It Happened to a Friend of a Friend of Mine: Natural History & the Rise of Empiricism
Sixteenth-century naturalists grappled with the problem of determining, in the case of second-hand accounts of often marvelous plants and animals, how to separate the true from the false […] In the case of unknown sources, separated from them and their social world by space or time, they applied humanist methods of collation and comparison in order to tease, if possible, the truth from vague or contradictory accounts.
-Brian Ogilvie,The Science of Describing (22-23)
In the 1579 dedication of his collected works to King Henri III, Paré writes, "I have now laboured fifty years with all care and pains in the illustration and amplification of Chirurgery [...] there be few men of this profession which can bring so much authority to their writings either with reason, or experience as I can."
The following year, when his use of ligatures rather than cauterization after amputations came under attack from Étienne Gourmelen, Paré again stressed the importance of first-hand experience, retorting: "Moreover, you say you will teach me my lesson in the operations of Surgery : which I think you cannot do : for I did not learn them in my study, or by hearing for many years the lectures of Physicians : but I was Resident three years in the Hospital of Paris [...] I have been in company at Battles, Skirmishes, Assaults, and Besiegings of Towns and Fortresses [...] Now will you dare to say you will teach me to perform the works of Surgery, you who have never yet come out of your study? [...] But the operations of Surgery are learned by the eye and by the hand" (qtd. in Paget 27).
Though Paré's methods may be outdated, this experiential ethos shines through the vast majority of his oeuvre. Of the 29 books contained in the 1634 edition, 28 draw more-or-less directly from his own knowledge of medicine and surgery. It's ironic, then, that modern audiences know him best for the one that doesn't.
"Of Monsters and Prodigies", the 25th book of The Workes of that famous Chirurgion Ambrose Parey, seems ludicrous by today's standards. Though it includes some cases Paré himself witnessed (including a discussion of fraud in “Chap. XVIII: Of the Cozenages and crafty Tricks of Beggars”), it primary relies on second- and third-hand reports copied from other texts.
However, it's important to understand these accounts in their historical context. In his work on the birth of natural history as a scientific discipline, Ogilive categories the 16th century as a transitional period, in which naturalists moved from a textual tradition surveying the works of classical authors to a descriptive, empirical approach that more closely resembles modern science (The Science of Describing 1). To put it in mildly anachronistic terms, history and natural history were briefly allied, though the 17th century saw a growing distinction between scientific and cultural knowledge ("Natural History, Ethics, and Phsycio-theology" 99).
Perhaps most emblematic of this allegiance was Paré's contemporary Conrad Gessner, widely regarded as the father of zoology, whose Historiae animalium collected all known accounts of animals, both ancient and modern. Gessner's volumes include meticulous drawings and the most up-to-date scientific knowledge of his time, but they also include outdated, incorrect and contradictory accounts and images of fantastical monsters, creating an inventory of knowledge throughout history: "Rarely was direct experience or observation the sole criterion for including an animal, while the existence of a textual description was. Texts were important: Gessner explained in the preface that agreement among writers over centuries made knowledge reliable" (Kusukawa 306). Gessner did not necessarily believe his sources - in fact he disclaims all responsibility for the veracity of some, including Olaus Magnus - but he thought it was important to provide a complete record.
It is also worth noting that the religion of the time provided a model for understanding the strange or implausible as an expression of the divine. Paré begins his book of monsters with this argument: "Here are reckoned up the many causes of monsters; the first whereof is the glory of God, that his immense power may be manifested to those which are ignorant of it, by the sending of those things which happen contrary to nature [...] another cause is, that God may either punish mens wickednesse, or shew signs of punishment at hand" (962).
The following year, when his use of ligatures rather than cauterization after amputations came under attack from Étienne Gourmelen, Paré again stressed the importance of first-hand experience, retorting: "Moreover, you say you will teach me my lesson in the operations of Surgery : which I think you cannot do : for I did not learn them in my study, or by hearing for many years the lectures of Physicians : but I was Resident three years in the Hospital of Paris [...] I have been in company at Battles, Skirmishes, Assaults, and Besiegings of Towns and Fortresses [...] Now will you dare to say you will teach me to perform the works of Surgery, you who have never yet come out of your study? [...] But the operations of Surgery are learned by the eye and by the hand" (qtd. in Paget 27).
Though Paré's methods may be outdated, this experiential ethos shines through the vast majority of his oeuvre. Of the 29 books contained in the 1634 edition, 28 draw more-or-less directly from his own knowledge of medicine and surgery. It's ironic, then, that modern audiences know him best for the one that doesn't.
"Of Monsters and Prodigies", the 25th book of The Workes of that famous Chirurgion Ambrose Parey, seems ludicrous by today's standards. Though it includes some cases Paré himself witnessed (including a discussion of fraud in “Chap. XVIII: Of the Cozenages and crafty Tricks of Beggars”), it primary relies on second- and third-hand reports copied from other texts.
However, it's important to understand these accounts in their historical context. In his work on the birth of natural history as a scientific discipline, Ogilive categories the 16th century as a transitional period, in which naturalists moved from a textual tradition surveying the works of classical authors to a descriptive, empirical approach that more closely resembles modern science (The Science of Describing 1). To put it in mildly anachronistic terms, history and natural history were briefly allied, though the 17th century saw a growing distinction between scientific and cultural knowledge ("Natural History, Ethics, and Phsycio-theology" 99).
Perhaps most emblematic of this allegiance was Paré's contemporary Conrad Gessner, widely regarded as the father of zoology, whose Historiae animalium collected all known accounts of animals, both ancient and modern. Gessner's volumes include meticulous drawings and the most up-to-date scientific knowledge of his time, but they also include outdated, incorrect and contradictory accounts and images of fantastical monsters, creating an inventory of knowledge throughout history: "Rarely was direct experience or observation the sole criterion for including an animal, while the existence of a textual description was. Texts were important: Gessner explained in the preface that agreement among writers over centuries made knowledge reliable" (Kusukawa 306). Gessner did not necessarily believe his sources - in fact he disclaims all responsibility for the veracity of some, including Olaus Magnus - but he thought it was important to provide a complete record.
It is also worth noting that the religion of the time provided a model for understanding the strange or implausible as an expression of the divine. Paré begins his book of monsters with this argument: "Here are reckoned up the many causes of monsters; the first whereof is the glory of God, that his immense power may be manifested to those which are ignorant of it, by the sending of those things which happen contrary to nature [...] another cause is, that God may either punish mens wickednesse, or shew signs of punishment at hand" (962).
The Sea Pig: A Case Study
A close investigation of the origin and textual history of one Paré's monsters can help to illuminate how knowledge was constructed and disseminated in this period, as well as how it could be distorted in the process.
The sea pig or sea swine (bottom image) is one of several aquatic beasts featured in “Chap. XXI: Of the wondrous nature of some marine things, and other living creatures”. Of it, Paré says: "Olaus Magnus writes that this monster was taken at Thyle an Iland of the North, Anno Dom. 1538. it was of a bignesse almost incredible, as that which was seventy-two foot long, and fourteene high, and seven foot betweene the eyes : now the liver was so large that therewith they filled five hogsheads, the head resembled a swine, having as it were a halfe moone on the backe, and three eyes in the midst of his sides, his whole body was scaily" (1005).
At first glance, all of the monsters on this page seem like simple examples of the classical belief that every land animal has an aquatic counterpart. This theory was popularized by Roman naturalists (notably Pliny the Elder) and had strong support from medieval writers such as Isidore of Seville. By the late 16th century, when Paré was writing, it had lost some credibility in the face of rising empiricism, though it had not been completely discredited (Van Duzer 9). For the purposes of this project, however, the sea pig is interesting for three reasons. Firstly, it appears in single, documented sighting that can be tracked from its origin to Paré's rendition. Secondly, despite its innocuous description here, its initial appearance can be linked to the religious tension between Catholics and Protestants that permeated Europe in this period, and the elision of that element from subsequent texts seems significant. And thirdly, Paré makes several mistakes in his brief description that add another dimension of unreliability.
The sea pig or sea swine (bottom image) is one of several aquatic beasts featured in “Chap. XXI: Of the wondrous nature of some marine things, and other living creatures”. Of it, Paré says: "Olaus Magnus writes that this monster was taken at Thyle an Iland of the North, Anno Dom. 1538. it was of a bignesse almost incredible, as that which was seventy-two foot long, and fourteene high, and seven foot betweene the eyes : now the liver was so large that therewith they filled five hogsheads, the head resembled a swine, having as it were a halfe moone on the backe, and three eyes in the midst of his sides, his whole body was scaily" (1005).
At first glance, all of the monsters on this page seem like simple examples of the classical belief that every land animal has an aquatic counterpart. This theory was popularized by Roman naturalists (notably Pliny the Elder) and had strong support from medieval writers such as Isidore of Seville. By the late 16th century, when Paré was writing, it had lost some credibility in the face of rising empiricism, though it had not been completely discredited (Van Duzer 9). For the purposes of this project, however, the sea pig is interesting for three reasons. Firstly, it appears in single, documented sighting that can be tracked from its origin to Paré's rendition. Secondly, despite its innocuous description here, its initial appearance can be linked to the religious tension between Catholics and Protestants that permeated Europe in this period, and the elision of that element from subsequent texts seems significant. And thirdly, Paré makes several mistakes in his brief description that add another dimension of unreliability.
Olaus Magnus and the Surprising Ecclesiastical Origins of the Sea Pig
Olaus Magnus, credited with the first description of the sea pig, was a Swedish Catholic priest who lived in exile following Sweden's conversion to Protestantism (Nigg 10). He is best known for two works focused on his native Scandinavia, likely written to convince the Roman Catholic world to attempt to recapture his homeland (Starkley 34): his 1539 map of the region (images 1 & 2), and an accompanying text, published in 1555, called Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus, or History of the Northern Peoples (image 4) . Both of these works contain depictions of the sea pig, and the Carta marina in particular can be considered cutting-edge reporting, as Olaus Magnus was working on the map when the monster was sighted in 1537 (not 1538, which is the first of Paré's mistakes) and printed it just over a year later. However, modern scholarship has determined that he was not the first to publish an image of the creature. A pamphlet called Monstrum in oceano Germanico (image 3), published in Rome in 1537, contains the original depiction of the sea pig, and was Olaus Magnus's source for his account (Nigg 60).
The pamphlet is primarily interesting because it interprets the sea pig as a sign of God's displeasure (compare Paré's second cause of monsters), and gives a detailed inventory of the symbolic meaning of its features. Olaus Magnus reproduces this inventory in his expanded commentary on the sea pig in Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus, an English translation of which is quoted below. This passage is significant because it can be contextually interpreted as an attack on Protestantism, and because it is absent from all subsequent descriptions.
The pamphlet is primarily interesting because it interprets the sea pig as a sign of God's displeasure (compare Paré's second cause of monsters), and gives a detailed inventory of the symbolic meaning of its features. Olaus Magnus reproduces this inventory in his expanded commentary on the sea pig in Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus, an English translation of which is quoted below. This passage is significant because it can be contextually interpreted as an attack on Protestantism, and because it is absent from all subsequent descriptions.
"Now I shall recall to memory the monstrous pig which was discovered later in the same North Sea in the year 1537, and seen as ominous in every feature. It has a pig's head with a crescent moon at the back, four dragon's feet, a pair of eyes in its loin at each side, and a third on its belly towards the navel; at the end was the bifurcated tail of a normal fish. In the city of Rome at that time an interpretation was printed and published, explaining the significance of the beast's individual parts, which showed how heretics generally pursue a swinish existence. By the moon behind the head is meant distortion of the truth, since it grows not on the pig's forehead but at the nape of its neck. The eyes in its loins and belly are full of temptation, and for this reason they must be cut out. Lastly, the four dragon's feet signify the grossly evil desires and acts of mankind, bursting in viciously from the four corners of the earth, and appearing in the fish very much as though it were some prying ruffian.
Whatever the import of this strange pig may be, then, it can properly be displayed as a symbol to the unclean men of this wretched age, urging them to recoil from monstrous habits and to embrace goodness and benevolence. Certainly this sea-pig knows all about the art of plundering with atrocious savagery; and it becomes even fiercer when, with the seal as an accomplice, it molests all kinds of prey.
-Description of the Northern Peoples, translated by Peter Fisher and Humphrey Higgins (1110)
Gessner & The Beginning of Distortion
Conrad Gessner was the next major naturalist to write about the sea pig in his Historiae animalium liber IIII, published in 1558. Gessner's description is brief, but contains several striking features, some of which provide strong evidence that Paré drew solely from this text and never directly read Olaus Magnus.
- The first, most obvious feature is the abridgement. Gessner has not included any of the religious context, simply stating the date and location of the sighting, and then explaining his decision to call the monster a hyena and discussing the ears and eyes in Olaus Magnus's image. It's possible that Gessner had not read Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus, but it's unlikely he would have included it even if he had, since he was a Protestant whose books were banned by the Catholic church (D'Amico 46).
- Here the sea pig is said to be found near the island of Thyle, a legendary island that appeared in travel narratives dating back to ancient Greece. Olaus Magnus did position the sea pig next to 'Tile' on the Carta marina, but in his longer account he makes no reference to the island. Paré follows Gessner in this mistake.
- The mirror image reversal of Olaus Magnus's sea pig is a characteristic feature of woodcuts copied from drawings, in which the original image was duplicated and then reversed in the printing process (Kusukawa 312). Paré's image also displays this mirroring, though a side by side comparison of their images with a reversed sea pig from an uncoloured version of the Carta marina reveals that very little else was changed.
A Return to Paré
Although at first these facts will appear to lack credibility, nevertheless with examination they illuminate the secrets of nature and are not only found to win belief but also to excite wonder (from which scholarship proceeds).
-Olaus Magnus, translated by Lindsay Starkley (36)
Several of the mistakes in Paré's description have already been discussed: his own change of 1537 to 1538, and the transposition of the sighting to Thule, which originated with Gessner. The elimination of religious interpretation cannot be counted as a mistake, but it is another significant change from the pamphlet that introduced this version of the sea pig. A final change, Paré's addition of a description of size, is not found in any other description of the monster. It's possible it was transposed from a different section of Gessner. It's equally possible that - contrary to idiom - it was added in translation. Paré did not know Latin (Packard 53, Paget 13), which increased the possibility of mistakes caused by either his own imperfect understanding or by a translator. In fact, other than the image, nearly every detail of Paré's account is different from Olaus Magnus's. Over three authors and 34 years (Paré first published his work on monsters in French in 1573), the sea pig lost its religious significance, grew to an enormous size, and moved to a legendary island. Even if the account had been based in rigorous empiricism to begin, it would be nearly impossible for anyone who encountered the later sources to reconstruct the truth.
It may seem needlessly microscopic to focus on a single image from Paré's work, especially since that image is only truly representative of a small section of 1000+ pages of text, but Paré himself considered the monstrous a natural extension of his other work - “Of monsters and prodigies” was originally published with his writing on obstetrics, under the title Deux livres de chirurgie (Packard 92) - and much of the cognitive dissonance at seeing it juxtaposed with anatomical diagrams is a product of modern sensibilities. In today's world, where information is readily available, books are digitized, cameras are everywhere, and almost every part of the globe can be reached by airplane, it's easy to dismiss Paré and his fellow naturalists as credulous or misguided. But they were limited by the technologies of their age and by physical proximity to whatever information they wanted to access. Even books, which we tend to think of as reliable repositories of knowledge, were affected by these limitations, and could often be distorted by their reliance on second-hand reporting, as I hope this discussion shows.
As per Paré's causes of monsters and Olaus Magnus's theological interpretation of the sea pig, the natural world of this period was conceptualized as a medium through which God's will could be expressed, making possible both the monstrous and the miraculous. To quote Brian Ogilvie, “God’s omnipotence served to warrant the most outlandish claims about His creation, so long as they were supported by credible testimony” ("Natural History, Ethics, and Phsycio-theology" 93). Whether the original depiction of the sea pig counts as credible testimony may be debatable, but its inclusion in Paré is not out of keeping with the scientific methods of his time.
It may seem needlessly microscopic to focus on a single image from Paré's work, especially since that image is only truly representative of a small section of 1000+ pages of text, but Paré himself considered the monstrous a natural extension of his other work - “Of monsters and prodigies” was originally published with his writing on obstetrics, under the title Deux livres de chirurgie (Packard 92) - and much of the cognitive dissonance at seeing it juxtaposed with anatomical diagrams is a product of modern sensibilities. In today's world, where information is readily available, books are digitized, cameras are everywhere, and almost every part of the globe can be reached by airplane, it's easy to dismiss Paré and his fellow naturalists as credulous or misguided. But they were limited by the technologies of their age and by physical proximity to whatever information they wanted to access. Even books, which we tend to think of as reliable repositories of knowledge, were affected by these limitations, and could often be distorted by their reliance on second-hand reporting, as I hope this discussion shows.
As per Paré's causes of monsters and Olaus Magnus's theological interpretation of the sea pig, the natural world of this period was conceptualized as a medium through which God's will could be expressed, making possible both the monstrous and the miraculous. To quote Brian Ogilvie, “God’s omnipotence served to warrant the most outlandish claims about His creation, so long as they were supported by credible testimony” ("Natural History, Ethics, and Phsycio-theology" 93). Whether the original depiction of the sea pig counts as credible testimony may be debatable, but its inclusion in Paré is not out of keeping with the scientific methods of his time.