Keywords: Hand Gesture, cynocephali, barking, John of Plano Carpini, Martin Waldseemüller The dog-headed cynocephali were frequently depicted with their hands raised or pointing. Hand gestures were recognised in ancient Greece and Rome as a part of universal human expression, used for persuasive and emotive discourse (Kendon, 2004, p. 17). As the Roman rhetorician, Marcus Fabius… Continue reading Cynocephali and Signs of ‘Barbarous’ Language
Witches in Sixteenth-Century Germany: The belief in witches, what they were accused of and why 'The witch trials demonstrated fear of the power of women’s sexuality. The female witch was understood to be a product of woman’s excessive carnal lust who were affiliated with fornication and orgies with the Devil. This made them more susceptible… Continue reading Halloween Compilation 2022
Keywords: New World, cynocephali, Native Americans, Cannibalism, Lorenz Fries With the discovery of the Americas, there was a natural decline in the interest in monstrous races, as that was superseded by the interest in real marvels of the New World. However, the legacy of the monstrous races persisted to the mid-sixteenth century. After the discovery… Continue reading Imagining the New World: Representations of Cannibalistic Cynocephali in Lorenz Fries’ Uslegung der Mercarthen oder Carta Marina
Keywords: Cynocephali, John Mandeville, Ox-worship, Christian conversion, St. Christopher The cynocephali depicted in Otto von Diemeringen’s German translations of late-fifteenth century editions of John Mandeville's Travels mirror Christian practices of worship. Not only do they kneel before their god, like Christians, but one cynocephalus in a Strasbourg 1499 edition was portrayed clasping his hands in… Continue reading Ox-worshipping Cynocephali in Mandeville’s Travels: Christian Conversion of Pagan Heathens
Keywords: Monstrous Births, Bestiality, Jews, Monstrous Races, Cynocephali A tale spread across Europe during the sixteenth century of a monstrous birth that possessed the legs and a curled tale of a canine, and the upper body of a young boy. An illustrative woodcut of the ‘dog boy’ posed like an ethnographic portrait appeared in Konrad… Continue reading Bestiality and Human-Animal Hybrids: Inter-Faith Relations and the Corruption of the Christian Body
Dana K Rehn 