gotten a man” (Genesis 4:1) is not different in kind from other post-lapsarian acts of naming, such as the naming by “the first hunter,” Nimrod, of a city after himself—Babel (Genesis 10:8–10). 6 When Adam first meets the woman before the Fall, he does not name her, but verbally expresses delight at her distinctive being and presence and “says to (or proclaims) her” (yiqqārē’), woman (‘iššāh), a variant of his own selfdesignation (‘īš). 7 Given this trajectory it is not unlikely that Adam’s renaming, or rather his first generic naming, gives her a name far inferior to his first appellation which highlighted the unity of their embodied narrative (Genesis 2:23). Only after the Fall, does he “call her” (same word) a proper name “Eve” (ḥawwāh) (3:20) renaming her by reference to a generic characteristic of women in general—their capacities as life-givers: “he called her Eve because she was the mother of all the living” (Genesis 3:20). Together these vignettes suggest that the biblical authors are aware of the dangerous and grasping potential of fallen naming. Leaving aside for now the question of the relation of the sexes implied in Adam’s naming of Eve, I would like to go further into the implications suggested by this account of the later renaming of “the woman” as “Eve” by Adam as one of the prime markers of the Fall. Renaming has a long history in scripture and Christianity, from the divine giving of new names to Abraham (Genesis 17:5), Sarah (Genesis 17:15), and Israel (Genesis 35:10) as a symbol of their being claimed in a special way for God’s purposes, through to Jesus’s renaming of the disciples (Jn. 1:42). In Christendom this biblical trajectory fostered the development of traditions like the giving of new names upon being inducted into monastic orders, a practice still kept publically visible in the renaming of popes at their investiture ceremonies. Traditionally, Christian renaming has been tied to a liturgical form, especially the baptism of a child. In Christendom baptism has been understood as not only a bath in water, but as also being remade by immersion “in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 8:16, 19:5). 8 This immersion had implications for the naming of the one baptised. “It could be argued,” writes historian Will Coster, “that the service of baptism in early modern England was not . . . so much a religious rite as a naming ceremony. Not only did it induct the infant into the spiritual and temporal communities, but also, paradoxically, it gave them their individual identity, carried in their forename.” 9 For our purposes it is sufficient to note that the biblical authors of the primeval history seem to think it worthwhile for those of us on the other side of the fall imaginatively to engage with the picture of peaceful and appropriate naming orchestrated by God and into which humans are invited. There seems to be an ethical imperative being offered that it might be fruitful to reconsider today. That imperative, I will suggest, is this: your giving and using of names should be carried out as an act of appreciative receipt of a

6

Brian Brock

reciprocal relation. This imperative, I want to suggest, might open a yearning amongst citizens of liberal societies that can be ethically productive in exposing the scope and proximity of our temptation to give and use names selfreferentially. Reconsidering how we give and use names might open us up to a greater vulnerability and receptivity to creaturely others as we watch how our naming binds us to them. TWO DILEMMAS OF NAMING The naming of the animals in Genesis 2 is presented in the spare style characteristic of the primeval narrative, and offers us few clues as to how it is meant to be understood. Chapter 2:19–20 reads “And the Lord God fashioned from the soil each beast of the field and each fowl of the heavens and brought each to the human to see what he would call it, and whatever the human called a living creature, that was its name.” 10 Two features of this passage are noteworthy. The first is the lack of ontological differentiation of the origin of humans and the animals—God fashions both from the soil. Any differences between them cannot therefore be material, or ontological, but only the way that God treats them and sets them in specific relations to one another. In the Hebrew the breath given to every living thing is also not distinguishable by species, though the impartation of this breath to the human is depicted in an especially intimate way in the creation narrative (2:7). What does distinguish the human from the living creatures of the land and air is God’s configuration of this relation by bringing each animal to the human “to see what he would call it.” This formulation assumes that humans were created with the capacity to speak and to name. It is therefore improbable that the authors of Genesis are trying to suggest that humans are distinctive among the creatures due to their powers of speech. We seem to be left then with only one unambiguous distinction in the performance that God now expects to be enacted: between the creatures that God gathers and parades and the creature before whom this parade is held. By putting the human in the position to name the other creatures the text apparently assumes that a power differential is being established between the one tasked to give names and those who are summoned and wait to receive names. This will be our first point of departure. The second is indicated by the puzzling reason given for setting up this power relation: “to see what he would call it.” In addition to the hint of there being limits to divine foreknowledge, this wording also seems to allow humans a role in the creative process: “whatever the human creature called a living creature, that was its name.” Given the interminable arguments had today amongst biologists about animal taxonomy, it seems clear that we have

“To see what he would name them . . . ”

7

lost this skill, and forgotten these names, which scripture is here suggesting are the original and true names. The psalmists go so far as to depict God as reminding humans that God alone now knows the names of every creature. This reminder is taken to be God’s way of reinforcing for his people the implications of their fallen state and their need for repentance (Ps. 147:4, cf. Ps. 50:9, 11). Are traditional readings correct to take this passage as a one-off act of prophetic symbolism in the pre-lapsarian world 11 or a depiction of human powers of perception and control over the animals lost in the fall? 12 The giving and receiving of names continues throughout the entire biblical witness, and in contexts which suggest that even if name-giving functions differently after the Fall, it remains in the post-lapsarian world a theological weighty moment in human life. We still give names today, even if that activity faces complications that surely were not present in the garden. Two sets of contemporary moral problematics offer striking parallels to the exegetical questions we have just noted, and suggest we may still have something to learn from the connections being made between humans and animals in the dynamics of name-giving. NAMING, TAXONOMY AND DOMINATION A first problematic becomes evident if we examine the common assumption that the first human naming indicated kinds of animals—the thing that hops with a pouch is a kangaroo, the one with a long neck a giraffe, and so on. For the sake of convenience I will be referring to this first human as Adam, though at this point the human is still non-gendered, and so properly speaking not the male known as Adam. As Tim Ingold has pointed out, for humans it is an insult to be without a proper name, equivalent to being excluded from society. And a common name of the type we find in something like a bird spotter’s guide will not do here. The reason is clear: To identify another person is to acknowledge their uniqueness, to pick them out from the crowd on the grounds of a familiar face, voice or gesture. To identify an animal or plant, to the contrary, is to deny its uniqueness, to set aside any individual idiosyncrasies in order to highlight characteristics shared with others of the same or similar kind. . . . In short . . . the authoritative knowledge of natural history presented in the field guide—takes the form of a taxonomy. And in this system of classificatory knowledge, there are no proper nouns. Everything is identified as one of a class. 13

And as David Clough has recently pointed out, the strong tendency of moderns to forget the role played by proper nouns or names often traps us in irresolvable disputes about how to name animals. 14 It is a dynamic we re-

8

Brian Brock

peatedly observe in political squabbles over the giving of commemorative street and place names, since when human naming is understood to be nothing more than a matter of the exercise of the will and social convention, it cannot but degenerate into power struggles over whose name will be applied in a given instance. 15 This conceptual quandary is shadowed by a moral dilemma. How is this initial naming of the animals different than the conquistadores replacing the local place names of conquered lands with the names of the new sovereign in order to display or represent a power of dominion that claims the power to determine all references to places and particular creatures? Is Adam showing his power over the animals by naming them, or, as Luther suggests, finding a name that is consonant with the features of the creature being recognized by naming? While Luther is clear that the naming itself was an act of perception receptive to the divine revelation of each animal, he then goes on to assert that “from this enlightenment there also followed, of course, the rule over all the animals . . . since they were named in accordance with Adam’s will.” 16 Sune Borkfelt is worried, with good reason, about this voluntarist turn in Luther’s account; to emphasize the role of human willing in the giving of names to animals “is . . . an assertion of rule over them, an act whereby Man makes the animals, their actions and their use, subjects to his power, appointed to him by God. A process very similar indeed to Columbus’s naming of islands God has enabled him to discover, and indicative of the same power relations justified by reference to the divine will.” 17 In her view an act of naming is always a signifier of inequality and dominance, a claim corroborated by animal names that uncritically perpetuate the human tendency to project our views of the world, such as when we call something that is not a “river horse” a hippopotamus, or an animal that is clearly not a pig a “guinea pig.” 18 It is a tyranny that is by no means confined to animals, warns Borkfelt: For us as humans, the vast majority of other animals seem to have fit nicely into generic categories, and our use of these categories may say quite a lot about the ways in which we regard other species. Bundling together a number of individuals in order to create hierarchies and assert power relations is a practice that has of course been applied to humans time and again throughout history, whether through reference to race and ethnicity, gender or other shared features of those being categorized and put at the lower end of a hierarchy. Through all ages, those who have physically resembled us the most have been those most willingly admitted into our communities and those who we have wished to keep beyond the moral pale have been categorized generically by reference to the features perceived to mark their difference from us. With categorizations of non-human animals, however, we might argue the practice has been taken to its extreme. 19

“To see what he would name them . . . ”

9

As the German Christian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was quick to observe in the midst of the confessing church’s struggle during WWII, the silencing of entire categories of Christians in worship is fundamentally illicit. It was his awareness of this very problematic that allowed him to resist the German Christians of the Nazi era when they cited 1 Cor. 14:34 (“women should be silent in the churches”) as a precedent for the silencing of Jewish pastors. 20 The contemporary French Canadian theologian and activist Jean Vanier has deployed this criticism to resist the same force in a modern medicalized context in which people with intellectual disabilities are often described by their medical diagnoses (“he’s autistic”). His practice has long been pointedly to refuse to refer to the people with learning difficulties with whom he lives in any other way than by their given names. 21 Taking these criticisms of the problems associated with generic naming into account, it seems worthwhile considering the thought that, while Adam might have been noticing comparative features that we think of as generic features of kinds of animals, perhaps he is being envisioned by the biblical writers here as giving particular names, but in a different way than we do today to pets. This would be to think of Adam’s activity in a manner not unlike the description offered by Ingold. One way to treat an animal is to treat it as a family pet, to anthropomorphize it, to sentimentalize it and to mark its subjectivity with a name. A second way is to see it as the living embodiment of certain attributes or characteristics by which it may be classed, as of one sort or another. This is to make an object of the animal, and to group it under the anonymity of an appellative. Such is the way of science and the State, inseparable partners in the colonial project of control by classification. The third way is to regard the animal as a going on: not as a living thing of a certain kind but as the manifestation of a process of becoming, of continuous creation or simply of being alive. 22

This insight usefully illustrates why Borkfelt has helped us along by indicating the importance of the naming of an animal in the formation of attachments that entail standing questions about the way we treat it. The giving of particular names to animals crosses a moral divide between animals for whom we accept some personal responsibility and with whom our own stories intertwine and those who we dare not extend this sympathy, destined as they are for a factory slaughter. In previous eras, when animals worked alongside humans in many vocations, this divide was more easily crossed, since training a horse to plough or a dog to herd sheep demands they be spoken to with a name to which they can respond. 23 The basic assumption that Adam was naming kinds, ironically, thus ends up inverting the surface meaning of the biblical text. First, it suggests that his primary interest was comparative and taxonomic—discovering what each animal had that others did not. This is combined, second, with the assump-

10

Brian Brock

tion that this activity was not really about the animals at all because it was essentially a project of self-discovery. It is a reading that meshes well with a range of ancient and modern anthropocentric accounts in understanding Adam in the work of naming to be discovering himself and his powers by way of distinguishing the differences of the human from the animal and exploring the control of the human over the animal realm. Thinkers as divergent as Aquinas, 24 Calvin, 25 Herder, 26 John Paul II, 27 and Leon Kass 28 have agreed that Adam’s naming is best understood as an exercise in human self-discovery, the latter arguing that without this exercise Adam would not have been able to appreciate the woman in all her creaturely distinctiveness. Clough suggests that from the beginning all the way up to contemporary thinkers like Barth and Kelsey, Christian theologians who have been variously trapped in anthropocentric accounts of Adamic naming by this tendency conceive naming as related to formal categories. He suggests, therefore, that the antidote lies in the opposite direction; “Adam’s naming of the animals brought before him suggests his attention to their particularity rather than concern to order them.” 29 But in saying this Clough never answers his own question: How are we to understand what is to be learned from such a particularized pre-lapsarian Adamic naming? We have established that naming seems still to be a special point of convergence in which humans express the configurations of separation and binding that they perceive or hope for between different creatures. A theologically adequate account of naming will also need to find the point of continuity between the pre- and post-lapsarian aspects of the activity, however different these might be in practice. The tradition has tended to locate the naming of the animals as an example of dominion properly enacted. Scholars of the Old Testament have shown more interest in the post-lapsarian naming which regularly recurs through the Old Testament, not least in the etymologies of place names (such as “Peniel” where Jacob wrestled with God) and the prominence given to names as guarantors of continuity in genealogies. Perhaps counter-intuitively for a Christian theologian, I want to suggest that the thinker who offers us the most fertile theological entry point into the whole constellation of questions I have raised happens to have been a modern quasi-atheist Jew, Walter Benjamin. BENJAMIN ON ADAMIC NAMING Benjamin’s reflections on naming develop a strand of early modern puzzling about the question of the origin of language, 30 discussions which provide the backdrop of Benjamin’s essay “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man” (1916). 31 I will be reading this essay as offering Christians a way to

“To see what he would name them . . . ”

11

understand ourselves embedded in, and recipients of, divine, kenotic selfcommunication that is tangible enough to orient our living. In engaging this earlier discussion about the origin of language, Benjamin finds himself driven back to fundamental questions about speaking, naming, and God. He advances our investigation in starting where Clough ended—by repudiating the search for “transcendent essences” of creatures which can be categorized in the activity of naming. In his view the most basic form of language does not name generic features, but identifies particular features of objects and so constitutes them as humanly perceptible entities. I am reading Benjamin’s account of language as a representative of what Ian Hacking calls “dynamic nominalism,” an understanding of language in which the real properties of the created realm both shape human naming, but become perceptible in conjunction with human observation and the giving of names. 32 Clough shows us why all universal schemas for producing generic names are susceptible to being contested, but he accomplishes this by taking the viewpoint of the universal observer, standing back to survey all the competing schemas in order to point out how the conflicts between them invalidates them (including the ones in scripture 33). Benjamin begins with a very different premise, one more characteristic of the Hebrew Scriptures, as Hanna Arendt has pointed out. For Benjamin to quote is to name, and naming rather than speaking, the word rather than the sentence, brings truth to light. . . . Benjamin regarded truth as an exclusively acoustical phenomenon: “Not Plato but Adam,” who gave things their names, was to him the “father of philosophy.” Hence tradition was the form in which these name-giving words were transmitted; it too was an essentially acoustical phenomenon. 34

Though a secular Jew, Benjamin did not give up the idea that traditions are carried by words: the act of naming puts words to things in a manner that can form a tradition if they are handed on and explained. Names, therefore, are communicable and ground human communication, making them the condition of human communion. 35 Before outlining Benjamin’s reading of Adam’s naming, let me now at least indicate why I take his position to be important for Christians today. Benjamin offers us the idea that God asks Adam to name and waits to “see what he will name them” because God is entrusting to a grateful humanity the task of putting appropriate words to the created world—appropriate in recognizing and handing on to their children and neighbors their recognition of the divine working. In Adam’s naming of the animals we are offered both an account of the beginning of tradition, but also a vision of what naming is, theologically understood: naming is a verbal recognition of the material and historical works of the Lord which are simultaneously praised in real time and handed on to future generation in both the activity of naming and the preservation of names. This is, as Alexander

12

Brian Brock

Schmemann puts it, a way of engaging with creatures that allows their nature as a divine gift to determine our understanding of them (and notice here that it is their essence as a divine gift, not as an alienated substance that is determinative). Now in the Bible a name . . . reveals the very essence of a thing, or rather its essence as a gift . . . To name a thing is to manifest the meaning and value God gave it, to know it as coming from God and to know its place and function within the cosmos created by God. To name a thing, in other words, is to bless God for it and in it. 36

Benjamin presses the question of what this theological insight reveals about language itself. He begins his discussion of the origin of language with the flat assertion that all creaturely entities are “linguistic”—are possessed of intrinsically communicative properties. Whether or not anyone “hears” the languages things utter, “this cannot alter the fact that we cannot imagine a total absence of language in anything.” 37 When humans speak language, this speaking does not invent words and grammar, but is always preceded by and responsive to what Benjamin calls the “linguistic being of all things.” 38 Each creature speaks in its own language, and, as the Genesis account suggests, a significant aspect of human language is expressed in naming. “It is therefore the linguistic being of man to name things.” 39 Who then is the addressee of human speech-as-naming? To hold that the only addressee of human naming is other humans is to affirm the pragmatic utility of naming activity but at the cost of giving up any reference that would allow names to be judged more or less appropriate to their object. This suggests, says Benjamin, that it is finally to God that humanity as the “naming creature” speaks. 40 God wants to “see what he would name them” because in the self-expression that is Adam’s naming of specific creatures, creation addresses itself (creature to creature) while at the same time addressing God. 41 Thus, suggests Benjamin, a human act of naming can finally be adjudged as a human expression of what a specific human has heard, in this concrete creature, from God. This leads Benjamin further to suggest that the true origin of human language is the divine breath of life. Human speech and naming are the returning of God’s gift of life/breath (the Hebrew nephesh entailing both) as sound given a new density. A crucial passage reads: In the word, creation took place, and God’s linguistic being is the word. All human language is only the reflection of the word in name. The name is no closer to the word than knowledge is to creation. The infinity of all human language always remains limited and analytic in nature, in comparison to the absolutely unlimited and creative infinity of the divine word. 42

“To see what he would name them . . . ”

13

To give proper names then is to approach the “frontier between finite and infinite language” because “of all beings, man is the only one who names his own kind, as he is the only one whom God did not name.” 43 Naming then, of children or any other creature, is a communing of the human word with the creative and anterior word of God which gives every being its existence and form. Because God said “Let there be . . . ” human speech is put in the position of needing to articulate a response when engaging with every creature. 44 In naming we both recognize creatures as distinct, and bind them into the traditions in which we live and have learned to think and speak. Though Benjamin does not often mention his sources, one he does mention by name, J. G. Hamann, is clear that the proper orientation of human language is found in echoing back to God recognition not only of God’s creative work, but also of the divine redemptive work in historical occurrence. 45 This understanding of naming is regularly displayed in scripture as when Hosea names his children to reflect their being born in the context of the divine judgment on Israel (Hosea 1:2–10), or Job’s naming of his divinely given new children in recognition that their very being attests a saving act of divine generosity (Job 42:12–15). In pursuing this line of reasoning Benjamin is also incorporating a traditional interpretative line that in naming Adam obeys the first command to “till and keep” the garden. The translation of the language of things into that of man is not only a translation of the mute into the sonic; it is also the translation of the nameless into name. . . . The objectivity of this translation is, however, guaranteed by the cognizing name, just as God, too, finally named each thing after it was created. But obviously this [divine] naming is only an expression of the identity of the creative word and the cognizing name in God, not the prior solution of the task that God expressly assigns to man himself: that of naming things. In receiving the unspoken nameless language of things and converting it by name into sounds, man performs this task. . . . Hamann says, “everything that man heard in the beginning, saw with this eyes, and felt with his hands was the living word; for God was the word. With his word in his mouth and in his heart, the origin of language was as natural, as close, and as easy as a child’s game . . . ” . . . only the word from which things are created permits man to name them, by communicating itself in the manifold languages of animals, even if mutely, in the image. 46

Benjamin now turns to the question of what all this might mean in light of the Fall. Because the world is an artifact of divine speech, it is much richer than humans can capture in their partial names. This is the condition that makes the multiplicity of languages after Babel possible, each of which can in principle name true aspects of the multiplicitous creative word of God. In this sense, human language is “a single great experiment that is conducted in as many laboratories as there are peoples.” 47

14

Brian Brock

Less positively, however, the Fall is also the slippage of human naming as a labor of recognition and praise into a register of naming as denoting possession. In sliding from naming before God and among creatures to merely an inter-creaturely exercise of human co-option, language is rendered a mere flag of possession like the flag the conquistador plants on lands he claims rather than a mode of communing with place and God within the traditions of our and other peoples. The Tree of Knowledge, on this view, is not to be understood as a warning sign set up to communicate information, but the one creature whose divinely given name was designed to keep humans aware that they are not the origin of the names of things. 48 Similarly, the story of Babel is not an example of how a legitimate human obedience to the command to have dominion and subdue the earth can reach a little too far, but displays God’s faithfulness to judge self-justifying but nevertheless totally inverted performances of dominion. The negative biblical association of Babel with the first empire issues a clear and damning judgment on human attempts to organize creation (inventing bricks) in the service of raising human-constructed names (“to make a name for themselves”) (Genesis 10:8–14, 11:2–3). This attempt to name in order to take (self-)possession is presented as the antithesis of more appropriately attentive dominion. Benjamin suggests that we can spot dominating naming by way of its tendency to impose false unities on creatures by attaching names that are not specific enough and are also self-referential. 49 Only God’s creative word can serve as the index of the unity of creatures, and when we cease to listen and discern this divine unity and relationality we cannot but group and name creatures according to the use-values we dream up for them. Hamann expresses the inner linkage of naming with gratitude or idol-production: All the colors of this most beautiful world grow pale once you extinguish its light, the firstborn of creation. If the belly is your god, then even the hairs on your head are under its guardianship. Every creature will alternately become your sacrifice and your idol—subject against its will—but in hope, it groans beneath your yoke or at your vain conduct; it does the best to escape your tyranny, and longs even in the most passionate embrace for that freedom with which the beasts paid Adam homage, when GOD brought them unto man to see what he would call them; for whatsoever Man would call them, that was the name thereof. . . . The more vividly this idea of the invisible GOD dwells in our heart, the more able we are to see and taste his loving-kindness in creatures, observe it and grasp it with our hands. Every impression of nature in man is not only a memorial but also a warrant of fundamental truth: Who is the LORD. 50

In terms of theological weighting, all this suggests that naming is a more fundamental activity than is the dangerously malleable idea of dominion. The responsivity demanded by naming offers a criterion for distinguishing be-

“To see what he would name them . . . ”

15

tween appropriate attentiveness to creatures and domination, a discernment that is the condition of any true obedience to the command to have dominion. The truth of Borkfeldt’s critique of the human naming of animals as an expression of the fallen tendency of humans to lump and name collectively in order to subjugate is therefore also an important aspect of the truth displayed in the post-lapsarian act of the renaming of Eve: these are sins because expressions of dominating naming. Such naming no longer opens itself to receive the divine revelation of creatures but seeks power over creatures, a form of naming expressed in patriarchy and empire but extending to the exploitation of animals. We are left then in a condition Benjamin calls “overnaming.” Since only God knows the proper names of all creatures (as we have seen scripture also to remind us), the melancholy reality of post-lapsarian life is that things have too many human names which are overly narrow in what they designate, so keeping us humans from finding easy agreement about things. And yet the nonacoustic languages that issue from creatures remain the pledge of the unity of creation and call us back to their unity in the creative word of God and so into a shared community of speech—into inter-human communion. Benjamin concludes, The uninterrupted flow of this communication runs through the whole of nature from the lowest forms of existence to man and from man to God. Man communicates himself to God through name, which he gives to nature and (in proper names) to his own kind; and to nature he gives names according to the communication that he receives from her, for the whole of nature, too, is imbued with a nameless, unspoken language, the residue of the creative word of God, which is preserved in man as the cognizing name and above man as the judgment suspended over him. 51

Benjamin himself was never able to shake the yearning to perceive and put words to things as Adam had been able to do, and the closest he ever came to this transparent and integrative perception (with all the joy such a revelation brings) came during his experimentation with drugs. 52 All these claims, to draw our treatment of Benjamin to a close, are elaborations of the basic affirmation that it is because all things speak God’s word in their own ways that they can be named. 53 All the creatures of the cosmos are God’s art, and even Adam’s good names which expressed the nature and significance of specific animals 54 because they harmonized 55 with the divine word still did not exhaust the beauty and richness of the divine word from which they originate.

16

Brian Brock

IN PLACE OF A CONCLUSION Why ask about naming? Naming is the moment when human beings accept some sort of responsibility to a specific creature already present in the material world. It is thus a paradigmatic moment in which humans articulate their understanding of their place before God (if they believe), and among peoples and their histories. It is all this oriented by an intense interest in the specificity of the creature being named. We cannot, therefore, evade the reality that naming is an act of emplacement, both culturally and historically, and of response, responsibility, and receipt of a given being. It is an act of memory (retrospective) and of hope (prospective) that expresses a discernment about what is at stake in our current relations to this given being. Virtually all human naming practices express this logic, even if unconsciously. This suggests that across human cultures practices of naming express an awareness of the importance of the act that often is not explicitly understood, which is certainly true of modern Western Christians. All human naming activity, Benjamin has argued, stands under the truth of the origin of things in God’s speaking them into existence, and is therefore only properly understood as a human response to this prior divine Word. This Word has become present to the mundane senses of those humans who respond to it by giving names. In the case of humans beings, the Christian tradition has fostered a hope in parents and godparents that the names give at baptism to locate children in cultural space and genealogical descent will prepare them to hear from God the name God has given them (Revelation 2:17). This account thus assumes a specific account of the materiality of revelation and the permeability of human epistemic capacity to revelation. My suggestion is that this whole modern discussion, of which Benjamin plays a significant role in transmitting into the modern discussion, 56 should also be read as a long reflection on Luther’s insistence that we cannot know God’s nearness in a way we can cling and respond to in faith solely in our imagination or recollection. 57 It is a “sure and infallible rule” that God makes Godself manifest to humans “by some definite and visible form that is . . . within the scope of the five senses.” 58 The externality and tangibility of the divine presence through creatures is therefore both the condition of faith and God’s chosen mode of speaking to humans. I hope it has become evident that the central ethical and theological issue in considering human-animal relations turns on the kinds of naming humans find themselves engaged in as they negotiate and continually reformulate the points where their lives intertwine with those of other creatures. Naming can be an act of possession and moral distancing or a peculiarly human way of recognizing a specific type of divine claim. The whole discussion must at the very least sensitize us to moral implications of language like “pork products” or “dairy herd” that collectivize and allow us to instrumentalize creatures

“To see what he would name them . . . ”

17

who are also explicitly singled out in the creation account as creatures blessed alongside humans by God. The ways we name animals also offers us a window into our tendencies to anthropomorphize sentient beings (such as when a group of performing Orcas is given a trade name, “Shamu”) or to shy away from linking ourselves by naming to creatures we know we have doomed to factories of industrial killing. If this theological insight is attended to, then the giving of both generic and particular names can conceivably be an act of gratitude to God, as when we call a being a chicken to denote it as a living embodiment of a way of being a creature (scratching the earth in a “chicken-like” way, for instance), and when we call one of these beings “Tilda” to demarcate the claim, story, and special way of living that a specific creature puts on our attention. Only thus will names not “kill off” or desiccate the creatures with whom we live. To speak names in this way is to point to the intersection of the lives we have been given to share together, each with our own particular ways of being. The upshot of these considerations is that we need not set up general and specific names as in opposition, nor even to insist that names are permanent and cannot recognize other new realities as we often see in the fluidity of aboriginal names 59 or ecclesial renaming. In letting the ones we name occur in their own way of living such naming, rather than freezing their lives, will enliven our speaking. NOTES 1. A sophisticated contemporary version of this position is presented by J. Richard Middleton, The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2005). David Clough explains how Carl Linnaeus and Francis Bacon repackaged the traditional concept of dominion for an enlightened age, and in a manner that was to pass out of theological thought to become dominant for the Western intellectual clearing as a whole. “Putting Animals in Their Place: On the Theological Classification of Animals,” in Celia Deane-Drummond, Rebecca Artinian-Kaiser, and David L. Clough ed., Animals as Religious Subjects: Transdisciplinary Perspectives (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 209–223. 2. The most famous defender of the arguing from racism to speciesism is presented by Peter Singer. See his Practical Ethics, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), ch 3. For a broader and more interesting version of this critique see Anat Pick, Creaturely Poetics: Animal Vulnerability in Literature and Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). 3. See the discussion of the House Rabbit Society in Erica Fudge, Pets (Stocksfield: Acumen, 2008), 98–105. 4. Steven M. Wise, Rattling The Cage: Toward Legal Rights For Animals, Jane Goodall foreword (New York: Perseus Publishing, 2000); Cass R. Sunstein and Martha C. Nussbaum eds., Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 5. The problems of domination emphasized in this paper are aspects of a much wider dichotomization of culture and nature in modern thought. The power of modern accounts of dominion can thus be said to rest on a picture of human culture as needing to capture and make nature productive, which both severed most of the practical relationships between humans and animals that characterized most other cultures and reified the distinctions between humans and

18

Brian Brock

animals in a manner that made ideas of having a shared life unthinkable. See Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (London: Routledge, 2000), chs. 4–5. 6. Jaques Ellul, The Meaning of the City (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 10–20. 7. This is the word used when God renames Abraham (Genesis 2:23), and Isaac (Genesis. 21:12), and Jacob (Genesis 36:10). 8. Lars Hartman, “Into the Name of the Lord Jesus”: Baptism in the Early Church (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), ch. 3. 9. Will Coster, Baptism and Spiritual Kinship in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 167. 10. Robert Alter trans., from The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 22. 11. Augustine, “The Literal Meaning of Genesis,” in On Genesis, Edmund Hill trans. and intro. (New York: New City Press, 2002), IX.20–22, 387–388. 12. Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis Chapters 1–5, Luther’s Works vol. 1, Jaroslav Pelikan ed. (St. Louis: Concordia, 1958), 120. 13. Tim Ingold, Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description (London: Routledge, 2011), 167. 14. “Once we have recognized that there is more than one way of ordering the differences between organisms, we encounter a plethora of possible candidates. . . . To embark on [listing] possible ways of ordering creatures in a unilinear way is already to appreciate the oddness of believing that any single principle for ordering different creatures could be thought of as definitive.” David Clough, On Animals: Volume 1, Systematic Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 61–62. 15. Reuben S. Rose-Redwood, “From Number to Name: Symbolic Capital, Places of Memory, and the Politics of Street Renaming in New York City,” Social & Cultural Geography, 9:4, 2008, 431–452; Flavia Hodges, “Language Planning and Placenaming in Australia,” Current Issues in Language Planning, 8:3, 2007, 383–403. 16. Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis Chapters 1–5, Luther’s Works vol. 1, Jaroslav Pelikan ed. (St. Louis: Concordia, 1958), 119. 17. Sune Borkfelt, “What’s in a Name?—Consequences of Naming Non-Human Animals,” Animals, vol. 1, 2011, 118. 18. Borkfelt, “What’s in a Name?,” 119. 19. Ibid., 120. 20. To this attempt Bonhoeffer responded, “Either we consider this admonition as legally binding, in which case it still does not say anything about Jewish Christians’ keeping silent in the churches, or we do not consider it legally binding, that is, women also are allowed to speak in the churches, in which case there is no possibility of forbidding Jewish Christians to speak as a matter of principle.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church. Vol. 1 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Works. Edited by Wayne Whitson Floyd Jr. and Clifford J. Green (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 429. 21. Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, 2nd rev. ed. (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1979), 208. 22. Ingold, Being Alive, 174. 23. Borkfelt, “What’s in a Name?,” 121. 24. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Fathers of the English Dominican Province trans. (London: Burns and Oates, 1922), Prima Pars, q. 96 a. 1 r. 3. 25. John Calvin, Genesis, Alister McGrath and J. I. Packer eds. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001), 38. 26. Johann Gottfried von Herder, The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, vol. 2, James Marsh trans. (Burlington: Edward Smith, 1833, reprinted by Charleston: Bibliobazaar, 2000), 15. 27. John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, Michael Waldstein trans. and intro. (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2006), “Man in Search of His Essence,” 148–150. 28. Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (New York: Free Press, 2003), 100.

“To see what he would name them . . . ”

19

29. Clough, On Animals, 63–64. 30. Cf. Oswald Bayer, A Contemporary in Dissent: Johann Georg Hamann as a Radical Enlightener, Roy Harrisville and Mark Mattes trans. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), ch. 5; Isaiah Berlin, The Magus of the North: J. G. Hamann and the Origins of Modern Irrationalism, Henry Hardy ed. (London: John Murray, 1993), 72–87; Michael N. Forester, After Herder: Philosophy of Language in the German Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). The parallel discussion in the English-speaking world comes slightly later and is outside of Benjamin’s purview. Cf. Roy Harris ed., The Origin of Language (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996). 31. Walter Benjamin, “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man,” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings vol. 1, 1913–1926, Marcus Bullock and Michael Jennings eds. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1996), 62–74. 32. Ian Hacking, “Making Up People,” in Thomas C. Heller, David E. Wellbery, and Morton Sosna eds., Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), 222–236. 33. “Such anthropocentric classifications are only problematic if we fail to appreciate that they are a tactical solution to a particular human project rather than a universal and authoritative insight into the essence of things.” Clough, On Animals, 63. 34. Hanna Arendt, “Introduction: Walter Benjamin: 1892–1940,” in Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, Harry Zorn trans. (New York: Schocken Books, 2007), 49. 35. Benjamin, “On Language as Such,” 66. 36. Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973), 15. 37. Benjamin, “On Language as Such,” 62. 38. Ibid., 63. 39. Ibid., 64. Italics in original. 40. Ibid., 65. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid., 68. 43. Ibid., 69. 44. It becomes apparent at this point that Benjamin’s account develops a Lutheran understanding of the relation of divine creation and speaking. In a characteristic passage Luther writes, “He [God] wills to speak, then, namely, when we, almost despairing, decide that He will keep silence forever. But what or in what manner will He speak? Here we must observe the Hebrew way of expression. For when Scripture says that God speaks, it understands a word related to a real thing or action [verbum reale], not just a sound, as ours is. For God does not have a mouth or a tongue, since He is a Spirit, though scripture speaks of the mouth and tongue of God: ‘He spoke, and it came to be’ (Psalm 33:9). And when He speaks, the mountains tremble, kingdoms are scattered, then indeed the whole earth is moved. This is a language different from ours. When the sun rises, when the sun sets, God speaks. When the fruits grown in size, when human beings are born, God speaks. Accordingly the words of God are not empty air, but things very great and wonderful, which we see with our eyes and feel with our hands. For when, according to Moses (Genesis 1), the Lord said ‘Let there be a sun, let there be a moon, let the earth bring forth trees,’ etc., as soon as He said it, it was done. No one heard this voice, but we see the works and the things themselves before our eyes, and we touch them with our hands.” Martin Luther, “Psalm 2,” in Luther’s Works, Selected Psalms I, Vol. 12, Jaroslav Pelikan ed. (St. Louis, Concordia, 1955), 32. 45. “Did scripture not seek out this most despicable of people, one of the smallest, and its worst, even its most sinful actions, in order to clothe God’s providence and wisdom and to reveal him in this lowliness of images? Nature and history are therefore the two great commentaries on the divine Word, and this Word is the only key to unlock a knowledge of both. What does the difference between natural and revealed knowledge mean? If I understand it aright, the difference is no more than that between the eye of a man who sees a picture without understanding the least thing about painting or drawing or the story that is represented, and the eye of a painter; or between natural hearing and a musical ear.” In Ronald Gregor Smith, J. G.

20

Brian Brock

Hamann: A Study in Christian Existence, With Selections From His Writings (London: Collins, 1960), 166. 46. Benjamin, “On Language as Such,” 70. 47. Walter Benjamin, “A State Monopoly on Pornography,” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, vol. 2.1, 1927–1930, Michael Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith, eds. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1999), 72. 48. “The Tree of Knowledge stood in the garden of God not in order to dispense information on good and evil, but as an emblem of judgment over the questioner. This immense irony marks the mythic origin of law.” Benjamin, “On Language as Such,” 72. 49. Benjamin, “Language and Logic,” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings vol. 1, 273. 50. Johann Hamann, “Aesthetica in Nuce,” in Writings on Philosophy and Language, Kenneth Haynes ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 78–79. 51. Benjamin, “On Language as Such,” 74. 52. His various accounts of these experiments are collected in Walter Benjamin, On Hashish, Howard Eiland trans., Marcus Boon intro. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006). 53. Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” 254. 54. Ibid., 255. 55. Ibid., 260. 56. It is beyond the limits of this paper to substantiate, but is nevertheless worth noting that one of the most influential books in contemporary discussions of animal ethics, Jacques Derrida’s The Animal That Therefore I Am, David Wills trans., Marie-Louise Mallet ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), is directly, and critically, engaged with Benjamin’s arguments in “On Language as Such.” 57. Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis Chapters 15–20, Luther’s Works vol. 3, Jaroslav Pelikan ed. (St. Louis: Concordia, 1961), 109, 117–18. 58. Luther, Lectures on Genesis Chapters 15–20, 122. 59. Peter P. Schweitzer and Evgeniy V. Golovko, “Local Identities and Traveling Names: Interethnic Aspects of Personal Naming in the Bering Strait Area,” Arctic Anthropology, 34:1 (1997), 167–180.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alter, Robert. The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Fathers of the English Dominican Province trans. London: Burns and Oates, 1922. Arendt, Hanna. “Introduction: Walter Benjamin: 1892–1940.” In Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, translated by Harry Zorn. New York: Schocken Books, 2007. Augustine. “The Literal Meaning of Genesis.” In On Genesis, translation and introduction by Edmund Hill. New York: New City Press, 2002. Bayer, Oswald. A Contemporary in Dissent: Johann Georg Hamann as a Radical Enlightener, translated by Roy Harrisville and Mark Mattes. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012. Benjamin, Walter. “A State Monopoly on Pornography.” In Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, vol. 2.1, 1927–1930, edited by Michael Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1999. Benjamin, Walter. On Hashish, translated by Howard Eiland, introduction by Marcus Boon. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. Benjamin, Walter. “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man.” In Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings vol. 1, 1913–1926, edited by Marcus Bullock and Michael Jennings. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1996, 62–74. Berlin, Isaiah. The Magus of the North: J. G. Hamann and the Origins of Modern Irrationalism, edited by Henry Hardy. London: John Murray, 1993. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church. Vol. 1 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Works, edited by Wayne Whitson Floyd Jr. and Clifford J. Green. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001.

“To see what he would name them . . . ”

21

Borkfelt, Sune. “What’s in a Name?—Consequences of Naming Non-Human Animals.” Animals 1 (2011): 116–125. Calvin, John. Genesis, edited by Alister McGrath and J. I. Packer. Wheaton: Crossway, 2001. Clough, David. On Animals: Volume 1, Systematic Theology. London: T&T Clark, 2012. Clough, David. “Putting Animals in Their Place: On the Theological Classification of Animals.” In Celia Deane-Drummond, Rebecca Artinian-Kaiser, and David L. Clough eds. Animals as Religious Subjects: Transdisciplinary Perspectives. London: Bloomsbury, 2013, 209–223. Coster, Will. Baptism and Spiritual Kinship in Early Modern England. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. Derrida, Jacques. The Animal That Therefore I Am. Translated by David Wills, edited by Marie-Louise Mallet. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. Ellul, Jacques. The Meaning of the City. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970. Forester, Michael N. After Herder: Philosophy of Language in the German Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Fudge, Erica. Pets. Stocksfield: Acumen, 2008. Hacking, Ian. “Making Up People.” In Thomas C. Heller, David E. Wellbery, and Morton Sosna eds. Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986, 222–236. Hamann, Johann. “Aesthetica in Nuce.” In Writings on Philosophy and Language, edited by Kenneth Haynes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Harris, Roy, ed. The Origin of Language. Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996. Hartman, Lars. “Into the Name of the Lord Jesus”: Baptism in the Early Church. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997. Herder, Johann Gottfried von. The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, vol. 2, translated by James Marsh. Burlington: Edward Smith, 1833, reprinted by Charleston: Bibliobazaar, 2000. Hodges, Flavia. “Language Planning and Placenaming in Australia.” Current Issues in Language Planning 8:3 (2007): 383–403. Ingold, Tim. Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. London: Routledge, 2011. Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge, 2000. John Paul II. Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, translation and introduction by Michael Waldstein. Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2006. Kass, Leon R. The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis. New York: Free Press, 2003. Luther, Martin. Lectures on Genesis Chapters 1–5, Luther’s Works vol. 1, edited by Jaroslav Pelikan. St. Louis: Concordia, 1958. Luther, Martin. Lectures on Genesis Chapters 15–20, Luther’s Works vol. 3, edited by Jaroslav Pelikan. St. Louis: Concordia, 1961. Luther, Martin. “Psalm 2,” in Luther’s Works, Selected Psalms I, Vol. 12, edited by Jaroslav Pelikan. St. Louis, Concordia, 1955. Middleton, J. Richard. The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2005. Pick, Anat. Creaturely Poetics: Animal Vulnerability in Literature and Film. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Rose-Redwood, Reuben S. “From Number to Name: Symbolic Capital, Places of Memory, and the Politics of Street Renaming in New York City.” Social & Cultural Geography 9:4 (2008), 431–452. Schmemann, Alexander. For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973. Schweitzer, Peter P. and Evgeniy V. Golovko. “Local Identities and Traveling Names: Interethnic Aspects of Personal Naming in the Bering Strait Area.” Arctic Anthropology 34:1 (1997), 167–180. Singer, Peter. Practical Ethics, 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Smith, Ronald Gregor. J. G. Hamann: A Study in Christian Existence, With Selections From His Writings. London: Collins, 1960.

22

Brian Brock

Sunstein, Cass R. and Martha C. Nussbaum, eds. Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Vanier, Jean. Community and Growth, 2nd rev. ed. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1979. Wise, Steven M. Rattling The Cage: Toward Legal Rights For Animals, foreword by Jane Goodall. New York: Perseus Publishing, 2000.

Chapter Two

From Ursus Diabolus to Ursus Ex Machina The Ambivalent Legacy of Biblical Bears in Christian Art and Hagiography Eric Ziolkowski

With no pun intended, I ask the reader to forbear impatience at the delay with which the animal species referenced in the title above will make its debut for discussion in this essay. 1 I wish to open by examining a celebrated sixteenthcentury painting of the primal human couple in Eden before the fall, in which a bear figures as but one of a variety of more typical animal candidates auguring evil. As I hope to suggest, the relationship into which this painting draws the bear with those other creatures helps to crystallize the beast’s wicked implications. Contrary to any number of today’s popular incarnations of the positive, “lovable,” child-friendly bear (Teddy, Winnie, Smokey, Paddington, the Berenstain Bears, to name but a few of the best-known examples), the bear in this painting emerges as the central focal point in a spectacle of implicit beastly evil, which sets all the more sharply in relief the association of bears with Christian saints that will be my subject in the second half of this essay. THE BEAR AS AXIS MALI In contemplating Cornelis van Haarlem’s (1562–1638) mannerist masterpiece of 1592, Adam and Eve in Paradise, 2 which captures the innocent, naked, primal human pair prior to their fateful biting of the apple held in Adam’s hand, one is struck by the particular combination of animals arrayed 23

24

Eric Ziolkowski

in the foreground around them. 3 Morally-symbolically speaking, the docile looks of these animals in the foreground are deceiving, for aside from the serpent with a human torso, head, and arms, whose significance in the picture speaks for itself (in view of Genesis 3), the symbolic implications of these creatures are for the most part sinisterly portentous. To be sure, the lion in the shadows to the right of Eve’s left thigh, and the dog to Adam’s left, are ambiguous. Biblically, the lion’s symbolism is both positive and negative. 4 God in his power, justice, and righteous vengeance is likened to a lion (Jeremiah 50:44; Hosea 11:10; 13:7, 8; Amos 3:8), as is the tribe of Judah (Genesis 49:9), and Christ himself is “the Lion of Judah” (Revelation 5:5). 5 At the same time, the lion throughout the Bible appears as a threatening beast, one with which Samson, David, and Benaiah son of Jehoiada contended (Judges 14:6, 8–9; 1 Samuel 17:34, 36–37; 23:20). The devil, moreover, is compared to “a roaring lion” that “prowls around, looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Yet, positively, in the Middle Ages the lion symbolized the resurrection, because, according to the bestiaries, the cubs are born dead and after three days are brought to life by their father’s breathing in their faces. 6 Roaring lions sometimes symbolize the resurrection of the dead on judgment day, and the apocalyptic winged lion represents the evangelist Mark. Negatively, the lion, like the one that menaces Dante in the first canto of the Inferno, personifies pride; in its strength and unrestrained wildness, it also embodies wrath, symbolizing malevolent, dangerous, or punitive forces as it is sometimes depicted devouring humans or other animals. The dog in Cornelis’s painting, presumably a predecessor of some modern Northern European breed, like a basset hound, 7 has associations no less mixed than those of the lion. In the Bible, as in ancient culture generally, the dog symbolizes loyalty, but also, more often, all that is impure, debased, foolish, threatening, or even diabolical. 8 In post-biblical Jewish and Christian cultures alike, attitudes towards dogs remained ambivalent: on the one hand, Jews could view them as trustworthy, dependable “friends,” or occasional loving companions (e.g., Tobias’s dog; see Tobit 6:2; 11:4), and, by medieval Christians, the dogs that licked the sores of poor Lazarus in Luke 16:21 were likened to Dominican preachers who cured sin. 9 On the other hand, a suspiciousness of dogs among the Jews could crystallize in Maimonides’s prohibition against having them in the home. 10 For early Christians and their successors, as the church historian Eusebius of Caesaria (ca. 260–ca. 340) compared the devil or a demon (δαίμονος) to “a raging mad dog [κυνὸς λυττῶντος],” 11 dogs typified heresy, paganism, and Satan. 12 Martin Luther reports that the devil appeared to him as “a large black English dog” that vanished only when he recited Psalm 8:8 of the Vulgate: “Omnia subiecisti sub pedibus eius [you have subjected all things under his feet]” (cf. Ps 8:6, NRSV). 13 Notwithstanding the variety of ancient “heathens” who worshipped dogs, Cornelis’s English contemporary, the cleric Edward Topsell

From Ursus Diabolus to Ursus Ex Machina

25

(1572–ca. 1625), points out in his History of Four-footed Beasts (1607)— mostly a translation of Conrad Gessner’s (1516–65) Historia animalium (1555; 2nd ed., 1602)—that “many learned and wise men in all ages have reckoned a Dog a base and an impudent creature.” 14 Among pictorial representations of this scene, Cornelis’s Adam and Eve in Paradise is not unique in including both a dog and a lion. Paired lions and dogs appear in Jacob Matham’s 1606 engraving of the same scene, 15 and a lion and multiple dogs recur in the Eden collaboratively painted almost ten years later by Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder. 16 In Cornelis’s image, any positive associations these two creatures evoke will likely be offset by the negative. The sense of foreboding is reinforced by the image of the cuddling cat and monkey—pace Topsell’s claim, citing the Roman author Aelian (Claudius Aelianus, 170–ca. 230 CE) as his authority, that “Cats will also hunt Apes” 17—between Adam and Eve at the base of the forbidden tree, as parodies of that primal human pair. The reputation of monkeys for imitating humans led them to be viewed as prototypical impostors, frauds, and tricksters. Hence they were considered diabolical by Christians, who construed the devil as simia Dei (God’s monkey), and referred to Satan as a parody of God, the simia Salvatoris (savior’s monkey). 18 Thus, by the late fifteenth century, monkeys (with tails) and apes (tailless), typically eating an apple à la Adam, appeared as stock figures in Eden scenes, signifying a demonic presence. 19 By extension, monkeys fulfilled the same symbolic function in scenes from the life, passion, and death of Jesus. For example, a demonic presence is symbolized by a monkey amid the fruit in a tree in the Pietà of Cosimo Tura, painted about 1455; 20 by a monkey tethered to the side of the porch on which Pilate is displaying Jesus to the crowd in an engraving of the Ecce homo scene by Israhel van Meckenem (late fifteenth century); 21 and by a crouching monkey grasping a human skull on the ground in front of the cross in the painting of the Crucifixion by the Master of the Virgo inter Virgines (late fifteenth century). 22 In a German engraving of Christ in the Wilderness from that same period, based on Mark 1:13 (“He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts”), Jesus’s temptation is represented by a fruit-grasping monkey who almost blends in among the branches of a tree in the background. 23 Let us return, however, to Cornelis’s painting. What might the hedgehog (peeking around Eve’s right ankle), the owl, cat, fox, and toads 24 represent, as well as the butterfly on the tree trunk between Adam and Eve, another butterfly on a leaf near Eve’s left ankle, and the two slugs or shell-less snails 25 on either side of Adam’s feet? The first five of these creatures all bear almost exclusively negative, demonic connotations, which may be supported by the butterflies and slugs. Let us pause to consider these connotations.

26

Eric Ziolkowski

The two biblical mentions of the hedgehog, both in Isaiah (14:23; 34:11), associate it with the destruction and chaos God will inflict upon his (and Israel’s) enemies. In an equally negative vein, the Physiologus evokes the hedgehog to symbolize the devil, warning the Christian, “Do not let concern for this world and the pleasure of temporal goods preoccupy you, for then the prickly devil, scattering all your spiritual fruits, will pierce them with his quills and make you food for the beasts.” 26 For medieval Christians the hedgehog also symbolized “greed, voracity, and—because of its Quickly erected quills—anger,” 27 and hence lent itself to use in a sermon by St. Anthony of Padua (1195–1231) as a metaphor of “the prickly sinner, covered all over with the prickles of sins.” If you try to convince “him” of his sin, “he immediately rolls himself up, and hides, by excusing his fault,” and hence “his head and mouth are set low down” 28—as illustrated by the hedgehog in Cornelis’s painting. The owl is condemned in the Torah as unclean (Leviticus 11:17–18; Deuteronomy 14:16–17) and is associated by a pair of the canonic prophets with the terrestial desolation resulting from divine acts of vengeance (Isaiah 34:11, 15; Zephaniah 2:14). In medieval Christian art, an owl is sometimes pictured with other birds in creation scenes, particularly those of the fifth day (Genesis 1:20–23), 29 in some cases combined with a representation of the sixth day (1:24–25) that includes some of the animals that also appear in Cornelis’s Adam and Eve in Paradise, such as the lion, ape, dog, and bear. 30 An owl also appears sometimes in pictures of Adam naming the animals. One such picture includes, together with the owl, no fewer than five of the other creatures that appear in Cornelis’s painting: a lion, ape, cat, serpent, and snail. 31 To be sure, as it elsewhere can appear in an optimistic scene such as Jesus’s nativity in the lower margin of a French Gothic image of 1350–74 in a breviary manuscript, 32 the owl can be positively suggestive of religious knowledge, or of Christ as the light that illuminates. Yet, probably more often, the owl bears the negative symbolism of spiritual darkness. 33 Evoking Psalm 101:7 in the Vulgate (“I have become like an owl [nycticorax; literally, night raven] in the house”; cf. 102:6, NRSV), the Physiologus portrays the owl as a creature that “loves the darkness more than the light,” and hence casts it as a figural type of the Jews, whom it accuses of cleaving to their ignorance (=darkness) by shunning Christ (=bright light) 34—an accusation and symbolization that draws the “blind” Jews into an obvious association with the image of the despised nycticorax that occurs not infrequently in medieval ecclesiastical sculpture and manuscript illuminations. 35 As a benighted bird, the owl was often juxtaposed with the ape or monkey in EdenFall scenes. 36 Folklorically, the owl is said to be a baker’s daughter punished for having stingily tampered with a breadloaf her mother baked for Jesus, 37 and has also been cast as the embodiment of a witch. 38 According to a Breton tradition, the nightowl is an animal the devil himself created. 39

From Ursus Diabolus to Ursus Ex Machina

27

The cat, fox, and toad likewise are typically associated with evil. The cat, a symbol of choleric, is linked with witches, 40 and hence also with the devil. Like the monkey and owl, the cat makes frequent appearances in Eden-Fall scenes, 41 where it is often juxtaposed with a dog. 42 In Rubens and Brueghel’s Eden, as in Cornelis’s, the cat is also juxtaposed with a monkey—the monkey, crouching behind the seated Adam, and the cat, peeking from behind Eve’s ankles. Topsell unwittingly links the cat as well with two other creatures from Cornelis’s scene, observing that although “Cats will fight with Serpents, and Toads, and kill them,” and “Cats and Serpents love one another.” 43 As fables often used the figure of the fox “to express vices of the world,” 44 Christians almost always disparaged the fox, too, as evil and demonic, largely on the basis of the Bible, which presents it as deceitful and treacherous 45—hence Jesus’s reference to Herod as a “fox” (Luke 13:32). As for toads, their symbolization of evil is rooted, first, in the role of their closely related, fellow anurans, frogs, 46 in the second Mosaic plague (Exodus 8:1–13; Psalm 105:30; Wisdom 19:10; cf. Psalm 78:45, listing the frogs third among the plagues); and secondly, even more so, in the vision of frogs in the book of Revelation (16:13–14), emerging from the mouths of the sevenheaded dragon, the seven-headed beast, and false prophets. 47 What is more, Topsell reminds us that frogs “signifie impudent and contentious persons,” and that, according to an ancient tradition, a soul ferried by Charon across to hell will hear “nothing but the croaking of Frogs, for such contentious spirits do best befit Hell.” 48 Thus in the hell panel of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights triptych (ca. 1503–4), 49 a frog clings grotesquely to the chest of a beautiful female sinner seated beneath the bird-headed demon—much as, earlier, in French and Spanish Romanesque art, the personification of luxury could appear as a nude woman, her breast bitten by a toad; 50 or holding a toad and serpent at her breasts; 51 or as a seated figure with a toad and serpent on her legs. 52 Toads, additionally, were associated with sorcery and the devil, 53 and in medieval art figured in depictions of death in assocation with the vices of lust and greed. 54 What about the butterflies and shell-less snails in Cornelis’s Adam and Eve in Paradise? Might they bear any symbolization commensurate with the evil, devilish associations of the other creatures pictured around Adam and Eve? Let us first consider the butterflies. In Christian symbolism the butterfly signifies, positively, resurrection (emerging as it does from the cocoon) and immortality, but also, negatively, vanity and futility (because its life is short and its beauty, transient). 55 Thus, for Cornelis’s English Puritan contemporary, the naturalist Thomas Muffet (1553–1604), the “forms, clothing, elegancy, and rich habits of the Butterflies” must lead us to admire “the bountiful God, who is the Author and giver of so rich treasure,” and yet Muffet warns: “Learn therefore O mortal Man . . . that God . . . made the butterfly to pull down thy pride, and by the

28

Eric Ziolkowski

shortness of their life (which is of no great continuance) be thou mindful of thy own failing condition.” 56 Such negative symbolisms—“pride,” “shortness of . . . life,” “thy own failing condition”—seem evoked in Cornelis’s painting, as the butterfly on the tree trunk faces Eve at the moment the serpent is addressing her, presumably with the fateful appeal to her vanity captured in Genesis 3:4. One cannot help wondering whether our Dutch artist was aware of the decorative motif, found in a Flemish prayerbook-manuscript of 1500–25, of butterflies in the borders that frame each of a series of miniatures by Cornelia van Wulfschkercke (d. 1540) involving both the pre- and post-lapsarian Eve, 57 a motif that occurred as early as in a French Bible manuscript two centuries before. 58 Supporting the butterflies’ ominousness in Cornelis’s Paradise scene, which is set just before the primal pair’s sin “Brought death into the world, and all our woe” (Milton), are the butterflies that appear with alarming frequency within the frames around miniatures depicting scenes of extreme human cruelties: for example, from Jesus’s passion, the Ecce homo, 59 flagellation, 60 and cross bearing; 61 the crucifixion of the apostle Andrew; 62 two images of the martyred St. Stephen; 63 and the Dance of Death. 64 Indeed, as becomes clear in Muffet’s discussion of them, in the time of Cornelis, butterflies were also, for different reasons, associated with no fewer than five of the other negatively portentous creatures in his depiction of Eden: the serpent, bear, snail, toad, and owl. According to Muffet, butterflies “are found in houses sleeping all the Winter like Serpents and Bears”; “feed on dew alone as do snails”; and “Phalenae or night Butterflies, such as fly at candles at night, . . . were accounted of ancient time amongst dangerous medicaments, for the same reason that Toads, Bats, Owls, . . . were; for they held that all . . . nightworkers [are] most unhappy and accursed.” 65 Regarding those above-cited miniatures by Cornelia van Wulfschkercke, it is perhaps noteworthy that a snail in its shell appears also within the frames around the Ecce homo and Dance of Death scenes, as do also a pair of monkeys in the frame around the Dance of Death scene, and an owl, around the image of Andrew’s crucifixion and the second of the two images of the martyred Stephen (see n. 63 above). Shell-bearing snails not infrequently appear in the decorative borders of illuminated manuscripts. For Christians, such snails symbolized the resurrection, because the snail was believed to burst from its shell in the spring. 66 Yet the shell-less snails, or slugs, in Cornelis’s Eden seem deprived of such an optimistic possibility; symbolically speaking, in lacking shells, they lack the capacity to resurrect, and as such seem to bode ill. We can now perceive Adam and Eve in Cornelis’s Eden to be standing in the midst of a virtual menagerie of symbolized evil, consisting of the dog, lion, owl, monkey, hedgehog, cat, fox, and toads, complemented by the additional negative implications of the butterflies and slugs. However, we

From Ursus Diabolus to Ursus Ex Machina

29

have yet to say a word about the most unassuming, yet potentially most ominous of all the creatures present: the brown bear, whose large face is visible behind Adam, peering around the trunk of the forbidden tree. This Edenic bear is not unique or without precedent. The perceptive viewer of Erhard Aldorfer’s pre-1533 woodcut of the Fall of Man 67 will notice, in the background opposite two tree monkeys, a bear ascending a slope toward two lions. In the paradise panel of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, where God presents Eve to Adam, a bear in the background shakes or prepares to scale a tree not far from a monkey that is riding astride an elephant. The proximity of the bear and the monkey in this instance represents a variation on an established motif in European art and literature in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, having first appeared as early as the end of the twelfth century, and persisting through the sixteenth century: the teaming of an ape with a bear, often with the ape shown riding on the bear’s back, sometimes as an apparent symbolization of impure love. 68 In Cornelis’s Adam and Eve in Paradise, the seemingly unassuming bear, once noticed by the viewer, thus stands out as the axis mali, the axial center of the picture’s spectacle of symbolized creaturely evil. Moreover, the bear’s nose constitutes one corner of a perfect, central triangle of symbolically ominous implications, the other two corners represented by the cat’s head and the fateful apple. From both biblical and classical Greek and Roman perspectives, this makes perfect sense. I have elsewhere written at length about the horrifying biblical pericope about the two she-bears that maul forty-two children who mocked the prophet Elisha (2 Kings 2:23–25). 69 Correspondingly, Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) associates the bear with fatuousness and mischief-making, 70 and, as Topsell observes, the “attributes” of this beast are overwhelmingly negative among ancient Greek and Latin authors alike, who view it as “armed, filthy, deformed, cruel, dreadful, fierce, greedy, Calydonian, Erymanthean, bloudy, heavy, night ranging, Lybican, menacing, . . . head-long, ravening, rigid and terrible.” 71 Such perceptions, together with the Bible’s negative representation of bears as violent, deadly beasts, coalesce in the anti-ursine sentiments of Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE), who harbored what Michel Pastoureau characterizes as a general zoophobia (zoophobie augustinienne) which seems to contradict that saint’s notion of the divinely-created world as infinitely good. For Augustine, in view of the claim at Genesis 1:26 that the human being was created in God’s image, it would be abominable to confound humankind with beasts, who are subordinate, imperfect, if not impure. 72 Augustine goes to considerable lengths on the basis of Genesis 1:26 to demonstrate how human beings, owing to the rational substance (rationalis substantia) with which God endowed them, are distinguishable from all other creatures. 73 More than any other animals, lions and bears, those two biblically paralleled beasts, are hostilely targeted in a sermon of 414/15 that is

30

Eric Ziolkowski

dubiously ascribed to Augustine. The author finds David’s deliverance of the flock from the lion and bear in 1 Samuel 17:34–36 74 to foreshadow Christ’s harrowing of hell, because “the bear has force in its paw, and the lion, in its jaw: the devil himself is figured in these two beasts.” 75 The patristic and medieval notion of the bear as a creature of the devil, or as his accomplice, 76 is consistent with the use of the bear as a symbol of gluttony 77 (one of the seven deadly sins), and also the bear’s association with sexual lust. 78 The consequent image of ursus diabolus (the demonic bear), symbolizing “the devil’s power,” 79 culminates in the notion that the devil sometimes assumes the form of a bear, 80 as reflected in representation of the devil as a bear in an illumination from a thirteenth-century German Psalter. 81 This identification of the bear with the devil makes all the more remarkable the simultaneous development of an opposite motif in Christian hagiography, to which we now shall turn: the taming, domesticating, and even befriending of bears by certain saints. POSITIVE RELATIONS BETWEEN SAINTS AND BEARS In the Lives of Christian saints, bears crop up with considerable frequency, as we shall presently see. There are feast days for at least two dozen saints who tamed a bear or had a special relationship with one, 82 and many saints have as their name either the Latin word for bear (Ursus) or a word derived from that term (Ursula, Ursinus, Ursicinus). 83 Moreover, well over a dozen saints have a bear as their attribute. 84 Despite the persistent demonization of the species, there developed in Christian hagiography a counter-tradition of legends about wild bears who miraculously—sometimes as veritable dei ex machina or, more precisely, ursi ex machina—rescue, submit to, or enter the service of holy personages. Unlike the heroic bear-slayers of scriptural and rabbinic lore (David, Judah, Gad), saints overpower and domesticate bears spiritually, through kindness or reprimand, but always without killing them. This legacy of the saints is consistent, incidentally, with the command by Hincmar (806–882), archbishop of Rheims (from 845), that his own clergy were “not to indulge in vulgar sports with bears and tumblers,” and that monks were forbidden to attend bear-baiting events. 85 Exhibiting indomitable faith or holiness, each saint miraculously proves exempt from a potential bear attack, or befriends a bear, or domesticates it and, often, enlists its service, typically for some specific menial task—a motif consistent with Topsell’s observation that, although bears “are very hardly tamed, and not to be trusted,” they nonetheless “are tamed for labours, and especially for sports . . . , being taught to draw water with wheels out of the deepest wels [sic]; likewise stones upon sleds to the building of walls.” 86

From Ursus Diabolus to Ursus Ex Machina

31

This hagiographical motif is paradoxical given not only the traditional demonization of the bear but also the sheer terror bears could instill in people. As for the Jewish sages of the Talmud, 87 for most Christian patristic writers and hagiographers the bear was not a creature that one could be sure to encounter only through reading and the imagination. Although extinct today from many of its former habitats around the world (despite current efforts to restore them to some such places—for instance, the Italian Alps 88), bears still inhabited most of the regions known to the church fathers and medieval saints. Although Pliny denies that any bears inhabited Africa, 89 his copier and “abbreviator” Julius Solinus (fl. after 200) devotes chapter 26 of his own Collectanea rerum memorabilium (a.k.a. Polyhistor) to “the bears of Numidia,” and Pliny’s claim is later dismissed by Topsell, who suggests that Pliny mistook Africa for Crete. 90 The alleged abundance of bears in Numidia during the fourth and fifth centuries CE leads Pastoureau to speculate that Augustine not only saw bears in his native North Africa but that he or one of his entourage may have been victimized by one. 91 In contrast to the European lion (panthera leo europaea) that populated southern Europe in prehistoric times but was extinct in western areas by the start of the Common Era, and disappeared from eastern Europe by the end of the first century CE, the bear continued through late antiquity and the Middle Ages to abound throughout the continent, including many regions where it now is extinct. This is noteworthy because, while the Bible often alludes to lions and bears almost interchangeably, bears were immediately “real” to the European Christian in a way that lions were not, with the obvious exception of the martyrs who were thrown to the (presumably imported) lions in the Roman amphitheaters. Christians had likewise been exposed to bears in the arenas, to be “hugged and mangled,” as was the martyr St. Agapius (d. 306) by one. 92 Yet the representations of bears devouring humans on the capitals in a monastery of southern France putatively reflect, in part, the monks’ immediate fear of actual wild beasts in the surrounding countryside. Despite the story of Agapius, most Christian saints, martyrs, and virgins tend to fare miraculously well when confronted by a bear. In some cases, the encounter occurs simply by chance, as reportedly happened with the sixthcentury bishop of Arras, St. Vedast (Vaast). When he returned to the Cathedral Church of Arras after it had been ravaged by the Vandals, Vedast found that it was overgrown with brambles, and that it had become the den of a giant bear who menacingly approached him. Vedast drove off the beast, bidding it never to return to pollute that holy ground again. While this bear is considered a symbol of the brutality with which the Vandals had invaded and desolated the church in that region, and which Vedast had come to exorcise, 93 a similar occurrence, albeit without the pagan symbolism, is recorded of St. William of Monte Virgine (d. 1142). While William was leading a solitary life of austerity in the wilderness, a bear kept trampling and muddy-

32

Eric Ziolkowski

ing the little fountain from which the hermit drank, with the consequence that he repeatedly had to mend it. One day, upon catching the bear in the act, William rushed at the beast, ordering it to leave, at which it fled in fright, never to return there again. 94 In the cases of other saints, the exposure to bears is purposeful inasmuch as the beasts are let loose for the express purpose of maiming and killing them, typically in an arena for a crowd’s entertainment. More often than not, however, the bear miraculously desists from harming the saint. For example, according to Eusebius, the virgin St. Blandina, before her martyrdom in 177 in Lyons, was exposed to wild beasts (θηρία), but they would not touch her. 95 Although Eusebius’s source does not specify the kinds of beasts (except for the bull that later kills her 96), iconography shows Blandina bound to a post, with a lion or bear nearby, like Daniel in the lions’ den (Daniel 6:1–28). Two similar tales emerge from North Africa in the year 303, during the persecution under Diocletian and Maximian. When four she-bears were let loose against Sts. Marcellus, Mammaea, and numerous other Christians by Cultianus, governor of the Thebaid, the animals showed no inclination to harm them but instead “rolled in the sand,” leading Cultianus to pronounce the bears “bewitched” and to opt to having the Christians’ heads cut off instead. 97 Likewise, in July 304, when the governor of Turbino, North Africa, sent a bear against the young saints Maxima, Donatilla, and Secunda in the theater, the beast refused to touch them, and so they were then martyred by a soldier with a sword. 98 Pope Gregory the Great (ca. 540–604; r. from 590) tells a kindred tale about the sixth-century martyr St. Cerbonius, Bishop of Populonia (Piombino): having incurred the wrath of the Ostrogothic king Totila, Cerbonius was cast before a terrible bear, but the beast miraculously bowed in submission and licked his feet. 99 Another virgin martyr, St. Colomba of Sens (d. 273/74), was saved by, not from, a bear. Imprisoned for being a Christian, she was defended by a bear against a Roman guard who intended to violate her; when the emperor ordered soldiers to enter her prison to draw her out, the bear threatened them with his paws. 100 Evidently related to, but inverting, this story is the annual bear festival—Fête de l’ours—in the Pyrenean region of Vallespir. The festival is based on the legend of a local virgin carried off by a bear who intended to rape her in his cave (a motif not peculiar to this tale), but who was thwarted by her incessant praying to Notre-Dame d’El Coral. 101 A variation on the bear scene in Columba’s legend occurs in an account of the martyrdom of St. Euphemia of Chalcedon (d. ca. 303), only in this case the bear serves as the virgin’s mercy killer: when tortured in the amphitheater, Euphemia prays to God to end her suffering, at which a bear kills her with a snap of its teeth and then crouches reverently beside her corpse. 102 Another variation, where a bear inadvertently saves a pious virgin from potential despoliation by a man, occurs in the story of the beautiful St. Amalberga (Amalburga) of

From Ursus Diabolus to Ursus Ex Machina

33

Munsterbilzen (d. ca. 770/772), who was born at Ardennes and raised in the abbey of Munsterbilzen. According to the legend, none other than King Pepin demanded her hand for his son Charles (Charlemagne), despite her staunchly professed devotion to the Lord. When Charles came to the abbey to lavish endearments upon her, she received them with repugnance. His attention was fortunately distracted by a bear which had eaten a woman’s honey and upset her hive. He forgot Amalberga, to pursue and kill the bear. But when the bear was dead, and, hot and exhausted, Charles returned to prosecute his amorous advances, to his indignation he found that the damsel had run away. 103

Like Columba’s ursine protector, and like the bear who embodies the distraction that enables Amalberga to eschew her unwanted royal suitor, a bear that miraculously appears in Eugippius’s (fifth–sixth century) Life of the monkhermit St. Severinus of Noricum (ca. 410–82) functions as a veritable deus ex machina. However, Severinus, unlike any other saint of whom I am aware, appears to have had some sort of visionary, even telepathic, connection with the bear. As Eugippius tells the tale, in the middle of a harsh winter, when Maximus of Noricum and a large number of companions tried rashly to cross the heights of the Alps to visit Severinus in his abode in Lauriacum, they found themselves engulfed by snow on the way. Yet just as they were about to give up hope of survival, the leader of the convoy had a dream in which a man of God commanded him not to be afraid, and to continue his journey. When the group therefore continued their march, suddenly a gigantic bear appeared at their side “by divine command,” and this creature proceeded to guide them the rest of the way. Upon their arrival, when told of it, Severinus ordered for “those whom a bear opened the way by which they might come” to be admitted. Hearing this, everyone was astonished at the allusion Severinus made to something that had occurred in his absence. 104 Gregory tells another saint-and-bear tale that resonates with the aforementioned biblical anecdote about Elisha. The sixth-century, possibly Irishborn eremite Florentius, having prayed for comfort in his isolated oratory outside Norcia, found a bear standing outside, whom he accepted as a fellow monk, calling him “brother.” Each day henceforth the bear obeyed the commands by Florentius to guard his sheep. Inverting the attacker-role of Elisha’s bears, this submissive bear was later killed by four monks who envied Florentius. After Florentius then cursed them, the four monks contracted leprosy and died, 105 just as the mauling of the forty-two boys in 2 Kings 2:24 seems to have been prompted by the stare with which Elisha fixed the boys after they derided him. At least one account of a saint’s experience with a bear resembles the tale-type constituted by Aesop’s fable of Androcles and the lion (ATU

34

Eric Ziolkowski

156). 106 The hermit Aventine of Troyes (martyred ca. 538), who had already established a specially sympathetic relationship with the wildlife surrounding his cave in the forest, remained unalarmed when he encountered a limping, plaintively roaring bear. He discovered in the bear’s paw a thorn, which he extracted, whereupon the bear caressed him and departed. 107 This same tale, notes Sabine Baring-Gould, is told of Aventine’s eighth-century namesake, St. Aventine of Larbouste. 108 In contrast, the sixth-century Welsh saint Gudwal, when presented with the corpse of a lamb killed by a wolf, successfully prayed for the lamb’s life to be restored, beseeching God to recall David’s slaying lions and bears to save a lamb’s life (1 Samuel 17:34–36a). A Christianized variant of that Davidic tale is the disclosure that St. Marsus (d. 462), a monk of Auxerre who worked as a shepherd, was so compassionate toward wildlife that, by his command, he sent away bears and other animals normally hostile to humans and their flocks, thus preempting the need to kill the predators as David did. Here, as a kind of “reality check” against such tales leading to a romanticized, overly harmonious image of what might be possible in the relationship between humans and bears, it is worth noting certain common folkloric motifs that suggest the extreme danger of befriending, let alone trying to domesticate, wild beasts such as bears. Pertinent in this respect are those motifs catalogued by Stith Thompson 109 as W154.2.1–Rescued animal threatens rescuer and J1172.3–Ungrateful animal returned to captivity. The latter motif is linked to one especially widespread tale-type, ATU 155–Ingratitude Is the World’s Reward, of a man who rescues a serpent or bear which in return seeks to kill its rescuer, with the consequence that a fox, acting as judge, advises the man to restore the offending creature to captivity. In other tales, it is purely by accident that the beast kills its master. As noted by the folklorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 110 among the parables her informant Dvora Katz (b. 1915) learned from her mother (d. 1949), with whom Dvora immigrated from Poland to Canada in 1929, were those that fit the category Aa-Th 163A*–The Bear Chases away the Flies that annoy his master, whom it by chance strikes dead, comparable to Aa-Th 1586A–Fatal Killing of the Insect (c) A tame bear sees a bee light on his sleeping master’s mouth and drops a heavy stone on the bee, killing his master 111; and also to Thompson’s motiftype N333.2–Man accidentally killed by bear trying to chase away flies. Nonetheless, despite such hazards as those to which these types of tales and motifs allude, stories are not lacking of saints who entered friendships with bears. After Columban(us) of Luxeuil (ca. 540–615) was banished from Gaul by Queen Brunehault (Brunehild), a bear yielded its cave to him for shelter as he fled to Switzerland, and another bear later yielded a dead stag whose skin he used for shoes for his fellow monks. 112 Likewise Columban’s Irish companion St. Gall (Gallus, d. ca. 630/40) was served by a bear who carried wood for him and whom he rewarded with bread. 113 Gall, like Aven-

From Ursus Diabolus to Ursus Ex Machina

35

tine and Florentius, had befriended the bear by removing a thorn from its paw, 114 while St. Gerold of Saxony (d. 978), like Gall, employed a bear to portage wood and stones after rescuing it from a pack of dogs. As late as the fourteenth century, the Russian anchorite St. Sergius of Radonezh (Sergii Radonezhsky, ca. 1315–92), dwelling in a hut in the woods amid numerous wild beasts, reportedly befriended a bear by “shar[ing] his last piece of bread with him.” 115 Within the legends about friendships between saints and bears, a recurrent motif concerns a bear who, acting seemingly as a providential agent, leads the holy personage to some specific site that either proves to be of some special functional value or actually becomes a sacred space. A classic example is the admittedly unreliable legend of St. Magnoald (or Mangold or Magnus, d. ca. 655). Probably a native of Swabia, Magnoald was an associate of Columban and Gall, and at some point founded a monastery at Füssen, Bavaria. In the mountains of that region, so the story goes, Magnoald befriended a bear, who led him with manifest deliberateness to discover the iron mines that continued to be worked long afterwards. 116 Legend also has it that the Germanic hermit-saint Gislenus or Ghislain (Guislain, Gisel, Ghysel, Ghyselen, d. ca. 680) gave refuge to a hunted bear, who afterwards gratefully led him to the location of the holy man’s future monastery, called Ursidongus, “bear’s den”—where the monks, to commemorate its origin, reportedly “always keep a bear and an eagle.” 117 Likewise, the Alsatian St. Richardis (Rigardis, Richardam, ca. 840–95) had a vision that she was to found her convent (of Andlau) by a hill where she would find a bear with its cubs scratching the ground (fig. 2). 118 Not all friendships between saints and bears begin in a kindly way. The fifth-century Syrian-born St. James, the first bishop of the Tarentaise Valley in the French Alps, after reprimanding a bear that had killed one of the oxen being used to draw wood for building a church, harnessed the bear and made it complete the ox’s task. Later, when the workers wanted to slay the bear, the saint intervened, commanding it to return to the woods. 119 Similarly, the Bavarian saint Corbinian (Korbinian, 7th–8th centuries), on a pilgrimage to Rome, was so angered at seeing his pack-donkey being devoured by a bear that he put his baggage onto the bear’s back, in the manner of Gall and Gerold, and compelled the beast to transport it to Rome. 120 Likewise, St. Marinus (century uncertain), originally a stone mason of Dalmatia, but later a hermit, found amusement in taming a bear to carry loads for him high up in the mountains after having fled there to escape a Dalmatian peasant woman who had come searching for him, claiming to be his wife. 121 Variants of this motif of the bear whom a saint converts into a beast of burden also recur in the lives of Martin of Tours (ca. 316–97); Maximin (d. 349); Amand of Maastricht (ca. 584–675/79); 122 Amand’s disciple, Humbert of Marolles (d. 680); 123 and a number of others. 124 In the tales of certain other saints who all

36

Eric Ziolkowski

happen to have been bishops, such as James of Tarentaise (as mentioned earlier), Elgius of Noyon (ca. 558–660), and Arigius of Gap (d. ca. 605), the bear is set to work pulling a plow like, or even with, an ox. 125 In this last case, the bear became so devoted to Arigius that, when the saint died, it joined an ox in pulling the funeral cart. 126 A legend about St. Romedius (Remedius) of Trent (4th or 5th or 11th century) has the holy man subduing, bridling, and then actually riding a bear that killed his horse. 127 CONCLUSION Such stories confirmed for the medieval laity the Church’s power to tame not only bears but also the chaos represented by the wilderness, as well as, symbolically, the wild pagan. 128 Additionally, one does not have to be a hardcore Freudian to suspect that the motif of the taming and domesticating of wild bears by saintly anchorites sublimates at least in part the subjugation of sexual lust, which we saw above to be associated with the bear. Even St. Corbinian’s fellow Bavarian, Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI, found special meaning in such a tale. The bear that appears on Benedict’s papal coat of arms recalls for him Augustine’s meditation on Psalm 73 (72 in the Vulgate), especially verse 22: “I was like a brute beast toward you.” Augustine took this “beast” to be a draft animal, and compared his own episcopal work to an ox drawing a wagon—God’s wagon. Before becoming pope, Ratzinger wrote: “Isn’t Korbinian’s bear, compelled . . . to carry the saint’s pack, a picture of my own life? . . . I am God’s pack animal.” 129 I end with a legendary anecdote about the martyr Blaise (d. 316?), Bishop of Sebaste in Anatolia and patron saint of wild animals and also of Candlemas. The latter association led to Blaise’s identification with bears because that holy day occurred around the time they emerged from winter hibernation. 130 Blaise was characterized as a bear-like man, and it has been argued that his legend stems from the same stream of pagan myth to which Orpheus, himself an arguably ursine figure, belongs. 131 When the city was purged of Christians, Blaise, by then an old man, fled to a mountain cave and immersed himself in prayer. According to his legend, “Attracted by the scent of his virtues, wild animals approached him as a second Adam and waited quietly at the mouth of the cave for him to complete his prayer and give them his blessing or heal their wounds.” 132 One day, there came to his mountain a party of soldiers sent by Agricolaus, the governor of Cappadocia, to trap wild beasts to which Agricolaus planned to feed Christians in the amphitheater. The soldiers, to their own amazement, “came upon a large group of fierce animals, lions, tigers, bears, wolves and others grazing peacefully together outside Saint Blaise’s cave.” 133

From Ursus Diabolus to Ursus Ex Machina

37

This story hardly bespeaks a restoration of the prelapsarian but precarious, threatened paradise Eden pictured in Cornelis’s Adam and Eve in Paradise. Yet the Blaise tale does suggest a fulfillment of the prophet’s forevision, at Hosea 2:18, of a divinely established “covenant” between fallen humans and beasts—including, we may presume, the bear. ABBREVIATIONS Aa-Th

Aarne‒Thompson classification system. In Antti Aarne. The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography. Trans. and enlarged by Stith Thompson. 2nd rev. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. [=Folklore Fellows Communications 184]

ATU

Aarne–Thompson–Uther classification system. In Hans-Jörg Uther. The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography Based on the System of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson. 3 vols. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2004 [= Folklore Fellows Communications 284–86].

BLS

Butler’s Lives of the Saints. 4 vols. “Complete Edition.” Edited, revised, and supplemented by Herbert Thurston and Donald Attwater. New York: P. K. Kennedy and Sons, 1962.

DSSA

James Hall. Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art. Rev. ed. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.

EBR

Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. Ed. Hans-Josef Klauck, Bernard McGinn, et al. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009–.

FC

The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation. Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1947–. [Patristic series]

HDS

The Herder Dictionary of Symbols: Symbols from Art, Archaeology, Mythology, Literature, and Religion. Trans. Boris Matthews. Ed. Deborah Farrell and Carole Presser. Wilmette, IL: Chiron, 1993.

HFfBSI Topsell, Edward. 1967. The History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents and Insects. 3 vols. “An unabridged reproduction of the 1658 edition published in London, . . . reproduced from a copy in the rare book collection of the Library of the American Museum of Natural History.” [Vols. 1–2 = “taken principally from the Historiae animalium of Conrad Gesner”; vol. 3 = “translation of Insectorum sive minimorum animalium theatrum.] New York: Da Capo.

38

Eric Ziolkowski

LS

Sabine Baring-Gould. The Lives of the Saints. 16 vols. “New and revised ed.” Edinburgh: J. Grant, 1914.

PG

Patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca. 162 vols. Ed. J.-P. Migne. Paris, 1857–86.

PL

Patrologiae cursus completes, series latina. 222 vols. Ed. J.-P. Migne. Paris, 1844–55; 1862–64.

TIB

The Illustrated Bartsch. Norwalk, CT: Abaris Books, 1978–. Gen. ed. Walter L. Strauss. NOTES

1. Portions of this essay draw upon Eric Ziolkowski, “Bear,” in the Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception [30 prospective volumes], ed. Hans-Josef Klauck et al. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009–; hereafter EBR), 3 (2011): cols. 626–50. I also wish to acknowledge with gratitude my reliance on the Index of Christian Art, recently renamed the Index of Medieval Art, at Princeton University for access to its reproductions of some of the manuscript miniatures and other medieval artworks referenced in this essay. 2. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; illus. in Eric Ziolkowski, “The Fox and the Fall: Vulpine Associations with Heresy, the Devil, and Eden’s Serpent,” in Zohar Hadromi-Allouche and Áine Larkin, eds., Fall Narratives (Abingdon, New York: Routledge, 2017), 151–169. 3. We will not concern ourselves in this essay with the other creatures that appear in various places much further away in the background. These include not only a pair of sheep, some large walking birds, and a deer-like creature gathered around a much smaller image of Adam and Eve with their backs toward us (as they are led out Eden after their sin?), but also an antlered deer or moose partially visible behind the left forearm of the main, foreground-Adam, and a dragon-like creature, with obviously Satanic implications, in the far background on the picture’s right side, behind Eve’s left arm. 4. My following comments on the lion follow James Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, rev. ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1979; hereafter DSSA), p. 193, s.v. “Lion”; and The Herder Dictionary of Symbols: Symbols from Art, Archaeology, Mythology, Literature, and Religion, trans. Boris Matthews, ed. Deborah Farrell and Carole Presser (Wilmette, IL: Chiron, 1993; hereafter HDS), p. 121, s.v. “Lion.” See also Deirdre Jackson, Lion (London: Reaktion, 2010), 127–29. 5. The use of the lion as a symbol of Christ is developed further, for example, in Physiologus, trans. Michael J. Curley (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), pp. 3–4, s.v. “ . . . of the Lion . . . ” 6. Compare the claim by Pliny the Elder, Natural History 10.83.176; trans. H. Rackham, 10 vols. Latin/English parallel texts, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938–63), 3 (1940): 404–5, that lionesses, like she-bears and vixens, produce offspring that are unfinished at birth, and form them by licking them—an idea that seems to be represented in the illustration in a bestiary in the British Library, Royal MS 12 C. xix, fol. 6r. 7. I am grateful to Dr. Bianca Falbo for this identification of the breed. 8. EBR 6 (2013): cols. 1032–34, s.v. “Dog. I. Ancient Near East and Hebrew Bible/Old Testament,” by Ralph K. Hawkins; and “II. New Testament,” by Joseph Verheyden. 9. Louis Réau, Iconographie de l’art chrétien, 3 vols. [in 6] (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1955–59), 2, pt. 2 (1957): 349. Andrea di Bonaiuto’s allegory Via Veritatis (a.k.a. Church Militant and Triumphant), fresco, ca. 1366–68, Spanish Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, features a plethora of “dogs of the Lord” (domini canes, a putative pun on “Dominicans,” a.k.a. God’s watch-dogs). Two of these dogs, whose black-and-white coats match the Dominicans’ attire, guard the sheep in front of the pope, while numerous others are dispatched to retrieve lost sheep (=the faithful) to the church, and to attack the wolves (=heretics) who

From Ursus Diabolus to Ursus Ex Machina

39

might harm them. Thus the dogs, whose Dominican association recalls the one ascribed to the dogs that licked Lazarus’s wounds, serve as agents of the pope (=church) and emperor (=state), seated above the sheep, as well as of St. Dominic (=Dominican Order), who directs them from above, and, implicitly, of Christ, protector of humankind—in keeping with the biblically-rooted Christian Good Shepherd theme. Cf. Laura Hobgood-Oster, Holy Dogs and Asses: Animals in the Christian Tradition (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2008), pp. 91–92; and Joseph Polzer, “Andrea di Bonaiuto’s Via Veritatis and Dominican Thought in Late Medieval Italy,” Art Bulletin 77, no. 2 (June 1995): 262–89, specifically 268. 10. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Nizqei mammon; cited by Joshua Schwartz s.v. “Dog. III. Judaism,” EBR 6 (2013): cols. 1034–37; at 1036. 11. Eusebius, Historia ecclesica 10.4, in Patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca, 162 vols., ed. J.-P. Migne (1857–86; hereafter PG), 20:853B. 12. See EBR 6 (2013): cols. 1038–44, s.v. “Dog. IV. Christianity,” by Eric Ziolkowski. 13. Matthäus Ratzeberger, Die handschriftliche Geschichte Ratzeberger’s über Luther und seine Zeit, ed. C. G. Neudecker (Jena: F. Mauke, 1850), p. 54; see also Friedrich Myconius, Geschichte der Reformation, ed. O. Clemen (Leipzig: R. Voigtländer, 1914), p. 37. 14. HFfBSI 1:112. 15. Jacob Matham (after Hendrik Goltzius), The Fall of Man, 1606, National Gallery, Washington, DC. 16. Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Garden of Eden, with the Fall of Man, ca. 1615, Royal Picture Gallery, Mauritshuis, The Hague. 17. HFfBSI 1:82. 18. Desmond Morris, Monkey (London: Reaktion, 2013), p. 46. On the ape’s reputation for imitating human beings, see also HFfBSI 1:4. 19. Adam and Eve in Paradise, engraving from La Bible historiée de Antoine Vérard (Paris, ca. 1499), illus. in H. W. (Horst Woldemar) Janson, Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1952), p. 125, fig. 3; Jan Gossaert, The Fall of Man, painting (after 1520), Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; Ludwig Krug, Adam and Eve (The Fall of Man), Solnhofen limestone, 1514, Skulpturensammlung, inv. no. 805, Bode Museum, Berlin (illus. in Janson, Apes, pl. 18b; discussed, p. 127); Erhard Aldorfer, Fall of Man, woodcut, before 1533 (illus. in Janson, Apes, pl. 19a; discussed p. 128). On the distinction between tailed monkeys and (for the most part) tail-less apes, see also HFfBSI 1:5. 20. Museo Correr, Venice. 21. Metropolitan Museum, New York. 22. Uffizi Gallery, Florence. 23. Monogramist I.E., active ca. 1480–1500, Christ in the Wilderness Served by Six Angels (probably after Schongauer), engraving, Vienna/Munich/Vatican; see The Illustrated Bartsch (Norwalk, CT: Abaris Books, 1978–; hereafter TIB), vol. 8 (Commentary), pt. 1: Early German Artists: Martin Schongauer, Ludwig Schongauer, and Copyists (1996), by Jane Campbell Hutchinson, p. 279. 24. See our next note below. 25. I am grateful to Dr. Charles Holliday for distinguishing the two anurans in this picture as toads (by the roughness of their skin and their shortened faces), and for identifying the two slugs or shell-less snails (= Gastropoda mollusk) as such. 26. Physiologus, trans. Curley, p. 24, s.v. “On the Hedgehog.” 27. HDS 97, s.v. “Hedgehog.” 28. Quoted in J. M. Neale, Medivaeval Preachers and Mediaeval Preaching: A Series of Extracts, Translated from the Sermons of the Middle Ages, Chronologically Arranged (London: J. & C. Mozley, 1856), p. 246. 29. In addition to the examples cited in our next note below, see, for example, the mosaic, 1180–99, on the south wall, zone 2 of the nave of the Monreale Cathedral, Palermo, Sicily. 30. See in particular the Anglo-Norman miniature, 1320–40, of the creation scene with Christ-Logos in the Holkham Picture Bible, London, British Library, Add. 47682, fol. 2v; and also, for example, the full-page Gothic miniature, 1270–80, representing the fifth and sixth day of creation, in the Holland Psalter, Cambridge, John’s College Library, K.26, fol. 3r.

40

Eric Ziolkowski

31. Pen drawing of Adam naming the animals, North English, Gothic, 1250–60, Ainwick Bestiary, Ainwick, Duke of Northumberland Collection, fol. 5v. An owl and monkey are among the creatures pictured in the miniature, English (North Midlands), 1190–1200, Gothic, Saint Petersburg Bestiary, Saint Petersburg Library, lat. Q.v.V.1, fol. 5r. 32. New York, Morgan Library and Museum, M.75, fol. 111r. 33. HDS 143–44, s.v. “Owl.” 34. Physiologus, trans. Curley, p. 10, s.v. “On the Owl.” 35. Examples of the “nycticorax despised”—i.e., an owl surrounded, attacked, and/or pursued by other birds—include: Romanesque stone sculpture, capital 2, first half of twelfth century, nave, right side, Notre-Dame Church, Cunault; two pen drawings with color wash, 1310–20, London, British Library, Roy.2 B. VII (Queen Mary’s Psalter), fol. 128v, 129r; a Gothic wood sculpture, ca. 1340–60, on one of the south stalls (misericord 9) in the Gloucester Cathedral. For discussion of another example of the nycticorax-despised image in its specific connection with the Jews see Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 137. 36. See the work by Gossaert and Monogramist I.E. referenced in nn. 19 and 23 above. 37. Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-books, and Local Legends [1932–36], 6 vols., rev., enl. ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955–1958), motif-type A1958.0.1. See also Oskar Dähnhardt, Natursagen: eine Sammlung naturdeutender Sagen, Märchen, Fabeln und Legenden, 4 vols. (Leipzig/Berlin: B. G. Teubner, 1907–1912), 2 (1909): 123. This notion found its way into Ophelia’s comment in Shakespeare’s Hamlet 4.5.42–44: “They say the owl was a baker’s daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be”; quoted from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), p. 1173. Also related seems to be the folkloric parallel: “Die Eule frisst, was herunterfällt, als Christus das Abendmahl austeilt; es wachsen ihr Flügel, und sie wird zum Nachtvoge” (Dähnhardt, Natursagen, 1 [1907]: 197). 38. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, motif-type G211.4.4. 39. Dähnhardt, Natursagen, 1 (1907): 164. 40. See, e.g., HFfBSI 1:83, where cats are pronounced “an unclean and impure beast,” and it is stated that “the familiars of Witches do most ordinarily appear in the shape of Cats.” 41. In addition to the two works by Goltzius cited in the next note below, see, for example, Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve, engraving, 1504, Metropolitan Museum, New York, accession no. 19.73.1. 42. For example, in the two works by Hendrick Goltzius, Adam and Eve (The Fall, The Temptation), engraving, ca. 1597, British Museum, and The Fall of Man, painting, 1616, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and also Rubens/Brueghel, The Garden of Eden (n. 16 above). 43. HFfBSI 1:82. 44. HFfBSI 1:179. 45. See Ziolkowski, “The Fox and the Fall” (n. 2 above), and also EBR 9 (2014): cols. 567–80, s.v. “Fox IV. Christianity; V. Literature and Film; VI. Visual Arts,” by E. Ziolkowski. 46. Topsell practically identifies the toad with the frog, pronouncing the former “the most noble kinde of Frog” (HFfBSI 2:726). 47. On these biblical connections see the articles by Judith Krawelitzki, Eric Ziolkowski, and Peter Malone, in EBR 9 (2014): cols. 755–67, s.v. “Frog.” On the frogs’ role in the Egyptian plague, see also HFfBSI 2:720. However, Topsell wrongly suggests that the frogs in Revelation 16:13–14 “come out of the Whore of Babylon” (HFfBSI 2:728), when in fact the Whore does not appear until Revelation’s next chapter. 48. HFfBSI 2:722. 49. Prado, Madrid. 50. In group 2 of limestone sculptures, capital, French, mid-twelfth century, from St.-Mélaine Church, Preuilly-sur-Claise, Southern Touraine; now in Cleveland Museum of Art, inv. 1930.18. 51. Stone capital, French, twelfth century, apse (exterior), St. Pierre Church, Blesle, southcentral France.

From Ursus Diabolus to Ursus Ex Machina

41

52. Sculpture, Spanish (Navarra), late eleventh century–early twelfth century, zone 1c, west exterior wall of Church of San Salvador, Leyre, northern Navarre, Spain. 53. J.-A.-S. Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire infernal ou Répertoire universel des êtres, des personnages, des livres, des faits et des choses qui tiennent aux apparitions, aux divinations, à la magie, au commerce de l’enfer, aux démons, aux sorciers, [etc.], 5th ed. (Brussels: Société nationale, 1845), p. 147, s.v. “Crapaud.” 54. HDS 199, s.v. “Toad.” 55. HDS 30, s.v. “Butterfly.” 56. HFfBSI 3:974. 57. See borders around the images of the creation of Eve by Christ-Logos from Adam’s rib; her being given to Adam by God; Adam’s and her being commanded by God; and her spinning while Adam labors, after the Fall, in Princeton University Library, Garrett 63 (Flemish), fols. 2r, 4r, 6r, 12r. 58. See the butterfly in the frame around the painting of Adam and Eve commanded by God, Bible Historiale of Guyart Desmoulins, ca. 1325, New York, Morgan Library and Museum, M.322–323, fol. 13v. 59. German (Franconia, Nuremberg), ca. 1520, New York, Morgan Library and Museum, M.896, no. 2. 60. Hours, Dutch (Haarlem), 1496, New York, Morgan Library and Museum, S.2, fol. 72r. 61. By Simon Bening and workshop, Flemish, Renaissance style, 1510–20, Da Costa Hours, New York, Morgan Library and Museum, M.399, fol. 82v. 62. Margins of painting, French (Île-de-France, Paris), Gothic, 1349–51, in the Saint-Denis Missal, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, L.1346–1891, fol. 242r. 63. In the frames around two different miniatures showing protomartyr Stephen: one by the Master of the Older Prayerbook of Maximilian (possibly Alexander Bening), Gothic, ca. 1500–10, Breviary of Eleanor of Portugal, New York, Morgan Library and Museum, M.52, fol. 37v; a second one in the Saint-Denis Missal (n. 62 above), fol. 35v. 64. French (Normandy or Loire), Gothic, last quarter of fifteenth century, New York, Morgan Library and Museum, G.4, fol. 102v. 65. HFfBSI 3:957, 975. 66. HDS 176, s.v. “Snail.” 67. N. 19 above. 68. See Janson, Apes, pp. 262–66. 69. Eric Ziolkowski, Evil Children in Religion, Literature, and Art (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001). 70. Pliny, Natural History 8.54.131: “In its idiocy, no other animal is more adroit in wrongdoing [nec alteri animalium in maleficio stultitia sollertior]”; trans. Rackham, 3 (1940): 92–93. 71. HFfBSI 1:28. 72. Michel Pastoureau, L’ours: histoire d’un roi déchu (Paris: Seuil, 2007), p. 161; Eng.: The Bear: History of a Fallen King, trans. George Holoch (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), p. 119. The passages Pastoureau cites from Augustine to support this last observation are not those that are most directly relevant to it. See our next note below for the pertinent passage. 73. See Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram imperfectus liber, ch. 16, §60, in Patrologiae cursus completes, series latina, 222 vols., ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1844–55; 1862–64; hereafter PL), 34 (1845): 243–44; Eng.: On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis: An Unfinished Book, trans. Roland J. Teske, FC 84 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991), p. 186. 74. David’s combat against both a bear and a lion is pictured, for example, in a miniature in Speculum humanae salvationis, Constance, ca. 1320, Kremsmünster, Austria, Stiftsbibliothek, cod. 242, fol. 19; illus. Pastoureau, L’ours, fig. 16; The Bear, thirteenth unnumbered plate between pp. 120 and 121. 75. Augustine, Sermones, Classis prima: De Veteri et Novo Testamento, sermo 37 (De David et Isai patre suo, et de Golia), §4, in PL 39 (1846): 1819. 76. See, for example, Pastoureau, L’ours, pp. 123, 154, 161–78, etc.; The Bear, pp. 89, 114, 119–32, etc.

42

Eric Ziolkowski

77. See DSSA 42, s.v. “Bear”; HDS 20. The bear as an emblem of glotonie (gluttony) occurs in Vincent of Beauvais, Miroir historial, ca. 1459–63, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. Fr. 50, fol. 25; illus. in Pastoureau, L’ours, fig. 22; The Bear, third unnumbered plate between pp. 184 and 185. 78. For example, HFfBSI 1:29: “A Bear is of a most venereous and lustful disposition, for night and day the females with most ardent inflamed desires, do provoke the males to copulation; and for this cause at that time they are most fierce and angry.” See also Pastoureau, L’ours, pp. 98–103, 109, 118–119, etc.; The Bear, 69–72, 77, 84, etc. 79. Réau, Iconographie, 1 (1955):110. 80. Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire infernal, p. 354, s.v. “Ours.” 81. The Devil in bear form, Psalter from Polling, southwestern Germany, after 1235, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, claim 11308, fol. 10v; illus. in Pastoureau, L’ours, fig. 19; The Bear, sixteenth unnumbered plate between pp. 120 and 121. 82. Pastoureau lists twenty-two such saints, not including some of those discussed by us below; see L’ours, p. 145; The Bear, p. 107. 83. See Pastoureau, L’ours, pp. 145–46; The Bear, p. 107. 84. Fourteen such saints are listed by Helen Roeder, Saints and Their Attributes, with a Guide to Localities and Patronage (London: Longmans, Green, 1955), pp. 55–58, s.v. “Bear.” 85. Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, 16 vols., “new and revised ed.” (Edinburgh: J. Grant, 1914; hereafter LS), 5:271; cf. 1:376. 86. HFfBSI 1:32. 87. See EBR 3 (2011): cols. 630–32, s.v. “Bear IV. Judaism,” by Eric Ziolkowski. 88. As reported by Daniel Duane, ‘If Technology Helps Us Save the Wilderness, Will the Wilderness Still Be Wild?’ International New York Times: Review, 12–13 March 2016, p. 7. 89. Pliny, Natural History 8.54.131; trans. Rackham, 3 (1940): 92–93. 90. HFfBSI 1:29. 91. Pastoureau, L’ours, p. 162; The Bear, p. 120. 92. Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, 16 vols., “new and revised ed.” (Edinburgh: J. Grant, 1914; hereafter LS), 14:459. Compare Baring-Gould’s description of Euphemia’s martyrdom in n. 102 below. 93. LS 2:181. See also Hieromonk Makarios of Simonos Petra, The Synaxarion: The Lives of the Saints of the Orthodox Church, 5 vols., trans. Christopher Hookway et al. (Ormylia, Chalkidike, Greece: Holy Convent of the Annunciation of Our Lady, 1998–2005), 3 (2001): 436. 94. LS 6:362. 95. Eusebius, Historia ecclesica 5.1, in PG 20:424B. 96. Ibid. 97. LS 9:330. 98. LS 8:679. 99. Gregory the Great, Dialogi 3.11, in PL 77 (1849): 237A–B; Eng.: Dialogues, trans. Odo John Zimmermann, FC 39 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1959), p. 126. See also LS 11:229; BLS 4:80. 100. LS 15:412, s.v. “S. Columba, V.M.” According to a variant account, when the emperor then ordered her prison to be set ablaze, the bear knocked over the torch-bearer. A statue of St. Columba blessing her bear is found in Notre-Dame d’El Coral, Prats-de-Mollo, Southern France (Pyrénées). A photo of this statue is viewable at: “Prats-de-Mollo: Notre-Dame d’El Coral”; accessible at: http://www.interfaithmary.net/pages/Prats-de-Mollo.htm. 101. An account of this legend, together with photos of the Fête de l’ours, is found on the same website cited in our last note above. Likewise, Conrad Gesner reports, on the authority of Philippus Cosseus of Constance, “that in the Mountains of Savoy, a Bear carryed a young maid into his den by violence, where in venereous manner he had the carnal use of her body” (Historiae animalium. [. . . ] Liber primus. De quadrupedibus viuiparis [1555], 2nd ed. [Frankfurt: Cambier, 1602], 944; as rendered in HFfBSI 1:29). 102. “Greatmartyr Euphemia the All-praised,” Orthodox Church in America; accessed at: https://oca.org/saints/lives/2008/09/16/102626-greatmartyr-euphemia-the-all-praised. The martyrdom of St. Euphemia, including the bear, is illustrated in an anonymous woodcut found in

From Ursus Diabolus to Ursus Ex Machina

43

the Leben der Heiligen published by Anton Koberger in Nuremberg, 1488, in TIB, vol. 86, German Book Illustration before 1500. Part VII: Anonymous Artists, 1487–1488, ed. W. L. Strauss and Carol Schuler (New York: Abaris Books, 1984), p. 193, illus. no. 49 [17.173]. Regarding her death, Baring-Gould says only that Euphemia died when “cast to wild beasts, and hugged to death by a bear” (LS 10:258); according to BLS 3:567, “she was killed by a bear, while the other beasts fawned harmlessly around her feet.” 103. LS 7:262. 104. Eugippius, Vita sancti Severini Noricorum Apostoli 8.37, in PL 62 (1848): 1189C–1190B; Eng.: The Life of Saint Severin, trans. Ludwig Bieler with Ludmilla Kresten (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1965), pp. 84–85 [chap. 21, §§2–4]. 105. Gregory the Great, Dialogi 3.15, in PL 77 (1849): 249C–253A; Dialogues, pp. 136–37. An engraving of 1636 by Jacques Callot shows St. Florentius standing beside a bear and two deer, with what appears to be a lion behind him; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. 106. ATU hereafter designates: Aarne–Thompson–Uther classification system, in Hans-Jörg Uther, The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography Based on the System of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, 3 vols. (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2004) [= Folklore Fellows Communications 284–86]. 107. LS 2:85–86. 108. LS 6:75. 109. See n. 37 above. 110. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “A Parable in Context: A Social Interactional Analysis of Storytelling Performance,” in Dan Ben-Amos and Kenneth Goldstein, eds., Folklore: Performance and Communication (The Hague/Paris: Mouton, 1975), p. 108. 111. Aa-Th = Aarne‒Thompson classification system, in Antti Aarne, The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography, trans. and enlarged by Stith Thompson, 2nd revision (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961) [=Folklore Fellows Communications 184]. 112. LS 14:491, s.v. “S. Columbanus, AB.” 113. See LS 12:423, s.v. “S. Gall, H.” Images of St. Gall with the wood-bearing bear have been popular in art since the Middle Ages—as in, for example, the ivory binding plate covering an early tenth-century book of the Gospels, Saint-Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 53 (illus. in Pastoureau, L’ours, fig. 20; The Bear, first plate between pp. 184 and 185); an anonymous woodcut from Jacobus de Voragine, Leben der Heiligen, Winterteil, published by Stefen Arndes in Lübeck, 1488, fol. 29r, in TIB, vol. 86 (n. 102 above), p. 101, illus. no. 173 [11.118]; an anonymous woodcut from Jacobus de Voragine, Heiligenleben, Winterteil, published by Anton Sorg in Augsburg, 1888, in TIB, vol. 86 (n. 102 above), p. 343, illus. 980 [4.2529]; a stained glass window of 1668 in the Abbey of St. Gall Library, St. Gallen, Switzerland; a wall painting in the Filialkirche St. Venantius, Pfärrenbach, Gemeinde Horgenzell Wandgemälde im Kirchenschiff. A grouping of statues of Sts. Gall, Magnus, and Columban entitled Allgäuheilge by the German sculptor Bonifatius Stirnberg (b. 1933) includes a small bear standing next to Gallus. The statue is located beside the Autobahnkapelle (highway) Chapel St. Gallus, on Bundesautobahn 96, Leutkirch im Allgäu. For a photo, see: https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Autobahnkapelle_Leutkirch_Allg%C3%A4uheilige.jpg. 114. Réau, Iconographie, 3, pt. 2 (1958): 555. Réau pronounces St. Gall’s bear “the Swiss counterpart of St. Jerome’s lion.” 115. “Venerable Sergius of Radonezh,” ed. Bishop Alexander of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, Orthodox Christian Booklets; accessed at: http://www.fatheralexander.org/ booklets/english/saints/sergius_radonezh.htm. See also BLS 3:641. 116. LS 10:95. 117. LS 11:211–13; BLS 4:71. 118. St. Richardis is represented with a bear she holds by a leash on an unglazed Swiss tile of ca. 1440, found in Zürich, Ötenbachstrasse 13, now in the Swiss National Museum (Schweizerisches Landesmuseum), Zürich. I am grateful to Dr. Keller Lüthi of that Museum for sharing with me the details of this tile. There is also an 1871 statue of Richardis, with a bear seated beside her, by Philippe Grass (1801–76), Fontaine Sainte-Richarde (Saint Richardis Fountain), Place de la Mairie, Andlau (a.k.a. le village aux ours), Bas-Rhin, Alsace. 119. See LS 1:243.

44

Eric Ziolkowski

120. LS 10:122–23. This miracle involving St. Corbinian and the bear is illustrated in an image of ca. 1725 in brown ink and gray wash by Cosmas Damian Asam (German); and a painting of 1489 by Jan Polack in the Diocesan Museum, Freising. 121. LS 10:47. 122. St. Amand appears with his baggage-carrying bear in a miniature from a manuscript of the Vie de saint Amand, ca. 1160–70, Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 500, fol. 61 (illus. in Pastoreau, L’ours, fig. 21; The Bear, second plate betwen pp. 184 and 185). 123. See LS 3:459, 460. 124. See Pastoureau, L’ours, pp. 136–38; The Bear, pp. 100–101; cf. Robert E. Bieder, Bear (London: Reaktion, 2005), p. 80. 125. See Pastoureau, L’ours, pp. 138–39; The Bear, pp. 101–102. 126. Represented on a mural in the church of Auron, Alpes-Maritimes, ca. 1430–50, private collection; illus. in Pastoureau, L’ours, fig. 25; The Bear, thirteenth unnumbered plate between pp. 120 and 121. 127. Romedius’s bear is one of the recipients—some of them historical personages, others, fictive or legendary—of the forty letters that comprise Albino Luciani [who later became Pope John Paul I]. See his “All’orso di san Romedio: La bocca sporca,” in idem., Illustrissimi: lettere del patriarca (Padova: Messaggero, 1976), pp. 153–60; Eng.: “To the Bear of Saint Romedio: Dirty Mouths.” In idem. Illustrissimi: Letters from Pope John Paul I, trans. William Weaver (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), pp. 109–114. 128. Bieder, Bear, p. 80. 129. J. J. Hughes, “The Scallop Shell and the Bear,” Inside the Vatican (21 April 2005); accessed at: http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20050422184759/http:/www.insidethevatican.com/ latest-newsflash.htm. 130. Bieder, Bear, p. 80. 131. Claude Gaignebet and Marie-Claude Florentin, Le carnaval. Essais de mythologie populaire (Paris: Payot, 1974), pp. 11, 18, 112, 117–33. According to Gaignebet and Florentin, through the linkage of Blaise’s cult with carnival-related rites, Blaise has been associated with Christ’s descent into hell, which parallels the descent of Orpheus, who was often pictured as a bear. The bear’s annual entry into and return from a cave strike Gaignebet and Florentin as an archetype for that same pattern in the lives of Orpheus and Christ. 132. Hieromonk Makarios, The Synaxarion, 3 (2001): 474. See also BLS 1:239. 133. Ibid., 475. An engraving after Maarten de Vos (1532–1603) showing Blaise seated at the entrance of a cave, with various animals including a bear gathered around outside, facing him, appears as plate 8 in Sylvae sacrae: monumenta sa[n]ctioris philosophi[ae] quam severa anachoretarum disciplina vitae et religio docuit (Munich: Raphael Sadeler, 1594).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Augustine of Hippo. De Genesi ad litteram imperfectus liber. In PL 34:243–44. ———. On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis: An Unfinished Book. Trans. Roland J. Teske. FC 84. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991. ———. Sermones, Classis prima: De Veteri et Novo Testamento. In PL 39 (1846): 1735–1972. Eugippius. Vita sancti Severini Noricorum Apostoli. In PL 62 (1848): 1167–99B. ———. The Life of Saint Severin, trans. Ludwig Bieler with Ludmilla Kresten. FC 55. Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1965. Gesner, Conrad. Historiae animalium. Opus philosophis, medicis, grammaticis, philologis, poëtis, & omnibus rerum, linguarúmque variorum studiosis, utilissimum simul incundissimúmque futurum. Liber primus. De quadrupedibus viuiparis [1555]. 2nd ed. Frankfurt: Cambier, 1602. Biodiversity Heritage Library; accessible at: http:// biodiversitylibrary.org/item/136746#page/7/mode/1up. Gregory the Great. Dialogi. In PL 77 (1849): 149–430A.

From Ursus Diabolus to Ursus Ex Machina

45

———. Dialogues. Trans. Odo John Zimmermann. FC 39. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1959. Hieromonk Makarios of Simonos Petra. The Synaxarion: The Lives of the Saints of the Orthodox Church. 5 vols. Trans. Christopher Hookway et al. Ormylia, Chalkidike, Greece: Holy Convent of the Annunciation of Our Lady, 1998–2005. Luciani, Albino [later, Pope John Paul I]. “All’orso di san Romedio: La bocca sporca.” In Illustrissimi: lettere del patriarca. Padova: Messaggero, 1976, 153–60. ———. “To the Bear of Saint Romedio: Dirty Mouths.” In idem. Illustrissimi: Letters from Pope John Paul I. Trans. William Weaver. Boston: Little, Brown, 1978, 109–114. Neale, J. M. Medivaeval Preachers and Mediaeval Preaching: A Series of Extracts, Translated from the Sermons of the Middle Ages, Chronologically Arranged. London: J. & C. Mozley, 1856. Physiologus. Trans. Michael J. Curley. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979. Pliny the Elder. Natural History. 10 vols. Latin/English parallel texts. Trans. H. Rackham. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938–63. Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974. Sylvae sacrae: monumenta sa[n]ctioris philosophi[ae] quam severa anachoretarum disciplina vitae et religio docuit. Munich: Raphael Sadeler, 1594.

Secondary Bieder, Robert E. 2005. Bear. London: Reaktion. Collin de Plancy, J.-A.-S. Dictionnaire infernal ou Répertoire universel des êtres, des personnages, des livres, des faits et des choses qui tiennent aux apparitions, aux divinations, à la magie, au commerce de l’enfer, aux démons, aux sorciers, [etc.], 5th ed. Brussels: Societe nationale, 1845. Duane, Daniel. 2016. “If Technology Helps Us Save the Wilderness, Will the Wilderness Still Be Wild?” International New York Times: Review. 12–13 March 2016, 7. Gaignebet, Claude, and Marie-Claude Florentin. 1974. Le carnaval. Essais de mythologie populaire. Paris: Payot. “Greatmartyr Euphemia the All-praised,” Orthodox Church in America; accessed at: https:// oca.org/saints/lives/2008/09/16/102626-greatmartyr-euphemia-the-all-praised. Hall, James. 1979. Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, rev. ed. New York: Harper and Row. The Herder Dictionary of Symbols: Symbols from Art, Archaeology, Mythology, Literature, and Religion. 1993. Trans. Boris Matthews. Ed. Deborah Farrell and Carole Presser. Wilmette, IL: Chiron. Hughes, J. J. “The Scallop Shell and the Bear.” Inside the Vatican. 21 April 2005. Accessed at: http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20050422184759/http://www.insidethevatican.com/latestnewsflash.htm. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1975. “A Parable in Context: A Social Interactional Analysis of Storytelling Performance.” In Dan Ben-Amos and Kenneth Goldstein, eds. Folklore: Performance and Communication. The Hague/Paris: Mouton, 105–130. Hobgood-Oster, Laura. 2008. Holy Dogs and Asses: Animals in the Christian Tradition. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Hughes, J. J. 2005. “The Scallop Shell and the Bear.” Inside the Vatican. 21 April. Online. Accessed at: https://web.archive.org/web/20050422184759/http://www.insidethevatican. com/latest-newsflash.htm . Jackson, Deirdre. 2010. Lion. London: Reaktion. Janson, H. W. (Horst Woldemar). 1952. Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. London: Warburg Institute, University of London. Morris, Desmond. 2013. Monkey. London: Reaktion. Myconius, Friedrich. 1914. Geschichte der Reformation. Ed. O. Clemen. Leipzig: R. Voigtländer. Pastoureau, Michel. 2007. L’ours: histoire d’un roi déchu. Paris: Seuil.

46

Eric Ziolkowski

———. 2011. The Bear: History of a Fallen King. Trans. George Holoch. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Polzer, Joseph. 1995. “Andrea di Bonaiuto’s Via Veritatis and Dominican Thought in Late Medieval Italy.” Art Bulletin 77, no. 2 (June): 262–89. “Prats-de-Mollo: Notre-Dame d’El Coral.” Accessible at: http://www.interfaithmary.net/pages/ Prats-de-Mollo.htm. Ratzeberger, Matthäus. 1850. Die handschriftliche Geschichte Ratzebergers über Luther und seine Zeit. Ed. C. G. Neudecker. Jena: F. Mauke. Réau, Louis. 1955–59. Iconographie de l’art chrétien. 3 vols. [in 6]. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. Roeder, Helen. 1955. Saints and Their Attributes, with a Guide to Localities and Patronage. London: Longmans, Green. Schwartz, Joshua. 2013. “Dog. III. Judaism.” In EBR 6 (2013): 1034–37. Strickland, Debra Higgs. 2003. Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Thompson, Stith. 1955–58. Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jestbooks, and Local Legends [1932–36]. 6 vols., revised, enlarged ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Topsell, Edward. 1967. The History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents and Insects. 3 vols. “An unabridged reproduction of the 1658 edition published in London, . . . reproduced from a copy in the rare book collection of the Library of the American Museum of Natural History.” [Vols. 1–2 = “taken principally from the Historiae animalium of Conrad Gesner”; vol. 3 = “translation of Insectorum sive minimorum animalium theatrum.] New York: Da Capo. “Venerable Sergius of Radonezh.” Ed. Bishop Alexander of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. Orthodox Christian Booklets. Accessed at: http://www.fatheralexander.org/ booklets/english/saints/sergius_radonezh.htm. Ziolkowski, Eric. 2001. Evil Children in Religion, Literature, and Art. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave.

Chapter Three

Jonah and His Fish The Monstrification of God’s Servant in Early Jewish and Christian Reception History Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer

The study of the history and development of Jonah’s fish offers an intriguing journey. Jonah’s fish begins as God’s obedient servant that obeys God’s commands. As time goes by, however, this benevolent fish turns into a symbol of death, a monster, and even the Devil. 1 THE BENEVOLENT FISH OF THE BOOK OF JONAH A level-headed reading of the book of Jonah shows unequivocally that the fish plays a positive role as a vehicle of deliverance. It is not a monster! 2 Rather, the fish swallows Jonah when he has been thrown overboard, thus saving him from drowning. It further keeps Jonah alive for the three-day journey to safety on dry land, and it finally spits out the prophet so that he can fulfil his God-given task. In the words of Jan Ziolkowski, Jonah is not swallowed “by a devilish whale but by a helpful fish acting at the behest of God.” 3 Even stronger, Norma Rosen calls the fish “a kind of underwater angel, created to do God’s bidding.” 4 In the final form of the book of Jonah, the song of praise in chapter 2 aptly captures this sense of redemption. It is fitting that Jonah sings a song of praise in the belly of the fish, given that the fish has just saved his life. 5 In 2:3 [Eng. 2:2], Jonah praises God for saving him “from the belly of She’ol.” 6 A contextual reading suggests that the fish is the saviour while “the belly of She’ol” is the netherworld where Jonah would have ended up had he drowned. Jonah cried out to God before the fish came around. When the fish 47

48

Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer

came around, he was saved. Put succinctly, Jonah is not in the “belly” of the netherworld (‫ )בטן שאול‬precisely because he is in the belly of the fish (‫מעי‬ ‫!)הדגה‬ Ackerman offers a different take on the matter as he argues that the prayer in chapter 2 represents Jonah’s warped and untrue understanding of reality. Jonah thinks that he has found deliverance in a safe place in the belly of the fish, but the reader knows that this is not true. Rather, the reader “is forced to equate” the “belly of She’ol” with the belly of the fish. 7 I both agree and disagree with Ackerman. The book of Jonah can be read successfully as a satire and Jonah’s grip on reality is at times somewhat frail. For instance, Jonah does not realize that he is being transported to Nineveh whilst sitting in the fish, yet that is where the fish is taking him. At the same time, the book of Jonah does not encourage the readers to equate the fish with She’ol. It can be done―and clearly has been done as we shall discover shortly―but I do not consider this to have been the author’s intent. The description of the fish within its surrounding narrative in Jonah 2:1–2, 11 [Eng. 1:17–2:1, 10] rather conveys the same impression as Jonah’s prayer in the intermediate verses 3–10 [Eng. vv. 2–9], namely that the fish has saved Jonah from “death.” In the book of Jonah, the fish is God’s creature and his executive agent who obeys the divine command (2:11 [Eng. 2:10]), thus making sure that Jonah ends up alive in Nineveh rather than dead at the bottom of the sea. THE FISH IN THE SEPTUAGINT AND THE ΚΉΤΟΣ IN GREEK MYTHOLOGY The Masoretic Text (MT) uses the term “fish” (‫ דגה‬/ ‫ )דג‬throughout Jonah 2. In contrast, the Septuagint (LXX) employs κήτος (Jonah 1:17; 2:1; and 2:10) 8 instead of ἰχθύς which is the general term for “fish” (cf. LXX of Genesis 1:26). In ancient Greece, the term κήτος (Latinised as cetus) denoted any large sea-living animal, among them a large fish, a whale, a shark, or indeed a sea monster. 9 The Latin word for “whale” is derived from this term, yet the Greek term has much wider connotation. In Greek mythology, the term κήτος denotes the sea monsters that were killed by the heroes Perseus and Heracles. The tale of Perseus and the seamonster begins when Cassiopeia boasts that her daughter Andromeda is more beautiful than the Nereids. This claim invoked Poseidon’s anger and causes him to send a κήτος (Cetus) to attack Æthiopia. Cassiopeia and her husband Cepheus decide, after having consulted an oracle, to sacrifice their daughter Andromeda to Cetus. They chain Andromeda to a rock near the ocean, ready for Cetus to devour her, and that is where Perseus finds her. When Cetus subsequently appears, Perseus manages to kill it. This legend is tangentially connected with the book of Jonah. As argued by Flusser, the story of the

Jonah and His Fish

49

freeing of Andromeda by Perseus is associated with Canaan and the city of Jaffa (Yafo). In support, Flusser cites Pliny the Elder who claims that traces of Andromeda’s fetters can be seen on a rock near Yafo. 10 There may thus be a link between this Greek legend about Andromeda, Perseus, and the sea monster in Yafo and the story in the book of Jonah about the prophet Jonah who was swallowed by a big fish after boarding a ship in Yafo (Jonah 1:3). Turning to Heracles, the Bibliotheca, Book II (Heracles, and the Heraclids—The Belt of Hippolyte) tells of the Trojan princess Hesione. 11 Because her father King Laomedon had refused to pay for the building of the walls of Troy, Apollo and Poseidon were angry with him. As punishment, Apollo sent a plague and Poseidon sent a sea monster (κήτος) to destroy Troy. If, however, King Laomedon were to allow the sea monster to devour his daughter Hesione, then Troy would be delivered. King Laomedon accordingly has his daughter chained to a rock near the seashore. Heracles subsequently comes along and, to make a long story short, he kills the monster. He does not marry the princess, however, and King Laomedon does not give him the promised reward. In revenge, Heracles and his companions attack and sack Troy. Finally, the name of Keto, the primordial sea goddess in Greek mythology, is derived from the word κήτος. As a mythological figure, she is known as the mother of a host of monstrous children, collectively known as the Phorcydes. 12 In my view, the word choice of the LXX, namely κήτος rather than ἰχθύς, was the impetus behind what we may call the monstrification of Jonah’s fish. Thus far, the issue is merely a matter of its species classification: it is an undefined, large, sea-living creature. Soon, however, the word choice of the LXX will inspire other texts that will take the monstrification of Jonah’s fish much further. A SEA MONSTER BUT NOT THE LEVIATHAN AND NOT THE TANNIN Before we turn to explore the monstrification of Jonah’s fish in later Jewish and Christian literature, however, an additional remark on the word choice vis-à-vis Jonah’s fish is helpful. As noted above, the reader of the MT encounters a benevolent fish who is God’s servant. This impression is emphasized further by the neutral terminology ‫ דגה‬/ ‫ דג‬in Hebrew. It is a “fish.” If the author(s) of the book of Jonah had wished to convey that Jonah had been swallowed by a sea monster (cf. the LXX), they would have had several other words at their disposal. They could, for instance, have used the term ‫תנין‬. Genesis 1:21 attests to the expression ‫ התנינם הגדלים‬which is best translated as “great serpents” / “sea-monsters.” Notably, the LXX employs the same word here as in the book of Jonah (κήτος). The Hebrew text of Exodus

50

Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer

7:9 uses the same word ‫ תנין‬to denote the type of creature into which Aaron’s staff turns. Here, however, the LXX employs a different word, δράκων (“dragon”). Alternatively, the author(s) of Jonah could have employed the term Leviathan (‫)לויתן‬, attested six times in the Hebrew Bible (Isaiah 27:1 [parallel to ‫ ;]תנין‬Psalm 74:13–14 [parallel to ‫ ;]תנין‬Psalm 104:26; Job 40:25–32). There is little doubt that the Leviathan was understood to be some kind of sea monster. In all of these cases, the LXX uses the Greek term δράκων (“dragon”): • In Isaiah 27:1, the LXX uses the term δράκων three times. • Likewise, the LXX in Psalm 73:13–14 (// MT Psalm 74) employs the word δράκων to denote the two different Hebrew words. • LXX of Psalm 104:26 translates the Hebrew ‫ לויתן‬into Greek as δράκων. • Finally, the LXX of Job 41:1–8 (cf. Eng. // MT 40:25–32) employs the term δράκων. In view of this, we can conclude that (1) the fact that the LXX tends to employ the term κήτος in Jonah, while using the term δράκων when the Hebrew has ‫ לויתן‬or ‫תנין‬, suggests that LXX did not understand the ‫ דג‬in Jonah to be a sea-monster on par with the Leviathan or the Tannin. 13 Some kind of monster―yes―but nothing as monstrous as the Tannin or the Leviathan. THE FISH IN MIDRASH Jonah’s fish is treated in various and wondrous ways in Midrash. 14 In this section, we shall focus on its appearance in Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer, chapter 10, and in Genesis Rabbah 5:5. Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer, chapter 10, contains a truly unique account about Jonah’s time inside the fish. 15 This account follows the discussion in chapter 9 which deals with the fifth day of creation (Genesis 1:21, ‫ויברא אלהים את‬ ‫)התנינם הגדלים ואת כל נפש החיה הרמשת אשר שרצו המים למינהם‬. As the biblical account makes clear, the fifth day saw the creation of ‫“( התנינם הגדלים‬the great serpents” / “sea monsters”). The textual proximity of these accounts in Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer strongly suggests that Jonah’s fish is associated with these ‫תנינם גדלים‬. This association hovers in the background of Rabbi Tarphon’s statement as he discusses the origin and creation of the fish: That fish was specially appointed from the six days of Creation to swallow up Jonah, as it is said, “And the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah” (Jonah 1:17). 16

Jonah and His Fish

51

At the same time, the claim that Jonah’s fish was created on the fifth day of creation implies that this type of big fish is not contrary to nature; they are built into the world as part of the creation. In the same way, the dividing of the Red Sea and the standing still of the sun in Ayalon were incorporated into creation and thus subject to God’s authority. Rabbi Jeremiah ben Eleazar has God declare in Genesis Rabbah 5:5: I commanded the sun and the moon to stand still before Joshua. I commanded the ravens to bring food to Elijah. I commanded the fire not to harm Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. I commanded the lions not to harm Daniel, the heaven to open before Ezekiel, the fish to vomit up Jonah. 17

Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer, chapter 10, further likens Jonah’s journey in the fish to an inverted ascent narrative: in contrast to the other prophets who ascend to heaven, Jonah descends to the underworld. At its end, he asks, or rather commands God: “I have reached death, now raise me up, bring me back to life!” As phrased by Adelman, “the prophet essentially undergoes a resurrection; he has been privy to a kind of mystical afterlife experience, and returns to his body an exalted soul.” 18 After Jonah has been swallowed by the fish, the fish tells Jonah about its own destiny, namely to be devoured by the Leviathan. In response, Jonah asks the fish to take him to meet the Leviathan. Jonah states that the true reason as to why he has descended to the deep sea really is to deal with the Leviathan. Jonah states his intention to kill it in the future. As for now, he shows the Seal of the Covenant of Abraham to the Leviathan, whereupon the latter flees away. The fish said to Jonah: “Do you not know that my day had arrived to be devoured in the midst of Leviathan’s mouth?” Jonah replied: “Take me beside it, and I will deliver you and myself from its mouth.” It brought him next to the Leviathan. (Jonah) said to the Leviathan, “On your account have I descended to see your abode in the sea, for, moreover, in the future will I descend and put a rope in thy tongue, and I will bring thee up and prepare thee for the great feast of the righteous.” (Jonah) showed it the seal of our father Abraham (saying), Look at the Covenant (seal), and Leviathan saw it and fled before Jonah a distance of two days’ journey. (Jonah) said to [the fish]: “Behold, I have saved you from the mouth of Leviathan, show me what is in the sea and in the depths.” 19

As a reward for his saving act, the fish shows Jonah the places of wonder from Israelite history (e.g. the place where Israel crossed the Reed Sea), as well as the foundation of the earth, She’ol, and the place beneath YHWH’s temple:

52

Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer It showed him the great river of the waters of the Ocean, as it is said, “The deep was round about me” (Jonah 2:5), and it showed him the paths of the Reed Sea through which Israel passed, as it is said, “The reeds were wrapped about my head” (Jonah 2:5); and it showed him the place whence the waves of the sea and its billows flow, as it is said, “All thy waves and thy billows passed over me” (Jonah 2:3); and it showed him the pillars of the earth in its foundations, as it is said, “The earth with her bars for the world were by me” (Jonah 2:6); and it showed him the lowest She’ol, as it is said, “Yet hast thou brought up my life from destruction, O Lord, my God” (Jonah 2:6); and it showed him Gehinnom, as it is said, “Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and thou didst hear my voice” (Jonah 2:2); and it showed him (what was) beneath the Temple of God, as it is said, “(I went down) to the bottom of the mountains” (Jonah 2:6). 20

During his time in the fish, Jonah has light and he can in relative comfort use the eyes of the fish to look out at the wonders of the sea: He entered its mouth just as a man enters the great synagogue, and he stood (therein). The two eyes of the fish were like windows of glass giving light to Jonah. Rabbi Meir said: One pearl was suspended inside the belly of the fish and it gave illumination to Jonah, like this sun which shines with its might at noon; and it showed to Jonah all that was in the sea and in the depths, as it is said, “Light is sown for the righteous” (Psalm 97:11). 21

Thus, not unlike Professor Pierre Aronnax in Jules Verne’s Vingt mille lieues sous les mers: Tour du monde sous-marin, Jonah is on a (forced) sightseeing tour of the wonders of the great deep, which he is able to see through the eyes of the fish. When the fish is below the Temple, Jonah commands the fish to stand still and Jonah prays to God. Yet, God responds only when Jonah vows to kill the Leviathan: Forthwith Jonah said to the fish: “Stand in the place where you are standing, because I need to pray.” The fish stood (still), and Jonah began to pray before the Holy One, blessed be He, and he said: “Sovereign of all the Universe! Thou art called ‘the One who kills’ and ‘the One who makes alive,’ behold, my soul has reached unto death, now restore me to life.” He was not answered until this word came forth from his mouth, “What I have vowed I will perform” (Jonah 2:9), namely, I vowed to draw up Leviathan and to prepare it before Thee, I will perform (this) on the day of the Salvation of Israel, as it is said, “But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanks-giving” (Jonah 2:9). 22

After this prayer, the fish vomited up Jonah upon the dry land. Returning to Genesis Rabbah, section 10:3 discusses the way that animals copulate. Jonah’s fish, together with the snake in Genesis 3:14 and the man

Jonah and His Fish

53

in Genesis 3:17, are singled out as copulating in the same way as human beings do, i.e. face-to-face. The reason for this is that God is reported as speaking to these creatures (Genesis 3:14; Jonah 2:11). Although the point of this passage is irrelevant to our present inquiry, it nevertheless shows that Jonah’s fish is not considered to be monstrous in any way. Rather, it is a creature, like humanity, with whom God communicates. To sum up, the presentation of Jonah’s fish in both Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer and Genesis Rabbah is that of a servant of God, which is integral to God’s creation and which does God’s bidding. Moreover, Jonah’s fish is a friendly creature which, after being saved by Jonah, treats his saviour to a spectacular sightseeing tour of the Great Deep, with all the important cultic and historical on the itinerary. JONAH’S FISH IN ON JONAH The Jewish-hellenistic sermon On Jonah, originally written in Greek but preserved only in a sixth-century Armenian translation which groups the text among the works of Philo, 23 stands in the same tradition of treating Jonah’s fish as a benevolent saviour figure. The fish does God’s bidding, saves Jonah from certain death, and offers him a safe (and comfortable) haven: Als (Gott) nun beide Krankheiten behandelt hatte—(als er) den Menschen (Jona) gelehrt hatte, Gott nicht für unwissend zu halten und sich (zweitens seiner) Liebe zu den Menschen nicht zu widersetzen, (da) umschloẞ er ihn mit einem (neuen) Schiff (in Gestalt) eines vorbeischwimmenden Seeungeheuers (κήτος). 24 Er (freilich) hielt es für eine tödliche Bestie; doch war es die Rettung, (ja) der Garant der (weiteren) Rettung. Den schwimmenden Propheten sog das Untier mit der Atemluft ein; es trug (ihn) lebendig in seinem Innern (wie) im Mutterleib. Der Bauch des Ungeheuers war ein Haus für den untergetauchten Propheten, die Augen ein Spiegel dessen, was sich (von) auẞen zeigte, und der Schlag (seiner) Flossen wie (der Antrieb) eine(r) Köningskarosse. 25

Moreover, when Jonah later prays to God (Jonah 2), he uses the mouth of the fish to utter the prayer, “as a musician (his) instrument.” For an onlooker, it would have seemed as if the fish were the intercessor for the prophet’s salvation. 26 Of special interest is the repeated connection between Jonah’s time in the fish and the time a foetus spends in its mother’s womb. In the above-quoted section, the fish takes care of Jonah as a mother takes care of her unborn child. The same image appears later in the context of Jonah’s prayer, where Jonah likens his time in the fish to that of a fetus in its mother’s womb:

Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer

54

Mein sunderbares Getragenwerden im Leib des Meerestieres wird ein Beweis dafür sein, wie es sich mit der natürlichen Schwangerschaft verhält. 27

Later in On Jonah, when Jonah realizes that the people of Nineveh have repented and that God as a result thereof is not going to destroy the city, Jonah offers a second sermon in which he expands on the wonders of the sea and God’s power over it all. He tells how he travelled through the Deep Sea and saw life at the bottom of the Sea. He saw the Leviathan, the sources of the streams, and how drinking-water and salt-water were mixed. 28 THE FISH IN THE WRITINGS OF JOSEPHUS A very different perspective meets us in Josephus’s writing. In The Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus recapitulates Israel’s history. In Antiquities 9, 213, Josephus retells the story of Jonah. Josephus, apparently following the LXX, claims that the fish that swallowed Jonah was a κήτος. 29 Josephus mentions the whole incident rather matter-of-factly: It is also related that Jonah was swallowed down by a whale, and that when he had been there three days, and as many nights, he was vomited out upon the Euxine Sea, and this alive, and without any hurt upon his body. 30

There is no indication that the creature that swallows Jonah is monstrous in any manner of speaking. In fact, Josephus aims consistently at downplaying the miraculous aspects of the book of Jonah. Jonah prays only after leaving the fish and God never speaks to it. Rather, in a detached manner, Josephus reports that according to the “story” of Jonah, Jonah was swallowed by a fish. Likewise, using passive voice, Jonah was cast up on the shore of the Black Sea. 31 THE FISH BECOMES A MONSTER In parallel with these benevolent traditions about Jonah’s fish, another interpretative trend gained momentum, namely that the fish itself was a monster. In this section, I shall trace the “monstrification” of Jonah’s fish, from obedient servant of God that saves Jonah from death in the sea into a scary monster from whom Jonah needs saving. We shall explore the depiction of Jonah’s fish in a representative selection of early Jewish sources. Joseph and Aseneth I maintain that the monstrosity of the fish first came to fruition in the Jewish tale called Joseph and Aseneth 12:10, a tale which probably was composed in

Jonah and His Fish

the Jewish community in Egypt sometime after 100 the biblical text is clearly based on the LXX. 32

55 BCE.

Its interaction with

9

For lo, the wild primaeval Lion pursues me; And his children are the gods of the Egyptians that I have abandoned and destroyed; And their father the Devil is trying to devour me. 10 But do thou, O Lord deliver me from his hands, And rescue me from his mouth, Lest he snatch me like a wolf and tear me, And cast me into the abyss of fire, and into the tempest of the sea; And let not the great Sea-monster swallow me. 33

This statement makes clear that when people are being thrown into the stormy sea, a great sea-monster may swallow them. Three motifs link this text to Jonah 2:1–2 here, namely the (1) throwing into the sea, (2) the creature, and (3) the swallowing. The Greek term for “to swallow” used both here in Joseph and Aseneth 12:10 and in the LXX of Jonah 2:1 is καταπιειν (“to devour”). Likewise, both the LXX and Joseph and Aseneth 12:10 use the term κήτος which can, but need not, denote a sea monster (cf. above). In Joseph and Aseneth 12:10, Aseneth (the speaker) fears being thrown into the sea and swallowed by the κήτος. It is the Devil who is doing the devouring in verse 9 and it is the κήτος who is doing the devouring in verse 10. The reader is thus led to connect the two and to understand the κήτος as God’s opponent who seeks to kill Aseneth. 34 We are now in a position to detect a gradual development of “monstrification.” The fish is benevolent in the MT. The fish stops being a fish in the LXX but is still a benevolent sea creature. In Joseph and Aseneth, the sea creature ceases to be God’s agent and instead becomes the agent of the Devil. Jonah’s benevolent fish has become monstrous! The Testament of Judah Another piece in the jigsaw is located in the section about Judah in the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs 21:6–9. 35 The text is of uncertain date and origin, stemming from either a Jewish or a Christian (or both) context and written sometime between 200 BCE and 190 CE. 36 6

But you will be king in Jacob and you will be for them as the sea: for as on the sea just and unjust men are tossed about, some being taken captive, others growing rich, so also every race of men (will be tossed) on you: some are in danger of being taken captive, others will grow rich plundering. 7For those who reign as kings will be like sea-monsters, swallowing men like fishes; they will enslave free daughters and sons, they will plunder houses, lands, flocks, money, 8and they will wrongfully feed ravens and cranes with the flesh of many, and they will advance in evil, uplifted in covetousness. 9And false prophets will be like tempests, and they will persecute all righteous men. 37

56

Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer

The reference to “sea-monster” here, who “swallows” men like fishes, in a context which also mentions false prophets who will be like whirlwinds, brings Jonah’s fish to mind. The fish in Jonah swallowed a man to save him; here kings are likened to sea-monsters that swallow men like fish. The word for sea-monster is again κήτος and the word for “swallow” is again καταπιειν (“to devour”). This word choice connects the imagery in the Testament of Judah 21:6–9 with that in Jonah 2:1–2, 11. In contrast to Jonah’s fish (LXX: κήτος) who is God’s agent, here the κήτος is a part of a metaphor that emphasizes the unlawful behaviour and despotism of monarchs. Again, Jonah’s peaceful fish has become an oppressive monster. 3 Maccabees and the Hellenistic Synagogal Prayers A third piece is found in 3 Maccabees which tells the story of the persecution of the Jews during the reign of Ptolemy IV Philopator (221–204 BCE), i.e. some decades before the Maccabean uprising in 166 BCE. Yet the book was written after 2 Maccabees, probably sometime between 100–30 BCE, although a significant minority argues for a Roman date. 38 In 3 Maccabees 6:8, the priest Eleazar prays to God, and in his prayer, he mentions Jonah and how he was “wasting away” (τηκόμενον) “in the belly of a sea monster” (ἐν γαστρὶ κήτους) and how God restored him unharmed to all his family. 39 It is not clear from verse 8 whether the fish is harmful or benevolent, yet the context suggests the former. In the preceding verse 7, Eleazar mentions that God saved Daniel and led him back unhurt when he had been thrown down into the earth to lions as food for the beasts. The parallelism between these two verses suggests that the “sea monster” is parallel with the “lions.” Both are thus beasts from which God saves men. The tradition of 3 Maccabees is strongly reminiscent of the abovementioned interpretation in Genesis Rabbah 5:5, yet with a crucial difference. There, the comparison of Jonah’s fish with the lions in the book of Daniel emphasizes the subordination of the animals, alongside the sun, the sea, fire, and Elijah’s raven, to God’s will. In contrast, in 3 Maccabees the comparison shows how God saves his prophets from animals that would normally kill them. The same connection is made in the Hellenistic Synagogal Prayers. 40 Chapter 6 contains a prayer of invocation which enumerates people whose prayers God has heard, and thus pleads with God to hear also the present supplicants’ prayers. Verse 11 states: Daniel in the hole of the lions; Jonah in the belly of the whale; the three children in a furnace of fire. 41

Jonah and His Fish

57

Although not stating explicitly that the fish is a monster on par with the lions and a danger on par with the furnace, such a comparison is implied. Jerusalem Talmud In the Jerusalem Talmud (Berachot, 9:1), Rabbi Judah, in the name of Rabbi Isaac, used Jonah as an example that God’s salvation is reliable: But the Holy One, blessed be He, [saves his subjects, just as he] saved Jonah from the belly of the fish. Lo, it says, “And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon dry land” [Jonah 2:10]. 42

This statement reveals that the fish is no longer thought of as God’s vehicle of salvation. Rather, it is something from which Jonah needs saving. The following chapter (The Jerusalem Talmud, Berachot, 10:1) reveals the same thought in even stronger wording as it compares Jonah’s fish with Pharaoh, the fiery furnace in Daniel 3, and the lions in Daniel 6: He saved Moses from the sword of Pharaoh. He saved Jonah from the belly of the whale, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from the fiery furnace, and Daniel from the lion’s den. 43

Jonah’s fish is clearly something from which one needs to be saved! The Book of Tobit The book of Tobit (6:2) features another fish that tries to swallow Tobit: And as they went on their journey, they came in the evening to the river Tigris, and they lodged there. And when the young man went down to wash himself, a fish (ἰχθὺς) leaped out of the river, and would have devoured him (καὶ ἐβουλήθη καταπιεῖν τὸ παιδάριον). Then the angel said unto him, “Take the fish.” And the young man laid hold of the fish, and drew it to land. To whom the angel said, “Open the fish, and take the heart and the liver and the gall, and put them up safely” (Tobit 6:1–4). 44

The link between Tobit’s fish and Jonah’s fish is at best tangential. While Jonah’s fish is large enough to swallow a man, Tobit’s fish is small enough for a man to catch. 45 It should be noted, however, there the size of the fish was a matter of dispute, as reflected in the various manuscript traditions. While GI states that the fish tried to devour Tobit whole, GII indicates that the fish nipped at Tobit’s foot / genitals (it is possible that the term “foot” is a euphemism for “genitals,” cf. Ruth 3:7b). 46 At the same time, a certain affinity exists. Two factors support a general connection between the book of Tobit and the book of Jonah. First, the

58

Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer

shared narrative setting in Nineveh suggests a strong literary connection. Secondly, Jonah is mentioned twice in the conclusion in chapter 14 where Tobit’s son, Tobias, at the extreme age of one hundred and twenty-seven years, rejoices at the news of Nineveh’s destruction by Nebuchadnezzar and Ahasuerus in apparent fulfilment of Jonah’s prophecy against the Assyrian capital. 47 Jonah is mentioned by name in verses 4 and 8 (but there is no mention of the fish). More specifically vis-à-vis the fish motif, Levine suggests that the account in Tobit is an intentional parody of Jonah’s fish. While Jonah who sought to flee from God was swallowed by the fish, Tobit who acted responsibly was given the power to overcome the fish. 48 The fish here is clearly a fish (ἰχθὺς) rather than some kind of monster (κήτος), as implied not only by the vocabulary used but also by the fact that Tobit eats it. 49 At the same time, Tobit’s fish is violent and threatening. Notably, Tobit’s struggle with the fish occurs at night, a time when evil is the dominant power. Nowell goes so far as to say that the fish here serves as a symbol of death, and that Tobit’s victory over it stands for life and a new beginning. In support of her reading, Nowell connects the fish with the primeval watery chaos, as well as with the chaos monster Tiamat over whom Marduk was victorious. What we have here in the book of Tobit is thus Tobit’s struggle and victory over evil. 50 Summing up, the book of Tobit may constitute additional evidence that Jonah’s fish is being “monstrificated” in the deuterocanonical biblical books. JONAH’S FISH BECOMES DEATH In parallel with the monstrification of Jonah’s fish, a parallel tradition turns Jonah’s fish into death itself. If the connotations of “death” are merely implicit in the book of Tobit, they are explicit in a motley assortment of texts: in the New Testament and later on also in the writings of the Church Fathers, in select midrashot such as Midrash Jonah and Yalkut Shimoni, and also in the Zohar. The Christian strand of this tradition culminated in mediaeval art, exemplified in the various depictions of Hell as the mouth of a massive sea monster and in the identification of Jonah’s fish with the Leviathan and ultimately also with the Devil. Jonah’s Fish in Research on Myth The conception of Jonah’s fish as a symbol of death ultimately has its root in myths and folktales. The account of Jonah and the fish has gathered interest among scholars of myth and religious rituals and experiences. More than a century ago, William Simpson read the Jonah narrative from what he calls “a comparative mythologist” perspective and suggested that Jonah’s three-day stay in the fish was a ceremony connected with the initiation into the priest-

Jonah and His Fish

59

hood. 51 More recently and with more credence, Mircea Eliade has argued that the Jonah narrative can be compared with initiatory ordeals that consist of being swallowed by a monster. In this wider context, Jonah’s experience of being swallowed by the fish, spending time in its belly, and being vomited out, is that of symbolic death and rebirth. It is furthermore comparable with myths which speak about heroes being swallowed by marine monsters which they later manage to kill and emerge from victoriously. 52 To cite Eliade, “[t]here can be no doubt that the fish that swallows Jonah and the other mythical heroes symbolizes death; its belly represents Hell.” 53 At the same time, this death experience also symbolizes the acquisition of wisdom. To enter into the monster, followed by a time of seclusion (in the belly / Hell), is when the hero obtains wisdom and learns secret traditions. Ultimately, death leads to spiritual regeneration. 54 From a slightly different perspective, Maud Bodkin connects Jonah’s descent into the sea and into the body of the fish with the experience of liberation and rebirth. Jonah descends amidst slime and corruption before he can experience renewal of life. 55 It is furthermore likely that the notion of a person spending three days in the realm of death, dormant in the biblical narrative itself but fully fledged in the New Testament and in the Zohar (below), echoes ancient Near Eastern myths. Landes, for example, connects Jonah’s three-day-stay in the belly of the fish with the Sumerian myth of Innana’s Descent to the Netherworld. 56 The Fish in the New Testament The notion that Jonah’s time in the fish symbolizes his death is strongly reminiscent of the New Testament statement in Matthew 12:40. On the basis of this statement, Jonah came to serve as a type for Jesus in Christianity, and his three days in the belly of the fish prefigured Jesus’s death and resurrection. Beginning with matters of language, the text of Matthew 12:39–41 clearly depends on the LXX and accordingly uses the same term κήτος in reference to Jonah’s three-day stay in the fish. Following suit, Jerome translates the Greek term κήτος used in Matthew 12:40 as cetus which is the Latinized form of the Greek term κήτος (sicut enim fuit Ionas in ventre ceti tribus diebus et tribus noctibus). In contrast, in his Vulgate translation of the book of Jonah, he employs the term pisces which denotes “fish” (piscis granda). This distinction is reflected in later English bible translations. Tyndale differentiates, as Jerome does, between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. While he renders the animal in Jonah 2:1 as a “greate fyshe” in line with the Hebrew text, he opts to translate the reference to the same animal in Matthew 12:40 as “whale” in line with the Greek text. Tyndale’s translation was later incorporated into the Authorized Version of 1611. Markedly, Tyndale’s translation of the NT is the first occurrence of the translation “whale” in

Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer

60

English. Since then, not only Matthew 12:40 but also Jonah 2 has often been understood to speak about a “whale.” Turning to matters of interpretations, Matthew 12:39–41 transforms Jonah and his fish into a typology for Jesus’s death and resurrection. He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here. 57

Matthew 12:40 makes clear that Jonah is a type for Jesus and the fish is a type for death. Thus, Jonah’s fish has ceased to be a redeemer figure that saves Jonah from death and has instead become a symbol of death itself. The parallel passage in Luke 11:30 does not refer to the fish. As the crowds increased, Jesus said, “This is a wicked generation. It asks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of Man be to this generation. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here.” 58

The relationship between the two passages is unclear. Edwards argues that Matthew 12 belongs, together with another three future-oriented “Son of man sayings” (“eschatological correlative sayings”), to the redactional material of Q. 59 In Edwards’s view, Luke 11:29–32 preserves the most original form, while Matthew attests to an extended version which features the three-day typology. 60 In contrast, Bolin argues that the Matthew account preserves the more original version. 61 The Fish in the Zohar The connotations of “death” and “resurrection” found in the New Testament are shared by and, if possible, made even more overt in the retelling of the Jonah narrative in the Zohar. The Zohar (Wayakhel 198b / 7:81–97) draws a parallel between Jonah’s downward journey into the sea and the descent of the human soul into this world to dwell in a physical body. The Jonah narrative in the Zohar is thus rewritten as a universal story about every

Jonah and His Fish

61

human being. 62 In this retelling of the Jonah narrative, the fish is identified with the grave and with She’ol. To cite Wayakhel 7:88–89: When they brought him into the graveyard following the judgement, the decree of judgment that had been raging now calmed from its fury. The fish that swallowed him is really the grave (‫)ונונא דבלע ליה דא איהו קברא‬: What is written? “And Jonah remained in the fish’s belly” (Jonah 2:1). The belly of this fish is actually the belly of She’ol. On what basis is this identity established? It is written, “From the belly of She’ol I cried out” (Jonah 2:3). And should it otherwise be understood simply as the belly of the fish and nothing more, it is here clearly written, “the belly of the Netherworld.” 63

Jonah lies in this grave for three days and three nights. After a subsequent period of 30 days of pain, a voice sounds among the graves, calling the people to life again. At this moment, the graves cast forth their dead ones to be resurrected. God thus commanded the fish and it spewed Jonah out. The Zohar further makes clear that the fish does not only represent a tomb; the fish itself really dies after swallowing Jonah. At the same time, death also means healing and death paradoxically serves as the gateway to life. The fish is restored to life three days later, in time to spit Jonah out. 64 In the account of the fish one finds words of healing for all the world, for upon swallowing Jonah the fish died, but after Jonah was inside the fish for three days, the fish was restored to life and cast out Jonah. 65

Support for death of the fish is derived from Exodus 7:21 where it is written that the fish of the Nile died (‫)והדגה אשר ביאר מתה‬. The Zohar makes the connection because of the shared form ‫דגה‬. The fish is thus understood as a sign of both death and the resurrection of the dead (‫)תחית המתים‬. 66 The retelling of the Jonah narrative in the Zohar also appears in Midrash Jonah, a text in two parts. 67 The second part, featuring an allegorical rendering of the Jonah narrative, contains the same material as the Zohar. In this text, Jonah is a symbol of the soul. The first part contains the midrash proper. A version of this text appears in the Yalkut Shimoni to Jonah (part ii. §§ 550–551). 68 Yalkut Shimoni comments on Jonah 2:1, stating that the belly of the fish should be understood as the belly of She’ol. 69 The Relative Chronology of the New Testament and the Zohar The notion of the fish as a sign not only of death but also of resurrection in both the New Testament and the Zohar opens up the question of relative chronology. Does this idea in the Zohar depend on the similar idea in the New Testament, or does the association of Jonah with resurrection in the Zohar predate the emergence of Christianity? Goodenough argues in favour of the latter, namely that there existed an already established allegory where

62

Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer

Jonah’s three days in the belly of the fish served as a symbol of the resurrection from the dead. The understanding in Matthew 12:40 of Jonah as a type for Jesus’s death and resurrection thus depends on an early Jewish prototype. In Judaism, this tradition survived primarily in the Zohar and related literature. 70 MARINE MONSTERS, THE LEVIATHAN, HELL, AND MEDIAEVAL ART The transformation of Jonah’s fish into death itself continued and culminated in the Christian Church and helped create a tradition wherein Jonah’s fish truly became a monster. The Fish and the Church Fathers The church fathers show virtually no interest in the fish itself; only its symbolic value is important. There are two prevalent trends of interpretation: the womb and the tomb. Cyril of Jerusalem, for example, states that Jonah was cast into the belly of a great fish, but Christ of his own will descended to the abode of the invisible fish of death. He went down of his own will to make death disgorge those it had swallowed up, according to the Scripture. 71

Implied in this comparison is the idea that the fish is equivalent to the tomb / netherworld. Cassiodorus goes one step further as he writes: Finally from these depths Jonah, who was set in the whale’s belly and had entered hell alive, spoke to the Lord with silent vehemence. The whale was a house of prayer for the prophet, a harbour for him when ship-wrecked, a home amid the waves, a happy resource at a desperate time. 72

Thus, in one and the same sentence, Cassiodorus manages to liken the fish to Hell, yet also to acknowledge, in line with the biblical account, that the fish is Jonah’s saviour. The Fish in Mediaeval Depictions Reaching the climax of the monstrification of Jonah’s fish, several mediaeval paintings depict the entrance to Hell as the gaping mouth of a huge (marine) monster. It is commonly held that this image first appeared in Anglo-Saxon art and then spread across Europe. 73 This motif remained common in depictions of the Last Judgment and Harrowing of Hell until the Renaissance. The

Jonah and His Fish

63

Anglo-Saxon collection called Vercelli Homilies (4:46–48) likens Satan with a dragon which is swallowing the damned: “ . . . ne cumaþ þa næfre of þæra wyrma seaðe & of þæs dracan ceolan þe is Satan nemned.” “[they] never come out of the pit of snakes and of the throat of the dragon which is called Satan.” 74

The Leviathan was later equated with this description. 75 In The Whale, an Old English poem from the Exeter Book, the mouth of Hell is compared to a whale’s mouth. This whale is the servant of the Devil. Alternatively, the whale is the Devil. In the poem The Whale, the monster / whale is given the name Fastitocalon and described as a cunning monster that sinks seafarers and that lures fishes into its mouth to be devoured. The fish becomes a symbol of Hell which lures the unaware sinners towards destruction. He has another property, the water-rager proud, yet more cunning: when him in the sea hunger afflicts, and the wretch lusts after food, then the ocean-ward his mouth opens, his wide lips, a pleasant odour comes from his inside, so that thereby other kinds of sea-fishes are deciev’d; eager they swim to where the sweet odour cometh out: they there enter in heedless shoal, thill that the wide jaw is filled: then suddenly around the prey together crash the grim gums. So is to every man who oftenest negligently, in this transient time his life surveys, lets himself be deceiv’d through sweet odour, fallacious will: so that he is foul with crimes against the King of glory. 76

It probably owes part of the imagination to the Leviathan and part of it to Jonah’s fish. The Leviathan, understood as a monstrous animal whose mouth swallows the damned during the Last Judgement, was also conflated with this imagery. 77 “THERE AND BACK AGAIN”—THE FISH AND THE REFORMERS Reaching the Reformers, we have come full circle. In the writings of Calvin and Luther, Jonah’s fish becomes a fish again and is again treated as God’s servant. It is, however, a very scary fish and Jonah is suffering torment! Calvin Calvin does not spend a lot of ink on the fish itself. Instead, in his discussion of Jonah 1:17, Calvin emphasizes time and again the torment that Jonah must have endured whilst being in the fish. Jonah suffered a “continual execution” and he languished in “continual torments.” As to the character of the fish, Calvin sees is as a most benevolent being as he likens it to a hospital! “[F]or

Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer

64

[Jonah] was received inside of the fish as though it were into a hospital; and though he had no rest there, yet he was as safe as to his body, as though he were walking on land.” 78 Luther In his Latin sermons, Luther speaks of the “fish” (pisces). He is God’s tool in the sense that God has provided him for the very purpose of keeping Jonah alive. 79 Turning to the much longer German version, the character of the fish is more nuanced and also more monstrous. The “fish” has become a “whale” (Walfissch) and Jonah being swallowed by the whale is referred to as a second death: One death does not suffice, and he must pass through the jaws of the whale. God takes on a glowering mien. It seems that His anger is not appeased by the death and the penalty, to which Jonah is willing to submit, and that He cannot avenge Himself fiercely enough on him. It must have been a horrifying sight to poor, lost, and dying Jonah when the whale opened its mouth wide (da sich das maul des fischs so went hat auffgethan) and he beheld sharp teeth that stood upright all around like pointed pillars or beams and he peered down the wide cellar entrance to the belly. Is that being comforted in the hour of death? Is this the friendly glance in dying, that dying and death are not even sufficient? [ . . . ] For the tumultuous sea wants to drown him, and as the whale devours him and wants to consume him, so a conscience feels nothing but the tempest of God’s wrath and of death, and hell and damnation threaten to make short shrift of the soul and consume it, etc. 80

In Luther’s subsequent commentary to Jonah 2:10, the creature is a fish again. Luther argues that from being a vehicle of death, now it must serve to further life. 81 CONCLUSION In this article, we have observed how Jonah’s fish has been on a journey of transformation throughout its reception history. In fact, we have witnessed a “fall narrative,” insofar as Jonah’s fish has fallen from its high position as God’s benevolent and obedient servant down to its low and menacing position as God’s opponent and as the symbol of torment, death, and ultimately also of Evil itself. Its fall was not straight, though, and it did not happen across board as some traditions upheld its status as God’s creature. Its fall can also not be isolated to a particular religious affiliation. Rather, Jewish and Christian texts alike display a variety of traditions, sometimes even in parallel and sometimes even in the same text. At one and the same time, Jonah’s fish is both a saviour and a tormentor, a place of safety and a place of

Jonah and His Fish

65

punishment. These manifold connotations are in line with the biblical text itself: although Jonah was saved by the fish, most readers of the book of Jonah would acknowledge that this means of salvation cannot have been a pleasant experience! NOTES 1. At a rather late stage in my research, I discovered David Paul Parris’s book Reading the Bible with Giants: How 2000 Years of Biblical Interpretation Can Shed New Light on Old Texts (2nd edition; Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015). His chapter called “The Best Fish Story Ever Told,” 36–63, contains some of the same material that I am presenting in the present article. I have also benefitted from reading Yvonne Sherwood’s excellent book A Biblical Text and its Afterlives: The Survival of Jonah in Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), (esp. pages 141–146) which is much broader in scope than my own, much more narrow, investigation into the interpretative history of the monstrification of Jonah’s fish. 2. Cf. George M. Landes, “The Kerygma of the Book of Jonah: The Contextual Interpretation of the Jonah Psalm,” Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 21 (1967): 3–31 (12). See also James Ackerman, “Satire and Symbolism in the Song of Jonah,” in Traditions in Transformation: Turning Points in Biblical Faith. Festschrift Frank Moore Cross (eds. Baruch Halpern and Jon D. Levenson; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1981), 213–246 (214–15). 3. Jan M. Ziolkowski, Fairy Tales from Before Fairy Tales: The Medieval Latin Past of Wonderful Lies (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009), 82. 4. Norma Rosen, “Justice for Jonah, or, a Bible Bartleby,” in Accidents of Influence: Writing as a Woman and a Jew in America (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992), 87–96 (93). 5. Ackerman, “Satire and Symbolism,” 215. 6. The chapter and verse division in the Masoretic Text (MT) differs from that in the Septuagint (LXX) in Jonah 2. Most English translations follow the division of the LXX. 7. Ackerman, “Satire and Symbolism,” 234–236. 8. For the translation of κήτος, see Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1889), 432. The translation in the LXX does not differentiate between ‫ דג‬and ‫דגה‬. 9. Cf. Jack M. Sasson, Jonah: A New Translation with Introduction, Commentary, and Interpretation (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 149. 10. David Flusser, “Paganism in Palestine,” in The Jewish People in the First Century: Historical, Geography, Political History, Social, Cultural and Religious Life and Institutions. Vol. 2 (eds. S. Safrai and M. Stern, in co-operation with D. Flusser and W. C. van Unnik; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976), 1065–1100 (1080–1083). 11. The Bibliotheca (also called Pseudo-Apollodorus) is a compendium of myths and heroic legends, arranged in three books, generally dated to the first or second centuries CE. See Apollodorus, The Library of Greek Mythology, transl. Robin Hard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 79. 12. See further Robin Hard, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose’s Handbook of Greek Mythology (London: Routledge, 2004), 58–64. 13. Genesis 1:21 is the exception to the rule where the LXX uses δράκων for the Hebrew ‫תנין‬. 14. For a discussion of other aspects of Jonah’s fish, for instance the widespread rabbinic tradition that Jonah 1–2 attests to two fishes, see my article “A New Look at the Biological Sex / Grammatical Gender of Jonah’s Fish,” VT 66 (2016), 1–17. 15. For an in-depth discussion of this narrative, see Rachel Adelman, The Return of the Repressed: Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer and the Pseudepigrapha (SJSJ 140; Leiden: Brill, 2009), 211–258. 16. For the translation, see Pirkê de Rabbi Eliezer: (The Chapters of Rabbi Eliezer the Great) According to the Text of the Manuscript belonging to Abraham Epstein of Vienna.

66

Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer

Translated and annotated with introduction and indices by Gerald Friedlander (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd.; New York: Bloch Publ., 1916), 69. 17. The translation is taken from Jacob Neusner, Habakkuk, Jonah, Nahum and Obadiah in Talmud and Midrash: A Source Book (Studies in Judaism; Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007), 71. 18. Adelman, Return of the Repressed, 213. 19. For the translation, see Friedlander, Pirkê de Rabbi Eliezer, 70. 20. For the translation, see Friedlander, Pirkê de Rabbi Eliezer, 70–71. 21. For the translation, see Friedlander, Pirkê de Rabbi Eliezer, 69–70. 22. For the translation, see Friedlander, Pirkê de Rabbi Eliezer, 71–72. 23. See further Folker Siegert, “Early Jewish Interpretation in a Hellenistic Style: The Sermons On Jonah and On Samson,” in Hebrew Bible, Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation. Vol I/1 (ed. Magne Sæbo; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 191–192. 24. The word used for Jonah’s fish is the Greek loanword κήτος. Jonah’s fish here clearly belongs to the larger categories of big sea-living creatures. See further Folker Siegert’s commentary to the text of De Jona in Drei hellenistisch-jüdische Predigten, II (WUNT 61; Tübingen: JC.B. Mohr, 1992), 135–136. 25. The sixth-century Armenian text has been translated into Latin and German. For the cited German translation, see Folker Siegert, Drei hellenistisch-jüdische Predigten, I (WUNT 20; Tübingen: JC.B. Mohr, 1980), 19 (section 16 [lines 63–64] of the text). 26. De Jona, section 18 (lines 67–68) (Siegert, Drei hellenistisch-jüdische Predigten, I, 20). 27. De Jona, end of section 25 (line 98) (Siegert, Drei hellenistisch-jüdische Predigten, I, 25). 28. De Jona, sections 42–43 (lines 163–175) (Siegert, Drei hellenistisch-jüdische Predigten, I, 38–39). 29. Original Greek: καὶ ὁ μὲν χειμὼν ἐστάλη, τὸν δὲ λόγος ὑπὸ τοῦ κήτους καταποθέντα τρεῖς ἡμέρας καὶ τοσαύτας νύκτας εἰς τὸν Εὔξεινον ἐκβρασθῆναι πόντον ζῶντα καὶ μηδὲν τοῦ σώματος λελωβημένον. I wish to thank my (former) colleague Prof. Steve Mason for helping me to locate the Greek text. This is the only occurrence of κήτος in Josephus’s writing. 30. This quote is based on the translation by William Whiston, The Works of Josephus. Complete and Unabridged (New Updated Version; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1987), 260. In the more recent translation by Christopher T. Begg and Paul Spilsbury, the word κήτος is still being translated as “whale.” See http://pace-ancient.mcmaster.ca/york/york/showText?book= 9&chapter=10&textChunk=nieseSection&chunkId=208&text=anti&version=english& direction=&tab=&layout=split. 31. See further the discussion in Louis H. Feldman, “Josephus’s Interpretation of Jonah,” AJS Review 17 (1992): 1–29 (14–16). 32. Andrew R. Angel, Chaos and the Son of Man: The Hebrew Chaoskampf Tradition in the Period 515 BCE to 200 CE (London: T & T Clark, 2006), 87, with fn. 67–69 and cited bibliography. 33. Translation by David Cook, “Joseph and Aseneth,” in The Apocryphal Old Testament (ed. H.F.D. Sparks; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 465–503 (485). On-line access: http://www.markgoodacre.org/aseneth/translat.htm. 34. See further the discussion in Angel, Chaos and the Son of Man, 88–89. 35. See further Harm W. Hollander and Marinus de Jonge, The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Commentary (Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha 8; Leiden; E.J. Brill, 1985), 220–224. 36. See further Angel, Chaos and the Son of Man, 110–111. 37. Translation by Hollander and de Jonge, Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, 221. 38. For an in-depth discussion, see Sara Raup Johnson, Historical Fictions and Hellenistic Jewish Identity: Third Maccabees in Its Cultural Context (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 129–141. 39. Verse 8 in Greek reads: τόν τε βυθοτρεφοῦς ἐν γαστρὶ κήτους Ιωναν τηκόμενον ἀφιδὼν ἀπήμαντον πᾶσιν οἰκείοις ἀνέδειξας, πάτερ. The Greek word κήτος follows the LXX.

Jonah and His Fish

67

40. My translation follows that of D.R. Darnell, “Hellenistic Synagogal Prayer,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. 2 vols. (ed. J.H. Charlesworth; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983), 2:677–697 (685). 41. As pointed out by James Limburg, Jonah (OTL; London: SCM Press, 1993). 42. The translation is taken from Jacob Neusner, Habakkuk, Jonah, Nahum and Obadiah in Talmud and Midrash: A Source Book (Studies in Judaism; Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007), 65–66. 43. The translation is taken from Neusner, Habakkuk, Jonah, Nahum and Obadiah, 66. 44. The quote is from the Authorized Version. The Greek text reads: 1. Οι δὲ πορευόμενοι τὴν ὁδὸν ἦλθον ἑσπέρας ἐπὶ τὸν Τίγριν ποταμόν, καὶ ηὐλίζοντο ἐκεῖ. 2 τὸ δὲ παιδάριον κατέβη περικλύσασθαι, καὶ ἀνεπήδησεν ἰχθὺς ἀπὸ τοῦ ποταμοῦ καὶ ἐβουλήθη καταπιεῖν τὸ παιδάριον. 3 ὁ δὲ ἄγγελος εἶπεν αὐτῷ· ἐπιλαβοῦ τοῦ ἰχθύος. καὶ ἐκράτησε τὸν ἰχθὺν τὸ παιδάριον καὶ ἀνέβαλεν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν. 4 καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ ὁ ἄγγελος· ἀνάτεμε τὸν ἰχθὺν καὶ λαβὼν τὴν καρδίαν καὶ τὸ ἧπαρ καὶ τὴν χολὴν θὲς ἀσφαλῶς. 45. Cf. Carey A. Moore, Tobit: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 40A; London / New York: Doubleday, 1996), 199. 46. Moore, Tobit, 199. 47. Cf. Tobit 14:4. There are two versions of this verse, one mentioning Jonah and the other mentioning Nahum. For a discussion of the two traditions, as well as for the primacy of the former reading, see Sherwood, Biblical Text, 124–25 (footnote 185). 48. Amy-Jill Levine, “Tobit: Teaching Jews How to Live in the Diaspora,” Biblical Review 8 (1992), 42–51, 64 (46). 49. Moore, Tobit, 199. 50. Irene Nowell, “The Book of Tobit: Narrative Technique and Theology” (Ph.D. diss., The Catholic University of America, 1983), 219, as cited by Moore, Tobit, 199. 51. William Simpson, The Jonah Legend: A Suggestion of Interpretation (London: Grant Richards, 1899), 98. 52. Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries: The Encounter Between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), 218–223. 53. Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, 222–223. 54. Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, 225–227. 55. Maud Bodkin, Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: Psychological Studies of Imagination (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), 52–53. 56. Landes, “Kerygma of the Book of Jonah,” 11–12. 57. Following the NIV translation. 58. Following the NIV translation. 59. Richard Alan Edwards, The Sign of Jonah in the Theology of the Evangelists and Q (London: S.C.M. Press, 1971), 49–55. The four sayings in Q are Matthew 12:40; 24:27, 37; 24:38–39. 60. Edwards, The Sign of Jonah, 71–109 (summary on 105–107). 61. Thomas M. Bolin, Freedom Beyond Forgiveness: The Book of Jonah Re-Examined (JSOTS 236 / Copenhagen International Seminar 3; Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1997), 20. 62. Aryeh Wineman, Mystic Tales from the Zohar (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 103–105. 63. Translation from Wineman, Mystic Tales from the Zohar, 101. 64. Wineman, Mystic Tales from the Zohar, 105–106. 65. Translation from Wineman, Mystic Tales from the Zohar, 102. 66. See further Wineman, Mystic Tales from the Zohar, 106–109. 67. Midrash Yonah is a late aggadic work which is traditionally read in the synagogue on the Day of Atonement. Its author drew mainly from Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer and reworked it in his own (Hebrew) words. It was written no earlier than the eighth century. For more information, see Moshe David Herr, “Midrashim, Smaller,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica. Access on-line via http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0014_0_13849.html. 68. Yalkut Shimoni or “the Yalkut” of Simon of Frankfurt is a midrashic anthology. It was probably compiled in the thirteenth century and began being circulated widely in the fifteenth

68

Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer

century. The compiler sought to gather all rabbinical sayings that he had at his disposal in one work which followed the order of the biblical books. He often but not always noted the source in the margins. For a discussion of the extant manuscripts, see further Jacob Elbaum, “Yalkut Shimoni,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica. Access on-line via http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0021_0_21181.html. 69. (‫ מבטן שאול שועתי )כתוב ברמז תל"ז‬.(‫)ויהי יונה במעי הדג שלשה ימים )ברמז י"ב‬: 70. Erwin Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period. Vol. 5 (Bollingen Series 37; New York: Pantheon, 1956), 31–61, most specifically on 47–48. 71. Cyril of Jerusalem, “Catechetical Lecture 14.7,” in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Old Testament xiv: The Twelve Prophets (ed. Alberto Ferreiro; Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2003), 135. 72. Cassiodorus, “Exposition of the Psalms 129.1,” in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Old Testament xiv: The Twelve Prophets (ed. Alberto Ferreiro; Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2003), 137. 73. Gary D. Schmidt, The Iconography of the Mouth of Hell: Eighth-century Britain to the Fifteenth Century (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press / London: Associated University Presses, 1995), 13–16. 74. Petra Hofmann, “Infernal Imagery in Anglo-Saxon Charters” (Ph.D. thesis; University of St Andrews, 2008), 85, as cited by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellmouth (footnote 7). 75. See further Schmidt, Iconography of the Mouth of Hell, 52–60. 76. For the translation, see Benjamin Thorpe, Codex Exoniensis: A Collection of AngloSaxon poetry, from a Manuscript in the Library of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter, with an English Translation, Notes, and Indexes (London: Society of Antiquaries of London, 1842), 360–364. https://ia802607.us.archive.org/16/items/codexexoniensis01londgoog/ codexexoniensis01londgoog.pdf For further discussion, see Schmidt, Iconography of the Mouth of Hell, 62–63. 77. See, for example, in Mexican art. Website: colonialmexico.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/xoxoteco-jaws-of-hell.html. 78. John Calvin, Twelve Minor Prophets. Vol. 3 Jonah, Micah, Nahum (transl. John Owen; Calvin’s Commentary: Calvin Translation Society, 1847), Calvin’s seventy-sixth lecture, referring to Jonah 1:17 (73). 79. Martin Luther, Jonah, Habakkuk (ed. H.C. Oswald; Luther’s Work 19; St Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1974), 15 (in the preface to his commentary of Jonah 2): “he was also swallowed alive by a fish, a fish the Lord provided for this very purpose.” For the Latin original, see D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgame, Vol. 13 (Weimar, 1883 ff.), 281, 248–249. 80. Luther, Jonah, Habakkuk, 67–68 (in his comments on Jonah 1:12). For the German original, see D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgame, Vol 19 (Weimar, 1883 ff.), 218–219. 81. Luther, Jonah, Habakkuk, 82.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Ackerman, James. “Satire and Symbolism in the Song of Jonah.” In Traditions in Transformation: Turning Points in Biblical Faith. Festschrift Frank Moore Cross, edited by Baruch Halpern and Jon D. Levenson, 213–246. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1981. Adelman, Rachel. The Return of the Repressed: Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer and the Pseudepigrapha. SJSJ 140; Leiden: Brill, 2009. Angel, Andrew R. Chaos and the Son of Man: The Hebrew Chaoskampf Tradition in the Period 515 BCE to 200 CE. London: T & T Clark, 2006. Apollodorus, The Library of Greek Mythology. Transl. Robin Hard. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Begg, Christopher T. and Paul Spilsbury. http://pace-ancient.mcmaster.ca/york/york/ showText?book=9&chapter=10&textChunk=nieseSection&chunkId=208&text=anti& version=english&direction=&tab=&layout=split.

Jonah and His Fish

69

Bodkin, Maud. Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: Psychological Studies of Imagination. London: Oxford University Press, 1934. Bolin, Thomas M. Freedom Beyond Forgiveness: The Book of Jonah Re-Examined. JSOTS 236 / Copenhagen International Seminar 3; Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1997. Calvin, John, Twelve Minor Prophets. Vol. 3 Jonah, Micah, Nahum. Transl. John Owen. Calvin’s Commentary, Calvin Translation Society, 1847. Cassiodorus. “Exposition of the Psalms 129.1.” In Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Old Testament xiv: The Twelve Prophets, edited by Alberto Ferreiro. Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2003. Cook, David. “Joseph and Aseneth.” In The Apocryphal Old Testament, edited by H.F.D. Sparks, 465–503. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. Cyril of Jerusalem. “Catechetical Lecture 14.7.” In Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Old Testament xiv: The Twelve Prophets, edited by Alberto Ferreiro. Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2003. Darnell, D.R. “Hellenistic Synagogal Prayer.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. 2 vols., edited by J.H. Charlesworth, 2:677–697. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983. Edwards, Richard Alan. The Sign of Jonah in the Theology of the Evangelists and Q. London: S.C.M. Press, 1971. Elbaum, Jacob. “Yalkut Shimoni.” In Encyclopaedia Judaica. Access on-line via http://www. jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0021_0_21181.html. Eliade, Mircea. Myths, Dreams and Mysteries: The Encounter Between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities. New York: Harper and Row, 1960. Feldman, Louis H. “Josephus’ Interpretation of Jonah.” AJS Review 17 (1992): 1–29. Flusser, David. “Paganism in Palestine.” In The Jewish People in the First Century: Historical Geography, Political History, Social, Cultural and Religious Life and Institutions. Vol. 2, edited by S. Safrai and M. Stern, in co-operation with D. Flusser and W. C. van Unnik, 1065–1100. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976. Goodenough, Erwin. Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period. Vol. 5. Bollingen Series 37; New York: Pantheon, 1956. Hard, Robin. The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose’s Handbook of Greek Mythology. London: Routledge, 2004. Herr, Moshe David. “Midrashim, Smaller.” In Encyclopaedia Judaica. Access on-line via http:/ /www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0014_0_13849.html. Hofmann, Petra. “Infernal Imagery in Anglo-Saxon Charters.” PhD diss., University of St Andrews, 2008. Hollander, Harm W. and Marinus de Jonge. The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Commentary. Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha 8; Leiden; E.J. Brill, 1985. Johnson, Sara Raup. Historical Fictions and Hellenistic Jewish Identity: Third Maccabees in Its Cultural Context. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Landes, George M. “The Kerygma of the Book of Jonah: The Contextual Interpretation of the Jonah Psalm.” Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 21 (1967): 3–31. Levine, Amy-Jill. “Tobit: Teaching Jews How to Live in the Diaspora.” Biblical Review 8 (1992): 42–51. Liddell, Henry George and Robert Scott. An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon, 1889. Limburg, James. Jonah. OTL; London: SCM Press, 1993. Luther, Martin. Jonah, Habakkuk. Edited by H.C. Oswald. Luther’s Work, 19; St Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1974. For the German original, see D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgame, Vol 19. Weimar, 1883 ff. Moore, Carey A. Tobit: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. AB 40A; London / New York: Doubleday, 1996. Neusner, Jacob. Habakkuk, Jonah, Nahum and Obadiah in Talmud and Midrash: A Source Book. Studies in Judaism; Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007. Nowell, Irene. “The Book of Tobit: Narrative Technique and Theology.” PhD diss., The Catholic University of America, 1983.

70

Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer

Parris, David Paul. Reading the Bible with Giants: How 2000 Years of Biblical Interpretation Can Shed New Light on Old Texts. 2nd Edition; Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015. Pirkê de Rabbi Eliezer: (The Chapters of Rabbi Eliezer the Great) According to the Text of the Manuscript belonging to Abraham Epstein of Vienna. Translated and annotated with introduction and indices by Gerald Friedlander . London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd.; New York: Bloch Publ., 1916. Rosen, Norma. “Justice for Jonah, or, a Bible Bartleby.” In Accidents of Influence: Writing as a Woman and a Jew in America, 87–96. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992. Sasson, Jack M. Jonah: A New Translation with Introduction, Commentary, and Interpretation. New York: Doubleday, 1990. Schmidt, Gary D. The Iconography of the Mouth of Hell: Eighth-century Britain to the Fifteenth Century. Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press / London: Associated University Presses, 1995. Sherwood, Yvonne. A Biblical Text and its Afterlives: The Survival of Jonah in Western Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Siegert, Folker Drei hellenistisch-jüdische Predigten, I. WUNT 20; Tübingen: JC.B. Mohr, 1980. Siegert, Folker. Drei hellenistisch-jüdische Predigten, II. WUNT 61; Tübingen: JC.B. Mohr, 1992. Siegert, Folker. “Early Jewish Interpretation in a Hellenistic Style: The Sermons On Jonah and On Samson.” In Hebrew Bible, Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation. Vol I/1, edited by Magne Sæbo, 191–192. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996. Simpson, William. The Jonah Legend: A Suggestion of Interpretation. London: Grant Richards, 1899. Thorpe, Benjamin. Codex Exoniensis: A Collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry, from a Manuscript in the Library of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter, with an English Translation, Notes, and Indexes. London: Society of Antiquaries of London, 1842. Tiemeyer, Lena-Sofia. “A New Look at the Biological Sex / Grammatical Gender of Jonah’s Fish,” VT 66 (2016), 1–17. Whiston, William. The Works of Josephus. Complete and Unabridged. New Updated Version; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1987. Wineman, Aryeh. Mystic Tales from the Zohar. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. Ziolkowski, Jan M. Fairy Tales from Before Fairy Tales: The Medieval Latin Past of Wonderful Lies. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009.

Chapter Four

“Who Has the Most Faults?” Animal Sinners in a Late Byzantine Poem Kirsty Stewart

The text on which this article focuses is entitled Συναξάριον τοῦ τιμημένου Γαδάρου, or the Synaxarion of the Honourable Donkey. 1 The Synaxarion tells the story of the Donkey, who is taken from his field by the Fox, or rather vixen, and the Wolf, ostensibly to be educated by them. The animals travel together on a boat to the middle of the sea, where the Fox “prophesizes” an imminent storm and their subsequent deaths. To prevent this, the animals agree to make confession and sacrifice whoever has committed the worst sin, apparently in an attempt to gain God’s favour and save themselves from drowning. Inevitably, the poor Donkey is chosen despite the trifling nature of his sin. Yet the outcome is not as expected; the Donkey is not eaten, as the Fox had intended, but saves himself, and the Wolf and Fox declare that he should no longer be referred to as a γάδαρος, meaning donkey. Instead they call him νικόν, another, later term that also means donkey but with connotations of the verb νῖκάω, meaning to have victory over, with which the author plays. The poem and its humour have been interpreted as being “directed against unscrupulous clergy who bemuse their simple parishioners with mumbo-jumbo, but in this case receive their just deserts.” 2 This article will argue that such an interpretation may oversimplify the author’s work. In what follows I will briefly discuss the confessions of each of the three animals, and highlight the stereotypes which the animals fulfil. I will then look at how we may interpret this poem, whether as a satire against the clergy, the political situation of the period, or of a more specific group of people. 3 The first of the animals to perform confession is the Wolf. He confesses to eating a large number of animals including sheep, cows, deer and pigs and, because his killing is so excessive that he cannot eat all he kills, he therefore 71

72

Kirsty Stewart

hides food in the hills in which he lives, to eat it later. The sin confessed to by the Wolf, who apparently believes he will survive the perceived threat of the sea if he confesses, is, therefore, the sin of gluttony. Ostensibly feeling guilty about such rapacious behaviour, he states that he goes into the hills where there is a τσιμάδι And immediately pass through and I confess And become a monk, I darken my back, I become reverend, I resemble an abbot, And repent the evil which I made in the world. 4

The word τσιμάδι in line 130 has yet to be satisfactorily explained. Etymologically, the word could be connected with the Italian “cima” meaning summit. It may be possible that it is connected with the Greek σημάδι, which can mean a mark or sign. Moennig suggests, following Basileiou, that it could mean a charcoal burning site or charcoal pit, which makes sense in terms of the Wolf’s act of darkening his fur to resemble a monk’s habit. 5 This act plays on the theme of the false wolf-monk. While several other animals, including the fox and the cat are recorded as masquerading as monks and holy men in the Greek, Latin and Arabic/Persian traditions, the wolf is the animal most commonly associated with this trick. In Latin literature the most famous example is probably Ysengrimus who pretends to be a monk to live an easy life and eat well, a tale which is continued into the Reynard cycle. 6 This popular association was habitually used to recall Matthew 7:15 “beware false prophets, who come to you in sheepskin, though inside they are wolves.” It also links nicely with the practice of costumes and cross-dressing in Byzantine street festivals in which “laymen could act the part of monks or clerics, and clerics those of soldiers and animals,” in a restoratively subversive atmosphere. 7 Such role-reversal is a common feature of comedic texts and here not only mocks those who try to be something other than they are, but criticises the behaviour of religious figures specifically. That the Wolf makes such a confession and attempts to transform himself in the hills adds a further aspect to this. The hills, like the desert, are an area outside of society, a place of retreat, implying a spiritual journey, self-improvement and seclusion. The Wolf mimics such holy withdrawal believed to improve one’s spirituality, apparently improving himself enough to appear as an abbot, and therefore mocking, if not the religious practice itself, then the attempt without real belief and the feigned piety of certain overly rich and influential churchmen. This sense is added to by the fact that the sin of gluttony itself is often attributed to monks, and used to mock them. It is also an obvious sin for the wolf, being seen as a key feature of their behaviour in medieval texts. If we believe the Wolf is fully aware of the Fox’s none too subtle plan to eat the Donkey, then he is truly a false monk, and even if aware of his own

“Who Has the Most Faults?”

73

sins, clearly unrepentant. If we follow the text more directly and assume the Wolf’s fear of drowning is real, and that he is unaware of the Fox’s plot, then the attempt to become a monk rather reflects the inability to change one’s nature. Either way, the Wolf fulfils a traditional role, being driven by violent hunger, even to the point of masquerading as a cleric, with the usual outcome of defeat and an empty stomach. The Fox is the leader of this trio of animals, and the most developed of the characters. It is she who convinces, or perhaps forces, the poor Donkey to leave his field and go with her and the Wolf. It is she who “foresees” the storm and suggests the act of confession. She is cunning, vicious and determined to eat the Donkey. In her confession, the Fox states that “(T)he world curses me day and night” on account of the many times she has wronged people. 8 She offers one particular example, in which she imitates a pet cat in order to steal and eat the pet hen of an old, partially blind woman. Her “sins are many and doings/actions bad,” so bad, in fact, that her confession stretches to 66 verses, the longest continuous speech in the text. Unlike the Wolf, she has no one sin to confess to, but many to repent for. Here again we find the topos of withdrawal from society displayed by the Wolf as the Fox also goes to the mountains for her personal penance. The Fox states that she “wished to cry” for her actions in hopes of salvation. 9 This apparently honest wish is quickly subverted by her inability to do so. Penitent tears, grief on account of sin, usually termed penthos, was a highly regarded act of faith in Byzantium. Numerous Byzantine texts from different time periods attest the importance of penitent tears, and references can be found in the Bible as well. 10 Manasseh and the inhabitants of Nineveh were regularly cited as examples of salvation through tears in Byzantine texts ranging in time from the early Church Fathers through to Gregory Palamas. Gregory of Nazianzus wrote that the “people of Nineve are threatened with an overthrow, but by their tears they redeem their sin. Manasseh was the most lawless of Kings, but is the most conspicuous among those who have attained salvation through mourning.” 11 The Wolf draws the connection between the Fox and Manasseh for us when absolving her of her crimes, saying, You surpassed Manasseh, you imitated the harlot, And you have become again like them, My divine one, my holy one and you have been justified. 12

But the Fox is never the true penitent. In the Orthodox faith, the desire to shed penitent tears was as important as the actual act. 13 Since the author has already made us aware of the Fox’s plan through the Wolf’s feigned or actual failure to understand it, we know that the Fox had no such sincere desire. Since she cannot produce real tears, crying being a distinctively human act, the Fox resorts to faking them: I squeeze myself a bit,

74

Kirsty Stewart And I piss on my tail, I water my eyes, And I knit my brows together, And it looks like tears and I have great hope That God will hold my tears in high esteem. 14

The Fox therefore makes a mockery of what was a very familiar act of penitence. Not only does she fake tears, but she goes so far as to use urine to do so. The author is unlikely to be disparaging the actual belief in penitent mourning. Rather, he is mocking those who fake such emotion for their own ends, dirtying themselves further by such an act, quite literally in this case. That the Fox herself expresses her hope that God will be pleased with her attempt increases the comedic value of this passage. The Fox is attempting to hoodwink God in the same way as she is trying to hoodwink the Donkey. She is exactly as duplicitous, evil, impenitent, and cunning as we would traditionally expect for a fox in a fable, and here is undermining a specific, generally positive, religious practice. It is worth noting that the Fox’s gender seems to have been stressed by the author. Although animals in Greek are grammatically gendered so that their presentation as being of one sex or another may be purely linguistic, the Fox’s femininity is so heavily stressed that it seems to be a deliberate, and deliberately misogynistic, depiction by the author. 15 Not only is she always addressed with feminine terms, the epithet πονηρά meaning wicked, a term used to describe women in any number of Greek works, is used several times of her. 16 The Fox is also by far the most verbose of the animals, corresponding to the misogynist topos of loquaciousness. Verbosity in women was poorly thought of by later Byzantines and silence, or at least limited speech, was lauded. For example, in the fragments we have of Manasses’s novel, we find a clear example of this idea: O woman, it is an adornment for women and especially for maidens not to wear their tongues out on useless matters, but to close their mouths and not waste time on long and superfluous discussions. 17

As noted above, the Fox’s confession is the longest continuous speech in the poem and she speaks alone for an additional 96 verses, as well as sharing 14 verses with the Wolf. In comparison, the Wolf’s confession covers only 10 verses, and he speaks alone for an additional 30 verses. The Donkey speaks for a total of 68 verses, of which his confession spans 24 verses. The Fox’s prophetic role aligns her with the “false prophets” of Matthew 7:15 mentioned above in connection with the Wolf. She claims vast knowledge of all things, and is attributed this also by the Wolf. The Fox is by far the more intelligent of the two evil companions, and her knowledge and cunning are continually stated, albeit often by her. The Wolf, as her companion, whose intellect is never mentioned, can blindly follow her, furthering the humour through his deference to his συντέκνισσα, who would normally be portrayed in the submissive role. It seems obvious that some Byzantine wom-

“Who Has the Most Faults?”

75

en were highly educated, but for them to have been so cannot have been the norm, at least outside of the court. The author’s portrayal of this character seems to add the stereotypes of women as deceptive and sinful descendants of Eve, to the traditional image of the cunning Fox, so that she becomes the cunning sinner of the work. In contrast with these traditional villains, The Donkey is the humble, honourable character throughout the text, not the stereotypical stubborn, greedy and foolish beast. This stereotype is, however, clearly what the Fox and Wolf are expecting when they first encounter the Donkey. When he tries to refuse their invitation to travel and be educated, the Fox sees through his excuses, saying, Do not pretend so much, so that you appear a boor, A rustic and uneducated, vulgar and a liar Indeed it is appropriate for you, Donkey, to be called a donkey. 18

The Fox continues with praise of whomever assigned the Donkey this name since it fits his character and appearance, but here we have a lacuna, so the Fox’s wit is somewhat lost. She continues to describe the “deformed” appearance of the Donkey and to refer to him as a coarse barbarian. In reality, the Donkey is intelligent and modest. He is mistreated by his master and essentially abducted by the Fox and the Wolf. He confesses to eating one lettuce leaf from his burden when starving and weak from beatings. This sin the Fox treats as a terrible crime, despite doing far worse herself, and condemns the Donkey to death. The Donkey sees through the Fox’s scheme and uses his own cunning “πονηρίαν” to beat the Fox and Wolf at their own game. Accepting the Fox’s judgement, he offers them the gift God gave him before he dies. This phrasing hints at the Biblical donkey who, though humble, is beloved, carries the Virgin and Christ, and in the form of Balaam’s ass, dispenses wisdom. The Fox asks him to give this gift to the Wolf, remaining suspicious. Once positioned as per the Donkey’s instructions, the Wolf is presented with the Donkey’s “gift” and is soundly beaten by the Donkey’s penis, before being kicked from the boat. The Fox chooses to leap into the sea herself, rather than suffer the same fate. This method of defeating the other animals is certainly unusual. Normally in fable, if a donkey is lucky enough to defeat their enemy, it is with a strong kick, which the Donkey certainly uses to remove the Wolf from the boat, but is not the main assault. What the exact significance of this is, beyond the suggestion of a very insulting defeat, is harder to see. The Donkey is honest and easily derided, but in the end proves himself to be both brave and clever, using his natural features to save himself. He is renamed by his enemies, and thus spiritually cleansed in the taking of a new name, as in the monastic world. This animal simultaneously fulfils, subverts and adapts his stereotype.

76

Kirsty Stewart

The animals in this text are familiar, perform largely as we would expect them to and the poem as a whole seems to follow the traditional pattern of a fable, until the final section at least. Although the animals themselves generally fulfil expected stereotypes, drawing on religious imagery whilst doing so, the poem invites us to look beyond the basic plot. Even if the poem is too long to be considered a fable proper, it nevertheless seems to draw heavily on that genre. Several of the motifs found in the Synaxarion, such as the confession, the privilege or gift of the Donkey, the character traits of the Fox and the Wolf, seem to draw directly from earlier fables. We can find a number of examples collected in Adrados’s extensive survey of the Graeco-Latin fable tradition. 19 The Synaxarion is not a direct copy of earlier material, though the anonymous author has used recognisable motifs and a familiar genre, developing them into a complex story and using their associations to further his plot. Unfortunately, the genre choice does not give us much information about either author or audience, as many fable collections, in different versions, exist in the period, and appear to have been popular with both monastic and secular audiences. The fable also formed one of the most rudimentary learning exercises in the traditional Byzantine education system, so would have been a widely known format for anyone with even a basic education. The use of the fable genre in education utilised its role as vehicle for moral or didactic lessons through the epimythium or promythium. 20 The narrator of the piece is certainly keen to point out to us the Donkey’s intelligence and the importance of his victory, stressing that not only do the Fox and Wolf refer to him with a new name, bearing positive connotations, but encouraging all who hear the tale to do so as well. No clear message, beyond perhaps more respect for donkeys, is spelt out by the author though. The moral of a fable does not have to be explicitly stated though. Indeed, the lack of an overt moral allows for multiple interpretations, and is perhaps safer if the story is critical of the status quo, something medieval fable-style works often were. For example, the Reynard cycle draws heavily on fable, was prevalent across Europe, and in its different versions acted as a vehicle for the representation of feudal justice and social conflicts, with many of the regional versions of Reynard being connected with specific political figures. 21 That the characters of the Synaxarion themselves are animals is another connection with, though not a prerequisite of, that genre, and a further method of distancing the author from his criticism, allowing his characters to use direct speech, while keeping the wrath of those being criticised balanced with humour, and a desire not to admit to their more animal-like traits. 22 The text as we have it today is found in only one manuscript, “Cod. Vindobonensis theol. gr. 244,” dated to the early sixteenth century. 23 The poem is written in vernacular Greek, a language style which became a feature of later Byzantine literary culture, contrasting with the highbrow Atticising Greek

“Who Has the Most Faults?”

77

popular for literary endeavours in the earlier period. It is in fifteen-syllable verse, known as “political verse,” and the author is anonymous. The language of the work, as well as several stylistic features and motifs, have led scholars to date it to the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, suggesting it is at least 150 years older than the manuscript that preserves it. 24 Where precisely it was written is unclear, but its author certainly seems to have been a native Greek speaker, whether under Byzantine rule or not. This context does lend itself to criticism of the status quo, as the Palaiologan period is often characterised as one of decadence and decay. 25 For much of the period, the empire was made up of little more than Constantinople and its hinterland, and the Peloponnese. Territory that had once been Byzantine was now in the hands of Latin lords and later the Ottomans, to whom Byzantium became a vassal state by the middle of the fourteenth century. Civil wars were a debilitating feature of the fourteenth century too, and some nominally Byzantine areas, such as the various despotates and city states like Thessalonica, largely functioned independently. Religious conflicts were another divisive feature of the period. Politically charged conversions or even unions with the church in Rome were formed and broken in the hopes of Western aid against the Ottomans. Internally, the church was often divided, particularly in relation to hesychasm, a mystical variation on the Orthodox faith, concerned primarily with silent prayer and contemplation, which split the church in the midfourteenth century. From a more material perspective, the economy in Byzantine lands could fluctuate widely, and the gulf between the rich and poor was often extreme. Despite all these problems, the intellectual climate of the empire flourished. A great number of texts were translated from Latin, and the translation of scientific works from Perso-Arabic continued. The use of vernacular language increased, and experiments with genre also seem to have been popular. 26 Conflict, whether political, military or religious, was the order of the day. Can we therefore see this poem as simply displaying the failure of false preachers to persuade their innocent listeners into harm? There are certainly a number of elements in the text which point to a religious interpretation. Aside from the confessions, the monastic-style renaming of the Donkey, and the references to various biblical characters including Manasseh, Jonah and Mary Magdalene, there are a number of terms used that imply a religious critique. The term “synaxarion” itself refers to an account of the life of a saint, sometimes to be read out during religious feasts. The use of such a term in the title of the Synaxarion of the Honourable Donkey therefore implies an immediate connection with a religious text, though the generic structure and tone are clearly different. Aside from the title, the story focuses on a central event in the life of the Donkey, which almost leads to his “martyrdom,” the most commonly depicted event in synaxaria of saints. The death of the Donkey would be the expected, and traditional, outcome for a story involv-

78

Kirsty Stewart

ing predators and a donkey. But the Donkey does not die, instead becoming the saintly hero of the tale. However, were the story so straightforward, one might expect the more commonly featured lamb to be the innocent who is saved. Two other, specifically religious terms are also relevant and easily noticeable to an audience. The Fox refers to the nomocanon, the codex of ecclesiastical law, claiming in-depth knowledge of it. When the Fox states that she and the Wolf wish to educate the Donkey so that they may appoint him as their envoy, the verb used for appoint, χειροτονῶ, is that used for appointments made within the church hierarchy and the ordination of clergymen. 27 Such terminology creates a religious connection, further supported by the content of the work. However, the religious content is highly satirical, and the synaxarial form is presumably also parodic. A further link with the religious may be suggested through the tales commonly called narrationes, in Greek διηγήσεις ψυχωφελεῖς, sometimes termed beneficial tales. These are something of a sub-genre of hagiography that began as an oral tradition and were popular around the sixth and seventh centuries, as well as during the second half of the tenth century, when a number were written by Paul, bishop of Monemvasia. 28 By the time Paul was writing, the spiritual element seems to have been of lesser importance than previously and had “become the excuse for telling a good tale, which frees the artist to develop his tale at will, without restraints.” 29 It was generally believed that new tales of this kind were not written after the early eleventh century, though the tales can be found in a number of later collections, so they must have continued to be of interest to the Byzantines, or at least the monastic population. 30 This may be due to their “simple and direct message which conformed to their language, style and concise manner of expression,” making narrationes an accessible and entertaining vehicle for religious messages, not unlike fables. 31 Some new tales from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries have recently been identified and assigned to the genre on the basis that they were produced in a monastic context, intended to edify their readers and show an affection for the exciting and bizarre. 32 Based on these criteria alone there seems to be a connection with the Synaxarion. The later versions of such tales also seem to mix genres, using older forms to criticise new, or at least contemporary, problems, but their aim was always “to provide good service to a religious cause through a simple mode of instruction.” 33 Narrationes could be highly critical or mocking of religious practice, particularly in connection with prideful or false monks, as represented in the Synaxarion by the Wolf, and so contained some humorous and entertaining features, and a didactic aim, rather than being purely spiritual works. It is important to bear in mind that the, often humorous, fable elements played with here do not detract from the religious content, nor do they remove the possibility of a monastic author and/or audience. In fact, they may strengthen this possibility. Fable material was used by Western preachers in

“Who Has the Most Faults?”

79

sermons, and it is possible that the same occurred in the Orthodox Church. 34 In the Byzantine world we find a direct connection between fable material and monasticism in a number of works, including those of Kassia. 35 The moral aspect, transmission of popular wisdom, and indeed the simple style of fable, similar to that of gnomic epigrams, ensured fable remained useful and popular for a Christian audience. This connection is even found outside the scriptorium. Aesopic decorations with inscriptions have been found in a number of church buildings such as those at Eski Gümüş, the early fifteenthcentury church of St Theodore, or the Evangelistria, at Sanxenou, Trebizond, and an eleventh-century church in the Mani. 36 Aside from the fabulistic and religious characteristics of this poem, the most prevalent feature is its humour. Humour in literature can do many things. It can be used as a tool for “reaffirming intimacy or attempting to establish a relationship, as a means of diffusing anger or frustration, or of displaying contempt – as well as a way of negotiating complex or difficult social moments.” 37 Humour does not need to directly parody or satirise in order to achieve any of these things. Elements of the humour in the Synaxarion are directed beyond the animals themselves to critique human, particularly religious, society more broadly, the slapstick action and clever mockery functions comedically in its own right. Mikhail Bakhtin coined the term “Carnival laughter” or the “carnivalesque,” meaning a literary mode that subverts the status quo, in the broadest sense, through humour and chaos. This somewhat anarchic comedy, he argues, was restorative. He relates it specifically to the religious festivals that occurred throughout the Christian year, and particularly those after Lent or other periods of sacrifice. 38 Regarding the connection between the carnivalesque and animals, and specifically the donkey, he notes that that animal traditionally symbolizes “the material bodily lower stratum, which at the same time degrades and regenerates.” 39 It is worth noting that novels in which literary scholars have identified the carnivalesque tend to have several characters with different opinions and a number of layers so that no single view is privileged. 40 The type of humour displayed in the final section of the Synaxarion, when the Wolf finds himself beaten by the Donkey’s genitals, and unaware of what has happened, asks where the iron club is, presents a modern audience with a degree of unease at its brutality. There is no reason to suppose that such a response was not to be found amongst a Byzantine audience as well. This comic violence is entertaining, because laughter, as Bergson suggests, is often accompanied by an “absence of feeling,” and through laughter we can remove our sense of pity long enough to find entertainment in such danger. 41 Nevertheless, the potential sense of discomfort, stressed by the many military items listed in connection with the Donkey’s “weaponry” allows an audience to question that emotion, and therefore the content of the poem and its related associations.

80

Kirsty Stewart

If the author of the Synaxarion is using poetry to mock, to reinvigorate, or to castigate the religious world, the characters may be representing particular individuals or factions. However, without the name-based puns found in works like Mazaris Journey to Hades or the characteristic features of particular offices and people found in the Poulologos, it is near impossible to identify these animals with individuals. In very general terms, the Donkey can be seen to reflect the Greek Orthodox population, at the mercy of duplicitous preachers. However, the femininity of the Fox seems too overt to apply to normal, Orthodox, preachers. It aligns better with an external religious enemy, the heretical Bogomils. Certainly, women played a prominent role within that heresy, as they could be prefects, ascetic holy leaders. Men and women seem to have attained a certain degree of equality under a religious doctrine that saw the physical world as evil and thus allowed for civil disobedience and the subversion of social norms. The traditional Orthodox role of women as wives and mothers was argued against as “all sex was evil, marriage an abomination, and the birth of children a victory for the Devil.” 42 Anna Komnene gives us a clear Orthodox view of these heretics, describing female Bogomils as “wretched women of loose habits and thoroughly bad.” 43 According to St Savas, women could preach Bogomilism. They were therefore educated, though mainly, or even only, in the theological and dogmatic thought of the Bogomils. 44 The Fox’s behaviour would seem to fit quite neatly with this image of women presented by the Orthodox opponents of the Bogomils. She acts as a spiritual equal to the Wolf, and is the leader of the group, apparently making the decisions and formulating plans. She claims a relatively high level of education, but in fairly specific areas, namely the nomocanon. It is possible that the text is not just mocking the vices of churchmen in general, but that it satirises particular heretics, singling them out for comparison with animals. This would not be a new concept; Epiphanios had used animals, particularly poisonous creatures, to describe heretics in his Panarion in the fourth century. But perhaps this suggestion places too much of a stress on the gender of animal whose central feature, cunningness, regularly belonged to women as well as to the animal in literature. An alternative is that the Fox and Wolf may represent preachers of the Western Church with whom some much debate continued. In some Greek-held or Greek-speaking regions the presence of Franciscan and Dominican monks is attested, and attempts at conversion appear to have been made, leading to at least one incident of Orthodox martyrdom, so violent religious conflict was not unheard of during this period. 45 It may also be possible to read a more political conflict into the poem. The possibility that the Fox and Wolf represent internal threats rather than external is certainly feasible, particularly when the internal was so confused in certain areas. It is possible that the conflict between the centre and the

“Who Has the Most Faults?”

81

periphery is less closely connected with religion, despite the generally religious tone of the work. Subversion and civil disobedience were not uncommon features of society at this time, particularly in Thessaloniki, whose obedience to Constantinople fluctuated not only due to conquest by outside forces, but also through the decisions of internal factions. 46 The Donkey could thus represent the victory of Constantinople over its wayward subjects, or the success of Thessaloniki in the unexpected triumph of the Donkey. Alternatively, the Donkey may represent Byzantine interests more broadly. The visualisation of Byzantium as the Donkey certainly seems unusual, but not entirely unfounded, as the creature is presented as humble and pious, and under the sway of a cruel master, as the Byzantines were under the Ottomans, or the Latins, depending on where the text was written. If the Donkey does represent Byzantium, then the Wolf and Fox may symbolise external forces, most likely the Latin West and the Turkic East, though it is difficult to identify which is which if that is indeed the case. The Wolf and Fox are clearly enemies of the Donkey, but whether they are external, political or religious enemies, or even internal ones, is hard to state. There is unfortunately nothing to indicate where the text was written, and the religious humour appears prevalent, so a socio-political interpretation can be little more than a suggestion. There is the possibility that the satire here is much more personal, that in some way the Donkey is the author himself and the Wolf and Fox his personal enemies. Perhaps he himself had been called uneducated and boorish as the Donkey is, and in writing this work has attempted to prove himself cleverer than his teachers or patrons. If this is the case, the religious humour implies that the teachers were religious figures of some form, and the insulting and painful defeat they suffer is the result of what can essentially be seen as an intellectual pissing contest. The use of the vernacular could simply indicate a lack of pretension, like that of the Donkey, or prove that an author who writes in the vernacular can be just as clever and amusing as one who does not. Studies of the near contemporary poem Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds (Παιδιόφραστος διήγησις τῶν ζῴων τῶν τετραπόδων) have read that piece of animal poetry as reflecting a political situation. 47 The Tale also lacks the identifiable name-based puns or characteristics of other contemporary satires, leaving the exact satire of the poem elusive. Nicholas and Baloglou posit a number of possible interpretations for the Tale, namely that it may have been written to sympathise with the poor, or as a version of the civil war between John Kantakouzenos and John V Palaiologos, or even as a discussion of the debate on Church Union. 48 Like the Synaxarion, the Tale contains fable-like elements, such as the stereotypical traits of the members of the animal court, and the depiction of the cunning fox is similar, though its gender is not stressed in the Tale. Religious references are also present, but

82

Kirsty Stewart

they are less of a focus than in the Synaxarion, a fact which has encouraged readers to interpret the poem as more political, than religious, satire. Physical, violent and sexual comedy is a key feature of the text again, especially when the animals are described as being punished and killed by humans. The death of the cat as described by the rat is perhaps the most gruesome: When people find that you have been committing these misdeeds, then you’ll see sticks and clubs fall on your ribs! And when they beat you, then you’ll get the squirts, and you’ll start farting farts like walnuts rattling! They’ll hit you many times around the head; and when you’ve croaked it, miserable bastard, they’ll throw you onto the dung, poor dear, where pigs will eat you.

Despite its use of fable elements, and a prologue which suggests an educational purpose for the text, the Tale does not invite interpretation in the same way as the Synaxarion. Fable is only one of its generic elements, and no clear epimythium is present, except for a quotation of Psalm 32:16 about the vulnerability of the mighty. Nevertheless, the existence of this, much longer, poem with its similarities to the Synaxarion, does suggest that animals were being used to critique events and people in the Palaiologan period, even if the critique itself is unclear to a modern reader. The Synaxarion of the Honourable Donkey is a text which, through its stylistic elements, invites us to read it as a fable and look for a moral or didactic message within its lines. Animals being used a source of insults has never been unusual, and their role as a vehicle for ideas and criticism is also not uncommon. 49 The poem stresses its religious preoccupation, and utilises animals often associated with religious themes. It is clever, subverting the expected, traditional ending of the Donkey’s death, and adds an additional, gender-based element to the Fox’s character. In doing so, it suggests that this poem was intended to do more than encourage the Orthodox flock to be wary of unscrupulous preachers. We could say that the Synaxarion stresses the excessive behaviour of the powerful towards the weak, with the powerful using the act of confession as a pretext and exaggerating a minor sin over a major one for their own aims, that it may have a political or even personal meaning, or symbolise the religious triumph of Orthodoxy over sin, or other faiths. Regardless, what I hope to have shown though, is that this poem is not simply a “delightful tale,” but a complex work that utilises the natural and perceived characteristics of three animals to entertain and possibly to educate or critique. Whatever the meaning behind the text, assuming there is one, the poem is adaptive, humorous and a significant part of the Byzantine beast literature that developed during the Palaiologan period.

“Who Has the Most Faults?”

83

NOTES 1. This study forms part of my DPhil thesis, “Nature and Narratives: landscapes plants and animals in Palaiologan vernacular literature,” PhD diss., University of Oxford, 2016). The version of the section on the gender of the Fox appears in The Byzantinist, Issue No. 5, Spring 2015 accessible at https://oxfordbyzantinesociety.wordpress.com/newsletterthe-byzantinist/ 2. Elizabeth M. Jeffreys and A. Cutler, “Synaxarion of the Honorable Donkey,” in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991): 1992. 3. The Greek text presented here comes from Ulrich Moennig’s edition, “Das Συναξάριον τοῦ τιμημένου Γαδάρου: Analyse, Ausgabe, Wörterverzeichnis,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 102 (2009). The English translations are my own. 4. Moennig, “Das Συναξάριον” lines 130 to 134, “Πλὴν ἀνεβαίνω εἰς τὸ βουνὶν ὁπού ̓ναι τὸ τσιμάδι,/καὶ κυλιοῦμαι παρευθὺς καὶ ἐξομολογοῦμαι,/καὶ γίνομαι καλόγερος, τὴν ράχην μου μαυρίζω,/γίνομαι μεγαλόσχημος, ἡγούμενον ὁμοιάζω,/καὶ μεταγνώθω τὸ κακὸν τὸ πολεμῶ εἰς τὸν κόσμον.” 5. Ibid, 164. 6. Jonathan Morton, “Wolves in Human Skin: Questions of Animal Appetite in Jean de Meun’s ‘Roman de la Rose,’” The Modern Language Review 105:4 (2010): 979–80; also JohnTheophanes A. Papademetriou, “Some Aesopic Fables in Byzantium and the Latin West: Tradition, Diffusion, and Survival,” Illinois Classical Studies 8:1 (1983): 128–32. 7. Lynda Garland, “Street-Life in Constantinople,” in Byzantine Women: varieties of experience, 800–1200, ed. Lynda Garland (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 172. 8. Moennig, “Das Συναξάριον” line 155, “Ὁ κόσμος καταρᾶται με ἡμέρας καὶ τὰς νύκτας.” 9. Ibid, line 201, “θέλω κλάψει.” 10. For a detailed discussion of the role of tears in prayer see Hannah Hunt, Joy-Bearing Grief: Tears of Contrition in the Writings of the Early Syrian and Byzantine Fathers (Leiden: Brill, 2004). 11. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow, trans., Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen, Sometime Archbishop of Constantinople: A select library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd Series, vol. 7, eds. P. Schaff and H. Wace (Edinburgh, 1894: reprint Peabody, Mass., 1995) Letter 77, section 9, accessed December 18, 2013, http:// www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf207.iii.i.html. 12. Moennig, “Das Συναξάριον” lines 213–215, “τὸν Μανασσῆν ἐνίκησας, τὴν πόρνην ἐμιμήσω,/καὶ γέγονας σὺ ὅμοιος πάλε ὥσπερ ἐκείνους,/ὁσια μου, ἁγια μου καὶ δεδικαιωμένη.” 13. Neilos of Sinai, a tenth-century saint stated that tears were not essential if, through sincere desire you imagined your soul weeping and “shed tears before God in your intention,” cf. Hunt, Joy-bearing Grief, 10. 14. Moennig, “Das Συναξάριον” lines 203–207, “καὶ δάκρυα οὐδὲν ἔχω καὶ σφίγγομαι ὀλίγο,/καὶ τὴν οὐράν μου κατουρῶ, τὰ ὀμμάτιά μου βρέχω,/καὶ εἰς τὰ ματοφρύδια μου κρεμάζονται οἱ κόμποι,/καὶ ὁμοιάζουν δάκρυα καὶ ἔχω μέγα θάρρος,/ὅτι ὁ θεὸς τὰ δάκρυα περὶ πολλοῦ τὰ ἔχει.” 15. Moennig, “Das Συναξάριον,” 124. 16. Moennig, “Das Συναξάριον,” lines 44, 96, 252, and 265. 17. Constantine Manasses, Aristandros and Kallithea 107 6.2–4 Hr (1–2 + 177–78 Ma) in Four Byzantine Novels, trans. Elizabeth Jeffreys (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012), 315. 18. Moennig, “Das Συναξάριον,” lines 49–51, “Μηδὲν ξυλοσοφῆς πολλά, ὅτι χωριάτης εἶσαι,/βάναυσος καὶ ἀπαίδευτος, χοντρὸς καὶ ψευδολόγος·/ὄντως πρέπει σε, γάδαρε, γάδαρον νὰ σὲ λέγουν.” 19. Francisco Rodríguez Adrados, History of the Graeco-Latin Fable: Vol. 3, Inventory and Documentation of the Graeco-Latin Fable (Leiden: Brill, 2003). For example H.198 “The Ass and the Wolf,” M.56 “The Ass with Privilege, the Fox and the Wolf,” and M.273 “The Unfortunate Wolf, the Fox and the Mule,” to name just a few. 20. Perry, B. E., “Fable,” Studium Generale, 12 (1959): 21.

84

Kirsty Stewart

21. Elaine C. Block and Kenneth Varty, eds., Reynard the Fox: social engagement and cultural metamorphoses in the Beast Epic from the Middle Ages to the present (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000). 22. Jan M. Ziolkowski, Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750–1150 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 7. 23. Peter Vejleskov, “Codex Vindobonensis theologicus graecus 244,” in Copyists, collectors and editors: manuscripts and editions of late Byzantine and early Modern Greek literature, eds. Hans Eideneier, Arnold F. Van Gemert and David Holton (Heraklion, 2005), 179–214. 24. Ulrich Moennig, “Das Συναξάριον,” 128. 25. Donald McGillivray Nicol’s The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261–1453 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) is still the main account of the period, though focused primarily on Constantinople. Nevra Necipoğlou’s Byzantium between the Ottomans and the Latins: politics and society in the late empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) provides a useful counter-balance, providing detailed political and economic information for Thessalonica and other regions as well as Constantinople. 26. Ulrich Moennig, “Literary Genres and Mixture of Generic Features in Late Byzantine Fictional Writing,” in Medieval Greek Storytelling; Fictionality and Narrative in Byzantium, ed. Panagiotis Roilos (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014), 163–82. 27. Evangelinus A. Sophocles, Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods (from B.C. 146 to A.D. 1100) (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1900), 1163. 28. John Wortley, The spiritually beneficial tales of Paul, bishop of Monembasia and of other authors (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1996). 29. John Wortley, “Paul of Monembasia and His Stories,” in Kathegetria: Essays Presented to Joan Hussey for Her 80th Birthday, ed. Julian Chrysostomides (Camberley: Porphyrogenitus, 1988), 314. 30. Stephanos Efthymiadis, “Redeeming the Genre’s Remnants: Some Beneficial Tales Written in the Last Centuries of Byzantium,” Scripta & e-Scripta (2010): 309. 31. Efthymiadis, “Redeeming the Genre’s,” 307. 32. Ibid., 309. 33. Ibid., 317. 34. Ron Baxter, Bestiaries and their users in the Middle Ages (Stroud: Sutton, 1998) 35. Marc Lauxtermann, Byzantine Poetry from Pisides to Geometres (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2003), 253–60. 36. Michael Gough, “The Monastery of Eski Gümüş: Second Preliminary Report,” Anatolian Studies 15 (1965): 157–64; Anthony Bryer and David Winfield, The Byzantine monuments and topography of the Pontos (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1985), 283; Andreas Rhoby, Byzantinische Epigramme in inschriftlicher Überlieferung. Band 3, Teil I (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2009), 218–19. 37. John Haldon, “Humour and the everyday in Byzantium,” in Humour, history and politics in late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. G. Halsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 55. 38. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1984), 99. 39. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais, 78. 40. Bruce Shaw, The Animal Fable in Science Fiction and Fantasy (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., Publishers, 2010), 35. 41. Shaw, Animal Fable, 38; Henri Bergson, “Laughter,” in Comedy, ed. Wylie Sypher (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1956), 63. 42. Eve Levin, Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs 900–1700 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), 70. 43. Edgar Robert Ashton Sewter, trans., The Alexiad of Anna Comnena (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969), 497, book 15, section 8.

“Who Has the Most Faults?”

85

44. Maja Angelovska Panova, “The Role of the Woman in the Bogomil Circles in Comparison with the Traditional Status Established With the Christian Religion,” Balkanistic Forum (Балканистичен Форум) 13 (2002): 219–21. 45. Gill Page, Being Byzantine: Greek identity before the Ottomans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 199; Silvio Giuseppe Mercati, “Macaire Caloritès et Constantin Anagnostès,” Revue de L’Orient Chrétien 22 (1920–21): 162–93. 46. Necipoğlu, Byzantium between the Ottomans. 47. Nick Nicholas and George Baloglou, trans., An Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds: Translation and Commentary (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). 48. Nicholas and Baloglou, Entertaining Tale, 431–447. 49. The many examples in Ziolkowski’s Talking Animals attest to this in Latin literature at least.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Adrados, Francisco Rodríguez. History of the Graeco-Latin Fable. Translated by Gert-Jan van Dijk, 3 vols., Leiden: Brill, 1999–2003. Angelovska Panova, Maja. “The Role of the Woman in the Bogomil Circles in Comparison with the Traditional Status Established with the Christian Religion,” Balkanistic Forum (Балканистичен Форум) 13 (2002): 219–221. Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhaĭlovich. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Hélène Iswolsky. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1968. Baldwin, Barry. “A Talent to Abuse: Some aspects of Byzantine satire,” Byzantinische Forschungen 8 (1982): 19–28. Bartusis, Mark C. The Late Byzantine Army. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. Baxter, Ron. Bestiaries and their users in the Middle Ages. Stroud: Sutton, 1998. Bergson, Henri. “Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic.” In Comedy, edited by Wylie Sypher, translated by George Meredith, 145–73. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1956. Block, Elaine C. and Kenneth Varty. Reynard the Fox: social engagement and cultural metamorphoses in the beast epic from the Middle Ages to the present. New York; Oxford: Berghahn, 2000. Boehrer, Bruce T. Animal characters: nonhuman beings in early modern literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Bough, Jill. Donkey. London: Reaktion Books, 2011. Bryer, Anthony and David Winfield. The Byzantine monuments and topography of the Pontos. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1985. Curley, Michael J., trans. Physiologus, Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2009. de Hamel, Christopher, ed. Book of Beasts: A Facsimile of MS Bodley 764. Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2008. Derrida, Jacques. The Animal That Therefore I Am. Edited by Marie-Louise Mallet, translated by David Wills. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. Drandakis, Nicholas Β. “Ἀνάγλυπτος παράστασις βυζαντινοῦ μύθου,” Ἐπετηρὶς Ἑταιρείας Βυζαντινῶν Σπουδῶν 39–40 (1972–73): 659–674. Efthymiadis, Stephanos. “Redeeming the Genre’s Remnants: Some Beneficial Tales Written in the Last Centuries of Byzantium,” Scripta & e-Scripta 8–9 (2010): 307–325. Epstein, Steven A. The Medieval Discovery of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Fudge, Erica. Animal. London: Reaktion, 2002. Garland, Lynda. “‘And His Bald Head Shone Like a Full Moon . . . ’: an appreciation of the Byzantine sense of humour as recorded in historical sources of the eleventh and twelfth centuries,” Parergon 8:1 (1990): 1–31. ———. “Street-Life in Constantinople: Women and the Carnivalesque.” In Byzantine Women: varieties of experience, 800–1200, edited by Lynda Garland, 163–176. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.

86

Kirsty Stewart

Gilhus, Ingvild Sælid. Animals, Gods and Humans: changing attitudes to animals in Greek, Roman, and early Christian ideas. London: Routledge, 2006. Gough, Michael. “The Monastery of Eski Gümüş: Second Preliminary Report.” Anatolian Studies 15 (1965): 157–164. Gregoras, Nicephoros. Antirrhetika I. Translated by Hans-Veit Beyer, Wien: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1976. Gregory of Nazianzus. Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen, Sometime Archbishop of Constantinople. Translated by Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow, A select library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd Series, vol. 7, eds. P. Schaff and H. Wace (Edinburgh, 1894: reprint Peabody, Mass., 1995) Letter 77, section 9, accessed December 18, 2013, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf207.iii.i.html. Halsall, Guy, ed. Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Harris, Jonathan, ed. Palgrave Advances in Byzantine History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. ———. Catherine Holmes and Eugenia Russell, Byzantines, Latins, and Turks in the Eastern Mediterranean World after 1150. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Hunt, Hannah. Joy-Bearing Grief: Tears of Contrition in the Writings of the Early Syrian and Byzantine Fathers. (Leiden: Brill, 2004. Ivanov, Sergey. “Spiritually Beneficial Tales in Byzantine and Slavic Literature – Foreword,” Scripta & eScripta, 8–9 (2010): 47–50. Jallad, Saleh Saʿadeh, trans. The Fables of Kalilah and Dimnah: adapted and translated from the Sanskrit through the Palavi into Arabic by ʿAbdullah ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, AD 750, London: Melisende, 2002. Jeffreys Elizabeth M. and A. Cutler. “Synaxarion of the Honorable Donkey.” The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991): 1992. Komnene, Anna. The Alexiad of Anna Comnena. Translated by Edgar Robert Ashton Sewter, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969. Kyriakis, Michael J. “Satire and slapstick in seventh and twelfth century Byzantium,” Byzantina 5 (1973): 291–306. Lauxtermann, Marc. Byzantine Poetry from Pisides to Geometres. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2003. Levin, Eve. Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs 900–1700. Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 1989. Leyerle, Blake. “Monks and Other Animals.” In The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography, edited by Dale B. Martin and Patricia Cox Miller, 150–192. Durham: Duke University Press 2005. Manasses, Constantine, Aristandros and Kallithea. Translated by Elizabeth Jeffreys in Four Byzantine Novels, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012, pp. 271–337. Mercati, Silvio G. “Macaire Caloritès et Constantin Anagnostès.” Revue de L’Orient Chrétien 22 (1920–21): 162–193. Moennig, Ulrich, trans. “Das Συναξάριον τοῦ τιμημένου Γαδάρου: Analyse, Ausgabe, Wörterverzeichnis,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 102 (2009) pp. 109–166. Moennig, Ulrich. “Literary Genres and Mixture of Generic Features in Late Byzantine Fictional Writing.” In Medieval Greek Storytelling; Fictionality and Narrative in Byzantium edited by Panagiotis Roilos, 163–182. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014 Morton, Jonathan. ‘Wolves in Human Skin: Questions of Animal Appetite in Jean de Meun’s ‘Roman de la Rose,’” The Modern Language Review 105:4 (2010): 976–997. Necipoğlu, Nevra. Byzantium between the Ottomans and the Latins: politics and society in the late empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Nicholas, Nick and George Baloglou, trans. An Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds: Translation and Commentary, New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Nicol, Donald McGillivray. The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261–1453. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Offermans, Dieter, ed. Der Physiologus nach den Handschriften G und M, Cologne, 1966.

“Who Has the Most Faults?”

87

Owen, Douglas David Roy, trans. The Romance of Reynard the Fox, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Page, Gill. Being Byzantine: Greek identity before the Ottomans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Papademetriou, John-Theophanes A. “Some Aesopic Fables in Byzantium and the Latin West: Tradition, Diffusion, and Survival,” Illinois Classical Studies 8:1 (1983): 122–136. Patterson, Annabel. Fables of power: Aesopian Writing and Political History. London: Duke University Press, 1991. Paul, Bishop of Monemvasia. The spiritually beneficial tales of Paul, bishop of Monembasia and of other authors. Translated by John Wortley, Cistercian Studies Series, 159, Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian 1996. Perry, Ben Edwin, ed. Aesopica: a series of texts relating to Aesop or ascribed to him or closely connected with the literary tradition that bears his name, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1952. Perry, Ben Edwin, ed. Babrius and Phaedrus, London: Heinemann, 1965. Perry, Ben Edwin. Studies in the Text History of the Life and Fables of Aesop. Haverford, Pa.: American Philological Association, 1936. ———. “Fable,” Studium Generale 12 (1959): 17–37. Philes, Manuel (Manuele File), Le Proprietà degli animali II. Translated by Anna Caramico, Naples: Accademia Pontaniana, 2006. Rhoby, Andreas, Byzantinische Epigramme in inschriftlicher Überlieferung. Band 3, Teil I Wien : Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2014. Salisbury, Joyce E. The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages. London: Routledge, 2011. Sbordone, Francesco, trans. Physiologus, Hildesheim; New York: Georg Olms, 1991. Ševčenko, Ihor. Society and intellectual life in late Byzantium. London: Variorum Reprints, 1981. ———. “Palaiologan Learning” in The Oxford History of Byzantium edited by Cyril Mango, 284–293. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Shaw, Bruce. The Animal Fable in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., Publishers, 2010. Shepard, Jonathan, ed. The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire c.500–1492. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Smithies, Andrew adn Michael John Share, trans. Mazaris’ Journey to Hades: or, Interviews with dead men about certain officials of the imperial court, Buffalo: Arethusa, 1975. Sophocles, Evangelinus Apostolides. Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods (from B.C. 146 to A.D. 1100). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1887. Thompson, Stith. Motif-index of folk-literature: a classification of narrative elements in folktales, ballads, myths, fables, mediæval romances, exempla, fabliaux, jest-books, and local legends. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1955–58. Toth, Ida. “Rhetorical Theatron in Late Byzantium: The Example of Palaiologan Imperial Orations.” In Theatron: rhetorische Kultur in Spätantike und Mittelalter, edited by Michael Grünbart, 429–448. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007. Tsavare, Isavella, ed. Ὀ Πουλολόγος; κριτική έκδοση με εισαγωγή, σχόλια και λεξιλόγιο, Athens: Μορφωτικό Ιδρυμα Εθνικής Τραπέζης, 1987. Vejleskov, Peter. “Codex Vindobonensis theologicus graecus 244.” In Copyists, collectors and editors: manuscripts and editions of late Byzantine and early Modern Greek literature, edited by Hans Eideneier, Arnold F. Van Gemert and David Holton, 179–214. Irakleio: Panepistemiakes Ekdoseis Kritis, 2005. Way, Kenneth C. Donkeys in the Biblical World: Ceremony and Symbol. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2011. White, Terence Hanbury, trans. The Book of the Beasts: being a translation from a Latin bestiary of the Twelfth century, London: Cape, 1954. Wortley, John. “Paul of Monembasia and His Stories.” In Kathegetria: Essays Presented to Joan Hussey for Her 80th Birthday, edited by Julian Chrysostomides, 481–99. Camberley: Porphyrogenitus, 1988. Ziolkowski, Jan M. “The Form and Spirit of Beast Fable,” Bestia 2 (1990): 4–18.

88

Kirsty Stewart

———. Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750–1150 (1993). ———. “Literary Genre and Animal Symbolism.” In Animals and the Symbolic in Medieval Art and Literature, edited by L.A.J.R Houwen, 1–23. Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1997.

Chapter Five

“The Author Laughed in a Cat’s Voice” Aesop and Humanism in William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat Rachel Stenner

William Baldwin’s prose narrative about speaking felines, Beware the Cat, presents conflicting ideas about the relationships between humans and animals. It occupies two key but competing early modern discourses about animal life that Bruce Boehrer theorizes as absolute anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism. With its scenes of hunting, animal torture and animal dismemberment, Beware the Cat asserts human superiority to the natural world, with the latter able “to be employed at the human community’s behest and for the human community’s convenience and advantage.” 1 This is absolute anthropocentrism. At a more subtle level, however, the text also displays attitudes characteristic of anthropomorphism, because it insists “on the continuity, rather than the disparity, between humankind and the lower orders of creation.” 2 Both of these versions of the relationship between humans and animals are immediately present at the narrative level of the text. The drama of Baldwin’s fiction hinges on the ability of a humanist scholar, Gregory Streamer, to understand the language of cats. His understanding facilitates a rapprochement between the positions of the human and the beast. En route to Streamer’s epiphany, however, the reader witnesses the death, dismemberment, and consumption of numerous creatures. Baldwin further encodes the dynamic of absolute anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism into the text’s formal, structural and philosophical layers. He does this by engaging two literary and philosophical frameworks that were important to early modern culture: the fabular tradition of Aesop and the educational practices of humanism. Baldwin establishes a prominent but ambivalent relationship be89

90

Rachel Stenner

tween his text and Aesop, destabilizing the moral authority of the fabular form. Owing to the centrality of Aesop within English humanist education, this results in an exposure of the paradoxical construction of the human within humanism. Anthropomorphism, Boehrer teaches, has an “oppositional function” that enables critique of anthropocentric positions. 3 By holding these competing discourses in tension, Baldwin entertains, even if he does not fully endorse, a dissonant construction of humanity’s relationship with beasts. William Baldwin wrote in the 1540s and 1550s and is closely associated with the coterie of Protestant printers who flourished during the reign of Edward VI. Consequently, scholarship has firmly placed him as “one of the scholars who pursued the trade of printing in order to forward the Reformation,” and Beware the Cat is frequently received as anti-Catholic satire. 4 There is increasing recognition of Baldwin’s centrality to the Edwardian literary scene and, indeed, the literature of the English Reformation. 5 He is known to many readers for his editorship of the Mirror for Magistrates (1559 onwards), the collection of gory verse that influenced Shakespeare’s history plays and that Sir Philip Sidney singled out in the 1580s as “meetly furnished of beautiful parts.” 6 In his own time he was noted for a popular philosophical compendium, A Treatise of Morall Phylosophie Contaynyng the Sayinges of the Wyse (first published in 1547), that was praised by readers as distinct as Thomas Nashe and John Bale, the latter writing of Baldwin in his Catalogue of British Authors (1557–1559) as an English Cato. 7 For recent critics, the sophistication and comedy of Beware the Cat are central to his acclaim. Hailed by its modern editors as the first English novel, this fiction is a scatological tale in which mock epic meets farce and proto-bildungsroman, and prose is smattered with Skeltonics. 8 The protagonist is Gregory Streamer, a scholar and “Divine” (5), or theologian, who dabbles in several subjects. His erudition is roundly mocked via the interplay between the narrative and the prominent marginal gloss, which is present throughout and is one component of an extensive paratextual framing. 9 In a dedicatory letter, the text presents itself as the manuscript account of Streamer’s “oration” (9), edited and brought to the point of printing by one “G.B.,” a thinly veiled persona of Baldwin. The occasion for the oration is a gathering of companions who are at court devising “interludes” (5) for the Christmas revels. One evening the company—prompted by the rumored performance of “a play of Aesop’s Crow” (5)—falls into debate about, the reader is told, “whether birds and beasts had reason” (5). This leads to a series of layered anecdotes delivered by various speakers who consider the issue. Finally, to settle the matter, Streamer describes what he has discovered through a process of alchemical experimentation. Having heard and observed a cat chorus on the roof of his lodgings, Streamer determines to “learn to understand them” (24). To do this, he liberally adapts instructions that he finds in Liber Secretorum de Virtuti-

“The Author Laughed in a Cat’s Voice”

91

bus Herbarum, Lapidum et Animalium (The Book of Secrets of the Virtues of the Herbs, Stones, and Certain Beasts, c. 1477), a collection of marvels and magic wrongly attributed to the prolific and influential natural philosopher Albertus Magnus. 10 Using ingredients derived from several anatomized animals, Streamer concocts magic potions to drink, a “cake” to eat, “lozenges” to suck, and “pillows” (28–29) to place on his ears. This paraphernalia painfully amplifies Streamer’s hearing but is otherwise successful: he is enabled to understand the cats’ language as if it were English. He discovers that the feline congregation is in fact a court, where a cat named Mouse-slayer is telling her life story before the “chief counselor [ . . . ] lord Grisard” in defence of allegations made against her by “that false accuser Catch-rat” (37). Mouse-slayer details her colorful experiences living and interacting with humans of dubious morality; amongst other things she has witnessed secret masses and been inveigled into the corrupt machinations of a Catholic bawd. Beware the Cat is analysed in several major studies of animals in the early modern period. For Boehrer, the narrative depicts “feline society as a sinister image of its human counterpart.” 11 Karen Raber perceives that the fiction capitalizes on feline skills and attributes, testifying to “human fears about inferiorities” in their own rationality and powers of perception. 12 In the most extensive animal studies discussion of Beware the Cat, Laurie Shannon presents it as an example of the “fundamentally political idiom” characterising relationships between species in the period. 13 All of this work, Shannon’s most importantly, elucidates the extent to which Baldwin articulates contemporary ideas about animals, or engages older thinking that retains significant intellectual traction in the mid-sixteenth century. Alongside his specific employment of the Aesopica and of humanist positions he alludes to the happy beast tradition of Plutarch’s dialogues, to Pythagoras’s doctrine of the transmigration of souls, to Pliny’s conception of humanity as nature’s insufficiently provisioned naked orphan, and to magical and medicinal animal lore that was later recorded in Edward Topsell’s influential zoography, The History of Four-footed Beasts (1607). 14 Shannon’s research significantly broadens critical understanding of the astonishing range of Baldwin’s interests. This essay, however, both complements and extends these readings. It positions Baldwin’s text within the fraught but overlapping discourses of absolute anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism. These categories provide an overarching characterization of the “most ubiquitous, important, and perdurably incohesive ways” that the relations between people and animals are formulated by early modern writers; they help to elucidate the ways in which Baldwin’s idiosyncratic text is nonetheless entirely characteristic of early modern thinking about animals. 15 Moreover, by moving beyond the most obvious animal presence in the text (the cats) and considering its other significant

92

Rachel Stenner

creatures, this discussion reveals Baldwin’s critique of the compromized articulation of the human in early modern culture. DEAD AND TRANSFORMED ANIMALS Dead animals feature noticeably—albeit ambivalently—within human material culture from an early stage in the text. During the extended debate about animal reason, readers learn of Irish armor “crested with otter skin” (14), and of a magic “candle made with the brain of a horse and brimstone” (17). In their contexts (an anecdote taking place in Ireland and a discussion about how human senses are deceived), these items are decorative signifiers of ethnic and cultural belonging. The text makes only passing mention of them and does not explicitly critique the related practices. Mouse-slayer’s narrative, however, examines animal cruelty from an imagined feline perspective. At one point she relates how she has had nutshells stuck to her feet by an “ungracious fellow” who “took four walnut shells and filled them full of soft pitch,” put them onto her feet and plunged her “feet into cold water till the pitch was hardened” (47) before letting her go. This act is the catalyst for a farcical scatological sequence that contains some of the text’s funniest and most pointed anti-Catholic satire. Mouse-slayer, however, explains to her fellow cats how “vexed” (47) and angry she felt at being treated in this way, and the culprit is “cursed” (49) by his companions. On another occasion, Mouse-slayer is made to cough, weep and sneeze by having mustard and pepper applied to her face by the Catholic bawd as part of a seduction scheme. Since the dame in question is a “very holy and religious” (40) Catholic, this episode is a further vehicle for Baldwin’s satire but in a less hilarious and more wary tone than the walnut episode. In these moments, Baldwin shows the potential thoughtlessness and selfishness of human interactions with more vulnerable animals; the “ungracious fellow” and the bawd clearly occupy “an exploitative or extractive mode of relation to the natural world.” 16 Yet by also enabling Mouse-slayer to voice her experiences he invites readers to imagine animal discomfort and, moreover, to imagine an animal critique of the absolute anthropocentrism that the selfish actions of the humans promote. By far the most discomfiting exercise of human power over animals occurs during Streamer’s fabrication of his potions: he kills more than twice as many animals than is necessary and describes in minute detail what he does with the carcasses. The Virtutibus Animalium, so he says, gives the following instructions: “‘if thou wilt understand [ . . . ] the voices of birds or beasts [ . . . ] get thee with hounds into a certain wood, and the first beast thou meetest take, and prepare with the heart of a fox, and thou shalt have thy purpose’” (25). Two beasts are required, the “first beast” encountered, and

“The Author Laughed in a Cat’s Voice”

93

the fox, yet the “medicine” (26) that Streamer makes contains a hare, a fox (both killed by hunters), a hedgehog and a kite (that he kills himself), and a cat that has been “caught in a snare” and “flain” for “doing evil turns” (27). The detail of this cat’s fate exposes practices of animal torture that Baldwin was not alone in noticing. 17 Shakespeare, for example, in Much Ado About Nothing (1600) highlights the use of trapped cats for recreational archery when his hero Benedick exclaims, “Hang me in a bottle like a cat, and shoot at me.” 18 For Baldwin, the moment springboards a description of Streamer’s procedures, detailed with relish over several paragraphs. Streamer states that he “took a piece of the cat’s liver and a piece of the kidney, a piece of the milt [spleen] and the whole heart, the fox’s heart and the lights [eyes], the hare’s brain, the kite’s maw, and the urchin’s kidneys” (27). Despite G.B., the glossator’s, characteristic tone of mockery, a patina of scholarly authority is applied to Streamer’s activities because much of this section is glossed in Latin. 19 However, the reader at this point is subjected to a “cascading series of surplus bodies” and cannot avoid exposure to repeated and gruesome images of dismembered animals and their internal organs. 20 The text contains a series of close-ups that reiterate the exploitative, cruel, and violent aspects of human relationships with animals. Nonetheless, it is inescapable that these are the very processes that lead to Streamer’s new-found linguistic abilities. As a result, he achieves the extraordinary feat of learning to understand the language of cats. Furthermore, his education moves beyond mere comprehension and towards transformation. Readers are alerted to this when Streamer recounts how he laughed upon hearing Mouse-slayer’s anecdote about the walnut shells. At this point, G.B. interjects from the margin by noting “the author laughed in a cat’s voice” (49). Remarkably, Streamer has begun to assume feline attributes, laughing not in his voice, the voice of a man, but in the voice of a cat. It hints that he has moved beyond his initial urge to interrogate the cats’ culture— earlier he described himself as “caught with such a desire to know” (24)— towards an empathic or sensory experience within which he can be more like them. It is difficult, though, to take this important comment at face value because of the source. G.B. is habitually derogatory about Streamer and could just as easily be accusing him of being bestial in a negative sense or mocking his personal qualities (perhaps the reader is invited to infer that Streamer’s laugh is especially discordant). Despite this ambivalence, Baldwin allows the reader to see the possibility of a rapprochement between the experience of the man and that of the cat. This would be an interesting observation but one of lesser significance were it not for the fact that earlier moments in the text also consider the possibilities of the transmutations or empathic connections between species. 21 One of the anecdotes told in the first part of the oration, by a servant named Thomas, concerns the death of an Irish-speaking cat named Grimalkin

94

Rachel Stenner

who, it later transpires, was a cat goddess. A “well-learned man” in the company suggests that Grimalkin was “an hagat or a witch” and “a witch may take on her a cat’s body nine times” (16): he is claiming that women can repeatedly turn into cats. More apparently magical transformations are discussed, including the abilities of witches to take on the likenesses and forms of “assess” (18) or mares, and one rather startling ancestral line in which “one man and woman are at every seven years’ end turned into wolves” (18). 22 Not all of the metamorphoses are as extreme as this; nor are they all magical. Immediately before Streamer’s account of the alchemical beasts, he reports on some acquaintances and their hunting hounds who all, man and beast, return terrified from the woods one day “with their hair standing on end” (25). In addition to recounting this particular instance, Streamer openly speculates on the mechanics of how such transformations can occur. He muses, “That a woman, being so large a body, should strain her into the body of a cat [ . . . ] I have not much heard of nor can well perceive how it may be” (16–17). This moment is meant to prove his credulity. 23 Like many strategies in the text it contributes to Baldwin’s ridicule of Catholic traditions because it is a response to hearsay, the “unwritten verities” that “go by traditions” (19) as G.B. puts it—the point being that, for an obedient Protestant, The Word is supposed to be derived from The Book and not from fireside gossip. 24 It is Streamer, though, who realizes the cats are communicating with each other, Streamer who tries to understand them, and Streamer who is transformed by his efforts. Baldwin repeatedly draws the reader’s attention to actual and metaphoric translations between species and this establishes an alternative vision of people’s relationships with animals, an anthropomorphic vision that insists “upon the continuity, rather than the disparity” between people and beasts. 25 According to Streamer’s experience, with enough observation, effort, and thought, a person can move closer to the animal—learning to laugh in a cat’s voice. The problem with the argument that Streamer moves productively closer to his feline counterparts is that he has instrumentally killed and consumed several animals to access that state; this appears to return him to the first version of the relationship, by which humans dispose of animals with impunity. 26 Rather than simply shuttling between them, Baldwin creates a point of overlap in the two relationships: the act of ingestion. Streamer’s transformation results from eating dead animals; this is an oppressive act arising from a power imbalance and it alienates him from animal existence. But other animals in the text also eat fellow animals, as at least one early receiver realized. The fragmentary 1570 edition, printed by Wylliam Gryffith, contains a woodcut which depicts four animals: a large cat at the top, a smiling hedgehog at the bottom and, in the middle, a rodent carrying in its mouth a smaller rodent. 27 Whilst the larger rodent is not explicitly eating the smaller one, the clear implication is that the latter is its prey. Within the text itself, the first act

“The Author Laughed in a Cat’s Voice”

95

of consumption occurs on the very site where Streamer meets the cats. In this locale he sees the grisly sight of “quarters of men [ . . . ] upon poles,” that is, state torture victims. As if that were not bad enough, he also spies “ravens” (10) regularly feeding on the corpses. 28 Later, during Thomas’s narrative about the intriguing cat-goddess, Grimalkin, she is said to eat a whole sheep, and swiftly afterwards a boy is “killed and eaten up” (14) by an entire gang of cats. Both of these unusual events are noted by G.B. in the margin. He does this blandly, simply stating “cats did kill and eat a man” (14), suggesting incredulousness or not noticing the obvious outrageousness of the event; the result of either reading is that the significance of the incidents are diminished. Either way, his gloss draws the reader’s attention to what has happened. Baldwin is at further pains to impress this sequence of events upon the reader’s mind because when Thomas breaks off, one of the company speculates on “how should Grimalkin eat so much meat” (15). The reader is being invited to notice these moments of animals eating animals, and animals eating humans. Eating other animals, then, is a thoroughly animal thing to do. This may not ameliorate the grim procedures of Streamer’s laboratory, but it recontextualizes them within a pattern of animal-eating behaviors. Other critics notice the alimentary poetics of this text, but they analyse them as part of Baldwin’s anti-Catholic satire. Boehrer, for example, sees that the products of Streamer’s experiments facilitate a parody of transubstantiation and of the mass, when he first bakes a “cake [ . . . ] like bread” (27) then feeds a lozenge of “cat’s turd” (30) to a servant. 29 This is persuasive and should the reader miss the allusion to Catholic ritual, Baldwin even offers a prompt, explicitly citing “the Catholic belief of Christ’s flesh in the sacrament” (38). 30 Yet, the text’s repeated scenes of animal eating, and the fact that eating is absolutely central to Streamer’s ability to access his newfound skills, suggest that its role is more complex than has been accounted for. The crucial factor is that by eating other animals Streamer is positioned ambivalently. On one hand he engages in a behavior that brings him closer to what animals do (because animals eat other animals). On the other hand, Streamer’s carnivorism distances him from other animals (because, like other humans in the text, he exploits them as part of his cultural practices). Judging by the text’s alimentary poetics, Streamer’s difference from other animals is both destabilized and asserted, and so is his humanity. Within the narrative, then, Baldwin establishes two versions of human-animal relations that overlap on the issue of ingestion. At a discursive level, these contrasting relationships of rapprochement and exploitation correspond with Boehrer’s identification of the dominant early modern discourses of anthropomorphism and absolute anthropocentrism.

96

Rachel Stenner

EDUCATIONAL ANIMALS An important philosophical, structural, and formal feature of the text provides a complementary dynamic of both destabilising and asserting the human: the presence of Aesop and the fabular tradition. Beware the Cat’s relation to Aesop should be considered in several senses. Firstly, Aesop is engaged as a component of the narrative. Secondly, the fabular qualities of the text are important. Finally, Aesop indicates a philosophical issue within humanist education. The Aesopica as an intertext is first alluded to at a narrative level in “The Argument,” where G.B. sets out the occasion for the debate that Streamer’s oration is supposed to settle. G.B. writes, I had heard that the King’s players were learning a play of Aesop’s Crow wherein the most part of the actors were birds, the device whereof I discommended, saying it was not comical to make either speechless things to speak or brutish things to common reasonably; and although in a tale it were sufferable to imagine and tell of something by them spoken or reasonably done (which kind Aesop laudably used), yet it was uncomely, said I, and without example of any author, to bring them in lively personages to speak, do, reason, and allege authorities out of authors. (5)

Baldwin asks a complex set of questions with this convoluted sentence. G.B.’s listeners, and much of the critical commentary on Beware the Cat, take him to be introducing what Shannon describes as the “perennial preCartesian topic” of whether “beasts and fowls had reason” (6). 31 Prior to Descartes’ beast-machine thesis, the non-reasoning capacities of non-human creatures were by no means assured. The issue was much debated in early modern texts, which regularly attempt to establish and police the boundary between the human and the animal by staging the arguments for and against animal reason. Shannon terms this a “scene of differentiation” which “never lacked for a brace of partisans, not only contra, but also pro.” 32 In Beware the Cat, the first third of Streamer’s tripartite narrative responds to this issue and so the text appears to be entirely typical of the early modern tendency that Shannon describes. However, both G.B.’s recourse to Aesop as an authority and the nature of the debate as staged by Baldwin come under pressure when their details are examined. Firstly, the reason of beasts is established and repeated early on. In the drama of Grimalkin’s death in Ireland one of the animal agents is in fact a “kitling” resident of Staffordshire who “killeth the kern that slew” (14) the goddess. Responding to this revelation, one of the fireside company concedes both that “cats have reason and that they do in their own language understand one another” before going on to wonder how a kitten in the north of England should “know what is done in Ireland” (14). The issue of reason is thus rapidly passed over as the unnamed speaker ponders how cats can

“The Author Laughed in a Cat’s Voice”

97

communicate internationally. As with Streamer’s speculations about how— rather than whether—women turn into cats, the question in this instance is not whether cats have reason, but how they exert it. The opinion of the unnamed interlocutor is seconded a few moments later by an ostensibly authoritative source, the “well-learned man” with “excellent judgement” (16) who then suggests that Grimalkin was a witch. He claims that “it doth appear that there is in cats, as in all other kinds of beasts, a certain reason and language whereby they understand one another” (16). At the outset of the text, then, the problem of human and animal ontological proximity is established, supposedly as a debate about whether animals have reason. The account that is expected to settle that debate sidesteps it, taking animal reason as a given, opening onto the question of how that reason is exerted and subsequently onto the rather more startling question of how humans can become animal. All of this is precipitated by G.B.’s mention of “the play of Aesop’s Crow” (5) and his turn to the fabular tradition as an authority on how to represent the animal. A further complication of Aesop’s presence in the text is that “Aesop’s Crow” has been impossible to identify as an extant play in the historical record. 33 This could simply be because it has not survived through time. It could, on the other hand, suggest that Baldwin is being deliberately obfuscatory in order to make a wider point about the authority of the Aesopica. There are, of course, numerous written crow fables, and birds more generally feature prominently in fables and related allegorical traditions. Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls and Ovid’s Philomel are pertinent examples from medieval dream vision and classical mythography. One roughly contemporary fabular compendium, Thomas Blague’s A Schole of Wise Conceytes, includes six different crow fables, pairing the bird with the dog, the raven, the sheep, the pitcher, the dove and the swan and using the figure to illustrate various moral qualities. 34 Like Philomel, the nightingale, however, the iconography of the crow is of special significance for writers. From Ovid onwards, it is a bird recurrently associated with misdirected or disbelieved speech, or failed attempts to speak truth to power. 35 A third of Blague’s crow fables present it in this way, and it is identified by Brendan O’Connell as one of the birds in the Chaucerian tradition that model the “poet as a fabulist.” 36 Baldwin appears to assume the fabular role by mentioning “Aesop’s Crow” at the outset of his text, but he does so in a way that casts doubt on the authority of the role by referring to a symbol of frustrated enunciation and potentially to a nonexistent text. He simultaneously undermines the fabulist and the fabular tradition. Baldwin’s ambivalent opening reference to “Aesop’s Crow” is furthermore used to relate his text to the interconnected intellectual structures of beast fable and humanism. These frameworks share the important premise that a reader should take a beneficial lesson from the text. The very fact that

98

Rachel Stenner

Baldwin’s title exhorts readers to Beware the Cat flags the text as a fable; by watching animal behavior the reader is invited to learn something about human behavior. One difficulty with this is that the cats are markedly polyvalent, seeming to signify in their nocturnal congregations the secret Catholics deemed to be an internal threat to the Protestant mid-Tudor state and to expose the vices of, for example, a greedy and promiscuous Catholic clergy. Read as a fable, Baldwin’s text defies the expectation of a clear moral exemplar because the cats resist allegorical classification. 37 A further difficulty with the text’s relation to the fabular tradition arises when Baldwin’s engagement of his source material is considered. Whilst “Aesop’s Crow” is elusive as an analogue, another source has been confidently identified. Mouseslayer’s anecdote about the Catholic bawd who cruelly tricks her into eating mustard—with painful and unpleasant results—derives directly from the “Fable of an Old Harlotte or Bawde” that William Caxton includes in his 1484 version of The Fables of Esope. 38 The old bawd in question owns a “lytyl catte” whom she starves and then feeds “somme breed with a grete dele or quantite of mostard vpon it,” causing the cat to “wepe and crye” (xxxjr). Having provoked this reaction, the bawd then pretends that the cat is her own daughter, who has been transformed into a weeping feline by the gods because her uncompromising chastity has caused her to reject the attentions of a suitor. This pretence tricks another woman into adultery and is exactly the subterfuge deployed in Beware the Cat by Mouse-slayer’s mistress in her scheme to help a young man seduce a beautiful “merchantman’s wife” (41). Whilst both versions of the fable highlight “the euyls whiche ben done by bawdes and old harlottes” (xxxjv), as Caxton explains, Baldwin also explicitly engages this material to show something else: the cruelty to which animals can be subjected when humans use them for their own ends. The Caxton text models the exploitative practice which Baldwin’s text adopts; when read from the perspective of the animal victim, the fabular tradition teaches Baldwin’s text how to perpetuate this violence. Baldwin’s recontextualization of the fable within a narrative that is alive to an animal perspective highlights that the teachings of the Aesopica are potentially compromised. For Robert Maslen, Baldwin’s engagement of the fable form fractures the “complacency” of the assumption in conventional fables that their receivers are linguistically, and therefore interpretatively, homogeneous. 39 Surely there is another, more complex, fracturing taking place, that of the fabular form’s complacency about its animal subjects. 40 Once the fable’s proliferating representational violence is observed, it begins to look like a problematic depiction of animal life and a compromised source of moral learning for humans. The fable form, though, had been used to teach Latin since the first century and was prominent in the early modern humanist education system in which Streamer is fully versed. 41 Baldwin makes it clear from the opening of

“The Author Laughed in a Cat’s Voice”

99

Streamer’s narrative that he is to be viewed as a humanist scholar. His central achievement in the text—being able to understand the language of cats—is an act of translation and cultural recovery. He mentions his “Greek alphabets” (9), and in his more poetic moments he employs tropes from classical epic to describe natural phenomena. 42 The activities of humanism are therefore writ large in this text, and the engagement of Aesop demands consideration from that perspective. In addition to its typical pursuits of translating and revaluing classical texts, Renaissance humanism prized the, supposedly, uniquely human attributes of both eloquence in communication and active interpretation of communication. These qualities were deemed to form the basis of a moral life and effective service of the body politic. Within the humanist classroom, reading and interpreting literature were central activities; Aesop, specifically, was used not only to demonstrate moral actions but to teach grammar. 43 Yet fables occupy, as Erica Fudge exposes, a paradoxical position because “the beasts of the beast fable are the teachers of humanist ideals. Animals, it would appear, do humanism before the humans, and the human in humanism becomes strangely connected to the beast.” 44 Streamer’s scholarly identity, then, unexpectedly marks him out as becoming more human by becoming more animal; this replicates the effect of the text’s alimentary poetics whereby Streamer becomes both more human and more animal through the ingestion of meat products. Consequently, his humanism contributes to his complex positioning within the discourses of absolute anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism. Baldwin thus creates a deliberately dissonant notion of the human, one that is deeply dependent on its relation with the animal, but he also includes a critical voice from within the text that resists this dissonant notion: the voice of G.B. The detail of G.B.’s opening statement about the staging of “Aesop’s Crow” deserves further inspection and whilst the importance of his complaint is often acknowledged, commentators have not fully appreciated its specificity. G.B. states that he “discommended” the play because it is not funny to make “speechless” and “brutish” (5) things, namely birds, to speak and act as if with reason. In written tales, such as those by Aesop, this might be “sufferable” but under other circumstances the practice takes on an offensive, “uncomely” edge that, moreover, has radical connotations by being without precedent or authority: “without example of any author” (5). These upsetting circumstances occur when such figures are brought onto the stage “in lively personages” (5). “Personages” here signifies dramatis personae, “a character adopted or impersonated, especially in a play.” 45 The stage is the space of temporary disguise and transformation; it might be seen as the perfect space to explore the performance of humanity and the performance of the animal: the making of “speechless things to speak” (5). 46 In G.B.’s eyes, the possibility of seeing birds transmuted into humans is unacceptable. His concern is with the radical potential of shifting “lively” (5) beasts from page to stage.

100

Rachel Stenner

The implication is that behavior that may be acceptable when written into a book becomes uncomfortably vivid and subversive when it is performed on the stage. This is all the more troubling when a human actor is performing the role of an animal that already has, within its fabular identity, human qualities. Add to this the central provocation of Beware the Cat, that animals actually do possess qualities previously reserved for the human (speech, reason, social structure and taboos), and the whole fabric of the division between the two is loosened. G.B. thus pre-emptively objects from the opening paratext to the destabilization of human and animal that the text will go on to perpetuate. By repeatedly discrediting Streamer and by acting as a controlling textual structure, his voice attempts to police the human and animal divide and to assert the discourse of absolute anthropocentrism. In contrast, Baldwin’s narrative, rather than dramatic, form distances his text from its internal editor’s complaint against “lively personages.” Overall, Beware the Cat promotes the position that G.B. discommends. Baldwin and G.B. are at odds and the text as a whole repeats at a structural level its narrative, philosophical and discursive dynamic of human movement towards and away from the animal. It might be stretching a point to conclude that Baldwin examines the early modern construction of the human from the position of the beast. It is more defensible to state that he exposes and critiques humanism’s ambivalent construction of the human and the centrality of the fable as an educative model within that construction. In the process, Baldwin brings together two competing early modern discourses about humanity’s relationship with animals. Streamer’s violent exploitation of his fellow creatures clearly marks him as occupying a position of absolute anthropocentrism, whilst the experiences he is enabled to have as a result facilitate a close engagement with the animal other. Consequently, as a textual construction he shares discursive space with early modern anthropomorphism. The dynamic of rapprochement with and resistance to the animal is not only present within the text’s narrative but is recognisable in its structure, its fabular form, and in its philosophy. This is a text that repeatedly presents its central figure as simultaneously both more human and more animal. Beware the Cat certainly imagines the radical transformation that allows a man to laugh “in a cat’s voice” (49). The louder sound, however, is the dissonance of the discursive relationship between humans and animals in the early modern period. NOTES 1. Bruce Thomas Boehrer, Shakespeare Among the Animals: Nature and Society in the Drama of Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 15. 2. Boehrer, Shakespeare Among the Animals, 31. Relative anthropocentrism is the third of Boehrer’s triad of discourses; it “associates [ . . . ] subsets of the the human community [ . . . ] with the realm of nature, while reserving full human status only for specific [ . . . ] groups” (17). These categories provoke extensive analysis and critique within animal studies. Pertaining to

“The Author Laughed in a Cat’s Voice”

101

early modern literature, see Erica Fudge, Perceiving Animals: Humans and Beasts in Early Modern English Culture (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 1–10. 3. Boehrer, Shakespeare Among the Animals, 34. 4. Eveline I. Feasey, “William Baldwin,” Modern Language Review, 20 (1925): 410. On the text’s anti-Catholicism, see William Baldwin, Beware the Cat: The First English Novel, ed. William A. Ringler and Michael Flachmann (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1988), xvi–xxv (all quotation is from this edition); Stephen Gresham, “William Baldwin: Literary Voice of the Reign of Edward VI,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 44.2 (1981); John N. King, English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 397–8; Andrew Hadfield, “William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat and the Question of Anglo-Irish Literature,” Irish Studies Review, 6 (1998). 5. See Gresham, “Literary Voice;” King, English Reformation Literature, 358; David Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 50. 6. Sir Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poesy, in Sidney’s “The Defence of Poesy” and Selected Renaissance Literary Criticism, ed. Gavin Alexander (London: Penguin, 2004), 44; Feasey, “William Baldwin,” 407. 7. Feasey, “William Baldwin,” 407–8; King, English Reformation Literature, 358. For overviews of Baldwin’s career see King, 358–406; Scott C. Lucas, “A Mirror for Magistrates” and the Politics of the English Reformation (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009), 36–41. On the Treatise, see Robert Maslen, “William Baldwin and the Politics of Pseudo-Philosophy in Tudor Prose Fiction,” Studies in Philology, 97 (2000); Jennifer Richards, “Commonplacing and Prose Writing: William Baldwin and Robert Burton,” in Andrew Hadfield, ed., The Oxford Handbook of English Prose 1500–1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 8. Alongside Ringler and Flachmann in Beware the Cat, see William A. Ringler, “Beware the Cat and the Beginnings of English Fiction,” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 12 (1979). 9. See Edward T. Bonahue, “‘I Know the Place and the Persons’: The Play of Textual Frames in Baldwin’s Beware the Cat,” Studies in Philology, 91.3 (1994); see also Jane Griffiths, Diverting Authorities: Experimental Glossing Practices in Manuscript and Print (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 123–33. 10. Ringler and Flachmann in Beware the Cat, 58. 11. Bruce Thomas Boehrer, Animal Characters: Nonhuman Beings in Early Modern Literature (Oxford: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 125–6. 12. Karen Raber, Animal Bodies, Renaissance Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 23. 13. Laurie Shannon, The Accommodated Animal: Cosmopolity in Shakespearean Locales (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 3; Shannon’s italics. 14. Shannon, Accommodated Animal, 204–9. 15. Boehrer, Shakespeare Among the Animals, 5. 16. Ibid., 17. 17. Boehrer, Animal Characters, 129. 18. William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, in The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard and Katharine Eisaman Maus (London: W.W. Norton, 1997), 1.1.210–1. 19. For detail of how Streamer at this point “attempts to parade his learning, but instead reveals his ignorance” see Ringler and Flachmann in Beware the Cat, 66–7. 20. Shannon, Accommodated Animal, 207. 21. For the contrasting view that “beastly transformation” is a plague-like instrument of pain, see Catherine I. Cox, “Plague like Cats: Soft Instruments of Sharp Justice in William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat,” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 41 (2015): 5. 22. See Cox, “Plague Like Cats,” for full discussion of this phenomenon. 23. As Gail Kern Paster demonstrates, early modern humoral theory in fact promoted the idea of a psychophysiological structure shared by human and animal passions; see Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage (London: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 135–88.

102

Rachel Stenner

24. For the text’s engagement of the problems and potentialities of orality and writing see Terence N. Bowers, “The Production and Communication of Knowledge in William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat: Toward a Typographic Culture,” Criticism, 33 (1991); Clare R. Kinney, “Clamorous Voices, Incontinent Fictions: Orality, Oratory, and Gender in William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat,” in Mary Ellen Lamb and Karen Bamford, eds., Oral Traditions and Gender in Early Modern Literary Texts (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); Trudy Ko, “The Hybrid Text: Transformation of the Vernacular in Beware the Cat,” in Joost Keizer and Todd M. Richardson, eds., The Transformation of Vernacular Expression in Early Modern Arts (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Rachel Stenner, “The Act of Penning in William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat,” Renaissance Studies, 30.4 (June 2016). 25. Boehrer, Shakespeare Among the Animals, 31. 26. This point is analogous to Fudge’s insight that early modern ideas about killing animals were governed by “two different ethical frameworks” (“Two Ethics: Killing Animals in the Past and the Present,” in The Animal Studies Group, Killing Animals [Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006], 112). 27. For further discussion of the animals in the woodcut, see Shaping Sense, “‘I know the place’: Locating the Woodcut in William Griffith’s 1570 Edition of William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat,” accessed 29 August 2016, http://senseshaper.com/i-know-the-place-locating-thewoodcut-in-william-griffiths-1570-edition-of-william-baldwins-beware-the-cat/. 28. In one politically charged view, these indicate the corpses of participants in the Prayer Book Rebellion that were left in situ in Baldwin’s urban environment between 1549 and 1551. See Robert Maslen, Elizabethan Fictions: Espionage, Counter-Espionage and the Duplicity of Fiction in Early Elizabethan Prose Narratives (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 79; see also Boehrer’s reading of this moment in Animal Characters, 130. 29. Boehrer, Animal Characters, 127, 129. 30. Fudge points out, though, that carnivorism both replicates and undermines the reformed understanding of the Eucharist. She also elaborates on the ambivalent status of the human that meat-eating indicates (“‘Saying Nothing Concerning the Same’: On Dominion, Purity, and Meat in Early Modern England,” in Erica Fudge, ed., Renaissance Beasts: Of Animals, Humans, and Other Wonderful Creatures [Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004], 77). 31. Shannon, Accommodated Animal, 201. Maslen, however, in Elizabethan Fictions reads the debate as being about whether or not Aesop’s fables should be taken literally (76). 32. See Shannon, Accommodated Animal, 201; cf. Erica Fudge, Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality, and Humanity in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). 33. Ringler and Flachmann in Beware the Cat, 58. 34. Thomas Blague, A Schole of Wise Conceytes (London: Henrie Binneman, 1569), STC (2nd edn) / 3114; fables 29, 150, 241, 313, 364, 400. 35. See, for example, “The Raven and the Crow” in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, ed. A.D. Melville (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986; 2008), II.539–636; Chaucer’s Manciple’s Tale in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 283–6. 36. Brendan O’Connell, “Chaucer’s ‘Beast Group’ and ‘Mother Hubberds Tale,’” in Rachel Stenner, Tamsin Badcoe and Gareth Griffith, eds., Rereading Chaucer and Spenser: Dan Geffrey with the New Poete (forthcoming). 37. Maslen, Elizabethan Fictions, 80; see 79–81 for his full discussion of the way the cats are “double agents” in the text. 38. William Caxton, The Fables of Esope (London: Caxton, 1484), STC (2nd edn) / 175, xxxjr. All quotation is from this edition. 39. Maslen, Elizabethan Fictions, 79. 40. For discussion of how animals typically signify in fables see Jill Mann, From Aesop to Reynard: Beast Literature in Medieval Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 28–44. 41. Mann, Aesop to Reynard, 6. 42. For more on the text’s response to humanism, see Nancy A. Gutierrez, “Beware the Cat: Mimesis in a Skin of Oratory,” Style, 23 (1989), 50–52; Thomas Betteridge, “William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat and Other Foolish Writing,” in Hadfield, Oxford Handbook of English

“The Author Laughed in a Cat’s Voice”

103

Prose; Rachel Stenner, The Typographic Imaginary in Early Modern English Literature (London: Routledge, forthcoming). 43. Fudge, Perceiving Animals, 72–73. 44. Ibid., 72. For a counter-narrative that decentralises humanism’s account of animals see Erica Fudge, “The Animal Face of Early Modern England,” Theory, Culture and Society, 30.7–8 (2013). 45. S.v. “personage,” n. 7.a.–b., OED Online, accessed 25 February 2016. 46. For the comments of one early modern anti-theatricalist, William Prynne, on acting the animal, see Fudge, Perceiving Animals, 88–90. On the way this acting threatens human identity, see James Knowles, “‘Can ye not tell a Man from a Marmoset?’: Apes and Others on the Early Modern Stage,” in Fudge, Renaissance Beasts.

BIBLIOGRAPHY The Animal Studies Group. Killing Animals. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006. Baldwin, William. Beware the Cat. London: Wylliam Gryffith, 1570. STC (2nd edn) / 1244. ———. Beware the Cat: The First English Novel. Edited by William A. Ringler and Michael Flachmann. San Marino: Huntington Library, 1988. Betteridge, Thomas. “William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat and Other Foolish Writing.” In The Oxford Handbook of English Prose 1500–1640, edited by Andrew Hadfield, 140–55. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Blague, Thomas. A Schole of Wise Conceytes. London: Henrie Binneman, 1569. STC (2nd edn) / 3114. Boehrer, Bruce Thomas. Animal Characters: Nonhuman Beings in Early Modern Literature. Oxford: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. ———. Shakespeare Among the Animals: Nature and Society in the Drama of Early Modern England. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002. Bonahue, Edward T. “‘I Know the Place and the Persons’: The Play of Textual Frames in Baldwin’s Beware the Cat.” Studies in Philology 91.3 (1994): 283–300. Bowers, Terence N. “The Production and Communication of Knowledge in William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat: Toward a Typographic Culture.” Criticism, 33 (1991): 1– 29. Caxton, William. The Fables of Esope. London: William Caxton, 1484. STC (2nd edn) / 175. Chaucer, Geoffrey. Manciple’s Tale in The Riverside Chaucer. Edited by Larry D. Benson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Cox, Catherine I. “Plague like Cats: Soft Instruments of Sharp Justice in William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat.” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 41 (2015): 1–29. Feasey, Eveline I. “William Baldwin.” Modern Language Review 20 (1925): 407–18. Fudge, Erica, ed. Renaissance Beasts: Of Animals, Humans, and Other Wonderful Creatures. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004. Fudge, Erica. “The Animal Face of Early Modern England.” Theory, Culture and Society 30.7–8 (2013): 177–98. ———. Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality, and Humanity in Early Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006. ———. Perceiving Animals: Humans and Beasts in Early Modern English Culture. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000. ———. “Saying Nothing Concerning the Same: On Dominion, Purity, and Meat in Early Modern England.” In Renaissance Beasts: Of Animals, Humans, and Other Wonderful Creatures, edited by Erica Fudge, 70–86. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004. ———. “Two Ethics: Killing Animals in the Past and the Present.” In Killing Animals by the Animal Studies Group, 99–119. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006. Gresham, Stephen. “William Baldwin: Literary Voice of the Reign of Edward VI.” Huntington Library Quarterly 44.2 (1981): 101–16. Griffiths, Jane. Diverting Authorities: Experimental Glossing Practices in Manuscript and Print. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

104

Rachel Stenner

Gutierrez, Nancy A. “Beware the Cat: Mimesis in a Skin of Oratory.” Style 23.1 (1989): 49– 69. Hadfield, Andrew, ed. The Oxford Handbook of English Prose 1500–1640. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Hadfield, Andrew. “William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat and the Question of Anglo-Irish Literature.” Irish Studies Review 6 (1998): 237–43. Keizer, Joost, and Todd M. Richardson, eds. The Transformation of Vernacular Expression in Early Modern Arts. Leiden: Brill, 2012. King, John N. English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. Kinney, Clare R. “Clamorous Voices, Incontinent Fictions: Orality, Oratory, and Gender in William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat.” In Oral Traditions and Gender in Early Modern Literary Texts, edited by Mary Ellen Lamb and Karen Bamford, 195–207. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Knowles, James. “‘Can ye not tell a Man from a Marmoset?’: Apes and Others on the Early Modern Stage.” In Renaissance Beasts: Of Animals, Humans, and Other Wonderful Creatures, edited by Erica Fudge, 138–63. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004. Ko, Trudy. “The Hybrid Text: Transformation of the Vernacular in Beware the Cat.” In The Transformation of Vernacular Expression in Early Modern Arts, edited by Joost Keizer and Todd M. Richardson, 207–27. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Lucas, Scott C. “A Mirror for Magistrates” and the Politics of the English Reformation. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009. Mann, Jill. From Aesop to Reynard: Beast Literature in Medieval Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Maslen, Robert. Elizabethan Fictions: Espionage, Counter-Espionage and the Duplicity of Fiction in Early Elizabethan Prose Narratives. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. ———. “William Baldwin and the Politics of Pseudo-Philosophy in Tudor Prose Fiction.” Studies in Philology 97 (2000): 29–60. Norbrook, David. Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. O’Connell, Brendan. “Chaucer’s ‘Beast Group’ and ‘Mother Hubberds Tale.’” In Reading and Rereading Chaucer and Spenser: Dan Geffrey with the New Poete, edited by Rachel Stenner, Tamsin Badcoe, and Gareth Griffith. Forthcoming. Ovid. Metamorphoses. Edited by A.D. Melville. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986; 2008. Paster, Gail Kern. Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage. London: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Raber, Karen. Animal Bodies, Renaissance Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. Richards, Jennifer. “Commonplacing and Prose Writing: William Baldwin and Robert Burton.” In The Oxford Handbook of English Prose 1500–1640, edited by Andrew Hadfield, 43–58. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Ringler, William A. “Beware the Cat and the Beginnings of English Fiction.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 12 (1979): 113–26. Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing in The Norton Shakespeare. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard and Katharine Eisaman Maus. London: W.W. Norton, 1997. Shannon, Laurie. The Accommodated Animal: Cosmopolity in Shakespearean Locales. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Shaping Sense. “‘I know the place’: Locating the Woodcut in William Griffith’s 1570 Edition of William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat.” Accessed 29 August 2016.http://senseshaper.com/iknow-the-place-locating-the-woodcut-in-william-griffiths-1570-edition-of-williambaldwins-beware-the-cat/. Sidney, Sir Philip. The Defence of Poesy in Sidney’s ‘The Defence of Poesy’ and Selected Renaissance Literary Criticism. Edited by Gavin Alexander. London: Penguin, 2004. Stenner, Rachel, Tamsin Badcoe and Gareth Griffith, eds. Reading and Rereading Chaucer and Spenser: Dan Geffrey with the New Poete. Forthcoming.

“The Author Laughed in a Cat’s Voice”

105

Stenner, Rachel. “The Act of Penning in William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat.” Renaissance Studies 30.4 (June 2016): 334–49. ———. The Typographic Imaginary in Early Modern English Literature. London: Routledge, forthcoming. ———. “The Typographic Imaginary in Early Modern Literature.” Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Bristol, 2014.

Chapter Six

Do Monkeys Know about Their Origin? Narratives of Animals Emerging During Fall in an Islamic Context Constantin Canavas

Evoking animals in processes of transformation is a topos known in several cultures and literary traditions. 1 In an Islamic context such transformations, known as maskh, are described in narratives involving transformation from humans to animals as a form of collective punishment which is linked to a religion-connoted moral regression. In this sense the topos of fallen animals becomes metaphor for human sin and religious abjection. The specific example is the transformation of the children of Israel into monkeys as God’s punishment mentioned in the Qur’ān. In fact, the monkey is an outstanding example of an animal covering the whole spectrum of culturally connoted assessment in human societies—from a sacred figure in religious cults, e.g. the sacred baboon in ancient Egypt, or Hanuman, the sacred monkey in Hindu tradition, to a despised creature in Islam. 2 Departing from the Islamic negative connotation, the present study traces the explicit or implicit assessment of the monkey figure in literary traditions among Muslim societies, namely in the adab Arabic literature and in the Arabian Tales (1001 Nights). Further, the present study focuses on the productive and reproductive narrative faculties of Muslim minority societies living inside or beside a non-Muslim majority society. In the context of the present study the negative connotation of the monkey in Muslim societies is confronted with the positive assessment of the figure of the monkey in a traditional Chinese context (mainly in the presence of the Monkey King). 107

108

Constantin Canavas

The Hui Muslim minority nationality of China is considered as source of narratives where the influence of both connotations will be examined. MONKEYS IN ARABIC TEXTS (QIRD, PL. QURŪD/QIRADA) In Arabic the monkey is generically referred by the Quranic term qird (pl. qirada in the Qur’ān; also qurūd in other usages). However, the term is used from case to case to denote several animals: baboons, macaques or apes (i.e. tailless monkeys), depending on the primate species commonly known in the region (Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Somalia, Morocco, etc.) from which the specific text originates. In his extensive article on qird in the Encyclopaedia of Islam Viré mentions further terms used for several species according to the sex of the animal or the locality, e.g. rubaḥ or rubbāḥ used in South Arabia for the large male baboons presumably imported from East Africa, then domesticated and trained to perform several services such as turning millstones. 3 In this conjunction Viré quotes references mentioning that the agility of monkeys was exploited by thieves for picking pockets and housebreaking—issues that are found in the Arabian Tales (1001 Nights), as we will see below. Viré also mentions less peaceable relations between men and monkeys, e.g. invasions of monkeys in Oman (referred by al-Idrīsī) and in Somalia (referred by al-Maqrīzī). The trade relations between the Middle East and South, Southeast and East Asia brought several specimens native in these regions (mainly macaques) to the Arab peninsula and the Arabic-speaking world—a fact that increased the probability of terminological confusion, affecting also the translations of Arabic texts into European languages referring to these animals—including Qur’ān and Islamic traditions/ḥadīth. The polysemy of the term qird is not specific for the Arabic language. As Desmond points out, similar confusions exist in English (monkey or ape, used commonly for several species, e.g. for macaques) and French (with the single term singe), and are partially related to the fact that the modern perception patterns have been formed in a process of discovering several species, such as the gorilla, chimpanzee and orang-utan. 4 With this background, Western understanding and translating of the Arabic terminology was affected not only by possible confusion in the Arabic texts, but also by the state of (Western) scientific knowledge at the time of the text transmission. The diversity of English terms for the Arabic (Quranic) qirada is encountered in the recent literature too. U. Rubin 5 and S. Tlili 6 use the term “apes” (as also does A. Arberry in his English translation of Qur’ān), whereas M. Cook 7 translates qirada as “monkeys.” The term “monkey” is used in the present study (including the references to Qur’ān).

Do Monkeys Know about Their Origin?

109

THE ISLAMIC CONTEXT: MASKH (METAMORPHOSIS, TRANSFORMATION) AS FALL (QUR’ĀN AND TRADITIONS/ḤADĪTH) The monkey (qird) is mentioned several times in Qur’ān in a context of maskh (metamorphosis, transformation). The Arabic (Quranic) term maskh is particularly used to connote the supernatural transformation of a common human form to an ugly one. 8 In the context of the present study maskh concerns the transformation of humans into monkeys as punishment. The case involves Israelites who did not respect the prohibitions of several activities during the Sabbath and collect fish which “came to them from the sea” on that day: “You know of those among you who have broken the Sabbath; We have said to them: “Be abject monkeys!” (Q 2:61–65, Q 7:166). A similar curse/punishment concerns the transformation of humans into pigs. In a context in which Qur’ān (Q 5:56) recommends “O believers, take not Jews and Christians as friends,” the text defends those who believe in God and warns the “people of the Book” by indicating: “Those whom Allah has cursed, those on whom His wrath has fallen, those whom He has turned into the monkeys and the pigs, and those who worship the idols—they are worse situated and have gone further astray from the right way.” (Q 5:65–66) Scholars have pointed out that this transformation is also mentioned in Talmud. Viré stresses the legend of the divine curse inflicted upon some of the builders of the Tower of Babel who were punished to be changed into monkeys for all eternity. 9 Rubin analyses the various Quranic references with the parallels in biblical texts (e.g. Numbers 11) in which Israelites, in some cases “at a town by the sea” as in Q 7:163–166, are presented to collect food on a Sabbath, thus violating the holiness of that day. 10 However, he underlines the fact that the punishment by transformation of men into monkeys in that particular case is only mentioned in Qur’ān. The form of monkey in the punitive context has been interpreted as “loss of human dignity.” 11 Other Quranic passages referring to the people of the Book, presumably Muhammad’s adversaries, the Jews of Medina, treat such punitive transformation without mentioning monkeys explicitly: 12 “O you who have been given the Book, believe in what we have revealed, which verifies what you already possess, before we alter countenances, turning them backwards, or lay a curse upon them, as we cursed the violators of the Sabbath.” (Q 4:47) The explanations and comments on the Quranic verses (tafsīr) by Muslim scholars stress the issue that the punitive transformation differentiates good deeds and pious humans on the one hand and false (bad) deeds and humans transformed into monkeys on the other. 13 The monkeys, as well as other metamorphic animals (e.g. pigs) stand on the side of the fallen humans, thus becoming themselves symbols of moral digression. Several narratives have been elaborated by scholars, e.g. regarding the partition of younger Israelite

110

Constantin Canavas

breakers of the Sabbath allegedly transformed into monkeys and older ones transformed into pigs. 14 The assessment of monkeys in Islam is not only depicted in the above theological context, but also in the context regarding the question of eating monkey flesh. According to the Islamic law, eating the flesh of the monkey is forbidden (ḥarām) because the animal is considered omnivorous and has canine teeth. Moreover, its proximity to the human race would bring the eating of monkey flesh close to cannibalism. 15 The issue of forbidding or not recommending the eating of the flesh of certain animals in Muslim societies is related to certain traditions/ḥadīth. One of them concerns eating the flesh of an animal into which sinful Israelites were transformed. Seeing somebody eating the flesh of the lizard, Muhammad said: “A nation of the Banū Isrā’īl has been transformed and I fear lest the creature is a part of it; I do not eat this meat, but I do not forbid it.” 16 Pellat refers to the above ḥadīth as mentioned by al-Damīrī in Ḥayāt alḤayawān, I, 573, and also by al-Jāḥiẓ. In Kitāb al-Ḥayawān al-Jāḥiẓ describes how a Muslim scholar, seeing a person eating the flesh of the lizard, says to him: “Know that you have eaten a shaykh of the Banū Isrā’īl.” 17 Pellat considers this ḥadīth typical for the way analogies and anecdotes are constructed in the Muslim world regarding punitive transformations: “This text is absolutely characteristic because, while testifying to the growth of traditions concerning punishments inflicted on the impious, it relates to an animal which is never mentioned in Qur’ān and is corroborated by various anecdotes.” 18 The metamorphic argument for refraining from (or forbidding) eating the flesh of descendants of the transformed impious humans (e.g. Israelites) is generally unusual in the Sunni dietary law; it is used by some Sunni scholars (fuqahā’) in the case of lizards, but it is not found applied to monkeys— despite the possible analogy between monkeys and lizards. Both animals are considered as the result of such a punitive transformation—the first is mentioned explicitly in Qur’ān, the second in ḥadīth as mentioned above. Michael Cook, however, points out that although punitive transformations of humans and hints about the sayings and—sometimes ambivalent—dietary behaviour of Muhammad concerning the results (animals) of these transformations are mentioned in ḥadīth, such arguments are uncommon among Sunni lawyers, even in the case of the lizard. Representatives of Sunni law schools would tend to argue against restrictions based on the metamorphic argument. Moreover, they would prefer arguments indicating e.g. the Prophet’s disgust regarding the flesh of a certain animal. Shi’ite scholars show a different attitude. Kulaynī refers to the monkey as a metamorphic animal (beside the pig and the bear) just before indicating that eating such animals is forbidden. 19 Generally speaking, the Shi’ite lawyers would tend to be more restrictive than their Sunni colleagues in formulating

Do Monkeys Know about Their Origin?

111

dietary rules; in several cases they would formulate restrictive rules by referring to the metamorphic argument. 20 Pellat as well as Cook showcase theological argumentations concerning the relevance of the curse for the possibility of real existence of descendants of the transformed Israelites at the present—since only the latter could have significance for elaborating arguments regarding restrictions of Muslim dietary behaviour. Questions raised in conjunction with the specific transformation into monkeys were of the following type: Is the aim of the curse to underline the ugly result of the disobedience, beyond historical evidence—or is it perhaps a punishment concerning specific individuals confined at a certain historical moment? Or is the transformation of the cursed Israelites to monkeys considered as a historical fact which could imply that the animals resulted through maskh/transformation (i.e. the specific monkeys) still survive? If the latter is the case, then the next question would be whether they have become numerous and—eventually—ubiquitous. A relevant question in this context regards the possibility (or even the necessity) of differentiating between real and metamorphic animals. These questions have been elaborated beyond the theological and juridical literature by al-Jāḥiẓ. REPERCUSSIONS IN ADAB LITERATURE: AL-JĀḤIẒ (KITĀB AL-ḤAYAWĀN AND KITĀB AL-TARBĪ‘ WA’L-TADWĪR) Al-Jāḥiẓ (166/776–255/869 H./CE), the well-known scholar of Arabic Adab literature and politico-theological polemics, approached on several occasions the controversy between symbolism and realism in the above case. Talking about monkeys, pigs and lizards in his Kitāb al-Tarbī’ and referring implicitly to the Quranic verses and to the exegetic traditions concerning the transformations of humans into these animals, he reasons on the consequences of a realistic reading of the Quranic verses as explained above. In fact several Muslim jurists and theologians have discussed the questions as to whether such transformations were effected at a stroke or gradually, whether they have led to the creation of new animal species that survived, and whether the monkeys, pigs and lizards we see today are their descendants. 21 Concerning the first of the above questions al-Jāḥiẓ conveys the opinion of gradual modifications (kalb) that can lead eventually to a total transformation. 22 Elaborating on the perception faculties of these animals he formulates the question “Do they [monkeys] recognise one another and do they know what has brought about their origin?,” 23 but he refrains from answering. Regarding the question of descendants of humans transformed into animals he conveys unanimous answers of other scholars. For some of them the punitive transformation concerned only individual cases to impress minds, whereas for others

112

Constantin Canavas

the monkeys, pigs and lizards of the present are descendants of the transformed humans. 24 Certainly these remarks obtain a different horizon if Kitāb al-Ḥayawān is considered as a zoological work in the Greek (Aristotelian) tradition, 25 as a treatise in dialogue with the early Mu‘tazili theology 26 or as a remarkable specimen of adab irony. 27 ARABIAN TALES (1001 NIGHTS) Looking for repercussions of the monkey figure beyond the Qur’ān and the adab Arabic-Islamic literature, the Arabian Tales (1001 Nights) turn up as a possible source with their roots far beyond the Islamic frame. Indeed, in the 152nd night 28 we find the tale of the thief with the monkey. In this tale a thief uses his monkey in order to distract the attention of a clothes vendor through the monkey’s tricky performance, so that he (the thief) can steal the clothes and sell them in another market. 29 In the 355th–356th nights we find the tale of the princess and the monkey. A princess had an obsessive erotic relationship with a black slave. She suffered from the fact that she couldn’t stay a single moment without her lover, and confessed it to an elder maid of honour. The maid remarked that there existed a creature who was an even more fierce lover than the black slave— the monkey. One day a man with a big monkey passed under the window of the princess. The monkey jumped into her room and became the lover of the princess. In order to escape the revenge of her father the princess, dressed as a Mamluk man, fled with the monkey lover to Cairo. Her true identity was discovered by a butcher who killed the monkey and, with the help of a magician, “relieved” the princess from her erotic obsession. In this tale the monkey is the best male lover. At the same time, however, the monkey is suspected to be the incarnation of a shayṭān—according to al-Jāḥiẓ, a renegade demon/jinn who shows discord and does evil 30—or of an evil spirit characterized by unlimited sexuality. 31 A major issue in this story is related to changed identities: monkey/black slave, monkey/al-shayṭān, princess/ Mamluk man. In this chain the monkey is related to the black slave, the lowest human grade in classical Islam. The monkey’s negative connotation is underlined by the fact of being dangerous to women and their honour. A more complex narrative with a monkey as a hero is presented in the tale of the lazy Abū Muḥammad from the 301st to the 305th night. Abū Muḥammad asked the sheikh Abū al-Muẓaffar to buy something for him during his journey to China. Abū al-Muẓaffar brought him a monkey encountered on an island (Ceylon?) during his sea journey back from China. The monkey turned out to be the metamorphosis of a mighty jinn (mārid), who, in the following, kidnapped the young wife of Abū Muḥammad. Eventually

Do Monkeys Know about Their Origin?

113

Abū Muḥammad subdued the mārid with the help of even more mighty demons, the ‘afārīt (plural of ‘ifrīt) who became obedient to him by means of a talisman. 32 The differences between jinn, mārid and ‘ifrīt seem to consist in their abilities to perform marvels. In this sense of marvel-performative power, the mārid, the demon with the metamorphosis into the monkey, is usually classified between jinn and ‘ifrīt, the latter being the mightiest. 33 To sum up, in the 1001 Nights we encounter the narrative patterns of the monkey as trickster, as supernatural lover replacing and surpassing the black slave, and as the negatively connoted metamorphosis of a mighty jinn in an inversion of the Indian Hanuman figure. The latter inverse parallel deserves more attention because of the assumed Indian-Persian influences on the collection of the 1001 Nights. 34 In India, the legendary figure of Hanuman, the monkey-god in the Hindu mythology, represents a peak of monkey prestige. 35 In the popular Indian epic Ramayana, Hanuman finds and sets free Sita, the wife of Rama. Sita had been kidnapped by the demon Ravana. Various forms of metamorphosis of Ravana and other demons are similar to those encountered in the Arabian Tales; the role of the monkey-general Hanuman, however, is completely inverse of the role of the monkey in the Arabian Tales. In Ramayana it is Hanuman himself who restitutes the honour of Sita after the kidnapping by bringing her back to Rama. 36 One detail of particular similarity is the implication that the place where Sita was kept kidnapped by Ravana is probably Ceylon—the island where Abū al-Muẓaffar encountered the monkey who was the transformation of a mighty jinn (mārid) in the tale of the lazy Abū Muḥammad from the 301st to the 305th night. MONKEYS UNDER CONDITIONS OF POSITIVE CONNOTATION: TALES OF A MUSLIM MINORITY IN CHINA (HUI) With this background we will trace in the following the figure of the monkey in narratives of a specific Muslim society, the Hui minority nationality in the People’s Republic of China. The goal is to examine to what extent and with what resulting products the symbolism of Muslim religious traditions interacts with the symbolic values of the non-Muslim majority society in the case of the figure of the monkey. The issue of the minority nationalities in the PR of China has a long and ambivalent history which cannot be discussed here. 37 The category minzu (nationality) was introduced officially after 1950 following the Soviet (USSR) model. Fifty-five authorized minority nationalities (shaoshu minzu) are ca. 8% of the population, whereas the Han nationality, officially considered as the 56th nationality (minzu), constitutes the large majority of the population (ca. 92%). The term hui was used since the imperial period (not-

114

Constantin Canavas

ably in the Mongol Yuan dynasty and the subsequent Ming dynasty) to designate Muslim Chinese (Hanhui). In the actual constellation of 55 minority nationalities the usage of the term has shifted from describing a religious group towards designating a certain ethnic identity—rather constructed than traditional—in which the identification criterion for the individual members is not the religion, but the proof of ancestry inside the group. 38 At the present day ca. 20 million Chinese citizens distributed in 10 minority nationalities (shaoshu minzu) are officially categorized as Muslims. The Hui minority nationality is the largest one, comprising 9.8 million members. What distinguishes the Hui from the other Muslims in China is the fact that they do not have their own language; moreover, they use the language of the majority (ethnic group) in which they are actually living as a minority—Han, Tibetan, Miao etc. Since they statistically live more among the Han majority nationality, they are practically the only Chinese-speaking (and writing) Muslim group. 39 They are generally considered as the most sinicized Muslims, living in most cases in a non-Muslim majority environment. The choice between the terms “sinicized Muslims” or “Muslim Chinese” in the case of Hui is indeed not just a linguistic one, and has been commented on by various authors. 40 The first implies long and complicated historical processes of adopting Chinese cultural characteristics by foreign Muslims living in China. 41 The term “Muslim Chinese” lets more space for decisions taken under specific historical circumstances (e.g. during the Japanese invasion in the 1930s) by the Hui themselves. 42 Moreover, it takes into account not only the heterogeneity of cultural elements smelt together e.g. in folklore and mythology, but also the contingency of identity in the present state of the People’s Republic of China—including recent. 43 The present study follows the latter perspective, admitting however the special role of the Chinese language in the process of cultural interaction. The importance of the Chinese language is linked to the fact that precisely this language is the vehicle of a composite cultural transmission, including religious Islamic texts and oral traditions, polyvalent connotations in Arabic and Indian literature, as well as classical profane Chinese texts and related oral traditions. What makes this encounter interesting for our questioning is the crossing of the negatively connoted Islamic figure of the monkey with the polyvalent connotations in the Arabian Tales presented above and the explicitly positive connotations of the figure in the classical Chinese tradition. The latter is embodied remarkably in the fabulous figure of Monkey King in the sixteenth-century CE (Ming dynasty) Chinese novel Journey to the West, 44 perhaps the most popular of the Four Great Classic Novels, which also include “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms,” “The Water Margin” and “The Dream of the Red Mansion.” According to the convolution of legends embracing the Monkey figure, Sun Wukong, the legendary Handsome Monkey King (Mei Houwang), was born from a magic stone turned into a stone

Do Monkeys Know about Their Origin?

115

monkey. In a complicated process in the world of monkeys he eventually became the Handsome Monkey King, and was eventually invited by the Jade Emperor to Heaven. After several adventures, he became one of the companions of the Buddhist monk Xuanzang in his journey to the West. Historically, Xuanzang was a real Buddhist monk who was sent to India by the Tang emperor Tai Zong (627–649 CE) to retrieve Buddhist scriptures. Sun Wukong became famous for his fighting skills and his shape-shifting ability to transform himself into seventy-two different beings—humans, animals and objects. 45 After becoming immortal by consuming the pills of longevity and immortality he demonstrated the character of a playful disobedient trickster—but with a good heart. The popularity of the Monkey King in the Chinese society—a figure marked by positively connoted transformations— goes as far as his being worshipped as a god. 46 A comparison between the narrative patterns regarding the monkey in the Arabian Tales and the Handsome Monkey King in the Chinese novel Journey to the West reveals some common aspects, but also strong deviations. The common aspects are covered by anthropomorphic projections presented as phenomenological attributes of the monkey’s behaviour: playful, trickster and mischievous, accompanied by the handsome appearance. The main features which enable a different development and, eventually, a positive assessment of the figure in the Chinese context are his being fearless and irrepressible. On the basis of these characteristics Sun Wukong dares deeds which motivate the other monkeys to proclaim him king. The next step is his quest for immortality and his luck in finding and consuming the pills of longevity; this event leads him to the sphere of the Chinese gods. In his function as companion of the Buddhist monk Xuanzang in his journey to the West he proves to be loyal, helpful and of good heart 47—in fact a quite different assessment than that of the monkey figures in the Arabian Tales. The following evidence of the monkey in narratives of the Hui minority nationality is based on the collection of mythology and folklore among the Hui published by Shuijiang Li and Karl Luckert in 1994. The tale of the Stone Monkey 48 is the story of two brothers, the older of whom mistreats the younger one. One day the younger brother, advised by a white-bearded, old man, found a treasure of silver coins in the open mouth of a stone monkey squatting in a ravine. This find changed the life of the young brother, a fact that made the older brother and his wife envious of him. After getting the story of the event by the honest younger brother, the greedy older brother and his wife got access to the squatting stone monkey and the treasure in his mouth with the help of the same old man by pretending that he, the older brother, was mistreated by the younger. But instead of listening when the old man said that they should descend from the mountain with the stone monkey, they kept on collecting coins, up to the moment when the stone monkey closed his jaws and grasped the hand of the older brother. Moreover,

116

Constantin Canavas

the silver coin treasure was transformed into pieces of stone. The older brother remained captured till he told his wife to go and apologize to his younger brother on his behalf. At that moment the stone monkey burst out laughing, allowing the older brother to take out his hand. Obviously, the tale is a combination of the Chinese motif of the Stone Monkey (mentioned above) with the tale of “Ali Baba and the 40 thieves” from the 1001 Nights with the monkey being a morally “positive,” wealth-spending figure. The trickster feature is present—the stone monkey captures the hand of the older brother and transforms the silver coins to pieces of stone—but with the obvious purpose of fulfilling the moral function of punishing the greedy older brother, at least until he apologized for his behaviour. The collectors and editors of the Hui stories, Li and Luckert, underline the didactic goal of the story and showcase structural similarities with other stories of the Hui folklore which convey moral lessons about the hazards of estimating material treasures beyond solidarity values and social piety. In their comment to the story of the Stone Monkey Li and Luckert recognise in the old man the figure of an ahong (the Chinese term for imam) who gives practical lessons for everyday behaviour. What makes him part of the majority (i.e. Han) Chinese culture is—according to the editors—the attributes of the old man corresponding to the ancient Chinese god of wealth. In this sense the old ahong of the story “remains in charge of a stone monkey which functions, intermittently, as an inexhaustible source of silver.” 49 In the context of our discussion on the assessment of the monkey in Hui folklore this interpretation implies that the Stone Monkey offers his superficial trickster attribute to the service of the old ahong—a fact that guarantees the positive assessment of this traditional Chinese figure in the above story as an actor inserted in a pattern of moral preaching. In another tale a small Monkey and a Turtle lived like sworn brothers. 50 One day the Turtle read a notice of a squire searching for a monkey’s heart to cure his daughter’s illness. The Turtle was excited by the prospect of getting the high reward and thought of offering the heart of the small Monkey to the squire. Once at home, the Turtle pretended being sick and feeble in order to get the promise of the small Monkey to help him, and, once the unconditional promise was obtained, the Turtle demanded the heart of the little Monkey claiming that he had promised it to the squire for curing his daughter. Realizing the Turtle’s unlimited greed for money, the small Monkey tempted the Turtle by telling him that he could get the hearts of ten dead monkeys lying at the Moon Mountain instead of insisting on his, the little Monkey’s heart. The Turtle followed the little Monkey to the Moon Mountain, paying attention, however, not to let the little Monkey escape. The little Monkey drew the attention of the greedy Turtle to the fruits lying on the ground under the trees by presenting these fruits as hearts of dead monkeys. While the Turtle focused his attention on the supposed monkey hearts, the little Monkey jumped

Do Monkeys Know about Their Origin?

117

on a tall tree and stayed there beyond the reach of the Turtle, until the Turtle died under the sun heat because of lack of water. In this story the Monkey demonstrates again its trickster features—this time in order to save his own life from the threat incorporated by the greedy Turtle. As in the previous story, the Monkey’s trickster behaviour has a moral excuse since the little Monkey acts so in order to circumvent the threat on his life. The Monkey’s trick is also a means for punishing the greedy Turtle who is violating severely the moral principle of friendship. In the tale of the Leaking Pot 51 the Monkey is presented as an ambivalent counsellor of the Tiger who is irrationally afraid of the Leaking Pot. The fear of the Leaking Pot was induced in the Tiger by a casual saying he heard from a woman who was asked by her husband about what she was afraid of most while he was away from home. The strange answer that she was not afraid of anything except a Leaking Pot occupied hence his thoughts. Before the Tiger could leave the village in the evening—actually he had come to steal and eat the donkey of the couple whose conversation turned around the Leaking Pot—a thief came to the village with the purpose to steal that donkey. In the darkness he climbed on the Tiger believing that he was climbing on the donkey. The Tiger thought it was “Leaking Pot” who was riding upon his back, and began running back towards the forest in a desperate hurry. Discovering his mistake, the thief was also scared to death. When they reached the forest the thief jumped on a tall tree, while the Tiger continued his running. Along his way the Tiger met the Monkey and confessed to him that he had come across a Leaking Pot—a being which was more fierce than the Tiger himself. Burning with curiosity the Monkey persuaded the Tiger to lead him to the tree with the Leaking Pot at the foot of the mountain. There the Monkey suggested they get tied to each other with a rope, and then let him—the Monkey—climb up to see whether the Leaking Pot would still be there. In case of danger the Monkey would wink to the Tiger, would jump on his back, and they would both quickly run away. After getting to the tree with the thief, a chain of coincidences made the Tiger misunderstand the Monkey who had climbed on the tree at a moment in which the Monkey tried to get rid of the tears of the scared thief which had fallen on the Monkey’s eyes. The Tiger thought the Monkey was winking at him implying danger, and so he hastily started running for his life, without carrying the Monkey on his back. The Monkey was almost dead because he was dragged along by the fleeing Tiger through the tying rope. In this story the Monkey acts as an egoistic trickster driven by its own curiosity; eventually he is beaten by the consequences of his decisions. To sum up, the monkey in the Hui tales is represented as a benevolent symbolic spender of wealth and justice, as a clever trickster for the sake of saving his own life, but also as an ambivalent counsellor who does not escape negative consequences of his tricky recommendations. These features corre-

118

Constantin Canavas

spond to the attributes encountered in the much more rich classic Chinese narrative tradition given in Journey to the West. CONCLUSION The aim of the present study was to contrast the Islamic theological assessment of the monkey as a symbol of fallen humans and—in an interpretative context—as a fallen animal itself with anthropological evidence in a discursive milieu which holds a positive assessment of this animal. In the Islamic theological (Quranic) background the figure of the despised monkey results from the punitive transformation (maskh) after a human fall (the Israelites fishing on Sabbath). The association of this transformation of sinners into monkeys with the prohibition of eating monkey flesh showcases monkeys themselves as fallen animals—at least in the limited frame where this association is encountered. The Islamic theological debates obviously influence adab—but not explicitly the motifs of popular Arabic literature. Many of them should have preIslamic or foreign (e.g. Indian or Persian) origin. However, a negative connotation (malicious trickster, excessive sexual performance) of the monkey figure accompanies the considered examples of popular Arabic literature. Finally, in the Muslim Chinese environment, a syncretism of Indian and classical Chinese narratives—such as the narratives regarding the figures of Hanuman and the Handsome Monkey King—frames the anthropological representation of the monkey as a rather positive figure. In our case study the non-Muslim cultural habitat of the Hui, the Han Chinese majority society, seems influential enough to “free” monkeys from the Qur’ānic curse and to provide them with the honouring attributes that characterise the picture of monkey in the traditional Chinese folklore, e.g. as represented in Journey to the West 52—including unpleasant consequences of his trickster actions. The present study has not traced monkey myths in the non-Muslim (Han) Chinese culture beyond the master narrative Journey to the West. The gross of proverbs, myths and narratives can provide material for a more thorough research concerning parallelisms or differences when comparing with myths and legends in the Hui communities. Furthermore, other forms of evidence regarding the Hui communities could be considered too. In a recent talk of the author with a Hui imam (ahong) in Xi’an (2016) the direct question on the perception of the monkey in the Hui community was answered unambiguously: “When we visit the zoo, we try to omit or circumvent the monkeys. In the Qur’ān, they are presented as the result of curse of Allah who transformed sinner Jews into monkeys.” Certainly, the canonical setting of the conversation in the main

Do Monkeys Know about Their Origin?

119

mosque shifts the interpretation frame of this statement from the anthropological to a theological level. It would be interesting to compare Hui theological literature and arguments of dietary laws regarding the flesh of monkey with their equivalents of the Middle East Islam mentioned above. It has been argued that such literature (han kitab) yields evidence of complementarity 53 or hybridity 54 between Islam, Confucianism and—possibly—other Chinese cultural traditions. But it would be also interesting to obtain anthropological evidence of individual assessments regarding the monkey in a modern everyday Hui environment—urban or rural—beyond an induced bias of authoritative theological discourses. NOTES 1. This study owes a lot to stimulations and references provided to the author by Stefanie Brinkmann (Hamburg) and Zohar Hadromi-Allouche (Aberdeen). 2. Desmond 2013, 10 ff., 44 ff. 3. F. Viré, “Ḳird,” EI², vol. V, 131a–134a. 4. Desmond 2013, 186 ff. 5. Uri Rubin, “‘Become you apes, repelled!’ (Quran 7:166): The transformation of the Israelites into apes and its biblical and midrashic background,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 78 (2015): 25–40. 6. Sarra Tlili, Animals in the Qur’an (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 7. Michael Cook, “Early Islamic dietary law,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 7 (1986): 217–277; Michael Cook, “Ibn Qutayba and the monkeys,” Studia Islamica 89 (1999): 43–74. 8. Ch. Pellat, “Maskh,” EI², vol. VI, 736b–738b. 9. Viré, “Ḳird.” 10. Rubin, “‘Become you apes, repelled!’ (Quran 7:166),” 26–35. 11. Ibid., 33. 12. Ibid., 34. 13. Tlili, Animals in the Qur’an, 123–127. 14. Cook, “Ibn Qutayba,” 52. 15. Viré, “Ḳird,” 133a. 16. Pellat, “Maskh,” 737a. 17. Al-Jāḥiẓ, Kitāb al-Ḥayawān, Éd. Hārūn (Cairo: Al-Halabī, ?/1965), vol. 6, 77. 18. Pellat, “Maskh,” 737a. 19. Abū Ja’far Muḥammad Al-Kulaynī, Al-furū’ min al-kāfī., ed. Murtadā Ahūndī, corrected and commented by ‘Alī Akbar al-Ġiffārī (Teheran: Maktabāt al-Sadūq, ?/1957), Kitāb alaṭ’ima/Chapter on Eating. 20. Cook, “Early Islamic dietary law,” 220–228. 21. Pellat, “Maskh,” 737b. 22. Al-Jāḥiẓ, Kitāb al-Ḥayawān, 70. 23. Al-Jāḥiẓ. Kitāb at-Tarbī’ wa’l-Tadwīr. Texte arabe avec une trad. par Charles Pellat (Damas: Institut Français de Damas., ?/1955), 44. 24. Al-Jāḥiẓ, Kitāb al-Ḥayawān, vol. 4, 68; Pellat, “Maskh,” 737b. 25. Susanne Enderwitz, “Culture, history and religion: À propos the introduction of the Kitāb al-Ḥayawān,” in Al-Jāḥiẓ: A Muslim Humanist of our Times, ed. Arnim Heinemann et al. (Beirut/Würzburg: Ergon, 2009), 229 ff. 26. Josef Van Ess, “Al-Jāḥiẓ and early Mu‘tazili theology,” in Al-Jāḥiẓ: A Muslim Humanist of our Times, ed. Arnim Heinemann et al. (Beirut/Würzburg: Ergon, 2009), 3 ff. 27. Peter Heath, “Al-Jāḥiẓ, adab and the art of the essay,” in Al-Jāḥiẓ: A Muslim Humanist of our Times, ed. Arnim Heinemann et al. (Beirut/Würzburg: Ergon, 2009), 133 ff.

120

Constantin Canavas

28. References to the 1001 Nights in the present study correspond to the German translation by Enno Littmann, based on the Calcutta edition of 1839: Enno Littmann, Die Erzählungen aus den Tausendundein Nächten. Nach dem arabischen Urtext der Calcuttaer Ausgabe aus dem Jahr 1839 übertragen von Enno Littmann (Wiesbaden: Insel-Verlag, 1953). 29. Littmann, Die Erzählungen, vol. 2, 284–285. 30. J. Chelhold, “‘Ifrīt,” EI², vol. III, 1050a. 31. Littmann, Die Erzählungen, vol. 3, 347–349. 32. Ibid., 178–195. 33. Chelhold, “‘Ifrīt,” 1050a. 34. Enno Littmann, “Alf layla wa-layla,” EI², vol. I, 362b ff. 35. Desmond Morris, Monkey (London: Reaktion Books, 2013), 18. 36. Morris, Monkey, 18–25. 37. For a comprehensive analysis see e.g. Frank Dikötter, The Discourse of Race in Modern China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1992); for the methodology used by the Chinese authorities and scientists for identifying and categorizing the various nationalities see Blake Stone-Banks, “The Minzu Shibie: Equality and evolution in early CCP minority research and policy,” in Ethnic Minority Issues in Yunnan, ed. Sam Mitchell (Kunming: Yunnan Fine Arts Publishing House, 2004), 48–69; and Dru C. Gladney, Dislocating China: Reflections on Muslims, Minorities, and Other Subaltern Subjects (London: Hurst, 2004). 38. Élisabeth Allès, L’islam de Chine: Un islam en situation minoritaire (Paris: IISMM— KARTHALA, 2013), 22 ff. 39. Allès, L’islam de Chine, 9, n.1. 40. e.g. Allès, L’islam de Chine; Dikötter, The Discourse of Race. 41. Gladney, Dislocating China, 100–101. 42. Allès, L’islam de Chine, 23. 43. Gladney, Dislocating China, 102. 44. The English translation by W. J. F. Jenner under the title Journey to the West (1982) was based on the Chinese edition of the Ming-dynasty novel by Wu Cheng’En (1500–1582) published in 1955 by the Beijing People’s Literature Publishing House: Wu Cheng’En, Journey to the West, English translation by W. J. F. Jenner in 3 volumes, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1982 [16th century CE/modern Chinese edition 1955]. 45. Desmond 2013, 30. 46. Ibid., 32. 47. Ibid., 30–32. 48. Shuijiang Li and Karl W. Luckert, Mythology and Folklore of the Hui, a Muslim Chinese People (Albany: The State University of New York Press, 1994), 288–290. 49. Ibid., 28. 50. Ibid., 435–437. 51. Ibid., 437–439. 52. Desmond 2013, 30–32. 53. Allès, L’islam de Chine, 21–22. 54. Gladney, Dislocating China, 103 ff.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Al-Jāḥiẓ. ?/1955. Kitāb at-Tarbī’ wa’l-Tadwīr. Texte arabe avec une trad. par Charles Pellat. Damas: Institut Français de Damas. ———. ?/1965. Kitāb al-Ḥayawān. Éd. Hārūn (7 vols.). Cairo: Al-Halabī. Al-Kulaynī, Abū Ja’far Muḥammad. ?/1957. Al-furū’ min al-kāfī. Ed. Murtadā Ahūndī, corrected and commented by ‘Alī Akbar al-Ġiffārī. Teheran: Maktabāt al-Sadūq. Allès, Élisabeth. 2013. L’islam de Chine: Un islam en situation minoritaire. Paris: IISMM— KARTHALA. Chelhold, J. “Ifrīt.” EI², vol. III, 1050a–1051a. Cook, Michael. “Early Islamic dietary law.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 7 (1986): 217–277.

Do Monkeys Know about Their Origin?

121

———. “Ibn Qutayba and the monkeys.” Studia Islamica 89 (1999): 43–74. Dikötter, Frank. 1992. The Discourse of Race in Modern China. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Enderwitz, Susanne. “Culture, history and religion: À propos the introduction of the Kitāb alḤayawān.” In Al-Jāḥiẓ: A Muslim Humanist of our Times, edited by Arnim Heinemann et al., 229–237. Beirut/Würzburg: Ergon, 2009. Gladney, Dru C. 2004. Dislocating China. Reflections on Muslims, Minorities, and Other Subaltern Subjects. London: Hurst. Heath, Peter. “Al-Jāḥiẓ, adab and the art of the essay.” In Al-Jāḥiẓ: A Muslim Humanist of our Times, edited by Arnim Heinemann et al., 133–172. Beirut/Würzburg: Ergon, 2009. Li, Shuijiang and Luckert, Karl W. 1994. Mythology and Folklore of the Hui, a Muslim Chinese People. Albany: The State University of New York Press. Littmann, Enno. “Alf layla wa-layla.” EI², vol. I, 358b–364a. ———. 1953. Die Erzählungen aus den Tausendundein Nächten. Nach dem arabischen Urtext der Calcuttaer Ausgabe aus dem Jahr 1839 übertragen von Enno Littmann. Wiesbaden: Insel-Verlag. Morris, Desmond. 2013. Monkey. London: Reaktion Books. Pellat, Ch. “Maskh.” EI², vol. VI, 736b–738b. Rubin, Uri. “‘Become you apes, repelled!’ (Quran 7:166): The transformation of the Israelites into apes and its biblical and midrashic background.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 78 (2015): 25–40. Stone-Banks, Blake. “The Minzu Shibie: Equality and evolution in early CCP minority research and policy.” In Ethnic Minority Issues in Yunnan, edited by Sam Mitchell, 48–69. Kunming: Yunnan Fine Arts Publishing House, 2004. Tlili, Sarra. 2012. Animals in the Qur’an. New York: Cambridge University Press. Van Ess, Josef. “Al-Jāḥiẓ and early Mu‘tazili theology.” In Al-Jāḥiẓ: A Muslim Humanist of our Times, edited by Arnim Heinemann et al., 3–15. Beirut/Würzburg: Ergon, 2009. Viré, F. “Ḳird.” EI², vol. V, 131a–134a. Wu Cheng’En. 16th century CE/modern Chinese edition 1955. Journey to the West (English translation by W. J. F. Jenner in 3 volumes, 1982). Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.

Epilogue We Fall into the Humanimal: A Conversation between Kate Walters and Penny Florence Kate Walters and Penny Florence

Figure 1. Creature Carrying Humans, Kate Walters, 2016, monotype with oilbar and ink on Bible paper, 50x60 cm

123

124

Kate Walters and Penny Florence

This essay is a written conversation: it is not the record of two people talking to one another, although it grows out of several such occasions. After discussing agreed topics, we each wrote sections and then collaged them together to form clear yet mobile connections. The aim was for the collaborative piece of writing to reflect directly the kinds of creative process we write about. Our original format embodied this (Figure 2 below). Unfortunately, it proved too expensive to include in the present collection. So we have modified it. But we encourage you to read freely across the words and images, allowing equal weight to word and image, logic and chance.

Figure 2. Screen shot of a page in the original format, KW’s words in red regular, PF’s in blue italics.

KW As I draw, animals appear as elusive dream visitors fugitive on the page. The curve of an eyelid, the suggestion of a gaze, the tilt of a profile, the sensitivity of flank or crest might surface and prompt my hands to follow.

Epilogue

125

PF Read me like the glinting waves Now light, now water, Sunset fire igniting earth. My element is drawn, Is written; it shifts, as in dreams, And laughter.

I would see your drawing processes as liminal crossings, Kate. They go deep, change, reveal what we have agreed to call “humanimality.” The knowledge of speechless beings is beyond speech as we know it; yet the best of what I know of my humanity is beyond speech. KW In this conversation I consider the process of painting/drawing as if, in the creative/dream process, I am becoming-animal: humanimal. PF While I consider the role of language in this process, less as a critic, but rather as another writer-artist, one who feels the power of becoming animal in your work; and one who moves constantly between words and images. It’s in this territory that we can see how even the differences between writing and

Figure 3. The Secret Worth a Thousand, Kate Walters, 2012, watercolour on gesso prepared paper, 34x50 cm

126

Kate Walters and Penny Florence

painting can reflect on each other. It’s prismatic; they are facets of related experience. It’s a good way of thinking about the humanimal while also looking at the differences between humans and animals. We reflect on each other. Your work takes me into this territory, Kate. It is its own genre.

Figure 4. Matrixial Tree, Kate Walters, 2012, watercolour on gesso prepared paper, 37x26 cm

Epilogue

127

KW When I first read the title “Fallen Animals” my thinking was focused on how I feel myself to be falling into their bodies as an escape from trauma. Many years ago the mare I loved would stand over me as if I were her foal. She stands over me still as she lends me her sensory gifts. (I never once considered that it might mean “fall” in the biblical sense). PF When I first read the title “Fallen Animals,” I assumed it meant we humans were fallen animals. That understanding is both more anthropocentric and less so than taking it to mean animals are fallen creatures. The question of the word is fundamental. In the beginning was the Word . . . But do we really know what that means? If animals have spoken language, how is it like mine? Or yours? What is it to translate? Or is the idea of translation either redundant or no longer

Figure 5. Coming to Fruitfulness in the Belly of the Mare, Kate Walters, 2012, watercolour, 38x30 cm

128

Kate Walters and Penny Florence

appropriate? Perhaps we enter a different physicality in which the channels of understanding are already shared. KW In my life as an artist, animals and birds provide a kind of “punctum,” a point through which I crawl, like a wonderland Alice, to another world. Animals I’ve known well have taught me about qualities and values more usually associated with highly regarded human behaviour; I call on memories of these experiences as I draw. I enter the body of the animal: vision and strength are generated. The genesis of these images draws together threads from my experiential background with animals, indigenous forms of knowledge about the human relationship with the natural world, and the way the creative process has enabled me to access this level of knowing. PF I wonder whether this is something related to the dominance of the ego? Indigenous knowledges, such as you deploy, appear not to be egocentric, and you have said that you work to put the ego aside. It’s interesting because in much psychoanalytic thought, speech is very closely associated with the formation of the ego. Yet in Buddhism, and, to an extent also, Christianity, it’s the dissolution of the ego that enables the highest consciousness. The greatest experiences are often called “ineffable”—beyond words. This applies to art, spiritual experience and to the body, including sexuality. And painting, of course, worth a thousand! If we are to understand your art, Kate, we can’t put language into a place detached from the body, or from corporeal experience. KW When she visits in the dream my gaze is tuned with sensitivity; there is a matrixial encountering. My recent work explores the animal body as lactating wing; she becomes nourishing and elevating. PF Let’s follow up on the “matrixial encountering” in a moment; but first, this lactating wing. It’s a humanimal state that crosses from horses to humans to birds, which don’t lactate, of course. But recent research suggests that birds are even more closely related to dinosaurs than previously thought. Somehow the pre-lapsarian as taking us back that far in earthly time helps me to reach an intuition of connectedness that abstract notions, such as the eternal, do not. This levels the ground between the body and language. KW Entering the womb of the Mare one can be brought to psychic ripeness. Through the release of the demands of one’s ego and the knowing mind the vibrational level of the self may be elevated.

Epilogue

129

PF I think I know what you mean by “vibrational level,” but I need you to spell it out.

Figure 6. cm

The Vessel is One, Kate Walters, 2012, watercolour on paper 25x27

130

Kate Walters and Penny Florence

KW The phrase comes from classical shamanism and is to do with working on oneself to raise this level—mainly by prayer, focusing on one’s spirit guide, being fully awake and aware of one’s situations and surroundings. It also enables a deeper understanding and response to wild animals especially in wilderness, and what we can learn from engaging with them, even if we don’t know why. It’s also to do with where your thoughts go, where you direct your creative energies, what you give your attention to . . . and the nature of dreams which come are an indicator of one’s vibrational level. “Emerging from the flank of the mare I am a wisp, a breath, a murmur, a fragment of becoming, a little part of a cocoon, the rest of which must be in her body. It goes into her through her flank, her soft and tender side, near her womb. She rests yet is fully attentive.”

Figure 7. Sharing the Animal Eye, Kate Walters, 2012, watercolour on paper 36x41 cm

Epilogue

Figure 8.

131

Pierced by Love, Kate Walters, 2012, watercolour on panel 40x30 cm

132

Kate Walters and Penny Florence

I’m interested in how states of stillness can be embraced through surrendering to a place of animal knowing: the Edenic body is approached . . . the closing of the species gap may be negotiated. At the time of making Vessel is One I was revisiting Jung’s Psychology & Alchemy. 1 Jung describes the truly marvelous Vessel as needing to be round in imitation of the Cosmos—and also as a kind of matrix or uterus from which the miraculous stone is to be born. PF This connects with what you said about the “matrixial,” which means more than “trans-subjective,” because the matrixial is closely associated with the feminine as connected with the body in a different way from the masculine. 2 It’s always controversial to say anything like this, because it can be taken to be essentialist. I don’t see it that way. It doesn’t close men out to say this. It does mean that their journey to this place is different. And that the difference is significant; it matters, and it carries meanings.

Figure 9. Diviner, Kate Walters, 2012, watercolour on paper laid on linen, 32x26 cm

Epilogue

Figure 10. The Woman Who Extends Her Arms Chases Away Shadows, Kate Walters, 2012, watercolour on panel, 90x80 cm

133

134

Kate Walters and Penny Florence

Jung is both useful and limited in elaborating gender: useful in that he recognizes that both sexes, all sexes, contain the others, so that female dream images belong to us all; but limited in his patriarchal way of attributing a fixed gender to attributes such as consciousness, and perhaps in his use of archetypes, which seem to perpetuate opposites, or to reduce complexity to dualism. KW My dreams have always offered much to my creative process. My horse often carries me over obstacles or through forest when I am troubled in my daily waking life. She also comes to me to press her head against my chest, where her consciousness appears to apply pressure to my heart cavity. The Secret Worth A Thousand (Figure 2) reflects this. The woman’s torso is shared by the horse head. It was a blissful, peaceful embrace for us both. Through becoming the horse the woman is given access to hidden areas of knowing about nature, about stillness and equilibrium. PF You say her “consciousness” here. We know what a great can of debating worms this opens. Without getting sidetracked, we can say that research increasingly reveals among animals the kinds of self-awareness that are supposed to be a

Figure 11. Feeding from the Fire Below, Kate Walters, 2012, watercolour on canvas, 50x80 cm

Epilogue

135

primary indicator of consciousness. These include recognition in a mirror and talking birds, especially magpies and grey parrots. 3 Anecdotally, I think of elephants and their recognition of, and respect for, the bones of their ancestors. They perform a kind of ritual, not only when one of the family dies, but also when they pass by their relics. KW Pierced by Love and Diviner were both made about the time my beloved dog suddenly became ill and very soon after died. She came to me a month afterwards in a dream—the day after I had written a letter to her expressing how much I missed her—and from a place above me, handed me down her skin, which I understood in the dream to be for my protection and for my help in making my work. PF Diviner in this context seems to introduce an even more challenging thought about inter-species knowing, comparable perhaps with the way dogs and other animals divine earthquakes. Divination in your work is perhaps another way of “borrowing sensory gifts.” If so, it is actually a material or bodily process, not an ethereal one. KW Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales by Marie Louise Von Franz 4 is a book that I’ve found fascinating and reassuring. The title I feel is unfortunately misleading; there are few references to either darkness or “evil” in the book. Rather, it explores fairy tales, their profound lessons, and the manifestation of aspects of the Jungian “shadow” in the search for the authentic Self. One paragraph concerns how the image of the horse represents the authentic voice of the cells of the human body. “The horse is one of the purest symbolic forms of instinctual nature, that energy by which the conscious ego is supported without our noticing it. It is what makes the flow of life, directs our attention onto things, and influences our action through unconscious motivation.” PF I have to admit that her reference to symbolic forms at this point shifts me into a less clear place than the matrixial and the way you use it. The power of symbolism (which I don’t deny) seems to me to rest on a culture in which an abstracted form of language is the most powerful force; whereas the matrixial does not. It is before language and yet embraces it because it is embodied. For example, if we think about the mythological creatures of classical art, such as centaurs or chimera, as symbolic, we distance ourselves from that world. But in the stories of ancient Greece, they are beings. The centaur, as we all know, is half horse. If we understand a centaur as embodying our relationship with horses, as humanimal, it becomes part of how we understand ourselves here and now. Rather than symbolic, it is iconic in a sense comparable to the classical Icon: it has its own existence and truth. It is.

136

Kate Walters and Penny Florence

Equally interesting in this context is the association of darkness with evil. Some people praise your work for the boldness with which you portray the “dark side,” or some such. This astonishes me as much as I know it does you. KW On many occasions when people view my work their first words reflect their assumption that it is about a “dark side.” Nothing could be further from the truth! Have we departed so far from the world of animal or instinctual bodily knowing that we confuse visceral knowing and the colours of earth, deep sea and the insides of our bodies as those associated with “evil”? When I make work where animals are carrying us or providing clarity it is often misunderstood, which baffles me. The physical “ground” I use is white gesso with colours washed on, followed by the fiery cloak of earth colours, from which the images emerge. PF Perhaps this is part of why some seem drawn to the idea of witches in the way they are? It can appear to be transgressive, but I’m not convinced it leads anywhere.

Figure 12. Special Gaze, Kate Walters, 2012, watercolour on linen, 80x90 cm

Epilogue

137

I wonder if the following two related thoughts help clarify what these responses are about: first, that some people are in a kind of denial about the kinds of truths in your work, so they experience seeing them as a threat; and second, that female power has been demonized for such a long time that it has become identified with evil, and evil with the darkness. KW Evidence suggests that a long time ago the power of women to give life was not seen as a threat. 5 In these times the power and gifts of animals were fundamental for the survival of the people. PF There is a darkness that is plenitude, and there is another, more fearless way of approaching feminine power. KW I see the darkness as a space for things to grow. Gardeners know that seeds need to be buried in the soil in order to germinate. It is also the darkness of deep space, from where all matter comes; and the absence preceding illumination; the inside of our wombs, site of generation; the place of closed eyes where shamanic journeys begin and which is the work of ecstasy providing clear vision and pure seeing/knowing. It is not one thing then, not one-pointed, but various, many, broad as land and sea; eagle wing. I came to understand my own painting Animals are always in the Womb of Creation (Figure 13) after reading Rilke’s poems (the Eighth Duino Elegy

Figure 13. Always in the Womb of Creation, Kate Walters, 2011, watercolour, 44x29 cm

138

Kate Walters and Penny Florence

to be precise), where he considers how animals are always in the moment, neither looking back nor forwards (or so we assume). PF I like how you say you “came to understand” your own painting. Writing about paintings takes time—for makers as well as the rest of us. You have to wait to be able to absorb the language of each work. Even if you think you planned it exactly (which I know you don’t). Here is the opening of Rilke’s Eighth Elegy (my translation follows): Mit allen Augen sieht die Kreatur das Offene. Nur unsre Augen sind wie umgekehrt und ganz um sie gestellt als Fallen, rings um ihren freien Ausgang. Was draußen ist, wir wissens aus des Tiers Antlitz allein; [ . . . ]

Figure 14. Spirit Horse, Kate Walters, 2016, watercolour, 47x56 cm

Epilogue

139

(With eyes entire the creature sees wide open space. Our eyes alone seem trapped in reverse, focused on self, sealed without escape. Through animals’ faces only, we sense what leads beyond [ . . . ] )

The phrase in the original German “als Fallen” literally means “as traps.” “Fallen” (pronounced with a short “a,” as in “alley”) looks the same as the English “fallen,” as in “fallen animals,” and its many resonances do include “fall.” But it also connotes sink, descend, snag, case/event (as “in the case of”). Rilke locates how human vision is double-edged: we need to see without ego, or else we only see our reflection. KW Taking on the skin of the creature I can see with their eyes and as an artist I am able to borrow their gifts of heightened perception. Through my creative process, which is one of loss, refinement and a reassembling of bodies, I find the human form being given birth through the crown of the earth-deer and the heart space of the bird-deer, whilst a seed is offered by a Heavenly bone arcing down from above. PF The culmination of this wonderful re-creation of bodies into the humanimal, for me, is embodied in Spirit Horse (Figure 14). Space in the painting is not representational, but it’s not abstract, either. The dramatic band of sanguine that constitutes about a third of the picture, together with the indeterminate boundaries of the bodies, brings alive the idea of “becoming animal,” 6 which can be understood in many complementary ways. These include the expression of soul, which is invoked in the position of the horse’s head outside the darker area, and shadowed or echoed in the lines and shapes above and around it. The acceptance of how much more like than unlike animals we are leads to relocating humanity in a cosmos that is both more mobile and more connected. In Rilke’s terms, by passing through the horse’s head, its face in the sense of its being, we might stop looking at ourselves, and so stand a chance of glimpsing what exists, beyond. NOTES 1. C. G. Jung, “Psychology and Alchemy,” in C. G. Jung, Collected Works (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1944), Vol. 12. 2. Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger was the first to use the term “matrixial” in the context of sexual difference in her book The Matrixial Gase, reformulating many key concepts in psychoanalysis and feminist thought, especially, but not exclusively, with regards to painting. Ettinger is a painter and practicing clinical psychologist. 3. See, for example, Irene M Pepperberg, The Alex Studies: cognitive and communicative abilities of grey parrots (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 2002). 4. Marie Louise Von Franz, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales (Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala, 1974). 5. Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image (London: Arkana/Penguin, 1993).

140

Kate Walters and Penny Florence

6. Rather than pointing specifically to one of the many references to the concept of “becoming-animal” in Deleuze and Guattari’s writings, this refers more closely to Elizabeth Grosz, Chaos, Territory, Art (NY: Columbia, 2008). Her comment that “art after painting, can be seen as the action of leaving the frame, of moving beyond, and pressing against the frame, the frame exploding through the movement it can no longer contain” (p.18) is a good example of how she brings Deleuzian thought to bear on art that initiates “harmonious vibration” (p.19).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Baring, Anne and Jules Cashford. The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image (London: Arkana/Penguin, 1993). Grosz, Elizabeth. Chaos, Territory, Art (NY: Columbia, 2008). Jung, C. G. “Psychology and Alchemy.” In C. G. Jung, Collected Works (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1944), Vol. 12. Lichtenberg Ettinger, Bracha. The Matrixial Gaze (Feminists Arts and Histories Network, 1995). Pepperberg, Irene M. The Alex Studies: cognitive and communicative abilities of grey parrots (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 2002). Steeves, H. Peter. On Ethics, Ontology, and Animal Life (New York: SUNY, 1999). Von Franz, Marie Louise. Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales (Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala, 1974).

Index

Aaron’s staff, 50 Abraham, xxv, 5, 51 Achilles, xiii, xvii Ackerman, James, 48 Acts: 19:5, 5; 8:16, 5 Adab, 107, 111, 112, 118 Adam and Eve in Paradise, xviii, 23, 25, 26, 27, 29, 37 Adam: male descendants of, xii Adrados, Francisco Rodríguez, 76 Aesop, xviii, 89, 90, 96, 97, 99; Aesop’s Crow, 90, 96, 97, 98, 99; Aesop’s fable, 33, 102n31 Æthiopia, 48 Africa, x, 31, 32, 108. See also East Africa Age of Exploration, x Aldorfer, Erhard, 29 Alexander the Great, xiii. See also Bucephalus Alps, 31, 33, 35 Amand of Maastricht, 35, 44n122 Amos 3:8, 24 Anatolia, 36 Andrew the Apostle, 28 Andromeda, 48–49 Anemoi, xiii animal rights movement, 2 animals: dead, 92, 94; divine revelation of, 8; human characteristics, ix anthropocentrism, 89, 91, 92, 95, 99–100, 100n2

anthropomorphism, 4, 89–90, 91, 95, 99–100 ape, 26, 29, 108; symbolism, 28 Apollo, xiii, 49 apple, 23, 25, 29 Aquinas, Thomas, 10 Arabian Tales (1001 Nights), 107, 108, 112, 114–115; Indian-Persian influences on, 113 Arendt, Hanna, 11 Aristotle, x Audubon, John James, x Augustine, 36, 41n72 Augustine of Hippo, 29, 30, 31 Aventine of Troyes, 34 Babel, 5, 13–14; narrative, 4; Tower of, xxiii, xxiv, 4, 109 Babieca, xiii–xiv Bakhtin, Mikhail, 79 Balaam’s ass, 75 Baldwin, William, 89–92, 93, 94–95, 96–100; critique over the Roman Catholic Church, xix; talkative, xix Baloglou, George, 81 Banū Isra’īl. See Israelites Baring-Gould, Sabine, 33, 42n102 bat, 28 bear, xviii, 23, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31–33, 34, 36, 37, 41n74, 42n100, 42n102, 43n105, 43n113, 43n118, 44n120, 141

142

Index

44n122, 44n131, 44n133, 110; bear festival, 32; as defenders/protector, 32; demonic/demonization of, 30, 31; friendship with saints, 30, 32, 33, 34–35; symbolism, 30, 31 bee, 34 Benjamin, Walter, xvii, 3, 4, 10–11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19n44, 20n48, 20n56 Bergson, Henri, 79 Beware the Cat, xviii, 89–90, 91, 96, 98, 100 Bibliotheca, Book II, 49 Black Beauty, xi Black Sea, 54 Blague, Thomas, 97 Blaise, 36–37, 44n131, 44n133 Boehrer, Bruce Thomas, 89–90, 91, 95, 100n2 Bogomilism, 80 Bonheur, Rosa, x Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 9, 18n20 The Book of Secrets of the Virtues of the Herbs, Stones, and Certain Beasts, 90 Book of Tobit, 57–58 Borkfelt, Sune, 8 Bucephalus, xiii Buddhist scriptures, 115 butterfly, 25, 27–28; and resurrection, 27 Cain, 4, 5 Cairo, 112 Calvin, John, 10, 63–64 Canaan, 49 Cassiodorus, 62 Cassiopeia, 48 cat, 25, 27, 28, 72, 73, 82, 90–91, 92, 93–95, 97, 98; and evil, 27; and Witches, 40n40; deviant, xix; language of, 89, 91, 96, 99 Catalogue of British Authors, 90 Catholic, 91, 92, 94–95, 98; anti-Catholic satire, 90, 92, 95; cat-holic, xix; bawd, 92, 98; clergy, 98; ritual, 95; Roman Catholic Church, xix Cavafy, Constantine P., xvii Cepheus, 48 cetus, 48, 59 Chaucer, Geoffrey: Chaucerian tradition, 97

China, xvi, 112, 113; Islam in, xix, 108, 113, 114; language, 114; tradition, 119. See also Hui Christ, 24, 26, 38n5, 62 Classical Greek, xiii, 29 Classical Mediterranean basin, x Claudius Aelianus, 25 Clough, David, 7, 10, 11, 17n1, 18n14, 19n33 Cod. Vindobonensis theol. gr. 244, 76 Code of Chivalry, xiii Columban(us) of Luxeuil, 34–35, 43n113 Cook, Michael, 108, 110, 111 1 Corinthians 14:34, 9 Cornelia van Wulfschkercke, 28 Coster, Will, 5 Crete, 31 Crucifixion (painting), 25 crucifixion, 28 cruelty, 2, 4, 92, 98 Cyril of Jerusalem, 62 al-Damīrī, 110 Daniel, 32, 51, 56, 57 Daniel (specific scriptural references): 3, 57; 6, 57; 6:1–28, 32 demon, 24, 112, 113; bird-headed, 27; jinn, 112, 113. See also devil Descartes, 96 Desmond, Morris, 108 Deuteronomy 14:16–17, 26 devil, xviii, 24–25, 26–27, 30, 47, 55, 58, 63, 80. See also demon di Narni, Erasmo, xiv dietary law, Islamic, 111, 118; Shi’ite, 110; Sunni, 110 divine Word, 12, 15, 16, 19n45 dog, xii, 9, 24–25, 26–27, 28, 35, 39n10, 97, 135; worshipped, 24 Donatello’s Gattamelata, xiv donkey, xviii, 71, 72–73, 74, 75–76, 77–78, 79–80, 81, 117; Byzantine, xviii; death, 77, 82 East, xxi East Africa, 108 East Asia, 108 education system, Byzantine, 76 Edward VI, 90

Index

143

Edwards, Richard Alan, 60 Egypt, 55, 107, 108 El Cantar de Mio Cid, xiv Eleazar, 56 elephant, 29, 135 Elgius of Noyon, 36 Eliade, Mircea, 59 Elisha, 29, 33 English Reformation, 90 Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds, 81 Eusebius of Caesaria, 24, 32 Evans, Nicholas, xiv Eve: female descendants of, xii, 75 Evil, xii, xviii, 23, 27, 28–29, 55, 58, 64, 72, 74, 80, 93, 112, 135, 136, 137 Exodus: 3:6, xxiii; 7, xxiii; 7:9, 50; 7:21, 61; 8:1–13, 27; 20:4–5, xxiii; 20:5, xxiv; 20:7, xxiii Ezekiel 1:26–28, xxiv

1:24–25, 26; 1:26, xxiii, 29, 48; 1:26–27, xxiii; 1:28, 1; 1–2:4a, xxiii; 2:2, xxiii; 2:4b–25, xxiii; 2:7, xxiii; 2:23, 5, 18n7; 3, xxi, xxii, xxiv, 24; 3:8, xxiv; 3:14, 52–53; 3:17, 53; 3:20, 5; 3:22, xxiii, xxiv; 4:1, 5; 4:2–8, 4; 4:23–24, 4; 6:2, 4; 6:5–6, 4; 6–9, xxiii; 8:21, xxiii; 9:8–17, xxiii; 10:8–10, 5; 10:8–14, 14; 11:2–3, 14; 11:4, 4; 11:1–9, xxiii, xxiv; 12, xxv; 17:5, 5; 21:12, 18n7; 35:10, 5; 36:10, 18n7 Genesis Rabbah, 53; 10:3, 52; 5:5, 50, 51, 56 Gessner, Conrad, 25 giraffe, 7 gnosticism, xxii Great Deep, 52, 53 Gryffith, Wylliam, 94 guinea pig, 8

fallen humans, ix, xxv, 4, 7, 15, 37, 109, 118 females: as silent, 74; as cunning, 74 femininity, 74, 80 fish, ix, xviii, 59, 64; saviour, 47, 61–62; resurrection, 53, 61; God’s servant, 63; as a symbol of death, xviii, 49, 58–59, 60, 61, 62; as symbol of tomb, 61, 62; symbol of hell, 62, 63; symbol of She’ol, 48, 51, 61 the flood, 4 Florentius, 33, 35 Flusser, David, 48–49 fox, xviii, 25, 28, 71, 73, 74–76, 78, 80–81; acting as judge, 34; cunning, 74, 75, 80, 81; and evil, 27; heart of, 92–93; masquerading as monk, 72 France, 31 Fraser, James Earle, x frog, 27 Fudge, Erica, 99, 102n26, 102n30 Furies, xiii

Hades, xxii ḥadīth, 108, 110 Han, 113, 114, 116, 118 hare, 93 Ḥayāt al-Ḥayawān, 110 Hebrew Scriptures, 11 hedgehog, 25, 26, 28, 93, 94 hell, 27, 30, 44n131, 58, 59, 62, 63, 64 Hera, xiii Heracles, xxii, 48, 49 Herder, 10 Hesiod, xxii Hesione, 49 Hindu tradition, 107; mythology 113 Hippiatrica, xiii Hippoi Athanatoi, xiii hippopotamus, 8 Historia Animalia, x Historia animalium, 25, 91 The History of Four-footed Beasts, 24, 91 Hodges, Gary, xi Homer, x, xiii, xvii, xxii horse, xi, xiii–xv, 9, 36, 92, 134, 135, 139 Hosea: 1:2–10, 13; 2:18, 37; 11:10; 13:7, 8, 24; 11:10; 13:7, 8, 24 Hubris, xxi Hui, xix, 107, 108, 113–114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119. See also China Humanimal, xix, 125, 126, 128, 135, 139

Garden of Eden, ix, xvii, xxi, xxii, xxiv, xxv, 23, 37 Gattamelata, xiv Genesis, xvii, 1, 4, 6, 12 Genesis (specific scriptural references): 1, xxiii, 19n44; 1:20–23, 26; 1:24, xxiii;

144 Humbert of Marolles, 35 idol, 14 al-Idrīsī, 108 ‘ifrīt, 113 Iliad, x, xiii, xvii Ireland, 3, 92, 96 Isaiah: 14:23, 26; 27:1, 50; 34:11, 26; 34:11, 15, 26 Israel, xxiv, 5, 13, 51, 52, 107 Jacob, 10, 55 Jaffa, 49 al-Jāḥiẓ, 110, 111, 112 Jan Brueghel the Elder, 25 Jeremiah 50:44, 24 Jeremiah ben Eleazar, 51 Jerusalem Talmud, 57 Jesus, xxii, 5, 25, 26, 59, 60 jinn. See demon Job: 40:25–32, 50; 41:1–8, 50; 42:12–15, 13 John 1:42, 5 Jonah, xviii, 47, 49, 50–51, 52, 53–54, 56, 57, 58, 59–60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 77 Jonah (specific scriptural references): 1, 23; 1:3, 49; 1:17, 48, 50, 63; 2, 48, 60; 2:1, 48, 55, 61; 2:1–2, 48, 55, 56, 65n14; 2:2, 52; 2:3, 47, 52, 61; 2:5, 52; 2:6, 52; 2:10, 57, 64; 2:11, 48, 56, 59; 14:6, 8–9, 23, 24 Joseph and Aseneth, 54, 55 Josephus, 54 Journey to the West, 114–115, 117, 118 Judah, 30, 55 Judah, tribe of, 24 Julius Solinus, 31 kangaroo, 7 Katz, Dvora, 34 Keto, 49 King David, xxii King Laomedon, 49 1 Kings 18, xxiii 2 Kings 2:23–25, 29 2 Kings 2:24, 33 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara, 34 Kitāb al-Ḥayawān, 110 Kitāb al-Tarbī’, 111

Index kite, 93 Kulaynī, 110 Lamech, 4 Landseer, Edwin Henry, x Latin West, 81 law schools, Sunni, 110 law, dietary, 110 Laws, xxii Lazarus, 24 Le Chanson de Roland, xiv Lent, 79 Leviathan, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 63 Leviticus 11:17–18, 26 Li, Shuijiang, 115 lion, 24, 25, 26, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 43n105, 55 Lion of Judah, 24 lizard, 110 London, xi Luckert, Karl, 115, 116 Luke: 11:29–32, 60; 11:30, 60; 13:32, 27; 16:21, 24 Luther, Martin, 19n44, 35, 51, 63, 64 LXX. See Septuagint Lyons, 32 2 Maccabees, 56 3 Maccabees, 56 Maimonides, 24 Mamluk, 112 Manasseh, 73, 77 Mani, 79 al-Maqrīzī, 108 Marduk, 58 marine monster. See sea monster Mark, evangelist, 23 Mark 1:13, 25 Martin of Tours, 35 martyrdom, 32, 77, 80 Mary Magdalene, 77 maskh. See metamorphosis; transformation Maslen, Robert, 98 Masoretic Text, 48, 49, 50, 55 Matham, Jacob, 25 Matthew: 7:15, 72, 74; 12, 60; 12:39–41, 59, 60; 12:40, 59, 60, 62; 24:27, 37–39, 67n59 Maximin, 35

Index Medina, Jews of, 109 Medusa, xiii Messiah, xxii Metamorphoses, x metamorphosis, ix, xvii, 94, 107, 109, 111, 112, 113, 118 Middle East, 108; Islam in, 119 Midrash, 50, 119n5 Midrash Jonah, 59, 61, 67n67 Ming dynasty, 114 Mirror for Magistrates, 90 Moennig, Ulrich, 72 monkey, 107, 109, 110, 113, 118; Monkey King, 115, 118; in Arabian Tales, 112–113; in China, 113, 114, 115, 116, 118; in Islam, 110; stone monkey, 115–116; as trickster, 25, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118. See also ape; qird Monroe, Lanford, xi monstrification, 49, 54, 55, 58, 62, 65n1 Morocco, 108 Morpurgo, Michael, xv Moses, xxiii, 19n44, 57 MT. See Masoretic Text Mu’tazili theology, 112 Much Ado About Nothing, 93 Muffet, Thomas, 27, 28 Muhammad, 110 naming, xvii, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9–13, 14, 16–17, 26; ceremony, xvi, 5; divinely given name, 13, 14; renaming, 5, 15, 17, 77 Naturalis Historia, x Nebuchadnezzar, 57 netherworld, 47, 59, 61, 62 Nicholas, Nick, 81 nightingale, 97 Nile, 61 Nimrod, 5 Nineveh, 48, 54, 57, 60, 73 Nixon, Richard M., xvi Noah, xxiii, 4 Numbers 11, 109 O’Connell, Brendan, 97 Old Testament, 10 On Horsemanship, xiii On Jonah, 53, 54

145

Ovid, 97 owl, 25, 26, 27, 28, 40n31, 40n35; nightowl, devilish, 26 Palaiologan period, 77, 82 paradise, ix, xvii, xviii, 23, 25, 26, 27, 29, 37. See also Garden of Eden Parliament of Fowls, 97 Pastoureau, Michel, 29, 31 Patroklos, xiii, xvii Paul, bishop of Monemvasia, 78 Pegasos, xiii Pellat, Charles, 110, 111 people of the Book, 109 Perseus, 48, 49 Perso-Arabic, translations from, 76 pets, household, 2, 3, 9 Pharaoh, 57 Philo, xxii, 53 Phorcydes, 49 Physiologus Latina, x, 26 pig, 8, 110 pilgrimage, 35 Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer, 50, 51, 67n67 pisces. See fish Plato, xxii, 11 Pliny the Elder, x, 29, 31, 49, 91 Plutarch, 91 Poland, 34 pope, 5, 36, 38n9 Pope Benedict XVI, 36 Pope Gregory the Great, 32 Pope John Paul II, 10 Poseidon, 48, 49 post-biblical, cultures, 24 primeval, xvii, 4, 5, 6, 58 prophet, false, 56 Proverbs 8:22–31, xxiii Psalms: 2, 19n44; 8:8, 24; 32:16, 82; 33:9, 19n44; 50:9, 11, 7; 73, 36; 73:13–14, 50; 74:13–14, 50; 78:45, 27; 97:11, 52; 101:7, 26; 104:26, 50; 105:30, 27; 147:4, 7 Ptolemy IV Philopator, 56 Pythagoras, 91 qird/qirada, 108, 109 Queen Brunehault, 34 Qur’ān, xix, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 118

146

Index

Qur’ān (specific scriptural references): 2:61–65, 109; 5:56, 109; 5:65–66, 109; 7:163–166, 109; 7:166, 109 Rabbi Jeremiah ben Eleazar, 51, 56 Raber, Karen, 91 Ramayana, 113 Ratzinger, Joseph, 36 Revelation: 2:17, 16; 5:5, 24; 16:13–14, 27, 40n47 river horse. See hippopotamus Rome, x, 35, 77 Romedius (Remedius) of Trent, 36, 44n127 Rosen, Norma, 47 Rubens, Peter Paul, 25, 27 Ruth 3:7b, 57 Sabbath, xix, 109, 118; breaking of, 109 saints, Christian, 23, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 42n82, 42n83 1 Samuel: 4, xxiv; 8, xxiii; 8:7, xxiv; 9:2, xxiv; 10:23, xxiv; 17:34, 23, 24; 17:34–36, 30; 17:34–36a, 33; 17:36–37, 24; 23:20, 24; 36–37, 23 Sarah, 5 Satan, xxv, 24, 25, 38n3, 63, 112 satire, 48, 71, 81, 90, 92, 95 Schmemann, Alexander, 12 A Schole of Wise Conceytes, 97 sea monster, 47, 48, 49, 50, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 62 Seal of the Covenant of Abraham, 51 Septuagint, 48, 49, 50, 54, 55, 56, 59, 65n6 serpent, ix, xii, 24, 26, 27, 28, 34, 50. See also snake Shakespeare, 40n37, 90, 93 Shannon, Laurie, 91, 96 shark, 48 shayṭān. See Satan sheep, 9, 33, 38n3, 38n9, 71, 95, 97 She’ol, belly of, 47, 48, 51, 52, 61. See also netherworld Shi’ite scholars, 110 Simpson, William, 58 sin, xviii, xxi, 1, 4, 24, 26, 28, 38n3, 71, 72, 73, 75, 82, 107 Sir Philip Sidney, 90 Sisyphus, xxii

slug, 25, 28, 39n25 snails, shell-less, 25, 27, 28, 39n25 snake, xii, xvii, xxi, xxiv, xxv, 52, 63. See also serpent Somalia, 108 St. Agapius, 31 St. Amalberga of Munsterbilzen, 32–33 St. Amand. See Amand of Maastricht St. Anthony of Padua, 26 St. Aventine of Larbouste, 33, 34 St. Blandina, 32 St. Cerbonius, 32 St. Colomba of Sens, 32 St. Donatilla, 32 St. Euphemia of Chalcedn, 32, 42n102 St. Gall, 34, 43n113 St. Magnoald, 35 St. Mammaea, 32 St. Marcellus, 32 St. Marinus, 35 St. Marsus, 35 St. Maxima, 32 St. Richardis, 35, 43n118 St. Secunda, 32 St. Sergius of Radonezh, 34 St. Severinus of Noricum, 33 St. Vedast, 31 St. William of Monte Virgine, 31 Stephen, martyr, 28, 41n63 Stubbs, George, x substance, rational, 29 Swabia, 35 Synaxarion of the Honourable Donkey, xviii, 72, 77–78, 81, 82; elements of humour in, 79–80 tafsīr, 109 Tai Zong, 115 Talmud, 31; Berakhot, 57; Berachot 10:1, 57; Jerusalem Talmud, 57, 109 Tannin, 50 Tartarus, xxii tears, xiii, xvii, 73, 74, 83n10, 117; fake, 74; salvation through, 73, 83n13 temptation, xii, xxv, 5, 25 Thessalonica, 77, 84n25 Tiamat, 58 tiger, 36, 117

Index toad, 25, 28, 39n25, 40n46; and evil, 27; and sorcery, 27; and vices, 27 Tobias, 24, 57 Tobit 6:2; 11:4, 24 topos, 73, 74, 107 Topsell, Edward, 24, 27, 29, 31 tradition, Chinese, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 120n37 transformation, ix, xviii, 62, 64, 93, 94, 99, 100, 109, 110, 111, 113, 118; topos, 107 A Treatise of Morall Phylosophie Contaynyng the Sayinges of the Wyse, 90 Troy, 49 Tura, Cosimo, 25 turtle, 116

vixen, 38n6, 71 Vulgate, 24, 26, 36, 59

unfallen, xvii, 1

Yafo. See Jaffa Yalkut Shimoni, 58, 61 Yemen, 108 Yuan dynasty, 114

Vallespir, 32 van Haarlem, Cornelis, xviii, 23–27, 28–29 van Meckenem, Israhel, 25 Vandals, 31 Vanier, Jean, 9 vernacular, xviii; Greek, 76, 81 Verne, Jules, 52 violence, xii, 42n101, 79, 97

147

West, xiv, xxi, xxii, 114–115; culture, xii, xiv whale, 47, 48, 54, 56, 57, 60, 62, 64; cunning, 63 Wisdom 19:10, 27 witches, 27, 93, 136 wolf, xviii, 33, 55, 71, 72–73, 74–81; as monk, 72 women turn into cats, 96; cunning, 73 Xanthos, xiii Xenophon, xiii Xi’an, 118 Xuanzang, 114–115

Zeus, xxii Zephaniah 2:14, 26 Ziolkowski, Jan, xviii, 47 Zohar, 58, 59, 60, 61 zoophobia, 29

About the Contributors

Diane Apostolos-Cappadona is Haub Director and Emerita Professor of Religious Art and Cultural History in the Catholic Studies Program at Georgetown University. The recipient of the Georgetown University Alumni Association Faculty Award for 2008, she received both the Annual Award for Excellence in the Arts from The Newington-Cropsey Foundation and the Excellence in Teaching Faculty Award from Georgetown University in 2000. During 1996-97, she was a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University. Dr. Apostolos-Cappadona is the author of numerous articles for scholarly journals and collected volumes, as well as books, such as the Encyclopedia of Women in Religious Art (1996). She has edited and co-edited multiple volumes, including the Isamu Noguchi: Essays and Conversations (1994). She has contributed to various dictionaries and encyclopaedias, and recently served as the Consulting Editor for Art for the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Arts (2015). Dr. Apostolos-Cappadona’s current works include Visualizing Biblical Women: Favored, Fallen or Otherwise (2019), Christian Art: A Companion Guide (2018), Swedenborg and Five Artists (2018), and the translation of The Religions (2017). Brian Brock is a Reader in Moral and Practical Theology at the University of Aberdeen. He has written a wide range of scholarly essays on themes related to Christian ethics and is a Managing Editor of the Journal of Religion and Disability. He has also written monographs on the use of the Bible in Christian ethics as well as the ethics of technological development. He is also editor (with Prof. John Swinton) of Theology, Disability and the New Genetics: Why Science needs the Church (2007) and Disability in the Christian Tradition: A Reader (2012). 149

150

About the Contributors

Constantin Canavas is Professor at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences in the fields of control technology and technology assessment, as well as history and philosophy of technology. He holds a Diploma of chemical engineering (National Technical University of Athens, 1979 ) and a Dr.Ing. on system dynamics and control (University of Stuttgart, 1988). He has followed studies on philosophy and comparative literature at the Universities of Stuttgart, Tübingen and Düsseldorf, as well as on Islamic studies and history of science and technology at the University of Hamburg (Germany). His research focuses on history of control, alchemy and traditional water technology; (cultural) history of medieval (Byzantine, Arab) and classical Chinese technology; iconography of manuscripts and books on scientific and technological subjects. Penny Florence is Professor Emerita at The Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, UK. Previous jobs include Chair of Humanities and Design Sciences, Art Center, Pasadena, USA; Head of Research Programmes at The Slade; Professor of Contemporary Arts & Director of Research at Falmouth University, UK. Publications include books and articles on issues related to art, feminism and cultural theory and poetry, including digital. She has also published digital and traditional poetry and exhibited art works and films. Zohar Hadromi-Allouche is a lecturer in Religious Studies and Islam at the University of Aberdeen. Her research applies a literary and comparative approach to the Islamic religious sources, and seeks to track down literary paradigms and inter-cultural transitions within the texts. Her recent research focuses on the image of Eve in medieval Islam. In 2014–2015 she initiated three workshops around the theme of Fall from an interdisciplinary perspective. One outcome of this project was a book, which she co-edited, Fall Narrative: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (2016). Robert A. Segal is Sixth Century Chair in Religious Studies at the University of Aberdeen. Among the books that he has written or edited are The Poimandres as Myth, Joseph Campbell, The Gnostic Jung, Jung on Mythology, The Myth and Ritual Theory, Theorizing about Myth, The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion, and 30-Second Mythology. He received his PhD from Princeton University and taught in the US for many years before relocating to the UK in 1994. Rachel Stenner lectures in Renaissance Literature in the School of English at the University of Sheffield. She completed her Phd at the University of Bristol and prior to that gained degrees in English Literature and Postcolonial

About the Contributors

151

Studies at the University of Kent. Her research focuses on mid-Tudor literature, early print cultures, and on the intersections between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. She is completing her first monograph, The Typographic Imaginary in Early Modern English Literature, and has recently edited a collection of essays on the relations between the poets Geoffrey Chaucer and Edmund Spenser. Kirsty Stewart has recently obtained her DPhil in History from the University of Oxford under the supervision of Professor Marc Lauxtermann. Her thesis discussed the representation of nature in later Byzantine vernacular literature, with particular attention to depictions of gender and human-animal textual associations and interactions. Her current research focuses on ecocriticism and theological naturalism. Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer is Reader in Hebrew Bible at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. She is the author of several full-length monographs on Isaiah and Zechariah, as well as of numerous articles on various aspects of the prophetic literature, Hebrew language, and reception history. At the moment, she is working on a commentary on the book of Jonah and she is the editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Isaiah. Kate Walters studied Fine Art in London, Brighton and Falmouth. Based in Cornwall, she explores wild places in Scotland and Italy extensively, finding inspiration for her work. Her work has been exhibited in the Jerwood Drawing exhibitions, Royal Academy, Discerning Eye and Newlyn Art Gallery. katewaltersartist (Instagram) www.katewalters.co.uk www.katewalters.co.uk/blog @katehorse (Twitter) Eric Ziolkowski, H. P. Manson Professor of Bible, and Head of the Department of Religious Studies, at Lafayette College, is author of numerous books, essays, and articles in religion and literature. His two most recent edited volumes are forthcoming in 2017: Kierkegaard, Literature, and the Arts and The Bible in Folklore Worldwide, vol. 1: A Handbook of Biblical Reception in Jewish, European Christian, and Islamic Folklores. He has lectured widely in North America, Great Britain, and Western Europe, as well as Poland, Australia, and China (Beijing, Suzhou, Hong Kong). Having served for eight years (2004‒2012) as North American Senior Editor of Literature and Theology: An International Journal of Religion, Theory and Culture (Oxford), he has also been main editor (since 2004) of the prospective thirty-volume Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (Berlin; fourteen volumes published to date), and co-edits two book series: Studies in

152

About the Contributors

Religion and the Arts (Leiden), and Studies of the Bible and Its Reception (Berlin).