7 Weird Things People Believed About the World in Medieval Europe

If you were an average person living in Europe in the 15th century, you probably weren’t very well traveled—meaning much of the world (even places within Europe) may have felt very mysterious to you.

What kinds of animals roamed the land, what did the land even look like, and what were the people like? To get the answers to these questions, you might rely on a mixture of stories from people who’d visited (or claimed to have visited) those lands.

Enter the Book of the Marvels of the World, a 15th-century illustrated manuscript written in France by an unknown author. The book shares descriptions and images of people, traditions, animals, and natural phenomena from locales around the world, as close as France itself and as far away as Egypt, China, and Africa. Little is known about the book’s patrons and early readers, but evidence suggests they were wealthy, educated members of the elite class who perhaps were engaged in travel and commerce or consumers of luxury international goods.

Four copies and one set of fragments survive today, and one copy (although missing some text and images) was recently acquired by Getty. The book is the focus of the new Getty exhibition The Book of Marvels: Wonder and Fear in the Middle Ages.

While some creatures and customs described in the book are based in reality, most are not. The book’s author crafted the stories from a combination of folklore, ancient sources, dubious and exaggerated firsthand accounts, and mythical tales of lands that do not exist. Ultimately, the stories recounted in the book reflect the era’s biases and prejudices, revealing how French Christians saw the world and spreading stereotypes they believed. The exhibition title references “wonder and fear” because the experience of wonder and fear are often two sides of the same coin.

“Just as space-alien and horror movies entertain modern audiences because they offer a thrilling yet vicarious experience of wonder and fear, so did the text and images of the Marvels manuscripts for their intended audience in the Middle Ages,” says exhibition co-curator Elizabeth Morrison, Getty senior curator of manuscripts.

Kelin Michael, former graduate intern in the department and exhibition co-curator, adds, “But it is important to keep in mind that in the Book of Marvels, the fascinating but often fictitious descriptions evoked wonder and fear by reinforcing a sense of civilized superiority in their audiences.”

So when we look back at the Book of Marvels of the World today, many of the claims seem pretty wacky, or even shocking! Read on for a taste of some of the truly outlandish things described in the book.

1. The opening to purgatory is found in… Ireland?

See that hole in the side of the hill? That’s the opening to purgatory, apparently found in Ireland. (According to medieval Christian belief, purgatory was a temporary place for purification/punishment after death to purge a soul before its movement to heaven).

The Book of Marvels elaborates that in Ireland there is “a very large opening like the mouth of a very deep well. And… it was revealed to the bishop Saint Patrick that this was the entrance to Purgatory and that all Christian men who would enter therein willingly and patiently endure all the dangers there would never have another purgatory.”

2. Sri Lanka: Land of giant snails

Readers of the Book of Marvels would have come away with some decidedly odd impressions of Sri Lanka—namely, that the land is inhabited by giant fast-moving snails big enough to hunt. And their shells are roomy enough to live inside!

The text recounts that Sri Lanka (called Traponee) has “the biggest snails that exist in the world, and they move so quickly that it is a marvel, and the men of the country hunt and chase them as we over here hunt wild animals. And the people of the region live on their flesh… And the shells are so big that the men and women of the country live inside them, and they have no other houses or habitations.”

3. Spain, where horses become pregnant from the wind

The air apparently has a lot more power in Spain than you might think. The pair of horses on the left side of the image represent the strange claim that in Spain, horses become pregnant through the wind.

“The mares, during the season when the soft and gentle wind Favonius [Zephyrus] is blowing above them, even though they be without the company of their stallions that we call horses and are grazing on the grass of the fields or the mountains all alone, when the month of May comes, they become pregnant by breathing in this wind, without being covered by their stallions.”

4. The lake in Spain where the devil lives

But wait, there are more marvelous creatures to be found in Spain! This claim sounds more like a local legend: a deep lake at the top of a mountain in Catalonia—“so deep that no man has ever found the bottom, and its water is hideously black and very frightening to behold”—is where the devils of hell have made their home.

“And if it happens that any man throws a stone into this lake, then the devils are enraged and, to avenge their injury, they stir up great rumblings in the form of thunder, lightning, and storms.”

5. The deserts of China are filled with serpents and dragons

The Book of Marvels presents the deserts of China as remarkably vast, noting that they are “extremely far” from any human habitation and very difficult to cross. One reason: they are filled with beasts like serpents and dragons (see these fantastical creatures on the left side of the image above).

“The deserts there are so great and so terrible and so full of ravenous, wild, venomous beasts like tigers, wolves, serpents, and dragons, that no one would be able to go there in a simple way without being killed.”

6. In Italy, some people walk through fire

Walking through fire was, apparently, no big deal for a group of people in Italy called “Hirpes” in the Book of Marvels.

They were “not among the most noble,” the book notes, but still “had such a power within themselves that they walked and could go and come through a great burning fire without feeling it or having any burns or discomfort at all.”

7. Scythia, where the werewolves roam