Dr Thomas Wood considers how people in central Europe interacted with ‘dragons’ during the Early Modern period.
Dragons are perhaps one of the most captivating mythical beasts, having stalked the edges of human imagination from the earliest days of our species. Although fictitious, early modern people believed that there were many ways you could experience a dragon first hand, whether the creatures be alive or dead. Centuries of purported dragon sightings, their inclusion in works of natural history, and the appearance of such monsters in scripture made the existence of dragons largely unquestionable in sixteenth and seventeenth century European society. Though dragon sightings were uncommon occurrences, they were nevertheless treated as an animal like any other, with many speculating on their diet, reproductive habits, and where they made their homes. Though it was generally not advisable to go looking for dragons in the wild, it was understood there were some places you could go and be guaranteed a glimpse of these terrible monsters without having to wait for one to come to you.
Before we think about where early modern people could go to see a dragon, it is worth noting that there were many parts of Europe where dragons were not considered to be native. The amateur natural historian Adriaen Coenen (1514-1587) included draconic creatures in his 1578 Visboeck but assured his readers that dragons were not native to his homeland, writing that ‘Dragons and Basilisks are fearful creatures, but, as far as I know, none have ever been seen in Holland’.1 A similar sentiment was echoed in a pamphlet published in London in 1614 that related an extraordinary dragon sighting in Sussex. In this pamphlet, the author similarly exclaims that ‘Our country does not naturally breed them’. 2 Though a piece of wonder literature mostly concerned with decrying the sins of England which the monster allegedly represents, the remark in this pamphlet that dragons are not native creatures shows that the English did not generally consider dragons to be contemporary phenomenon in their part of the world at this time in their history.
Despite many places having rich draconic histories, many people living in them in the early modern period no longer believed that dragons were native to their lands. Some cities, like Klagenfurt in Austria, were allegedly founded following the death of the local dragon while others, like Metz, routinely celebrated the expulsion of such monsters from their city by local saints. Dragons may have been there once, but early modern people were assured that you wouldn’t find them there now.
Some places however, had a rich history of dragon habitation that continued through to the latter half of the seventeenth century. For example, in his Mundus Subterraneus (1665), Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) highlighted the Swiss city of Lucerne as having many historical and near-contemporary dragon-sightings, suggesting that the neighbouring Mount Pilatus played host to many dragon lairs.3 One oft repeated story involves a man who fell
into a cave on Mount Pilatus and found himself not only unable to escape, but also trapped with two dragons. The creatures did not kill him, however, and he was able to subsist off of licking moisture from the rocks, just as the Dragons did. He was finally able to escape the cave by holding onto one of the dragon’s tails when they flew out of the mountain one day, letting go when he was not too far from the ground. He returned to Lucerne and had the story of his ordeal recorded, but soon died when he tried returning to an ordinary diet.
It is in caves such as these that many dragons were thought to live, sequestered away from the civilised world, an ominous threat hidden deep in the bowels of the earth. Indeed, the bones of ancient cave bears were often mistaken for those of dragons and wherever these bones were found dragons were believed to have lived. For example, we can find drawings of ‘dragon bones’ found in difficult to access caves in the Carpathian mountains in the 1672 work De draconum Carpathicorum cavernis by Johannes Hain, and sites across this mountain range that remain of interest to palaeologists still possess draconic names like ‘Drachenhöhle Cave’ and ‘Drachenlock Cave’.4
For those who did not mistakenly fall into draconic caves, or bravely venture out into the mountains in search of dragons, it was still possible to have a first hand experience with these draconic beasts. Usually, this was through the viewing of the remains of dragons that had been put on public display. Alleged dragon bones could be found in many churches across early modern Europe, with numerous examples surviving to the present day like those at Wawel Cathedral in Kraków, Murano’s Church of Santa Maria e San Donato, and the Cathedral of San Leucio in Atessa. While relics such as these are in fact whale bones or the fossilised remains of ancient megafauna, to the early modern eye they were proof of dragons who still walked the earth, and extraordinary chances to see with their own eyes the monsters that stalked their folklore and their faith.
Alternatively, if you wanted to witness more substantial specimens, there were many places in early modern Europe you could find entire draconic corpses preserved for a curious spectator. On the smaller end of the scale, in many port towns and cities you could find the dried out bodies of rays and skates that had been mutilated to appear like miniature dragons. These ‘dragons’, known to contemporaries as ‘Jenny Haviners’, were known fakes and had been debunked by naturalists like Conrad Gessner (1516-1565), but still managed to attract the attentions of rapt audiences and collectors of curios who wished to own a tiny dead dragon alike. 5 Larger-scale dragon corpses also existed that only the most discerning of patrons could view, such as the body of a dragon found in Ulisse Aldrovandi’s (1522-1605) museum in Bologna, or the monstrous ‘Hamburg Hydra’ that was famously debunked as a fake made of snakeskin and weasel by Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) in 1735.6
These feats of imagination and taxidermy were perhaps the closest an early modern person could get to having their own first hand experience with dragons, a creature that otherwise was acknowledged as often living far away in remote caves or in the distant past. In early modern Europe the most accessible dragon was a dead one, their existence proved in churches and museums rather than in their natural habitats. For early modern people, this was perhaps fortunate. A dead dragon was no longer a harbinger of fiery ruination and death, but rather an object of wonder and awe, something to be marvelled at and examined instead of something to flee in terror from.
- A. Coenen, Visboek (1578), p. 29.
- Anon, True and wonderfull A discourse relating to a strange and monstrous serpent (or dragon) lately discouered, and yet liuing, to the great annoyance and diuers slaughters both of men and cattell, by his strong and violent poyson, in Sussex two miles from Horsam, in a woode called S. Leonards Forrest, and thirtie miles from London, this present month of August. 1614. (London, 1614).
- A. Kircher, Mundus Subterraneus Vol. 2 (Rome, 1665), pp. 89-97.
- M. Sabol, ‘A short history of cave bear research in Slovakia’ in Aragonit 22/1 (2017), pp. 3-6.
- C. Gessner, Historia animalium Vol. 4 (Zurich, 1558), p. 945
- C. Linnaeus, Systema naturae (Leiden, 1735), p. 11.
Dr Thomas Wood has recently completed his PhD at the University of Birmingham, funded by the Midlands-4-Cities doctoral training partnership. His thesis explored the significance of serpents and dragons as cultural phenomenon in the changing religious landscape of sixteenth and seventeenth century Germany; examining the uses and abuses of these symbols in a diverse range of contexts: from witch trials and providential literature, to scientific discourse and folklore. He is currently preparing this research for publication in a monograph provisionally titled: ‘The Reformation of the Dragon’. Outside of his studies Thomas is the editor-in-chief of the Midlands Historical Review open access journal, and is keen to promote the work of postgraduate and early career researchers in academic publishing.