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- [00:01]
Matt Lewis
Hello, I'm Matt Lewis.
- [00:03]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
And I'm Dr. Eleanor Jaenega and we're.
- [00:05]
Matt Lewis
Just popping up here to tell you some insider info.
- [00:08]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
If you would like to listen to.
- [00:09]
Dr. Eleanor Jennica
Gone Medieval ad free and get early.
- [00:12]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit.
- [00:14]
Matt Lewis
With the History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original.
- [00:20]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Documentaries, such as my new series on everyone's favorite conquerors, the Normans, or my.
- [00:25]
Matt Lewis
Recent exploration of the castles that made Britain.
- [00:29]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
There's a new release to enjoy every week.
- [00:32]
Matt Lewis
Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe or find the link in the show Notes for this episode, you can make a difference in someone's life, including your own, with a job in home care. These jobs offer flexible schedules, healthcare, retirement options and free training. They also provide paid time off and opportunities for overtime. Visit oregonhomecarejobs.com to learn more and apply. That's oregonhomecarejobs.com.
- [01:24]
Dr. Eleanor Jennica
Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Jennica and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes to the Crusades, we delve into the rebellions, plots and murders that tell us who we really were and how we got here. I want you to picture a torchlit world where monks illustrate tales of monstrous serpents coiled in the darkness beneath mountains and castles. Knights polish their swords, hearts pounding as as rumors swirl of beasts terrorizing the land with scales like iron, claws like daggers, and breath that scorches the earth. In the flickering firelight, the dragon's silhouette dances, sometimes as a hulking horned lizard with bat like wings, sometimes as a sinuous legless worm or even a crowned serpent, the dreaded basilisk, whose gaze alone could kill. Dragons in the medieval period were more than just monsters.
- [03:00]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
They were symbols for Christians.
- [03:02]
Dr. Eleanor Jennica
They embodied Satan himself, the adversary of saints and angels.
- [03:08]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
We've recently talked about St. George here.
- [03:10]
Dr. Eleanor Jennica
On Gone Medieval and do go back.
- [03:12]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
And check that episode out.
- [03:14]
Dr. Eleanor Jennica
Lance poised, George faced the dragon that held a kingdom in terror. But then There was also St. Margaret, swallowed whole by a dragon's form, only to burst free by the power of her faith. But not all dragons were the same. Some, like the greedy Fafnir of Norse legend, hoarded gold in its underground lairs. Its blood was said to hold strange magical powers. Others, like the winged wyverns of heraldry, adorned the banners of kings and conquerors. They were Symbols of might, chaos, and the eternal struggle between good and evil. Dragons slithered across coats of arms.
- [03:53]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
The Red Dragon of Wales.
- [03:55]
Dr. Eleanor Jennica
The golden beasts of Uther Pendragon's royal crests. Each was a sign of power, a warning, a promise of glory or doom. In this episode of Gone Medieval, we're going to discover how these mythical monsters shaped their medieval imagination. I'm joined by Dr. Sam Riches, a cultural historian specializing in the late medieval period with a particular focus on the cultural and historical context of dragons, particularly their representation in art and mythology.
- [04:31]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
So draw your sword, steady your shield.
- [04:34]
Dr. Eleanor Jennica
And step into the darkness with us. Because in the world of the medieval dragon, every shadow hides a story, and every legend begins with a fiery roar.
- [04:55]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Sam, welcome to God Medieval.
- [04:57]
Dr. Sam Riches
Absolute delight to join you today.
- [04:59]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Elena, I am over the moon that you are here because we are going to talk about, I think, one of almost everybody's favorite things to talk about when it comes to the Middle Ages, which is something that isn't real controversial straight away. Oh, right, yeah. Come on. I'm out of the gate with it. I'm not afraid to say the big things, but I think that this is true. There's something about our imagination where when we conjure up an idea about the medieval past. Who's there? A dragon. Every time, every time, every time. And the people long for a dragon in their hearts, Sam. And I think that medieval people are 100% on board with this. They like to think about dragons. They want to draw a dragon. They want to think about a dragon. But it is not as though medieval people came up with the concept of the dragon, is it? I mean, how far back do we have to go in order to come up with our scaly winged friends?
- [05:56]
Dr. Sam Riches
Well, I think dragons have always existed in human consciousness, so certainly as far back as the earliest written creation stories, the dragon is right there. I think my favorite is Tiamat, who appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh. So we're going back, who knows, 2,000 years before the Common Era, so about 4,000 years in total. And the reason I like Tiamat so much is because she's a female dragon. I'm sure we'll get to talk more about female dragons, but, yeah, right at the beginning. And there's a similar story of the hero overcoming the monster in the earliest Hindu texts as well, so probably around the same kind of timing, as far as we can tell. I'm by no means an expert on those particular forms of literature relating to dragons, but I think it's worth noting that most of Our recorded human cultures have a version of the hero overcoming the monster in order to rescue a woman. This legend of St. George, the thing that's my real specialism is simply one version among many of that kind of paradigm.
- [07:22]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I too have a real soft spot for Tiamat. I had a cat when I was a child whose name was Tiamat. But, you know, it's a, you know, inside all of us there's a longing for a dragon of some description. I think when we say dragon too, I think that can be sort of a confusing one because, you know, like I have a little figurine of a kind of Babylonian dragon and they don't look a thing like the dragons that we see in medieval art at all. You know, he's kind of like a little guy with four legs and a little born on his nose. And I think there are these kind of serpent monsters that exist a lot, you know, in Asia and places like that. Or, you know, we can think of dragons in the Eastern Asian conception which are a lot more friendly and flying.
- [08:07]
Dr. Sam Riches
Absolutely. I think one of the essential issues with discussions of dragon is define your terms because dragon as a word, as a name, as a noun, gets applied to a huge range of really quite different sorts of creatures. I think that's the best word I can use. We could call them monsters, but that's a very kind of Western European concept because dragons in the east are quite positive. They can be scary, but they are associated often with good fortune, with bringing the rain. They are a sign of good luck. Is that the same creature as the scary, fire breathing, pestilence breathing, literal monsters that we are familiar with in certainly Western medieval tradition? I'm really not sure they're the same thing at all. But the word has become applied to both of these. And also the point you make about your little dragon, they are massively varied in scale, in whether or not they have scales. They're kind of reptilian usually, but not always. Sometimes they have wings, sometimes they don't. They can have two legs or four legs or no legs. One head, two heads, many heads, many. The colours vary. I'm particularly fond of pink dragons. This seems to be a medieval English idea. So it doesn't always mean it's an English dragon if it's pink. But I think it's a pretty good starting point. Elsewhere, of course, red dragons, white dragons, green dragons, multicolored rainbow dragons, all kinds of things are possible. So there is no consistency in what it means to see a creature and decide that it's a dragon. It's as varied as you wish it to be.
- [10:16]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
So is this sort of one of those I'll know it when I see it kind of deals, is that what we're saying with the dragon?
- [10:22]
Dr. Sam Riches
Maybe. I think though it's about a decision having been made by someone who you trust. So it's less about me knowing that it's a dragon and it's more about the wise woman from the village or the text that someone has read out to me has identified this thing as a dragon. And my response to it will be based on the associations that come with it. Certainly there's very, very strong idea of them as objects of fear and loathing that have to be done away with. And that is something that makes them incredibly powerful when that's turned around. So that they are a way of demonstrating a truth. So this is where the idea of monster is so important because it's the same routers demonstrate.
- [11:18]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
No, see this is a really interesting point to me because there is a kind of equivalence to an extent in where sometimes giant serpents and dragons enter the Lexcon. So you know, from an ancient or an Asian perspective, you know, I'm thinking here of the hydra that Zeus has to kill. And I suppose I wouldn't necessarily that a dragon. But I also can't explain to you why.
- [11:43]
Dr. Sam Riches
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. This again is one of the kind of complexities around dragons is where do they live. I have one dragon story, a saint encountering a dragon where the dragon is drowned in the sea. This happens in France. Other dragons absolutely would not drown in the sea because that's where they live. They're water dwelling. And Hydra, the name that you mentioned, there is literally a creature of the water that is the origin of its name. So yeah, again, how do you know it's a dragon? It's ultimately because someone that you trust as an authority has told you that that's what it is often because I.
- [12:26]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Am who I am and I study what I study when I'm thinking about dragons. For me, the number one dragon is the dragon in the book of Revelation. Right. So you know, you get this giant fire breathing dragon, he's got seven heads and this doesn't look dissimilar to an extent from the hydra, although the hydra is poisonous, not fire breathing. But we have like many, many head. Lots of talk about a lashing tail, this sort of a thing. So I mean is this something when we, we find these biblical dragons, would we conflate that with the Greek motifs or eastern motifs or is that just kind of Me filling in the gaps.
- [13:09]
Dr. Sam Riches
There's an element of continuity and transference that's gone on. So in doing some reading and preparation for our chat today, one of the things that I came across that I was really interested in is the idea of a dragon that is kind of the origin of Leviathan, who's mentioned in the Old Testament and then arguably turns up as an influence on the dragon in Revelation that you mentioned. Now, the dragon that influences Leviathan seems to be from Canaanite traditions. So this is about 1400 years before the common era. They have a lovely story of the hero overcoming the monster. It's actually a slippery serpent. So. Absolutely. Your point about this overlap between snakes and dragons comes to the fore there. And it's called Lotan. And this seems to move into the concept of Leviathan. Again, we can see in Egyptian mythology, we've got Ra or possibly Set, overcoming Apep, the serpent. So it's very, very strong set of consistencies there. And I think, yes, this does still come to play in Revelation. Now, Revelation is a really interesting set of writings and I would class, class. It really is mysticism. I'm sure you're aware that St. John the Evangelist, so that acclaimed writer of the fourth gospel, is claimed identified as the writer of the Book of Revelation as well. So for argument's sake, we'll just agree that that's who it is at the moment. And John writes, I saw. I saw this. I saw that. It's this very consistent formulation that's used and in some of our medieval illustrated what we call the Apocalypse. This, this manuscript, which is very popular in England, it usually shows, like a room where the thing is happening. So whether it's in the case, we're interested in this dragon. And then there's a window, and then John is outside the window and he's looking in through and witnessing what's going on. My understanding is this is very much about seeing things in your mind's eye. So this is a vision. This is not about something that is meant to be literally happening. And of course, it's a vision of, of the end of times. I think that it's entirely possible that the way that the beast is talked about in the book of Revelation is strongly influenced by other forms of mythology, which John, as the author, is aware of. And so he's calling these things to mind. However, there is a step beyond it, though, because our beast, with its seven heads and its ten horns, is specifically identified as a form of the devil. And that is different. So it's almost like A layering on of an additional set of meanings. And I think that characterization in Revelation becomes extremely influential. You've moved away from a fairly neat good against evil to rescue girl kind of paradigm into something that's much more layered and capable of being manipulated to serve different kinds of needs.
- [16:53]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
That makes sense. I mean, when we think about, for example, the story of Ra and Apep, you know, Apep is bad. This is a sinful monster. You know, this is a genuine threat to humanity and the gods, but it's not the devil. You know, there's no concept. Apep isn't the thing that is evil. It's just sort of a manifestation which happens to share a collective set of personality traits almost, I suppose. Whereas by the time we're talking about Revelation, there is this real close association with the devil. And an interesting one as well, because I think that this also then has knock on effects for biblical interpretations, because then we see this sort of casting back into, for example, the book of Genesis and suddenly the serpent there becomes the devil. Whereas for a while it's just kind.
- [17:49]
Dr. Sam Riches
Of a serpent, as I mentioned at the beginning, female dragons, that's an area that I'm really interested in. And I think that the serpent in the garden is one of the really big influences because for medieval, particularly late medieval manuscript illustrators. So our visual artists, they often would demonstrate that the serpent was able to speak, because of course, it is imbued with speech, according to what we read in Genesis. So it has a human head, that's how you demonstrate it can speak visually. And then a step beyond that is to make it into a woman. So you get these amazing images where the image of the serpent and Eve are almost mirror, mirror of one another. The difference is, of course, the serpent finishes with the tail a bit like a mermaid, really wrapped around a tree. And it's all about the idea that Eve is more culpable than Adam. She got him to sin. And therefore it makes sense that it is a woman who is the tempter as well. So the idea that the serpent, as they say in the bestiary, that what is the greatest of all serpents, it's the dragon. So you then give wings to the tempter in the garden as well. It's a deeply misogynistic reading. And it isn't the only way of showing what happens in the Garden of Eden, but it is something that comes up pretty consistently. And I think that the idea of making the attempt of female taps into that very, very profound element of Eve and the Virgin Mary. Is the second Eve who reverses everything and the virgin and the whole and all those sorts of misogynistic ideas. But one additional layer I want to put in is this idea. It's very difficult to demonstrate if medieval artists would have known about it. But Lilith. Are you familiar with Lilith?
- [20:05]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yes. The original starter wife?
- [20:07]
Dr. Sam Riches
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So Lilith is created at the same time as Adam. This is the idea that there are two versions in Genesis of the. The creation of people. And the first time we have man and woman being created at the same time. And the second time we have woman being created from Adam's rib. And that, of course, is Eve. So the explanation is that there was a first wife and she was equal with Adam and she was uppity, so she had to be cast out of the garden. And Lilith is conflated with a Babylonian storm demon who runs around the place stealing babies and generally being not very nice to know. I think we can potentially see this deeply negative, very, very scary kind of corruption of femininity all being bound up in that figure of the tempter as a snake, as a dragon, potentially, but certainly as profoundly evil.
- [21:17]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
We see dragons in lots of classical literature, but then we kind of get to the medieval period and the average person has actually a pretty good idea about, like, who Hercules is. Right. They could probably. They could probably tell you about the Hydra and this sort of thing, but ciamat probably less so, but there's still this kind of like lurking about what the problems with dragons may be. And I mean, does that get transmuted into a kind of folk way and come out in places other than biblical stories?
- [21:48]
Dr. Sam Riches
That's really difficult to answer with certainty. My sense is, yes, I think you're right. I think it probably does happen. But because we're dealing with an oral tradition so much, it's very, very late, that kind of the folktales get written down and sometimes they don't get written down at all. In some parts of the world, you're dependent upon a folklorist who will collect the story where people are comfortable and confident talking to them and giving them the unsanitised version. And the point you made about the sexuality of dragons is very well made. And I think for some people this is not an element that they would be really comfortable talking about. So we end up with these sanitized versions and it's. It's very, very difficult to be specific. What I can do though, is to tell you a bit about some of my research with St. George and the female dragon. So there's a bit of a spate of images of George with a dragon that is clearly female, usually genitalia, sometimes breasts or dugs, and occasionally dragonlets. So baby dragons, she's a mother. They very much come to the fore at the end of the 15th century, going into the early 16th century. And we've even got one written account of George and the dragon, which is an English translation, early 16th century, from a Latin original. Now, in the Latin, the dragon has no gender, it is just it. But we come into the English version by Alexander Berkeley, and it is consistently she. The dragon is she throughout. Now, there's no particular reason for the dragon to be she. We don't have any discussion of genitals or doves, breasts, babies even. But what we can see is the persistent existence of that construction into Edmund Spencer's Fairy Queen. So the Red Cross knight we have, of course, is a form of St. George, and we do definitely have a female dragon who turns up there. So it's kind of, if you stand back from it, you can see elements of a continuation of. Is folk memory too big a term to use? I'm not sure, but I would say that there's at least a possibility that we don't have Alexander Berkeley sitting down and dreaming up something that, as far as he's aware, nobody's ever done before, which is to have a female dragon for his hero to encounter. I think he's picked that up from somewhere else, and it's the somewhere else that maybe we're not able to see directly anymore.
- [24:43]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
This is such a good point, because, I don't know, folklore is so tricky because really, we kind of invented it as a field in the 19th century. And there's no way of knowing that what gets written down in the 19th century is actually what was happening in the 14th century, for God's sake. You know, it's been 500 years, right? So it's very difficult to say, oh, yeah, and then nothing changed. It's a kind of really conservative attitude, this idea that people were telling exactly the same story for 500 years. And, I mean, there's probably elements to it, right? But I mean, I think we can certainly say, just even looking at the way that people talked about dragons in the 4th century and the way they talked about them in the 9th century, it's very, very different. So talking about this as though it's always static, as though people always think the same way, is really difficult. And then also, famously, Victorians. Weird. Are prudes, right? So even if you did tell them Here comes some lord who's decided that his thing is folklore. And here he is, you know, he's out in the marches or something and he says, oh yeah, tell me your dragon story. And then you go, okay, yeah. And if there's a bunch of sex stuff in it, he might just freak out and not write that down. Right. Because of what the sensibilities are at the time. But I mean, I am quite interested in this reading of the dragon as a female in the English tradition, which also I guess makes sense when we think about the legend of George and the dragon. Because this dragon, one of the things about it is that it's been consistently fed virgins from the town. Right. That's the story. Do you know, I made that connection.
- [26:19]
Dr. Sam Riches
That's really interesting. Yeah, right.
- [26:22]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
So it's kind of like, oh, here's, here's the bad. Here's the bad over sexed idea of the female, which is hugely prevalent in medieval culture. You know, that is 100% the way that we think about women. And it's like, oh, yeah, and you're just feeding it new virgins constantly, all the time, until you kind of come up against the, you know, the final boss virgin, which is the princess.
- [26:44]
Dr. Sam Riches
I think that's a lovely reading. However, I'm just gonna step us down slightly. Couple of things. The first is that we've got six different English versions of the legend of St George from the medieval period. One of them doesn't have the dragon story at all. That's the oldest. Aboo. Aboo. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. St. George is just a holy man. So it's all about his martyrdom. It's not nothing. There is no dragon reference. But the others we have, the dragon story is there, but the dragon is either male for no particular reason or it is just neuter. There's no gender obviously assigned to it. So I wouldn't get too carried away with the idea that there is.
- [27:30]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Too late, too late. I'm carried away.
- [27:32]
Dr. Sam Riches
And then the other point is it's quite often young people that are being fed as opposed to specifically virgins. And you might be aware of this great theory about the mistranslation in relation to the Virgin Mary that in fact she isn't meant to be understood as a virgin, she's simply young. So I think that whilst it's a lovely image that you've created for us of the dragon's burgeoning sexuality being reinforced and brought to boiling point by a diet of virgins, I think it is a little bit more complicated than that. And the one thing I would say, though, is I think you've beautifully demonstrated that the story can be changed according to the desires, whims, preferences of the teller. The tale teller has a hugely significant role. And that, I think, really underlines the point that you made slightly earlier about how dragons and understandings of them and stories about them do change and evolve over time. In fact, the thing that was going through my mind as you were telling us about that was a Coptic, so this is from Ethiopia, version of George and the dragon, which is 20th century, early 20th century. And there's this fantastic image of the princess going out as if she was to be married, when she goes out to be sacrificed to the dragon. And she wears lots of jewelry, but she also has several wrist watches on. So. Absolutely, that tells you that this must be from a time when wristwatches were available in Ethiopia. But also it underlines the point that these stories do not have to be static, that you are able to modify it according to what you want to put in, but also what you think your audience is going to appreciate. So it was a way of demonstrating the wealth. Not that she particularly wanted to know the time, but she could know the time if she wanted to because she was from this very wealthy family.
- [29:43]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
This is an interesting point because speaking of wealth, one of the big things that dragons do in a lot of the medieval stories is they guard treasure, where there's this very specific thing about how dragons. They just love a bit of gold. They are bling addicts. Where can we really date this to? Is this a Beowulf thing?
- [30:02]
Dr. Sam Riches
Oh, we can go. We can go further back. We can go further back than that. But just before we do, I just want to say, though, that it's by no means a consistent idea of dragons hoarding treasure. So, in fact, in English tradition, it's very unusual. So if you base yourself on Tolkien and his understanding of dragons, you know, if you look at Smaug in the Hobbit, you have to bear in mind that Tolkien was a great medievalist, but he did not limit himself to English medieval tradition. He will have drawn in his influences from much further afield and in particular, perhaps northern Europe. But, yeah, I had a sense that you might want to talk about dragons and treasure, so I did a bit of checking. And it's Jason of Jason and the Argonauts fame. So we're here in classical Greece. We all know that he got the Golden Fleece, but who was guarding the Golden Fleece? It was a dragon. Absolutely. And also another Hero from this classical period, Heracles, who we talked about a little bit earlier on, we know that he battled a sea monster to save Hesione, but he also has to kill a great snake to get at the golden apples of the Hesperides. So I think this link that's being made between dragons, snakes, treasure, and also I put out to you that they are perhaps not only holding it for their own sake, but they are potentially being placed there as a guard because there's a nice sort of sub tradition about dragons acting as bodyguards. And would you want to cross one? Essentially. So there's a couple of Christian saints who have dragons as bodyguards. And also one of my favorites, it's strictly not a dragon, but it's certainly a monster with, I would say, dragonish tendencies. And this is an Irish story. So it's a saint who is brought to Scattery island, which is in River Shannon. And the island has been kept free from sin. And how it's been done is because this monster was put there as an agent of God to keep everybody at bay. I have actually got a lovely little description, if I may read that to you. This is Saint shenanigans. When the monster heard them coming. So this is Shannon, who's being brought by the Archangel Raphael, as one does. It shook its head and its hair stood up upon it and its rough bristles. And it looked at them hatingly and wrathfully, not gentle, friendly, mild was the look that it bestowed upon them, for it marvelled that anyone else should come to visit it in its island. So it went to them strongly and swiftly, so that they. The earth trembled under its feet. Hideous, uncouth, ruthless, awful was the beast that arose there. A horse's mane. It had an eye gleaming, flaming in its head, and it was keen, savage, froward, angry edged, crimson, bloody, cruel, bounding. Anyone would think that its eye would go through him when it looked upon him. Two very hideous, very thick feet under it, behind it a mane, nails of iron, which it used to strike showers of fire out of the rocks of stone whenever it went across them. A fiery breath which burnt like embers. You can see why I think it's a dragon. Fiery breath, A belly it had like the bellows of a furnace. A whale's tail upon it behind iron rending claws upon it, which used to lay bare the surface of the ground. Equally did it traverse sea and land when it so desired. The sea boiled from the greatness of its heat and from its virulence when the monster entered it. It's just splendid, this creature, but it is there to keep the island free from sin. And as soon as Saint Shenan arrives and says thank you very much, your work here is done, it quietly goes away and moves itself off to a lock where it lives to the current day.
- [34:50]
Unknown
You can make a difference in someone's life, including your own, with a job in home care. These jobs offer flexible schedules, health care, retirement options and free training. They also provide paid time off and opportunities for overtime. Visit oregonhomecarejobs.com to learn more and apply. That's oregonhomecarejobs.com gas, groceries, eating out. It all adds up fast. With the Verizon Visa card, you get rewarded every time you spend. Get 4% in rewards on gas, dining and at grocery stores and you can put those rewards toward your Verizon bill or on new tech like a smartwatch and earbuds. Apply today at Verizon. Application required. Subject to credit approval. Must be a Verizon mobile account owner or manager or FIOS account owner. See verizon.com Verizon Visacard for terms and restrictions. The Verizon Visa signature card is issued by Synchrony bank pursuant to a license from Visa USA Inc.
- [35:51]
Maddie Pelling
Summer is finally here, but for those of you just like me who are counting down the days until the leaves turn golden, the nights start drawing in, and it's finally acceptable to spend a whole weekend binging watching true crime in your PJs. After dark myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal can transport you there right now, twice a week, every week.
- [36:10]
Anthony Delaney
Tudor Murder, Ancient Ghosts, Victorian Mysteries. Our podcast has you covered. I'm Maddie Pelling.
- [36:17]
Maddie Pelling
And I'm Anthony Delaney and we are friends and historians who love to find out about the darker side of history.
- [36:23]
Anthony Delaney
Join us on the scaffold for Anne Boleyn's final moments. Step inside Tutankhamun's tomb, which is apparently cursed.
- [36:31]
Maddie Pelling
Watch a jury deliberate the fate of the last three women to be hanged for witchcraft in England.
- [36:37]
Anthony Delaney
Find us every Monday and Thursday wherever you get your podcasts. And now on YouTube after Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal is created by the award winning network History hit.
- [37:04]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
So interesting because it is just so in opposition to the dragons that I'm used to seeing pop up in saint stories. You know, Obviously we've got St. George as we've been talking about. And Also obviously there's St. Margaret, one of my favorite saints, you know, and she one of her miracles is that she's fed by the Emperor Diocletian to Satan in the form of a dragon obviously keeps him. Keeps him back there, you know, got him, got him out back in the shed. And then she bursts forth from Satan's stomach and vanquishes this dragon. So we have this really just straightforward application of a dragon as Satan once again. You know, no surprises here. Right. But here this is, I don't know, a morally ambiguous dragon, I suppose. I mean, he's doing something good, even though it is fearsome and loathsome. Do you have any other examples of.
- [37:58]
Dr. Sam Riches
Oh, okay.
- [37:58]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Come on, lay him on.
- [37:59]
Dr. Sam Riches
Yes. So there's a Cornish saint called Carintok who is called in to defeat a dragon that is terrorizing people and killing them at will. And it's so powerful that even King Arthur is unable to deal with this dragon. And Karen Tok comes along. It's an interesting little side story that he's looking for his altar stone, which has floated away. And it's meant to, wherever it lands, he's meant to set up his religious foundation. And the local lord keeps the altar stone prisoner. He holds it hostage until Karen Tok agrees to do away with the dragon. And Karen Tok basically makes friends with the dragon and brings it into the city and feeds it some dinner. It's like a dog on a lead. It's wonderful. And he patiently explains it's because everybody's been so naughty and wicked that God sent this dragon to teach them all lesson. We're back to the monster demonstrate idea there. And he says, now, if you'll promise to mend your ways, I will make the dragon go away. And so, of course, everybody agrees to do that. And he literally takes the dragon to the cliffs and sets it free. Away. It flies. It's a beautiful, beautiful image. You can just imagine the television miniseries Karen took and the dragon. It's complete opposite of the idea of killing the dragon, but nevertheless, its power and its fearsomeness comes through very, very strongly. So I would say that Shannon and Karen Tok's monsters are playing a very similar role. One is the kind of guard dog that is entirely keeping all people off Scattery Island. Therefore, it is completely free from sin. The other is being used as a way of essentially teaching. Teaching people to behave themselves.
- [40:06]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I find these dragons incredibly interesting, Right. Because oftentimes when we see dragons, so, you know, I guess St. George is, again, obviously, it's always going to come back to St. George. Sorry, everybody. One of the ways of kind of reading the dragon in St. George is that this is some form of triumph over, quote, unquote, Paganism. Right. Because what is happening here is the city itself hasn't Christianized yet. You know, the princess who's being fed, she hasn't Christianized and she becomes a nun at the end of the story. Yeah, fantastic. Everybody loves it. And here we have this dragon that is the root of this pagan misunderstanding of the world.
- [40:45]
Dr. Sam Riches
But.
- [40:45]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
But we can also see these dragons redeployed for specific Christian ends. And it's just, I don't know, so complex that we just don't tell the story. You know, we have a lexicon of dragons that we deploy and we want to see them as evil and monstrous. So we're just like, yeah, nevermind about these several other nice little dragons.
- [41:04]
Dr. Sam Riches
Yeah. And even again, one of my favorite stories is a rather terrifying Irish saint called Macree. And he describes himself as a dragon. I will be a mangling dragon unto my enemies. Isn't that amazing? Ah, so that to me is kind of influenced by or a crossover with the dragons that you get in heraldry, where we seem to have this idea of taking on the life force of the dragon so that the Lord who defeats the dragon or who invokes the dragon, which I'd say is what Macri was doing there, invoking it, they increase their own power. They are a force literally to be reckoned with. So the dragon, yeah, it's fearsome, but it's not always fearsome in the same direction. Sometimes it's acting as a force that can be harnessed. And again, if you've got a very powerful saint, then they are able to control the dragons. So a saint I think we haven't mentioned yet is St. Martha. So she is allegedly from Martha and Mary in the New Testament. She ends up in France, as one does. And again, a little bit like the story with Carentoc, there's this fierce dragon that nobody can control. And people in desperation, they go to Martha, they know she is a holy woman and they ask her to intervene. Can she possibly help them? And she does. She makes the sign of the cross. That's all that's needed to subdue the dragon. And she's able to put it on a girdle in the same way that the princess does in the St. George legend. And so she's able to lead the dragon like a dog. I'm afraid that particular dragon, if memory serves, does come to a very bad end. It is killed. But other saints are able to control dragons and keep them as bodyguards that I mentioned before, also as another French saint, Saint Hilary, who is able to divide an island. So that the monsters, the big snakes, I think they are in this case. But let's take it as an overlap of dragons. They are on one side of the island and the people are on the other side and they are able to kind of move, live harmoniously, respecting one another's domains. So that requires a saint of some great virtue and spiritual power in order to enact that kind of power over this very, very strong sense of the wild, the chaotic wilderness. I said earlier on that one of the things with dragons is they don't consistently live in the same sorts of places. So some that live in the sea, for instance, others that live on land, however, we do get quite a strong idea of them living in places of wilderness. And so you get this encoding of nature that's untamed and dangerous. So the comparison between civilization, the town, the city, and outside the outside world, where everything is not really under human control. So there's two aspects of that object point to. First is St. George is a quite common dedicate of chapels over the gates or by the gate of city walls. So he acts as this kind of protective force, keeping the danger and the chaos and the wilderness at bay. And the other one is nothing to do with St. George at all, but dragon figures that were paraded at rogation tide. So this is a part of the church calendar which seems to have got quite deep roots well before or outside of Christianity. And it's about asserting the farmer's control over the land and being able to produce the crops that are needed. So it's kind of the dragon almost as a form of winter or a form of, I think, chaos. I'm gonna go with chaos. So you've got the control of the plough and the chaos of the weeds and the wilderness and the processing of the rigation tide dragon is part of marking the change.
- [45:40]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
That makes sense. Classic medieval stuff. You know, we see this all the time with the worries about the forest. Right. The forest is always this sort of magical location where any number of monsters or magical persons can be living and, you know, the real worry there. So, yeah, I mean, the dragons is a part of that makes perfect sense. But I. I guess also I'm quite interested in, I don't know, this capture of dragons, this use of dragons for good purposes. Because, I mean, we certainly see this when they crop up in architecture, right. Because we see dragons as gargoyles on churches all the time. So there's this kind of apt, apopetraic, you know, use of them. Like you can. You can use A dragon on your church to scare off actual evil things. And would that, do you think, fall under the same sort of understanding?
- [46:31]
Dr. Sam Riches
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right there. The story of the gargoyle, it is originally, again, a saint's legend. It's a less well known saint, so he's Saint Romaine or possibly Romanus, and he's dated to the seventh century at Rouen in Northern France. France. And he is brought in to deal with the Garguy. This is this name for this evil dragon that, amongst other things, it is lying across the width of the River Seine and it is forming a dam and flooding, causing floods, and it's also eating people and breathing pestilence and doing all kinds of other dragony activities. But how does the saint subdue the dragon? Oh, it'll be with the sign of the cross. Yep, there we go again. Even St. George, in one version of his legend, he subdues the dragon with the sign of the cross. But going back to St. Romanus and the gargilla, there's an element of the legend which is that he cut off the head, or the head was cut off. I'm not sure he did it personally. And then there was a big storm and the water kind of goes through the mouth of the monster, so it can be directed. And so you've taken this evil, destructive, horrible creature that causes floods and turned it into something which will help you deal with floodwater. And hence why gargoyles, specifically in architecture, have water pipes coming through them as opposed to just decorative monsters which are called grotesques. But I love the fact that this whole story has been generated around it to explain, I believe it was first written down in the 19th century, the idea of the gargoyle as the water spout. And of course, they were in use long, long before then. Who knows whether it is an oral tradition which led to that identification, but it certainly, I think, gives some sense of what might have been. Traveling around across Europe with our itinerant stonemasons and other people involved in creating these incredible works of architecture, complete with their gargoyles to control rainwater.
- [48:56]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I long for a gargoyle. My entire phone is just nothing but pictures of a gargoyle I saw one time at a church. It's ridiculous, but we see dragons in lots of other, other bits of medieval art, right? So can we talk a little bit about when they show up in manuscripts? Because we see many a dragon in bestiaries, right? And we see them crop up alongside animals that are 100% real, you know, like Jaguars or ants. And granted, in bestiaries these animals are doing all kinds of things that are kind of legendary. So do you think that when we see these dragons are medieval people saying, oh yeah, well there's this symbolic nature, the symbolic meaning of what a dragon is, or is this some sort of thing where they're like, yeah, dragons, man. They live in Africa with elephants, you know.
- [49:47]
Dr. Sam Riches
Yeah, it's. It's difficult to be sure. Again, I think we're looking at multi layered understandings. And if there's one thing I'll say about people in the medieval period, that they loved riddles, they loved multiple meanings. You know, if they had the word polyvalent, they would have used it. I'm sure bestiaries are a kind of well done to themselves. As you say. Real creatures that we absolutely recognize are presented alongside all kinds of odd things. Like, I don't know, the barnacle goose, for instance, that hatches from barnacles. Of course, my personal favourite is probably the Bonnicon, which is this farting beast that that sets fire to. I think it's a quarter of an acre of land can be ravaged by a single fart from a Bonnican dragons there. I think I maybe alluded to this earlier, but they are the greatest of all snakes. So you've got this series of different kinds of snakes, such as the viper for instance, that we would be familiar with, but none of the images are snakes that we would recognize because they have feet. And that is the internal logical world of the bestiary, the bestiary writers and particularly the bestiary artists. I think the one that doesn't have feet has two heads. I'm never quite sure how to pronounce it. I'm going to go with the amphispina. And it puts the one head into the mouth of the other head and then it rolls along like a hoop. So it moves around very, very fast. And the kind of. The moral point of it is that it's able to do twice as many wicked things because it has two heads now off the top of my head and I don't have a vestry to hand. I can't absolutely remember whether it has feet or not. I think maybe sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it doesn't. But what I can say is that other snakes and serpents consistently have feet. And so the idea of the dragon that we have with its feet very much seems to link into that. And it's almost maybe a back formation that once you've decided that a dragon is a form of serpent and with of Course, the temperature in the garden, all those things we talked about earlier on, you can see the connection then they're all having feet. Doesn't really lead itself into a huge problem. You can see some consistency there and you've got the potential for this moralising. So with dragons in the bestiary, their main enemy is the elephant. Yeah, yeah. So what you have is this strange to modern, modernized construction, that the dragon lies in weight with its coiled tail and it acts as a kind of trap. So the elephant's going about its business and it accidentally manages to stand into the trap that the dragon has made. The dragon then proceeds to wrap itself around the elephant's body like a boa constrictor. So, again, you can see the link to real snakes and suffocates the unfortunate elephant to death. But as it falls over, it crushes the elephant, crushes the dragon. And so then you get this excellent moral and religious understanding, which is about the dragon as the devil and it tried to trap Christ. Christ is the elephant. And in fact, because Christ gave his life, he defeated the devil, you can. You can see where they're going with that idea. But, you know, Christ is also the true weasel. Within bestiaries, there's all kinds of readings that bestiary authors felt more than capable of making. I think it's worth noting as well that bestiaries are very strongly associated with the English traditions. So pretty much every medieval bestiary that is known seems to have originated in England. English medieval people, people had various skills and interests that they were known for. Embroidery. Opus Anglicanum, that's something else that is, you know, the English worker. But it could. You could equally make that point about bestiaries. So I think we also have to be a little bit careful in discussing dragons to try to localize the story, the understanding. So although it may spread it, it doesn't mean that everybody everywhere would have understood things in the same way. Just to go back to St. George, again, we've got multiple places that claim to be the site of St. George killing the dragon, and also multiple stories that are associated with it. So earlier on, we were talking about what the dragon was given to eat. In Denmark, the dragon is given eggs as well as young people. Huh? Yeah. It's only when the supply of eggs begins to run low that they start to feed young people to their dragon. I mean, it is just beyond anything that you would sit down and invent now who would take you seriously? But again, this is the way that medieval people seem to think. I don't know why Eggs were seen as being a particular interest to dragons in Denmark. I think I need to do more research to pick that up. But another example I can give you in Italy is that St. George is a patron saint there of dairies and people who work with milk. And the reason is that dragons are meant to creep up to cows in the night and suckle at their udders in the way that poor old hedgehogs have been blamed for in England. So again, you know, it's this, you know, how, how, how did they decide on this? No idea. But localized understandings of how dragons behave. There's so much complexity and it's just a constant joy really is.
- [56:22]
Unknown
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- [57:36]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
If there's all these interesting medieval ways of looking at dragons and using dragons, is this something that we see drop off once we hit the early modern period? You know, are Renaissance people suddenly too good for dragons? Because I would wager no.
- [57:52]
Dr. Sam Riches
And you would win that wager? Absolutely. Yeah. Dragonzog just constantly interesting to people. I think it's in part because you can customize them to the extent that you want. I've sometimes explained this in relation to images of St. George and the dragon. For late medieval people, they would have been almost always commissioned, rather than something that you just go along to your local icon shop in the way that you might today and you buy one ready made. And so you can imagine the discussion taking place. Well, how big do you want it to be? How many heads? Wings? No wings. How many legs? Do you want it to be green? Do you want it to be scaly, pink and furry? How would you like your dragon to be aspects of a lion. Dragons sometimes have manes, aspects of snakes. Oh, well, that's a given. We're definitely going to have that. What about it being bear? Like, what about being badger? Like, there's so many possibilities. And as well, who is it that's commissioning art? Well, it's going to be rich people. And then you've got this overlap with the illusion that we made earlier to heraldry. So people who are rich and powerful and they want to assert that, and dragons give them a really handy way to actually sell themselves. It's dragons as propaganda.
- [59:24]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
And dragons make such great propaganda. Right. Like, I was at the va, as is my want of the weekend, and I was looking at the cast in the cast courts of the St. George and the Dragon, which comes from outside of Prague Cathedral, because I'm a cliche of myself. And that dragon is really interesting because it has a kind of movable proboscis that is wrapping around St. George's Foot, and so it's almost kind of elephantine. And I was just kind of thinking about that. And I mean, what does this mean in terms of, you know, contact with the artists in. With Africa or in expanding interest or understanding of how animals may look? Do we just have Charles IV beefing with someone who's got, like an elephant in their heraldry? Right. So now. Now the. The bad guy has to look kind of like an elephant. It's very difficult to say.
- [60:11]
Dr. Sam Riches
There's so many possibilities. But what I will say is that money was spent on a regular basis on dragons that was going to be processed through the city streets. We know this is in England, it's called the riding of St. George, and we know from quite a few places that this happened. The best attested is at Norwich, and we've got excellent records from there. And in fact, one of the dragons still exists. It's in Norwich Castle. It's known as the Snap, or Old Snap, and it has an articulated jaw. And terrifyingly, in the 15th century, there is one account where the dragon operator was paid extra money for using gunpowder.
- [60:55]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Oh, I love this.
- [60:57]
Dr. Sam Riches
I think it's just the once that that happens, because that really doesn't bear thinking about. But I had the huge pleasure a few years ago of going to Mons, or Mons, depending how you like to pronounce it, in Belgium for the most amazing spectacle of reenacting George and the Dragon. It's a long, complicated story about how I came to be there and what they were doing, which I'm not going to detain you with at the Moment. But basically, if you find yourself in Belgium on Trinity Sunday, then Mons is definitely the place to be. So there was me and about 120,000 fairly drunk Belgian people, all in the city square and they reenact the battle between George and the dragon. As we said earlier on, it's possible to change the story over time, and they have done. They've been doing this every year other than during wartime, since the 15th century. And it is not the same dragon as it used to be. It's wonderful fiberglass thing. Oh, it's absolutely beautiful. It used to be wicker work and I think that was a bit of a fire hazard. But now a female personification of the city is involved in the story, is bringing the weapons to St. George. And St. George uses a revolver to kill the dragon. I love it. It's just priceless. It really is. So you've got this idea of the civic power and pride literally being paraded in the streets. And it is, of course, the hugest honour to be allowed to take part. You've got to be a resident. You've had to live there for probably 15 generations or something like this. But it is a really amazing spectacle and it's something that is taken so seriously that they do a junior version a couple of days previously to train up the young people of the city to be able to, in due course, take their place reenacting the battle between George and the dragon. So on the one hand, we've got kind of the dragon's power, which is terrifying, but ours at the same time. And then St. George, as this personification of the might of the city and of civilization and urbanity, putting this chaotic and dangerous thing in its place, it's absolutely fantastic.
- [63:28]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I think it just goes to show you that there's this real enduring appeal of dragons. You know, we're all still in love with them. We still want to see a reenactment of George and the dragon. You can tart it up and make it nice and modern, you know, give the princess some wristwatches, give St. George a revolver, all these things. Or we can go and look at just how media works. I mean, you've got the Game of Thrones show, lots of dragons there. You got, of course, you know, the Hobbit and Smaug or, you know, the how to Train youn Dragon films. You know, is this just a human thing? You know, you've alluded to it already. All of us have some kind of story about dragons. Is this just a thing that humans long for?
- [64:11]
Dr. Sam Riches
I think it's certainly very deeply encoded into human consciousness. It's something as well that I think children really respond to. They love the idea of dragons. Something that is scary, that is potential to be friends with as well. So there's some lovely films. I have a grandson who's three and a half and he's extremely keen. So I've seen Zoggs quite a lot. I recommend that. And these are dragons that he says that they're not scary, they're nice dragons, but they're learning how to be dragons. And the idea as well of the dragon doctor. So it's the princess who doesn't want to be a princess. She actually wants to go and help the dragons and to be friends with them. And it's so, I think, imaginative. There's just no limit. And that's where I would say dragons are incredibly powerful within the human psyche because they are limitless. You know, who doesn't want to fly, who has never dreamt of being able to fly, to be able to swim, all these things that dragons are able to do, apparently. And you know, I'm sure there are occasions when most of us would quite like to breathe fire to sort out a situation. And these lovely stories that we get in fantasy literature about dragon riders as well. I just point to that, that to be able to get the freedom of the skies without actually having to be involved in something that's artificial or something that's created by people that you're actually tapping into. Wild and, yeah, dangerous, but maybe tameable part of the natural world world. So they are responding to, as you say, this kind of hunger maybe that many, many people have.
- [66:11]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Well, thank you, Sam, for coming on today to feed this hunger that I would argue lives in all of us.
- [66:19]
Dr. Sam Riches
It's been my absolute pleasure and yeah, I look forward to finding even more dragon stories and locating those resonances. It's all out there.
- [66:35]
Dr. Eleanor Jennica
Thanks to Dr. Sam Riches and to you for listening to Gone Medieval from history hit.
- [66:40]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
If you haven't listened to my recent.
- [66:41]
Dr. Eleanor Jennica
Episode on Monsters of the Medieval Apocalypse or my chat with Amy Jeffs about St. George and the springtime Saints, do go back and find them in our back catalog. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award winning original TV documentaries, including my recent dragon filled film medieval apocalypse and ad free podcasts by signing up@historyhit.com subscription, you can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and.
- [67:10]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Suggestions or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [67:13]
Dr. Eleanor Jennica
And tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.
- [67:33]
Unknown
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- [68:02]
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