Gone Medieval - Monsters of the Medieval Apocalypse

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

Does a four-winged leopard, a woman riding bareback on a monstrous serpent-like beast and giants having a good chat signal the beginning of the apocalypse? Medieval folk certainly thought so.Dr. Eleanor Janega and Prof. James Palmer delight in these terrifying - and sometimes comical - figures and how they served both as religious symbols and as interpretations of worldly evils, reflecting the medieval fascination with the unknown and the stark moral lessons intended by these vivid depictions.The discuss the meanings of apocalyptic monsters like the dragon and the beast of the abyss, as well as their artistic representations in illuminated manuscripts, church walls, and maps from the medieval period.Gone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. It was edited by Amy Haddow, the senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Watch Eleanor's new documentary uncovering how medieval people understood the end of days, from the terrifying visions of Revelation to the vivid warnings painted onto church walls, in Medieval Apocalypse on the History Hit channel.Sign up to History Hit for this and hundreds more 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 probably don't need to tell you that people in the medieval period thought about monsters a lot. After all, when we think of the medieval period, we conjure up stories of knights slaying dragons and rescuing fair maidens. As fun as those stories are, and as much of a place as they undoubtedly held in medieval society, there were a whole host of stories about dragons and dangerous monsters from which rescue was almost impossible. And the fair damsel in this case, she's the opposite of a maiden. And it turns out that she's a monster herself.

Today we're talking about the monsters of the apocalypse, or the Book of Revelation. There is a host of beasts lurking in the last and most enigmatic book of the Bible. that can challenge a modern creature feature. And they loomed large in the imaginations of medieval Christians, helped along by the fact that they were popular art motifs, and they inhabited the warnings of preachers far and wide. Today I'm joined by Professor James T. Palmer, an expert on apocalypticism from the University of St. Andrews,

to talk about all things monstrous, and to get you wonderful listeners ready for my new special, The Medieval Apocalypse out this month on history hit TV. Well, James, hi. Thank you so much for coming on to talk about one of my favorite things, which is Little Monsters, Little Monstie Guys. Yeah, Monster Guys. You know, the normal way that most people get into medievalisms is by being interested in Little Monster Guys.

And both you and I have then been dragged into the subcategory of medievalism, You can put a really worthy face on being interested in apocalypticism because fundamentally this is an intellectual movement. But I'm going to be so real with you. I just want to talk about the little monsters. The little monsters are everywhere. You can't just have the end of the world where it's just like normal people. That's not scary. Apocalypse has to be scary.

It needs monsters. Exactly. Isn't this why we have zombie apocopulipses? Now, it's different to medieval, but it's still monsters. We're going to have bad guys. We're absolutely still doing the apocalyptic monsters thing. That is just a matter of fact. But I think for medieval people, we've got this real understanding that there are certain monsters that are going to show up at the end of time, which is, you know, the apocalypse is the great revealing at the end of the world.

You know, we all know the world is going to end if we are Christians. That is just how it works. That's how that is. And so all sorts of terrible things are going to happen at the end, but there's definitely going to be a lot of monsters at the time. And we know this because of the book of the Bible, the apocalypse or Revelation. And can you just tell us a little bit about that and how it is we get all these little monster men? The book of revelation is a series of mystical visions that St. John has on the island of Patmos. So the monstrous is a very important part of this setting up the, conflict between good and evil. At the beginning, he sees angels and he sees churches, and they kind of talk him through not what will happen, but as mystical visions, kind of giving us a sense of how this conflict will work and what kind of battles will have to happen to get to

Judgment Day when everyone can get to the heavenly Jerusalem at the end. So the apocalyptic monsters are absolutely central to introducing the theme of good versus evil. There's a dragon, there's a horrible monster. They are connected to Satan and the forces of Satan and Antichrist are going to be riding around on monstrous horses with the heads of lions. It's everywhere.

So this is a good sense that it's not just sinners and the good guys and the sinners will just beat normal people. That would be a very sad, underwhelming apocalypse. It has to be more dramatic. All the way through the Middle Age, as people are, say, well, you know, there's plague now. There's wars now. There are signs in the sky. There are eclipses. Does that mean it's the end of the world? And people have to keep coming

back and say, no, you really know when it's the end of the world. It will be twice as terrifying. Everything will be completely bonkers. So all the crazy stuff you see now, that's just start. That's just for starters. It was going to be so much worse. And like, no one is saying the Black Death isn't bad. We can all agree that it's maybe a sign. the end times are coming. I mean, and when I say we all, I mean, you know, people in the 14th century. Or if we were there, we would say. I very well might because I spend all my time thinking about this like a great many medieval

people do. But on the other hand, there are no dragons. And so I, I, what are you saying? Yet. Yet. Okay, so can you give us a cast of characters? Because you've already brought up the dragon. I think he's the number one apocalypse batty, right?

And the dragon in particular is kind of seen as Satan. Is that right? Yes. Well, there's a couple of creatures that come in. But the dragon, he is classically red, as you would hope. And he is leading the bad guys in the final battle. He has a big fight with the archangel, St. Michael. What you want, having a big dragon in the battle, but having angels to fight him.

Because there's the dragon and there's the beast. And there's the beast. Yeah. They're the same because it kind of flips halfway through. Okay. This is the thing that's interesting, right? Is that you do have the dragon who is a really important monster and bad guy in the apocalypse. And he kind of comes out and he's generally identified by preachers and biblical exegetes,

who are the people who sit around and read the apocalypse all day long and say what it means with Satan himself. And he is a cool, badass red dragon, usually has got. nine heads. A pretty cool guy. Pretty cool guy. We all like the dragon. But you're right. He flips halfway through and suddenly you have this other monster come on the scene and that is the beast of the abyss. And can you tell us a little bit about him? Where he has leopard spots. Obviously. Obviously. And he is fierce like a bear. He's furious like a bit and he's like lion and he's strong. I mean, the kind of collective sense of evil is these are the people who are going to lead the forces of evil right at the end. And for the beast of the abyss, as a kind of

representative, Satan, well, he's going to be bound with Satan for a thousand years and thrown into the dark imprisonment. Although in medieval images, it's often a tower. It's almost like they don't know what a valley is. Put him in a tower. But it's still a prison. So, they're thinking it's prison. Do you know what, if I'm going to have to draw a valley or a tower, I'm going to go for the tower every time because it's more interesting. So fair enough, fair play, you know. That's artistic license, baby. Yeah. Yeah, it's, and then you have these two monsters who wreak a lot of havoc. There's going to be several confrontations between said monsters and the good side. So at first it is St. Michael, the archangel, but then at the end of the world,

It's kind of like the spirit of Christ's mouth and things of this nature. But they're really interesting because when you read the book of Revelation, you're introduced to these guys and they're like, wow, big monsters. But medieval people aren't satisfied with, wow, big monsters. They're like, who are these people? Right. And so they identify the dragon with Satan. And then they usually then identify the beast of the abyss with Antichrist, who is not underline Satan. Not Satan. Well, I think there's some puzzlement because there is no Antichrist in the Bible. He's not in the book of Revelation. But he is a character that they like to talk about. He's the antithesis of Christ, but he's not the antithesis of Christ because he kind of looks a bit convincing as a savior figure while leading people astray. So it looks and sounds like he might be Christ but doing bad things. So where is he in the end times narrative? And if he's not the other characters, he must be one of the mystery beast things.

And so this is the thing about having great mystical images like this, is that they are so open to interpretation. And these biblical exegetes, the people reading you were talking about, they're kind of interested in just taking imagery and saying, okay, so literally this is a monster. But what this signifies is all these other kind of bad guys. And with Antichrist, one time he does kind of crop up in one of the letters in the new text. Testament. It's like there will be many antichrists. Well, I mean, they just go wild as that you're an Antichrist and you I don't like is an Antichrist. And they were symbolized by this monsters. And anyone who opposes me, the good guys, at the end of time, well, you're a kind of Antichrist and you're in league with the beast. And so then they have you. The beast of the apocalypse is raising around

leading this entire army or evil bad guys. Oh, yeah. Everywhere. And they are everywhere, right? And I suppose then you get these layers of meaning then that are placed on top of both the dragon and the beast. So, for example, the dragon is usually associated with, you know, the concept of spiritual evil, I guess. So, you know, the really big bad, the original, you know, the snake in the Garden of Eden, Satan himself and hell. And then the beast is usually associated with kind of worldly power and worldly evil. So there's almost a bifurcation of ways to think about. these two monsters then as well. That's why the beast has the proper army with the bad guys on the weird horses.

But then there's also, it lends itself to some nice symbolism as well because this is the what is supposed to have seven heads. And because they like to think about the progression of history towards Judgment Day, each of the seven heads might represent a different kind of Antichrist. So there's this classic exposition of it in Joachim of Fury in the, in the, 12th century in the time of the Crusades. And they're thinking, well, the first one, well, that's obviously Herod, because he was a bad guy. Well, obviously, then there must be Nero because he persecuted Christians. And they have a whole load. And the sixth head is Saladin,

because he's the leader of the Arabs against the Christians in the Crusades. And then the seventh one is the Antichrist, the final one. And so they like that kind of numerical imagery than they can play around with it. So you've got an evil bad guy plus numbers. I mean, oh, maybe the sequencing and that gives a pattern. Isn't it great when the apocalypse can have a pattern rather than just being this kind of open-ended fluff? And that's a really important thing to medieval people is they absolutely love numbers involving the apocalypse. You know, there's kind of a way of thinking about the world and thinking about the way that it's made, which is saying that there are kind of numeric codes that you can use to

work out about the monsters. And, you know, quite full. famously, one of these things is the mark of the beast that is going to be written on the Beast of the Abyss's forehead, right? Yeah, 666. They're going to get into really kind of like the numerological values of symbols to get that out so they can bring out who that might be as well. And people start play around. During the fall of the Roman Empire, there's a whole thing about whether it's one of the kings of the Goths and that they play, oh, does it mean Gaiserick? Or it might mean Gaiserick. He's quite bad. Yeah, and then you get all this association with basically, as you say, anyone who's a political enemy. So by the time you get to, for example, the split between Avignon and Rome, it's, you know, whoever the other pope is, that that guy is Antichrist. You know, and so.

What's the difference between an anti-Pope and an Antichrist? They're clearly the same. Same guy. Same thing. You know, same application. And you also see the people who kind of like are scrambling around trying to associate these monsters with varying things. They're also like, I'm afraid I don't have enough monsters and I also don't have enough numbers. So interestingly, a lot of the ways of depicting the beast or talking about Antichrist or talking about Satan don't actually come from the Book of Revelation.

They dig deep into the Old Testament as well, don't they? Because they start reaching into the Book of Daniel because there were not enough monsters, right? And the Book of- Because they're not saying monsters. And the Book of Daniels got really good monsters in it. Well, the book of Daniel is almost like the favorite apocalyptic text because there are two different bits. One doesn't really have monsters, but it has this really scary statue. Nebuchadnezzar has a dream of four elements.

And it says, well, these four elements will be the sequence of four kingdoms. And Daniel interprets this for him. But then when the monsters come in, this previous dream seems to have got into Daniel's psyche. and he has his own mystical vision of these four monsters coming up out of the sea. There's a lioness with eagle wings, and there's a bear with three rows of teeth, and wants to use the teeth. Leopards with four wings and four heads, and then, as if those are quite terrifying to me, but that's the fourth one, and then an actual terrible beast will rise up,

and it will have iron teeth, and it will have ten horns, and another little horn on top of that. This little horn is classically Satan as well. And the ten horns will be a sequence of ten kings, spits over into this whole apocalyptic fantasy universe of how there will be an empire divided into kings and then people will fight amongst themselves and terrible things will happen.

But the four monsters will be supposed to represent Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome, classically. People play around with what they mean. at different times. But taking them as a sequence because they come out of the water in turn, this gives them another plan for history. And because most of the people commenting on this are Christ lives during the Roman Empire. So the Roman Empire is the last one. It's the last terrible beast, which makes sense at the very beginning of Christianity, where Christians are persecuted by the Roman Empire, it's the worst one. They want to, even though this is an Old Testament

vision. And they're only living in the last times if the Roman Empire is there. and then the Roman Empire has gone. Or what happens to the terrible monster? Are they the terrible monster? Oh, this does get thrown around a lot, right? For example, if the Pope is quite mad at the emperor, which they are wont to do, then suddenly the emperor is a representation of the beast and he is Antichrist.

And you do see then the Danieline monsters sometimes creep into representations of the end times. So I've definitely seen, even in a modern context, people using the leopard with the four wings when they are talking about the apocalypse. And I'm like, well, she's not even supposed to be here. She doesn't go to this school. You know, she's from the Danieline vision. So it will get brought in. And medieval people do that same thing as well. They kind of chop and change all of their favorite monsters. It's kind of like, you know, Godzilla fights Mothra or Godzilla fights, you know, Rodan or whoever. you have the same in like, it's great to have a typology, isn't it? So again, going back to the horns, the 10 horns plus one, and said the little horn is Satan again. So people are going to like, are you the 10th, are you the 11th horn?

Are you the little horn? And so very easy to slip that into a world in which you're thinking in terms of typologies of evil using all your imagery from the Bible and just go, you're Antichrist. You're like the little horn. you are a beast. And I think that there's also something here about art, right? Because when you have, if you sit down and you read, for example, the Danieline prophecies, it's not kind of easy to imagine what this monster with all the horns and the little horn looks like. And they're like, and then there's 10 horns and then there's a little horn on top of the other thing.

And you're like, what? You know, as a non-artist, it is kind of confusing. But I think for medieval artists, this gives you a lot of room to play around. You know, in the same way that you might make a tower that the beast and the dragon are imprisoned in as opposed to a valley, you might say, oh, okay, well, I'm going to make a weird little monster and he's going to have all these horns all over the place. And then this is going to be a, you know, a really kind of fun thing to depict. Yeah, so one of my favourite manuscripts, really vivid thing produced in 10th century in Spain, is the Morgan Apocalypse, which is an illuminated copy of a commentary on the Book of Revelation. You'll have seen pictures of it if you've ever looked at medieval images of the apocalypse and monsters because it's lusciously yellow and orange. And the monsters themselves are incredible within that. The beast of the apocalypse, lips with its seven heads. Each one is a separate color. There's a little little green one and a blue one, orange. And what's also beautiful about that, thinking about this in terms of, in relation to Daniel, is that it also has an illustrated book of Daniel in it as well. So the same artist has got really excited. And so he's got his little leopard with his wings and he's got the ferocious bear, weird monster. And the terrible one with teeth, which doesn't actually look that much scarier than the others. We've already gone so hard on them being scary.

We've gone so hard into how terrifying the monsters are, having all the terrifying monsters on one page. And this is 10th century Western art. So it has a nice kind of cartoonish feel to it, to our modern sensibilities. But they're not going for realism. They're going for an evocation of darkness, even though it's kind of really orange and red and blues all over the place. And those images are fantastic.

And what they are also really fantastic for us is they're not just in these very learned books that three monks read once. We know that they also used exactly the same kind of images on church walls. And you and I went to that church, St. Mary's in Kempley, down in Gloucestershire. And they had a dragon of the apocalypse on the wall as well. And then that's brilliant because then you, in the audience, when you're listening to sermons about the end of the world, being told, you must do good, otherwise you're going to burn in hell. You've got the beast up there and like the beast, see, that's the beast. You can imagine the beast.

So for people who aren't very artistic, like you say, who are trying to imagine this, then you've got all these visual aids. You probably do get these lavishly illuminated books of Daniel and Apocalypse out to show people, you know, we get them out, show and tell time in church to inspire people. so they can really imagine it so that they don't have to use their imagination to a certain extent. It's there in the books and it's there on the church walls. Yeah, I think that that is such an important point because certainly these are stories that people are being read all the time. You know, you're going to be thinking about the apocalypse and all the monsters there in, you know, especially at like Advent, the traditional time of year to think about how the world is ending.

But you're also going to be sitting in churches where there are big displays of the scary. monsters because, again, artists like that, you know, it's funny. If you get commissioned to make a scene of something and you're going to go swing for the fences, right? You're going to be like, all right, okay, what I'm going to do? I'm then the end of the world and I'm going to draw the big dragon because, of course you are. It's a fun thing to do, right? And so that ends up being the thing that gets reproduced and the thing that people see all the time. Yeah. And another bit of parts that sometimes it's slightly different context that is kind of fine is maps, maps of the world. They can be quite apocalyptic too in the Middle Ages and sometimes you get them in churches.

Sometimes you get in courts. It's probably one of our favorites is the Hereford Mapermondi. Oh, wonderful. It's lovely thing. But that's got judgment there at the top. Christ is sitting in judgment at the top surrounded by the people of the apocalypse. And then below that, just this, well, it's the expulsion from. Eden. And then as you cascade down through the map, you get monsters, monsters, monsters,

some more monsters. Here are some griffins. Here are some dog-headed men. And then you get to where the people live. People have gone through expulsion from heaven and they got through a universe of monsters and now they live over around the Mediterranean. But for history to be completed, they're then having to go back to the heavenly Jerusalem, back up to Judgment Day at the top of this picture of how the world's supposed to work back through the world of monsters. It's going to be challenging. But again, it's the sense that to get to the end of the world, people want to get to get to the end of the world.

It's not just a completely horrible thing because at the far end is the rewards for heaven. It's supposed to be nice in heaven. It's peaceful. It's what you want. You know, we're all aiming for heaven, right? And we're told repeatedly in the book of revelry. we're told that actually if you live through this time of monsters, then you are so lucky because it's essentially expiating your sins. If you are living cheek by jowl with the beast of the abyss, then God is like, hey, fair enough, that's the equivalent of living through purgatory.

You are already doing whatever it needs to be done to expunge all your sins. And if you remain faithful, then you are going to be absolutely fine when we get to the final judgment. and you are going to be able to be in heaven with him forever. So to a certain extent, even though it's terrifying and awful, you're really lucky to see all of these scary monsters, right? Yeah, I'm going to be punished more than other people. It's the Book of Job expanding outwards across the rest of history, which is probably appropriate because one of the popular books that inspires,

not just the Book of Job, but Pope Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, which sets out this kind of eschatological vision of how suffering is pretty good thing for exactly these kind of reasons. And there has monsters in it too, because like bear moth turns up as a bear moth will be anti-crusted, and you'll be all be punished for your sense. It'll be great. Yeah, those last days, really horrible. Can I bring in a non-biblical text? Of course. The people love the apocalypse of pseudo-Mothodos, the 7th century Syriac text, which is, well, being read in Latin translation as early as the 8th century, and they get super excited about. This has monsters, too.

It starts off. It's in Syria. It's after the Arab conquests, which were also earlier in the 7th century. And it's written by somebody who's quite grumpy that Christians aren't in charge of everything anymore. And what he's actually really angry about is the fact that most Christians and most Muslims actually get together fine, and he wishes that they wouldn't. But the Arabs aren't the bad guys.

Really, they're not the monsters. What he fantasizes about is that one day a great leader will wake up as if from a drunken slumber and chase the Arabs away. And that's done. And then monsters will turn up. And he fantasizes about the monsters. The monsters will be the worst things ever. They will lead dead bodies rotting in fields. And they will eat creatures that you shouldn't eat like scorpions. And it will be really bad. You shouldn't eat scorpions. These are the hordes of Gog and Magog. And they are in the Bible. But all they do in the Bible is they turn. up for like two sentences. And it's like, and then the hordes of Gogamag will appear from all four corners of the earth and they'll do terrible things in conjunction with Satan and then they'll get destroyed by God. Yeah, it's not, they do. They barely get a look at it. And anti-climax. Like, but they're supposed to be terrible. So in this, then they're going to create this whole universe. Okay, so where are Gog and May Gog? I've not heard of Gog and May Gog.

And in Pseudius, he places them not in the four corners of the world, but he places them in the north. In 7th century Syria, this kind of really, off this whole thing about the legends of the great king Alexander the Great. And he is supposed to have hidden lots of barbarous peoples and monsters behind these great bronze gates and the Caspian gates. And so at the end of time, the gates will open and these monsters people will flood out all over the places. And most of them, we don't really know anything about them, but they do include dog-headed men. So then dog-headed men are running around all over the place. That's even scarier.

And Gog and May Gog, they are kind of monsters themselves. And they get depicted rather a lot, even in early modern arts. So it's super, super common if you see, for example, a clock tower and it's got two big giant guys. That's usually Gog and Magog. So, for example, we've got a Gog and Megag here in London at Guildhall. There are big Gog and May Gog out front. And it's sort of a reminder of everyone that, oh, the time is linked to the end of time. and there's going to be these terrible giants that opened the gates.

So you've got a monster baked into that already, which is very funny because, again, as you say, it's like, oh, and then Gog and Magog will release the hordes. No one says they're a giant. And medieval people are like, ooh, I feel like those guys are giants. Or make them even worse. They always have to be one step. I mean, the thing about the monstrous peoples in this case is that there's a kind of significantly pre-Christian thing about who lives on the peripheries. And you can see this back in our Hereford Map of Monday, actually, if you look around the

edge of the map, there's all these little islands with like Blenny's, there's all these strange little shrunken creatures or people with only one leg or fauns, well, forns and satyrs are a bit closer up to Greece, but all these kind of griffins. There is a little island with dragons on them just off the Persian Gulf. Fabulous. Yeah, dog-headed men in it. But then there's an entire section up in the north. where you can see that Gog and Megog have got the gates,

and they're there to be shoved in the corner as well. But what this kind of helps to illustrate is, because they're all all on the edges of the known world. It's a classic, there be monsters. We don't know what goes on. Beyond those mountains, anything could happen. And this could create this wonderful travel literature as well, which is only quasi-apocalyptic when people go,

Warwick on this great imaginary journey to see if it's like Bordelino, Umberto Echko. The further you get from the known world, the matter it gets. So there's all these weird creatures all over the places they're searching for Presta John, all part of this apocalyptic narrative, but also but just part of the mysteries of the East and the mysteries of the unknown world. The apocalypse is unknown. Going abroad is unknown. It's the same thing. And you can kind of understand from a medieval European standpoint, there isn't that much of a difference between hearing about an elephant and hearing about a monster, you know, because they're like, oh yeah, it's the size of a house and it's big and gray and it's got a big long nose like

a snake and everyone goes, wow, okay, well, that's a monster, right? Yeah, exactly. If you've never seen one before, you know, one of my favorite, the Emperor Charlemagne in the beginning of the 9th century, there's this whole universe where he's fighting against Vikings. Vikings are themselves kind of linked with dog-headed men and they're up in the North, so they're kind of apocalyptic as well. So he takes an elephant because this is being given as a present by the Caliph of Baghdad. Because they've never seen one before. That's scare them. It's like you think you've got Apocalypse soared with your dogheads. I've got Apocalypse sorted. What is this? It's an actual real living monster. But of course, which they've had to source from thousands of miles away. So you can play around with the exoticism. Exoticism is, it's beautiful when it's in court and it's all friendly. But you take it answer battle. It's, absolutely terrifying. Well, you don't want to end up in a battle against dragons and things as well,

because we've seen enough sci-fi fantasy stuff to know that's always the wild card that swings the battle. Same in the Middle Ages. And you have the same kind of imaginary terror of the monstrous that is certainly on display, for example, with other things in the book of Revelation. So just in the same way that Gog and Megag get a sentence, then everyone goes, oh, well, yeah, that must be a bunch of giants who have control of a bunch of monsters. You have certain things like, for example, the locusts, right? And you and I, when we hear the term locusts, we're like, oh, yeah, when grasshoppers get out of pocket and start flying, that's what a locust is. But that's not what people are imagining locusts to be when they're talking about the apocalypse, right?

No, I mean, these terrible things swimming all over the way. Again, it's the rumor. I mean, how many locusts do people come across in any one time? There's this, it's a, it's a, One of the first big locust plagues after Egypt, the people were really right about it. In the year 873, there's this big surge that comes all the way through Europe, and it comes through Italy and through Germany and through France, and up into Ireland. And everyone has absolutely besides themselves with absolute terror, because it's part of this series of events which wipes out a third of the population of Europe, so it is said, without even plague being involved.

But they are monsters, and they're like they're like a foot, long and they've got giant teeth. Of course, the sound as well, it then adds into a whole world of buzzing and the number of times you get apocalyptic texts where often heretics, or often possessed by flying buzzy things and then start

running about. Again, horror movie style, buzzing is heresy. The madness and creating this entire sonic universe of darkness. It's not just there's a monster and that's Satan and we'll have to deal with that.

There's an atmospherics to it as well. And bugs and plagues. Because the book of Revelation, there are plagues of things flying around. The angels are flying around dumping horrible plagues of nastiness all over the people just to kind of really stir things up, just as how special they are to be punished in this way. This is the thing, right?

Is that all of this monstrosity is obviously linked with, Satan is linked with, you know, hell. But also, it's being allowed to happen by God, right? This is part of the design. The idea is that God is like, well, the universe is got to end sometime. And we're specifically going to end it like this. And so, yeah, like, get your monsters out. Like, throw some plagues in there.

You know, we're going to let all of this happen. And I think actually one of my favorite monsters, I mean, she's kind of like monstrous, but I think she counts as a monster. But my favorite girl, personally, of the apocalypse, is our queen, the whore of Babylon. That's the, you know, technical term for her. We don't like to use the W slur around here, but that's what she's called. That's what she's called. And, you know, she's being punished for being a chick with hobbies, which, God forbid, that women drink the blood of the innocent and corrupt the world with their fornications.

But she shows up, and she gets to ride the beast of the abyss, which is kind of like my favorite thing for her. So she's got this great chalice full of every iniquity in the world and the bloods of the innocence. And she's riding the beast of the apocalypse. And so she gets to show up as this kind of bloodthirsty monster woman. And I just love her. She's got great fashion sense. There's some great art for the goes with this as well. It looks like she's doing some kind of exotic dance.

It often has to have her arms absolutely out straight either side of her to keep her balance. Because you would if you're on a giant beast. and the beast's kind of very, it's normally kind of very S-shaped. It's not just a flat thing behaving like a horse. Yeah, balance is needed. But yes, create a double whammy because otherwise, you know, the gendered aspect of apocalypse is all these monstrous people who are often very male-coded, and Satan, obviously, male-coded.

Where do women fit into this as a universe of darkness as well? And I guess I think it's quite funny that, you know, when we're going to come up with a girl monster, it's because she's sexy. It's like, you know, the real monster was the sexy ladies that we met along the way, you know. Oh, it was in pseudo, back in pseudomothodias, one of the things that people are doing is that they're dressing effeminately. Oh, no. Oh, no. Definite sign of the end times. We definitely get this in 14th century apocalyptic literature as well.

So for example, quite famously, the Bishop of Rochester, Thomas Brinton, writes in his sermons when he's explaining the plague that one of the reasons why the plague has happening is it's the end of the world because a dudes are being too sexy. And they're wearing really pointy shoes and super tight tights. And so they're behaving like women and it's too sexy. And so now God has to punish the world. And yeah, so this kind of effeminate masculinity is also. a real apocalyptic worry, and indeed monstrous, you know, it's monstrous to have shoes that pointy. Back with our Vikings as well, it's not quite apocalyptic, but leading towards apocalypse when the Vikings turn up and there's all these letters go about, not being, oh, my word, the Vikings is the end of the world. Letters that people are writing are like, so this is definitely

your fault, isn't it? You were dressing nicely. It's a similar kind of thing. Were you listening to stories about monsters? And this kind of gets right. Were you really, we really, reading bear wolf. Oh, naughty. Not really. Oh, were you enjoying bear wolf? No, you're not supposed to enjoy that, you know. No, drinking and dressing, yeah, dressing up.

And sometimes say effronately or in flashy way or pointy shoes, what they really mean is just like you're not being kind of very boring. Can you be wearing sackcloth and feeling very sad? various different versions of this throughout the Middle Ages, what the people who really make a big noise about this normally want is everybody to feel very sorry about everything all the time. And so by saying things like, you know, it's almost like parenting. You know, if you're not good, the monsters will come and get you.

If you spend all your money on clothes rather than saving it, the monsters will come and get you. And this is a real, you know, It's an interesting one because when you see apocalyptic preaching, so, you know, a lot of the apocalyptic creatures that I've worked on, you know, like your Thomas Brinton, like your young military of Gramejish, my boy, etc. They usually don't go around saying, okay, there's a monster that's going to come out from underneath your bed at the end of the world. But what they will say is, oh, well, you know, the piece of the apocalypse, he's rather like this situation. And they'll bring up. a political situation and they will ordinarily kind of ask you to equate these two things. Like this monster at the end of the world who is certainly real and a sign of the end times, but also a political situation that they don't like, an individual that they don't like. And they will say, oh, well, okay, well, this is, this is all a metaphor, right? And I think that that's quite

interesting because there's a tendency to think that medieval people are really rather simple and that they are not very intelligent, which is, you know, endlessly. frustrating. But they are completely capable of holding these two concepts at the same time. So on the one hand, there's going to be these monsters at the end of the world. And on the other hand, really, what is monstrous is, you know, treating people badly, is a king that is taxing unfairly or are the members of the clergy who don't do a good job of looking after their flock, right? And we're meant to equate the monstrous as those things as well, right? Exactly. And it's creating the moral colour of the world, isn't that? So sermons, you know, my sermon friends, people like

Caesarius of Aal and Augustine of Hippo, they do exactly the same kind of things. They're a little bit sketchy. What they don't want you to do is to think that the barbarians coming into Rome and running off with all the gold, even though that was technically owed to them, was that's not Gog and Magog. That's not the Gog and May Gog. We're not necessarily in the Bible right now. We're not living out part of the Bible, but it's that kind of thing. And so their servants are yeah, it's not the thing, but it's like that. And there will be many, it's still an evil to be fought against, and it's still a lesson to be learned now, that these things, bad things happen to us because we have been bad. Augustine's doing this little tour after the Gothic

sack of Rome in 410. We're doing various different versions of, this was bad, this was punishment, we need to think about what we have done, how we can improve ourselves. So we think about, get very good at say, if you look back through Roman history, like when the Carthaginians turned up, that was bad. They were punishment as well. And we fought that battle against the Persians. And they were bad as well. And to just build up this whole cast list of all the bad guys in history.

And because they're not attached immediately to the end times as a lived experience, doesn't mean they're not that kind of thing. It will build up through all of history. Satan is always at work. And if by barbarians coming over the hill and killing you, you die, you go straight to Judgment Day anyway. So there's no escaping Judgment Day. And at Judgment Day, I think Judgment Day paintings are some of my very, very favorites

in terms of apocalyptic imagery because you get a lot of cool little demons and monsters in those. So at Judgment Day, you're going to get, the main thing that's going to happen is the Archangel Michael is going to show up and tell you that he's very disappointed. pointed in you, right? But then he's going to sort you. Your soul is going to be weighed in little scales. And then either you're going to go off to his right into heaven. Fantastic. Great. Good for you. Or you're going to be dragged down into hell for all eternity. And, oh, mate, you get some really good monsties dragging people down to hell. I was actually looking at

this wonderful picture of Judgment Day from this illustrated book for Emperor Otto the third, who's emperor in Germany in the year 1000. It's all gold. Everything is gold, and it's wonderful. And Christ is in majesty at the top of the page, surrounded by the angels. And Michael is there. And they've got these very long lists of who is going to be saved and who is going to be down. It's the ultimate Father Christmas.

Nauty and nice list. Oh, but then down at the bottom of the page in the bottom right-hand corner, They've got these incredibly like, almost like dog-headed demon beasts, escorting people down into hell. And some are historians think that one of the people that are dragging down, they're dragging down this young man, is that supposed to be Otto III himself? Because he's talking to an older woman. Maybe that's supposed to be his mother.

And so this is kind of like, has the artist's gone just super political. It's like, dear emperor, if you don't watch your ways, you are going to be dragged to these terrible dog demon things and they are actually really quite scary and a lot of efforts that's got into them as you would in a super deluxe gold image and then all the way to the left-hand side of that was so covering the bottom

half of the picture these slightly green zombie-like figures coming out of boxes and pursues the resurrection of the dead looking a bit startled to suddenly have found themselves very green and zombie-like walking around at the end of time But it's a fabulous overall picture.

The super saved at the top, the demonic monsters down in the bottom and everyone panicking in between. But hell itself is kind of a monster in a lot of apocalyptic depictions as well, because you get the hell mouth, right? Yeah. Again, we were looking in St. Mary's in Kemply and had some lovely images of the sinners being dragged down. And so it's like it's like being eaten a giant monster in its own right. There's cast of demons everywhere. And the demons are loving it as well. This is part of, it's quite easy to just, oh, the demons, well, of course they like about it.

But it's the inversion for people. You're supposed to be horrified at the idea of creatures who are actually enjoying getting people and tying them up by their feet and poking them with sticks. And they do get very graphic with rows of sinners being suspended over. Exotically very horned beasts bouncing around thrashing them. And that's not what nice people, nice respectable people should be doing. So this is quite interesting because I went to Inge to look at the 14th century apocalypse tapestry there, which is just incredible, absolutely beautiful. and some of the finest renderings of all of these monsters that one could ever hope to see. And it's very clear that the people who made it are also trying to kind of get out in front of enjoyment of these images as well.

Because, you know, look, I'm there for the monsters, right? If you show me, I just want to see the monsters. I just want to see the dragon. I want to see the horror of Babylon. I want to see the beast of the abyss. I want to see all these little guys, you know, when I show up. And they have this character that's kind of built in that they refer to as the reader who is sort of like a regular person who's like, now now, stop that. You know, or occasionally, you know, the Archangel Michael is looking at you as the audience and being like, no, you better not be like in this dragon that I'm spearing right now.

So it's quite funny because there seems to be misunderstanding on the part of the artists that, yeah, you're here for the monster show. but you also have to rein people in because it is delightful fundamentally to see these things. It's fun to be scared and then go back to a safe environment. Right back to the actual composition of the Book of Revelation, it is told as this series, like, we're going to show you some scary pictures, John. So the illuminations of them are always really funny

because John is sitting with a pen writing stuff down, looking a bit nervous. which just always for me reminds me that a lot of these images are not just, you don't just leave them around so your average person can come and look at the tapestry or anything like you kind of control access to the mental bit. These opportunities to have the person standing next to it saying what you should be getting out of this picture is this. It's the difference between going around an art gallery and going look at that cool thing. And then actually having to go around the tour guide. And so the symbolism we're supposed to be getting from this is we have not spent half of the monastery's earnings on this incredibly elaborate gold stuff with tapestries and whatever just so that we can be entertained. It's supposed to save your soul.

And it's quite funny because obviously, you know, the way that we relate to these things now is primarily as entertainment. And, you know, I am the worst for this. You know, I am 100%. I want to see your hell fresco. I want to see your apocalypse fresco. If you have any little monster guy anywhere who is medieval, I am going to show up at a point in time and have a look at these things. And yeah, I'm only relating to it as entertainment.

You know, I'm every medieval monk's worst nightmare because I'm just having a nice time. And I think it strikes me as interesting because that's really changed. But I guess that I still want to kind of say, you know, for audiences now, that's also okay. For example, St. Mary's in Kemply, which I really think is such a great place to go and have a look at the frescoes, or going to Inche and seeing this incredible tapestry, you know, the largest extant medieval tapestry. People don't necessarily go see these things because I think that they think I don't really have enough understanding of the apocalypse. I'm not really sure what I'm looking at. And, okay, yeah, there's a lot that you could learn. If you could go around with the tour guide, you're going to learn a lot more. But. Baby, I'm here to tell you, you can just go and enjoy the monsters. Yeah. I got no problem with that. It's fine.

Just go enjoy the medieval imagery. All those funny little details in books of hours that people like to post on the internet. Snails getting up to weird things. The magical world of the monstrous in medieval imagery. Just enjoy it. It's there for fun. You don't have to get all there. The symbolism.

Yeah, I mean, look. Some of it's supposed to be silly. They haven't done these incredibly imaginative, creative things, always with the most seriousness of hearts. They've done it because there is a bit of whimsy and a bit of fun. We can do the other thing, the Middle Ages. It's not just scary and other, and everyone was very deeply devout. Some of those monks, they had incredible senses of humor.

Just the extent to which I mentioned, Bear Wolf, things like Bear Wolf only survive because some monks write them down and things like that. there's a lot more fun and celebration of image. And just every now and again, people have to be pulled in. But I think that there is a lot more trying to engage people in lots of different ways back then, just as there is now. And it's like, one way is not going to capture everybody's soul. Look, obviously, Godzilla is a parable about Japanese people's discomfort with the nuclear age. We, you know, that's one way of relating to Godzilla monsters.

But you could also just be like, oh, monster. Monsters. And I don't need you to have the full understanding of what every single layer of apocalypticism is. It's okay to just have a nice time. That's fine. I'll let everybody. Yeah, exactly. Well, and I think the use of the monstrous is very interesting in that kind of context

for the people at the time as well, because people could make a lot more of it and don't, always. So there's clearly like we could get rid of all the monsters, because some people will do sermons where basically we're just going to say, remember your sins, remember fire, you will get burned if you commit sins, and that's very bad. You don't have to say there's a beast. No, it's one bit in the middle. You don't have to mention Gog and Magog.

Not everyone's going to fight Gog and Magog. So when people do this, and so there's incredible things, and there's a dragon, and there's all sorts of, so. It's actually supposed to be insane. So then people actually like, there's a dragon. Wow. Yeah. Can I see this?

You know, fundamentally, whatever gets the feet through the door, I think that's kind of what the church is going for as well. And if you can, you know, change some hearts and minds, fine. But everybody knows. Monsters sell. Monsters sell. Always. James, thank you so much for coming and talking to me about probably my favorite thing ever.

And my. Thank you very much for having me. Such a pleasure. Thanks for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit. And thanks once again to James for joining me. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my incredible new show, The Medieval Apocalypse, and ad-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com forward slash subscription.

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