Read the beginning here.
In the eyes of a true Christian, the chilling appearance of a monster testifies to the infinity of divine fantasy
Ancient heritage
Various monsters and monsters are an integral part of the medieval cosmography, which dates back to Antiquity, where the "others" are the world of the barbarians, that is, everything that is not Greece or Rome. Most of the monsters that fill the medieval maps, all these one-legged and belly-headed mistakes of nature, oddly enough, were images born not in the damp and mossy monastery walls, but among the gardens of beautiful Hellas. Of course, medieval cartographers also used the stories of their contemporaries - pilgrims, travelers and warriors returning from distant campaigns. In this way, Eastern characters fell on European maps.
All this information was placed on the map, like concentric rings revolving around the center of the earth's circle - Jerusalem. And the further the map takes the viewer away from him, the more he sees all sorts of monsters on it. However, there is a significant difference between the ancient and medieval perception of them. In antiquity, strange creatures were considered anomalous curiosities, and in the Middle Ages they were looked upon as one of the wonders of creation.
Whole galleries of monsters in several registers occupy the south side of most of the monastery maps. In the extreme north, where the terrible cold reigns, there are also "other people", but in smaller numbers. Monsters also live in the east, both on T-O type maps and on zonal ones. Later maps: Ebstorf Map, Hereford Mappa Mundi and Psalter maps of the 13th century - monsters are present throughout the field. On the Ebstorf map, you can count 24 types of "other people"; on the Hereford map, 20 monsters are included in the bestiary.
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Husbands of the Amazons
Who were these "other people", and were they human? The question is fundamental for the Middle Ages. If these are people - they should be converted to Christianity, if not - they can be destroyed as needed, like any other animals (by the way, the same question will arise in relation to the American Indians).
Of course, we know nothing about most of the monsters, except for their name and appearance, maybe some habits. But as for the cinephalous people, people with the head of a dog, or pseglavians, there is an opportunity to "untangle the ball". Therefore, we will dwell on them in more detail.
Fragment of the Hereford Map (c. 1290). From the legends on the map: “They say that near the mountains of Armenia women are born, dressed in skins, their beards reach down to their breasts, they use not dogs for hunting, but tigers, leopards and other wild animals”.
In ancient times, cinephals were placed on the border of Iran and India. But in the Middle Ages, most cartographers moved them north. According to the English historian Ian Wood, the reason for this was the stories of Christian missionaries who faced the peoples living in Scandinavia in the early Middle Ages (until the 11th century). Archaeological data show that the cult of a dog or a wolf was widespread here. For example, in the harbor of Hedeby (Denmark), several felt masks of the 8th century were found, skillfully reproducing dog faces. And in Torslund (Sweden), archaeologists come across metal covers on clothes in the form of wolf-like figures with human legs.
In the Middle Ages, in contrast to ancient times, it was believed that only men could be cinephalous. The Amazons gave birth to them. The boys were Pseglawites, the girls were ordinary people. Wood suggests that such a difference between men and women in Scandinavians indicates the presence of closed male unions, found in almost all primitive peoples. It was believed that these communities were headed by a totemic ancestor, in our case - a dog, so all the men of the tribe at the right time (war, hunting, rituals) "turned" into dogs. Women were forbidden to do this.
But where did the Amazons come from in Scandinavia? Probably, there were tribes on the Baltic coast, the entire male population of which left the community in the summer. Similar examples are known in Africa and America. In our case, men most likely went north for iron ore or skins of northern animals. Summer was then the only time of the year when traders from continental Europe ventured across the Baltic Sea. It is possible that their stories formed the basis of the myth of the Amazons in northern Europe.
Full-fledged people were not immediately recognized in the cinema. For example, the Aethici Istrici Cosmographia (Cosmography of the Ethics of the Istrian), dating from the middle of the 8th century, tells of a trip around the world, made either in the 3rd century or in the 5th-6th centuries. The ethicist reports in particular:
These tongues walk with bare feet, improve the condition of the hair by smearing it with oils and grease, which makes them emit a disgusting stench. They live in filth, feed on the reserved meat of unclean four-legged animals - mice, moles and others. They do not have real houses; they use shelters covered with cloth in thickets and hard-to-reach places, in swamps and in thickets of reeds.
The author of "Cosmography" himself has not been to Scandinavia, and, according to him, he received information from German traders.
It is curious that the picture changed already in the 9th century. Now the cinephals were presented by the people following the "social prescriptions". They no longer walk naked like animals, but plow and reap, engage in crafts. These are quite reasonable people, or rather "monsters who came out of the human race", like pygmies or giants (the human nature of the latter is confirmed in the Bible, take Goliath, for example). In general, it is quite possible to deal with them. According to Wood, the change in perceptions about the Pseglawers is probably the result of a reduction in cultural distances and, accordingly, a weakening of cultural "filters" between the authors of the descriptions and their subject of interest. Now missionaries who preached on the shores of the Baltic Sea wrote about the Pseglawites. Apparently, the German merchants, on whom the author of "Cosmography" relied at one time, added much of themselves to the Scandinavian legends.
Holy cinephalus
By this time, the Pseglavians even had their own heavenly intercessor - Saint Christopher, who in 250 was martyred in Lycia. Oddly enough, Christopher was originally depicted with the head of a dog. In later legends, this was explained by a divine miracle performed through the prayer of the saint. According to one version, the preacher in this way convinced the pagans of the truth of the Christian faith. On the other, Christopher did not want to lead girls into temptation who listened to his sermons with his beauty. But in fact, the origin of the legend about the dog's head of the saint was quite different.
One of the first biographies of Saint Christopher was written by the German poet and bishop Walter von Speyer (963–1027), who used the word “canineus”, which does not exist in Latin, for his hero. The word obviously made one think of canis, a dog, although it was most likely just the Germanic equivalent of cananeus, which meant a native of the "land of Canaan," a small region on the west bank of the Jordan. This hypothesis was indirectly confirmed by the Book of Numbers (13:34), which says that Canaan is the land of monsters (without specifying which ones). Accordingly, Christopher, as a Canaanite by birth, could not help but be a Pseglave.
Over time, the misunderstanding cleared up, but Christopher's pseudonymity remained, they just began to explain it in a different way, as we have already spoken about. By the 13th century, the Catholic Church had already moved away from such an extravagant image of the saint, returning him to a human appearance. But in Orthodoxy, Christopher's pseudonymity persisted until the 16th century. Until now, in some old churches one can find the image of the holy cinephalus, although in most cases his face was rewritten.
In the famous Catalan atlas of Abraham Cresques (1375), the country of Gog and Magog found its place in the region of present-day Chukotka. This land in the extreme northeast is surrounded on all sides by high mountains. In the center there is a foot army on the march, led by a ruler with slanting eyes (an allusion to the nomadic steppe inhabitants) on a gray horse, dressed in blue clothes and under a blue canopy
Monster Industry
The world, created by cartographers, literally "burst" with monsters and unusual creatures. So, according to the Hereford map, to the north of the Caucasus lives a manticore - a monster with a human face and the body of a lion. In the Caspian region and further in Asia, there are monsters similar to the Minotaur, "suitable for combat, although mainly used in the army of the enemy of the human race." In the Egyptian desert, a satyr is depicted who probably tempted Saint Anthony (Άγιος Αντώνιος ο Μέγας, 251–356); somewhere in Persia live one-eyed people (manokuli), hypopods (creatures with horse hooves) and sciopods - people who run fast on a single leg.
On the Ebstorf map, the monster breeding ground is located in Ethiopia. There dwells "a tribe without a language, whose representatives are explained by nods and gestures"; four-eyed Ethiopians; psillas that are not afraid of snake venom; creatures with a flat face; some three-armed hairy people living in the swamps; ichthyophages that feed only on fish and drink salty sea water; some mouthless creatures who "support their existence, inhaling the smell of apples, and if they feel any stench, they die"; amiktirs, whose huge front lip covers the whole body … The list can be extended indefinitely. But the trinity was especially popular - panotii, blemii and donestra.
The appearance of panotias can serve as no less than a prototype of Cheburashka. On the Ebstorf map in the extreme northeast, they are depicted with huge ears, and it is said about them: "Panotias live here, they have ears so large that they can cover their body." For the first time, the warriors of Alexander the Great ('Aλέξανδρος ο Μακεδών, 356–323 BC) encountered the stories of panotias in India. Many historians suggest that the legends about them are a distant echo of the invasion of the Aryans (Indo-Europeans) to Hindustan in the II millennium BC. The fact is that the Aryans pulled back their ears with heavy earrings. In the memory of the indigenous population of India, they remained - more eared.
Blemies are creatures with a face on their belly. Typically, Blemies were depicted in Ethiopia or at the edge of the Nubian Desert. Historians associate them with the tribe of the same name that lived in these places during the Roman Empire. The Blemies were distinguished by their cruelty and belligerence, causing many problems for the Roman governors in Egypt. It was believed that they are very bloodthirsty and make human sacrifices. The myth of bellyhead stuck to the blemies, probably due to the peculiarities of their protective weapons - they depicted a human face on their shields and chest armor. From a great distance, it really could seem that their faces are at the level of the abdomen.
Donestra are unique creatures living on the islands in the Red Sea. Their uniqueness lay in the ability to speak all languages. In the medieval picture of the world, this skill was associated only with the apostles, who became polyglots after the descent of the Holy Spirit. But unlike the apostles, donestra did not save, but destroyed people. Their image is a manifestation of the peculiarity of medieval consciousness: everything in the world must have an opposite pair. From head to waist, the donestr was ugly. Judging by the miniatures, he looked like a mixture of a toad and a lion. From waist to toe, this is a man. Despite their ugliness, the donestra were very courteous and quickly won over the traveler. But as soon as he lost his vigilance, the monster grabbed and ate him. Then it used to cry for a long time over the severed head of its victim.
This is my homeland …
Now let's see who the cartographers of the land of Russia inhabited, who were at the far reaches of the Oykumene.
Since ancient times, the border of the civilized world in the east was limited by the Tanais River, traditionally identified with the Don, and in the north and northeast - by the mythical mountain range called the Riphean, or Hyperborean mountains, behind which the kingdom of darkness was located. The mountains were named Riphean because of the incessant strong winds blowing in these latitudes: in Greek, "riffen" means "strong blow". Somewhere here lived the accursed peoples Gog and Magog. Abbon de Fleury (c. 945-1004) in his book "Life of Edmund" called the Hyperborean mountains "the concentration of world evil", from where the wicked Normans, who were "the devil's instrument", and from where the nations will come out, who will make up the army of the Antichrist (we, therefore).
Fragment of a copper planisphere, the so-called "Planisphere of Cardinal Borgia" (15th-17th centuries). It depicts lands belonging to the territory of modern Russia. In the north, pagans worship a huge head hanging on a crossbar, fire worshipers are depicted near the Rostov Sea, and Amazons are shown in the north of the Perm Territory. You can also see in the upper right corner the scene of the battle of Alexander the Great with the accursed nations. Directly opposite the viewer, the cartographer placed outlandish animals. The largest of these is the manticore (with a lion's head and wings). She was considered one of the most ferocious man-eating monsters
And on the Ebstorf map in the northern reaches of Scythia (as the Europeans called all the lands beyond the Don), an anthropophagus is depicted near the ocean, and under it is an eloquent legend: “Anthropophages live here, people are very fast, since they have legs like horses (not here the origins of the sayings about the love of Russians for fast driving? - I. F.). They feed on human flesh and blood. " This is confirmed by the planisphere map of 1448, compiled by Andreas Walsperger (1415–?). On it, not far from the city of "Norgadia" (Novgorod), there is an image of a giant cannibal, furiously eating his victim, a Western missionary or a compatriot - unknown.
On the 1550 world map of the famous French cartographer Pierre Desceliers (1500–1558) in the northeast of Muscovy in the “Colmogora” (Kholmogory) region there is a miniature depicting a Russian hunter-fisherman (or an eschatological warrior from the Gog and Magog clan?), dressed in skins, with a gun in his hands and a dog's muzzle.
On the Hereford map we read:
Riphean mountains. This area is called Apterophone, where eternal cold reigns. Behind the Riphean mountains, the Scythians of the interior regions live in caves, and their life is very harsh. Their drinking bowls are made from the skulls of their enemies … Scythians love to fight and drink blood from the wounds of those killed.
Nearby live Essedon - people who eat their own parents at festive feasts, believing that this is much better than leaving them prey to worms; the people of the Griste, who "cover themselves and their horses as blankets with the skin of their slain enemies."
Representatives of the normal fauna in the Russian borders are practically not found on the monastic maps of the world, except that on the Ebstorf map near Kiev the wild beast "urus" (tur, bison) grazes on the Dnieper fields, which can later be found on the maps of Sigismund Herberstein (Siegmund Freiherr von Herberstein, 1486-1566).
Against the background of this bleak picture, one thing consoles - on the Ebstofsky map, where the world is the Body of Christ, the Russian lands are right under the right hand of the Savior and the text from the Psalter: "The right hand of the Lord creates power!" (Psalm 117: 16). And no matter how far Russia is from the civilized world, most of the Western European maps have an eastern orientation, which means that near our Hyperborean country, fenced off from Europe by mountains and border pillars, there is the border of Eden - Earthly Paradise …