«Our Filthy Liues in Swines are Shewd»: Deformed Pigs, Religious Disquiet and Propaganda in Elizabethan England

This article takes into account some broadsheets published in London between 1562 and 1570, a span of time in which the birth of deformed pigs is read in the light of the conflicts that destabilised the auroral decade of Elizabeth I’s reign. In this period both Protestants and Catholics fostered a symbolic imagery, as a result of which animals (and humans) born with appalling congenital malformations were deciphered instrumentally as manifestations of God’s wrath against the religious and political enemy. In order to highlight the origin, functioning and chronology of this significant cultural phenomenon, the essay offers first a general overview of the allegorical use of monstrosity in early modern Europe, emphasising the central role played by the German printing houses in this process of symbolisation. Subsequently, the research moves from the continent to England to show this process in action in a specific socio-political context and within the boundaries of a well-defined animal species. The pig – per se perceived as a filthy, dirty and obscene beast – embodied further meanings when its anatomy exceeded the laws of nature, and could be interpreted as a mirror of moral and social non-conformity. According to the authors of the documents at the core of this essay, the ‘monstrous pig’ was first a general sign of sinful and unstable times, to become the unequivocal metaphor of treasonous conspiracies fomented against the Queen. No change in the natural order occurred by chance, and spiritual anxiety offered tools and opportunities for the most unscrupulous political interpretations of the “signs from heaven”.