BONE FIRES AND DRAGON SPERM
1. Translated by Benjamin Bertrand and Scott G. Bruce from John Beleth, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis 137, ed. J. P. Migne, in Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina 202 (Paris: Apud editorem, 1855), cols. 141–42.
2. Psalms 148:7.
3. Modern Sebastia, a Palestinian village northwest of the city of Nablus, where Saint John the Baptist was thought to be buried.
THE PROPHECIES OF MERLIN
1. Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain 7.3, trans. Lewis Thorpe (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), pp. 166–71.
2. The pagan philosopher and storyteller Apuleius (ca. 124–ca. 170 CE) wrote On the God of Socrates (De deo Socratis) about the nature of daemones, which he described as invisible intermediaries between the heavens and the earth.
THE DEVIL IS THE LARGEST SERPENT
1. Translated by Benjamin Bertrand and Scott G. Bruce from De bestis et rebus aliis libri quatuor 23–24 and 34, ed. J. P. Migne, in Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina 177 (Paris: Apud editorem, 1879), cols. 69–72 and 99–100.
2. The “naturalist” (physiologus) is the name given to the putative author of a second-century collection of Christian moral stories about animals from which the medieval bestiary tradition drew its inspiration.
3. Ephesians 4:8.
4. Here the author quotes verbatim the chapter on dragons from Isidore’s Etymologies (see pp. 85–86, above).
5. Luke 1:35.
6. There are two accounts of the death of Judas in the New Testament (Matthew 27:1–10 and Acts 1:18), but neither directly implicates a demon as the agent of his demise.
HUNTING MONSTERS IN KARA-JANG
1. Marco Polo, The Travels 4, trans. R. E. Latham (New York: Penguin Books, 1958), pp. 178–80.
A THEOLOGIAN CONTEMPLATES THE NATURE OF DRAGONS
1. Translated by Anthony Kaldellis from Pseudo-John of Damascus, De draconibus, ed. J. P. Migne, in Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Graeca 94 (Paris: Apud editorem, 1864), cols. 1600–1604.
2. Here the author may be referring to legendary stories about the birth of Alexander the Great, in which his mother, Olympias, was seduced by the Egyptian sorcerer Nectanebo, who came to her bed disguised as the god Ammon of Libya in the form of a serpent or dragon. For a version of this story, see The Greek Alexander Romance 1.4–14, trans. Richard Stoneman (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), pp. 37–47.
3. Genesis 2:9.
4. Cassius Dio was a Roman senator of Greek origin in the early third century CE who wrote a history of Rome, in which he repeated the story of Regulus and the dragon of Bagrada River well known from Silius Italicus’s Punica (see pp. 18–22, above).
5. It is not clear which “tendon” the author means.
WHY DRAGONS FEAR LIGHTNING
1. Translated by Anthony Kaldellis from Michael Psellos, De meteorologicis, ed. J. M. Duffy and D. J. O’Meara, Michaelis Pselli philosophical minora, vol. 1: Opuscula logica, physica, allegorica, alia (Stuttgart and Leipzig: De Gruyter, 1992), pp. 69–76.
A DEMON IN DISGUISE
1. Translated by Anthony Kaldellis from Acta sanctae Marinae et sancti Christophori, ed. H. Usener, in Festschrift zür fünften Säcularfeier der Carl-Ruprechts-Universität zu Heidelberg (Bonn: Universitätsbuchdruckerei von C. Georgi, 1886), pp. 25–30.
THE TREASURY DRAGON OF CONSTANTINOPLE
1. Translated by Anthony Kaldellis from Βίος καὶ πολιτεία καὶ ἄθλησις τοῦ ἁγίου ἱερομάρτυρος Ὑπατίου ἐπισκόπου πόλεως Γαγγρῶν τῆς τῶν Παφλαγόνων ἐπαρχίας 8–19, ed. S. Ferri, in “Il Bios e il Martyrion di Hypatios di Gangrai,” Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici 3 (1931): 69–103, at pp. 80–82.
2. Acts 28:3–5.
THE TERROR OF TREBIZOND
1. Translated by Anthony Kaldellis from Ἰωσὴφ τοῦ χρηματίσαντος μητροπολίτου Τραπεζοῦντος Λόγος ὡς ἐν συνόψει διαλαμβάνων τὴν γενέθλιον ἡμέραν τοῦ ἐν θαύμασι περιβοήτου καὶ μεγαλάθλου Εὐγενίου, ed. J. O. Rosenqvist, in The Hagiographic Dossier of Saint Eugenius of Trebizond in Codex Athous Dionysiou 154 (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1996), pp. 220–25.
THE OGRE-DRAGON’S PITILESS HEART
1. Translated by Anthony Kaldellis from Τὸ κατὰ Καλλίμαχον καὶ Χρυσορρόην ἐρωτικὸν διήγημα, verses 473–693, ed. M. Pichard, in Le roman de Callimaque et de Chrysorrhoé (Paris: Les Belles-Lettres, 1956), pp. 18–26.
THE DRAGON AND THE LION
1. Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances, trans. William W. Kibler (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), p. 337.
A DRAGON WITH THE DEVIL INSIDE
1. Translated by Douglass Hamilton from Les Chétifs, lines 1594–614, 2473–571, 2660–726, 2786–95, and 2799–869, ed. Geoffrey M. Myers, in The Old French Crusade Cycle, Volume V: Les Chétifs (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1981), pp. 38, 57–59, 61–63, and 64–66.
2. The story is set in the Taurus Mountains in eastern Turkey, through which the Tigris River runs.
3. The league was a flexible unit of distance measurement in the Middle Ages, varying from region to region, but averaging about three miles.
4. The name Sathanas evokes the name “Satan,” who was often associated with a dragon.
5. Baldwin took vengeance for the murder of his brother Ernoul by the dragon.
6. Michael is the archangel who defeats Satan in the form of a great red dragon as described in the Book of Revelation. See pp. 34–35, above.
7. Longinus was the Roman soldier who pierced the side of Jesus Christ with his spear while he hung on the cross (John 15:34). He was not named in the New Testament, but he appeared by name in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, which was widely read throughout the Middle Ages.
8. John 11:1–44.
9. This refers to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem constructed under the Umayyad Dynasty (661–750). After the taking of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, crusaders referred to this building as the Temple of Solomon, after the holy temple of the same name in ancient Jerusalem that was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BCE.
10. The preacher Peter the Hermit was the leader of the more popular contingent of the crusading army, sometimes called the People’s Crusade. This army was soundly defeated at the Battle of Civetot (1096) and those taken prisoner as a result are the eponymous chétifs, the captives of the Saracens.
11. Saint Denis, a legendary third-century bishop of Paris, is the patron saint of France. He appeared often in medieval vernacular French works.
12. The invocation of these particular saints was not arbitrary. They all had strong associations to the Frankish heartlands or to pilgrimage routes associated with crusading, were proven intercessors for those held in captivity, or were military saints with appeal to a noble audience. Saint George was renowned as a dragon-slayer (see pp. 155–57, below).
13. That is, Baldwin experienced a joy greater than receiving the prosperous city of Rohais (modern Edessa in southeast Turkey) as a fief. In the Middle Ages, an “honor” was a technical term which came to mean something akin to a fief.
14. In medieval stories, demons often took the form of black birds when fleeing the bodies of the possessed. See, for example, the twelfth-century account of the miracles of Saint Modwenna by Abbot Geoffrey of Burton in The Penguin Book of the Undead: Fifteen Hundred Years of Supernatural Encounters, ed. Scott G. Bruce (New York: Penguin Books, 2016), p. 126.
15. Medieval Christians employed the pejorative term “Saracen” to describe all Muslims, Turks, and Arabs during the crusading period.
16. The bezant was a unit of Byzantine or Islamic currency measured in gold coins. Its value varied depending on the place of issue.
17. Jongleurs were French minstrels and entertainers who sang chansons de geste and other French songs to lords at their courts.
FOUR SAINTLY DRAGON-SLAYERS
1. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Selections, trans. Christopher Stace (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), pp. 116–18.
2. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea, ed. T. Graesse, 3rd ed. (Breslau: Koebner, 1890), pp. 78–79.
3. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, pp. 162–63.
4. The name Margaret derives from the Latin word for “pearl” (margarita).
5. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, pp. 183–84.
THE DRAGONS OF FAIRYLAND
1. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen, Book 1, Cantos 1 and 11, ed. Thomas J. Wise, in Spenser’s Faerie Queene (London: George Allen, 1897), pp. 8–14 and 213–31.
2. The summaries of the topic of each stanza are modern devices intended to guide the reader.
3. Una’s dwarf companion represented Common Sense.
4. Redcrosse is a “valient Elfe,” that is, a knight of Fairyland.
5. These “bookes and papers” allude to the pamphlets attacking Queen Elizabeth and the reformed church by the papal see and the Jesuits.
6. Here Spenser calls upon Clio, the Muse of History, who is the daughter of Apollo (Phoebus).
7. A furlong is a medieval unit of measurement about 660 feet long, or one-eighth of a mile.
8. A longbow made from the wood of a yew tree.
9. On the labors of Hercules, see pp. 5–6, above.
10. Here Spenser compares the restorative properties of the Well of Life with other famous springs: the pool of Siloam where Jesus healed the blind man (John 9:1–11); the Jordan River where Naaman was cured of his leprosy (2 Kings 5:14); the medicinal spas at Bath in England and at Spau in Belgium; and the Cephise and Hebrus Rivers in Greece, both of which were renowned for the purity of their waters.
11. Phoebus is the sun god Apollo, whose golden chariot represents the sun.
12. Titan is the sun.
13. Here Spenser compares the risen knight to an eagle. It was once believed that eagles molted and renewed their plumage every ten years by flying high into the sky and then plunging into the ocean, from which they emerged with new feathers.
14. Cerberus was the monstrous three-headed dog that guarded the gates of the underworld in Greco-Roman mythology.
15. Mount Aetna (modern Etna) was—and still is—an active volcano in Sicily.
16. The Tree of Life was one of two trees in the Garden of Eden, the other being the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. See Genesis 2:9.
17. Aurora was the goddess of the dawn. Her lover was Tithonus, a mortal prince of Troy. Zeus granted him immortality at Aurora’s request, but not eternal youth, so he aged forever.
A FARTING DRAGON BURLESQUE
1. Anonymous, “The Dragon of Wantley,” in Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, ed. Thomas Percy, 3 vols., 3rd edition (London: John Nichols, 1794), vol. 3, pp. 297–308.
2. Like Spenser’s character the Redcrosse Knight, the martial exploits of More of More-Hall surpassed those of the ancient hero Hercules. See pp. 5–6, above.
3. The description of the dragon of Wantley owes much to Spenser.
4. The modern village of Wortley is about nine miles from Rotherham in South Yorkshire.
5. Wortley lies about ten miles north of the city of Sheffield.
6. This stanza recalls the role of the Well of Life in Redcrosse’s battle with the dragon in The Faerie Queene.
THE GREAT SERPENT RETURNS
1. John Milton, Paradise Lost: A Poem in Twelve Books, Book 10, lines 504–47, 2nd ed. (London: S. Simmons, 1674), pp. 266–67.
2. Milton borrowed this catalogue of exotic serpents from the description of the progeny of Medusa in Lucan’s Civil War. See pp. 7–10, above.
3. Python was a giant serpent in Greek mythology that lived at the shrine of Delphi until it was slain by the god Apollo. In premodern Europe, Python was often depicted as a dragon with wings and limbs.
THE DRAGON OF DROUGHT
1. The Rig Veda 1.32, trans. Wendy Doniger (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), pp. 149–51.
A BLACK WIND FROM THE SEA
1. Al-Masudi, Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems, trans. Aloys Sprenger (London: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1841), vol. 1, pp. 291–93.
NO ONE EVER ESCAPES MY CLAWS
1. Abolqasem Ferdowsi, Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings, trans. Dick Davis (New York: Penguin Books, 2016), pp. 154–55.
THE EIGHT-HEADED SERPENT OF KOSHI
1. Ō No Yasumaro, Kojiki 1.18, trans. Basil Hall Chamberlain (Tokyo: Asiatic Society of Japan, 1906), pp. 71–73 (modified). Chamberlain rendered several character names as long and sometimes awkward strings of hyphenated nouns, so for readability I have replaced three of them with the names “Rushing Raging Man,” “Great Mountain Majesty,” and “Heaven Shining” from the translation of Kojiki by Gustav Heldt (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), pp. 25–27.
CHIEF OF THE SCALY CREATURES
1. Li Shizhen, Bencao Gangmu, trans. Carla Nappi, in The Monkey and the Inkpot: Natural History and Its Transformations in Early Modern China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 56.
MY LORD BAG OF RICE
1. The Japanese Fairy Book, trans. Yei Theodora Ozaki (New York: P. Dutton and Company, 1908), pp. 1–11.
THE FISHERMAN AND THE DRAGON PRINCESS
1. The Japanese Fairy Book, trans. Yei Theodora Ozaki (New York: P. Dutton and Company, 1908), pp. 26–42.
2. In Japanese folklore, ghosts are depicted without legs or feet.
STRANGE, YET NOW A NEIGHBOUR TO US
1. Anonymous, A Discourse Relating a Strange and Monstrous Serpent or Dragon (London: John Trundle, 1614).
2. Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford Univesity Press, 1999), p. 45.
3. Here the pamphlet printed the Latin text of Lucan’s Civil War 9.771: Noxia serpentum est admixto sanguine pestis. See pp. 7-10, above.
A WORLD FULL OF DRAGONS
1. Edward Topsell, The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents (London: E. Cotes, 1658), pp. 701–16.
2. Onesicritus (ca. 360–ca. 290 BCE) was a Hellenistic historian who accompanied Alexander the Great on campaign and later wrote a history about him.
3. Chios is an island in the northern Aegean Sea off the west coast of Turkey.
4. Legends about the adventures of Alexander the Great circulated widely in the Middle Ages in Latin and vernacular languages. His encounters with dragons were often illuminated in medieval manuscripts. A cubit was a unit of measurement based on the distance between a grown man’s fingertips and elbow (about eighteen inches).
5. A buckler is a small round shield, usually measuring no more than eighteen inches in diameter.
6. Maximus of Tyre (fl. late second century CE) was a Greek philosopher. A rood of land is an archaic unit of land measurement equal in length to one quarter of an acre. Since an acre with equal sides has approximately 209 feet per side, Maximus is describing a serpent slightly over fifty feet in length.
7. Several Hellenistic monarchs had the name Euregetes (“Benefactor”), so it is difficult to narrow down Topsell’s temporal reference. Asclepius was the god of medicine and healing often associated with snakes. The symbol of his serpent-entwined rod remains in use today as a logo for medical institutions.
8. The “equinoctial” is the equator. Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos (ca. 1256–ca. 1335) was an ecclesiastical historian active in Byzantium in the decades around 1300.
9. Here Topsell is making reference to Augustine of Hippo’s Exposition on Psalm 148:7. For a convenient translation of this passage, see Augustine, Expositions on the Book of Psalms, in The Nicen
e and Post-Nicene Fathers: First Series, Volume 8 (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1888), pp. 1466–67.
10. For the story of Regulus and the dragon of the river Bagrada, see pp. 18–22, above.
11. Epidaurus was a small Greek city in the western Peloponnese.
12. A paraphrase of Augustine of Hippo’s Exposition on Psalm 148:7. See n. 9, above.
13. The word derkein means “to see” in Greek.
14. Phrygia was an ancient kingdom in western Anatolia, in what is now modern Turkey.
15. The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BCE) wrote about the anatomy and habits of hundreds of species of animals.
16. The Greek author Plutarch (ca. 46–ca. 119 CE) wrote about the intelligence of animals in his Moralia.
17. The Ring of Gyges is a legendary magical item that makes its wearer invisible. The Greek philosopher Plato (ca. 425–348 BCE) makes reference to it in his dialogue The Republic.
18. Megasthenes (ca. 350–ca. 290 BCE) was a Hellenistic historian who wrote a lost description of India.
19. A stirax (now commonly, storax) is a kind of large shrub or small tree native to warm regions.
20. King Francis I ruled the kingdom of France from 1515 to 1547.
21. Conrad Gessner (1515–65) was a Swiss naturalist who wrote about zoology and botany.
22. Jerome Cardan (1501–76) was an Italian scholar with an interest in natural science.
23. Mauritius Tiberius was the emperor of Byzantium from 582 to 602.
24. Justinus Gobler (1503/4–67) was a legal scholar based in Frankfurt.
25. This story was popularized in the Roman period by Plutarch in his account of the life of Cleomenes III, who was king of Sparta from 235 to 222 BCE.
26. Scipio Africanus (236/5–183 BCE) was a much-admired Roman military commander during the time of the Second Punic War.
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