Saint Raphael the Whale-Slayer

St. Raphael’s icon on the chapel at the bridgehead of the Blue Nile, 19th c.

I have already written that the iconography, that is, the system of representations of the Ethiopian church, living isolated at the edge of the Christian world, had evolved in a separate way, and developed many pictorial formulas that are apocryphal to other Christian churches.

Such as the prominent role of the seven archangels in the church frescoes. The Ethiopian monastery churches of Lake Tana are circular wooden constructions, with square-based stone sanctuaries inside. On each of the four sides of the sanctuary, a gate opens (or, more precisely, is closed to the ordinary believer), and on their double doors are painted a pair of archangels (and on the doors of the fourth gate, the seventh archangel and the Virgin Mary).

Archangel Raphael (to the right) on one gate of Ura Kidane Mihret monastery church. The counterpart of the slaying of the big fish is everywhere another sea scene, the crossing of the Red Sea and the destruction of Pharaoh’s army in the water.

Who can name all seven archangels? Probably not many of us. In fact, the Bible mentions only two or three of them by name, depending on confession. Michael, who pushes down the rebellious angels with a fiery sword, and Gabriel, who forwards the divine message to the Virgin Mary with a white lily in hand, are known to everyone. And the Catholic Bible also includes the book of Tobit, which is not accepted in the Jewish and Protestant scriptures, since it had no Hebrew original, only a Greek version was known. In this, a third archangel, Rafael, accompanies the young Tobias from Nineveh to Media – to Ekbatana/Hamadan, a significant Jewish settlement at that time, the later funeral place of Queen Esther and Mordecai, to connect it also to today’s Purim celebration.

At the same time, apocryphal or not, this is the book which establishes that seven is the number of archangels. In its final part, the archangel reveals himself: “I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who stand in the glorious presence of the Lord, ready to serve him.” (Tob 12:15) The idea of the seven archangels – the lords of the seven planets – was taken over by the Jews from the surrounding peoples, especially from the Zoroastrian religion, where it first took shape, during the Assyrian-Babylonian captivity, when Tobias’ story also takes place. The Yezidi Kurds preserved from the same cultural milieu the cult of the seven archangels, for which they are now being massacred by the extremists of ISIS. This cult was also popular with local Christians in the first centuries, so much so, that the Council of Laodicea of 363 (Article 35) had to expressly prohibit the worship of the angels, and allow only their veneration. The Latin church limited this to the three archangels known by name, while the Orthodox church has preserved to this day the veneration of the seven archangels, celebrated on 8 November in a special feast called “the gathering of the archangels” (Σύναξη τῶν Ἀρχαγγέλων), “the gathering of Archangel Michael” (Собор Архистратига Михаила), or “the gathering of the bodiless” (Σύναξη τῶν Ἀσωμάτων). At this meeting, the seven archangels hold a council at the end of time, just before the last judgment.

The gathering of Archangel Michael. Russian icon, 19th c., with the names of the single archangels in their halos: Yegudiel, Uriel, Selaphiel, Barakhiel, Gabriel, Michael, Raphael (the latter with the young Tobias, who holds the fish in hand).

Especially remarkable among the Ethiopian representations is the figure of Raphael, who always stabs a big fish with his spear. In the Book of Tobit, Raphael and Tobias wandering together catch a big fish from Tigris River, whose heart and liver are later used to expel the demon Asmodeus, and its gall to heal the blind eye of Tobit, the father of Tobias. We might think that the Ethiopian pictures of Raphael also show the fish of the Book of Tobit. It is peculiar, however, that we always see a small chapel beside the fish or on the fish’s back, with people praying inside. What’s that?


The answer is given by an Ethiopian source. The 14th-century Synaxarium Aethiopicum, the collection of the biographies of the Ethiopian saints, ordered by feasts, celebrates on 8 September the feast of Archangel Raphael, about whom it tells, amongst others, the following miraculous story. The Coptic Patriarch St. Theophilus (385-412)

“…built many churches, and among them was the church, which was on the island outside the city of Alexandria, and was dedicated in the name of the glorious Archangel Rufa’el (Raphael); and Abba Theophilus the Archbishop finished the building thereof and consecrated it as it were this day. And whilst the believers were praying in the church, behold the church trembled, and was rent asunder, and it moved about. And they found that the church had been built upon the back of a whale of the whales of the sea, on which a very large mass of sand had heaped itself. Now the whale lay firmly fixed in its place, and the treading of the feet of the people upon it cut it off from the mainland; and it was Satan who moved the whale so that he might throw down the church. And the believers and the archbishop cried out together, and made supplication to the Lord Christ, and they asked for the intercession of the glorious Archangel Rufa’el. And God, the Most High, sent the glorious angel Rufa’el, and he had mercy on the children of men, and he drove his spear into the whale, saying unto him, “By the commandment of God stand still, and move not thyself from thy place”; and the whale stood in his place and moved not. And many signs and wonders were made manifest, and great healings of sick folk took place in that church. And this church continued to exist until the time when the Muslims reigned [641], and then it was destroyed, and the whale moved, and the sea flowed back again and drowned many people who dwelt in that place.”

In this story, we can recognize two “Wandermotive”, traveling motifs. One is the big sea fish which is thought to be an island, but which, after a while, swims away or submerges in the sea. Its best known example is read in the sea travels of the 6th-century Irish abbot St. Brendan, where the abbot and his companions moor at night on an island. However, when in the morning they read Mass, and then set fire, the island moves, and slowly swims away. The companions flee back in horror to the ship, where they hear from St. Brendan:

“God has last night revealed to me the mystery of all this; it was not an island you were upon, but a fish, the largest of all that swim in the ocean, which is ever trying to make its head and tail meet, but cannot succeed, because of its great length. Its name is Iasconius.”

Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis. The voyage of St. Brendan the Abbot, ch. 10., translated by Denis O’Donoghue, 1893

St. Brendan’s island, c. 1230-1240. British Library, Harley MS 4751, f. 69r.

The other traveling motif is the subjection of the great fish / water monster. This story often appeared in various creation stories in Mesopotamia, where the Book of Tobit was also written: the deity (Ninurta, Marduk, Hadad etc.) overcomes the great fish / snake / dragon living in the ancestral sea of chaos, and creates from it / builds upon it the world. This myth was also taken over by the Jews at the time of the Babylonian captivity, and although later they replaced it with the two creation stories now read at the beginning of the Book of Genesis, its traces were retained in the Bible. For example, in Job 40:25-32, where God reminds Job of His greatness with references to the former struggle: “Can you pull the Leviathan with a fishhook… will it make an agreement with you for you to take it as your slave for life?” or in Psalm 74, which briefly summarizes the creation myth to illustrate God’s greatness:

“It was you who split open the sea by your power; you broke the heads of the monster in the waters. It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan, and gave it as food to the creatures of the desert. It was you who opened up springs and streams; you dried up the ever-flowing rivers. The day is yours, and yours also the night; you established the sun and moon. It was you who set all the boundaries of the earth; you made both summer and winter.” (Psalm 74:13-17)

The creation founded on the Leviathan in the center of the Hasidic synagogue of Łańcut (on the vault of the bimah), late 18th c.

The Ethiopian legend of Raphael bears a great resemblance to this creation story. The archangel, at the command of God, stabs the great fish, so it serves as a solid foundation for the house of God. Is it possible that the Ethiopian tradition has retained something from the Jewish myth, in which, perhaps, the Archangel Raphael fulfilled the subjugation of the ancient water monster at His command, just as the rebellious angels were pushed out from heaven to the underworld by the Archangel Michael in His name?

This is justified by a motif that was unintentionally left in the Book of Tobit. Known as the “Tobias’ Dog Problem”, it has excited the fantasy of commentators at least since the age of confessional debates. It is about the dog that appears twice in brief mentions without any antecedents, and then disappears again without any further role in the Book of Tobit:

“So the son and the angel departed, and the dog went after them.” (Tob 6:2)

“They both arrived, and the dog went after them.” (Tob 11:4)

Tobias and Raphael depart and then come back, and on these occasions the dog appears next to them. Jacob van Maerlant, Rijmbijbel. Utrecht, 1332, miniatures by Michiel van der Borch

According to the analysis of Naomi S. S. Jacobs (What about the dog? Tobit’s mysterious canine revisited, 2014), the dog remained in the Book of Tobit from a more detailed folk narrative, written – as it is indicated by its Greek vernacular – as an entertaining and teaching Midrashic story. In the original narrative, it might have been the helper of Raphael who subjugated the great fish / water monster, just as in similar myths, the evil-chasing dog helps the deity to overcome the water monster / dragon. In the final version, it appears at the two key points of the fish story: before the catching of the great fish, and when Tobias and Raphael heal the blind Tobit with the fish gall.

It is thus conceivable, that this unique motif of Ethiopian iconography, Archangel Raphael stabbing the big fish and firmly founding the house of God on it, as well as the Book of Tobit, written in the 3th century BC in a Greek-speaking Jewish diaspora of Mesopotamia or Egypt, preserved the memory of the most ancient “third creation story” on these two edges of the Jewish and Christian religions, where the authority of the official Book of Genesis, redacted in Judea in the 6th century BC, had not yet completely pushed the original myth into oblivion.

Archangel Raphael (to the right) on a gate of the Azwa Mariam monastery church at Lake Tana.

In any case, the fish scene is well suited to the monasteries built on the islands of Lake Tana. The frescoes of the nearly two-dozen monastery churches willingly reach back to those biblical or apocryphal scenes, where the holy figures catch or eat fish, thus blessing and elevating up to a higher sphere the most important daily food of the islands’ inhabitants.

Holy Thursday in Seven Cities, Azores

The volcano crater of Sete Cidades, with its double lagoon: the Green Lagoon in the foreground, and the Blue Lagoon in the background. Seen from the Cerrado das Freiras.

We are in the almost most westerly parish of Europe. This is due to São José, in the freguesía of Fajã Grande, in the Isla de Flores of the Azores – of course, if we accept beforehand that these islands belong to Europe, despite sitting on the American plate. But where we are now is the westernmost parish of the Island of San Miguel, halfway between the Finis Terrae of the old continent and the coast of Newfoundland. Exactly, in the front of the church of San Nicolás, erected in the nineteenth century, in a particularly beautiful volcanic crater that bears the crowded-sounding name of Sete Cidades. Even though there are no cities here, and even of people there are very few. The name comes from the legendary Isla de las Siete Ciudades, the Island of the Seven Cities, never found, but very much alive in the literature and dreams of the cartographers, sailors and explorers of the Atlantic, described for centures in endless variations.


Any visit to these islands, with the omnipresent sea and harsh geographical conditions, evokes the world of the whales and whale hunters. Among the men and women who gathered on this Holy Thursday in the church of San Nicolás, few would not have had a family member who earned their bread hunting whales. Surely, too, most have had family members who emigrated to America. The two things used to go together. They called it “taking the leap”: to go out at night, clandestinely, on an American whaler, to have a job, and above all, to avoid the obligatory recruitment for military service. Under cover of darkness, when they were aware that an American whaling ship was nearby, the men who wanted a new life would light a bonfire on the rocks of the coast, and at this signal the captain sent a boat to enroll them. The presence of the Azorean whalers (or, as they were known in Nantucket and New Bedford, the men of the Western Islands) is recorded even in Moby Dick.


José Pecheco, Luís Silva: Canção de despedida (Farewell song). From the album Chants des baleiniers portugais de Faial, Açores (Songs of the whalers of Faial, Azores, 1958)

Whale hunting put roots in the islands from 1756 on, when the first whaling boat from New England circumnavigated the Azores. By 1880, a third of the 3.896 whalers of the New Bedford fleet were Azorean. At that time, the islanders themselves were developing a fleet and a local industry. It was relatively weak, almost artisanal, because they never had enough capital to compete with the American vessels. Only for a few years, beginning with 1951, did local whaling reach a significant industrial level (751 sperm whales and 16,000 barrels of oil in the same year), but it was very ephemeral: In 1957, with the destructive eruption of the Vulcão dos Capelinhos and the subsequent massive emigration, it went into rapid decline until its total cessation on August 21, 1987, when a group of men hunted the last sperm whale, a 15-meter leviathan, and processed it on the Isla de Pico. We’ll talk about it in a future post. Today there are very few old whalers, usually men of few words, testimonies to a way of life that, like so many others, will never come back.

Jueves Santo en Sete Cidades, Azores

Caldera volcánica de Sete Cidades, con su laguna doble: la Laguna Verde, más cerca, y la Laguna Azul al fondo. Vista desde el Cerrado das Freiras.

Por poco no estamos en la parroquia más occidental de Europa. Este título le correspondería a la de São José en la freguesía de Fajã Grande, en la azoriana Isla de Flores  —si aceptamos antes, claro está, que esta isla es Europa a pesar de asentarse sobre la placa americana—. Pero donde sí estamos ahora es en la parroquia más occidental de la Isla de San Miguel, es decir, a medio camino desde el Finis Terrae del viejo continente a las costas de Terranova. Exactamente ante la iglesia de San Nicolás, erigida el siglo XIX en una hoya volcánica especialmente hermosa que ostenta el populoso nombre de Sete Cidades. Aunque ciudades propiamente dichas aquí no hay ninguna; y gente, poca. El nombre le viene de la legendaria Isla de las Siete Ciudades, nunca encontrada pero viva en la literatura y las ensoñaciones de cartógrafos, marineros y exploradores del Atlántico, y contada a lo largo de los siglos con infinitas variantes.


Cualquier visita a estas islas, con el mar omnipresente y la dureza de las condiciones geográficas, pone sin remedio en nuestra imaginación el mundo de las ballenas y de los balleneros. Entre los hombres y mujeres que se congregaban este Jueves Santo en la iglesia de San Nicolás, pocos debía haber que no tuvieran un familiar que hubiera vivido de la caza de ballenas y cachalotes. Seguramente también la mayoría habrán tenido familiares que emigraron a América. Las dos cosas solían ir unidas, y llamaban «dar el salto» a subirse de noche, clandestinamente, a un ballenero norteamericano para tener trabajo y, sobre todo, por evitar el reclutamiento obligatorio para el servicio militar. Ayudados por la oscuridad, cuando sabían que algún barco ballenero americano estaba cerca, los hombres que deseaban una vida nueva encendían una hoguera en las rocas de la costa y a esta señal el capitán del barco botaba una chalupa para enrolarlos. Hasta en Moby Dick se recoge la presencia de balleneros azorianos (o, como se conocían en Nantucket y New Bedford, hombres de las Western Islands).


José Pecheco, Luís Silva: Canção de despedida. Del album Chants des baleiniers portugais de Faial, Açores (Canciones de los balleneros portuguese de Faial, Azores, 1958)

Fue a partir de 1756, al avistarse la primera embarcación ballenera de Nueva Inglaterra rondando las Azores, cuando la caza se hizo presente en las islas. En 1880, un tercio de los 3.896 balleneros de la flota de New Bedford eran azorianos. También los propios isleños fueron desde entonces desarrollando una flota y una industria local. Relativamente débil, casi artesanal, porque nunca llegó allí capital suficiente como para competir con las embarcaciones de alta mar americanas. Solo durante unos pocos años, a partir de 1951, la caza de ballenas alcanzó un nivel industrial significativo (751 cachalotes y 16.000 barriles de aceite en ese mismo año, por ejemplo) pero fue muy efímero: en 1957, con la erupción destructora del Vulcão dos Capelinhos y la subsiguiente emigración masiva, empezó un rápido declive hasta el cese total el 21 de agosto de 1987. Ese día, un grupo de amigos cazó el último cachalote, un leviatán de 15 metros descuartizado en la Isla de Pico. Hablaremos de ello en una próxima entrada. Quedan ya muy pocos viejos balleneros, normalmente hombres de escasas palabras, testimonios de una forma de vida que, como tantas otras, es imposible que vuelva.

“How deep is the ocean”

We have read in one sitting the 448 pages of Leviathan, or The Whale (London: Fourth Estate, 2009), written by Philip Hoare, an author whose biography did not suggest he would publish a book like this. But the truth is that Hoare has always had an obsession with whales and a deep reading of Moby Dick which inspired this text, written as a confession, as a particular whale encyclopedia, as an exercise in literary criticism and as an attempt to define himself at once. His desire to understand the whales reminds us the maxim of G. B. Shaw: “Man is as civilized as his understanding of cats.” How much more humane he will become, we think now, when he will also be able to understand the whales. The book won last year’s “Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction”, awarded annually by the BBC.

The compound title, Leviathan, or, The Whale, seems to refer to those two aspects that man has always seen in this animal: a monster which is as terrible as unfamiliar, or a mere object of business. But Hoare’s approach always offers a very balanced perspective, without any sentimental fuss, not even when he illustrates with full cruelty (inevitable at this point) the sad relationship between man and nature, and especially between man and the sea. There is a curious mixture of evaluative equanimity and obsessive infatuation in the discourse of Hoare, whose pursuit of the whale has brought him to live in the old whaling ports, to tour the historical sites and, finally, to actively collaborate with various groups that document and disseminate what is known about these beings and their environment.

Perhaps the chapter that has provided us with the most suggestive information was the fourth that outlines the relationship between whaling and the problem of slavery in the United States. Not coincidentally, in New Bedford’s museum of whaling, side by side with their greatest treasure, a 1:2 scale copy of a hunting boat, a portrait is hanging on the wall, that of Frederick Douglass, who promoted an unprecedented campaign to abolish slavery in this city. He was the first black man in America who publicly opposed slavery.

“In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries whaling and slavery coexisted as two highly lucrative transoceanic industries. And while the whalers were camouflaged as warships to chase pirates (and sometimes themselves housed fugitive slaves), the boats engaged in slave trade which tried to evade the Union blockade during the Civil War tried to pass as whalers. It was no coincidence that in 1850, when Melville began writing Moby Dick, the debate over slavery was nearing its decisive moment. The pressures that would end in tearing a whole nation, also granted to Melville’s book its symbolic force.” (Leviatán, o la ballena, p. 130; our translation back to English from the Spanish edition).

Following this intuition, we can conclude that the great white whale is also a certain type of a political monster. Not in Hobbes’ sense, but in that more widespread and popular sense which developed in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries and recently has been studied in profusion (just type the Spanish word “monstruos”, ‘monsters’ in this search window). This is the monster created by the fear of the irremediably alien, by the terror that we cannot incorporate it or understand it, and even by killing it we can never erase it from our nightmares.

Elena del Río Parra published in 2003 a study that has since become a classics: Una era de monstruos. Representaciones de lo deforme en el Siglo de Oro español (An age of monsters. Representations of the deformed in the Spanish Golden Age, Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana-Vervuert).  “From the late sixteenth century”, she says, “the monstrous being gradually ceased to be a bad omen, and became an object with open features … For much of the 16th century a literature was established and became unequivocal which saw in the birth or appearance of monstrous beings the sign of some evil thing to come. In the 18th century these manifestations lose their exclusive reading, and if they do not want to disappear, they have to be reinstated into various fields of knowledge. The belief in the deformed being as a bad omen begins to weaken in some places, while in other fields it remains very vivid, partly because there was an interest in feeding it. The monster is therefore an example to understand the process by which new ways of thinking were introduced in Spain, as well as the operating mechanism by which a true fact becomes, by way of adaptation, a commodity and a form of art.” (p. 20). Something similar happened to the beast that was the main figure of Melville, albeit two hundred years after the Hispanic phenomenon.

Nevertheless, the monster as a bad sign or evil omen – synonymous with the medieval “prodigy” – is still alive even in the enlightened eighteenth century, as late as 1727. It is demonstrated by the following creature – not mentioned by Elena del Río Parra –, whose history we read in the Lisbon National Library, many years ago, when its director was João Palma-Ferreira who died soon as a young man. The text accompanying the illustration is written in the form of a letter whose author tells to a friend about a monster, fifteen feet high, observed in the forests of Anatolia in 1726. Besides its features well observable on the picture, it is told to have one single horizontal bone instead of teeth, and to have been asexual. The bird heads emerging from its shoulders are eagles. And when breathing, its chest, on which the figure of a cross is seen, gave light. It was captured and brought before the Sultan in Constantinople. It did not eat and did not speak. A hermit told that it was an obvious sign that the Turks, for their obstinate observance of Islam, would be soon defeated by the Christians. The Turks then hurried to kill the monster and thereupon they denied its existence, not to give encouragement to the enemies. Of course, its crescent-shaped forehead and its chest bearing a shining cross leaves no doubt about its status as a political and religious monster. The eagles looking at each other encircle the Ottomans like the German and Russian empires, finally united against the common enemy.

This story, provided with details that try give it credibility, even in the Age of Enlightenment could pass for a true fact. It is not the monsters that cause fear. It is fear which begets monsters.

Emblema vivente, ou notícia de hum portentoso monstro, que da Província de Anatólia
foy mandado ao Sultão dos Turcos. Com a sua figura, copiada do retrato, que
delle mandou fazer o Biglerbey de Amafia, recebida de Alepo, em huma
carta escrita pelo mesmo autor da que se imprimio o anno passado.
Lisboa Occidental, Na Officina de Pedro Ferreira.
Anno de M.DCC.XXVII.

«How deep is the ocean»

Hemos leído de un tirón las 448 páginas de Leviathan, or The Whale (Londres: Fourth Estate, 2009), escrito por Philip Hoare, un autor cuya trayectoria biográfica no dejaba adivinar que fuera a publicar un libro como este. Pero lo cierto es que Hoare guardaba una obsesión por las ballenas y una lectura tan profunda de Moby Dick que acabó sacando un texto escrito a la vez como confesión, como enciclopedia ballenera particular, como ejercicio de crítica literaria y casi como un intento de definirse a sí mismo. Su afán de comprensión de las ballenas nos recuerda aquella máxima de George Bernard Shaw: «el hombre es civilizado en la medida en que es capaz de comprender a un gato». Cuánto más humano será, pensamos ahora nosotros, si es capaz de comprender a las ballenas. El libro ganó el año pasado el «Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction» que convoca anualmente la BBC.

El título disyuntivo, Leviatán, o la ballena, parece remitir a los dos aspectos que el hombre ha visto en el animal siempre que se le ha acercado: un monstruo tan temible como desconocido, o un puro objeto comercial.  Pero la mirada de Hoare ofrece siempre un ángulo muy equilibrado, sin aspavientos sentimentales ni cuando ilumina con toda crudeza (no podría ser de otra forma a estas alturas) la triste relación del hombre con la naturaleza, y especialmente con el mar. Hay una curiosa mezcla de ecuanimidad valorativa y apasionamiento obsesivo, íntimo, en el discurso de Hoare, cuya persecución de la ballena le ha llevado a vivir en los viejos puertos balleneros, a recorrer los lugares históricos y, finalmente, a colaborar de manera activa con diversos grupos que documentan y divulgan cuanto se sabe de estos seres y su entorno.

Quizá el capítulo que nos ha dado una información más sugerente es el IV, titulado «Una promulgación asquerosa», que esboza la relación entre la caza de ballenas y el problema del esclavismo en Estados Unidos. No por casualidad, en New Bedford, junto al mayor tesoro de su museo ballenero, una réplica a escala 1:2 de un barco de caza, cuelga en la pared un retrato fotográfico de Frederick Douglass, impulsor de una campaña sin precedentes para abolir la esclavitud en esta ciudad: fue el primer hombre negro de América que se opuso públicamente al esclavismo.

«En los siglos XVIII y XIX la caza de ballenas y la esclavitud coexistieron como dos industrias transoceánicas muy lucrativas y, mientras los balleneros se camuflaban como barcos de guerra para ahuyentar a los piratas (y a veces ellos mismos albergaban a esclavos fugitivos), los barcos dedicados a la trata de esclavos que intentaban evadir los bloqueos de la Unión durante la Guerra de Secesión intentaban hacerse pasar por balleneros. No fue una coincidencia que en 1850, cuando Melville empezó a escribir Moby Dick, el debate sobre la esclavitud estuviera llegando al momento decisivo. Las presiones que al final desgarrarían a toda una nación le dieron también al libro de Melville su fuerza simbólica» (Leviatán, o la ballena, p. 130; trad. de Joan Eloi Roca).

Siguiendo esta intuición, podemos concluir que la gran ballena blanca tiene también carácter de monstruo político. No al modo hobbesiano, sino al más divulgado y popular que se desarrolló en los siglos XVI a XVIII y que últimamente se ha estudiado con cierta profusión (poned la palabra «monstruos» en esta caja de búsquedas). Se trata del monstruo generado por el miedo a lo irremediablemente ajeno, el espanto por lo que no nos podemos incorporar ni acabar nunca de entender y que ni matándolo se borrará de nuestras pesadillas.

Elena del Río Parra publicó en 2003 un estudio ya clásico: Una era de monstruos. Representaciones de lo deforme en el Siglo de Oro español (Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana-Vervuert).  «Desde finales del siglo XVI —dice— el ser monstruoso deja progresivamente de ser sólo sinónimo de presagio para convertirse en un objeto con funciones abiertas ... Durante gran parte del siglo XVI se sanciona una lectura unívoca que ve en los seres monstruosos una fuente de malos augurios como función fija y definida. A medida que avanza el siglo XVII, estas manifestaciones van perdiendo la lectura exclusiva con lo que, para no desaparecer, deben reinsertarse en diferentes ámbitos del conocimiento. La creencia en el ser deforme como mal agüero comienza a debilitarse en algunos espacios, mientras que en otros sigue muy viva, en parte porque interesa seguir alimentándola.  El monstruo es, por tanto, un ejemplo para comprender el proceso de introducción de nuevas formas de pensamiento en España, así como el mecanismo de funcionamiento por el que un hecho real se adapta y convierte en mercancía y en forma artística.» (p. 20) Algo así habría ocurrido con la bestia protagonista de Melville, aunque doscientos años después del fenómeno hispánico.

Con todo, el monstruo como mala señal o mal agüero —sinónimo del «prodigio» medieval— sigue vivo aún en el ilustrado siglo XVIII, en fecha tan tardía como 1727. Así lo demuestra este bicho de aquí abajo (que Elena del Río Parra no menciona) y cuya historia pudimos leer en la Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, hace ya muchos años, cuando su director era el malogrado João Palma-Ferreira. El texto de esta relación adopta la forma de una carta en la que un amigo relata a otro un acontecimiento de 1726: un monstruo de quince palmos de altura salió de los bosques de Anatolia. Aparte de los rasgos que se ven bien en la imagen, se nos dice que tenía un solo hueso horizontal en lugar de dientes y que era asexuado. Las cabezas de ave que emergen de sus hombros son águilas. Y al respirar, su pecho, en el que se observa la figura de una cruz, se iluminaba. Fue capturado y llevado ante el sultán de Constantinopla. No comía y no hablaba. Un ermitaño advirtió que era una señal obvia de que los turcos, por su tibia observancia del Islam, pronto iban a ser derrotados por los cristianos. Los turcos se apresuraron a matar al monstruo y negaron acto seguido su existencia para no dar aliento a los enemigos. Por supuesto, su frente en forma de media luna y su pecho con la cruz luminosa no dejan lugar a dudas acerca de su condición de monstruo político-religioso. Las águilas que se miran una a otra, cercan a los otomanos como el imperio germánico y el ruso, unidos, por una vez, frente al enemigo común.

Este relato, cargado de detalles que intentan dotarlo de verosimilitud, aún en el siglo de las luces quería pasar por hecho verdaderamente acontecido. No son los monstruos quienes provocan miedo, es el miedo quien engendra a los monstruos.

Emblema vivente, ou notícia de hum portentoso monstro, que da Província de Anatólia
foy mandado ao Sultão dos Turcos. Com a sua figura, copiada do retrato, que
delle mandou fazer o Biglerbey de Amafia, recebida de Alepo, em huma
carta escrita pelo mesmo autor da que se imprimio o anno passado.
Lisboa Occidental, Na Officina de Pedro Ferreira.
Anno de M.DCC.XXVII.