from 1295 with the
Archangel Michael killing a basilisk The basilisk is sometimes referred to as "king" because it has been reputed to have a
mitre or crown-shaped
crest on its head. Stories of the basilisk show that it is not completely distinguished from the
cockatrice. The basilisk is alleged to be hatched by a
cockerel from the egg of a
serpent or toad (the reverse of the cockatrice, which was hatched from a cockerel's "egg" incubated by a serpent or toad). In
Medieval Europe, the description of the creature began taking on features from cockerels. It has a venomous strike, and in some versions of the myth, it has the ability to breathe fire. One of the earliest accounts of the basilisk comes from
Pliny the Elder's
Natural History, written in roughly 79 AD. He describes the
catoblepas, a monstrous cow-like creature of which "all who behold its eyes, fall dead upon the spot", and then goes on to say, . The cockatrice (pictured) became seen as synonymous with the basilisk when the "basiliscus" in
Bartholomeus Anglicus's
De proprietatibus rerum (ca 1260) was translated by
John Trevisa as "cockatrice" (1397).
Isidore of Seville defined the basilisk as the king of snakes because of its killing glare and poisonous breath. The
Venerable Bede was the first to attest to the legend of the birth of a basilisk from an egg by an old cockerel; other authors added the condition of
Sirius being ascendant.
Alexander Neckam (died 1217) was the first to say that not the glare but the "air corruption" was the killing tool of the basilisk, a theory developed a century later by
Pietro d'Abano.
Theophilus Presbyter gave a long recipe in his book, the
Schedula diversarum artium, for creating a compound to convert copper into "Spanish gold" (
De auro hyspanico). The compound was formed by combining powdered basilisk blood, powdered human blood, red copper, and a special kind of vinegar.
Albertus Magnus, in the
De animalibus, wrote about the killing gaze of the basilisk, but he denied other legends, such as the rooster hatching the egg. He gave as source of those legends
Hermes Trismegistus, who is credited also as the creator of the story about the basilisk's ashes being able to convert silver into gold. The attribution is absolutely incorrect, but it shows how the legends of the basilisk were already linked to
alchemy in the 13th century. kills a basilisk, symbolic of
Swedish occupiers and Protestant heresy, on the
Mariensäule, Munich, erected in 1638.
Geoffrey Chaucer featured a so-called
basilicok (likely a portmanteau of “basilisk” and
“cock”) in his
Canterbury Tales. According to some legends, basilisks can be killed by hearing the crow of a rooster or gazing at itself in a mirror. This method of killing the beast is featured in the legend of the basilisk of
Warsaw, killed by a man carrying a set of mirrors. According to the popular urban legend, it was a terrifying creature, described as a rooster, snake or turkey, with a snake's tail and the eyes of a frog. It guarded hidden treasures in the
Warsaw's Old Town underground and killed intruders with its eyes. It died outwitted by a young journeyman who went underground carrying a mirror in front of him. According to
Artur Oppman,
Bazyliszek lived in the basement of one of the tenement houses on Krzywe Koło street in Warsaw.
Leonardo da Vinci included a basilisk in his Bestiary, saying “it is so utterly cruel that when it cannot kill animals by its baleful gaze, it turns upon herbs and plants, and fixing its gaze on them, withers them up.” In his notebooks, he describes the basilisk in an account clearly dependent directly or indirectly on Pliny's: Then Leonardo noted of the weasel, "this beast finding the lair of the basilisk kills it with the smell of its urine, and this smell, indeed, often kills the weasel itself."
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa wrote that “[the basilisk] is always, and cannot but be a male, as the more proper receptacle of venome and destructive qualities." According to the tradition of the
Cantabrian mythology, the ancient
Basiliscu has disappeared in most of the Earth but still lives in
Cantabria, although it is rare to see it. This animal is born from an egg laid by an old cock just before his death exactly at midnight on a clear night with a full moon. Within a few days, the egg shell, which is not hard, but rather soft and leathery, is opened by the strange creature, which already has all the features of an adult: legs, beak, cockscomb, and reptilian body. Apparently, the creature has an intense and penetrating fire in its eyes such that any animal or person gazing directly upon it would die. The weasel is the only animal that can face and even attack it. It can only be killed with the crowing of a rooster, so, until very recent times, travelers carried a rooster when they ventured into areas where it was said that the basilisks lived. A basilisk is said to have terrorised the inhabitants of
Vilnius, Lithuania, during the reign of King of Poland and Grand Duke
Sigismund August. In his book
Facies rerum Sarmaticarum, 17th-century
Vilnius University historian Professor
Adam Ignacy Naramowski describes how boughs of
rue, a plant believed to have the power to repel basilisks, were lowered into the creature's lair. The first two boughs lowered into the lair turned white, indicating that the creature remained alive, but the third bough retained its characteristic green colour, indicating the basilisk had been killed. Nineteenth-century historian Teodoras Narbutas (
Teodor Narbutt) claimed the location of the creature's lair had been at the intersection of Bokšto, Subačiaus, and Bastėjos streets, near
Subačius Gate. Legend has it the basilisk haunts the bastion of the city wall located there. Nicander of Colophon, a 2nd-century BCE Greek poet and physician, offers one of the earliest references to the basilisk in his didactic poem
Theriaca. As discussed in “La figura del basilisco en los textos grecolatinos”, Nicander portrayed the basilisk not as a mythical creature with supernatural powers, but as a small, venomous snake known for the potency of its bite. His description emphasized the basilisk’s deadly natural attributes—particularly its ability to cause rapid death and decay—rather than the legendary gaze or breath found in later medieval accounts. By presenting the basilisk in a more scientific and naturalistic context, Nicander’s work laid the foundation for the creature’s transformation in subsequent centuries, illustrating how a real-world fear of venomous serpents evolved into a mythic symbol of lethal power. ==Origin==