INTRO:
Hello and welcome to Myth Monsters, my name is Erin and I’ll be your host for these little snack bite size podcasts on folklore and mythical monsters from around the world.
These podcasts focus on the actual cryptids, folklore and mythic monsters from global mythology, rather than focusing on full stories of heroes and their big adventures.
I’ll also be dropping in some references that they have to recent culture and where you can see these represented in modern day content so you can learn more, and get as obsessed as I am about these absolute legends of the mythological world.
It’s officially the last week of July and I am so glad, I had a big wedding last week so I’m now in full on rest and recovery mode and I still do not wish to see another person. I’m hoping to go see the Barbie movie this weekend, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to cry my eyes out.
DESCRIPTION:
Anyway, this week we’re heading over to the land of wine, Romans and the Pope, and flying over to Italy for this monster - it’s a bit of a weird one, but nothing we’ve not seen before. Yes, it’s the Monster of Ravenna!
This monster is definitely a bit unique as it’s not really a monster at all - more one that was created from something quite sad, and you may feel that this one is quite similar to Changelings from European folklore and we’ll get onto their similarities later. However, just a small content warning for this one about child death and neglect.
The Monster of Ravenna was generally described as a newborn child from the union of a friar and a nun, which had a horn on its head like a unicorn, one hairy leg with a cloven hoof, and the other one with an eye embedded in the thigh. It also had the letters YXV on its chest and is sometimes noted as being cycloptic. Within days of the birth, the description changed to the child being a hermaphrodite, bat wings, a bird’s clawed foot, and eventually merged the two legs into one.
This monstrous birth was followed by one other, called the Monster of Bologna and the child born there had two faces, three eyes and a vulva on her forehead. This child was called Maria and lived for four days before passing on.
I hear you say - Erin, you were right at the beginning, this definitely isn’t a monster. You’re not wrong, however, back when this monster was around, it was considered one because of the foreshadowing it was believed to have had. The Monster of Ravenna was considered an omen, which is what really makes it stand out in history - and this is because of where it comes from.
Ravenna is a city in Northern Italy, just east of Bologna - and during the 1500’s, when this monster was around, it was the Italian Renaissance, but also and more importantly for Ravenna, when the battle of Ravenna took place. This was a battle for territory - I won’t go too into this now, but the monster was born a month before the battle, and the French saw this as an omen from God, showing the grotesque amalgamation of all King Louis 12th’s soldiers and a display of disapproval to Catholic power. I’ll get more into all of this later - but you can see that the omen part is important, that’s the good bit.
In terms of reproduction, neither monstrous child lived long enough to reproduce, but there were other much less documented cases of deformed children coming from all around Europe at the time. However, these two are the only ones we are referring to exactly when discussing this monster, and there are technically only two Monsters of Ravenna, and really that’s a push, it’s just one that was named this way.
Usually, I’d go into their food and how to kill them - but because the children were so young, I would assume they had breastmilk, and unfortunately whilst one died of natural causes, the other actual Monster of Ravenna was left to die on a hillside of exposure. I’ll go into this more later too, as why this happened does have importance in this story.
ORIGIN:
For etymology - it is what it is, there’s nothing particularly interesting here as it’s a monster that was from Ravenna, however, I can tell you that in Italian, it’s Mostro di Ravenna which sounds great, I love Italian.
Now the most interesting thing about this monster is its history, because it not only relates to the middle ages and how they treated medical problems, but also to religion and the power of the Pope, which I’ve not covered before - which to me is very interesting.
The Monster does itself, have a birthday - which was the 8th March 1512, within 3 days, Pope Julius II was aware of it in Rome. During this time, the Pope had a significant power, not only in Rome and the Vatican, but worldwide - look at Henry the 8th, the Pope refused a divorce in 1534 and he created a whole other religion, it was a big deal. The Pope actually created the rule that all deformed or disabled babies should be left to starve and die in the wilderness - so this Pope especially was not a nice guy.
However, we also have to take historical context into account, we’re in the Renaissance period, but only just - some would still consider this the middle ages. There were no ways of medically treating anyone with a deformity or disability back in the 1500’s, and they would have usually died from something like infection, which was horrible, but just the norm within these times. Babies were in a boom, with an average of 7-10 children born to one family - however, the child mortality rate was 15-20% in children under one, and 30% in people under 20, so out of those 10 children, maybe 3 would make it to fully grown adults.
Anyway, we also said we would go back to the Battle of Ravenna which is also important within this monster origin story. Superstition was rife during these days, but this ongoing war was called the War of the League of Cambrai or War of the Holy League. This war was between Venice, which at the time was its own state, the rest of Italy, Spain and France - this began because the King of the Romans at the time wanted to be crowned by the Pope in Rome and went through Venetian territory. The Pope actually wanted to push the Venetians out and so formed the coalition of France, Spain and the rest of Italy to do so, and the Venetians eventually surrendered.
How does the Battle of Ravenna fit in here, well that was when the French decided they still wanted Italian territory and fought the Italian forces, which were led by the Pope, and he was known as the Warrior Pope. What does this have to do with our monster though? This baby was born a month before the conflict, when tensions were high, and to have a baby born with horns and wings implies that God might not be on your side. So the Italian people and the Pope were very conscious of the spreading of these rumours and they indeed, lost at the Battle of Ravenna to the French.
Another interpretation of the monster though is still religious, but it’s that of a nun and a friar - two supposedly cellibate religious roles, birthing a child out of wedlock, which is controversial any way and shows sexual immorality, even within the church.
What could it actually be though - the most common thought is that it’s a very rare medical condition called Roberts syndrome, which is a genetic disorder that stops cell division in the womb, meaning that babies do not form bones, limbs or faces. The babies can have deformed skulls, shorter limbs and unusual limb or feature placement on the body, which could reflect on our monster. The condition is very rare with only 150 known people to have had it, but the mortality rate is extremely high. Another potential condition may be Mermaid syndrome, which is where babies are born with their legs fused together, and sometimes their pelvis, spine and renal organs can be missing. Unfortunately this condition is usually fatal, babies may be miscarried or born stillborn, and if born alive, will only live a few days.
Both of these conditions could potentially be the cause of this monster's deformities and it makes sense that little Maria only lasted four days, but these are both very rare conditions that most definitely would not have been seen favourably in the Middle Ages, and certainly wouldn’t have been treated.
Lastly, let’s talk about mythical comparisons because I did mention them right at the start - the most common monster I can think of is a Botchling or Poroniec. I covered these a really long time ago at the start of this podcasting journey back in 2021, and these monsters are the undead foetuses of babies who were improperly buried after being born unwanted. They are also deformed, however are a lot more malevolent than their fairy counterparts, the Changelings.
I do also see a Changeling link here, children believed to be swapped by fairies after birth due to birth defects and sometimes abused or killed by their human parents who don’t believe the child is theirs. These creatures usually weren’t as strange to look at as Botchlings or the Monster of Ravenna, but you can certainly see the similarities. If you do want to hear more about them, do go check out the episode I did on them - but be mindful that it was very early in my podcasting career and the quality is not the best by my own admission.
CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE:
Now onto modern media, there’s nothing specifically on this monster - literally nothing, so here’s a whole load of stuff on grotesque monsters and media;
For art, you can check out artwork of this creature in The Ravenna Monster from 1581 and The Monster of Ravenna by John Ashton from 1890 - there are other depictions of it, but there are no titles or dates so they’re hard to describe to you - and there aren’t really any independent artworks this week, so very basic I’m afraid!
In movies, we have; The Hunchback of Notre Dame, A Monster in Paris, The Elephant Man, Darkman, Freaks, Batman Returns, Igor, Friday the 13th, 300, Queen of Outer Space, Mask, The Fly, The Goonies, Moonraker, Van Helsing & Grotesque.
For TV, we have; Game of Thrones, Supernatural, The Outerlimits, Doctor Who, X-Files, Grimm, American Horror Story, The Witcher, Batman: The Animated Series, Cyber Six & Love, Death and Robots.
In video games, we have ones such as; Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, Street Fighter 3, Dark Cloud 2, Layers of Fear, Dropsy, Undertale, Fallout, World of Warcraft, Warcraft & Diablo.
My book recommendations for this week are Italian Fairy Tales by Lila E Romano and Howard Davie and Catarina the Wise and Other Wondrous Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales by Giuseppe Pitre for some brilliant Italian stories from their folklore - one that is probably overlooked by having such a Roman and Christian influence in the same place.
DO I THINK THEY EXISTED?
Now it’s time for, do I think they existed?
Yep - I do, mainly because it’s written into history that these children were born. Do I believe that they were monsters, or omens? No, but I definitely believe they were real, and unfortunately likely had one of the conditions I mentioned earlier, which gave them a monstrous appearance to middle ages peasants.
It makes sense - the world was a very cruel and obviously uneducated place back then, and children were a commodity that you had to calculate how death affected, and account for it. It was a wild and horrible time, and I hope the babies from these stories are in a better place.
I am a big fan of the exhibit Body Worlds or Korperwelten, which is an exhibit of plastinated dead people - it’s fascinating, but some people are really freaked out by it. In this exhibit, there is a baby section, and they had a few babies with conditions like these who had been plastinated. It’s a very sombre exhibit about human life and death as a cycle that never ends. I really recommend it if you’re in Berlin or Amsterdam, but it travels too. I do not recommend it for a first date, I have learnt this the hard way.
But what do you think? Do you think the Monster of Ravenna is truly a monster, or just a sad story from the Middle Ages? Let me know on Twitter!
OUTRO:
What an interesting and yet sad creature to cover this week, it’s been a while since we covered a child-based monster, so I’m glad we got to cover it and it is certainly a unique one.
Next week, I’m actually going to have a week off because I realised that between March and September, which is 6 months - I don’t have any breaks at all and honestly, I’m knackered, so I’m gonna give myself a little break.
But the week after, we’re heading back over to Ol’ Blighty and looking at a monster popularised by Harry Potter, specifically in the Prisoner of Azkaban - get ready to shout riddikulus at the Boggart from English folklore Thursday 9th August!
For now, thank you so much for listening, it’s been an absolute pleasure. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a rating on the service you’re listening on - I’ve got the twitter for any questions, or suggestions on what monsters to cover next and I’d love to hear from you. The social media handles for Tiktok, Youtube and Instagram are mythmonsterspodcast, and twitter is mythmonsterspod. But all of our content can be found at mythmonsters.co.uk - you can also find us on Goodpods, Buymeacoffee and Patreon if you want to help me fund the podcast too.
Come join the fun though and share this with your pals, they might love me as much as you do.
But for now, stay spooky and I’ll see you later babes.