Tarasque

The Tarasque is a river dragon of Provençal legend, a monstrous hybrid said to be the offspring of Leviathan, which Saint Martha tamed at Tarascon on the Rhône and which the town still parades in its festival.

The Story

After the death of Christ, the legend says, Martha of Bethany (sister of Mary and Lazarus) came to Provence to preach. Near the place then called Nerluc, on the Rhône between Arles and Avignon, a dragon lurked in the river and the woods. It overturned boats, killed travelers, and could not be defeated by the local soldiers.

Martha went out alone. She found the beast devouring a man, sprinkled it with holy water, and held up a cross. The dragon became as meek as a lamb. She tied it with her girdle and led it back to the people, who killed it with spears and stones. The town took the name Tarascon from the creature, and Martha stayed there for the rest of her life.

Appearance and Powers

In the Golden Legend version, the Tarasque is half beast and half fish, larger than an ox and longer than a horse, with teeth like swords and horns on either side. It came by sea from Galatia in Asia Minor and was the child of Leviathan and the onachus (the bonnacon of the bestiaries, a bull-like beast that defends itself with burning dung). Later descriptions and the festival effigy add a lion-like head, a shell like a turtle's covered in spikes, six short legs, and a scaly tail; these details are not all in the earliest texts.

Origins and Sources

The story appears in Latin lives of Saint Martha written after her supposed relics were found at Tarascon in 1187. The earliest, attributed to Pseudo-Marcella, dates to roughly 1187-1220. Vincent of Beauvais and Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend (about 1260) spread it across Europe. The legend served the pilgrimage church of Sainte-Marthe, where her relics are still kept.

Legacy

Tarascon has paraded a giant Tarasque effigy since at least the 15th century; King René of Anjou is traditionally credited with organizing the festival in 1474. The procession is part of the "Processional giants and dragons in Belgium and France" listed by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage. The anthropologist Louis Dumont wrote a classic study of it. Spain has its own tarasca carried in Corpus Christi processions. See Western dragons and dragon legends.

Related

• Leviathan: Leviathan is the great sea monster of the Hebrew Bible, a fire-breathing, scale-armored serpent of the deep that only God can tame, descended from the Canaanite sea serpent Lotan.
• Graoully: The Graoully is the dragon of Metz in Lorraine, said to have infested the city's Roman amphitheater until Saint Clement, the first bishop, bound it with his stole and drove it into the river.
• Drac of Beaucaire: The Drac of Beaucaire is a shape-shifting water dragon of Provençal legend that lived beneath the Rhône, lured people with floating treasures, and kidnapped a woman of Beaucaire to nurse its child.
• Gargouille: The Gargouille is the dragon of Rouen in Norman legend, subdued by the 7th-century bishop Saint Romain with the help of a condemned prisoner, whose pardon became the city's annual Privilege of Saint Romain.
• Dragon of Silene: The Dragon of Silene is the lake-dwelling, plague-breathing dragon killed by Saint George in medieval legend after he rescued a princess offered to it, the best-known version appearing in the Golden Legend around 1260.
• Western Dragons
• Dragon Legends

Sources and Further Reading

• Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton University Press, 1993), "Saint Martha"
• Louis Dumont, La Tarasque: essai de description d'un fait local d'un point de vue ethnographique (Gallimard, 1951)
• Jacques Le Goff, "Ecclesiastical Culture and Folklore in the Middle Ages: Saint Marcellus of Paris and the Dragon," in Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (University of Chicago Press, 1980)

Cite this entry: “Tarasque,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/tarasque.