In a tradition epitomized by Isidore of Seville, to the degree that Cynocephali bark, they lack language, therefore resemble animals, and are likely only animals. Isidore wrote that Cynocephalic barking “magis bestias quam homines confitetur” (reveals them to be more beasts than men), and the eighth-century Liber monstrorum, which emphasizes its monsters' inhumanity, describes Cynocephalic speech as “contaminated” or “perverted” by barking ("Cynocephali quoque in India nasci perhibentur, quorum sunt canina capita, et omne uerbum quod loquuntur intermixtis corrumpunt latratibus"): their voices, as much as their bodies, are contaminated to the degree that they are canine. The thirteenth-century Old French moralized translation of the section on monsters in Thomas of Cantimpré's De naturis rerum similarly observes that Cynocephali “com chien glatisent…/ mes sens de gens est lors savoirs” (489-90; bark like dogs, but have human sense): with the conjunction “mes,” it's clear that barking occludes or opposes the human qualities Cynocephali possess.
The depiction of Cynocephali (labelled "gigantes") on the Hereford Mappamundi seems to belong to this tradition. It is unclear, however, whether the map depicts only barking, which would, following the Isidorian model, demonstrate speechlessness and hence inhumanity; or speech, human by definition; or something for which neither the teratologic tradition nor traditions of natural history normally account: barking that is intelligible as speech to the Cynocephali but not to humans. After all, these Cynocephali face each other and look as though they are communicating. If the barking of the Liber monstrorum and the Hereford map is not opposed to sense, but is rather language evidencing sense, the “mes” of the moralized bestiary should perhaps be an “et”: barking would not be a contamination, but only another mode of communicating. If Cynocephalic barking can be a kind of language, then by the same token humans might reconsider other animals’ noises as potentially linguistic, though incomprehensible to humans. In that case, a key justification of the human subjugation of animals—the animal absence of language, frequently advanced as evidence of animal irrationality—might no longer obtain: if barking could be speech, the world of animals might either be a world of language or, just as confusingly, a world in which creatures or species must be individually assessed for the possession of language. In such a world, the previously homogeneous, predictable irrationality of animals gives way to uncertainty.
Granted, some medieval theories of language allowed for some manner of animal language: Roger Bacon observes that “gallina aliter garrit cum pullis suis quando invitat eos ad escam et quando docet eos cavere a milvo” (hens prattle to each other with their chicks when they summon them to eat and when they teach them to beware the kite), and Abelard allowed that dogs might intend different meanings with different barks. In each case, however, medieval theorists of language would still reserve something exclusively for the human, such as the power of abstraction.
But the gestures of the Hereford image are not the gestures of mere animals; they are not engaged in the merely instrumental communication through which hens share food or warn against predators; rather, their postures suggest intellectual work or at least conviviality among nonhuman mortal creatures. In response to this suggestion, the only recourse to establish or reestablish Cynocephalic animality would be simply, regardless of evidence, to declare them nonhuman. But such a declaration, effective as it might be, also declares the ineffectiveness of relying on animal noise to classify Cynocephali—or indeed any nonhuman creature—as animal. The only certainty is the cold comfort of a chauvinist tautology: if Cynocephalic barking is inhuman, it is because humans declare it to be so.
Sources Used and Essential Works on Cynocephali apart from Friedman
Eco, Umberto, R. Lambertini, C. Marmo, and A. Taborroni, “On Animal Language in the Medieval Classification of Signs,” in Umberto Eco and Costantino Marmo, eds., On the Medieval Theory of Signs, Foundations of Semiotics 21 (Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 1989).
Hilka, Alfons, ed., Eine altfranzösische moralisierende Bearbeitung des Liber de monstruosibus hominibus orientis aus Thomas von Cantimpré, De naturis rerum, Abhandlungen der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen 7 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1933).
Lecouteux, Claude. “Les Cynocéphales: Étude d’une tradition tératologique de l’Antiquité au XIIe s.” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 24 (1981): 117-29.
Newall, Venetia.”The Dog-Headed Saint Christopher,” in Folklore on Two Continents: Essays in Honor of Linda Dégh, ed. Linda Dégh, et al. (Bloomington: Trickster Press, 1980).
Orchard, Andy. Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript, Rev. ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003).
Westrem, Scott D., The Hereford Map: A Transcription and Translation of the Legends with Commentary, Terrarum Orbis (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001).
White, David Gordon. Myths of the Dog-Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).