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Monsters, American Animals, and Mirabilia in Gerónimo de Huerta and his Translation of the Natural History (1624)
Penélope Marcela Fernández Izaguirre
In 1599, Gerónimo de Huerta (1573–1643) began translating the
Natural History of Pliny the Elder, the 1624 edition of which contains a “Tabla de las efigies de gentes monstruosas, animales, pescados, aves e insectos.”
1 Henceforth, I will refer to the “Tabla de las efigies de gentes monstruosas, animales, pescados, aves e insectos” as the “Table.” This graphic resource, the author of which is not provided in the translation, illustrates some of the monsters and animals mentioned in the Natural History and gives the Book and Chapter number in which the textual reference is found. The
Historia natural / de Cayo Plinio Segundo; traducida por el Licenciado Geronimo de Huerta … y ampliada por él mismo, con escolios y anotaciones, en que se aclara lo oscuro y dudoso y añade lo no sabido hasta estos tiempos provides in the Castilian language – as the complete title of the translation indicates – more information on the many things there are to say about animals. Both the Latin writer and the Spanish humanist contributed to the encyclopedia on animals. The last words of the title of the translation relay that Pliny’s work was expanded
by Geronimo de Huerta,
who added material on previously unknown topics
. Here, the question arises: what information pertaining to animals, according to the translator, was unavailable in Pliny’s time, which the Spaniard, as a scholar of philosophy and natural history, thought should be included to bring the work’s zoological matter up to date? To answer this question, using comparative literature as a methodology,
I explain how Gerónimo de Huerta incorporated zoological findings from various sources into his notes. Thus, both the “Table” and the annotations to the translation of the
Natural History present, on the one hand, the fauna that inhabited the territories identified by Pliny (first century), and, on the other, reveal the fauna that inhabited the places known to the Spanish translator (sixteenth to seventeenth century).
Pliny the Elder, in Books VII to XI, offers a naturalistic zoological study based on the prevailing knowledge of the time, including references to both real and mythical creatures that populated the world and were the protagonists of European legend. For example, Book VII mentions and illustrates: tiny pygmies, whom cranes attack; the
blemmyae or headless men, whose eyes are on their shoulders; the
cynocephali, a race of men with dogs’ heads, who bark; the
sciapoda, humanoid in appearance, which lie face up to protect themselves in the shade cast by their feet; as well as men who cover themselves completely with their ears, those whose bodies are covered with hair and who dress in the down of leaves, who feed on air and the scent of flowers; and the
arimaspi, whose peculiar feature is the eye in the middle of their forehead.
Marvellous animalia also abound in Books VIII and X; among them are the “bueyes de pezuña compacta, con un solo cuerno” (
HN 1995: VIII: 76: 151), which in the “Table” are represented by the beautiful figure of the unicorn, which is highlighted in artistic representations from the fifteenth century onwards but whose origins go back to descriptions made in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. When Pliny the Elder writes in Book X about birds, he includes those he calls mythical, such as the Pegasus or winged horse; the Roc, similar to the eagle but of immense size and strength and that can carry an elephant on its own without help; the
tragopan (
tragopanade), so called because it has horns like a goat, and sirens, with a woman’s torso and a bird’s body. Against this backdrop of monstrous peoples and extraordinary races forming part of the universal fauna, the supplementary annotations of Gerónimo de Huerta centuries later described other geographical areas with a vast number of animals and beasts. In this category, Book VI, Chapter XXXIII of the
Natural History, which pertains to the “Division of the earth” and information on Africa, Asia, and Europe, is included. To the continental triad, Gerónimo de Huerta added America, the territory invaded by Europeans, but that also inspired admiration for its natural abundance and unknown animals.
2 Book VI, originally divided by Pliny into XXXIV chapters, begins with the one dedicated to the Euxine Point, the name which the Ionian Greeks gave the Black Sea, and continues with others that had to do with the different nations and peoples distributed throughout the world. For example, Chapter III is dedicated to Cappadocia; Chapter IV to the peoples of the Themyscyrene region; Chapter XIX to the peoples of India; Chapter XXVIII deals with the region of Arabia and the Nomads, Nabateans and Omans. Chapter XXXIII pertains to the “Division of the earth, computed by its measurements” and includes information on Africa, Asia and Europe. The 1624 edition – thanks to the pen of the translator and his annotations – includes the three continents known before the fifteenth century; the Natural History in Spanish considers one more, America. It is worth mentioning that, although Books VII to XII also contain notes attributed to Gerónimo de Huerta, these correspond to amplifications on the characteristics of each creature mentioned by Pliny. That is to say, the translator does not incorporate in the books, the central theme of which is animals, information about American beasts; Book VI is the one that develops his research on the subject, under the pretext of locating the animals in their respective territories.The notes that I examine below include the physical and behavioral characteristics of fauna from Peruvian and Southern America, as well as from Mexican or Northern America.
3 Spanish America in the seventeenth century was divided into two large peninsulas, the northern part, called by some Mexicana, and the southern part, Peruviana (HN 1624: 233). Because descriptions of various animals are more effective when the image included in the “Table” is added, I include some illustrations in this regard. Beyond the prominence of humanoid monsters and wonderful animals, which Pliny highlighted in his
Natural History, and that were taken as fact at the time, what interests me here are the innovative references to other creatures, equally wonderful but originating from other contexts. That is, the notes alluding to the animals of the American continent that Gerónimo de Huerta wrote to update the Latin encyclopedia. Based on Book VI of the seventeenth-century edition, I cite some of the wonders of the animal kingdom that historians contemporary to Gerónimo de Huerta tried to reconcile with their own reality and that were relevant sources for the Spanish translator. Through an independent study of the notes, I intend to prove that recording fauna within the framework of the naturalist tradition was still important in the translator’s time. The selection that follows also adds to the colonial bestiary, a connecting axis between the
terra incognita and the monstrous marvelous of the old continent. Although the translator’s notes never stray far from colonial relations of domination, Eurocentrism, and the subjugation of the so-called new continent, the inclusion of American animals in this encyclopedia endorses the continuity of European natural history in America and channels a connection between previously unknown lands and the
mirabilia4 As Jacques Le Goff explains, the term mirabilis is useful for understanding the supernatural in the medieval West, since from this word (which had a similar meaning to the current adjective marvelous) derives the plural mirabilia. Currently, the marvelous is considered a literary genre, but for “the cultured people of the Middle Ages and those who received their information from it and were formed by it, they saw in this category a universe” (Le Goff: 9). The worldview of the Middle Ages includes in the universe of mirabilia, as the historian has classified it, the wonders or admirable facts that erupt into the everyday and appear naturally and can be real or imaginary animals (Le Goff: 20). The latter found their antecedents and original models in Greco-Latin literature, specifically in Pliny’s compilation. The translation of the Natural History from Latin to Spanish gives rise to a work that perpetuates the monstrous and animal mirabilia of the original, with a notable contribution of cultural background and exposition in the annotations. of the old world.