Y.... ?--.B** ~ .... Critical Inquiry Autumn 1991 103 ....v ? -? }.._ j.,^- _ , ..- ^_ _ FIG. 1.-German broadside pr<strong>in</strong>ted <strong>in</strong> Frankfurt, 1627, of a celestial apparition, por- tend<strong>in</strong>g, <strong>in</strong>ter alia, a Turkish <strong>in</strong>vasion, plague, <strong>and</strong> hailstorms. Courtesy of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich. <strong>in</strong>to service as propag<strong>and</strong>a on one or another side of the rag<strong>in</strong>g religious controversies of the day.29 However, the pr<strong>in</strong>ted collections of prodigies, learned <strong>and</strong> lay alike, did not saddle every prodigy they reported with a portentous <strong>in</strong>terpretation. Some might be signs either of impend<strong>in</strong>g events (an <strong>in</strong>vasion of Turks, an outbreak of plague, the com<strong>in</strong>g of the Messiah), or religious heresy, or more generally of God's wrath <strong>and</strong> power-but not all. Bod<strong>in</strong> believed only comets <strong>and</strong> monsters to be true portents, <strong>and</strong> took care to dist<strong>in</strong>guish these from superstitious <strong>and</strong> impious div<strong>in</strong>ation.30 Boaistuau <strong>and</strong> his coauthors blithely related prodigies that testified to "the excellence of man" (a man who slept for thirty years, another who washed his face <strong>and</strong> h<strong>and</strong>s with molten lead, women who had borne litters of children, a prodigiously obese man) <strong>and</strong> to the fecundity of nature (stones that could render brackish water sweet, nereids <strong>and</strong> tritons, volcanoes), rather than to div<strong>in</strong>ejudgements <strong>and</strong> messages. Even the German broadsides, generally the gloomiest of a gloom-<strong>and</strong>-doom genre, sometimes published simple descriptions, without <strong>in</strong>terpretations. 29. See Park <strong>and</strong> Daston, "Unnatural Conceptions," pp. 27-34. 30. See Bod<strong>in</strong>, De la Dcmonomanie des sorciers, fol. 49 r/v. I
. K "p I . , * ws -. 1 t ;1u. x ,- ! -k C I -e- --- ,, - FIG. 2.-German broadside illustrat<strong>in</strong>g a monstrous birth <strong>in</strong> Spalt, 1511. Although described as "a wondrous <strong>and</strong> terrify<strong>in</strong>g th<strong>in</strong>g," no <strong>in</strong>terpretation is offered. Courtesy of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich. I I i I