Monstrous Births and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Germany

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Jennifer Spinks

Religious Cultures in the Early Modern World

Dramatically physically deformed children and animals were a source of fascination and fear – though seldom pity – in early modern Europe. Notorious cases include the 1495 conjoined twins of Worms, the Monk Calf of 1523, and a seven-headed baby born in Eusrisgo in 1573. This study is an examination of printed representations of monstrous births in German-speaking Europe from the end of the fifteenth century and through the sixteenth century, beginning with a seminal series of broadsheets from the late 1490s by humanist Sebastian Brant, and including prints by Albrecht Dürer and Hans Burgkmair.

In the sixteenth century these births were of particular importance in German-speaking areas that were caught up in the religious conflicts of the Reformation and early Counter-Reformation. While interest flared periodically in France, the Netherlands, and Italy, the most sustained and voluminous publications emerged from German regions. During this period intellectual and theological debates, popular belief and visual culture reflected a preoccupation with phenomena that were simultaneously natural and unnatural, including showers of blood, comets and other strange apparitions in the sky, and - the topic of this study - monstrous births.

Readership

Religious Studies, History of Art, History of Print Culture, Social History of Medicine

Contents

Introduction: Wonders and monsters in Early Modern Europe
Chapter 1: From Monstrous Races to Monstrous Births: Sebastian Brant and the Intersection of Humanism, Print Culture and Monstrous Births around 1500
Chapter 2: Visual Culture and Monstrous Births before the Reformation: Albrecht Dürer, Hans Burgkmair and Conjoined Twins
Chapter 3: Reformation Visual Culture and Monstrous Births: Luther’s Papal Ass and Melanchthon’s Monk Calf
Chapter 4: Wonderbooks and Protestants: Jakob Rueff, Konrad Lycosthenes and Job Fincel
Chapter 5: Catholic Print Culture and Monstrous Births: Johann Nas and Anti-Lutheran Polemic
Chapter 6: One Monster after Another: Interpreting the Multitude of Monstrous Births in the later Sixteenth Century

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