Monsters in the Middle Ages
medievalists.net
medievalists.net
Ten centuries later we like to think that we have outgrown this phase and arguably this is indeed so on an explicit, externalized level.
But I wonder if a thousand years from now the medievalists studying the 21st century will be collecting an equally unsettling set of elaborate and arbitrary cultural constructs. Maybe not painted on church walls but e.g., implicit in the narratives and digital artifacts people share in social media
The benefit of temporal distance is that it (hopefully) helps further separate what is objective (and e.g., scientifically verifiable, understood etc) versus what is effectively an assumption that is culturally tinged.
For example the medieval era definition of humanity given in this article is as "rational and mortal". I suspect that as people dive deeper into forms of artificial rationality we will revisit this multiple times.
I mean "race" and "gender" have always been cultural and political constructs far more so than rational and scientifically verifiable, but we still cling to notions of them created centuries or millennia ago as if they were as immutable as the laws of physics. Boys are like this, girls are like that, white people this, black people that.
All it takes to get from mere stereotype to "monstrous" is hatred and fear. I'm reminded of Ta-Nehisi Coates' passage about 9/11 in one of his books, and how he saw the first responders: “They were not human to me. Black, white, or whatever, they were menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could — with no justification — shatter my body.” Or the links between anti-semitic conspiracy theory and shapeshifting reptilians created by David Icke and the like. Or what's going on now with Israel and Palestine.
We may no longer think other people go around with faces on their chest and backwards feet but seeing others as fundamentally less human than ourselves, or irreconcilably "other", with whom we can find no commonality, is still very much a thing.
At night you might hear the sound of someone chopping at the root of a tree - CHUD CHUD CHUD - but if you seek it out, you'll see this black monster of Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror. A massive human form, with a neck cut off like a stump, and in his chest and trunk are two enormous doors, swinging back and forth as he moves through the forest. As they slam shut they make their sound - CHUD CHUD CHUD. Within the doors you can glimpse Yohualtepuztli's beating heart, and, according to tradition, if you are fast and lucky you can reach in and take it, and Tezcatlipoca will grant you favors.
Of course, he might just kill you for funsies, because Tezcatlipoca. Aztec gods, man. They make Yahweh look nice.
The horror was in the presence of alien gods - which to a devout Catholic of the era would be seen as real . . real demons, that is. Other "horror" I put in quotes, as some codices were written for the precise purpose of propaganda.
However, don't let that blind our eyes. The Aztecs were indeed nasty bastards. But "nasty bastards" covers lots of territory in history, and we shouldn't forget that one of the bands of nasty bastards came there specifically to be nasty bastards to someone else. The entire Cortez operation was such a fustercluck, it really deserves a film, if someone could manage it without being horrifically offensive.
Unsurprisingly, the English-Nahuatl translation for "I'd @&#k me" is unhelpful.
Seriously though, I remember reading comics as an undergrad and Grant Morrison's fascination with Xipe Totec. One scary mfer. But somehow not as scary as real Aztecs.
In one story - probably a mix of legend and record, passed through the filter of mass death - the Mexica (later known as Aztecs, back when they were sort of homeless, coming from no-one's-sure-where) had come to be challenged by an alliance between the Tepanec and the Cualhuac. The alliance relented and the Aztecs settled among them, but the multi-ethnic state did what ethnic states do, and things went a bit sour. So . . punchline. The Aztecs had this cultural tic: they demonstrated hostility by asking for something. So they asked for the gorgeous daughter of Prince Achitometl. The young lady was sent off to the Aztecs in the finest clothes and jewels during the Feast of Xipe Totec. Bright side: not the last time Achitometl would see his daughter. Down side: the way he saw her the second time round sent every single man, woman, and child into a purge-o-rific rage against these @&#$! Mexica. Go be Aztecs somewhere else!
Not the last word in that story, obviously, but it's a good one. The Aztecs were never what you might have called "popular". Which, intuitively, makes sense, considering what would happen later.