Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Mankie. Listener Discretion advised. The year
Speaker 1: was fifteen eighty eight, and the soon to be parents
Speaker 1: were eagerly awaiting their child's birth with excitement and trepidation.
Speaker 1: In fifteen eighty eight, you couldn't blame any couple for
Speaker 1: feeling nervous about childbirth, but Petrus and Catherine, the parents,
Speaker 1: had bigger worries even than getting through the birth with
Speaker 1: mother and baby alive. Katherine was a perfectly ordinary woman,
Speaker 1: but the father was the French Court's most unusual looking member,
Speaker 1: and the question everyone, including the parents, wanted to know
Speaker 1: was what sort of child this baby would be. As
Speaker 1: soon as he or she was born, they would know
Speaker 1: if the wrath of God or the superstition of myth
Speaker 1: might be waiting for them. As her labor progressed, Katherine
Speaker 1: gasped with pain. She gritted her teeth, squeezed her eyes,
Speaker 1: and focused only on the immediate task ahead of her.
Speaker 1: As the contractions overtook her more and more heavily and frequently,
Speaker 1: she did what any mother of any child does. She pushed,
Speaker 1: and then the baby came crowning with hair at the
Speaker 1: top of her head, a new baby girl, but no
Speaker 1: one had been too terribly concerned about what the baby's
Speaker 1: sex would be. Catherine craned her neck trying to see
Speaker 1: the baby, exhausted, no doubt, but still trying to sense
Speaker 1: the feeling in the room. Even through the haze of
Speaker 1: pain and hormones. Katherine must have felt the energy in
Speaker 1: the room shift because the baby was born with hair
Speaker 1: not just on her head, but cascading from the entirety
Speaker 1: of her face and body. No, this isn't a scene
Speaker 1: from the new off brand Wicked spin off with a
Speaker 1: child magically born hairy instead of green. It was the
Speaker 1: reality of one of the most unusual families ever to
Speaker 1: be received in Royal court. The brand new baby girl
Speaker 1: was named Madeleine Gonsalvas, and within moments those in the
Speaker 1: room knew that she, like her father, was what was
Speaker 1: then called a her suit, a rare person who was
Speaker 1: almost entirely covered in hair. The girl's father, Petraus Gonsalvus,
Speaker 1: was one of the most famous hair suits of his day.
Speaker 1: His entire face was covered in long, silky hair, His
Speaker 1: forehead and cheeks were covered on his face. The only
Speaker 1: skin you could see was the pink of his lips.
Speaker 1: Today we have a scientific understanding of the genetic condition
Speaker 1: that causes excessive hair growth, called congenital hypertrichosis. But in
Speaker 1: the sixteenth century Petras was considered a quote wild man.
Speaker 1: But the strangest, most interesting thing about Petras wasn't his
Speaker 1: medical abnormality. It was that beneath it he had been
Speaker 1: raised up in the court of Henry the Second, to
Speaker 1: read Latin literature, to wear noble clothing, to have a
Speaker 1: noble bearing and manners, and to receive military training. You
Speaker 1: would have no doubt if you looked at his face
Speaker 1: at the time of his daughter's birth, that he was
Speaker 1: a quote wild man. Yes, But you would also not
Speaker 1: have any doubt if you looked at his clothing and
Speaker 1: manners and listen to his voice, that he was a nobleman.
Speaker 1: But how did the man covered in hair the wild
Speaker 1: men of Tenerife, the family legally considered somewhere between human
Speaker 1: and beast, and the only family depicted in a sixteenth
Speaker 1: century natural history of beasts, become a favorite of nobility.
Speaker 1: And how did they spend their lives in the French
Speaker 1: noble court that's the sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes fairytale like story
Speaker 1: of Petras Gonsalvus. I'm Danish schwartz and this is noble blood.
Speaker 1: Petrus Gonsalvus was born in fifteen thirty eight on Tenerife,
Speaker 1: the largest of the Spanish controlled Canary Islands, just off
Speaker 1: the northwest coast of Africa. That island is known as
Speaker 1: the Isle of the Blest. The weather is beautiful all
Speaker 1: year long and the ocean's sparkle. But Petras was not
Speaker 1: among the island's blest, at least not as a young boy.
Speaker 1: He was born with an unusual condition that meant he
Speaker 1: was entirely covered in hair. It was not an abnormality,
Speaker 1: he could hide inches of silky hair extended from every
Speaker 1: part of his face except for his mouth. From the
Speaker 1: time he was a child, Petras expected everyone he met
Speaker 1: to stop and stare, no doubt wondering is this a
Speaker 1: boy or some sort of animal. By the time Petris
Speaker 1: was born, the Canary Islands had been conquered by the
Speaker 1: Kingdom of Castile, now a part of Spain. The indigenous
Speaker 1: people of the island, called Guanches, were subject to a
Speaker 1: controversial enslavement. Controversial because many were Christians after all. Whether
Speaker 1: or not Petras, probably born with the name Pedro, was
Speaker 1: actually a Guanche himself is a matter of historical speculation.
Speaker 1: He may have been, or he may have been descended
Speaker 1: from port or Spanish colonists. Because of his strange appearance,
Speaker 1: many Europeans from whom we get our history assumed that
Speaker 1: he must have been a native. Some even speculated that
Speaker 1: he must have been a member of some other race
Speaker 1: of hairy people who lived somewhere on the island. They
Speaker 1: were wrong. We don't know how Petrus inherited his condition,
Speaker 1: and whether others in his family had it before him,
Speaker 1: but there are no known records of anyone else on
Speaker 1: the island with the look of this wild man. Little
Speaker 1: Petras stood alone. The way he stood out and was
Speaker 1: quite literally dehumanized put him at very high risk of
Speaker 1: winding up enslaved. But history has a funny way of
Speaker 1: doing the unexpected, and Petras happened to be born during
Speaker 1: a very particular period, during a very particular ular cultural trend.
Speaker 1: At this time, there was a courtly interest in human
Speaker 1: quote specimens and marvels. It was considered fashionable a mark
Speaker 1: of high social status to have dwarves at court, along
Speaker 1: with all manner of people with mental and or physical
Speaker 1: conditions that they at court found fascinating. There was at
Speaker 1: this time both a fear and fascination with a medieval
Speaker 1: mythical figure known as the so called wild Man of
Speaker 1: the woods, a man covered in hair like an unknowable
Speaker 1: mythological Sadar of the forest. Renaissance artists like Albrecht Durr
Speaker 1: were known to paint these wild men into German coats
Speaker 1: of arms. Medical science and popular belief offered many explanations
Speaker 1: for abnormal births, ranging from God's wrath to an errant
Speaker 1: mixture of the male and female quote seed that was
Speaker 1: believed to constitute human beings. One particularly popular theory at
Speaker 1: this time for both physicians and common folk alike, centered
Speaker 1: on the idea that a mother's imagination, her thoughts, beliefs,
Speaker 1: and fantasies during pregnancy could shape the body of her
Speaker 1: unborn child, often to disastrous effect. In his fifteen seventy
Speaker 1: three book on surgery, Ambrose Pere concluded that at least
Speaker 1: one pursuit child came to be because quote the mother
Speaker 1: had looked too intently at the figure of Saint John
Speaker 1: wearing a fur skin, an image that was tied at
Speaker 1: the bottom of her bed while she was conceiving the child.
Speaker 1: Of course, today we would consider these individuals neither monsters
Speaker 1: nor marvels, but merely humans with genetic differences. But for Petres,
Speaker 1: the courtly interest in quote human marvels saved him from
Speaker 1: a possible life of enslavement. He was a hersuit, which
Speaker 1: made him too unique, too unusual, too valuable to be
Speaker 1: a common slave. Of course, this would eventually lead to
Speaker 1: a different sort of loss of autonomy, but one I
Speaker 1: imagine was far far more comfortable physically, and so Petras
Speaker 1: found himself on a ship bound for the European mainland.
Speaker 1: He did not speak any language that the Venetian ambassador
Speaker 1: to Spain, whose our source here could understand. Petris was
Speaker 1: considered something between human and magnificent zoo specimen. Traveling alongside
Speaker 1: several parrots, Petras was brought first to Venice, then to France.
Speaker 1: He was presented as a diplomatic gift for the new King,
Speaker 1: Henry the Second, who became King of France on his
Speaker 1: twin twenty eighth birthday in fifteen forty seven. At this point,
Speaker 1: Petras was just ten years old. He must have been
Speaker 1: both intrigued and terrified looking around the French court. He
Speaker 1: had never before left the gentle sea breeze of his
Speaker 1: island back home. He didn't know what this foreign king
Speaker 1: intended to do with him. Indeed, the new king did
Speaker 1: not at first know himself. He had never seen someone
Speaker 1: like little Petras presented to him like a gift as
Speaker 1: valuable as foreign jewels. No one at court had ever
Speaker 1: seen anyone like Petris. Legend has it that court doctors
Speaker 1: inspected the little boy wondering if he would open his
Speaker 1: mouth and make the growling sounds of an animal. But
Speaker 1: he was only a little boy, and a little boy
Speaker 1: who did not speak the language of the people around him.
Speaker 1: Maybe King Henry was curious. Maybe he was running an
Speaker 1: experiment to see whether this little wild boy could grow
Speaker 1: up to be a nobleman. Maybe he saw something of
Speaker 1: himself in this little boy. After all, when Henry was
Speaker 1: around Petris's age, he had been held hostage in Spain
Speaker 1: in exchange for the release of his father. Maybe in
Speaker 1: this little wild boy Henry saw an image of himself
Speaker 1: caught between Spain and France. But for whatever reason, or
Speaker 1: maybe just because he thought he was interesting. Henry the
Speaker 1: Second made an incredible decision about the little hersuit boy's future.
Speaker 1: He decided to educate him. Pedro Gonzalez learned Latin and
Speaker 1: adopted the Latin name Petris Gonzalvez. He proved able to
Speaker 1: read Latin even better than most of the courtiers in
Speaker 1: Henry's court. Petris was given military training, He wore gold
Speaker 1: lined vestiments fit for a noble He sat for portraits
Speaker 1: for artists far and wide. It was never quite clear,
Speaker 1: or at least least it's not quite clear now legally speaking,
Speaker 1: whether he was even considered fully human. But he was
Speaker 1: certainly educated in the manners not just of a human,
Speaker 1: but of a nobleman. And so Petris Gonsalvis, the Canary
Speaker 1: Island boy covered in hair, grew up in the way
Speaker 1: of an educated nobleman in King Henry the Second's French court.
Speaker 1: In fifteen fifty nine, when Petris was twenty two, he
Speaker 1: was hairy as ever, but now fully outfitted as a nobleman,
Speaker 1: and the first serious risk to his position took place
Speaker 1: in the form of a calamity. King Henry the Second,
Speaker 1: who had ensured Petris's protection and education died he was
Speaker 1: mortally injured in a jousting tournament when he was just
Speaker 1: forty years old. Petris's future was thrown into doubt. Yes,
Speaker 1: King Henry had treated him as a nobleman rather than
Speaker 1: a wild man, whether due to human empathy or as
Speaker 1: a proto science experiment. But Henry's young son, Francis the Second,
Speaker 1: the new King, just fifteen, could easily make a different
Speaker 1: choice when it came to Petris's fate. Petris's life at court,
Speaker 1: his life itself, could be over with a single decree.
Speaker 1: But fortunately for Petris, King Henry's widow and the new
Speaker 1: King's mother, Catherine de Medici, decided that Petris's courtly life
Speaker 1: should be maintained. Catherine would be an incredibly stable patroness
Speaker 1: over the next thirty years. As King Francis died and
Speaker 1: gave way to his brother, King Charles the Ninth, who
Speaker 1: died and gave way to their brother, King Henry the Third,
Speaker 1: Catherine de Medici remained in power and Petris remained at court.
Speaker 1: In fifteen seventy three, when Petris was thirty six years old,
Speaker 1: Catherine de Medici made a decision. She determined that if
Speaker 1: Petras was to remain essentially a nobleman at court. He
Speaker 1: had to do what nobleman did, which was get married.
Speaker 1: Why did Catherine make that decision? Here we have a
Speaker 1: little bit more evidence. Catherine had a specific interest in
Speaker 1: the quote human marvels at court. She had already arranged
Speaker 1: for two dwarves to marry to see if they would
Speaker 1: create a new breed of humans. In other words, it
Speaker 1: was sport, not kindness. That said, given the alternatives available,
Speaker 1: living as a pseudo mascot figure at court for the
Speaker 1: amusement of the royal family wasn't the worst life available
Speaker 1: to someone who fit outside of the mainstream. It's also
Speaker 1: possible that Catherine had just taken a liking to Petras,
Speaker 1: and for whatever reason, she decided that she wanted his
Speaker 1: bride to be one with a typical amount of hair,
Speaker 1: although we can only speculate whether that was out of
Speaker 1: kindness or curiosity, or just the fact that her suits
Speaker 1: were incredibly rare. But Catherine's determination that he would have
Speaker 1: a typically haired bride created a new problem for Petras.
Speaker 1: The court wanted to find him a wife, but who
Speaker 1: would want to marry a man who was thought of
Speaker 1: as a beast? The answer was a young woman also
Speaker 1: named Catherine. A quick aside about vocabulary that I'm going
Speaker 1: to use in the story of Petrus Gonsalves, we wind
Speaker 1: up using words like her suit and glabrous glabrous meaning smooth,
Speaker 1: so Catherine would be Petris's glabrous bride. We can't know
Speaker 1: for certain what Catherine and Petris might have been thinking
Speaker 1: when they first met one another. Maybe Catherine saw some
Speaker 1: kindness in his eyes from the start, maybe she he
Speaker 1: was quietly afraid, maybe he was apologetic about his condition,
Speaker 1: or maybe he stood proud. What we do know is that,
Speaker 1: to the surprise of the court, the couple settled into
Speaker 1: a married life that was shockingly normal. The two seemed
Speaker 1: to genuinely love each other, and soon enough Catherine was pregnant.
Speaker 1: Of course, then there was no understanding of the science
Speaker 1: of genetics. Nobody in the fifteen hundreds was learning about
Speaker 1: Mendel and fruitflies in high school biology class because Mendel
Speaker 1: wouldn't be born for another few hundred years. So Petrus
Speaker 1: and Catherine didn't know what to expect from the union
Speaker 1: of a pursuit man and a glaborous woman. Would their
Speaker 1: baby follow its mother or its father would it somehow
Speaker 1: be a combination of both, or would it be born
Speaker 1: with some other unknowable supernatural condition entirely the moment of
Speaker 1: birth arrived, Catherine went into labor and Petras waited with
Speaker 1: bated breath to discover the fate of his child. And
Speaker 1: as they discovered, the baby was a girl, and like
Speaker 1: her father, she was covered in hair. We don't know
Speaker 1: a lot about Petras in his own words. Most of
Speaker 1: what we know comes from the paintings that curious artists
Speaker 1: made of him and his family, and from the records
Speaker 1: that curious medical scientists made of their visits to him.
Speaker 1: We can imagine him stoically accepting his fate, or we
Speaker 1: can imagine that he was quietly bitter about it. We
Speaker 1: can imagine that he was proud of his own successes
Speaker 1: and grateful for the life he got at French Court.
Speaker 1: Or we can imagine he was resentful of the impossibility
Speaker 1: that he would be treated like an ordinary person, resentful
Speaker 1: that his life was as a curiosity. We do have
Speaker 1: one s each attributed to him by Urus Hofnagel, who
Speaker 1: included the Gonsalvis family as the only humans in his
Speaker 1: four volume collection of natural history in this speech, Petrus
Speaker 1: calls himself quote the foster child of the King of France,
Speaker 1: Tenerif brought me forth hair all over my body, a
Speaker 1: marvelous work of nature. God was moved to give me
Speaker 1: a wife of excellent figure as well as our marriage.
Speaker 1: Bed's dearest token. It pleases nature to distinguish. Whereas some
Speaker 1: children repeat in figure and color their mother, others follow
Speaker 1: their father in their hairy vestimens. Indeed, Patris and Catherine
Speaker 1: had seven children together, three girls all her suit, and
Speaker 1: four boys, two each pursuit and glabrous. If the above
Speaker 1: speech really was delivered by Petras, it seems he saw
Speaker 1: his life and family as a blessing of God and nature.
Speaker 1: But of course, no matter how blessed, no situation lasts forever.
Speaker 1: The Gonsalvis family had long held a place at the
Speaker 1: French court, but it was always a place that was
Speaker 1: contingent on the good graces of those in power. And
Speaker 1: in fifteen eighty nine, Petris's longtime protector, Catherine de Medici, died.
Speaker 1: That same year, her son, King Henry the Third was assassinated.
Speaker 1: For the Gonsalvis family, that meant that they no longer
Speaker 1: had anyone really protecting their position in France, and so
Speaker 1: for the second time in his life, Petrous Gonsalves was
Speaker 1: forced to say goodbye to the place that had been
Speaker 1: his home. The family left France. They moved between courts
Speaker 1: in Austria and Rome, and ultimately wound up in Parma
Speaker 1: present day Italy. Initially under the protection of the Duke
Speaker 1: of Parma. They received another courtly type of life there.
Speaker 1: They were given a servant and a government grant. One
Speaker 1: of their hairsuit sons got married to a glaborous woman
Speaker 1: in a ceremony at the church. They all seemed to
Speaker 1: be having a relatively happy life. Much of what we
Speaker 1: know about the Gonsalvis family today comes from art history,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned. In fact, the family's congenital condition, hypertrichosis,
Speaker 1: is sometimes known as Ambras syndrome, after the many Gonsalvis
Speaker 1: family portraits held in Austria's Ambras Castle. A number of
Speaker 1: the portraits and paintings depict Petrus and his daughters, all
Speaker 1: with their faces covered in hair and all wearing their
Speaker 1: noble finery. The portraits of his daughter Antoinette arouse particular
Speaker 1: interest among art historians. Looking sweet, she was painted by
Speaker 1: Lavinia Fontana, of the first professional female painters of the Renaissance.
Speaker 1: In the paintings we still have today, Petris's wife, Catherine
Speaker 1: is sometimes depicted hair only on her head, her arms
Speaker 1: serenely around the shoulders of the family she seems to
Speaker 1: truly love. In sixteen seventeen, it's believed Petris attended his
Speaker 1: grandson's christening. He likely died the next year, aged eighty one.
Speaker 1: We know that at least one of his married children
Speaker 1: had pursuit children of their own, but after that we
Speaker 1: don't have further records. The family lived, died, and faded
Speaker 1: from history. Maybe the genetic odds meant that the condition disappeared.
Speaker 1: Maybe the family line at some point came to an end.
Speaker 1: In either case, the family's fate has dissolved away from
Speaker 1: the history books. They leave us a legacy of portraits
Speaker 1: and of an unlikely, even fairytale like story of rising
Speaker 1: through the noble ranks. But this is also a story
Speaker 1: of gaps and speculation. Petris Gonsalves was treated as an
Speaker 1: oddity and curiosity in his time, which made him famous.
Speaker 1: That is the only reason we still know of him today,
Speaker 1: and so it's unfortunate that so little of his story
Speaker 1: is left to us, because now trying to understand him
Speaker 1: and trying to write about him in a nuanced way,
Speaker 1: we're left with little more than the simple notion that
Speaker 1: he existed, That a quote wild man was brought to
Speaker 1: French court, and isn't that interesting. That's the story of
Speaker 1: Petras Gonsalves, the noble wild Man. But stick around after
Speaker 1: a brief sponsor break to hear more about the famous
Speaker 1: fairy tale that the Gunsalvist family may have inspired. If
Speaker 1: the story of Petris Gonsalvius, the quote beastlike man and
Speaker 1: his lovely wife Catherine reminded you of a fairy tale
Speaker 1: you've heard before, you wouldn't be the first. Many have
Speaker 1: suggested that the unlikely love between Petras and Catherine Gonsalves
Speaker 1: was the real life origin of Beauty and the Beast.
Speaker 1: That fairy tale was first written by French author Gabrielle
Speaker 1: Suzanne Barbeau de Villeneu and published in France in seventeen forty,
Speaker 1: a little over a century after Petrus's death. A real
Speaker 1: life origin for the famous fairy tale does seem plausible
Speaker 1: and even kind of romantic. It's the fun fact that
Speaker 1: people love to repeat, particularly on the internet. But did
Speaker 1: Villeneuve know about the Gonzalez family. We can't be sure,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately it's probably unlikely. There's no evidence for it,
Speaker 1: and in fact, her written version describes the beast as
Speaker 1: having scales and a trunk like an elephant, which doesn't
Speaker 1: align with the look of Petras. But if you are
Speaker 1: one of the many who wish the Gunsalvis has had
Speaker 1: inspired Beauty and the Beast, no need to give up.
Speaker 1: In the famous Jean Cocteaux movie adaptation from nineteen forty six,
Speaker 1: the beast looks strikingly similar to a famous full length
Speaker 1: portrait of Petris in Noble Robes. What else looks a
Speaker 1: lot like that portrait? The image of the Beast you
Speaker 1: probably have in your head from the nineteen ninety one
Speaker 1: Disney cartoon. So Petris Gonsalves may have not directly inspired
Speaker 1: the literary version of the story, but he and his
Speaker 1: wife Catherine, who built a loving family together despite the
Speaker 1: expectations of others, may live on in the fairytale memory
Speaker 1: of children everywhere, having inspired the beast's physical representation. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening. One quick note of housekeeping before we
Speaker 1: go if you're interested in reading and writing. Noble Blood
Speaker 1: staff writer Courtney Sender has a podcast, newsletter and writers
Speaker 1: group called The Craft Lab, which features weekly craft readings
Speaker 1: and discussions of the greats. Courtney has been a professor
Speaker 1: of creative writing for fifteen years, and now she's giving
Speaker 1: what you can't get in school, the inspiration, motivation, and
Speaker 1: passion you need to energize your writing and help bring
Speaker 1: your projects to life. So if that's something that sounds
Speaker 1: interesting to you, we're linking to her podcast in this
Speaker 1: episode description. Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted
Speaker 1: by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by
Speaker 1: Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Courtney Sender, Amy Hit, and Julia Melaney.
Speaker 1: The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with
Speaker 1: supervising producer rima il Kaali and executive producers Aaron Manke,
Speaker 1: Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.