Is the devil – or vampire – in the
detail? Close-up of the mysterious, sinister-looking entity lurking in the upper
margin of folio 28v from the Sankt Florian Psalter (public domain)
Just in case you're wondering, the illuminated
vampire under consideration here is definitely not one of the sparkling,
shimmering, but invariably angst-ridden teenage variety that frequent a certain
series of romance-driven novels (and accompanying films) for young adults. No
indeed, this one is none other than Nosferatu himself, the dreaded Count Orlok
of the long incisors and even longer ears, and this present ShukerNature blog
article of mine records my unexpected discovery of him, or someone very much
like him, in an exceedingly unlikely locality – a medieval illuminated
manuscript!
ShukerNature readers may well recall that some time
ago I documented an astonishingly Yoda-like entity existing far far away from
his usual galactic Star Wars abode as a Jedi Knight – residing instead inside
an early illuminated manuscript known as the Smithfield Decretals (click
here
to read my article), dating from c.1300-1340. Apparently, however, he wasn't
the only fictitious figure to lurk undetected until recent times within the
rarified illustrative realm of medieval marginalia, as now revealed.
Comparison of my official Yoda model
with the Yoda-like entity hidden away in the Smithfield Decretals (© Dr
Karl Shuker/public domain)
As I noted when blogging previously about the
presence of snail-cat illustrations in illuminated manuscripts (click here),
psalters were volumes of predominantly medieval age that normally contained the
150 psalms of the Old Testament and a liturgical calendar. They were also beautifully
illustrated in illuminated form by monks.
One of the most ornate examples is the Sankt
Florian Psalter, also known as the Saint Florian Psalter or the Psalterium
Trilingue. It was written between the late 14th and early 15th
Centuries, and its text is presented in three different languages – Latin,
Polish, and German (the Polish version contains the earliest presentation of
the psalms in Polish). It was first discovered in 1827, by local librarian
Father Josef Chmel, at the St Florian monastery of Sankt Florian – the Austrian
town after which this psalter is named – and is currently held as a priceless religious
and iconographical treasure at the National Library of Poland, in Warsaw.
The beginning of Psalm 1, gorgeously
illuminated in the margins with assorted plants, animals, human figures, and
other adornments, from the Sankt Florian Psalter - click to enlarge (public domain)
Yet despite its beauty and historical significance,
the Sankt Florian Psalter is a notably mysterious work, inasmuch as its creator(s),
original owners, and provenance are all currently unknown (although certain
localities in Poland are variously favoured as the identity of the latter).
But these are not the only mysteries or anomalies associated with this famous
literary – and artistic – masterpiece.
The Sankt Florian Psalter consists of 297 + IV
folios, and can be viewed online in its entirety here. Reiterating from my snail-cats article,
manuscripts from the Middle Ages were bound without page numbers. In relation
to such manuscripts, the term 'folio' (commonly abbreviated to 'fol' or simply
'f') is used in place of 'page', and the front or top side of each folio is
referred to as the recto ('r'), with the back or under side of each folio being
the verso ('v'). Consequently, as examples of how folios are designated in such
manuscripts, the front side of a manuscript's fifth folio would be referred to
as f 5r, and the back of the manuscript's 17th folio as f 17v.
Bearing in mind that some consist of as many as 300 folios or even more,
illuminated manuscripts housed in libraries sometimes have the respective number
of each constituent folio lightly pencilled upon its recto side's top-right
corner, for ease of access to specific folios.
A snail-cat, as delightfully depicted
in the Maastricht Hours, an illuminated religious manuscript dating from
the early 1300s and originating in the Netherlands (public domain)
During my earlier researches into snail-cats and
other exotic zoological marginalia portrayed in illuminated manuscripts (click here), I viewed a varied assortment of these
latter works online, including the Sankt Florian Psalter. I didn't locate any
snail-cats in it, but what I did find was far more startling, and is as
follows. In the margin directly above the upper edge of text on the Sankt
Florian Psalter's f 28v (click here
to view this folio online within the psalter itself) is a very elaborate,
colourful decoration consisting of swirling feathers and leaves, clusters of
bright golden berries, a bird, a lion, a large human face portrayed in profile…and,
partially encircled by a feather and a leaf, a very unusual humanoid figure. He
may be cloaked and shown only from the waist up, but just one look at his face
is more than enough to reveal just how strange and sinister he is.
To begin with, this eerie, scowling entity's skin is a very pale,
unhealthy-looking grey shade, his highly domed head is entirely hairless, his
arched jet-black eyebrows have a decidedly satanic appearance, and his eyes below
them are large and staring. But what sets him well apart from what may
otherwise be conceivably identified as some form of stern religious figure
wearing a pinkish-red cloak are his extraordinarily long, donkey-like ears, and
his noticeably conspicuous teeth, which not only are very large, ghostly-white, and fully exposed, bared in a highly disturbing, snarling grimace,
but also are unmistakeably pointed.
The mysterious neo-Nosferatuan figure
depicted on f 28v of the Sankt Florian Psalter (public domain)
Not so long ago, as mentioned in a recent
ShukerNature post (click here), I watched
the 1979 art-house remake (starring Klaus Kinski) of the classic silent German
Expressionist horror movie from 1922, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror,
directed by F.W. Murnau – in which Max Schreck played Count Orlock the vampire,
or Nosferatu. And to my amazement, when looking at the weird, grotesque figure
standing aloof among the illuminated margin adornments of f 28v from the Sankt
Florian Psalter, I realised that he bore an uncanny resemblance to Klaus
Kinski's Nosferatu, and even more so to Max Schreck's original version!
The cloak itself (albeit pink rather than black),
the extra-long asinine ears, the pale and grim countenance, the domed hairless head,
the large staring eyes, and, above all, the white pointed teeth – a veritable
vampire of Nosferatuan nature but portrayed in illuminated splendour was gazing
back at me from one of the world's most celebrated medieval psalters, a psalter
that had been created at least 600 years ago!
Comparing the cloaked figure from the
Sankt Florian Psalter with Max Schreck's portrayal of Nosferatu, the vampirish
Count Orlok (public domain)
Never having encountered any mention of this truly
bizarre coincidence before, I searched online to discover if anyone else had drawn
the same comparison, but could only find a few very scant mentions of the psalter-depicted
entity in question on some Polish websites. Like all the best vampires,
therefore, the sharp-toothed stranger from the Sankt Florian Psalter had for
the most part entirely eluded detection. Only one notable exception came to
light, a lengthier, more detailed Polish article that had been written and
posted online to advertise the one-day-only public display of this invaluable psalter,
on 23 April 2016, at
the Palace of the Republic of
Poland, in Warsaw.
The article had been uploaded onto the Polona/Blog
website on 14 April 2016 (click here
to access it), and by an extraordinary coincidence it had been written by none
other than Łukasz Kozak, the expert in relation to medieval
times and editor at the National
Digital Library of Poland whose earlier, equally informative online article regarding
the anomalous 'Locust of Kalisz' had been instrumental in guiding my own
researches concerning this latter hitherto-obscure cryptid (click here to read my recent ShukerNature blog article documenting
it).
The bizarre 'Locust of Kalisz' drawing, depicting one of many such
insects allegedly encountered near this Polish city in 1749 (public domain)
What was particularly interesting about Łukasz's article, however, was not only his own comparison of the psalter's
mystery figure with Nosferatu, but a second, alternative comparison of it made
by him as well. Providing a stark contrast to the darkness epitomised by the
fictional Nosferatu, Łukasz noted how the figure also resembled a notable
fictitious entity embodying the light side – none other than the Star Wars
movie franchise's big-eared, cloak-garbed Yoda!
And indeed, as shown below, there is certainly a resemblance, but less marked,
at least in my opinion, than either the similarity between the figure and
Nosferatu or the similarity between the earlier-mentioned Smithfield
Decretals figure and Yoda. Nevertheless, how can we explain any such resemblances
between modern-day fictitious beings and enigmatic, decidedly odd-looking entities
depicted in illuminated manuscripts many centuries earlier, and by cloistered monks
with little if any first-hand knowledge of the outside world anyway?
Three-way comparison featuring the cloaked figure from
the Sankt Florian Psalter, Max Schreck's portrayal of Nosferatu, and my
official model of Yoda (public domain/public domain/© Dr Karl Shuker)
As noted in my ShukerNature article dealing with it
(here), one popular explanation of this Yoda-like
entity as depicted in the Smithfield Decretals is that in reality it may
represent the devil attired as a demonic doctor of canon law, signifying that
some clerics charged to uphold the law were actually corrupt and exploitative
of their flock. Alternatively, it might simply represent a devil or demon in
human form that is hoping to lure and tempt the unwary away from the paths of
righteousness, and I consider it most likely that this or something similar is
what the Sankt Florian Psalter's Nosferatu-like figure is intended to represent too. In religious
imagery and classical western mythology, the donkey or ass is sometimes seen as
an evil beast, so the addition of ass-like ears to a figure is a deft,
easily-executed way of conveying visually the inherently malign nature of the
figure, irrespective of his religious garb and other outward suggestions of piety
and propriety.
Nevertheless, it is nothing if not intriguing to discover just how very like
such purposefully ambiguous representations are to analogous versions created
entirely independently and several centuries later in time. Then again, when
dealing with entities as wily and astute as vampires and Jedi Knights, I
suppose that we shouldn't really be surprised at anything!
View of the entire f 28v folio from
the Sankt Florian Psalter, showing the Nosferatu-like mystery figure in situ
(public domain)
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