The Dog-Headed Men Of Medieval Legend

Imagine, if you will, it's July 25th, which your Catholic grandma tells you is the feast day of St. Christopher. You love your grandmother almost as much as you love my YouTube channel, so you decide to go onto your computer and look up this saint so you have something to talk to her about. While you're doing your research, you find plenty of lovely pictures. But then you stumble upon... this one. That's kind of weird. And then... this one. Okay... what the hell is this? A man? With the head of a dog? What you're looking at is a Cenocephalus, which is a Latinized Greek term meaning dog-headed. And Christopher here is not the only one. They were one of several fantastical and monstrous creatures inherited from antiquity, which medieval people believed inhabited the earth. Well, some medieval people, anyway. And they were certainly amongst the most popular. They pop up in all sorts of literature, some more fanciful, some more serious, and some which straddles the line between the two. Today, we're going to take a look at what medieval people thought of these dog-headed men and answer the age-old question, Do all dogs really go to heaven? Okay, that last bit was a joke. Well... only partially. Like I mentioned in the intro, medieval people got the idea of the Cenocephalus from antiquity, so that's probably a good place to start. Unlike centaurs, satyrs, or other such hybrids, though, they're best known not from mythology, but rather from works of history and geography. In fact, they seem to be first mentioned by the father of history, Herodotus, Most accounts place them in India, however, which is to say, anywhere east of the Indus River and south of China, including the account of the Greek Ctesias of Cnidus and the Romans Pliny the Elder and Salinus, who copied his description from Pliny. The Cenocephali are also not usually alone in these accounts. Pliny, for example, mentions them as part of a chapter all about weird, monstrous humans, including the Blemye, who had no heads, instead having faces in their chests, and the Seapodes, who hop around on one massive foot and lie on their backs, using their foot as a parasol to shield them from the sun. These monstrous peoples are presented as weird-looking and unusual kinds of humans, who live in faraway places, or at least beyond the limits of the familiar. These works, intended and read as informative texts, made the Cenocephali out to be real, and simply unusual and foreign. They could be wild. Pliny says they wore furs and ate meat, including human flesh. But even normal-looking humans could be wild. But the doggishness of Cenocephali often made it that their humanity was in question. And in fact, to many people, this seems to have been a more important question than whether or not they were real. Although Pliny notes that they wore clothing, and elsewhere says that only humans wear clothes, he also says that they had no human speech, and instead could only bark. Speech was seen as one of the defining features of humanity, so their lack of speech led many to see them as possibly more beast than men. Speaking of beasts, there's something I should probably mention to avoid any confusion. The term Cenocephalus is also occasionally used in reference to a type of ape, which most people agree to be the baboon. In fact, the modern scientific name of the yellow baboon is Papio Cenocephalus. Aristotle used it this way in his History of Animals, and Pliny, writing in Latin, actually uses this Greek term exclusively for baboons, explaining that they have muzzles and sharp teeth like dogs, and are highly aggressive. The strange humans he instead refers to in Latin as men with the heads of dogs, Now, baboons do definitely have a dog-like face, but it also seems like it was just common to name apes after human-animal hybrids, since Pliny and others also make reference to apes called sphinxes and satyrs, probably because apes looked almost like a cross between a human and an animal. Of course, it's also possible that the idea of dog-headed people came from descriptions of baboons, but that's hard to prove one way or the other. But, regardless of which came first, by the time these ancient authors are writing, they clearly see them as different entities, and they all make it clear that the ape cenocephali are not human. In any case, Latin and vernacular texts do start to apply the Greek term cenocephalus to the dog-headed people fairly regularly by late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, though some still prefer just calling them people with the heads of dogs. This gets a little confusing in works like Isidore of Seville's Etymologies, which took a lot of its information from Pliny. Though, unlike Pliny, Isidore chooses to use the name cenocephali for both the people and baboons. Nonetheless, it's still quite clear that he's referring to two separate things here, just in how he describes them, and by the fact that one is in the book on humans, specifically in a section on monstrous humans alongside cyclops and giants, and the other is in a book on animals, specifically in the section on apes. But even if the cenocephali weren't baboons, were they really human? Most people seem to agree that they were at least partially so, but like I said, some thought they were more animal than human. Isidore of Seville himself, writing in 7th century Spain, describes them as being part of the universo generi umano, which, as a Christian, implies that they're descendants of Adam. But to him, their dog heads and barking nonetheless reveals that they're more beast than man. But what does it mean to be more beast than man, or vice versa? Well, to a medieval Christian readership, especially an intellectual one, the distinguishing factor was the soul. The most important attempt to tackle this question, which would have a strong influence throughout the Middle Ages, was by the late antique writer Augustine of Hippo. In his influential City of God, Augustine discussed, amongst many other things, strange-looking humans. He starts by discussing people with deformities, denying that such people were made by mistake, as if God were a simple mortal craftsman who could make errors. Instead, they're completely valid forms of humans. We just find them odd because we're unaccustomed to seeing them. We marvel and gawk at the rare, and take the common for granted. He then notes that it's perfectly possible for God to have created whole nations of people who appear monstrous to us, as many tales claim there are. As long as they have rational souls, they're just as human as the rest of us. But there it is, rational souls. Rationality is what separates the human from the animal. Or, more specifically, only the descendants of Adam can have rational souls. At least, provided they're mortal, since angels also have rational souls. Also, emphasis on the can. Descent from Adam doesn't necessarily guarantee that one has a rational soul. Birth and nature were not one and the same in the medieval mind, where, in some cases, a human could give birth to an animal. But, if a mortal creature has a rational soul, then it must also be human. But, Augustine hesitates when he mentions Cenocephali, since, again, he's caught up on their dog heads and their barking, which to him implies that they're more animal than human. The appearance of a monstrous creature, especially a part-animal hybrid, was often seen as an indication of the degree of their humanity. This view is reflected eight centuries later in Thomas of Contreprise on the Nature of Things, where he notes that the more they resemble men in shape of body, the closer they approach men in the sense of judgment in their hearts. A dogish head, the highest and most rational of a human's body parts, might have seemed a little too animalistic for some. But, at the same time, dogs were thought to be the most nearly rational of the animals. With Augustine's mentor, Ambrose of Milan, analogizing their ability to discern things through their sense of smell to syllogistic reasoning. Still, this was only a similarity, since Ambrose notes that dogs are incapable of actual reason. But, this fact may have played into why Cenocephali specifically were so often the objects of these kinds of discussions. Inability to speak is also a point against them, especially since speech was thought to require reason. But, it isn't definitive proof against their human rationality either, especially since some sources claim that they could still understand human language even if they could only bark in reply. All in all, Augustine avoided making a firm declaration on the matter. He suspected that they may be more animal, but he wasn't sure. But, one man, writing over four centuries after Augustine, did feel like he knew enough to come to a conclusion. That man was Ratramnus, a monk of Corbie in West Francia, who exchanged letters with the missionary and future archbishop of Hamburg, Bremen, Rimbert. By the 9th century, Bremen, in today's northern Germany, was an important center for missionary activity into Scandinavia. Rimbert's mentor and predecessor's archbishop, Ansgar, had founded a church in Birka amongst the Swedes with the consent of their king, Björn, in 829. And, Rimbert would also eventually be put in charge of the church in the Danish emporium of Riebe, which should hopefully go some way to dispel the myth that the Vikings were all fiercely hostile to Christianity. At the time, Scandinavia and the Baltic world more broadly, were newly opening up to the Latin Christian world. But, it was still strange, liminal, a place which, although nearer than India, was unfamiliar and full of people who were very much other, especially since they weren't Christians. Which is probably why, in around the 8th century, the cosmography of Aethicus Ister placed many of the classical monstrous peoples in the Baltic, including Cenocephali, who he says lived on an island and built tents in swamps. Others would then also assume that the dog-headed men lived in this region, including Paul the Deacon, who, in his History of the Lombards, has the Lombards face off against the much more numerous Aescipiti, tricking them into going for a duel of champions rather than a full-on battle, by convincing them that there were Cenocephali in the Lombard army, who, they said, fought ferociously and drank the blood of their enemies, hungering for it so much that they drank their own if they couldn't get to them. The connection eventually became so strong that the monk Noetker, in his fanciful biography of Charlemagne, even has the Frankish king refer to the Norsemen as Cenocephali. In the words of the historian Ian Wood, the monstrous seems to play a role in helping define a world that was newly opening up and was not fully understood. The Baltic was physically near, but it was conceptually distant. It was a place of endless possibility and new discovery. In a world where people were very much aware that there were plenty of things out there with which they were unfamiliar, and in which God's creation was not limited to the usual, the idea of men with the heads of dogs didn't seem all that far-fetched. That connection, which Wood notes, between lack of familiarity and the monstrous, is probably why Adam of Bremen, writing in the 11th century, is the last to mention Cenocephali in Scandinavia, though he describes them more like the headless Blemjai and calls them the male offspring of Amazons. They do still bark, though. He has them living in the legendary Rifaian Mountains, traditionally thought to exist at the northernmost edge of the world, information he claims to receive from King Sven Estridsen of Denmark. This is, of course, a time when the major powers of Scandinavia were now Christian, but missionary activity was still strong, both in the less central parts of these kingdoms, but also to ensure conformity to proper Christianity in the newly Christianized realms. After this point, however, Scandinavia becomes much less of a focus for discussions of the marvelous, having become far more familiar and less mysterious. And although some maps still place monstrous creatures in the far north, and it never fully loses its semi-liminal charm, literature generally has them return to the east. But back to Retromnus and Rimbert. Sometime before 865, Rimbert and Retromnus exchanged several letters on the topic of cenocephaly. Rimbert clearly believed that they lived somewhere around the Baltic, and seems to have obtained a bit of information about them, which he shared with Retromnus. In that same letter, he also asked whether his friend reckoned that they had rational, i.e. human, souls. All we have of this conversation is Retromnus' reply, in which he repeats what Rimbert said he knew about cenocephaly, and gives his opinion on their rationality. We know then that according to Rimbert and his sources, For Retromnus, all of this was clear evidence of their rationality. Living communally, and not just as a herd of animals in one place, implied civil life, which was only possible through agreement, a body of morals, and law. It required a sense of right and justice, a view inspired by the writings of Cicero, all of which required reason to establish. Agriculture and weaving were also evidence, since these were complex arts which required thought and a rational understanding about how and why things happened. As for the covering of genitals, this is further evidence that they have a sense of right and wrong, because without thinking that it was wrong for others to see you naked, you wouldn't take special care to cover yourself. Again, this means an agreed sense of morality, which requires reason, and which animals lack. Domestication is also proof of their rationality. It is also complex, but Retromnus argues this point more off of the observation that humans alone domesticate other animals, saying that this is a consequence of God granting Adam dominion over all other creatures. The Cenocephali then share in this inheritance. Retromnus also makes mention of our old friend Saint Christopher, whose status as a saint makes it clear that Cenocephali can be Christians. Now, typically, these days, and even in most depictions in the West for much of the Middle Ages, Christopher was portrayed as a man, though he continued to be portrayed as a Cenocephalus in the Orthodox world until the 19th century. The most famous story about him has him carrying the child Jesus across a river, which is where he gets his name. Christophoros is Greek for Christ-bearer. But Christopher is also noted as being a foreigner from the desert, and early hagiographies tied this to monstrousness. The Greek life of Christopher has him a giant, ferocious Cenocephalus from the land where they eat human flesh. He likewise can't talk and only barks. But despite all this, Christopher still believes in God, and after praying in the desert to be granted the ability to speak, an angel comes and grants it to him, after which he travels to Antioch to be baptized and becomes a defender of Christians in the Age of Persecutions. Eventually he gets captured by the Roman Emperor, who demands that Christopher fight for him, but he refuses and is martyred. There are other versions where he starts off as a regular human, or possibly a giant, and then prays to God to get a dog head, either as penance for past sins, or to prevent future sins, because he's so handsome and women keep throwing themselves at him. But the version where he's a Cenocephalus all along seems to have been most popular. And it's this version which gets translated into Latin and several Western vernacular languages, like Old English, and with which Vatramnus was familiar. Christopher was also often connected to the land of Canaan in the Latin tradition, which may be because the Latin word for dog, canis, looks and sounds similar to canaan, and also because the Bible often uses monstrous terminology to describe the Canaanites. And this connection to Canaan remained even once Christopher stopped being portrayed in the West as a Cenocephalus. But anyway, Vatramnus could look at this example as clear evidence that Cenocephali could be baptized, could pray to God, and could participate in communion with the Christian community, all of which was reserved for the rational. Likewise, the issue of their lack of speech was mitigated in this example, showing that, although it made them strange and unfamiliar, they could still think rationally even if they couldn't express those thoughts through language. Past authorities were caught up on their appearance, but using Augustine's metric for determining whether a monster was human. Vatramnus did just that by proving the rationality of their souls. The ability for Cenocephali to become Christians was the most important part of Vatramnus and Rimbert's discussion. The whole reason Rimbert cared was because he was a missionary, and he suspected that he might encounter them during his missions. If he did, he needed to know whether or not they could, and should, be saved. This is because Christian missionaries sought to fulfill the command given in the Bible to proclaim the gospel to all peoples. So, where the boundaries of peoples lay was extremely important. And, like I said, a rational soul was a guarantee that one was a descendant of Adam, and therefore shared in the condition of humanity, To Vatramnus, Cenocephali shared in Adam's sin, and could, and should, be saved. The inclusion of the Cenocephali amongst the peoples to be preached to was also sometimes seen in artistic depictions. For example, in this Armenian depiction of a Cenocephalus amongst the crowd at the First Pentecost. They also show up, along with pygmies, giants, men with massive ears, and others, on the tympanum of the 12th century Vizalay Abbey in Burgundy, as symbols of the church's mission to extend all the way to even the most distant nations of the earth, while also emphasizing the otherness of those who have not yet accepted the Christian faith. But, the strangeness of the Cenocephali also sometimes brought more fantastic elements, especially in narrative literature, where they might be encountered by the protagonists. Like in one of the poems of the Welsh Black Book of Carmarthen, where King Arthur fights some of them. They also frequently appeared in legends about Alexander the Great's conquests of the East. A pseudonymous letter from Alexander to Aristotle even claims that they had the manes of horses, the tusks of boars, and they breathed fire. Such tales were influenced by earlier geographical works like Pliny's, and they in turn influenced other similar works like the Wonders of the East, an early medieval text that Greta Austen notes arranges various beings in a hierarchy from least to most human. Here, the description of the Cenocephali mirrors the Alexander letter to a T. Fiery breath and everything. So, it should probably be no surprise that the author placed them rather low on the hierarchy. Another genre that made mention of Cenocephali was travel narratives. Especially after the Mongol conquests of the 13th century, there was a greater interest in going to the East, and the Mongols actually made that easier. One of the most famous of those narratives is the travels of Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant and explorer who traveled to the court of Kublai Khan in China in the late 13th century, spending over two decades away from home. In his book, written around 1300, he claimed that the Cenocephali lived on an island in the Indies, northwest of Java, called Angaman. He says that they were wild, lived like beasts, had no king, and were exceedingly cruel. They ate fruits, milk, and rice, as well as meat, including that of humans. An even more famous text at the time, the travels of John Mandeville, written several decades later, instead places them on an island called Nakumera. Although John also describes them as cannibals, as he does for several other monsters in his tale, including giants and centaurs, they differ from Polo's Cenocephali in other respects. They wear only loincloths, which Polo doesn't mention, but may be implied in his description of them as living like beasts. But, unlike with Polo, they do have a king. John says straight up that they have reason, making his position on their humanity immediately obvious, and also notes their devotion to a pagan religion. According to him, they worship an ox as a god and have many prayers, with the king saying 300 every day and several before each meal. The king also wears a red ruby around his neck as the symbol of his authority. Apparently the great Khan covets this gemstone, but hasn't been able to obtain it. Now, these islands, Angaman and Nakumera, are likely referring to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the eastern Indian Ocean. It's quite unlikely that either of these men actually went there, especially John Mandeville, who scholars pretty much all agree was more of an armchair geographer who probably didn't travel at all, and if he did, never went beyond Jerusalem. Instead, he relied on other works of geography and legend to build a fictional travel narrative. But even Marco Polo's account is well known for its fanciful marvels, and this is largely because Polo filled his work not only with what he actually saw, and indeed in some passages he can be quite analytical and precise, but also what was expected. You see, many people read these works precisely for the fabulous tales. Indeed, Mandeville notes that the reason he recorded so many of the marvels he supposedly saw was because people liked hearing about foreign wonders. So even Marco Polo, who did travel to the east, may have felt the need to add details which his readership expected. Some of this embellishment might also come from the work's co-author, Rusticello of Pisa, who was an author of romance literature. The two of them wrote the text jointly when they were in prison together in Genoa. It was even originally composed in Old French, the language of medieval romance, as Le Divisament du Monde. But the marvels were so central to people's interests in the book that by the time it was translated into Latin, only a few years later, it was known as the Liber Miliones dei Magnis Mirabilios Mundi, or The Book of a Million of the World's Greatest Wonders, often shortened to the Italian Il Milione. It seems quite clear that Rusticello had in mind to write a piece of entertainment, as he was used to, and he and Marco Polo may have been willing to stretch the truth to that end by integrating the sorts of things that people wanted and expected to read. On the other hand, Polo may have genuinely believed some of the things he wrote about because of his own expectations. You may be familiar with one of the islands amongst the Andaman and Nicobars as North Sentinel Island. If you've heard this name, then you probably know that to this very day, the Sentinelese can be quite hostile to outsiders. If that was the case for the natives of these islands more broadly, even back in the 13th century, then Marco Polo may well have heard stories while in Java or elsewhere about their hostility to outsiders and their tradition of wearing very little clothing mixed with local assumptions and lore about them. Assumptions which may have already been quite fantastical due to the mystery surrounding them as a result of their relative isolation. And due to his expectations of finding Cenocephalae out in the east somewhere, he could have applied certain characteristics to them, assuming these were the most likely candidates to be the men spoken of by past authorities. As for Mandeville, he basically copies his passage from the account of Oderic of Pordenone, writing in the early 1300s. Oderic did genuinely go to the east, but he also seems to take some inspiration from Polo's account, likely hearing similar tales as Polo had and carrying on the dog-headedness as a result. Alternatively, they could have both gotten it from a mutual third source, whether a European one or possibly even an Asian one. Regardless, it was preconceived ideas about these places which led to Marco Polo's expectations in the first place, as well as his willingness to believe what he was told, or to fill in the blanks and expand upon it as seemed right to him based on those expectations. To quote the historian Keegan Brewer, Now, not everyone was so quick to apply their expectations to their experiences. William of Rubruck, a Franciscan friar from Flanders, travelled to the Mongol capital of Karakorum in 1254 and wrote extensively about his experience. He was a rather curious and observant man, and he asked lots of questions, which has made his work a rather reliable source and a favourite of modern historians. At one point in the text, William relates that he asked the Mongols about the monstrous men described by Isidor and Salinas, inquiring whether they knew where to find them. The Mongols, however, said that they'd never seen such men, which William then notes led him to wonder whether they were actually real. Another Franciscan, the Florentine John de Marioli, had a similar experience in the 1330s when he travelled through India on his way back from a journey to China. Drawn, he says, by a great curiosity and desire to learn all that he could, he visited every part of India, but no matter how often he asked, no one could tell him where to find the monstrous men he'd read about back home. In fact, he claims that some people actually asked him about them, presumably thinking they were back west, though who knows if that's exaggeration on his part for the sake of emphasis. But William and John's doubts didn't have a huge impact on medieval views of the East. Neither of their works were all that popular in the Middle Ages. The Travels of John Mandeville are extant in around 300 medieval manuscripts from all over Europe and translated into various vernacular languages. Compare that to William of Rubruck's work, only extant in five, all of which are confined to England. Keegan Brewer sees this as evidence for the expectation and popularity of wonders in these sorts of travel narratives, whereas the straightforward and mundane had a much more limited readership and influence. Now, popularity of a work doesn't mean that everyone believed everything that was written in it, something Brewer points out several times in his book. Indeed, John Mandeville expected this and defended himself preemptively, saying he wouldn't omit details just because some people didn't believe anything they don't see with their own eyes. In fact, many medieval texts about foreign wonders often have these kinds of defensive passages, which shows the authors were aware that there would be doubters. And sometimes we can get really good glimpses into this when we have several recensions or editions of the same text. I talked about this in my video on Gerald of Wales and his book on the wonders of Ireland, which was also seen as a land of the other at the time. But this can also be seen in the work of another Franciscan who traveled east, John of Plano Carpini, who traveled to the Mongol courts of Batu Khan and Guyuk Khan in 1245 and writes about cenocephaly, amongst other things, in his History of the Mongols. Incidentally, one of his companions on this voyage, Benedict of Poland, also wrote a travel narrative which likewise mentions cenocephaly, saying they lived in the lands of the Rus, the eastern Slavs, much of which was now under Mongol rule. What's interesting about Carpini's work, though, is that from the first to the second recension, the passages where he justifies his inclusion of eastern marvels become even more defensive, justifying these aspects of his writings more firmly and denouncing his haters for trying to ruin his reputation by calling him a liar. Brewer notes how this indicates a response to skeptical feedback by those who were more doubtful and critical about the marvelous elements of the work. That's why at the start of the video I specified that some medieval people believed in cenocephaly. But it's also worth reiterating that this doesn't seem to have been the biggest concern for everyone who wrote or even read about them. For these narratives especially, it should be kept in mind that the line between fiction and nonfiction in medieval literature was not anywhere near as clear as it is today, and many people took both Polo's and Mandeville's texts as authoritative accounts of the East while also consuming them as fanciful entertainment. The medieval world was also one where, as I've said, there was plenty of room for the unusual. There was a very distinct sense of the central, the familiar, and the peripheral, the distant, the unfamiliar. And, for most intellectuals at least, they were willing to accept that there could be strange things out there which only seemed strange because they were unfamiliar. God had no limits on what he could create, so to say that the existence of dog-headed men was impossible was, at best, arrogant. All you could say was that you went where they were said to be and didn't find them. You had reason to believe that they didn't exist, not that they couldn't. Indeed, both William of Rubruck and John de Marioli indicate that they believed in them, or at least were open to the possibility of their existence, until given good reason to think otherwise. John Mandeville wasn't the only one to criticize those who only believed in what they saw with their own eyes. Such a way of approaching the world was commonly seen as foolish. In the medieval worldview, there was so much beyond what you could see. One couldn't see the cause of the motion of the heavens, or the force which brought things down to the earth. One couldn't see atoms, the soul, thoughts, the force which brought magnets together. Nor could one typically see angels and demons, though these could manifest at times. Nor the power by which the words spoken during Holy Communion transformed bread and wine into flesh and blood. And yet, these were all real. So why couldn't men with the heads of dogs exist, too? Now, again, some people doubted several of the things I just mentioned as well. We even read of people who doubted the existence of magnets before getting to see them work with their own eyes. But even so, for some intellectuals anyway, the more important discussion seems to have been not so much whether Cenocephali existed, as much as what the implications might be if they did exist. So whether as saints, the objects of conversion, of philosophical and theological contemplation, as a reflection of the dichotomy between the self and the other, as symbols of the diverse entirety of humanity, or simply as something fun to look at and read about, the dog-headed Cenocephali certainly occupied the minds of many in the Middle Ages, and would continue to do so even into the modern period, especially as exploration of new and unfamiliar lands became a larger and larger venture. Coming to understand how and why medieval people thought about these beings can help us get a glimpse into how medieval people saw the world in which they lived more broadly, and fleshes out our understanding of that world and its inhabitants, even, and especially, in areas where we don't necessarily share the same worldview today. And like the travels of Marco Polo and John Mandeville, I hope that you found this video both informative and entertaining. Make sure to let me know in the comments whether you think Cenocephali have rational souls. As always, I thank you all very much for watching, and I'll see you next time.