The Liber Monstrorum

Record summary

Liber Monstrorum de diversis generibus is an early medieval Latin collection describing monstrous peoples and creatures, probably assembled from biblical, classical and earlier Christian materials. It matters because it preserves a historical taxonomy of marvels at the boundary between ethnography, theology and natural history. The work’s authorship, date and transmission are debated, and its entries are not modern sighting reports. A researcher can compare its marine or liminal beings with later bestiaries to trace how literary motifs become candidates for retrospective cryptid identification.