ABSTRACT
Monstrous iconography was a major, even central, element of the visual arts throughout the entire medieval period, early Christian through late Gothic, east and west, north and south. There are few – if any – medieval cultural traditions that do not rely on monstrous imagery for vital cultural functions. Within this catchall category, often defined through exclusion from all of the more clearly defined categories of the period, there is tremendous dynamism and variety, as well as great hermeneutic and epistemological potential. It is worth noting that prominent medieval scholars, most notably Augustine of Hippo and Isidore of Seville, wrote important works theorizing the role of the monstrous. Monsters and the monstrous were therefore as worthy of careful study as all other natural and supernatural phenomena, and so we should not be surprised that vital patristic and medieval scholars dedicated their energies to thinking about a subject that much scholarship of the twentieth century saw as marginal, at best.
