Kenneth Spencer Research Library

What makes a monster, well, monstrous? Monsters carry the fears of the people that create them, tapping into existential dreads and cultural tensions to flay our superficial defenses and expose the weak societal organs and vulnerabilities beneath. Today, our monsters array from the cannibalistic and supernatural vampires of Sinners to Barbarian’s brutal, lonesome and pitiable Mother – and the movie’s true monster, a landlord. 

In the later Middle Ages, however, monsters sometimes played a more ambivalent role than violent antagonists. The word “monster” derives from the Latin “monēre” or “to warn, to admonish.” These monsters embodied omens or manifested God’s admonishment of human behavior, inviting conscious and deliberate analysis and contemplation on their meanings. So-called “monstrous races” were born from tales and anecdotes of human and human-like peoples born in far-off lands, repurposing anecdotal entrails from the Bible and classical authors like Pliny the Elder into haruspices of divine interpretation. They were frequent subjects of fascination and debate for their meanings, paired with prodigies and marvels as the myriad ways that God’s will manifested in nature and the real world, as well as theological debates as to whether such races possessed souls and could be converted to Christianity. 

Konrad Lykosthenes was one such interpreter, a humanist and encyclopedist who sought to sew together a comprehensive history of signs, prodigies, and portents from biblical times into his own modernity with his Prodigiorum ac ostentorvm chronicon [Chronicle of Prodigies and Signs]. He built a body of text from the limbs of other historical and contemporary sources onto which he sutured his own interpretations. These portents included everything from natural disasters like earthquakes to the appearance of mythical and monstrous creatures, as well as so-called “wonders,” “marvels,” and “monstrous” births. His work proved sensationalist and popular, a theological treatise that leaned lurid and sometimes traded on the grisly and gruesome to appeal to a wider audience. 

By the end of the sixteenth century, science and medicine had pierced their talons into the tender underbelly of the study of monstrosities, clawing it away from the sole purview of priests, philosophers, and theologians. With that shift, natural historians like Ulisse Aldrovandi and physicians like Fortunio Liceti dissected the meanings of monstrosities not as reflections of divine will or intent, but as natural phenomena that could be classified and analyzed under the newly invented microscope. 

Ulisse Aldrovandi sought to document all forms of nature, collecting a cabinet of curiosity with over 7,000 specimens – including an alleged and infamous dragon, likely fabricated by grafting together the stuffed carcasses of other animals. From those studies and collections he wrote over 400 volumes on everything from mollusks to metals. Monsters were a natural inclusion, and thus was wrought his Monstrorum Historia, the eleventh of a fourteen-volume encyclopedia. It bled together what we today treat as unequivocally monstrous creatures – centaurs and satyrs – with concepts that today we might conceive as mere medical conditions, such as neurofibromatosis or hypertrichosis, transplanting alien viscera of exotic monstrosity into the hollow body cavity of the reader’s imagination and understanding of nature. Aldrovandi’s amalgamation of monstrous creatures, humans, and hybrids reflected an ambition to reflect a complete and total natural history of monsters in parallel to birds, fish, and all of the natural world, rather than flensing the impossible from the plausible like extraneous fat from muscle and meat. 

In De Monstrorum causibus [On the Causes of Monsters], Fortunio Liceti, meanwhile, purported to analyze monsters not only as a phenomena born from nature – or “nature’s mistakes” or even its jokes and pranks – rather than divine will, but also sought their causes and their taxonomic classifications a landmark in teratology – the study of monsters which today has come to mean the study of congenital birth defects. The modern conflation is no accident, as Liceti’s work treats them as one and the same: monsters were born, not made, and his work discusses everything from dog-headed humans to conjoined twins, framed in antithesis to the ideal or perfect human body that was increasingly the focus of medical study.  

Liceti described monsters not as warnings or admonishments but as “showings,” claiming that the term derived from “monstrare,” or “to demonstrate or show.” His examination of “monsters” demystified them and challenged the portentous interpretations of monstrosities that deemed them a reflection of the wrath of God upon the parent or their community writ large. This metamorphosed monstrosities into something not inherently ominous or harrowing but still oozing with interpretations. 

As we examine historical horrors, it invites a vivisection of our own insecurities and fears, to peel back the flesh of our society and examine the sinews beneath that tie together our own identities: What do we think of as monstrous, and why? When does humanity itself become monstrous? And when something goes bump in the night, what are we really afraid of? 

All of above books will be on display at this year’s Haunting Humanities event this Wednesday, October 29th, 5:30 to 9pm at Abe and Jake’s Landing (800 E. 6th Street), together with an array of horrifying, prodigious, and compelling activities, including a monstrously-themed escape room in a box, coloring pages, Rare Book Bingo, monster reviews, and more. Come contemplate the meanings of monstrosity with us and walk away with your own nightmares to divine. 

Eve Wolynes
Special Collections Curator

Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland is widely regarded as a book that inspired and informed many of William Shakespeare’s history plays, as well as tragedies such as Macbeth and King Lear. Last year Kenneth Spencer Research Library (KSRL) purchased the first edition (1577) with the aim of making the book and its 212 lively woodcut illustrations available to visiting classes and researchers. The bookseller’s description said that this copy had been in private family ownership for generations, but we never dreamed that it would be possible to trace the book back to its original owner. After unpacking the two volumes, we leafed through them page by page looking for manuscript annotations.

On the title page of volume one “William Kyllygrewe” had signed his name twice in Tudor script:

Title page of Volume 1 of Raphael Holinshed’s
Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande.
At London: Imprinted for Iohn Hunne, 1577.
Call Number: Pryce D11. Click image to enlarge.

Could William Kyllygrewe have been the original owner of the book? Browsing through the rest of the book revealed some marginal notes and manicules (sketches of a pointing hand) marking passages of interest to some past reader. There is no other handwritten evidence of ownership.

However, there is an eye-catching pictorial map in the section about the reign of Queen Elizabeth I that concludes volume two. The text recounts the conflict between the Catholic forces supporting Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Protestant forces of Queen Elizabeth during 1571-1573. The hostilities culminated in the “Lang Siege” of Edinburgh Castle.

The map shows the Protestant artillery bombarding Edinburgh Castle before achieving victory.

Map of the siege of Edinburgh Castle, from Vol. 2 (following page 1868) of
Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande.
Call Number: Pryce D11. Click image to enlarge.

Text on the back side of the map lists the chief participants in the siege. General Sir William Drurie commanded the Protestant forces with the aid of ten Gentlemen and Captaines. One of them was “Henrie Killigrew hir maiesties ambassadoure at that present in Scotland.” Listed next are thirteen “Gentlemen as went thither to serve of their owne free willes.”

Among the gentlemen who participated “of their own free willes” is William Killigrew.

List of participants in the siege from the verso of the map of Edinburgh castle,
from Vol. 2 (following page 1868) of Holinshed’s Chronicles of England,
Scotlande, and Irelande. Call Number: Pryce D11. Click image to enlarge.

Allowing for the variations in spelling usual at that time, could he be the William Kyllygrewe who owned this book? In his shoes, wouldn’t you want to own a book in which you and your brother are mentioned as major players in a recent military victory?

Some genealogical investigation of the Killigrew family tree with its numerous Henrys and Williams revealed that the Henry Killigrew (d. 1603) and William Killigrew (d.1622) were the fourth and fifth sons of John Killigrew and Elizabeth (née Trewennard) of Arwennack in Cornwall. As younger sons they needed to make their own way in the world and did so successfully as royal courtiers. William was elected Member of Parliament a number of times and was appointed to various government offices, including Groom of the Privy Chamber to Elizabeth I in 1576 and Chamberlain of the Exchequer under James I in 1608.  In 1594 he took an 80-year lease on Kempton and Hanworth, adjoining royal manors in Middlesex near London. In 1603 he was knighted.

While the biographical information did not answer the question whether this William Killigrew had owned our copy of Holinshed’s Chronicles, his prominence suggested that surviving documents signed by him might be located and compared with our owner’s inscription. The Discovery database at the website of The National Archives at Kew near London in England led to an archival record in the Surrey History Centre for a letter held written by William Killigrew to Sir William Moore on 3 June 1579, just two years after the publication of Holinshed’s Chronicles.

Killigrew’s letter concerns the Bishop of Winchester’s meadow at Farnham in Surrey.

Letter from William Killigrew to Sir William Moore, 3 June 1579.
Surrey History Center. Letter Ref. Number 6729/1/56.
Reproduced by permission of the More-Molyneux family and
Surrey History Centre. Click image to enlarge.

Killigrew planned to pasture his horses there but was asking Moore, one of the Bishop’s executors, to reduce the rent because the meadow was “very much choked with sand and gravel by reason of the great floods.” It was exciting for us to discover that the Killigrew signature on the letter is a close match to the ownership inscriptions in our Holinshed’s Chronicles.

Details of William Killigrew’s signatures: Holinshed’s Chronicles (left)
and the letter to Moore (right). Click image to enlarge.

In fact, the search for a William Killigrew signature need not have led so far afield. Kenneth Spencer Research Library’s large collection of English Historical Documents includes, as it turns out, a 26 October 1601 deed of covenant by William Killigrew and his son, Robert, agreeing to sell a messuage (dwelling house, outbuildings, and land) in Clerkenwell Parish, Middlesex to John Gregorye and his wife, Judith.

William Killigrew’s signature is clear at the bottom of the deed, although Robert’s signature to the right is only partly legible

Deed of covenant signed by William Killigrew, 26 October 1601.
A Miscellany of Deeds and Manorial, Estate, Probate and Family Documents, 1194-1900.
Call Number: MS 239: 2357. Click image to enlarge.

Once again, the signatures match.

Details of William Killigrew’s signatures: Holinshed’s Chronicles (left)
and Killigrew-Gregorye deed (right). Click images to enlarge.

The manner in which the copy of Holinshed’s Chronicles descended from the hands of William Killigrew in family ownership until Kenneth Spencer Research Library purchased it is still uncertain. The bookseller’s description suggests that a female Killigrew relative may have taken the book with her when she married into the Grenville family. More research remains to be done.

Karen Severud Cook
Special Collections Librarian