© The Society for the Social History of Medicine 2005, all rights reserved
Good, Common, Regular, and Orderly: Early Modern Classifications of Monstrous Births
Department of Histopathology, Royal Free Hospital, Pond Street, London NW3 2QG, UK. E-mail: convithouse{at}aol.com
In the early modern period, monstrous births were described in both popular and scholarly publications. Their interpretation as signs from God, often in response to perceived lapses in moral order, is a well-recognized aspect of the use of wonders as evidence of divine providence. This article considers an alternative reading of monsters as signs of complexity and order in the natural world. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, natural philosophical writers classified monsters according to their causes and morphology. These classifications implied that monsters were part of the plenitude of creation, and it is argued that they were presented to the reader as part of an exemplary order that glorified its creator. In the eighteenth century, the concept of orderly monsters, based on internal anatomy as well as external form, was used in support of the preformation hypothesis.
Keywords: monster; classification; teratology; conjoined twins; autopsy; Michel de Montaigne; Fortunio Liceti; preformation
1 D'un Enfant Monstrueux was first published in 1580. The quoted passage was added in the 1595 edition. I have used the translation by John Florio, The Essays of Michael Lord of Montaigne (London, 1613). The monster was probably born in Gascony in 1571. See Pierre Boaistuau, Claude de Tesserant, François de Belle-Forest, Rod Hoyer, and Arnaud Sorbin, Histoires Prodigieuses les plus Memorables qui ayent esté Obseruées, depuis la Natiuité de Iesus Christ, Iusques à nostre Siecle: Extraictes de Plusieurs Fameux Autheurs, Grecz, & Latins, Sacrez & Prophanes... (Anvers, 1594), p. 477.
2 Cicero, De Divinatione, II, 27.
3 K. Park and L. J. Daston, ‘Unnatural Conceptions: The Study of Monsters in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-century England and France’, Past and Present, 92 (1981), 20–54; L. J. Daston and K. Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York, 1998), p. 176.
4 P. Fontes da Costa, ‘The Understanding of Monsters at the Royal Society in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century’, Endeavour, 24 (2000), 34–9.
5 R. French, Medicine Before Science (Cambridge, 2003), p. 78.
6 J. Céard, La Nature et les Prodiges (Geneva, 1977), pp. 3, 10.
7 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, III, 2; J. M. Thijssen, ‘Twins as Monsters: Albertus Magnus's Theory of the Generation of Twins and its Philosophical Context’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 61 (1987), 237–46. On medieval monsters, see D. Williams, Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and Literature (Exeter, 1996); K. E. Olsen and L. A. J. R. Houwen (eds), Monsters and the Monstrous in Medieval Northwest Europe (Leuven, 2001); A. Bovey, Monsters and Grotesques in Medieval Manuscripts (London, 2002).
8 On which, see Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, De Civitate Dei, XII, 8.
9 Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, Enchiridion, 87.
10 Daston and Park, Wonders, p. 14; Z. Hanafi, The Monster in the Machine: Magic, Medicine and the Marvellous in the Time of the Scientific Revolution (Durham, 2000), p. 4.
11 Daston and Park, Wonders, pp. 173–214; M. Douglas, Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology (London, 1975), p. 32.
12 See A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study in the History of an Idea (Cambridge, MA, 1936).
13 For an overview, see Céard, La Nature, and D. Wilson, Signs and Portents: Monstrous Births from the Middle Ages to The Enlightenment (London, 1993). English broadsides on monsters are to be found in: J. Lilly (ed.), A Collection of 79 Black Letter Ballads and Broadsides, Printed in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Between the Years 1559 and 1597 (London, 1867); H. L. Collmann (ed.), Ballads & Broadsides Chiefly of the Elizabethan Period... (Oxford, 1912), and H. E. Rollins (ed.), The Pack of Autolycus; or, Strange and Terrible News of Ghosts, Apparitions, Monstrous Births, Showers of Wheat, Judgments of God, and Other Prodigious and Fearful Happenings As Told in Broadside Ballads of the Years, 1624–1693 (Cambridge, MA, 1927). For a bibliography of French ballads, see Wilson, Signs and Portents, pp. 195–202, and, on the German popular literature, see I. Ewinkel, De Monstris: Deutung und Funktion von Wundergeburten auf Flugblättern im Deutschland des 16 Jahrhunderts (Tübingen, 1995).
14 J. Needham, A History of Embryology (Cambridge, 1959), pp. 28–9, is critical of the application of Aristotelian hierarchies of causation to monsters. See also Wilson, Signs and Portents, pp. 73, 114–15.
15 On large numbers of visitors to monsters born in Valencia in 1530, Geneva in 1555, and England in 1565, see Edward Fenton, Certaine Secrete Wonders of Nature... (London, 1569), fo. 69r; Fortunio Liceti, De Monstrorum Caussis, Natura, & Differentiis (Padua, 1634), p. 88, and Collmann (ed.), Ballads & Broadsides, p. 113. On late seventeenth-century public exhibitions of monsters in England, Ostend, and Germany, see Anon., A True Relation of a Monstrous Female-Child... (London, n.d. [c. 1680]); the anonymous A Letter from an Eminent Merchant in Ostend... (n.d.) in the British Library N.TAB.2026/25, and Christopher Krahe, ‘The Description of a Monstrous Child...’, Philosophical Transactions, 14 (1684), 599–600.
16 For example, H. B., The True Discription of a Childe with Ruffes... (London, 1566).
17 E. Holländer, Wunder, Wundergeburt und Wundergestalt... (Stuttgart, 1921), pp. 64–7, 71–3; O. Niccoli (transl. L. G. Cochrane), Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy (Princeton, 1990), pp. 35–65.
18 Wilson, Signs and Portents, pp. 50–5.
19 P. Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London, 1978), p. 28; T. Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 2.
20 Anon., Monstrificus Puer... (n.p., 1511). See Holländer, Wunder, p. 343.
21 Anon., L'Androgyn né a Paris... (Lyon, 1570).
22 A. G. Dickens, Reformation and Society in Sixteenth-century Europe (London, 1966), p. 51.
23 On Catholic and Protestant interpretations of monsters, see Ewinkel, De Monstris, pp. 25–38, and R. P.-C. Hsia, ‘A Time for Monsters: Monstrous Births, Propaganda, and the German Reformation’, in L. L. Knoppers and J. B. Landes (eds), Monstrous Bodies/Political Monstrosities in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, 2004), 67–92.
24 Philip Melanchthon and Martin Luther, Deuttung der Zwo Grewlichen Figuren, Bapstesels zu Rom und Munchkalbs zu Freyburg in Meyssen Funden (Wittenburg, 1523). On the influence of Luther's pamphlet, see Park and Daston, ‘Unnatural Conceptions’, pp. 26–8.
25 See Daston and Park, Wonders, p. 181; Céard, La Nature, p. 81.
26 T. H. Luxon, ‘"Not I, but Christ": Allegory and the Puritan Self’, English Literary History, 60 (1993), 899–937; P. Harrison, ‘Curiosity, Forbidden Knowledge, and the Reformation of Natural Philosophy in Early Modern England’, Isis, 92 (2001), 265–90, pp. 265, 275.
27 Lilly (ed.), Black Letter Ballads, pp. 112–13, 217–20; Anon., A Wonder Woorth the Reading... (London, 1617), sig. A1v.
28 Stephen Batman, The Doome Warning All Men to the Judgement... (London, 1581), fol. i r.
29 Pierre Boaistuau, Histoires Prodigieuses... (Paris, 1560). There were more than 37 editions, with translations into English, French, Dutch, and Welsh. For a bibliographic history, see P. Boaistuau (ed. S. Bamforth), Histoires Prodigieuses: MS 136 Wellcome Library (Milan, 2000), pp. 22–3.
30 Céard, La Nature, pp. 252–64.
31 A. Walsham, ‘Sermons in the Sky (Celestial Visions Reported Across Early Modern Europe)’, History Today, 51 (2001), 56–63.
33 The anonymous ballads, A True Report of a Straung and Monsterous Child, Born at Aberwick, in the Parish of Eglingham, in the County of Northumberland, this Fifth of January (London, 1580), and The Description of Monstrous Childe Borne at Ffenny Stanton in Huntingdonshire (London, 1580) were the sources for Batman, Doome, pp. 408, 414.
34 Hsia, ‘Time for Monsters’, pp. 80–92.
35 The so-called Ravenna monster was linked with the battle of 1512. See Niccoli, Prophecy and People, pp. 35–51. For monstrous births linked with a sudden fall in prices and with sexual deviation, see Batman, Doome, p. 334, and Jacob Rueff, De Conceptu et Genratione Hominis, et iis quae Circa hec Potissimum Consysderantur (Zürich, 1554), I, p. 383.
36 For an example of a place-specific warning (‘this monstrous shape to thee England’), see Lilly, Black Letter Ballads, pp. 194–7.
37 Th[omas] B[edford], A True and Certain Relation of a Strange Birth... (London, 1635), p. 12.
39 Thomas Schweicker, a man born without arms, was shown c.1580 writing ‘Deus est mirabilis in operibus suis’ with his feet. See Holländer, Wunder, p. 115.
40 Ambroise Paré, Deux Livres de Chirurgie... Des Monstres Tant Terrestres que Marins, avec leurs Portrais... (Paris, 1573). Subsequent quotations are from the translation by J. L. Pallister (ed.), On Monsters and Marvels (Chicago and London, 1982).
41 For other influences on Paré, see Céard, La Nature, pp. 292–314.
42 On Paré's interest in causes, see Céard, La Nature, pp. 305–6. On medieval causes of monsters, see Albertus Magnus, Physica, II, 3, 3.
43 Pallister (ed.), Monsters and Marvels, pp. 3–4.
44 Ibid., p. 3; François Bouchard, ‘Infante Monstroso Lugduni in Viam Publicam Die V Martii A. MDCLXXI Exposito’, Miscellanea Curiosa, series 1, 3 (1672), 14–16, paraphrases Paré's distinction between monsters and marvels.
45 Pallister (ed.), Monsters and Marvels, pp. 91–4.
47 Although Montaigne did not refer directly to Des Monstres, see J. Zeitlin (ed.), The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (New York, 1934–6), I, pp. 94, 336; II, pp. 423, 611.
48 Pallister (ed.), Monsters and Marvels, p. 6.
50 Some commentators have claimed that Paré was secretly Protestant. See ibid., pp. xv, 197.
53 For monsters mentioned by Paré that had previously been described in canards, see ibid., pp. 6–7, 10–11, 17.
54 Caspar Bauhin, Hermaphroditorum Monstrosorumque Partuum Natura ex Theologorum, Jureconsultorum, Medicorum, Philosophorum, & Rabbinorum (Frankfurt, 1600), p. 22.
55 F. H., ‘Bauhin (Gaspard)’, in Nouvelle Biographie Générale (Paris, 1859), IV, 810–13, col. 811.
56 See Needham, History of Embryology, pp. 153, 245–6.
57 Johann Georg Schenck, Monstrorum Historia Memorabilis... (Frankfurt, 1608). Schenck treated monsters as historical occurrences.
58 Bauhin, Hermaphroditorum Monstrosorumque, facing p. 58.
60 Quoted in Daston and Park, Wonders, p. 183.
61 Liceti, De Monstrorum (1634), pp. 61–2.
62 On the concept of an active and creative nature in Liceti, see M. T. Monti, ‘Epigenesis of the Monstrous Form and Preformistic "Genetics" (Lémery-Winslow-Haller)’, Early Science and Medicine, 5 (2000), 3–32, p. 9.
63 Fortunio Liceti, De Monstrorum Caussis, Natura, et Differentiis (Padua, 1616), pp. 37–68; Hanafi, The Monster, p. 96.
64 Liceti, De Monstrorum (1616), p. 42; Daston and Park, Wonders, p. 200. On the influence of Aristotle on Liceti's De Monstrorum, see Needham, History of Embryology, p. 114; Wilson, Signs and Portents, pp. 114–15; A. W. Bates, ‘The De Monstrorum of Fortunio Liceti: A Landmark of Descriptive Teratology’, Journal of Medical Biography, 9 (2001), 49–54.
65 Ulysse Aldrovandi, Monstrorum Historia... (Bononia, 1642).
66 Caspar Schott, Physica Curiosa, Sive Mirabilia Naturae Et Artis Libris XII Comprehensa, Quibus pleraq[ue] quae de Angelis, Daemonibus, Hominibus, Spectris, Energumenis, Monstris, Potentis, Animalibus, Meteoris, etc., Rara Arcana Curiosaque Circumferuntur, ad Veritatis Trutinam Expenduntur, Variis ex Historia ac Philosophia Petitis Disquisitionibus Excutiuntur, et Innumeris Exemplis Illustrantur (Würzburg, 1662), I, p. 12.
71 Three years later, a theological student from Wittenberg also classified monsters morphologically. Johann Stricer, Disputatio Physica de Monstro (Wittenberg, 1665).
72 Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Histoire Generale et Particulière des Anomalies de l'Organisation chez l'Homme et les Animaux... (Paris, 1832–7). For a comparison with later classifications, see G. J. Fisher, ‘Diploteratology’, Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of New York (1866), 207–96, p. 208.
73 Anon., The Forme and Shape of a Monstrous Child, Born at Maydstone in Kent... (London, 1568); Ewinkel, De Monstris, pp. 331, 333.
74 They resemble earlier personifications of sins. See Rueff, De Conceptu, I, p. 384; Niccoli, Prophecy and People, pp. 44–5.
75 For emblematic monsters in English ballads, see Lilly, Black Letter Ballads, pp. 27–30, 194–7.
76 See M. Praz, Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery (Rome, 1964), p. 68.
77 Hans Burgkmair the Elder, Disz künd ist geboren worden zu Tettnaug (Munich, 1516); Aldrovandi, Monstrorum Historia, pp. 408–9.
78 Höllander, Wunder, pp. 66–8; Hanafi, The Monster, pp. 21–5.
79 Pallister (ed.), Monsters and Marvels, pp. 10–12, 33, 35; Liceti, De Monstrorum (1634), pp. 132–3.
80 Pallister (ed.), Monsters and Marvels, p. xxix.
82 For examples, see Holländer, Wunder, pp. 286, 289, 310, 313, 331–2, 343, 345.
83 Jean Riolan, De Monstro nato Lutetiae anno Domini 1605: Disputatio Philosophica (Paris, 1605).
84 For example, Maurit Hofmann, ‘Anatome Partus Cerebro Carentis’, Miscellanea Curiosa, series 1, 2 (1671), 60–4; idem, ‘De Monstro Gemello’, Miscellanea Curiosa, series 2, 4 (1685), 288–90.
85 On the early modern culture of dissection, see J. Sawday, The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture (London, 1996), pp. 22–32, 110–29.
86 P. Camporesi, The Anatomy of the Senses (Cambridge, 1994), p. 94.
87 For autopsies on diseased bodies, see George Thomson, 
o
µo
oµ
: Or The Pest Anatomized... (London, 1666); R. C. Maulitz, ‘The Pathological Tradition’, in W. F. Bynum and R. Porter (eds), Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine (London, 1993), I, 169–91, pp. 169–70; D. A. Schwartz and C. J. Herman, ‘The Importance of the Autopsy in Emerging and Reemerging Infectious Diseases’, Clinical Infectious Diseases, 23 (1996), 248–54, p. 249; G. M. Weisz, ‘The Papal Contribution to the Development of Modern Medicine’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Surgery, 67 (1997), 472–5, pp. 473–4.
88 D. Harley, ‘Political Post-mortems and Morbid Anatomy in Seventeenth-century England’, Social History of Medicine, 7 (1994), 1–28, p. 5, argues that the autopsy was ‘far less intrusive and destructive’ than anatomy. On embalming of gentry, see C. A. Bradford, Heart Burial (London, 1933), pp. 5–6, 29–35.
89 Hanafi, The Monster, pp. 18, 21.
90 For an example from 1664, see Rollins, Pack of Autolycus, p. 141.
91 Thomas Greenhill, N
o
: or, the Art of Embalming... (London, 1705), p. 118. On embalmed monsters, see Fenton, Secrete Wonders, ff. 36r–v, 98v–99r; I. Blickstein, ‘The Conjoined Twins of Löwen’, Twin Research, 3 (2000), 185–8.
92 A. Peña Chavarría and P. G. Shipley, ‘The Siamese Twins of Española (The First Known Post-Mortem Examination in the New World)’, Annals of Medical History, 6 (1924), 297–302; F. A. Jimenez, ‘The First Autopsy in the New World’, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 54 (1978), 618–19.
93 Peña Chavarría and Shipley, ‘The Siamese Twins’, p. 302.
94 Pallister (ed.), Monsters and Marvels, pp. 15–16, 18.
95 See Bauhin's remarks on his anatomy theatre in Hermaphroditorum Monstrosorumque, p. 4, and Paré's on the importance of practical experience in surgery in Pallister (ed.), Monsters and Marvels, p. xvii.
96 On autopsy technique, see L. S. King and M. C. Meehan, ‘A History of the Autopsy. A Review’, American Journal of Pathology, 73 (1973), 514–44, p. 529. For dissections of double monsters, see Fenton, Secrete Wonders, fol. 36; Batman, Doome, p. 338; G. T. Haneveld, ‘Een Nederlands Schilderij van een Samengegroeide Tweeling (Thoracopagus) uit de 17e Eeuw’, Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, 118 (1974), 801–5.
97 See A. W. Bates, ‘Post-mortem Examination of Conjoined Twins in Early Modern Europe’, in A. Musajo-Somma (ed.), 39th International Congress on the History of Medicine: Proceedings (Bari, 2004), 107–12.
98 See, for example, J. Grandi, ‘An Extract of an Italian Letter’, Philosophical Transactions, 5 (1670), 1188–9; J. Jaenis, ‘De Infante Sine Capite’, Miscellanea Curiosa, series 1, 3 (1672), 442–4; Monsieur Galliard, ‘Observations Particulieres sur Differentes Maladies’, Journal des Savans (1697), 338–40.
99 Hofmann, ‘Anatome Partus Cerebro’.
100 H. Volgnad, ‘De Monstroso Foetu’, Miscellanea Curiosa, series 1, 3 (1672), 446–7.
101 Anon., ‘Extract of a Letter, Written from Paris, Containing an Account of Some Effects of the Transfusion of Bloud; and of Two Monstrous Births, &c.’, Philosophical Transactions, 2 (1667), 479–80.
102 See Vander Wiel, ‘Extrait des Nouv. de la Rep. des Lettres’, Journal des Savans (1686), 263–4.
103 Sawday, Body Emblazoned, pp. 22–4, 28–32, 141–7.
104 For a physician ‘pleading’ for an autopsy, see J. M. Hoffmann, ‘De Foetu Monstroso’, Miscellanea Curiosa, series 2, 6 (1687), 333–6.
105 For example, Fenton, Secrete Wonders, fo. 13v; Bauhin, Hermaphroditorum Monstrosorumque, pp. 1–12.
106 V. Nutton, ‘The Anatomy of the Soul in Early Renaissance Medicine’, in G. R. Dunstan (ed.), The Human Embryo: Aristotle and the Arabic and European Traditions (Exeter, 1990), 20–31.
107 Pallister (ed.), Des Monstres, pp. 38–40; Fenton, Secrete Wonders, fo. 13r.
108 Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 767a36–b25, 775a15. For a late sixteenth-century theologian's reading, see Nicholas Remy, (ed. M. Summers, transl. E. A. Ashwin), Demonolatry (Secaucus, 1974), pp. 11, 67.
109 Pallister, Monsters and Marvels, p. 47.
111 Liceti, De Monstrorum (1634), p. 191. Compare Aristotle, Physics, IV, 767b–769b.
112 Bayle, ‘Dissertationes Physicae in Quibus Principia Proprietatum in Mixtis, Aeconomia in Plantis & Animalibus, Causa & Signa Propensionum in Homine &c Demonstrantur’, Journal des Savans (1677), 161–3, claimed that a human foetus could degenerate into a monkey.
113 Fenton, Secrete Wonders, fo. 12v.
114 Pallister, Monsters and Marvels, pp. 3–4.
115 Fenton, Secrete Wonders, fo. 13v; Pallister (ed.), Monsters and Marvels, p. 33.
116 A. R. Hall and M. B. Hall (eds and transl.), The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg (Madison, 1965–77), II, p. 277.
117 E. B. Gasking, Investigations Into Generation 1651–1828 (London, 1967), pp. 19–30; S. A. Roe, Matter, Life, and Generation: Eighteenth-century Embryology and the Haller-Wolff Debate (Cambridge, 1981), p. 3.
118 Wilson, Signs and Portents, p. 147.
119 Gasking, Investigations, p. 43.
121 D. Todd, Imagining Monsters (Chicago, 1995), pp. 109–13.
122 Roe, Matter, Life, pp. 8–9.
123 Monti, ‘Epigenesis’, p. 8.
124 Roger, Les Sciences, p. 397; Needham, History of Embryology, p. 187.
125 Monti, ‘Epigenesis’, p. 9.
126 Wilson, Signs and Portents, pp. 151–9.
128 Monti, ‘Epigenesis’, p. 6; Wilson, Signs and Portents, p. 152.
129 Monti, ‘Epigenesis’, pp. 11–12; Wilson, Signs and Portents, pp. 151–2.
130 For example, the sixteenth-century German scholar Martin Weinrich: see Céard, La Nature, pp. 438–49.
131 Lilly, Black Letter Ballads, pp. 63–6.
132 Aristotle, Physica, II, 8.
133 Anon., Gods Handy-Worke in Wonders (London, 1615). See D. Cressy, Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England: Tales of Discord and Dissention (Oxford, 2000), p. 40.
134 Martin Parker, The Two Inseparable Brothers... (London, 1637). On the brothers' subsequent career of self-exhibition, see Thomas Bartholin, Historiarum Anatomicarum Rariorum (Amsterdam, 1654), p. 117, and Christophor Wallrich, Disputatio Physica de Monstris quam Deo Juvante (Wittenberg, 1655).