ABSTRACT
During its examination of some supernatural practices recorded by the three physicians, the previous chapter touched on Hecate as a Jacobean stage witch. Classical representations of this goddess typically depict her with three conjoined human bodies, complete with three heads and up to 12 limbs.1 Traditionally, witches were represented with physical abnormalities, and those with abnormal bodies were often ‘suspected of witchcraft’.2 Hecate’s anatomical configuration offers an extreme example of the type of supernatural humans examined in this chapter, those with congenitally abnormal bodies. Like all extraordinary natural wonders, such as monstrous animals or plants, prodigious floods or hailstorms, solar or lunar eclipses, comets, volcanic eruptions or earthquakes, such humans were regarded as supernatural omen-bringing messengers, with a perceived ‘demonstrative’ role. With reference to this, the early modern term for humans and animals born with physical nonconformities was ‘monster’.3 Because of their perceived social and religious significance, the birth of every early modern human with extreme physical nonconformities that came to public attention was recorded as a matter of course. The development of printing provided a cheap, portable and profitable way of spreading news of such humans, through broadsheets reporting on their births and activities, and the prodigy and wonder books and other publications drawing on such ephemera.
