Monstres et christianisme — monstres du christianisme, xvie–xviiie siècles. Édité par Étienne Couriol et Teresa Hiergeist

Abstract

The figure of the early modern monster — as shape-shifting, hybrid, allegorical confection, and trans-discursive creature demonstrating the porosity of the border between the medieval and the (early) modern — has received a good deal of attention in the past decade and more. This collection, which capitalizes on this recent scholarly interest, offers a welcome focus on the relation between monsters and Christian thought and practice, as exemplified in doctrinal debates, cross-confessional polemic, and pastoral interpretation of canon law. The first three chapters cover familiar ground — curiosity cabinets, canards, and monstrous births — but they do so well, setting out the terrain for what is to follow. The next six contributions bring both new material and new analysis to the existing debate around monsters and to our broader understanding of the period. All are very fine, from Ismael del Olmo’s discussion of teratology, apology, and the figure of the athéiste and Santiago Francisco Peña’s analysis of Humanist readings of the 1566 Laon miracle, by way of the twinned essays of Christine Orobitg and Teresa Hiergeist, which explore werewolf anxiety and the ‘bête humaine’ in early modern Spain, all the way through to Valeria Motta’s repertory of ex-voto crocodiles and Lisa Zeller’s deft comparison of the deployment of the topos of the ‘État-monstre’ in Corneille’s Horace and Racine’s Phèdre. These chapters, by young (post/)doctoral scholars based either in Latin American and German universities or in Hispanic studies in France, display the real value of this volume: amplifying new voices in the debate concerning the place of monstrosity within early modern European religious and political thought. They and the other contributors are less than well served, however, by the standard of copy-editing evidenced here; the ‘English’ synopses prefacing the chapters sometimes make little sense, and there are far too many typos (including in the otherwise rich bibliography). The volume concludes (following an oddly misplaced excursus into the ‘esprit ondoyant à l’âge baroque’) with a trilogy of essays exploring a set of juridico-theological questions: ‘Faut-il baptiser les monstres?’; ‘Dieu souhaite-t-il les monstres humains?’; and, in respect of hermaphrodites and marriage, ‘Le monstre est-il compatible avec un sacrement devant l’Église?’ These concluding chapters reinforce the book’s principal contention concerning the significance of the church in matters monstrous at this time. But they also work a little too hard at exemplifying the broad-brush claims of the editors’ introduction, which asserts (rightly) the importance of the ‘cadre religieux’ in the period under discussion, but frames this argument itself as a means to anticipating the triumphant arrival of the ‘xviiie siècle, où les sciences naturelles et les discours de la raison mettront un point final à une conception métaphysique des monstres’ (p. 17). The best essays in this collection argue a more nuanced historical, theological, and intellectual case; and they make the volume far better for it.