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Abstract: This dissertation seeks to understand the idea of a boundary between humans and nonhuman
creatures in the early modern era. The idea of a boundary between people and nonpeople,
while implicit among most sixteenth-century theologians, is still an important feature of
early modern history. However, the boundary, while rhetorically very important and static, did
not match with the reality of the boundary in theology and culture as fluid. Theologians argued at
length that humanity, being made in the “image of God,” retained a fundamental difference from
animals and other nonhuman creatures, in which that boundary could not be crossed. However,
they also allowed for animals to possess positive traits and even moral and legal culpability.
They also accepted creatures that challenged the boundary, whether monsters (including exotic
creatures and misbirths) or humans who were not thought to possess all of the constituent
characteristics of the “image of God,” such as those with mental or cognitive deficiencies. Thus,
they struggled to reconcile the experiential reality of a fluid boundary with the theological
conviction of an anthropocentric hierarchy of creation.
This dissertation will address the inherent tension between these two views and assess the
ways in which theological and cultural figures helped to resolve the tension. Using early modern
commentaries on Genesis, we will first examine the rhetorical insistence on a firm boundary
articulated by figures both mainstream and heterodox. Then, we will examine the popular
perception of a fluid boundary, in which nonhuman creatures could be addressed and understood
morally in bestiaries, saints’ lives, and trial records. Finally, we will examine how protoscientific
thinkers of the sixteenth century, like Conrad Gessner, Andreas Vesalius, Johann
Weyer, and Ambroise Paré, actively challenged existing authorities and helped to resolve the
tension to a state in which humans and nonhuman creatures were different, yet both existed
within the broader sphere of nature. By the end of the sixteenth century, violations of the
boundary between people and non-people come to be rejected more for their natural than
theological implications.