Gone Medieval - Dragons: From Eden to Middle Earth

Episode Date: July 29, 2025

Step into a torch-lit world where dragons weren’t just monsters—they were symbols of power, chaos, faith and fear. Dr. Eleanor Janega explores the fire-breathing creatures that haunted the imagination of the Middle Ages. From the serpentine wyrms lurking beneath castles to the crowned basilisks whose gaze could kill, dragons shaped medieval mythology, religion and heraldry in profound ways.Eleanor is joined by Dr. Sam Riches to uncover how dragons were used to represent everything from Satanic evil to royal might.MOREMonsters of the Medieval Apocalypsehttps://open.spotify.com/episode/54HitUMboNBFWtOJQhvH3HMedieval Monsters, Ghosts & Werewolveshttps://open.spotify.com/episode/0daEokZMvacfQVvHeHcZyeGone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. It was edited by Tim Arstall, the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world,

to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanorianica and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were. And how we got here.

I want you to picture a torchlit world where monks illustrate tales of monstrous serpents coiled in the darkness beneath mountains and castles. Knights polish their swords, hearts pounding, as rumors swirl of beasts terrorize and land, with scales like iron, claws like daggers, and breath that scorches the earth. In the flickering firelight, the dragon's silhouette dances, sometimes as a hulking horned lizard with bat-like wings, sometimes as a sinuous, legless worm, or even a crowned serpent, the dreaded basilisk whose gaze alone could kill. Dragons in the medieval period were more than just monsters.

They were symbols. For Christians, they embodied Satan himself, the adversary of saints and angels. We've recently talked about St. George here on Gone Medieval, and do go back and check that episode out. Lance poised George faced the dragon that held a kingdom in terror. But then there was also St. Margaret, swallowed whole by a dragon's form, only to burst free by the power of the power of it. of her faith. But not all dragons were the same. Some, like the greedy Fafnir of Norse legend, hoarded gold in its underground lairs. Its blood was said to hold strange magical powers. Others, like the winged wivorants of heraldry, adorned the banners of kings and conquerors.

They were symbols of might, chaos, and the eternal struggle between good and evil. Dragons slithered across coats of arms. The red dragon of whales. The gold, golden beasts of Uther-Pen-Dragons royal crests. Each was a sign of power, a warning, a promise of glory or doom. In this episode of Gone Medieval, we're going to discover how these mythical monsters shaped the medieval imagination. I'm joined by Dr. Sam Riches, a cultural historian specializing in the late medieval period, with a particular focus on the cultural and historical context of dragons.

particularly their representation in art and mythology. So draw your sword, steady your shield, and step into the darkness with us. Because in the world of the medieval dragon, every shadow hides a story. And every legend begins with a fiery roar. Damn, welcome to God Medieval. Absolute delight to join you today, Eleanor. I am over the moon that you are here because we are going to talk about. I think one of almost everybody's favorite things to talk about when it comes to the Middle Ages, which is something that isn't real.

Controversial, Streis and Rai. Oh, right. Yeah. Come on. I'm out of the gate with it. I'm not afraid to say the big things. But I think that this is true. There's something about our imagination where when we conjure up an idea about the medieval past, who's there?

A dragon. Every time. Every time. Every time. And the people. long for a dragon in their hearts, Sam. And I think that medieval people are 100% on board with this. They like to think about dragons.

They want to draw a dragon. They want to think about a dragon. But it is not as though medieval people came up with the concept of the dragon. Is it? I mean, how far back do we have to go in order to come up with our scaly winged friends? Well, I think dragons have always existed in human consciousness. So certainly as far back. as the earliest written creation stories.

The dragon is right there. I think my favourite is Tiamat, who appears in the epic of Gilgamesh. So we're going back, who knows, 2,000 years before the common era, so about 4,000 years in total. And the reason I like Tiamat so much is because she's a female dragon. I'm sure we'll get to talk more about female. dragons. But yeah, right at the beginning. And there's a similar story of the hero overcoming the

monster in the earliest Hindu texts as well. So probably around the same kind of timing as far as we can tell. I'm by no means an expert on those particular forms of literature relating to dragons, but I think it's worth noting that most of our recorded human cultures have a version of the hero overcoming the monster in order to rescue a woman. The Legend of St. George, the thing that's my real specialism, is simply one version among many of that kind of paradigm. I too have a real soft spot for Tiamot. I had a cat when I was a child whose name was Tiamot. But, you know, inside all of us is a longing for a dragon of some description, I think.

When we say dragon to, I think that can be sort of a confusing one, because, you know, like I have a little figurine of a kind of Babylonian dragon, and they don't look a thing like the dragons that we see in medieval art at all. You know, he's kind of like a little guy with four legs and a little worn on his nose. I think there are these kind of serpent monsters that exist a lot, you know, in Asia and places like that. Or, you know, we can think of dragons in the Eastern Asian conception, which are a lot more friendly and flying. Absolutely. I think one of the essential issues with discussions of Dragon is define your terms because Dragon as a word, as a name, as a noun, gets applied to a huge. range of really quite different sorts of creatures. I think that's the best word I can use. We could call them monsters, but that's a very kind of Western European concept, because

dragons in the east are quite positive. They can be scary, but they are associated often with good fortune, with bringing the rain, they are a sign of good luck. Is that the same creature as the scary, fire breathing, pestilence breathing, literal monsters that we are familiar with in certainly Western medieval tradition? I'm really not sure they're the same thing at all, But the word has become applied to both of these. And also the point you make about your little dragon, they are massively varied in scale, in whether or not they have scales. They're kind of reptilian usually, but not always. Sometimes they have wings.

Sometimes they don't. They can have two legs or four legs or no legs. One head, two heads, many heads. The colours vary. I'm particularly fond of pink dragon. This seems to be a medieval English idea. So it doesn't always mean it's an English dragon if it's pink, but I think it's a pretty good starting point. Elsewhere, of course, red dragons, white dragons, green dragons, multi-coloured, rainbow dragons, all kinds of things are possible.

So there is no consistency and what it means to see a creature and decide that it's a dragon. it's as varied as you wish it to be. So is this sort of one of those I'll know it when I'll see it, kind of do else? Is that what we're saying with the dragon? Maybe. I think, though, it's about a decision having been made by someone who you trust. So it's less about me knowing that it's a dragon,

and it's more about the wise woman from the village or the text that someone has read out to me has identified this thing. as a dragon. And my response to it will be based on the associations that come with it. Certainly, there's very, very strong idea of them as objects of fear and loathing that have to be done away with. And that is something that makes them incredibly powerful when that's turned around, so that they are used as a way of demonstrating a truth. So this is where, the idea of monster is so important because it's the same root as demonstrate. See, this is a really interesting point to be because there is a kind of equivalence to an extent

in where sometimes giant serpents and dragons enter the lexicon. So, you know, from an ancient or an Asian perspective, you know, I'm thinking here of the Hydra that Zeus has to kill. And I suppose I wouldn't necessarily call that a dragon, but I also can't explain to you Why? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. This, again, is one of the kind of complexities around dragons is where do they live? I have one dragon story, a saint encountering a dragon, where the dragon is drowned in the sea. This happens in France. Other dragons absolutely would not drown in the sea because that's where they live. They're water dwelling and Hydra, the name that you mentioned there, is literally a creature of the water.

That is the origin of its name. So, yeah, again, how do you know it's a dragon? It's ultimately because someone that you trust, as an authority, has told you that that's what it is. Often because I am who I am and I study what I study, when I'm thinking about dragons, for me, the number one dragon is the dragon in the book of Revelation, right? So, you know, you get this giant fire-breathing dragon, he's got seven heads. And this doesn't look dissimilar to an extent from the Hydra, although the Hydra's poisonous, not fire breathing.

But we have like many, many head. Lots of talk about a lashing tail, this sort of a thing. So, I mean, is this something when we find these biblical dragons? Would we conflate that with the Greek motifs or Eastern motifs? Or is that just kind of me filling in the gaps? There's an element of continuity and transference that's gone on. So in doing some reading in preparation for our chapter day, one of the things that I came across that I was really interested in

is the idea of a dragon that is kind of the origin of Leviathan, who's mentioned in the Old Testament and then arguably turns up as, an influence on the dragon in Revelation that you mentioned. Now, the dragon that influences Leviathan seems to be from Canaanite tradition. So this is about 1,400 years before the common era. They have a lovely story of the hero, overcoming the monster. It's actually a slippery serpent. So absolutely your point about this overlap between snakes and dragons comes to the fore there. And it's called Lothan and this seems to move into the concept of Leviathan. Again, we can see in Egyptian mythology, we've got Rar or possibly set overcoming APEP, the serpent.

So it's very, very strong set of consistences there. And I think, yes, this does still come to play in Revelation. Now, Revelation is a really interesting set of writings. And I would class it really as mysticism. I'm sure you're aware that St. John, the evangelist, so that the claimed writer of the fourth gospel, is claimed, identified as the writer of the book of Revelation as well. So for argument's sake, we'll just agree that that's who it is at the moment. And John writes, I saw, I saw this, I saw that. It's this very consistent formulation that's used. And in some of our medieval illustrated what we call the apocalypse, this manuscript, which is very popular in England, it usually shows like a room where the thing is happening. So whether it's, in the case we're interested in this dragon. And then there's a window and then John is outside the window and he's looking in through and witnessing what's going on.

My understanding is this is very much about seeing things in your mind's eye. So this is a vision. This is not about something that is meant to be literally happening. And of course it's a vision of the end of times. I think that it's entirely possible that the way that the beast is talked about in the Book of Revelation, is strongly influenced by other forms of mythology, which John as the author is aware of. And so he's calling these things to mind.

However, there is a step beyond it, though, because our beast with its seven heads and its ten horns is specifically identified as a form of the devil. And that is different. So it's almost like a layering on of an additional set of meanings. And I think that characterization in Revelation becomes extremely influential. You've moved away from a fairly neat, good against evil to rescue girl kind of paradigm into something that's much more layered and capable of being manipulated to serve different kinds of needs.

That makes sense. I mean, when we think about, for example, the story of RAA and APEP, you know, APEP is bad. This is a sinful monster. This is a genuine threat to humanity and the gods. But it's not the devil. You know, there's no concept. Apep isn't the thing that is evil.

It's just sort of a manifestation which happens to share a collective set of personality traits, almost I suppose. Whereas by the time we're talking about Revelation, there is this real close association with the devil. And an interesting one as well, because I think that this also then has knock-on effects for biblical interpretations, because then we see this sort of casting back into,

for example, the book of Genesis, and suddenly the serpent there becomes the devil, whereas for a while it's just kind of a serpent. As I mentioned at the beginning, female dragons, that's an area that I'm really interested in. And I think that the serpent in the... garden is one of the really big influences because for medieval, particularly late medieval manuscripts illustrators, so our visual artists, they often would demonstrate that the

serpent was able to speak, because of course it is imbued with speech according to what we read in Genesis. So it has a human head. That's how you demonstrate it can speak visually. And then a step beyond that is to make it into a woman. So you get these amazing images where the image of the serpent and Eve are almost mirror, mirror of one another. The difference is, of course, the serpent finishes with the tail, a bit like a mermaid really, right round a tree. And it's all about the idea that Eve is more culpable than Adam. She got him to sin. and therefore it makes sense that it is a woman who is the tempter as well. So the idea that the serpent, as they were saying the best tree,

what is the greatest of all serpents? It's the dragon. So you then give wings to the tempter in the garden as well. it's a deeply misogynistic reading and it isn't the only way of showing what happens in the Garden of Eden but it is something that comes up pretty consistently and I think that the idea of making the attempt of female taps into that very very profound element of Eve

and the Virgin Mary is the second Eve who reverses everything and the virgin and the whore and all those sorts of misogynistic ideas. But one additional layer I want to put in is this idea. It's very difficult to demonstrate if medieval artists would have known about it. But Lilith, are you familiar with Lilith? Yes, the original starter wife. Absolutely, absolutely. So, Lilith is created at the same time as Adam.

This is the idea that there are two versions in Genesis of, the creation of people. And the first time we have man and woman being created at the same time, and the second time we have woman being created from Adam's rib, and that of course is Eve. So the explanation is that there was a first wife, and she was equal with Adam, and she was uppity. So she had to be cast out of the garden. And Lilith is conflated with, a Babylonian storm demon who runs around the place stealing babies and generally being not very nice to know. I think we can potentially see this deeply negative, very, very scary kind of corruption of femininity, all being bound up in that figure of the tempter as a snake, as a dragon potentially, but certainly as profoundly evil.

We see dragons in lots of classical literature, but then we kind of get to the medieval period. And the average person has actually a pretty good idea about like who Hercules is, right? They could probably tell you about the hydra and this sort of thing. But Siamat, probably less so, but there's still this kind of like lurking about what the problems with dragons may be. And I mean, does that get transmuted into a kind of folk way and come out in places of other than biblical stories? That's really difficult to answer with certainty. My sense is yes, I think you're right.

I think it probably does happen. But because we're dealing with an oral tradition so much, it's very, very late that kind of the folk tales get written down and sometimes they don't get written down at all in some parts of the world. You're dependent upon a folklorist who will collect the story, where people are comfortable and confident talking to them and giving them the unsanitized version and the point you made about the sexuality of dragons is very well made. And I think for some people, this is not an element that they would be really comfortable talking about.

So we end up with these sanitised versions and it's very, very difficult to be specific. What I can do, though, is to tell you a bit about some of my research with St George and the female dragon. So there's a bit of a spate of images of George with a dragon that is clearly female, usually genitalia, sometimes breasts or dugs, and occasionally dragonlets, so baby dragons, she's a mother. But they very much come to the fore at the end of the 15th century going into the early 16th century. And we've even got one written account of George and the Dragon, which is an English translation, early 16th century, from a Latin original. Now, in the Latin, the dragon has no gender. It is just it.

But we come into the English version by Alexander Barclay. And it is consistently she. The dragon is she throughout. Now, there's no particular reason for the dragon to be she. We don't have any discussion of genitals or dugs, breasts, babies even. But what we can see is the persistence of that construction into Edmund Spencer's fairy queen. So the Red Cross night we have, of course, is a form of St George. and we do definitely have a female dragon who turns up there.

So it's kind of if you stand back from it, you can see elements of a continuation of, is folk memory too big a term to use? I'm not sure. But I would say that there's at least a possibility that we don't have Alexander Barclay sitting down and dreaming up something that, as far as he's aware, nobody's ever done before, which is to have a female dragon for his hero to encounter. I think he's picked that up from somewhere else, and it's the somewhere else that maybe we're not able to see directly anymore.

This is such a good point because, I don't know, folklore is so tricky, because really we kind of invented it as a field in the 19th century. And there's no way of knowing that what gets written down in the 19th century is actually what was happening in the 14th century. For God's sake, you know, it's been 500 years, right? So it's very difficult to say, oh, yeah, and then nothing changed. It's a kind of really conservative attitude, this idea that people were telling exactly the same story for 500 years.

And I mean, there's probably elements to it, right? But, I mean, I think we can certainly say just even looking at the way that people talked about dragons in the fourth century, and the way they talked about them in the ninth century, it's very, very different. So talking about this as though it's always static, as though people are, always think the same way is really difficult. And then also famously, Victorians are weird prudes, right? So even if you did tell them, here comes some lord who's decided that his thing is folklore. And here he is, you know, he's out in the marches or something.

And he says, oh, yeah, tell me your dragon story. And then you go, okay, yeah. And if there's a bunch of sex stuff in it, he might just freak out not write that down, right? Because of what the sensibilities are at the time. But, I mean, I am quite interested in this reading of the dragon. as a female in the English tradition, which also, I guess, makes sense when we think about the legend

of George and the dragon, because this dragon, one of the things about it, is that it's been consistently fed virgins from the town, right? That's the story. Do you know, I'd never made that connection? That's really interesting, yeah. Right? So it's kind of like, oh, here's the bad,

here's the bad, over-sexed idea of the female, which is hugely prevalent in medieval culture. You know, that is 100% the way that we think about women. And it's like, oh, yeah, and you're just feeding it new virgins constantly all the time until you kind of come up against the final boss virgin, which is the princess. I think that's a lovely reading. However, I'm just going to step us down slightly. A couple of things.

The first is that we've got six different English versions of the legend of St. George and the Mediore. evil period. One of them doesn't have the dragon story at all. That's the oldest one. A boo! Yeah, yeah, absolutely. St. George is just a holy man. So it's all about his martyrdom. It's not nothing. There is no dragon reference. But the others, we have the dragon story is there, but the dragon is either male for no particular reason, or it is just Newton. There's no Genza obviously assigned to it. So I wouldn't get too carried away with the idea that there is. Too late. Too late. I'm carried away. And then the other point is it's quite often young people that are being fed as opposed to specifically virgins. And you might be aware of this great theory about the mistranslation in relation to

the virgin Mary that in fact she isn't meant to be understood as a virgin. She's simply young. So I think that whilst it's a lovely image that you've created for us of the dragons burgeoning sexuality being reinforced and brought to boiling points by a diet of virgins, I think it is a little bit more complicated than that. And the one thing I would say, though, is I think you've beautifully demonstrated that the story can be changed according to the desires, whims, preferences of the teller. the tale tellteller has a hugely significant role. And that, I think, really underlines the point that you made slightly earlier about how dragons and understandings of them and stories about them do change and evolve over time. In fact, the thing that was going through my mind as you were telling us about that was a Coptic.

So this is from Ethiopia version of George and the Dragon, which is 20th century, early 20th century. and there's this fantastic image of the princess going out as if she was to be married when she goes out to be sacrificed to the dragon. And she wears lots of jewelry, but she also has several wrist watches on. So absolutely that tells you that this must be from a time when wrist watches were available in Ethiopia. But also it underlines the point that these stories do not have. have to be static, that you are able to modify it according to what you want to put in, but also what you think your audience is going to appreciate. So it was a way of demonstrating the wealth, not that she particularly wanted to know the time,

but she could know the time if she wanted to because she was from this very wealthy family. This is an interesting point because speaking of wealth, one of the big things that dragons do in a lot of the medieval stories is they guard treasure. There's this very specific thing about how dragons, they just love a bit of gold. They are bling addicts. Where can we really date this to?

Is this a Beowulf thing? Oh, we can go further back. We can go further back in that, but just before we do, I just want to say, though, that it's by no means a consistent idea of dragons hoarding treasure. So, in fact, in English tradition,

it's very unusual. So if you base yourself on Tolkien and his understanding of dragons, you know, if you look at Smorg in the Hobbit, you have to bear in mind that Tolkien was a great medievalist, but he did not limit himself to English medieval tradition. He will have drawn in his influences from much further afield, and in particular, perhaps, northern Europe. But yeah, I had a sense that you might want to talk about dragons and treasure,

So I did a bit of checking. And it's Jason of Jason and the Argonauts fame. So we're here in classical Greece. We all know that he got the golden fleece. But who was guarding the golden fleece? It was a dragon. Absolutely. And also another hero from this classical period, Heracles,

who we talked about a little bit earlier on, we know that he battled a sea monster to save his irony. But he also has to kill a great snake to get at the golden apples of the Hesperides. So I think this link that's being made between dragons, snakes, treasure. And also I put out to you that they are perhaps not only hoarding it for their own sake, but they are potentially being placed there as a guard. Because there's a nice sort of sub-tradition about, about dragons acting as bodyguards and would you want to cross one, essentially.

So there's a couple of Christian saints who have dragons as bodyguards and also one of my favorites. It's strictly not a dragon, but it's certainly a monster with, I would say, dragonish tendencies. And this is an Irish story. So it's a saint who is brought to Scattery Islands, which is in River Shannon. And the island has been kept free from sin. And how it's been done is because this monster was put there as an agent of God to keep everybody at bay. I have actually got a lovely little description, if I may read that to you. This is St. Shannon.

When the monster heard them coming, so this is Shannon, who's being brought by the Archangel Raphael, as one does, it shook its head and its hair stood up upon it and its rough bristles, and it looked at them, hatingly and wrathfully. Not gentle, friendly, mild was the look that it bestowed upon them, for it marvelled that anyone else should come to visit it in its island. So it went to them strongly and swiftly so that the earth trembled under its feet, hideous, uncouth, ruthless, awful was the beast that arose there. A horse's mane it had, an eye gleaming, flaming, flaming in its head,

and it was keen, savage, froward, angry, edged, crimson, bloody, cruel, bounding. Anyone would think that its eye would go through him when it looked upon him. Two very hideous, very thick feet under it, behind it a mane, nails, of iron, which it used to strike showers a fire out of the rocks of stone whenever it went across them. A fiery breath, which had burnt like embers. You can see why I think it's a dragon, fiery breath. A belly it had like the bellows of a furnace. A whale's tail upon it behind. Iron, rending claws upon it, which used to lay bare the surface of the ground. Equally did it traverse sea and land when it's so desired. The sea boiled from the greatness of its heat and from

its virulence when the monster entered it. It's just splendid this creature, but it is there to keep the island free from sin. And as soon as St. Shannon arrives and says, thank you very much, your work here is done. It quietly goes away and moves itself. off to a lock where it lives to the current day. It's so interesting because it is just so in opposition to the dragons that I'm used to seeing pop up in saints stories. You know, obviously we've got St. George, as we've been talking about. And also, obviously, there's St. Margaret.

One of my favorite saints, you know, and she, one of her miracles is that she's fed by the Emperor Diocletian to Satan in the form of a dragon, obviously. keeps him back there, you know, got him out back in the shed. And then she bursts forth from Satan's stomach and vanquishes this dragon. So we have this really just straightforward application of a dragon as Satan once again. You know, no surprises here, right? But here this is, I don't know, a morally ambiguous dragon? I suppose.

I mean, he's doing something good even though it is fearsome and loathsome. Do you have any other examples of, oh. Okay, come on, Liam on you. Yes. There's a Cornish saint called Carantock, who is called in to defeat a dragon that is terrorising people and killing them at will. And it's so powerful that even King Arthur is unable to deal with this dragon.

And Caron Tock comes along. It's an interesting little side story that he's looking for his altar stone, which has floated away. And it's meant to, wherever it lands, he's meant to set up his religious foundation. And the local lord keeps the altar stone prisoner. He holds it hostage until Karen Tock agrees to do away with a dragon.

And Karen Tock basically makes friends with a dragon and brings it into the city and feeds it some dinner. It's like a dog on a lead. It's wonderful. And he patiently explains it's because everybody's been so naughty and, wicked that God sent this dragon to teach them all lesson. We're back to the monster demonstrate idea there. And he says, now, if you all promise to mend your ways, I will make the dragon go away. And so, of course, everybody agrees to do that. And he literally takes the dragon to the cliffs and sets it free. And way it flies, it's a beautiful, beautiful image.

You can just imagine the television miniseries. Karen Tockham and the dragon. It's complete opposite of the idea of killing the dragon, but nevertheless, its power and its fearsomeness comes through very, very strongly. So I would say that Shannon and Karen Tox monsters are playing a very similar role. One is the kind of guard dog that is entirely keeping all people off Scattery Island, therefore it is completely full. free from sin. The other is being used as a way of essentially teaching, teaching people to behave themselves. I find these dragons incredibly interesting, right? Because oftentimes when we see dragons, so, you know, I guess St. George is, again, obviously it's always going to come back

to St. George. Sorry, everybody. One of the ways of kind of reading the dragon in St. George is that this is some form of triumph over quote unquote paganism, right? Because what is happening here, is the city itself hasn't Christianized yet. You know, the princess who's being fed, she hasn't Christianized and she becomes a nun at the end of the story. Yeah, fantastic. Everybody loves it. And here we have this dragon that is the root of this pagan misunderstanding of the world. But we can also see these dragons redeployed for specific Christian ends. And it's just, I don't know, so complex that we just don't tell the story. You know, we have a lexicon of dragons that we deploy and we want to see them as evil and monstrous.

So we're just like, never mind about these several other nice little dragons. Yeah, and even, and again, one of my favorite stories is a rather terrifying, Irish saint called McCreech. And he describes himself as a dragon. I will be a mangling dragon unto my enemies. Isn't that amazing? Ah. So that, to me, is kind of... of influenced by or a crossover with the dragons that you get in heraldry where we seem to have

this idea of taking on the life force of the dragon so that the lord who defeats the dragon or who invokes the dragon which i'd say is what mccreak was doing that invoking it they increase their own power they are a force literally to be reckoned with so The dragon, yeah, it's fearsome, but it's not always fearsome in the same direction. Sometimes it's acting as a force that can be harnessed. And again, if you've got a very powerful saint, then they are able to control the dragons. So a saint I think we haven't mentioned yet is St. Martha. So she is allegedly from Martha and Mary in the New Testament.

she ends up in France, as one does. And again, a little bit like the story with Karen Tock, there's this fierce dragon that nobody can control, and people in desperation, they go to Martha, they know she is a holy woman, and they ask her to intervene. Can she possibly help them? And she does.

She makes the sign of the cross. That's all that's needed to subdue the dragon, and she's able to put it on a girdle in the same way that the princess does in the St George legend. And so she's able to lead the dragon like a dog. I'm afraid that particular dragon, if memory serves, does come to a very bad end. It is killed.

But other saints are able to control dragons and keep them as bodyguards that I mentioned before, also as another French saint, St. Hilary, who is able to divide an, island so that the monsters, the big snakes, I think they are in this case, but let's take it as an overlap of the dragons. They are on one side of the island and the people are on the other side and they are able to kind of live harmoniously, respecting one another's domains. So that requires a saint of some great virtue and spiritual power in order to enact that kind of power over this very, very

strong sense of the wild, the chaotic, wilderness. I said earlier on that one of the things with dragons is they don't consistently live in the same sorts of places. So some that live in the sea, for instance, others that live on land. However, we do get quite a strong idea of them living in places of wilderness. And so you get this encoding of nature that's untamed and dangerous. So the comparison between civilization, the town, the city and outside, the outside world where everything is not really under human control. So there's two aspects of that I'll point to. First is St George is a quite common dedicate of chapels over the gates or by the gate of city walls. So he acts as this kind of protective force keeping the danger and the chaos and the wilderness at

Bay. And the other one is nothing to do with St. George at all, but dragon figures that were paraded at Rogation Tide. So this is a part of the church calendar, which seems to have got quite deep roots well before or outside of Christianity. And it's about asserting the farmers' control over the land and being able to produce the crops that are needed. So it's kind of the dragon almost as a form of winter or a form of, I think chaos. I'm going to go with chaos. You've got the control of the plow and the chaos of the weeds and the wilderness. And the processing of the regation-tied dragon is part of marking the change.

That makes sense. Classic medieval stuff, you know, where we see this all the time. with the worries about the forest, right? The forest is always this sort of magical location where any number of monsters or magical persons can be living and, you know, the real worry there. So, yeah, I mean, the dragons as a part of that makes perfect sense. I guess also I'm quite interested in, I don't know,

this capture of dragons, this use of dragons for good purposes because, I mean, we certainly see this when they crop up in architecture. Right? Because we see dragons as gargoyles on churches all the time. So there's this kind of apopatraic, you know, use of them. You can use a dragon on your church to scare off actual evil things. And would that do you think fall under the same sort of understanding? Yeah, I think you're absolutely right there. The story of the gargoyle, it is originally, again, a saint's legend. It's a less well-known saints. So he's Saint-Romain or possibly Romanus. And he's dating. to the 7th century at Rouen in northern France and he is brought in to deal with the garguia. This is this name for this evil dragon. But amongst other things, it is lying across the width of the river Sen and it is forming a dam and flooding, causing floods

and it's also eating people and breathing pestilence and doing all kinds of other dragony activities. But how does the saint subdue the dragon? Oh, it'll be with the sign of the cross. Yep, there we go again. Even St. George, in one version of his legend, he subdues the dragon with the sign of the cross. But going back to St. Romanus and the Garguya,

there's an element of the legend, which is that he cut off the head, or the head was cut off. I'm not sure he did it personally. And then there was a big storm, and the water kind of goes through the mouth of the monster. so it can be directed. And so you've taken this evil, destructive, horrible creature that causes floods

and turned it into something which will help you deal with floodwater. And hence why gargoyles specifically in architecture have water pipes coming through them, as opposed to just decorative monsters, which are called grotesques. But I love the fact that this whole story has been generated around it to explain. I believe it was first written down in the 19th century, the idea of the gargoyle as the water spout. And of course, they were in use long, long before then. Who knows whether it is an oral tradition, which led to that identification. But it certainly, I think, gives some sense of what might have been travelling around.

across Europe with our itinerant stone masons and other people involved in creating these incredible works of architecture, complete with their gargoyles to control rainwater. I long for a gargoyle. My entire phone is just nothing but pictures of a gargoyle I saw one time at a church. It's ridiculous. But we see dragons in lots of other bits of medieval art, right? So can we talk a little bit about when they show up? in manuscripts, because we see many a dragon in bestiaries, right? And we see them crop up alongside

animals that are 100% real, you know, like jaguars or ants. And granted, in bestiaries, these animals are doing all kinds of things that are kind of legendary. So do you think that when we see these dragons, our medieval people saying, oh yeah, well, there's this symbolic nature, the symbolic meaning of what a dragon is or is this some sort of thing where they're like, yeah, dragons, man, they live in Africa with elephants, you know. Yeah, it's difficult to be sure.

Again, I think we're looking at multi-layered understandings. And if there's one thing I'll say about people in the medieval period, that they loved riddles, they loved multiple meanings. You know, if they had the word polyvalent, they would have used it, I'm sure. Bestories are kind of well done to themselves. As you say, real creatures that we absolutely recognise are presented alongside all kinds of odd things like, I don't know, the barnacle goose, for instance, that hatches from barnacles.

Of course. My personal favourite is probably the bonacon, which is this farting beast that sets fire to, I think it's a quarter of an acre. of land can be ravaged by a single fart from a bonneton. Dragons there, I think I may be alluded to this earlier, but they are the greatest of all snakes. So they've got this series of different kinds of snakes, such as the viper, for instance, that we would be familiar with. But none of the images are snakes that we would recognise because they have feet. And that is the internal logical world of the best genus.

the best jury writers and particularly the bestry artists. I think the one that doesn't have feet has two heads. I'm never quite sure how to pronounce it. I'm going to go with the amphis bina, and it puts one head into the mouth of the other head, and then it rolls along like a hoop, so it moves around very, very fast. And the kind of the moral point of it is that it's able to do twice as many wicked things

because it has two heads. Now, off the top of my head, and I don't have a vesture to hand, I can't absolutely remember whether it has feet or not. I think maybe sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it doesn't. But what I can say is that other snakes and serpents consistently have feet. And so the idea of the dragon that we have with its feet very much seems to link into that. And it's almost maybe a back formation that once you've decided that a dragon is a form of serpent, and with, of course, the temperature in the garden, all those things we talked about earlier on.

You can see the connection. Then the more having feet doesn't really lead itself into a huge problem. You can see some consistency there. And you've got the potential for this moralising. So with dragons in the bestiary, their main enemy is the elephant. Yeah, yeah. So what you have is this strange to modern, modern eyes. construction, that the dragon lies in weight with its coiled tail and it acts as a kind of trap.

So the elephant's going about its business and it accidentally manages to stand into the trap that the dragon has made. The dragon then proceeds to wrap itself around the elephant's body like a boa constrictor. So again, you can see the link to real snakes and suffocates the unfortunate elephant's death, but as it falls over, it crushes, the elephant crushes the dragon. And so then you get this excellent moral and religious understanding, which is about the dragon as the devil, and it tried to trap Christ. Christ is the elephant. And in fact, because Christ gave his life, he defeated the devil. You can see where they're going with that idea. But, you know, Christ is also the true weasel within bestories.

There's all kinds of readings that vestry authors felt more than capable of making. I think it's worth noting as well that bestories are very strongly associated with the English traditions. So pretty much every medieval bestiary that is known seems to have originated in England. English medieval people have various skills and interests that they would. known for embroidery, opus anglicanum, that's something else. That is, you know, the English worker, but you could equally make that point about bestories. So I think we also have to be a little bit careful in discussing dragons to try to localise the story, the understanding. So

although it may spread, it doesn't mean that everybody everywhere would have understood things in the same way. Just to go back to St. George again, we've got multiple places. that claim to be the site of St George killing the dragon, and also multiple stories that are associated with it. So earlier on we were talking about what the dragon was given to eat. In Denmark, the dragon is given eggs as well as young people. Huh. Yeah.

It's only when the supply of eggs begins to run low that they start to feed young people to their dragon. I mean, it is just beyond anything that you... would sit down and invent now, who would take you seriously? But again, this is the way that medieval people seem to think. I don't know why eggs were seen as being a particular interest to dragons in Denmark. I think I need to do more research to pick that up. But another example I can give you in Italy is that St. George is a patron saint there of dairies and people who work with milk, and the reason is that dragons are meant to creep up to cows in the night and suckle at their udders in the way that poor old hedgehogs have been blamed for in England.

So, again, you know, it's this, you know, how, how did they decide on this? No idea. But localised understandings of how dragons behave, there's so much complexity, and it's just a Constant joy, really is. If there's all these interesting medieval ways of looking at dragons and using dragons, is this something that we see drop off once we hit the early modern period? You know, our Renaissance people suddenly too good for dragons, because I would wager, no. And you would win that wager.

Absolutely. Yeah, dragons are just constantly interesting to people. I think it's in part because you can customize them to the extent that you want. I've sometimes explained this in relation to images of St. George and the Dragon. For late medieval people, they would have been almost always commissioned rather than something that you just go along to your local icon shop in the way that you might today and you buy one ready made. And so you can imagine the discussion taking place. Well, how big do you want it to be? How many heads?

Wings? No wings. How many legs? Do you want it to be green? Do you want it to be scaly, pink and furry? How would you like your dragons to be? Aspects of a lion? Dragons sometimes have mains.

Aspects of snakes. Oh, that's a given. We're definitely going to have that. What about it being bear like? What about being badger like? There's so many possibilities. is. And as well, who is it that's commissioning? Well, it's going to be rich people. And then you've got this overlap with the illusion that we made earlier to heraldry. So people who are rich and powerful

and they want to assert that. And dragons give them a really handy way to actually sell themselves. It's dragons as propaganda. And dragons makes such great propaganda, right? I was at the as is my want of the weekend. And I was looking at the cast in the cast courts of the St. George and the Dragon, which comes from outside of Prague Cathedral, because I'm a cliche of myself. And that dragon is really interesting because it has a kind of movable proboscis that is wrapping around St. George's foot. And so it's almost kind of elephant time.

And I was just kind of thinking about that. And I mean, what does this mean in terms of, you know, contact with the artists with Africa or in expanding interest or understanding of how animals may look. Do we just have Charles IV beefing with someone who's got like an elephant in their hair artery, right? So now the bad guy has to look kind of like an elephant. It's very difficult to say. There are so many possibilities. But what I will say is that money was spent on a regular basis on dragons that was going to be processed

through the city streets. We know, this is in England, it's called the riding of St George, and we know from quite a few places that this happened. The best attested is at Norwich, and we've got excellent records from there. And in fact, one of the dragons still exists. It's in Norwich Castle, it's known as the Snap or Old Snap. And it has an articulated jaw. And terrifyingly, in the 15th century, there is one account where the dragon operator was paid extra money. for using gunpowder.

Oh, I love this. I think it's just the once that that happens, because that really doesn't bear thinking about. But I had the huge pleasure a few years ago of going to Mon or Monz, depending how you like to pronounce it, in Belgium, for the most amazing spectacle of reenacting Georgian the dragon. It's a long and complicated story

about how I came to be there and what they were doing, which I'm not going to detain you with at the moment. But basically, if you find yourself in Belgium on Trinity Sunday, then Mon is definitely the place to be. So there was me and about 120,000 fairly drunk Belgian people all in the city square. And they reenact the battle between George and the Dragon. As we said earlier on, it's possible to change the story over time. And they have done. They've been doing this every year other than during wartime since the 15th century.

and it is not the same dragon as it used to be. It's wonderful fibreglass thing. Oh, it's absolutely beautiful. It used to be wickerwork, and I think that was a bit of a fire hazard. But now a female personification of the city is involved in the story, is bringing the weapons to St George, and St George uses a revolver to kill the dragon. I love it. It's just priceless.

It really is. So you've got this idea of the civic power and pride literally being paraded in the streets. And it is, of course, the hugest honour to be allowed to take part. You've got to be a resident. You've had to live there for probably 15 generations or something like this. But it is a really amazing spectacle. And it's something that is taken so seriously that they do a due. version a couple of days previously to train up the young people of the city to be able to, in due course,

take their place, reenacting the battle between George and the dragons. So on the one hand, we've got kind of the dragon's power, which is terrifying, but ours at the same time. And then St. George as this personification of the might of the city and of civilization and urbanity, putting this chaotic and dangerous thing in its place, it's absolutely fantastic. I think it just goes to show you that there's this real enduring appeal of dragons. You know, we're all still in love with them. We still want to see a reenactment of George and the dragon. You can tart it up and make it nice and modern, you know, give the pretty,

and says some wristwatches, give St. George a revolver, all these things. Or we can go and look at just how media works. I mean, you've got the Game of Thrones show, lots of dragons there. You've got, of course, the Hobbit and Smog or, you know, the how to train your dragon films. You know, is this just a human thing? You know, you've alluded to it already. All of us have some kind of story about dragons. Is this just a thing that humans long for?

I think it's certainly very deeply encoded into human consciousness. It's something as well that I think children really respond to. They love the idea of dragons, something that is scary, that is potential to be friends with as well. So there's some lovely films. I have a grandson who's three and a half and he's extremely keen, so I've seen Zoggs quite a lot. I recommend that.

And these are dragons that he says. They're not scary. They're nice dragons. But they're learning how to be dragons and the idea as well of the dragon doctor. So it's the princess who doesn't want to be a princess. She actually wants to go and help the dragons and to be friends with them.

It's so, I think, imaginative. There's just no limit. And that's where I would say dragons. are incredibly powerful within the human psyche because they are limitless. You know, who doesn't want to fly? Who has never dreamt of being able to fly, to be able to swim? All these things that dragons are able to do, apparently. And, you know, I'm sure there are occasions where most of us would quite like to breathe

fire to sort out a situation. And there's lovely stories that we get in fantasy literature about dragon riders as well. I just point to that, that to be able to get the freedom of the skies without actually having to be involved in something that's artificial or something that's created by people that you're actually tapping into wild and, yeah, dangerous but maybe tameable part of the natural world. So they are responding to, as you say, this kind of hunger maybe that many, many people have. Well, thank you, Sam, for coming on today to feed this hunger that I would argue lives in all of us. It's been my absolute pleasure. And, yeah, I look forward to finding even more dragon stories and locating those resonances. It's all out there.

Thanks to Dr. Sam Ritches and to you for listening to Gone Mediades. from History Hit. If you haven't listened to my recent episode on Monsters of the Medieval Apocalypse or my chat with Amy Jeffs about St. George and the Springtime Saints, do go back and find them in our back catalog. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent dragon-filled film Medieval Apocalypse, and add-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com forward slash subscription.

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