The Monster of Ravenna and the Case of Mass Hysteria that nearly toppled the Vatican in 1512


 A few weeks before Easter in the year 1512 alarming reports began to reach Pope Julius II in Rome.  Reports of a strange and monstrous creature--a true demon (it was said) brought to life--near the Adriatic coast in the historic and holy city of Ravenna, only about two-hundred miles as the crow flies, north of the Vatican.

This creature, what Vatican officials labelled as the spawn of Satan, was said to have been the illicit offspring of a secret sexual liaison between a nun and a monk.  In reality, if that was the case, then the so-called “Monster of Ravenna” never stood a chance of acceptance into Renaissance Italian society no matter what it looked like from the moment that it was born.

This “monstrous” being would have been banished to the wilderness from infancy, shunned and pushed away to the margins of Renaissance society, only able to sustain a subsistence life if it were lucky, merely for having been the product of such a sinful sexual encounter.

When Pope Julius found out about the Monster of Ravenna in early 1512 the news for him only got worse from there.  The Pope was told that not just one monster existed in the north of Italy, but that apparently, due to sinful activity on the part of clerics, there seemed to be several half-human and half-animal beings in and around Ravenna as Easter of 1512 approached.

City of Ravenna northern Italy


Deformed births, reports of unknown creatures and even odd looking children and adults with deformities being confused for unknown creatures was not uncommon in the late Middle Ages.  Sixteenth century society existed at a time when empirical science hadn’t yet advanced very far, and most learning still took place in cloistered monasteries.  Although the Renaissance, particularly in Italy due to the support of wealthy Catholic patrons, was a time when artistic endeavors like painting, sculpture and literature flourished, it was still also a time when most people, due to a lack of knowledge, were very prone to superstition and mass hysteria.

However, there must have been something especially terrifying and alarming about the appearance of the Monster of Ravenna that was seen in early 1512 to have caused the mayor of that city to write almost immediately to no less an authority before God than Pope Julius II himself to report what he had witnessed.

Pope Julius II, it could be said, was crazy about religious artwork and control.  He sought not only military power, but also immortality through artwork, to confirm what he considered to be his rightful place in history as the greatest leader of the Holy Roman Catholic Church since at least Saint Peter.  It was Pope Julius who commissioned Michelangelo to create the amazing frescoed ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and he also commissioned the legendary Italian Renaissance artist Raphael to paint masterpieces on  the walls of his own personal bedchamber!

Pope Julius II

Knowing what a lover and patron of the arts that Pope Julius was it should come as no surprise that as reports of the Monster of Ravenna began to reach him, some took it upon themselves to paint and draw the creature and recreate in imagery the monstrous beast that had been reported for the benefit of Pope Julius II.

The Pope’s own apothecary and famed Florentine memoirist Luca Landucci wrote in his diary in the year 1512: 


We heard that a monster had been born at Ravenna of which a drawing was sent here.  It had a horn on its head, straight up like a sword, and instead of two arms it had two wings like a bat’s…at the height of the breast it had a Y shaped mark on one side and a cross on the other and lower down at the waist two serpents and it was an hermaphrodite.  I saw it painted and anyone who wished could see this painting in Florence.


It is somewhat confusing as to why Landucci would write that the Pope received a drawing of the Monster of Ravenna but then also comment that he had seen a painting of such a creature in Florence, as well.  But from the historical record it would appear that the appearance of the Monster of Ravenna was so remarkable and so terrifying that commissioned images of it appeared all throughout Renaissance Italy in the year 1512.

There are elements in the case of the Monster of Ravenna that have the echo of mass hysteria about them.  Just after the appearance of the Monster an army of the Pope’s allies called the Holy League was defeated in battle in the north of Italy by a French army under the Command of King Louis XII.  The French King was seeking influence over the Italian Papal states that had long been a bulwark of the Holy Roman Church.  Many feared Pope Julius II, not least among them, in the year 1512 that the world was shifting away from the Church; becoming more secular and sinful.  Growing nation states and their Monarchs like King Louis in France were ignoring the edicts of the Pope and the authority of the Church in Rome.  The start of the Protestant Reformation, an upheaval that would tear traditional Europe apart, was only five years away.  The year 1512 was definitely a scary time to be a Catholic and a supporter of the Vatican and it's no wonder that reports of monsters all across the Papal States in Italy started to pop up.

Many said that the birth of the Monster of Ravenna on the eve of battle was a bad omen that foretold the defeat of the Papal forces in the face of the French army.  The more sober minded observers commented that it could have simply been a deformed child,  but many within the Church insisted that the Monster of Ravenna was Satan himself brought to life, and that the appearance of such a Monster as Easter approached was a sign of the end times and a call for all of humanity to repent from their evil ways and draw closer to the teachings of God.

Artist engraving of the Monster of Ravenna

At the 5th Lateran Council, only eighteen days after the defeat of the Pope’s armies by the French before the gates of Ravenna, Egidio de Viterbo, Pope Julius’ favored Cardinal declared in a mass prior to the start of the Holy council that the Monster had appeared because “The Lord God was displeased with the Church in Rome.”

The most interesting thing about the frenzy of reports regarding the Monster of Ravenna in early 1512, is that just as quickly as they appeared, they suddenly disappeared.  Sometime prior to the end of 1512 reports of the Monster’s death began to surface and the French Army was defeated after new allies rushed to the defense of Rome.  Soon, the fortunes of Pope Julius, at least for a time changed, and it would appear that God once again smiled upon his one true church, at least that is, until Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to a church door in Wittenberg, Germany and tore the traditional Roman Catholic world of the Renaissance and High Middle Ages apart for good.

It is possible, even likely, that improvements in communication namely the invention of the printing press, a vastly more literate society in the year 1512 than ever before in the past and improved maritime transportation networks across Europe--the same ingredients that allowed reports of the Monster of Ravenna to go viral across Italy--were the very things that also sparked the Protestant Reformation and changed western history forever.  In that way, though most agree the Monster of Ravenna may have been nothing more threatening than a poor deformed child born out of wedlock, in many ways the Monster of Ravenna did serve as an all too real bad omen for the Roman Catholic Church.

Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses

Reports of the Monster of Ravenna continued to pop up from time to time even though many claimed that it was dead.  It would seem that in the years leading up to the reformation in 1517 monster sightings increased in frequency, because in the year 1514 Luca Landucci wrote again in his diary of another monster--this one called the Monster of Bologna.  The Monster of Bologna was indisputably a deformed child and was said by Landucci to, “Have two faces; three eyes and a woman’s vulva on its forehead.”  Apparently, this so-called “Monster of Bologna” , unlike its possibly fictitious counterpart in Ravenna, lived long enough to be baptized with the name Maria, and at least according to the Church, this poor child’s eternal soul was saved from damnation.

Today, historians and scientists agree that what the late Medieval imagination labelled a “Monster” was nothing more than a suffering child born, perhaps, with a wide range of conditions and birth defects that gave the unfortunate infant an appearance unlike anything anyone had ever seen before and one that the narrow superstitious medieval thought process could only label as monstrous.  The poor child likely never even had a chance at life, or a chance to be baptized before it passed away, and rumors and speculation about its appearance went viral across Renaissance Italy.

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