Dragons have been a cornerstone of storytelling for centuries. Today, they are an essential piece of classic fantasy literature, playing the role of villain or misunderstood hero depending on the author’s preferred take. What’s more, dragons appear to have a wide global appeal, with a rich culture around them emerging in the Far East and in Europe. However, for medieval Europeans, the dragon was not a fantasy. These terrifying beasts represented something very real, as we learn speaking with Chantry Westwell, author of Dragons, Heroes, Myths & Magic.
Did people in the Middle Ages really believe that dragons were real, or had at least once existed?
Based on written sources, it seems people did believe that dragons were members of the animal kingdom. Medieval encyclopedists and natural scientists, basing their descriptions on classical writers such as Pliny, Solinus and Aristotle, included the dragon (‘draco’ in Latin, ‘drakon’ in Greek) in their taxonomies of the natural world. The 7th century encyclopedia by Isidore of Seville refers to the dragon as a very large snake. The dragon,
