The deaf asp: the serpent that stops its ears
From Psalm 57 to Isidore and the bestiaries: the asp that presses one ear to the ground and blocks the other with its tail, symbol of refusing the Word.
Among the serpents of the bestiaries, the asp holds a special place. It is remembered not so much for its venom, though that was greatly feared, as for an odd piece of behaviour: when the charmer tries to draw it out with his spells, it stops its ears so as not to hear them. The image, biblical in origin, became in the Middle Ages the symbol of those who stubbornly refuse to listen to the word of God, and it passed from the commentaries of the Fathers to the bestiaries, to sermons and to church sculpture.
A verse of the Psalms
Everything begins with Psalm 57 in the Vulgate numbering, where sinners are compared to a serpent: ‘sicut aspidis surdae et obturantis aures suas’, like the deaf asp that stops its ears and will not hear the voice of the charmers. Augustine, in his Expositions of the Psalms, applied the passage to those who make themselves deliberately deaf to warnings so as not to have to change their lives. The asp’s obstinacy thus became the figure of a sin of the spirit.
The practice of snake charming was well known in the ancient Mediterranean world, and the psalmist could count on an image familiar to his readers. In later tradition, however, the detail of how the animal managed to stop its ears called for an explanation, which the encyclopedists provided. The verse, moreover, was well known because it was recited in the monastic office.
One ear to the ground, the other under the tail
Isidore of Seville, in Book XII of the Etymologies, describes the gesture precisely. When the asp hears the charmer trying to make it leave its hole, it presses one ear against the ground and closes the other with the tip of its tail, so as not to hear the magic words. This version passed into the bestiaries, and the illuminators depicted it with evident relish: a coiled serpent, its head pressed to the ground and its tail raised to cover its ear.
In the bestiaries the interpretation becomes explicit. The asp stands for the people of this world who, unwilling to give up earthly pleasures, keep one ear turned to the earth, that is to material desires, and close the other with their tail, that is with sin. So they cannot hear the voice calling them to conversion. The moral had the merit of being easy to picture, and many preachers used it in their sermons.
Other asps, other meanings
The asp also appears in another biblical passage of great importance for iconography. Psalm 90 promises the righteous: ‘super aspidem et basiliscum ambulabis’, you shall tread upon the asp and the basilisk. From this came the image of the triumphant Christ trampling the beasts of evil, widespread in Carolingian art, in Romanesque sculpture and on Gothic portals. In these figures the asp is no longer the image of the deaf sinner, but of evil itself defeated by the Saviour.
In the ancient world the asp was also the serpent linked with the death of Cleopatra. Plutarch, in his Life of Antony, reports this version but honestly admits that no one knew for certain how the queen had died. It is a good example of how an animal’s fame could feed on different stories, historical and legendary, woven together.
The asp that stops its ears is one of the cases in which the bestiary does not start from a piece of natural history, but from a biblical metaphor, which the encyclopedists then tried to explain as though it were a fact. The reverse path, compared with the pelican or the beaver, confirms that for medieval people Scripture and nature were two books to be read together.