Does this Medieval Spoon Depict a Dog-Headed Man?

The Cynocephalus Spoon

"They inhabit the mountains as far as the river Indus. Their complexion is swarthy. They are extremely just, like the rest of the Indians with whom they associate. They understand the Indian language but are unable to converse, only barking or making signs with their hands and fingers by way of reply."

Ctesias

Indica

I attended art school in Boston, Massachusetts at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (now rebranded the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University). I had thought myself clever and in my senior year of high school took AP Art History, thinking the credits would free up academics of my choosing when I got to school.

It was not to be. I was told that the transfer wouldn’t count and, if memory serves me, I had a requirement of 6 different art history courses throughout my time there. It turned out to be a happy mistake, because I was able to take a variety of courses outside of the standard western tradition of art history, and I enjoyed every one of them.

One of my favorite classes investigated the ways in which Medieval and Renaissance art visualized, and often demonized, those considered outside of the norm – often in the form of different monstrous people. One of my favorites was the dog-headed men known as cynocephali. A famous example is Saint Christopher, who in some traditions was depicted as a dog-headed warrior before his conversion.

St. Christopher with the head of a dog — Icon of Saint Christopher from the Byzantine and Christian Virtual Museum. Originally from Greece.

While in college, I had the great fortune of limitless access to the contents of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA. In my first two years there I also lived right next to the museum and so spent a lot of my time amongst the collections of work, especially on my lunch breaks between classes.

Within the collections was a small area of work dating from the medieval era. Tucked along the relics and icons was this small, decorative spoon. Upon inspection, it appears to show a man with the head of a dog. What an exciting discovery! My class even examined it at one point when we were at the Museum viewing a collection of Medieval manuscripts that had been pulled for us. It is very common to see cynocephali depicted in manuscripts, but I have not seen them much in artifacts.

Detail of spoon with geese and what appears to be a man with a canine head. Museum of Fine Arts

The dog-headed men were one of several types of monsters that were assumed to live outside the boarders of the known world (along with other examples such as cannibals, wild men, people with one foot, people with no head, etc). Mentioned by Ctesias, Marco Polo, Sir John Mandeville, and others who wrote about the wonders of the world, cynocephali were described in several different ways but most seem to agree they lacked the ability to speak and communicated by barking and we ferocious warriors.

It would seem then that this spoon does, in fact, show a cynocephalus. The timeline is right – Sir John Mandeville’s manuscript dates around 1400-50 and the spoon is dated to about 1430. And it appears to depict a dog headed man in some sort of a robe, a sack slung across its back.

However, the description on the Museum of Fine Art website makes no mention of the creatures. Instead, it is described as a fox wearing a monk’s habit and preaching peace to a flock of geese while its accomplice steals them away. This apparently is known commentary on the growing mistrust between the clergy and the lay people that was bubbling up. Certainly they would have plenty to mistrust, as the lay population by and large could not understand the latin speech and scripts presented by the clergy and had to depend on them for their religious fulfillment and salvation. This obviously made for an imbalance of power where the temptation to manipulate their followers would have been very enticing to the clergy.

Full length image of spoon. — Full length image of the spoon from the Museum of Fine Arts.

So, what’s the story here? Have I been wrong all these years in my impression of this beautiful object? When I first saw the spoon on display it did not have any of the description now found on their website, so I was left to my own assumptions. While it may depict the scenario described by the museum (and let’s be real, it does) I do still think it pays homage to these beasts. Especially when you consider the early representations of St. Christopher and the actual moral of the scene depicted on the spoon. St. Christopher in legend is an outsider and non-christian who is converted when he seeks as a warrior to serve the strongest master, having first chosen the devil. Paired with the images on the spoon, I can see some similar visual iconography between the “otherness” of a dog and its negative markers. To have the head of a dog is to be a beast, and to preach falsely while robbing your parishioners, as is implied in the spoon, is also beastly. They may not directly depict the same thing but both ascribe to the visual language of depicting monstrous people as being beastly in form as well, and in that we can be sure that this spoon depicts canine clergyman of the type Christopher would have been before his conversion.