Dragons: From Eden to Middle Earth

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Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga, 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 torch-lit 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 terrorizing the 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 Ploy's 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 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 wyverns 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 Wales. The Golden Beasts of Uther Pendragon's 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.

Sam, welcome to Gone 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. 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 favorite is Tiamat, who appears in the epic of Gilgamesh. So we're going back, who knows, 2000 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. 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 Tiamat I had a cat

when i was a child whose name was tiamat but you know it's a you know inside all of us there's a longing for a dragon of some description i think when we say dragon 2 i think that can be sort of a confusing one because you know like i have 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 horn 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 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 dragons. 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, multicolored rainbow dragons, all kinds of things are possible. So there is no consistency in 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 see it kind of deals? 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 a 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 route as demonstrate. No, see, this is a really interesting point to me 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, their 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 we find these biblical dragons would we conflate that with the greek motifs or eastern motifs or is that just kind of me filling the gaps. There's an element of continuity and transference that's gone on.

In doing some reading in preparation for our chat today, 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...

1400 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 lotan and this seems to move into the concept of leviathan again we can see In Egyptian mythology, we've got Ra or possibly Set overcoming APEP, the serpent. So it's very, very strong set of consistencies 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 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 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 characterisation 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 Ra and Apep, you know, yeah, Apep is bad. This is a sinful monster. You know, this is a genuine threat to humanity and the God.

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

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 one another the difference is of course the serpent finishes with the tail a bit like a mermaid really wrapped around 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 say in the bestiary, 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 they could probably tell you about the hydra and

this sort of thing. But Tiamat, 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 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 sanitized versions and it's 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 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 Knight 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.

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 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 and 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 what? I never made that connection.

that's really interesting yeah right so it's kind of like oh here's here's the bad here's the bad oversexed 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 you know 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 from the medieval period. One of them doesn't have the dragon story at all. That's the oldest one. Yeah, 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 gender obviously assigned to it so I wouldn't get too carried away with the idea that there is 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 dragon's burgeoning sexuality being... reinforced and brought to boiling point 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 teller 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, a version of George and the Dragon which is 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 wristwatches were available in Ethiopia. But also it underlines the point that these stories do not 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. Where 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 bit.

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 Smaug 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'd put out to you that they are perhaps not only holding 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... 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 favourites.

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 Island, 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 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 of 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 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. This message is sponsored by Greenlight with School Out.

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That's so interesting because it is just so in opposition to the dragons that I'm used to seeing. pop up in saint stories you know obviously we've got saint george as we've been talking about and also obviously there's saint margaret one of my favorite saints you know and she one of her miracles is that she's fed by the emperor dioclesian 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

Ooh, okay, come on, lay them on me. I do, yes. So there's a Cornish saint called Carintoc 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 Karantok comes along. It's an interesting little side story that he's looking for his altar stone, which has floated away.

And 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 Tok agrees to do away with the dragon. And Karen Tok basically makes friends with the 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 explained. It's because everybody's been so naughty and wicked that God sent this dragon to teach them a lesson. We're back to the monster demonstrate idea there. And he says, now, if you 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. Away it flies.

Beautiful, beautiful image. You can just imagine the television miniseries, Karen Talk 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 Tock's 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 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 saint george's again obviously it's always going to come back to saint george sorry everybody one of the ways of kind of reading the dragon in saint 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 yeah never mind about

These several other nice little dragons. Yeah. And even, again, one of my favorite stories is a rather terrifying Irish saint called Macree. And he describes himself as a dragon.

I will be a mangling dragon unto my enemies. Isn't that amazing? So that to me is kind of influenced by or a crossover with the... dragons 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 mccreek was doing there 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 Saint Martha.

So she is allegedly from Martha and Mary in the New Testaments. She ends up in France, as one does. Again, a little bit like the story with Karantok, there's this fierce dragon that nobody can control. 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 saint hillary 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 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 saint george is a quite common dedicatee 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. They've got the control of the plough and the chaos of the weeds and the wilderness and the processing of the regation tide dragon is part of marking the change.

that makes sense classic medieval stuff you know 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 is a part of that makes perfect sense but i 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 uh dragons as gargoyles on churches all the time so there's this kind of apopatraic you know use of them like you can 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 saint. So he's Saint Romain. or possibly Romanus. And he's dated to the 7th century at Rouen in northern France. And he is brought in to deal with the Garguille.

this is the name for this evil dragon. But amongst other things, it is lying across the width of the river Seine. 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 Garguia, 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.

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 flood water 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 stonemasons 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?

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 are medieval people saying

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 bestries are a 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 bonakin. Dragons there, I think I maybe alluded to this earlier, but they are the greatest of all snakes.

So you'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 recognize because they have feet and that is the internal logical world of the best jury the best jury writers and particularly the best jury 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 baina 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 vestry 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 them all having fate doesn't.

really lead itself into a huge problem you can see some consistency there and you've got the potential for this moralizing so with dragons in the bestiary their main enemy is the elephant Yeah, yeah. So what you have is this strange to modernised construction that the dragon lies in wait 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.

suffocates the unfortunate elephant to 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 you can see where they're going with that idea but you know christ is also the true weasel within bestiaries

There's all kinds of readings that Vestry authors felt more than capable of making. I think it's worth noting as well that Vestry's... are very strongly associated with the English tradition. 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 were known for. Embroidery, opus anglicanum, that's something else. That is, you know, the English work. But you could equally make that point about bestries.

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

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 did they decide on this? No idea. But localised understandings of how dragons behave. There's so much complexity. It's just a constant joy, really is. This message is sponsored by Greenlight with School Out.

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If there's all these interesting medieval ways of looking at dragons and using dragons, is it something that we see drop off once we hit- The early modern period, you know, are 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 customise 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 dragon to be? Aspects of a lion?

dragons sometimes have manes aspects of snakes oh well 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 and as well who is it that's commissioning art 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 make such great propaganda right like i was at the vna as is my want of the weekend and i was looking at the cast in the cast courts of the saint george and the dragon which comes from outside of prague cathedral because and 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 elephantine.

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 or tree, right? So now the bad guy has to look kind of like an elephant. It's very difficult to say. There's so many possibilities.

But what I will say is that money was spent on a regular basis on dragons that were 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 happens. The best attested is at Norwich. And we've got excellent records from that. And in fact, one of the... dragon 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 Mons, depending how you like to pronounce it. Belgium for the most amazing spectacle of reenacting George and the dragon it's a long 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 Mont 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 um since the 15th century and

It is not the same dragon as it used to be. It's a wonderful fiberglass thing. Oh, it's absolutely beautiful. It used to be wicker work 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 honor 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's it is a really amazing spectacle and it's something that is taken so seriously that they do a junior 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 re-enacting 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 civilisation 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 give the princess some wrist watches give saint george a revolver these things or we can go and look at just how media works i mean you've got the game of thrones a show lots of dragons there you got

Of course, you know, The Hobbit and Smaug 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

its 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 Zogs quite a lot.

I recommend that. And these are... dragons that he says that 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 and 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. 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. Wiles and...

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 Riches and to you for listening to Gone Medieval from Historyhead.

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.

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