Today's
Monster Monday is the bonnacon, a strange bull-like creature often found in medieval bestiaries. Unlike a normal bull, the bonnacon's horns are largely useless, curving inwards toward its own head. It defends itself instead by spraying burning poop at its attackers. As you might imagine, the bonnacon usually had the funniest picture in the bestiary.
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Kongelige Bibliotek, Gl. kgl. S. 1633 4º, Folio 10r, via Wikimedia
Those expressions are priceless.
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The earliest recorded reference to the bonnacon (also known as the bonasus) comes from Pliny the Elder's
Naturalis Historia:
There are reports of a wild animal in Paeonia called the bonasus, which has the mane of a horse, but in all other respects resembles a bull; its horns are curved back in such a manner as to be of no use for fighting, and it is said that because of this it saves itself by running away, meanwhile emitting a trail of dung that sometimes covers a distance of as much as three furlongs, contact with which scorches pursuers like a sort of fire.
Although such an animal clearly doesn't exist, that doesn't mean Pliny made it up. Pliny's work was an encyclopedic compilation of information on animals, plants, rocks, astronomy, medicine, and magic, begun in 77 AD and nearly finished by the time Pliny died in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. He claims to have consulted about 2,000 books, and lists over 400 sources for his information. The bonnacon may have originated in a work that no longer survives, or belong to an earlier oral tradition. It may have started life as a joke, a trick that Paeonians played on Romans in the same way that Australians warn tourists to watch out for
drop bears, or it could have originated in an observation of a wild
European bison with diarrhea, a tale which grew in the telling. The European bison's hairy, ridged back and its inward-curving horns do lend themselves well to the description of the bonnacon, with its curved horns and horse mane. It was not uncommon for garbled transmissions and exaggerations to lead to Roman authors recording the existence of fantastic beasts on the peripheries of Roman territory: Julius Caesar, in his account of the conquest of Gaul, describes knee-less elk that sleep upright leaning against a tree, and a deer with an single horn that sprouts into five points.
Medieval bestiaries were collections of animal illustrations combined with descriptions of the beasts and their behavior and lessons that Christians could draw from these animals. They derived much of their description from the
Physiologus, a similar work of late antiquity, but they incorporated elements of other works as well. The bonnacon made the transition from the
Naturalis Historia to the bestiaries, but the monks seem not to have made the attempt to bring a spiritual reading to the description of the beast and its flaming poop. Its popularity may have been grounded in scatological humor rather than theological study.
The Aberdeen Bestiary, created around 1200 AD, describes it thus:
In Asia an animal is found which men call bonnacon. It has the head of a bull, and thereafter its whole body is of the size of a bull's with the maned neck of a horse. Its horns are convoluted, curling back on themselves in such a way that if anyone comes up against it, he is not harmed. But the protection which its forehead denies this monster is furnished by its bowels. For when it turns to flee, it discharges fumes from the excrement of its belly over a distance of three acres, the heat of which sets fire to anything it touches. In this way, it drives off its pursuers with its harmful excrement.
The description is much the same as Pliny's, but its location has shifted from Paeonia (roughly modern day Macedonia) to the more mysterious and less known Asia. Illustrations of the bonnacon often feature armored hunters protecting themselves from its flaming poop with large shields, usually while looking suitably grossed-out.
Oddly, the bonnacon found its way into Jacobus de Voragine's
The Golden Legend, a 13th century collection of fantastic and inspiring tales about the lives of saints. In the story of Saint Martha, the saint tames a ferocious beast called the
tarasque, which is described as "a great dragon, half beast and half fish, greater than an ox, longer than an horse, having teeth sharp as a sword, and horned on either side, head like a lion, tail like a serpent, and defended him with two wings on either side, and could not be beaten with cast of stones ne with other armour, and was as strong as twelve lions or bears." We dungeon delvers are more familiar with the classic D&D tarrasque (with two 'r's), a nigh-unstoppable Godzilla-like monster that has served as the final boss of many a campaign. In
The Golden Legend, the tarasque is said to be the offspring of the biblical Leviathan and, oddly enough, the pooptastic bonnacon (here rendered 'bonacho').
My bonnacon is below. After the stat block, I will talk about my decision making process in statting the beast up.
The following text in
gold is available as Open Game Content under the
OGL. Open Game Content is ©2016 Jonah Bomgaars.
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