Monsters and the Monstrous - Conference Programme Session 8

2nd Global Conference

Monsters and the Monstrous:
Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil

Monday 10th May - Wednesday 12th May 2004
Budapest, Hungary

Conference Programme, Abstracts & Papers

Session 8: Monsters Medieval Revisited
Chair: Paul Yoder

Monsters of the Russian Apocalypses and Synodicons
Ludmila Sukina
Humanitarian Sciences Department, Program Systems Institute, University of Pereslavl, Pereslavl-Zalessky, Russia

The monstrous in the Russian medieval culture is associate with idea on the end of the world and on the death. This subject reflected best of all in the illuminated books of late Middle Ages: the Apocalypses end Sinodicons.
The Apocalypse is one the most mysterious and popular book in Christianity. Its subject are common in fine arts in Europe . But in Byzantine-Russian culture the subject of Apocalypse was seldom used.
The Sinodicon (Grecism) is the book of the remembrans of the dead. Its analogy of the European culture is “Exempla”.
The Golden age of the illuminated Apocalypses end Sinodicons of the Russian medieval culture of XVI-XVII century is evoke of the waiting of the Doomsday. In their illustrations reflected of the ideas of the Russian man on the infernal monsters as the personification of the Evil. In the part of the monsters is perform of the fantastic creatures (many-heads snakes, Dragons, Leviathan) and the realistic animals, which the Christian tradition associated with infernal forces (rat, dog, lion, horse). Their images is use in the illustrations of the struggle of the Good with the Evil: Christ with Antichrist, pure soul with sinful temptations. By Evil in the Apocalypses end Sinodicons may be and anthropomorphous image (nations of Gog and Magog, army of Antichrist).
The images of the monsters from the illuminated Apocalypses end Sinodicons moved to the other forms of the Russian art: fresco, engraving, cheap popular, icon-painting.
The images of the monsters in the Russian medieval culture on the whole is coincide with the images the monsters in the European culture of Middle Ages. But in Russian art they is not numerous and their looks generalized, therefore they are less terrible. Their intention is not frighten of the spectator, not he is remind of the is existence of the Doomsday and the Death.

There is No Hero without a Dragon: A Revisionist Interpretation of the Myth of St George and the Dragon
Estelle Mare
Department of Art History, University of South Africa, South Africa