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Various drawings of the sea monk with some possible source animals. a. Rondelet's sea monk. b. A giant Loligo squid as the sea monk. c. The sea monk of Belon. d. A dorsal view of Lophius piscatorius. e. Sluperius' (1572) sea monk. f. Dorsal view of a female Squatina squatina (FAO). g. The sea-monk by Hamer 1546 (1977). h. A reconstruction of an Architeuthis in the same posture and style as Steenstrup's Loligo (fig. b), but the arms are, in fact, too short. i. The sea monk according to Lycosthenes (1557). Figures a–c are from Steenstrup (1855), as reproduced in Roeleveld & Knudsen (1980). Note that Steenstrup's reconstructions of Belon's and Rondelet's pictures are not wholly the same as the originals we have seen.
Source publication
The mysterious "sea monk" found in the Øresund c. 1550 was commented on by three great Renaissance natural historians, Pierre Belon, Guillaume Rondelet and Conrad Gesner. Three centuries later, Japetus Steenstrup suggested the sea monk of the Øresund was a giant squid (Architeuthis sp.). The evaluation of three, previously ignored, early sources al...
Contexts in source publication
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... are three further early sources which merit discussion, all of which contain illustra- tions: 9. Conrad Lycosthenes (1557) illustrated an aquatic monk three times (Fig. 1i) in his work Prodigiorum ac Ostentorum Chronicon [Of Portents and Shown Times]. Lycosthenes mentions three sea monks being found in 1530, 1546 and 1549. In fact the first sea monk was not a sea monk at all, having been found in the Rhine. The second one was found near Copenhagen with a black head and the clothes of a monk and the final ...
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... the first sea monk was not a sea monk at all, having been found in the Rhine. The second one was found near Copenhagen with a black head and the clothes of a monk and the final one was found near Hafnia (Copenhagen), tonsured like a monk. 10. Johannes Sluperius in 1572 also figured the sea monk (looking wholly different to its pred- ecessors, Fig. ...
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... found referred to in Scheuchzer's Bibliotheca Scriptorum Historiae Naturalis of 1716 but was unable to find. We have been unable to look at the latter work to confirm this. 11. A German woodcut by Stefan Hamer (see Strauss 1975, Fig. 1g here) that gives the date of the sea monk as 1546. Obviously, as the woodcut itself dates to 1546 then the sea monk could have been found no later than that ...
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... general body form of the sea monk was similar to a squid with the rear of the mantle as the head, the fins representing the chasuble, the en- trance to the mantle cavity representing the lower edge of the vestment and with the circle of arms representing the tail fin of the sea monk. The arms of the monk are the tentacles of the squid wrapped underneath the body with just the clubs visible in just the right position to be taken as human arms (Figure 1 ...
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... is every reason to believe that the identity of the Øresund sea monk and the earlier sea monks was not a giant squid. "Monkfish" in British English is used to describe a variety of benthic fishes. Recently the term has most often referred to the anglerfishes Lophius piscato- rius Linnaeus, 1758 (Fig. 1d) and L. budegassa Spinola, 1807. These species have one of the characteristics of Magnus' monachus maris: Lo- phius like almost all anglerfishes uses a lure to capture its prey. However the anglerfish does not particularly look like a monk. Alternatively in British English (and also more rarely in Norwe- gian and Danish as munk) the ...
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... not particularly look like a monk. Alternatively in British English (and also more rarely in Norwe- gian and Danish as munk) the "monkfish" also refers to the angelshark, Squatina squatina (Lin- naeus, 1758) a dorso-ventrally flattened elasmo- branch with a ventral mouth and a shape not unlike that of a cowled but not a bare-headed tonsured monk (Fig. 1f). The two species have been confused since antiquity. Aristotle (transla- tion in Balme 1991) wrote: "Both hake and ba- trachos (either Lophius or another anglerfish), psetta and angelfish (Greek rhina = the modern Squatina, not the guitarfishes genus Rhina) hide in the sand and, after making themselves invis- ible, fish with the things ...
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... been no Loligo, the common North Atlantic genus that grows to a mantle length of approximately 60 cm (Nesis 1987), but, as Steenstrup (1855) realized, a giant squid. But if it was an Architeuthis then the body form would have been wholly different from that in his original figure with the smaller fins providing no distinct chasuble for the monk (Fig. 1b). Steenstrup had no perfectly preserved specimens to judge overall body shape and so assumed that Loligo was a good model for Architeuthis. With a few exceptions squid are osmocomformers (Withers 1992), with a narrow toleration of salinity fluctuations and low sali- nities (Boyle 1991) and so would rarely occur in the surface waters of ...
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... squatina has a brownish body not unlike that of a monk (Fig. 1f), occasional spots (which can be black or reddish) and scales (al- though they are not wholly obvious). It also has pelvic and pectoral girdles, to provide the im- pression of sleeves under a chasuble and the waist level vestments. A ventral view of the animal could even provide a "face", with a mouth and "eyes". Further, as an ...
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... Squatina so perhaps they should have recognised the monkfish as Squatina. However they did not actually see the specimen. 2. The Squatina explanation cannot explain the described black face except that the body is dark all over. The ventral surface of Squatina is pale. 3. Squatina looks like a cowled rather than bare headed, tonsured monk (Fig. 1f). 4. At 2.5 m the fish would be at the very limit of its size range (Compagno ...
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Citations
... In the hands of the natural philosopher Paracelsus, for example, the Sea-Monk was easily explained as the progeny of a fish and a drowned monk (Szabo 2008;Gesner 1558, pp. 520-21;Magnus 1555, p. 729;Hendrikx 2017Hendrikx , 2018Rackham 1967, p. 164;Paxton and Holland 2005;Mackenzie 2014;Pinon 1995;Blair 2010). ...
The ability of animals to convey meaning, either sacred or profane, features prominently in the dialectic of natural knowledge and sacred histories. Animals, particularly those that exhibited irregularities of nature, symbolised and revealed God’s wrath and favour, fulfilling a polemical and pastoral purpose in the communication of God’s anger and assiduous care for humanity. The language of readable nature ran through the ancient natural histories of Pliny and Aristotle, the words and images of the medieval bestiaries, and the natural histories and popular discourses of Reformation Europe. In the history of the natural world, ‘God’s great book in folio’, ideas about connections between the written word and human observation, miracles, wonders and providences, were interleaved with theological and biological taxonomies. In so doing, discussions of irregularities and portents in nature expose the conceptualisation of human relationships with the world, with the past, with the present, and with the divine. This article explores the connections between real and symbolic animals, religious, and the plasticity of God’s creation in the natural histories and polemical literature of the Reformation. It explores the multivalent positioning of particular sea creatures as providential signs of God’s continued presence in the world, natural phenomena, and man-made objects, and the ongoing syncretism between natural history, religion, ancient texts and human observation in the dialectic of this period.
... Giant squid (Mollusca, Cephalopoda, Architeuthidae, Architeuthis dux Steenstrup, 1857) are one of the most enigmatic large marine animals on the planet. Strandings of specimens recognisable as this species in Europe date back to 1639 (see Ellis, 1999, for a history), probably not (Paxton & Holland, 2005) 1545/ 1546, as often stated. It was described (informally) only in 1855-1860 (Steenstrup, 1857;Ellis, 1999) and photographed alive in its natural environment only in 2004 (Kubodera & Mori, 2005). ...
Giant squid are among the largest invertebrates known, but a consensus on their maximum size is lacking. Statistical investigation of various measures of body length and beak size in Architeuthis suggests that squid of at least 2.69 m (99.9% prediction interval: 1.60–3.83 m) mantle length (ML) may be handled by large bull sperm whales but perhaps not females. Given the relationship of squid ML to standard (from tip of mantle to end of arms) and total (from tip of mantle to end of tentacles) length, the observed spread of individual lengths, along with a longest reliably measured ML of 2.79 m, purported squid of 10 m standard length and even 20 m total length are eminently plausible.
... It is not accurate to presuppose that technically qualifi ed scientists are uninterested in examining cryptozoological evidence. Several workers have assessed such data and reported their fi ndings in the peer-reviewed technical literature (e.g., Scott and Rines, 1975, Raynal & Sylvestre, 1991, Paxton & Holland, 2005, Paxton, 2009. Critical discussions of large undescribed species are not necessarily outlandish, as numerous marine vertebrate megafaunal species (>45 kg) have been discovered and described in recent years (e.g., Megamouth shark Megachasma pelagios Taylor et al., 1983, Bandolero beaked whale Mesoplodon peruvianus Reyes et al., 1991, West African skate Bathyraja hesperafricana Stehmann, 1995, Indonesian coelacanth Latimeria menadoensis Pouyaud et al., 1999, and statistical work suggests that several such species remain to be documented (Paxton, 1998, Raynal, 2001, Solow & Smith, 2005. ...
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This book builds upon the extensive study of the historical relationship between sea animals and humans in transatlantic culture during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It exposes the present understanding of the human relationship with the giant squid not only as too simplistic but also as historically inaccurate. For instance, it redefines the earlier understanding that humans and especially seafarers have understood giant squid as horror-evoking and ugly creatures since the dawn of history and explains the origins of mythical sea monsters such as the Kraken. The book is, however, more than a critical response to previous work. It will point out that animals such as cephalopods, which have largely been defined in biological contexts in recent times, have a fascinating and multivariate past, entangled with the history of humans in many remarkable ways. Hence, this book is not just about perceptions of giant-sized squid or cephalopods, but a historical inquiry into the transatlantic culture from the late eighteenth century to the turn of the twentieth century. It will provide new knowledge about the history of mollusc studies, seafaring culture and more broadly of the relationship between humans and animals during the period.
Attached is an introduction to the book, which can also be found on the Taylor & Francis website (https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003311775/giant-squid-transatlantic-culture-otto-latva) under "Preview Pdf"
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The research on fossil bones by Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) is an instructive example of the making of scientific knowledge in the indoor setting of a museum. The trajectory of his specimens can be followed all the way from their collection in the field to their publication as engravings with explanatory text. Cuvier's resources at the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris were greatly enlarged by his accumulation of a “paper museum”. He appealed to other naturalists to send him accurate drawings of fossil bones. These functioned as paper “proxies” for specimens that in reality remained elsewhere. Such visual “mobiles” were far from immutable, however, because they were transformed not only by the processes of drawing and engraving but also by Cuvier's use of visual rhetoric: he made them give persuasive support to his zoological and geological interpretations of fossil bones.
This review surveys recent scholarship on the history of natural history with special attention to the role of images in the Renaissance. It discusses how classicism, collecting and printing were important catalysts for the Renaissance study of nature. Classicism provided inspiration of how to study and what kind of object to examine in nature, and several images from the period can be shown to reflect these classical values. The development of the passion for collecting and the rise of commerce in nature's commodities led to the circulation of a large number of exotic flora and fauna. Pictures enabled scholars to access unobtainable objects, build up knowledge of rare objects over time, and study them long after the live specimens had died away. Printing replicated pictures alongside texts and enabled scholars to share and accumulate knowledge. Images, alongside objects and text, were an important means of studying nature. Naturalists' images, in turn, became part of a larger visual culture in which nature was regarded as a beautiful and fascinating object of admiration.
