June 3, 2025 • 26 mins
Petrus Gonsalvus was born with a rare genetic condition that meant he was entirely covered in hair. His life took him to French court, where he lived as an oddity, but also, as a nobleman, husband, and father. [NOTE: Listen to Courtney's podcast The Craft Lab on Apple or Substack!]
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Mankie. Listener Discretion advised. The year
was fifteen eighty eight, and the soon to be parents
were eagerly awaiting their child's birth with excitement and trepidation.
(00:21):
In fifteen eighty eight, you couldn't blame any couple for
feeling nervous about childbirth, but Petrus and Catherine, the parents,
had bigger worries even than getting through the birth with
mother and baby alive. Katherine was a perfectly ordinary woman,
but the father was the French Court's most unusual looking member,
(00:44):
and the question everyone, including the parents, wanted to know
was what sort of child this baby would be. As
soon as he or she was born, they would know
if the wrath of God or the superstition of myth
might be waiting for them. As her labor progressed, Katherine
(01:05):
gasped with pain. She gritted her teeth, squeezed her eyes,
and focused only on the immediate task ahead of her.
As the contractions overtook her more and more heavily and frequently,
she did what any mother of any child does. She pushed,
(01:25):
and then the baby came crowning with hair at the
top of her head, a new baby girl, but no
one had been too terribly concerned about what the baby's
sex would be. Catherine craned her neck trying to see
the baby, exhausted, no doubt, but still trying to sense
(01:47):
the feeling in the room. Even through the haze of
pain and hormones. Katherine must have felt the energy in
the room shift because the baby was born with hair
not just on her head, but cascading from the entirety
of her face and body. No, this isn't a scene
(02:10):
from the new off brand Wicked spin off with a
child magically born hairy instead of green. It was the
reality of one of the most unusual families ever to
be received in Royal court. The brand new baby girl
was named Madeleine Gonsalvas, and within moments those in the
(02:31):
room knew that she, like her father, was what was
then called a her suit, a rare person who was
almost entirely covered in hair. The girl's father, Petraus Gonsalvus,
was one of the most famous hair suits of his day.
His entire face was covered in long, silky hair, His
(02:53):
forehead and cheeks were covered on his face. The only
skin you could see was the pink of his lips.
Today we have a scientific understanding of the genetic condition
that causes excessive hair growth, called congenital hypertrichosis. But in
the sixteenth century Petras was considered a quote wild man.
(03:18):
But the strangest, most interesting thing about Petras wasn't his
medical abnormality. It was that beneath it he had been
raised up in the court of Henry the Second, to
read Latin literature, to wear noble clothing, to have a
noble bearing and manners, and to receive military training. You
(03:40):
would have no doubt if you looked at his face
at the time of his daughter's birth, that he was
a quote wild man. Yes, But you would also not
have any doubt if you looked at his clothing and
manners and listen to his voice, that he was a nobleman.
But how did the man covered in hair the wild
(04:01):
men of Tenerife, the family legally considered somewhere between human
and beast, and the only family depicted in a sixteenth
century natural history of beasts, become a favorite of nobility.
And how did they spend their lives in the French
noble court that's the sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes fairytale like story
(04:26):
of Petras Gonsalvus. I'm Danish schwartz and this is noble blood.
Petrus Gonsalvus was born in fifteen thirty eight on Tenerife,
the largest of the Spanish controlled Canary Islands, just off
the northwest coast of Africa. That island is known as
(04:48):
the Isle of the Blest. The weather is beautiful all
year long and the ocean's sparkle. But Petras was not
among the island's blest, at least not as a young boy.
He was born with an unusual condition that meant he
was entirely covered in hair. It was not an abnormality,
(05:10):
he could hide inches of silky hair extended from every
part of his face except for his mouth. From the
time he was a child, Petras expected everyone he met
to stop and stare, no doubt wondering is this a
boy or some sort of animal. By the time Petris
was born, the Canary Islands had been conquered by the
(05:32):
Kingdom of Castile, now a part of Spain. The indigenous
people of the island, called Guanches, were subject to a
controversial enslavement. Controversial because many were Christians after all. Whether
or not Petras, probably born with the name Pedro, was
actually a Guanche himself is a matter of historical speculation.
(05:56):
He may have been, or he may have been descended
from port or Spanish colonists. Because of his strange appearance,
many Europeans from whom we get our history assumed that
he must have been a native. Some even speculated that
he must have been a member of some other race
(06:16):
of hairy people who lived somewhere on the island. They
were wrong. We don't know how Petrus inherited his condition,
and whether others in his family had it before him,
but there are no known records of anyone else on
the island with the look of this wild man. Little
Petras stood alone. The way he stood out and was
(06:42):
quite literally dehumanized put him at very high risk of
winding up enslaved. But history has a funny way of
doing the unexpected, and Petras happened to be born during
a very particular period, during a very particular ular cultural trend.
(07:02):
At this time, there was a courtly interest in human
quote specimens and marvels. It was considered fashionable a mark
of high social status to have dwarves at court, along
with all manner of people with mental and or physical
conditions that they at court found fascinating. There was at
(07:25):
this time both a fear and fascination with a medieval
mythical figure known as the so called wild Man of
the woods, a man covered in hair like an unknowable
mythological Sadar of the forest. Renaissance artists like Albrecht Durr
were known to paint these wild men into German coats
(07:47):
of arms. Medical science and popular belief offered many explanations
for abnormal births, ranging from God's wrath to an errant
mixture of the male and female quote seed that was
believed to constitute human beings. One particularly popular theory at
(08:09):
this time for both physicians and common folk alike, centered
on the idea that a mother's imagination, her thoughts, beliefs,
and fantasies during pregnancy could shape the body of her
unborn child, often to disastrous effect. In his fifteen seventy
three book on surgery, Ambrose Pere concluded that at least
(08:34):
one pursuit child came to be because quote the mother
had looked too intently at the figure of Saint John
wearing a fur skin, an image that was tied at
the bottom of her bed while she was conceiving the child.
Of course, today we would consider these individuals neither monsters
nor marvels, but merely humans with genetic differences. But for Petres,
(09:00):
the courtly interest in quote human marvels saved him from
a possible life of enslavement. He was a hersuit, which
made him too unique, too unusual, too valuable to be
a common slave. Of course, this would eventually lead to
a different sort of loss of autonomy, but one I
(09:21):
imagine was far far more comfortable physically, and so Petras
found himself on a ship bound for the European mainland.
He did not speak any language that the Venetian ambassador
to Spain, whose our source here could understand. Petris was
considered something between human and magnificent zoo specimen. Traveling alongside
(09:47):
several parrots, Petras was brought first to Venice, then to France.
He was presented as a diplomatic gift for the new King,
Henry the Second, who became King of France on his
twin twenty eighth birthday in fifteen forty seven. At this point,
Petras was just ten years old. He must have been
(10:07):
both intrigued and terrified looking around the French court. He
had never before left the gentle sea breeze of his
island back home. He didn't know what this foreign king
intended to do with him. Indeed, the new king did
not at first know himself. He had never seen someone
like little Petras presented to him like a gift as
(10:30):
valuable as foreign jewels. No one at court had ever
seen anyone like Petris. Legend has it that court doctors
inspected the little boy wondering if he would open his
mouth and make the growling sounds of an animal. But
he was only a little boy, and a little boy
who did not speak the language of the people around him.
(10:51):
Maybe King Henry was curious. Maybe he was running an
experiment to see whether this little wild boy could grow
up to be a nobleman. Maybe he saw something of
himself in this little boy. After all, when Henry was
around Petris's age, he had been held hostage in Spain
in exchange for the release of his father. Maybe in
(11:14):
this little wild boy Henry saw an image of himself
caught between Spain and France. But for whatever reason, or
maybe just because he thought he was interesting. Henry the
Second made an incredible decision about the little hersuit boy's future.
He decided to educate him. Pedro Gonzalez learned Latin and
(11:36):
adopted the Latin name Petris Gonzalvez. He proved able to
read Latin even better than most of the courtiers in
Henry's court. Petris was given military training, He wore gold
lined vestiments fit for a noble He sat for portraits
for artists far and wide. It was never quite clear,
(11:59):
or at least least it's not quite clear now legally speaking,
whether he was even considered fully human. But he was
certainly educated in the manners not just of a human,
but of a nobleman. And so Petris Gonsalvis, the Canary
Island boy covered in hair, grew up in the way
of an educated nobleman in King Henry the Second's French court.
(12:25):
In fifteen fifty nine, when Petris was twenty two, he
was hairy as ever, but now fully outfitted as a nobleman,
and the first serious risk to his position took place
in the form of a calamity. King Henry the Second,
who had ensured Petris's protection and education died he was
(12:46):
mortally injured in a jousting tournament when he was just
forty years old. Petris's future was thrown into doubt. Yes,
King Henry had treated him as a nobleman rather than
a wild man, whether due to human empathy or as
a proto science experiment. But Henry's young son, Francis the Second,
(13:08):
the new King, just fifteen, could easily make a different
choice when it came to Petris's fate. Petris's life at court,
his life itself, could be over with a single decree.
But fortunately for Petris, King Henry's widow and the new
King's mother, Catherine de Medici, decided that Petris's courtly life
(13:31):
should be maintained. Catherine would be an incredibly stable patroness
over the next thirty years. As King Francis died and
gave way to his brother, King Charles the Ninth, who
died and gave way to their brother, King Henry the Third,
Catherine de Medici remained in power and Petris remained at court.
(13:54):
In fifteen seventy three, when Petris was thirty six years old,
Catherine de Medici made a decision. She determined that if
Petras was to remain essentially a nobleman at court. He
had to do what nobleman did, which was get married.
Why did Catherine make that decision? Here we have a
little bit more evidence. Catherine had a specific interest in
(14:18):
the quote human marvels at court. She had already arranged
for two dwarves to marry to see if they would
create a new breed of humans. In other words, it
was sport, not kindness. That said, given the alternatives available,
living as a pseudo mascot figure at court for the
(14:39):
amusement of the royal family wasn't the worst life available
to someone who fit outside of the mainstream. It's also
possible that Catherine had just taken a liking to Petras,
and for whatever reason, she decided that she wanted his
bride to be one with a typical amount of hair,
(15:00):
although we can only speculate whether that was out of
kindness or curiosity, or just the fact that her suits
were incredibly rare. But Catherine's determination that he would have
a typically haired bride created a new problem for Petras.
The court wanted to find him a wife, but who
(15:21):
would want to marry a man who was thought of
as a beast? The answer was a young woman also
named Catherine. A quick aside about vocabulary that I'm going
to use in the story of Petrus Gonsalves, we wind
up using words like her suit and glabrous glabrous meaning smooth,
(15:44):
so Catherine would be Petris's glabrous bride. We can't know
for certain what Catherine and Petris might have been thinking
when they first met one another. Maybe Catherine saw some
kindness in his eyes from the start, maybe she he
was quietly afraid, maybe he was apologetic about his condition,
(16:04):
or maybe he stood proud. What we do know is that,
to the surprise of the court, the couple settled into
a married life that was shockingly normal. The two seemed
to genuinely love each other, and soon enough Catherine was pregnant.
Of course, then there was no understanding of the science
(16:27):
of genetics. Nobody in the fifteen hundreds was learning about
Mendel and fruitflies in high school biology class because Mendel
wouldn't be born for another few hundred years. So Petrus
and Catherine didn't know what to expect from the union
of a pursuit man and a glaborous woman. Would their
(16:48):
baby follow its mother or its father would it somehow
be a combination of both, or would it be born
with some other unknowable supernatural condition entirely the moment of
birth arrived, Catherine went into labor and Petras waited with
bated breath to discover the fate of his child. And
(17:10):
as they discovered, the baby was a girl, and like
her father, she was covered in hair. We don't know
a lot about Petras in his own words. Most of
what we know comes from the paintings that curious artists
made of him and his family, and from the records
that curious medical scientists made of their visits to him.
(17:33):
We can imagine him stoically accepting his fate, or we
can imagine that he was quietly bitter about it. We
can imagine that he was proud of his own successes
and grateful for the life he got at French Court.
Or we can imagine he was resentful of the impossibility
that he would be treated like an ordinary person, resentful
(17:55):
that his life was as a curiosity. We do have
one s each attributed to him by Urus Hofnagel, who
included the Gonsalvis family as the only humans in his
four volume collection of natural history in this speech, Petrus
calls himself quote the foster child of the King of France,
(18:17):
Tenerif brought me forth hair all over my body, a
marvelous work of nature. God was moved to give me
a wife of excellent figure as well as our marriage.
Bed's dearest token. It pleases nature to distinguish. Whereas some
children repeat in figure and color their mother, others follow
(18:37):
their father in their hairy vestimens. Indeed, Patris and Catherine
had seven children together, three girls all her suit, and
four boys, two each pursuit and glabrous. If the above
speech really was delivered by Petras, it seems he saw
his life and family as a blessing of God and nature.
(19:01):
But of course, no matter how blessed, no situation lasts forever.
The Gonsalvis family had long held a place at the
French court, but it was always a place that was
contingent on the good graces of those in power. And
in fifteen eighty nine, Petris's longtime protector, Catherine de Medici, died.
(19:27):
That same year, her son, King Henry the Third was assassinated.
For the Gonsalvis family, that meant that they no longer
had anyone really protecting their position in France, and so
for the second time in his life, Petrous Gonsalves was
forced to say goodbye to the place that had been
(19:47):
his home. The family left France. They moved between courts
in Austria and Rome, and ultimately wound up in Parma
present day Italy. Initially under the protection of the Duke
of Parma. They received another courtly type of life there.
They were given a servant and a government grant. One
(20:08):
of their hairsuit sons got married to a glaborous woman
in a ceremony at the church. They all seemed to
be having a relatively happy life. Much of what we
know about the Gonsalvis family today comes from art history,
as I mentioned. In fact, the family's congenital condition, hypertrichosis,
(20:29):
is sometimes known as Ambras syndrome, after the many Gonsalvis
family portraits held in Austria's Ambras Castle. A number of
the portraits and paintings depict Petrus and his daughters, all
with their faces covered in hair and all wearing their
noble finery. The portraits of his daughter Antoinette arouse particular
(20:53):
interest among art historians. Looking sweet, she was painted by
Lavinia Fontana, of the first professional female painters of the Renaissance.
In the paintings we still have today, Petris's wife, Catherine
is sometimes depicted hair only on her head, her arms
serenely around the shoulders of the family she seems to
(21:16):
truly love. In sixteen seventeen, it's believed Petris attended his
grandson's christening. He likely died the next year, aged eighty one.
We know that at least one of his married children
had pursuit children of their own, but after that we
don't have further records. The family lived, died, and faded
(21:41):
from history. Maybe the genetic odds meant that the condition disappeared.
Maybe the family line at some point came to an end.
In either case, the family's fate has dissolved away from
the history books. They leave us a legacy of portraits
and of an unlikely, even fairytale like story of rising
(22:03):
through the noble ranks. But this is also a story
of gaps and speculation. Petris Gonsalves was treated as an
oddity and curiosity in his time, which made him famous.
That is the only reason we still know of him today,
and so it's unfortunate that so little of his story
(22:23):
is left to us, because now trying to understand him
and trying to write about him in a nuanced way,
we're left with little more than the simple notion that
he existed, That a quote wild man was brought to
French court, and isn't that interesting. That's the story of
(22:44):
Petras Gonsalves, the noble wild Man. But stick around after
a brief sponsor break to hear more about the famous
fairy tale that the Gunsalvist family may have inspired. If
the story of Petris Gonsalvius, the quote beastlike man and
(23:08):
his lovely wife Catherine reminded you of a fairy tale
you've heard before, you wouldn't be the first. Many have
suggested that the unlikely love between Petras and Catherine Gonsalves
was the real life origin of Beauty and the Beast.
That fairy tale was first written by French author Gabrielle
(23:28):
Suzanne Barbeau de Villeneu and published in France in seventeen forty,
a little over a century after Petrus's death. A real
life origin for the famous fairy tale does seem plausible
and even kind of romantic. It's the fun fact that
people love to repeat, particularly on the internet. But did
(23:50):
Villeneuve know about the Gonzalez family. We can't be sure,
but unfortunately it's probably unlikely. There's no evidence for it,
and in fact, her written version describes the beast as
having scales and a trunk like an elephant, which doesn't
(24:11):
align with the look of Petras. But if you are
one of the many who wish the Gunsalvis has had
inspired Beauty and the Beast, no need to give up.
In the famous Jean Cocteaux movie adaptation from nineteen forty six,
the beast looks strikingly similar to a famous full length
portrait of Petris in Noble Robes. What else looks a
(24:34):
lot like that portrait? The image of the Beast you
probably have in your head from the nineteen ninety one
Disney cartoon. So Petris Gonsalves may have not directly inspired
the literary version of the story, but he and his
wife Catherine, who built a loving family together despite the
(24:55):
expectations of others, may live on in the fairytale memory
of children everywhere, having inspired the beast's physical representation. Thank
you for listening. One quick note of housekeeping before we
go if you're interested in reading and writing. Noble Blood
staff writer Courtney Sender has a podcast, newsletter and writers
(25:18):
group called The Craft Lab, which features weekly craft readings
and discussions of the greats. Courtney has been a professor
of creative writing for fifteen years, and now she's giving
what you can't get in school, the inspiration, motivation, and
passion you need to energize your writing and help bring
your projects to life. So if that's something that sounds
(25:40):
interesting to you, we're linking to her podcast in this
episode description. Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and
Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted
by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by
(26:04):
Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Courtney Sender, Amy Hit, and Julia Melaney.
The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with
supervising producer rima il Kaali and executive producers Aaron Manke,
Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(26:28):
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Mankie. Listener Discretion advised. The year
was fifteen eighty eight, and the soon to be parents
were eagerly awaiting their child's birth with excitement and trepidation.
(00:21):
In fifteen eighty eight, you couldn't blame any couple for
feeling nervous about childbirth, but Petrus and Catherine, the parents,
had bigger worries even than getting through the birth with
mother and baby alive. Katherine was a perfectly ordinary woman,
but the father was the French Court's most unusual looking member,
(00:44):
and the question everyone, including the parents, wanted to know
was what sort of child this baby would be. As
soon as he or she was born, they would know
if the wrath of God or the superstition of myth
might be waiting for them. As her labor progressed, Katherine
(01:05):
gasped with pain. She gritted her teeth, squeezed her eyes,
and focused only on the immediate task ahead of her.
As the contractions overtook her more and more heavily and frequently,
she did what any mother of any child does. She pushed,
(01:25):
and then the baby came crowning with hair at the
top of her head, a new baby girl, but no
one had been too terribly concerned about what the baby's
sex would be. Catherine craned her neck trying to see
the baby, exhausted, no doubt, but still trying to sense
(01:47):
the feeling in the room. Even through the haze of
pain and hormones. Katherine must have felt the energy in
the room shift because the baby was born with hair
not just on her head, but cascading from the entirety
of her face and body. No, this isn't a scene
(02:10):
from the new off brand Wicked spin off with a
child magically born hairy instead of green. It was the
reality of one of the most unusual families ever to
be received in Royal court. The brand new baby girl
was named Madeleine Gonsalvas, and within moments those in the
(02:31):
room knew that she, like her father, was what was
then called a her suit, a rare person who was
almost entirely covered in hair. The girl's father, Petraus Gonsalvus,
was one of the most famous hair suits of his day.
His entire face was covered in long, silky hair, His
(02:53):
forehead and cheeks were covered on his face. The only
skin you could see was the pink of his lips.
Today we have a scientific understanding of the genetic condition
that causes excessive hair growth, called congenital hypertrichosis. But in
the sixteenth century Petras was considered a quote wild man.
(03:18):
But the strangest, most interesting thing about Petras wasn't his
medical abnormality. It was that beneath it he had been
raised up in the court of Henry the Second, to
read Latin literature, to wear noble clothing, to have a
noble bearing and manners, and to receive military training. You
(03:40):
would have no doubt if you looked at his face
at the time of his daughter's birth, that he was
a quote wild man. Yes, But you would also not
have any doubt if you looked at his clothing and
manners and listen to his voice, that he was a nobleman.
But how did the man covered in hair the wild
(04:01):
men of Tenerife, the family legally considered somewhere between human
and beast, and the only family depicted in a sixteenth
century natural history of beasts, become a favorite of nobility.
And how did they spend their lives in the French
noble court that's the sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes fairytale like story
(04:26):
of Petras Gonsalvus. I'm Danish schwartz and this is noble blood.
Petrus Gonsalvus was born in fifteen thirty eight on Tenerife,
the largest of the Spanish controlled Canary Islands, just off
the northwest coast of Africa. That island is known as
(04:48):
the Isle of the Blest. The weather is beautiful all
year long and the ocean's sparkle. But Petras was not
among the island's blest, at least not as a young boy.
He was born with an unusual condition that meant he
was entirely covered in hair. It was not an abnormality,
(05:10):
he could hide inches of silky hair extended from every
part of his face except for his mouth. From the
time he was a child, Petras expected everyone he met
to stop and stare, no doubt wondering is this a
boy or some sort of animal. By the time Petris
was born, the Canary Islands had been conquered by the
(05:32):
Kingdom of Castile, now a part of Spain. The indigenous
people of the island, called Guanches, were subject to a
controversial enslavement. Controversial because many were Christians after all. Whether
or not Petras, probably born with the name Pedro, was
actually a Guanche himself is a matter of historical speculation.
(05:56):
He may have been, or he may have been descended
from port or Spanish colonists. Because of his strange appearance,
many Europeans from whom we get our history assumed that
he must have been a native. Some even speculated that
he must have been a member of some other race
(06:16):
of hairy people who lived somewhere on the island. They
were wrong. We don't know how Petrus inherited his condition,
and whether others in his family had it before him,
but there are no known records of anyone else on
the island with the look of this wild man. Little
Petras stood alone. The way he stood out and was
(06:42):
quite literally dehumanized put him at very high risk of
winding up enslaved. But history has a funny way of
doing the unexpected, and Petras happened to be born during
a very particular period, during a very particular ular cultural trend.
(07:02):
At this time, there was a courtly interest in human
quote specimens and marvels. It was considered fashionable a mark
of high social status to have dwarves at court, along
with all manner of people with mental and or physical
conditions that they at court found fascinating. There was at
(07:25):
this time both a fear and fascination with a medieval
mythical figure known as the so called wild Man of
the woods, a man covered in hair like an unknowable
mythological Sadar of the forest. Renaissance artists like Albrecht Durr
were known to paint these wild men into German coats
(07:47):
of arms. Medical science and popular belief offered many explanations
for abnormal births, ranging from God's wrath to an errant
mixture of the male and female quote seed that was
believed to constitute human beings. One particularly popular theory at
(08:09):
this time for both physicians and common folk alike, centered
on the idea that a mother's imagination, her thoughts, beliefs,
and fantasies during pregnancy could shape the body of her
unborn child, often to disastrous effect. In his fifteen seventy
three book on surgery, Ambrose Pere concluded that at least
(08:34):
one pursuit child came to be because quote the mother
had looked too intently at the figure of Saint John
wearing a fur skin, an image that was tied at
the bottom of her bed while she was conceiving the child.
Of course, today we would consider these individuals neither monsters
nor marvels, but merely humans with genetic differences. But for Petres,
(09:00):
the courtly interest in quote human marvels saved him from
a possible life of enslavement. He was a hersuit, which
made him too unique, too unusual, too valuable to be
a common slave. Of course, this would eventually lead to
a different sort of loss of autonomy, but one I
(09:21):
imagine was far far more comfortable physically, and so Petras
found himself on a ship bound for the European mainland.
He did not speak any language that the Venetian ambassador
to Spain, whose our source here could understand. Petris was
considered something between human and magnificent zoo specimen. Traveling alongside
(09:47):
several parrots, Petras was brought first to Venice, then to France.
He was presented as a diplomatic gift for the new King,
Henry the Second, who became King of France on his
twin twenty eighth birthday in fifteen forty seven. At this point,
Petras was just ten years old. He must have been
(10:07):
both intrigued and terrified looking around the French court. He
had never before left the gentle sea breeze of his
island back home. He didn't know what this foreign king
intended to do with him. Indeed, the new king did
not at first know himself. He had never seen someone
like little Petras presented to him like a gift as
(10:30):
valuable as foreign jewels. No one at court had ever
seen anyone like Petris. Legend has it that court doctors
inspected the little boy wondering if he would open his
mouth and make the growling sounds of an animal. But
he was only a little boy, and a little boy
who did not speak the language of the people around him.
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Maybe King Henry was curious. Maybe he was running an
experiment to see whether this little wild boy could grow
up to be a nobleman. Maybe he saw something of
himself in this little boy. After all, when Henry was
around Petris's age, he had been held hostage in Spain
in exchange for the release of his father. Maybe in
(11:14):
this little wild boy Henry saw an image of himself
caught between Spain and France. But for whatever reason, or
maybe just because he thought he was interesting. Henry the
Second made an incredible decision about the little hersuit boy's future.
He decided to educate him. Pedro Gonzalez learned Latin and
(11:36):
adopted the Latin name Petris Gonzalvez. He proved able to
read Latin even better than most of the courtiers in
Henry's court. Petris was given military training, He wore gold
lined vestiments fit for a noble He sat for portraits
for artists far and wide. It was never quite clear,
(11:59):
or at least least it's not quite clear now legally speaking,
whether he was even considered fully human. But he was
certainly educated in the manners not just of a human,
but of a nobleman. And so Petris Gonsalvis, the Canary
Island boy covered in hair, grew up in the way
of an educated nobleman in King Henry the Second's French court.
(12:25):
In fifteen fifty nine, when Petris was twenty two, he
was hairy as ever, but now fully outfitted as a nobleman,
and the first serious risk to his position took place
in the form of a calamity. King Henry the Second,
who had ensured Petris's protection and education died he was
(12:46):
mortally injured in a jousting tournament when he was just
forty years old. Petris's future was thrown into doubt. Yes,
King Henry had treated him as a nobleman rather than
a wild man, whether due to human empathy or as
a proto science experiment. But Henry's young son, Francis the Second,
(13:08):
the new King, just fifteen, could easily make a different
choice when it came to Petris's fate. Petris's life at court,
his life itself, could be over with a single decree.
But fortunately for Petris, King Henry's widow and the new
King's mother, Catherine de Medici, decided that Petris's courtly life
(13:31):
should be maintained. Catherine would be an incredibly stable patroness
over the next thirty years. As King Francis died and
gave way to his brother, King Charles the Ninth, who
died and gave way to their brother, King Henry the Third,
Catherine de Medici remained in power and Petris remained at court.
(13:54):
In fifteen seventy three, when Petris was thirty six years old,
Catherine de Medici made a decision. She determined that if
Petras was to remain essentially a nobleman at court. He
had to do what nobleman did, which was get married.
Why did Catherine make that decision? Here we have a
little bit more evidence. Catherine had a specific interest in
(14:18):
the quote human marvels at court. She had already arranged
for two dwarves to marry to see if they would
create a new breed of humans. In other words, it
was sport, not kindness. That said, given the alternatives available,
living as a pseudo mascot figure at court for the
(14:39):
amusement of the royal family wasn't the worst life available
to someone who fit outside of the mainstream. It's also
possible that Catherine had just taken a liking to Petras,
and for whatever reason, she decided that she wanted his
bride to be one with a typical amount of hair,
(15:00):
although we can only speculate whether that was out of
kindness or curiosity, or just the fact that her suits
were incredibly rare. But Catherine's determination that he would have
a typically haired bride created a new problem for Petras.
The court wanted to find him a wife, but who
(15:21):
would want to marry a man who was thought of
as a beast? The answer was a young woman also
named Catherine. A quick aside about vocabulary that I'm going
to use in the story of Petrus Gonsalves, we wind
up using words like her suit and glabrous glabrous meaning smooth,
(15:44):
so Catherine would be Petris's glabrous bride. We can't know
for certain what Catherine and Petris might have been thinking
when they first met one another. Maybe Catherine saw some
kindness in his eyes from the start, maybe she he
was quietly afraid, maybe he was apologetic about his condition,
(16:04):
or maybe he stood proud. What we do know is that,
to the surprise of the court, the couple settled into
a married life that was shockingly normal. The two seemed
to genuinely love each other, and soon enough Catherine was pregnant.
Of course, then there was no understanding of the science
(16:27):
of genetics. Nobody in the fifteen hundreds was learning about
Mendel and fruitflies in high school biology class because Mendel
wouldn't be born for another few hundred years. So Petrus
and Catherine didn't know what to expect from the union
of a pursuit man and a glaborous woman. Would their
(16:48):
baby follow its mother or its father would it somehow
be a combination of both, or would it be born
with some other unknowable supernatural condition entirely the moment of
birth arrived, Catherine went into labor and Petras waited with
bated breath to discover the fate of his child. And
(17:10):
as they discovered, the baby was a girl, and like
her father, she was covered in hair. We don't know
a lot about Petras in his own words. Most of
what we know comes from the paintings that curious artists
made of him and his family, and from the records
that curious medical scientists made of their visits to him.
(17:33):
We can imagine him stoically accepting his fate, or we
can imagine that he was quietly bitter about it. We
can imagine that he was proud of his own successes
and grateful for the life he got at French Court.
Or we can imagine he was resentful of the impossibility
that he would be treated like an ordinary person, resentful
(17:55):
that his life was as a curiosity. We do have
one s each attributed to him by Urus Hofnagel, who
included the Gonsalvis family as the only humans in his
four volume collection of natural history in this speech, Petrus
calls himself quote the foster child of the King of France,
(18:17):
Tenerif brought me forth hair all over my body, a
marvelous work of nature. God was moved to give me
a wife of excellent figure as well as our marriage.
Bed's dearest token. It pleases nature to distinguish. Whereas some
children repeat in figure and color their mother, others follow
(18:37):
their father in their hairy vestimens. Indeed, Patris and Catherine
had seven children together, three girls all her suit, and
four boys, two each pursuit and glabrous. If the above
speech really was delivered by Petras, it seems he saw
his life and family as a blessing of God and nature.
(19:01):
But of course, no matter how blessed, no situation lasts forever.
The Gonsalvis family had long held a place at the
French court, but it was always a place that was
contingent on the good graces of those in power. And
in fifteen eighty nine, Petris's longtime protector, Catherine de Medici, died.
(19:27):
That same year, her son, King Henry the Third was assassinated.
For the Gonsalvis family, that meant that they no longer
had anyone really protecting their position in France, and so
for the second time in his life, Petrous Gonsalves was
forced to say goodbye to the place that had been
(19:47):
his home. The family left France. They moved between courts
in Austria and Rome, and ultimately wound up in Parma
present day Italy. Initially under the protection of the Duke
of Parma. They received another courtly type of life there.
They were given a servant and a government grant. One
(20:08):
of their hairsuit sons got married to a glaborous woman
in a ceremony at the church. They all seemed to
be having a relatively happy life. Much of what we
know about the Gonsalvis family today comes from art history,
as I mentioned. In fact, the family's congenital condition, hypertrichosis,
(20:29):
is sometimes known as Ambras syndrome, after the many Gonsalvis
family portraits held in Austria's Ambras Castle. A number of
the portraits and paintings depict Petrus and his daughters, all
with their faces covered in hair and all wearing their
noble finery. The portraits of his daughter Antoinette arouse particular
(20:53):
interest among art historians. Looking sweet, she was painted by
Lavinia Fontana, of the first professional female painters of the Renaissance.
In the paintings we still have today, Petris's wife, Catherine
is sometimes depicted hair only on her head, her arms
serenely around the shoulders of the family she seems to
(21:16):
truly love. In sixteen seventeen, it's believed Petris attended his
grandson's christening. He likely died the next year, aged eighty one.
We know that at least one of his married children
had pursuit children of their own, but after that we
don't have further records. The family lived, died, and faded
(21:41):
from history. Maybe the genetic odds meant that the condition disappeared.
Maybe the family line at some point came to an end.
In either case, the family's fate has dissolved away from
the history books. They leave us a legacy of portraits
and of an unlikely, even fairytale like story of rising
(22:03):
through the noble ranks. But this is also a story
of gaps and speculation. Petris Gonsalves was treated as an
oddity and curiosity in his time, which made him famous.
That is the only reason we still know of him today,
and so it's unfortunate that so little of his story
(22:23):
is left to us, because now trying to understand him
and trying to write about him in a nuanced way,
we're left with little more than the simple notion that
he existed, That a quote wild man was brought to
French court, and isn't that interesting. That's the story of
(22:44):
Petras Gonsalves, the noble wild Man. But stick around after
a brief sponsor break to hear more about the famous
fairy tale that the Gunsalvist family may have inspired. If
the story of Petris Gonsalvius, the quote beastlike man and
(23:08):
his lovely wife Catherine reminded you of a fairy tale
you've heard before, you wouldn't be the first. Many have
suggested that the unlikely love between Petras and Catherine Gonsalves
was the real life origin of Beauty and the Beast.
That fairy tale was first written by French author Gabrielle
(23:28):
Suzanne Barbeau de Villeneu and published in France in seventeen forty,
a little over a century after Petrus's death. A real
life origin for the famous fairy tale does seem plausible
and even kind of romantic. It's the fun fact that
people love to repeat, particularly on the internet. But did
(23:50):
Villeneuve know about the Gonzalez family. We can't be sure,
but unfortunately it's probably unlikely. There's no evidence for it,
and in fact, her written version describes the beast as
having scales and a trunk like an elephant, which doesn't
(24:11):
align with the look of Petras. But if you are
one of the many who wish the Gunsalvis has had
inspired Beauty and the Beast, no need to give up.
In the famous Jean Cocteaux movie adaptation from nineteen forty six,
the beast looks strikingly similar to a famous full length
portrait of Petris in Noble Robes. What else looks a
(24:34):
lot like that portrait? The image of the Beast you
probably have in your head from the nineteen ninety one
Disney cartoon. So Petris Gonsalves may have not directly inspired
the literary version of the story, but he and his
wife Catherine, who built a loving family together despite the
(24:55):
expectations of others, may live on in the fairytale memory
of children everywhere, having inspired the beast's physical representation. Thank
you for listening. One quick note of housekeeping before we
go if you're interested in reading and writing. Noble Blood
staff writer Courtney Sender has a podcast, newsletter and writers
(25:18):
group called The Craft Lab, which features weekly craft readings
and discussions of the greats. Courtney has been a professor
of creative writing for fifteen years, and now she's giving
what you can't get in school, the inspiration, motivation, and
passion you need to energize your writing and help bring
your projects to life. So if that's something that sounds
(25:40):
interesting to you, we're linking to her podcast in this
episode description. Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and
Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted
by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by
(26:04):
Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Courtney Sender, Amy Hit, and Julia Melaney.
The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with
supervising producer rima il Kaali and executive producers Aaron Manke,
Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(26:28):
to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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