Humans and Other Animals in the Middle Ages: An Introduction and Reader 9004720847, 9789004720848

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Permissions
Figures
Introduction
Notes
Chapter 1 The Genesis of the Animals
1 The Medieval Conception of the Biblical Creation
2 The Naming of the Animals
3 Animals Wild and Tame
Chapter 2 Animals in Medieval Natural Philosophy
1 Defining the Animal
2 Categorizing Animals
3 Animals in the scala naturae
4 Human and Nonhuman Souls and Their Faculties
5 Animal Society
Chapter 3 Animals as Exemplars
1 Animals as Didactic Tools
2 The Symmetry of Nature
3 Physiologus and the Bestiaries
4 The Medieval Encyclopaedia of Nature
5 Animals in Homilies and Sermons
6 Physiognomy
7 Symbols of Ferocity, Valour and Lineage
8 Animal Behaviour as Portents
Chapter 4 Animals in Field, Park, and Forest
1 Animal Husbandry
2 The Lot of the Working Animal
3 Foresta and Parks
Chapter 5 Hunting
1 Defining the Medieval Hunt
2 Quarry Animals
3 Animals Who Assisted in the Hunt
4 Medieval Conservation?
5 Hunting of Rival Predators
6 Illegal Hunting
7 Criticism of Hunting
Chapter 6 Animals and Law
1 Natural Law
2 Animals in the ‘Laws of the Barbarians’
3 Animals in High Medieval Law
4 Human Ownership of Animals and the Right to Hunt Them
5 Trials, Execution and Cursing of Nonhuman Animals
6 Execution of Animals for Involvement in Bestiality
Chapter 7 Beast-Humans and Human Beasts
1 Monstrous Beings, Monstrous Races
2 Metamorphosis
3 Zoophilia
4 Offspring of Human-Beast Unions
5 Humans Acting Beasts
6 Humans Compared to Beasts
7 Beasts Representing Humans
Chapter 8 Animals as Food
1 Eating as Differentiator of Humans from Other Animals
2 The Old Law Dietary Restrictions in Christianity
3 Cultural Taboos
4 Meat-Eating, Lust and Gluttony
5 Meat for the Starving
6 Human Meat, Animal Meat
7 Animals in the Human Diet
8 Entertaining Meals
9 Food Waste Management
10 Animal Fast Food
Chapter 9 Animals, Disease and Medicine
1 Animals as Sources of Medicinal Cures or Causes of Injury and Disease
2 Care of Domesticated Animals
3 Animal Self-Help
4 Animals as Medical Metaphors
5 Epidemics among Domestic Animals and the Human Perception of Them
Chapter 10 Animals and Saints
Chapter 11 Animals for Show and Companionship
1 Menageries
2 Animals as Companions to Humans
3 Animals in the Cloister
4 Pets of the Secular Aristocracy
5 Naming Household Animals
6 Animals Punished as Surrogates for Human Owners
7 Animals for Entertainment
Chapter 12 Animals at War
1 Warlike Animals?
2 The Warhorse
3 Other Animals in Battle
4 Feeding the ‘Beasts of Battle’
5 Animal Messengers
6 Animal Attrition: on the March, in Camp and in Sieges
7 Animals Stolen and Slaughtered
Quoted Authors
Figures
Bibliography
Index
Back Cover

Citation preview

Humans and Other Animals in the Middle Ages

Explorations in Medieval Culture General Editor Larissa Tracy (University of Maryland) Editorial Board Tina Boyer (Wake Forest University) Emma Campbell (The George Washington University) Kelly DeVries (Loyola Maryland) David F. Johnson (Florida State University) Asa Simon Mittman (CSU, Chico) Thea Tomaini (USC, Los Angeles) Wendy Turner (Augusta University) David Wacks (University of Oregon) Renée Ward (University of Lincoln)

VOLUME 27

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/emc

Humans and Other Animals in the Middle Ages An Introduction and Reader By

Philip Line

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Adam naming the animals. Aberdeen Bestiary, c.1200; MS 24, fol. 5r., Aberdeen University Library: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/ms24/f5r, last accessed September 4, 2024. License: CC BY 4.0. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at https://catalog.loc.gov LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024952310

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2352-0299 isbn 978-90-04-72084-8 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-72170-8 (e-book) DOI 10.1163/9789004721708 Copyright 2025 by Koninklijke Brill BV, Plantijnstraat 2, 2321 JC Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill BV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Brill Wageningen Academic, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau and V&R unipress. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill BV via brill.com or copyright.com. For more information: [email protected]. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Dedication ix Acknowledgements x Permissions xI List of Figures xVi

Introduction 1 Notes 4

1

The Genesis of the Animals 7 1 The Medieval Conception of the Biblical Creation 9 2 The Naming of the Animals 28 3 Animals Wild and Tame 31

2

Animals in Medieval Natural Philosophy 48 1 Defining the Animal 50 2 Categorizing Animals 56 3 Animals in the scala naturae 60 4 Human and Nonhuman Souls and Their Faculties 67 5 Animal Society 104

3

Animals as Exemplars 111 1 Animals as Didactic Tools 111 2 The Symmetry of Nature 117 3 Physiologus and the Bestiaries 119 4 The Medieval Encyclopaedia of Nature 135 5 Animals in Homilies and Sermons 138 6 Physiognomy 147 7 Symbols of Ferocity, Valour and Lineage 154 8 Animal Behaviour as Portents 163

4

Animals in Field, Park, and Forest 166 1 Animal Husbandry 166 2 The Lot of the Working Animal 183 3 Foresta and Parks 186

vi

Contents

5

Hunting 194 1 Defining the Medieval Hunt 194 2 Quarry Animals 203 3 Animals Who Assisted in the Hunt 216 4 Medieval Conservation? 228 5 Hunting of Rival Predators 235 6 Illegal Hunting 237 7 Criticism of Hunting 242

6

Animals and Law 247 1 Natural Law 247 2 Animals in the ‘Laws of the Barbarians’ 252 3 Animals in High Medieval Law 256 4 Human Ownership of Animals and the Right to Hunt Them 271 5 Trials, Execution and Cursing of Nonhuman Animals 277 6 Execution of Animals for Involvement in Bestiality 293

7 Beast-Humans and Human Beasts 296 1 Monstrous Beings, Monstrous Races 297 2 Metamorphosis 307 3 Zoophilia 321 4 Offspring of Human-Beast Unions 325 5 Humans Acting Beasts 326 6 Humans Compared to Beasts 329 7 Beasts Representing Humans 333 8

Animals as Food 343 1 Eating as Differentiator of Humans from Other Animals 345 2 The Old Law Dietary Restrictions in Christianity 346 3 Cultural Taboos 354 4 Meat-Eating, Lust and Gluttony 359 5 Meat for the Starving 373 6 Human Meat, Animal Meat 375 7 Animals in the Human Diet 385 8 Entertaining Meals 399 9 Food Waste Management 405 10 Animal Fast Food 408

Contents

vii

9

Animals, Disease and Medicine 412 1 Animals as Sources of Medicinal Cures or Causes of Injury and Disease 412 2 Care of Domesticated Animals 432 3 Animal Self-Help 440 4 Animals as Medical Metaphors 441 5 Epidemics among Domestic Animals and the Human Perception of Them 446

10

Animals and Saints 458

11

Animals for Show and Companionship 494 1 Menageries 494 2 Animals as Companions to Humans 504 3 Animals in the Cloister 522 4 Pets of the Secular Aristocracy 526 5 Naming Household Animals 531 6 Animals Punished as Surrogates for Human Owners 532 7 Animals for Entertainment 535

12

Animals at War 541 1 Warlike Animals? 541 2 The Warhorse 545 3 Other Animals in Battle 564 4 Feeding the ‘Beasts of Battle’ 570 5 Animal Messengers 577 6 Animal Attrition: on the March, in Camp and in Sieges 578 7 Animals Stolen and Slaughtered 588



Quoted Authors 593 Figures 646 Bibliography 674 Index 717

Dedication I would like to dedicate this book to all the good people I have met while living in Finland who work to increase our understanding of nonhuman animals and/or to eliminate human abuse of them: those who work with the Finnish Society for Human-Animal Studies (Yhteiskunnallisen ja kulttuurisen eläintutkimuksen seura – YKES) and with the Network for Critical Animal Studies in Finland ([Suomen] Kriitisen Eläintutkimuksen Verkosto), and those who work and campaign with the animal rights association Animalia.

Acknowledgements I first of all have to thank those who occasionally assisted me in writing this book by suggesting a source to be included or reading parts of the manuscript; Kirsi Kanerva, PhD and Docent in Turku University, Sini Kangas, PhD and Researcher at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities/History in Tampere University, and Juhana Toivanen, PhD and Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä. In addition, while writing this book I have been working with a research group on the Nature and Moral Status of Animals in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, directed by Miira Tuominen, PhD and Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at Stockholm University, and including Liisa Kaski, researcher and PhD candidate at the University of Helsinki, Tua Korhonen, PhD and Docent of Greek Literature at Helsinki university, Janne Mattila, PhD and research fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Behnam Khodapanah, PhD (University of Jyväskylä), and Juhana Toivanen. The group is producing a book in Finnish that covers some of the same ground as this book and our meetings and writing have both motivated and assisted me. It was because of my participation in this project that I obtained a grant from the Finnish Kone Foundation, which also supported me in writing this book and several articles, so I am beholden to the Foundation for its support. I am also indebted to the two anonymous reviewers of my draft manuscript for their suggestions. To my wife Mervi Mattila, who supports all my endeavours and provides a valuable service by countering my bipolarism concerning my own work, I owe special thanks. Finally, I must acknowledge the assistance of those at Brill who have produced the book, in particular Marcella Mulder, Associate Editor, who has had the unenviable task of corresponding with me.

Permissions Permission has been granted for the following excerpts. The work and copyright holder are followed by the page numbers on which the excerpts are cited and the source works given. Bede, on Genesis, trans. Calvin Kendall. Copyright 2008 by Liverpool University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 11, 12, 29, 31 William of Conches, a dialogue on natural philosophy – Dragmaticon philosophiae, trans. Italo Ronca and Matthew Curr. Copyright 1997 by University of Notre Dame Press 12, 13, 82 Augustine: Two books on Genesis against the Manichees; and On the literal interpretation of Genesis, an unfinished book, trans. Roland J. Teske. Copyright 1991 by Catholic University of America Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through Copyright Clearance Center 18, 19, 29 Nemesius, on the Nature of Man, trans. R.W. Sharples and P.J. van der Eijk. Copyright 2008 by Liverpool University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 20, 21, 22, 69, 70 Bernardus Silvestris, Poetic Works, trans. Winthrop Wetherbee. Copyright 2010 by Harvard University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through Copyright Clearance Center 26, 27, 39 Ambrose of Milan, Hexameron, Paradise, and Cain and Abel, trans. John L. Savage, Copyright 1961 by Catholic University of America Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through Copyright Clearance Center 28, 29 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 18–45, trans. Robert C. Hill. Copyright 1990 by Catholic University of America Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through Copyright Clearance Center 40 Hugh of Saint-Victor, Selected Spiritual Writings, trans. a Religious of C.S.M.V. Copyright 1962 by Wipf and Stock 41, 42, 43 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, trans. Stephen A. Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach, Oliver Berghof. Copyright 2006 by Cambridge University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 51, 52, 53, 54, 163, 164, 299, 300, 308, 309 Adelard of Bath, Conversations with his Nephew, On the Same and the Different, Questions on Natural Science, And on Birds, trans. Charles Burnett. Copyright 1998 by Cambridge University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 55, 79, 80, 81, 541, 542

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The Mystical Theology and the Celestial Hierarchies of Dionysius the Areopagite, trans. Editors of the Shrine of Wisdom. Copyright 2004 by the Fintry Trust 63, 64, 114, 115 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Vol. 2: Man, trans. Timothy Sutton. Copyright 1970 by Cambridge University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 65, 85, 86, 87, 88 Augustine of Hippo. The Immortality of the Soul; The Magnitude of the Soul; On Music; The Advantage of Believing; On Faith in Things Unseen, trans. Ludwig Schopp and others. Copyright 2002 Catholic University of America Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through Copyright Clearance Center 71, 72, 73 Augustine, on the Free Choice of the Will, on Grace and Free Choice, and Other Writings, trans. Peter King. Copyright 2010 by Cambridge University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 73, 74, 75, 76 John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon: The Division of Nature, trans. John O’Meara. Copyright 1987 by Dumbarton Oaks, an imprint of Harvard University Press 77, 78, 79 Roger Bacon and the Origins of Perspectiva in the Middle Ages, trans. David C. Lindberg. Copyright 1996 by Oxford University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 95, 96, 97, 98 Bestiary, trans. Richard Barber. Copyright 1999 Boydell. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 125, 129, 130 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 1–17, trans. Robert C. Hill. Copyright 2000 by Catholic University of America Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through Copyright Clearance Center 140 Thomas de Chobham, Summa de Arte Praedicandi, ed. Franco Morenzoni. Copyright 1988 by Brepols 32, 143 Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam, trans. Ian Redpath. Copyright 2007 by Oxford University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 148, 149, 150, 151 Secretum Secretorum: Nine English Versions, ed. Mahmoud Manzalaoui. Copyright 1977 by Oxford University Press, 1977. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 152, 388 Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney. Copyright 1999 by estate of Seamus Heaney, handled by Faber & Faber 155–156, 572 Walter of Henley and other Treatises on Estate Management and Accounting, trans. Dorothea Oschinsky. Copyright 1971 by Clarendon Press, an imprint of Oxford University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 406

Permissions

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The Fabliaux: A New Verse Translation, trans. Nathaniel Dubin. Copyright 2013 by Liverlight, an imprint of W.W. Norton and Company 182, 183 Doctor Illuminatus: A Ramon Llull Reader, ed. and trans. Anthony Bonner. Copyright 1993 by Princeton University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through Copyright Clearance Center 184, 185 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. and trans. Simon Armitage. Copyright 2007 by W.W. Norton 187 Xenophon & Arrian on Hunting, ed. and trans. A.A. Phillips and M.M. Willcock. Copyright 1999 by Aris & Phillips, an imprint of Liverpool University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 199 Charlemagne and Louis the Pious: The Lives by Einhard, Notker, Ermold, Thegan and the Astronomer. Edited and translated by Thomas F.X. Noble. Copyright 2009 by Pennsylvania State University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through Copyright Clearance Center 201, 202 Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources, ed. and trans. Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge. Copyright 1983 by Penguin Books 202, 203 The Mabinogion, ed. and trans. Geoffrey Gantz. Copyright 1976 by Penguin Books 207, 208 Gottfried von Strassburg: Tristan with the ‘Tristran’ of Thomas, trans. A.T. Hatto. Copyright 2004 by Penguin Books 213 Frederick II of Hohenstaufen: The Art of Falconry, trans. Casey A. Wood and F. Marjorie Fyfe. Copyright 1969 by Stanford University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through Copyright Clearance Center  217, 218, 219, 220 The Good Wife’s Guide: Le Ménagier de Paris: A Medieval Household Book, trans. Gina L. Greco and Christine M. Rose. Copyright 2009 by Cornell University Press 227, 399 Richard Fitznigel, Dialogus de Scaccario: The Dialogue of the Exchequer, ed. and trans. Emilie Amt. Copyright 2007 by Clarendon Press, an imprint of Oxford: Clarendon Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 229, 276 The Law Courts of Medieval England, by Alan Harding, Copyright 2020 by Routledge. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 259 The History of Leo the Deacon: Byzantine Military Expansion in the Tenth Century, ed. and trans. Alice-Mary Talbot and Denis F. Sullivan. Copyright 2005 by Dumbarton Oaks, an imprint of Harvard University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through Copyright Clearance Center 316

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Gerald of Wales, The History and Topography of Ireland, trans. John O’Meara. Copyright 1982 by Penguin Books 318–19 Marie de France: The Lais of Marie De France, trans. Glyn S. Burgess and Keith Busby. Copyright 1999 by Penguin Books 321 The Poems of Robert Henryson, ed. Denton Fox. Copyright 1981 by Oxford University Press 336, 337 Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol. 1: Nicaea I to Lateran V, ed. Norman P. Tanner. Copyright 1990 by Sheed & Ward, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing 354 John Mirk’s Festial: Edited from British Library MS Cotton Claudius A.II, Vol. 1: Sermons, ed. Susan Powell. Copyright 2009 by Oxford University Press 367, 368 Hildegard von Bingen, Physica, trans. Priscilla Throop. Copyright 1998 by Healing Arts Press, an imprint of Inner Traditions 390, 420, 421 Regional Cuisines of the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays, ed. Melitta Weiss Adamson. Copyright 2002 by Routledge. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through Copyright Clearance Center 397 Philip the Good, by Richard Vaughan. Copyright 1970 by Longman 403, 404 The Letters of Peter the Venerable, Vol. 1: Text of the Letter Collection, ed. Giles Constable. Copyright 1967 by Harvard University Press 436 Boccaccio, Decameron, trans. John Payne, rev. Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin. Copyright 2004 by Wordsworth 450 Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave. Copyright 1956 by Cambridge University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 468, 469 Reginald of Durham, The Life and Miracles of Saint Godric, Hermit of Finchale, ed. and trans. Margaret Coombe. Copyright 2022 by Oxford University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 473, 474 Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber Confortatorius, ed. and trans. Stephanie Hollis and others. Copyright 2004 by Brepols. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through Copyright Clearance Center 480, 481, 482 Saint Patrick’s World: The Christian Culture of Ireland’s Apostolic Age, by Liam de Paor. Copyright 1993 by Four Courts Press 485, 486, 487 Daniel of Beccles, The Book of the Civilized Man: An English Translation of the Urbanus Magnus of Daniel of Beccles, ed. and trans. Fiona Whelan, Olivia Spenser and Francesca Petrizzo. Copyright 2019 by Routledge. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 509

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Pangur Bán, trans. Seamus Heaney. Copyright 2006 by Estate of Seamus Heaney, handled by Faber & Faber 516, 517 The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle, ed. A.C. Baugh. Copyright 1956 by Oxford University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 526 Les épîtres de l’amant vert par Jean Lemaire de Belges, ed. Jean Frappier. Copyright 1947 by Éditions Droz 528 Waltharius, and Ruodlieb, ed. and trans. Dennis M. Kratz. Copyright 1984 by Garland, an imprint of Routledge / Taylor & Francis 551 Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival and Titurel, trans. Cyril Edwards. Copyright 2006 by Oxford University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 552 Guibert de Nogent, the Deeds of God through the Franks, trans. Robert Levine. Copyright 1997 by Boydell. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 554, 555 The History of William Marshal, trans. Nigel Bryant. Copyright 2016 by Boydell. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 555, 556, 559 Annales Gandenses / Annals of Ghent, ed. and trans. Hilda Johnstone. Copyright 1985 by Oxford University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear 560 Richer of Saint-Rémi: Histories, Volume II, Books 3-4, edited and translated b yJustin Lake, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library Volume 11, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Copyright © 2011 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College Used by permission. All rights reserved 566 Bonvesin de la Riva, Le Meraviglie di Milano, ed. and trans. Paolo Chiesa. Copyright 2009 by Fondazione Lorenzo Valla 567 Aneirin, the Gododdin: Lament for the Fallen, trans. Gillian Clarke. Copyright 2001 by Faber & Faber 571, 572 The Scandinavians from the Vendel Period to the Tenth Century, ed. Judith Jesch. Copyright 2002 by Boydell 573, 574 Chronicle of the Third Crusade: A translation of Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, trans. Helen J. Nicholson. Copyright 1997 by Ashgate 584 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, Vol. II: Books III and IV, ed. Marjorie Chibnall. Copyright 1969 by Clarendon Press, an imprint of Oxford University Press 591

Figures 1 God creating the animals 646 2 Noah’s Ark, as depicted in the Old English Illustrated Hexateuch 647 3 Adam, represented as a bonde, drives a plough with an iron share, drawn by two horses 648 4 “Castrated animals.” An illustration of common domesticated animals from the Tacuinum Sanitatis 649 5 An illustration of a medieval park from an edition of Edward of York’s Master of Game, depicting a variety of animals who lived in or entered parks 650 6 Falconry: an illumination from the Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift (Codex Manesse) illustrating a poem of Conradin (1252–1268) 651 7 Lady shooting at a rabbit, an illumination from the Taymouth Hours 652 8 The unicorn defends himself, from the Unicorn Tapestries 653 9 The Hunt of the Frail Stag. Portrayed as courtly ladies, Vanity Sounds the Horn and Ignorance unleashes the hounds Overconfidence, Rashness, and Desire 654 10 Beavers bite off their testicles or show that they have already done so to save themselves from hunters seeking the testicles for their medicinal properties 655 11 A caladrius perching at the bedside of a king 656 12 The fox plays dead to trick birds into coming close to it so it can seize and devour them 657 13 Having killed her young, the pelican revives them by piercing her breast and giving them her blood, thus symbolizing Christ’s sacrifice for mankind 658 14 The leopard and the panther 659 15 Fish (pisces) 660 16 Elephant carrying a tower full of soldiers 661 17 A stone relief with the arms of the Porcelet family of Provence 662 18 An illumination from the Hours of Simon de Varie by Jean Fouquet. The coat of arms is supported by a lady and a ‘greyhound’ 663 19 Fresco of a lion mounted on canvas from Burgos, Castile-León 664 20 The sick lion 665 21 The plagues of Exodus 8:21. From the Haggadah for Passover 666 22 Slaughtering the pig in December 667 23 A fabulous beast with a mane, pointed teeth, a scaly rump and clawed feet 668 24 An assortment of hybrid or otherwise fantastic beasts 669

Figures 25 26 27 28 29

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Bear-baiting 669 Illumination from the Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift (Codex Manesse) illustrating the work of a unidentified poet, Von Obernburg 670 The mocking of Thomas Becket 671 St Anthony blessing the poor, the sick, and nonhuman animals 672 Charlemagne in battle with heathens, as illustrated in an edition of the chivalric novel Willehalm of Wolfram von Eschenbach 673

Introduction The term “Middle Ages” was devised by Italian humanists who wished to revive classical culture and learning, with the intent of representing the era as one of darkness, stagnation, and ignorance after the glories of Greece and Rome and which would be ended by their ‘revival of civilization.’ The term has been retained ever since, seen as ending with the Renaissance, the name now given to the ‘revival’ begun by these humanists. The image of the ‘Middle Ages’ they wished to project has remained to this day, but it is slowly being dispelled; if measured by scientific and technical advance, the thousand-year Middle Ages measures up well to the previous thousand years. However, for most people who ponder the circumstances of nonhuman animals in a human-dominated world, the Middle Ages in Europe is probably still a ‘dark age,’ conjuring up images of bear-baiting and other cruelties, an age when nonhuman animals were outside the moral compass of human beings, when people were taught that other animals were created by God, like the rest of nature, to serve human purposes, and humans took full advantage of the biblical permission to exploit them. As usual with such stereotypes, there is truth in this one, but it is not the whole truth. Medieval people’s attitudes to animals were many and varied; an animal that might serve as an example of sinfulness in one context might have a positive image in another, and openly or tacitly, the commonalities between nonhuman animals and humans were recognized. The remainder of this introduction is an explanation of my methods and the parameters I have chosen for the work, and some of the problems involved in compiling it. Where necessary, a chapter has its own introduction which explains more about the background to medieval attitudes to nonhuman animals. For the purposes of this book the ‘Middle Ages’ is taken as somewhat more than a millennium, the period 300 CE to the 1520s CE. The commonly used starting point for the Middle Ages is the early fifth century, that is, the decades when the western Roman Empire disintegrated, but this would exclude several Christian thinkers whose writings had a huge influence on thought about nonhuman animals in subsequent centuries. They include Augustine of Hippo, Basil of Caesarea, Ambrose of Milan and others who lived in a period normally designated ‘Late Antiquity,’ taken to begin in the late third century CE but which overlaps with the onset of the Middle Ages. In this book there are a few passages quoted from even earlier writers, where these were known in the Middle Ages and had especial relevance then. The end of the Middle Ages here is taken as the Reformation, which began in the 1520s, so there is also an overlap

© Koninklijke Brill BV, Leiden, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004721708_002

2

Introduction

with the Renaissance, taken by some as beginning in the fourteenth century in Italy but spreading to other regions during the following two centuries. Aside from period, there are other limits to coverage. Covering too wide a geographical area in too few pages would make it difficult to select enough passages to be in any way representative of the culture from which they originated. Almost all the sources used here come from west-central and northern Europe, most of the area that recognised the authority of the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. There is also a bias towards areas with vernacular sources that I can decipher. Perhaps some time someone can compile a similar work that includes more from east-central Europe or the parts of Europe that recognized the authority of the Eastern Orthodox Church. There is also another omission; there are no sources written by the Islamic or Jewish authors who lived within Europe, although it was through translation of some of their works into Latin that they became influential in European medieval thought. Among these the most significant were from Islamic Iberia, notably Ibn Rushd (Averroes, 1126–1198) and the Jewish philosopher and physician Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides, 1138–1204).1 Averroes, in fact, had a stronger influence on Latin and Jewish than on Islamic thought, whereas Maimonides moved to North Africa and his writings influenced both Islamic and Christian thought as well as Jewish. I decided to draw the boundary of my coverage at the geographical boundary between Islam and Christendom: there is as strong a case for including numerous other Islamic philosophers and physicians among those who influenced medieval European attitudes to nonhuman animals, Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna, c.970–1037) being especially important, as for including those who lived in Andalusia, which again would extend the geographical coverage and make the book so unwieldy that it could barely be picked up. Furthermore, although I read Latin and several European vernacular languages I cannot read Arabic, Judeo-Arabic, Hebrew or Persian. Even within all these parameters the selection of quoted material and the authors chosen can be only a small sample of the mass of written sources available, and there will be some aspects of human-nonhuman animal relations that are barely covered. It almost goes without saying that an excerpt from any work can hardly do justice to the whole. The passages in Chapter 2, on animals in natural philosophy, are generally longer than those in other chapters because the writers attempted carefully reasoned argument (which may sometimes come across as long-winded to us), according to the rules of logic that most of them had learnt during their education. A presentation of half an argument without any 1 The alternative names in parentheses are those by which these philosophers were known in Latin.

Introduction

3

concluding point would convey very little to the reader. My own categorization for the various chapters also presents its problems, as many quoted passages include material that is relevant to more than one chapter subject: law texts, for instance, tell us about the way in which humans valued and treated different animals as well as the way in which animals were considered legal subjects. The cross-referencing should enable readers to find passages relevant to the chapter they are reading even when they are located in a different one. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, written works represent only a part of the story of medieval human-nonhuman animal relations. Some aspects of the subject are poorly represented in written works. There is a wealth of artistic material that often provides evidence which is lacking from written sources, and an ever-increasing amount of archaeological material which can tell us of animal diseases, their use as artefacts or food, distribution of species, and so on. However, it is hoped that this volume can open doors and convince readers that not only are there numerous medieval written works that are worth further investigation, but also non-written sources that should be explored. The subjects touched upon in this book are those which still interest us today, such as human assessment of animal cognition, animal husbandry, human consumption of animals, hunting, companion animals, use of animals for entertainment, veterinary medicine, animal use in medical experimentation, and zoonotic diseases. Even animal use in warfare still occurs, although it has attracted relatively little notice since the mounted warrior has largely disappeared from the battlefield. Medieval scholarship is obviously of interest if we wish to explore the origins of our own thought-world, but it may be more surprising to the reader that many of the matters discussed in medieval writings are still discussed today. Moreover, not all the concepts of medieval natural philosophers or encyclopaedists that have largely disappeared were necessarily invalid; for example, until relatively recently, in our society the focus of scholarship on nonhuman animals, at least in English-speaking countries, was taxonomical, and taxonomy in its stricter sense (biological and phylogenetic) still dominates the way in which animals are categorized in ‘popular science.’ Medieval writers categorized animals in different ways, and in discussions of their abilities or uses did not make the same distinctions. For instance, when considering the capacities and ‘merits’ of nonhuman animals natural philosophers did not make the distinction between vertebrates and invertebrates that we consider a major one and which tends to create a conception of invertebrates as wholly alien to us. Many invertebrates were classed as vermes in the Middle Ages but so were many small mammals.

4

Introduction

Nonhuman animals were a constant presence in the lives of almost all humans in the Middle Ages, and people could not but think about them in one way or another, often about the use they could be put to or the food and material they could provide for humans, but also how they should be handled, or as part of God’s creation, or about what their behaviour or appearance might teach humans. The similarities between nonhuman animals and humans made them suitable as substitutes for people in satirical tales and fables, and the same similarities led natural philosophers who wished to understand God’s works to ponder their behaviour and cognition. It is true that in Europe during the period covered in this book, as they still do now in the minds of most people, nonhuman animals had a lower status on the ladder of being than humans, and there were no medieval advocates of animal intelligence or animals as moral subjects such as Porphyry or Plutarch, but there was a lively discussion among natural philosophers of what these animals could and couldn’t do. In addition, some animals elicited genuine affection from humans and became their companions. Notes On the use of “animal” or “nonhuman animal”: The use of these terms causes considerable difficulties for anyone writing about relations between humans and other animals. For convenience, I usually refer to “nonhuman animals” simply as “animals” in this work. However, in many places I have included “nonhuman” with “animal” where it is necessary to emphasize a distinction from humans, or I have referred to “other animals” after referring to human (animals) in the same sentence. Medieval natural philosophers, who recognized that humans were animals, had the same problem with the use of “animal”; sometimes it included humans and sometimes not, and they too had to distinguish clearly between meanings. Even modern use of “nonhuman animal” creates a dichotomy between the human animal and the thousands of other animal species as a single category, so there is always a danger of unwanted implications in the use of ‘animal’, with or without ‘nonhuman’ attached. The regular use of “animal” to mean “nonhuman animal” does not mean that I subscribe to the view that there is a fundamental difference between humans and the rest of the animal world. A corollary of that view is that all animals apart from humans tend to be lumped together, as if there is less difference between a chimpanzee and an earthworm than there is between a human and a chimpanzee. Such a distinction has been made, largely on the basis of categorizations of the soul, in the western religious and philosophical tradition, but it is

Introduction

5

not considered fundamental in modern natural science or neuroscience and has been abandoned by many modern philosophers. On the translations. All the passages included are translated, most by recognized scholars. Those that have no translator listed are my own translations. Occasionally I have adjusted the wording of others’ translations slightly, usually to replace the archaisms that were popular with some translators over a century ago. The reader should bear in mind that all translation involves interpretation, the reason why there are several available translations into the same language of many writings. Generally the degree of interpretation varies according to the distance between the source language and that into which it is translated, in this case English, in terms of language structure and vocabulary, but also era and culture. Whereas Middle English is not so distant linguistically from modern English, many terms used in medieval Latin have no close equivalents in English, and there are some terms from medieval written languages whose meaning is uncertain or even unknown. Translators always face the problem of how literal their translations should be – following the Latin word order and vocabulary closely, for instance, can result in a convoluted English text that is difficult to read. But regardless of whether it is followed closely, there is a danger of misrepresenting the emphasis or even meaning of the original. On translation of names: Names of medieval people are usually given in their English form, with de, von, etc. translated as of. The exceptions are those which are invariably or almost always nowadays written in the non-English form (e.g. Pietro de’ Crescenzi). Similarly, Latin forms of names are used when this use is most common. Alternative forms used are given in the list of people. More than one form of a name appears in some cases if both forms are commonly used nowadays: e.g. Albertus Magnus – Albert the Great; Bartholomeus Anglicus – Bartholomew the Englishman. Sources of quoted passages: The commonly used titles and sections or chapters of the work from which the quoted passage comes are given in both the source language and in translation above each passage, followed by the book, chapter, treatise, part, etc. with their numbers given in Arabic numerals. The full references to the source texts in the original or medieval languages are given in the footnotes or bibliography, so that the reader can find them if he or she is able to read them. If the author is known, this name is placed first in bold letters and the title follows in italics, both in the original language and in English translation (in parentheses), followed by book number, chapter/section number, etc. and its title if it has one. If there is no known author, the title comes first in italics.

6

Introduction

On the quoted passage: Where the quoted passage does not start or end at a point indicated as the beginning or end of a book, chapter, treatise, section, etc. in the original text or standard modern editions of it, I have indicated this with an ellipsis “…”. On use of quotation marks: Throughout the work, within my text I have used double quotation marks with words, phrases or very short quotations from a pre-existing source, even if they are translated into English, and single quotation marks for words or phrases of doubtful validity (that is, indicating so-called … or popularly termed …). For instance, medieval writers commonly used ‘man’ to mean human, which is no longer acceptable in modern writing, but I have often used it, in inverted commas ‘…’, when discussing what medieval writers had written, as it reflects their view of the world. In the translations, man substitutes for its equivalent in the source language without quotation marks. In my opinion, substituting human for man or indicating that the latter might not be valid to our way of thinking in translations of medieval works distorts the outlook that lay behind them. Footnotes. Footnote references follow the recommendations of the Chicago Manual of Syle, but with the reference to the book, chapter, section, tractatus, title, etc., following the CMS reference and after a colon. In a few cases the edition given in the footnote is a post-medieval translation of the original, but in all other cases it is an edition in the source language. Here names and numbers of chapters, sections, etc. are given in the form used in the source. These references should enable the reader to find the passage in any edition of the source; however, occasionally page number references for the specific edition listed are given after the colon, where the quoted text would otherwise be difficult to find. In such cases, the numbers are preceded by p. or pp., unlike the CMS page number references, to avoid confusion with section or chapter numbers listed alongside them which are also in Arabic numerals. Some section numbers are given in brackets [ ], where these have been added by post-medieval editors and will not be found in early editions.

Chapter 1

The Genesis of the Animals The influence of the Bible on the world view of medieval Europeans was profound. If this is true of people in general, it was even more so of the medieval monk.1 Most of those who produced natural philosophy were cenobitic monks until the High Middle Ages, although there were some notable exceptions and some whose background is uncertain.2 In the seventh and eighth centuries monasteries became the European centres of learning and scriptoriums. The Bible was the basis of education and theologians and philosophers lived in a world where nature and history could only be defined within a scriptural framework. For much of the Middle Ages most writing by learned people that concerned the nature of the world people lived in was biblical exegesis, involving historical and literary interpretation, extracting moral example, and allegorical (or ‘typological’) interpretation of the Bible. The last assumed a hidden and true meaning to the text and often involved linking the Old to the New Testament by interpretation of the events in the former as prefiguring those of the latter. The pattern changed in the twelfth century with the advent of cathedral schools, which subsequently developed into universities by the thirteenth century. In the latter century the mantle of philosophy passed to the mendicant orders of St Dominic and St Francis, whose members were theologically trained but spent far more of their time in the world outside their convents. By the fourteenth century there were thinkers who did not belong to the Church at all, although they maintained a biblical outlook. Biblical narratives were not interpreted only by theologians or philosophers, however. There were various Latin translations of the biblical books during the Middle Ages, although Jerome’s Latin Vulgate translation, available at the beginning of the fifth century, increasingly became accepted as the authoritative version of the Bible in the Roman Church, but in the early Middle Ages there were also vernacular poems relating biblical events, especially in 1 Whereas the Bible almost invariably appears as a single volume nowadays, in the Middle Ages it did not; for instance, the Pentateuch, the Prophets, Psalms, the Gospels and Paul’s Epistles frequently appeared alone. Some parts of the Bible thus received much more attention from theologians than others and the different sections were regarded as teaching different things or employed in different settings (e.g. Paul’s Epistles as lessons in doctrine, the Psalms to be sung in liturgy). 2 The High Middle Ages is defined here as in the English-speaking world, as the period c.1100 to 1300.

© Koninklijke Brill BV, Leiden, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004721708_003

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Old English or Irish, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries many more works appeared in the vernacular, including parts of the Bible. The appearance of paper in Iberia in the eleventh century and its slow spread northwards facilitated book production, and the invention of printing in the fifteenth century made the dissemination of religious tracts and pictures much easier. In the High Middle Ages, more popular than the few complete vernacular Bibles were paraphrases of parts of the Bible. They appeared in various guises, often in works named ‘historia’ or ‘chronicle.’ Some works were ‘histories’ incorporating biblical narratives, and some, like Rudolf Ems’ Weltchronik of the early thirteenth century, were almost entirely based on the Bible. Like many other similar late medieval works, the Weltchronik got much of its material from Peter Comestor’s Latin Historia Scholastica of about 1170, which obtained papal approval in 1215. There were also biblical dramas in prose or verse, many performed as plays. The main target audience of vernacular biblical tales was obviously people who could not understand Latin, but references in some of these works to an audience of “simple folk” may refer to lay brethren rather than the general populace. The works themselves betray that knowledge of the Bible outside scholarly circles was not necessarily accurate. The popular works added material presumably intended to explain questions that people asked or that made the material easier for contemporary people to relate to, while some elaborated on dramatic events to add interest, much as modern biblical epic films have done. Often biblical authority was claimed for this additional material. Many of the writers appear to have been working from a rather hazy memory of the Bible or second-hand knowledge of it. Christian theology and philosophy thus incorporated a historical perspective. In the Middle Ages there was a conception of a linear and finite time (on Earth) from the Creation to the Apocalypse. Time was an element of God’s creation and was important insofar as it marked this progression, during which humans had the possibility to reach a greater understanding of God’s purpose. The most common chronological reckoning was Augustine’s six ages, which were punctuated by significant events, especially those related in the scriptures. as the twelfth-century theologian Hugh of St Victor (1096–1141) put it, “History follows the order of time, whereas allegory relates more to the order of knowledge, for teaching ought always to begin, not from the obscure, but from the evident  …”3 In Christian thought the central theme of these successive ages was the fall and redemption of humankind. The medieval social structure, including the place of domestic animals in it, was itself seen as ‘natural’ and permeated by hierarchy. Dramatic transformations of the world created 3 Hugh of Saint-Victor. Eruditionis Didascalicae Libri Septem. Edited by J.-P. Migne. PL, MPL 176, 0739–0838D: Liber VI, Cap. VI.

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by God would be made only by him. In this drama other beings living on Earth play a subsidiary role as part of nature, the world around humans that was created for them. Nonhuman animals were rarely ascribed agency in shaping historical events and usually acted as agents of a greater power. The Gospels make very little direct reference to animals and Paul made only occasional references in his letters that are not easy to interpret as either supportive or unsupportive of human respect for other animals. In the Old Testament the Pentateuch, especially the Book of Genesis, was by far the most important guide to the relative place of humans and other animals in the created world, but this aspect of these books was not the primary concern of exegetes. Thereafter in the Old Testament there are scattered references to animals, some implying care for them, others that animals not under human control are a threat. Interpretations of these verses as tools of argument will be found in many of the quoted passages in this volume. The excerpts below are intended to give some impression of the ways in which the origin of animals and references to animals in the Book of Genesis were interpreted, as well as giving some idea of medieval methods of interpretation. 1

The Medieval Conception of the Biblical Creation

Medieval exegetes were heirs to a long cosmogonical tradition, going back at least to the second century of Christianity, which concerned the method and timing of creation. To the medieval Christian mind, the creation of the cosmos, although described in Genesis as taking place in several stages, was planned and carried out in a systematic way by an infallible God. Early Christian and medieval exegetes used the writings of earlier thinkers known to them, including those by pagans where they did not obviously contradict the biblical account, to reconstruct the purpose behind the order and placing of the constituents that God added, and the shape of the universe he formed. Central to this endeavour was a reconciliation of the accounts of Genesis 1.1–2.3 with the conceptions of Greco-Roman philosophy. In this process were formed many aspects of the creation as understood in the Middle Ages, such as the concept that God first created the basic substance of the universe in one moment ex nihilo and then shaped this formless substance into the comprehensible world: as Ambrose of Milan put it, the substance was “made first, and afterwards put in order.”4 This ‘putting in order’ took place in stages corresponding to the six days, although the precise interpretation of this time period engendering 4 Ambrose of Milan, “Exameron,” in Sanctii Ambrosii Opera, Pars Prima, ed. Karl Schenkl (Prague: G. Freytag, 1896), Cap. 7.27.

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considerable discussion among hexamerists. Some believed that the whole of creation was enacted simultaneously. Regardless of whether the six days were interpreted in some literal way, as by Basil of Caesaria, Ambrose of Milan or Bede, or allegorically as by Augustine of Hippo, by the Middle Ages an apparent contradiction between the Genesis account that implied creation of everything within the six days and other biblical statements that God was still actively directing nature had been cleared up; the solution was that some of the created things were like seeds that came to fruition afterwards, so that the world seemingly continued to develop.5 Animals, which are listed as appearing in groups discussed further below, were among the components that made up the creation. Like all other cosmological phenomena, animals were thought to be composed of one of more of the four elements, earth, water, air and fire. The elemental concept as known in Europe was supposed to have originated with the pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles (mid-fifth century BCE) but was systematized by Aristotle and Hippocrates. Following certain concepts developed by Aristotle (but not his terminology) a fifth element, ether, was conceived as a form of clear refined air filling the region of the cosmos beyond the terrestrial sphere. Aristotle was followed by both Islamic and Christian philosophers in connecting the four elements with the four natures heat and cold (the active force), and dryness and moisture (the recipients). Bede was not an innovator of new ideas in exegesis or philosophy, but his In principium Genesis was a skilful synthesis of the ideas of earlier thinkers whose works he knew into a coherent account of the creation and the form of the cosmos. Here the various animals are created to embellish the earth just as certain non-animate elements are, and similarly belong in the inner terrestrial sphere in a cosmos conceived by almost all cosmogenists throughout the Middle Ages as a succession of concentric spheres, with earth, composed of the heaviest element, at its centre.6 Flying birds were not restricted to the innermost sphere, the earth and its associated waters, but they are adapted to and inhabit the lower sphere of air, closest to the earth.

5 In John 5:17 Christ implied that God was still active in directing nature: “But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working.’” In addition, apparently ‘new’ phenomena were constantly appearing in the world of the exegetes themselves. 6 This does not imply ‘central’ in its modern meaning of most important or fundamental to the universe: it is merely a positional indicator. Exceptions to the belief in a spherical earth were rare.

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Bede, In principium Genesis (On the beginning of Genesis), Bk 1, 1.207 [1.20] “And God also said, Let the waters bring forth the creeping creature having life and the bird over the earth under the firmament of heaven.” After the face of heaven was adorned with lights on the fourth day, portions of the lower world, namely, the waters and the air, were fittingly adorned on the fifth day with these creatures that move with the breath of life, because these elements are connected with each other and with heaven by a certain family relationship, as it were. They are linked with each other because the nature of the waters is very near to the quality of air: hence air is shown to be thickened by waters’ vapours so that it forms clouds and can sustain the flight of birds. Scripture bears witness that the air on a sudden shall be thickened into clouds, and the wind shall pass and drive them away. And then, it also drips dew throughout clear nights, the drops of which dew are found are found in the morning on the green plants. And they are linked in this way to heaven, because the air is so similar to it that it sometimes takes its name, as when Scripture calls those creatures that fly as we know in the air, the birds of heaven. And the Lord himself, speaking of the manifestation of his powers to the multitudes, who did not know the time of his coming, says, “When you see a cloud rising from the west. presently you say, A shower is coming, and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blow, you say, There will be wind, and it comes to pass. You hypocrites, you know how to discern the face of heaven and of the earth, but how is it that you do not discern this time?” Here it is certain that he calls this state of the air, the face of heaven, for the sake of variety. Therefore, God said, Let the waters bring forth the creeping creature having life and the bird over the earth under the firmament of heaven. And lest by chance anyone should think that any species of flying or aquatic creatures was overlooked in this word of the Lord, because there living creatures of the waters which move not by creeping, but by swimming or walking with feet, and because there are among birds those that have feathers even though they lack all capacity for flight, it is carefully added:8 “And God created the great whales and every living and moving creature which the waters brought forth according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.” Therefore, 7 Bede, In principium Genesis, ed. Charles W. Jones (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967): Liber 1, 1.120. The title in full: In principium Genesis, usque ad natiuitatem Isaac et eiectionem Ismahelis, libros IIII (On the beginning of Genesis, to the nativity of Isaac and the expulsion of Ismael, in four books). 8 Bede produced more than one ‘edition’ of his commentary on Genesis: here the translator, Calvin Kendall, has indicated which following passage belongs to his 1.21a/d. See Bede. 2008. On Genesis, edited and translated by Kalvin Kendall, 86. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

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no species was excepted when every living creature of those which the waters brought forth in their various kinds was created along with the great whales – that is, not only creeping, swimming and flying creatures, but also those which, not being adapted for any form of locomotion, cling fast to the rocks, as in the case with many types of shellfish. Moreover, the statement, and the bird over the earth under the firmament of heaven, offers no obstacle to the framework of truth, because indisputably birds which fly over the earth nevertheless fly under the starry heaven, although an immense space lies between  … Admittedly, it bothers some people that it was said, according to another translation, “And flying creatures flying near the firmament”, that is, next to the firmament of heaven.9 But it must be understood that it was said that birds fly under the firmament of heaven because the word “firmament” also indicates the ether, that is, the upper region of the air which extends from this stormy, foggy region in which birds fly as far as the stars, and which is believed, not implausibly, to be absolutely calm and full of light. trans. Calvin Kendall

In the twelfth century William of Conches gave a more ‘scientific’ explanation of how animals were created from the elements and their interaction. The work is written as a dialogue in which the Philosopher explains natural philosophy to the Duke of Normandy. William of Conches, Dragmaticon Philosophiae, Bk 3, Ch. 4. The Creation of Animals and Man10 1. Philosopher. After the bodies of the stars were thus created, because they are of a fiery nature, they began to move, and from their motion [began] to heat the air lying below them. Through the mediation of this air, water was heated, from which, through the boiling caused by fire, various types of animals were created. Some of these – namely those that possessed more of the upper elements in them – are birds: sometimes they are in the air, thanks to the lightness of the upper elements and the suitability of their

9

Referring to an older (pre-Vulgate) Latin translation, as used, for instance, by Ambrose of Milan. 10 William of Conches, Guillelmus de Conchis Dragmaticon philosophiae; Summa de philosophia in vulgari, ed. I. Ronca, L. Badia and J. Pujol (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997): Liber III, Cap. IV.

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wings; at other times they descend to the earth, as a result of the heaviness of the lower elements. On the other hand, those that had more water in them are fish, and that is why they can live in this element alone. 2. Duke. Unless you provide some reasonable argument or some authority for this, I will not believe that birds and fish were born from the sea. Philosopher. If you do not believe me, believe Ambrose, who says, “God of great might, of the race born from the waters, you return part to these and part you raise to the air.” Duke. I shall believe Ambrose, so you may go on to say something about the other animals. 3. Philosopher. When fish and birds had been thus created out of water through the working of the upper elements, where the water was shallower, there it was dried up as a result of that creation and through the heat of the upper elements, and there appeared on the earth some spots, as it were, on which man and the other animals live today. But the surface of the earth, which was muddy from the water lying on it, boiling from the heat, produced from itself (ex se) various kinds of animals. If in some part the quality of fire was dominant, then choleric animals, such as the lion, were born there; if earthly qualities were dominant, then melancholy animals, such as the ox, were born; where watery qualities dominated, phlegmatic animals, such as the pig, came into being. 4. But the body of man was made from a particular type of mud, in which the qualities of the elements had come together equally. It was made in the eastern region, as it is more temperate than the other regions. It is in this connection that holy Scripture tells of God making man from the mud of the earth: so attributing to the whole what pertains only to a part. For it should not be believed that soul, which is spirit and pure, was formed from mud, but created by God from nothing and given to man. Thus Moses says, “God created man from the mud of the earth and breathed on his face the breath of life.” trans. Italo Ronca and Matthew Curr

The creation of the animals culminated in the appearance of humans, who had a special place among them. In Genesis there are several passages that relate or imply significant events for the human-nonhuman animal relationship: the two versions of the creation (Genesis 1 and Genesis 2), the naming of the animals by the first man (Genesis 2), the Fall (Genesis 3), and the Flood and

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its aftermath (Genesis 8–9). The two accounts of the creation differ somewhat as to its order and method. Medieval commentators did not discuss this as an apparent contradiction and tended to conflate the two, placing emphasis on the Genesis 1 version, nowadays generally considered to have developed later than the other version, although it comes first in the Bible. For instance, Bede saw Genesis 2.7 as an explication of Genesis 1.26–27: “Here, then, is described at greater length the making of man, who was indeed made on the sixth day  …”11 It is the first version of creation that includes the well-known passage, here given as translation of the Latin Vulgate version: “And he said: ‘Let us make man to our image and likeness; and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moves upon the earth.’”12 There is no question that the words translated into English as ‘dominion’, Hebrew radah and its Vulgate Latin translation praesum, imply rule, but there is no indication here of whether this dominion should be exercised in a tyrannical and exploitative manner or benevolently. Just after this, in Genesis 1.28, humans are enjoined to “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.” The Latin word for subdue, subiugo, like the original Hebrew verb kabash, elsewhere in the Old Testament describes subjugation by force of enemy territory or forcing people into slavery. There was relatively little discussion of how dominion should be exercised in the Middle Ages. Theologians were primarily interested in the afterlife rather than life on earth, which was but a fleeting moment compared to life eternal, and as Jeremy Cohen pointed out, theologians and philosophers showed more interest in the command for humans to multiply than to dominate.13 Many philosophers sought a meaning of dominion beyond simple control over animals. In his first homily on Genesis and his defence of Christianity, Against Celsus, the first great Christian scholar and exegete, Origen (185–284 CE), suggested that the exercise of dominion does have some practical purpose besides providing for humans’ material needs, as its enforcement over wild 11 Bede, In principium Genesis: Liber 1, 2.7. 12 Genesis 1.26. This list differs in minor ways from that in some modern translations and from translations of the Old Testament made from Greek that were in use before Jerome’s translation from Hebrew (the Vulgate). Most significant is the substitution of ‘beasts’ (bestis) for ‘cattle’ (iumenta – also yoke-animals and/or beasts of burden), which is considered the most correct translation in almost all modern versions. Many of the pre-Vulgate translations were still in use in Europe until the twelfth century. 13 Jeremy Cohen, “Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It”: The Ancient and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989).

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and dangerous animals develops virtues in humans by exercising the seeds of courage in them. However, according to him, dominion over animals was not given by God just for these purposes, but to remind them of their struggle against sexual desire.14 Origen tells us that the essential meaning of dominion is allegorical, since animals represent the carnal and earthly man, the impulses of the outer man, but man should endeavour to suppress this corporeal side to live a Christian life by achieving the domination of the incorporeal, incorruptible and immortal inner man, created by God in his image. In addition, medieval exegetes interpreted dominion over animals as a legitimation of power and hierarchy, which was extended to encompass human socio-political and gender relations. In the medieval mind political rulership incorporated both domination (lordship) and care for the ruler’s subjects; kingship implied an authority given by God that also implied maintenance of the peace and protection of the people within the realm. Augustine of Hippo, De Genesi ad litteram (The Literal Meaning of Genesis) Ch. 1615 (16.55) “And God said, let us make humankind in our image and likeness.” We should note here that humans are both linked to and distinguished from other animals. The text says he created humans on the same day as the beasts; all animals of the earth are created at the same time. But humans have superior reason, which is why they are said to be made in God’s image and likeness. Hence they are discussed separately, after the words ‘God saw it was good’ which ended the section about other earthly animals. (16.59) “And God said, let us make humankind in our image and likeness.” Through God’s Likeness all things were made. How far was it involved in creating different species of things? Admittedly this question is far beyond human understanding, but we can still approach an answer by considering that every category and species of thing (whether sentient or rational) is made up of similar individuals formed on a single model. Rational souls are called ‘wise’ because of God’s wisdom. This label ‘wise’ is not applicable any further: we do not apply it to any beast, and far less to trees; nor to fire, air, water, or earth (although all these things 14 Origen, Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980): Bk 4, 78, 246. 15 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram, ed. Joseph Martin (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962): Liber XVI.

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are certainly manifestations of God’s wisdom, insofar as they exist). But when it comes to Likeness, we definitely say stones are like each other, and animals, and humans, and angels. This is true for individual categories too. Earth is earth, in as much as different examples of it are alike. Water – whatever its form and wherever it is – is like other cases of it, and cannot be anything but water. Air, however different it is from other things, can under no condition be different from air. Fire, even the tiniest spark of light, is what it is because it is like other examples of it. For every single stone and tree and animal body, we can see that it is only because each specimen is alike that they belong to a generic species, and that they are themselves what they are. A specimen is thought ‘fine’ if it matches other examples of its species. And of course similarity leads to happiness for souls. This occurs when a group of souls are similar, and friendship arises through having similar interests. Also, an individual soul cannot be steady unless activities and virtues are harmonized; this is a sign of the happy life. Of course, all these things demonstrate likeness, but we can’t say they are Likeness itself. A species is made up of things similar to each other: each one is what it is, but all contribute to the whole, which God both established and continues to oversee. They were certainly made this way by God’s Likeness [the Word], which is why each one’s beauty comes from being like its species. It was God’s Likeness who established everything; he is unchanging and undefiled, and surpasses everything! However, creation in God’s Likeness refers only to rational beings, nothing else. Everything was created by God’s Likeness, but not in God’s Likeness. (16.60) Rational beings on the other hand were created by God’s Likeness but also in his Likeness. No other nature stands between them: the human mind embraces only Truth itself (although it only senses Truth when it is truly pure and blissful). That Truth is called the Father’s ‘likeness and image’ and his ‘Wisdom’. So the words ‘Let us make humankind in our image and likeness’ should be taken as referring to the innermost, most important part of humans: their mind. The value of humans is in this most important feature, the part which distinguishes us from the beasts. All other human features are certainly fine in themselves, but they are shared with the beasts so we should downplay them in humans. Perhaps there is something to the belief that the human body itself is like God, since humans stand upright to gaze at heaven. Humans are turned to heaven just as the absolute Likeness is turned to his Father, and unlike other animals whose backs are to heaven as they lie flat on their

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belly. Still, this theory is not entirely satisfactory. Our body is very different from heaven, but the Likeness who is the Son cannot be different in any way from the One he is similar to. Other things are similar within their species while still having differences; but there is nothing different in absolute Likeness. trans. Roger Pearse

In the Latin Vulgate creation of Genesis 1, iumenta (yoke-animals or beasts of burden), are listed along with creeping animals and animals of the Earth/field (bestias terrae) and (iumenta et reptilia et bestias terrae). Augustine, using a pre-Vulgate Latin translation, noted the apparent incongruity of pecora (iumenta) alongside the contemporary taxonomic classifications of animals that crept and animals that lived on land, but explained it partly by a problem of translation: Augustine of Hippo, De Genesi ad litteram (The Literal Meaning of Genesis), Ch. 15.5316 “And God said, Let the earth produce different kinds of living animal: quadrupeds, and serpents, and different kinds of beasts of the earth, and different kinds of livestock. And so it happened.” In the Latin language the word ‘beast’ designates all irrational animals in general, but here we should distinguish the types. We should take ‘quadrupeds’ (quadrupedum) as being beasts of burden; ‘snakes’ (serpentium) refers to all reptiles; ‘beasts’ (bestiarum terrae) refers to untamed creatures, all wild quadrupeds; and ‘livestock’ (pecora) refers to quadrupeds which do not help humankind by working but still provide some benefit to those who feed them.17 trans. Roger Pearse

Augustine wrote three works on Genesis at different stages of his life.18 The above was the second, which, like the first, from which the next passage comes, was an early effort. More so than in any of his other extant works, these 16 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram, ed. Joseph Martin (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962): Liber XVI, Cap. XV. 17 “Quadrupeds” are listed in Augustine’s quotation of this verse, Genesis 1.24, which he gives just before this passage and which derives from the pre-Vulgate translation he uses, but not in most Vulgate versions or any published English versions of the Bible. 18 The names under which the works appear, both in Latin and translated into English, often vary and the title of the Literal Meaning of Genesis often lacks the information that it is unfinished. To avoid confusion, I translate it as above and the last of the three exegeses, De

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commentaries demonstrate how Augustine’s hermeneutical approach varied, causing considerable confusion both in medieval theologians who followed his exegetical example and modern researchers, who have referred to them variously as spiritual, literal, allegorical or figurative. Augustine himself had been a Manichee for ten years, and in his first work on Genesis he answered some of their criticisms of Christian scripture; evidently, they objected that many of the animals God created were useless while others were harmful or frightening. Augustine answers that all things are beautiful to God who made them and that God uses them for the governance of the universe. It seems that neither Augustine nor the Manichaeans thought it important that these animals might be food for other nonhuman animals: to them, even if they functioned only as aids to learning about morality and faith, all created things had to have some value to humans – that, after all, was why God had created the Earth and everything on it. Augustine of Hippo, De Genesi contra Manichaeos (On Genesis against the Manichaeans), Bk 1, Ch. 1619 25. “And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth the living soul according to each kind of quadruped and reptile and beast of the earth.’ And so it was done. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kind, and the cattle according to their kind and all the reptiles of the earth according to their kind. And God saw that they were good.”20 The Manichees also stir up this question and ask, “What need was there for God to make so many living things, either in the waters or on the land, that are not necessary for men? And also many that are harmful and frightening?” When they say this, they do not understand how all things are beautiful to their creator and maker, who uses all of them for governing the universe which he rules by the supreme law. For if an untrained person enters the workshop of an artisan, he sees many tools whose uses he does not know, and if he is quite stupid, he thinks they are superfluous. Moreover, if he carelessly falls against the kiln or injures himself, while mishandling some sharp piece of iron, he thinks that the shop contains many dangerous and harmful things. Still, since the artisan knows their uses, he laughs at his visitor’s foolishness and goes about his work, not paying attention to his silly comments. But some men are very foolish. They do not dare to find fault with what they do not understand in the shop of a human Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim (c.415 CE), in full as the Literal Commentary on Genesis in Twelve Books. 19 Augustine, De Genesi contra Manichaeos, ed. Dorothea Weber (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998): Liber I, Cap. XVI. 20 Genesis 1.24–25.

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artisan; rather, when they see such things, they believe that they are necessary and made for certain functions. Yet in this world, of which God is proclaimed the creator and governor, they dare to find fault with many things whose purposes they do not see, and they want to appear to know what they do not know in the works and tools of the Almighty Artisan. 26. I admit that I do not know why mice and frogs were created, or flies or worms. Yet I see that all things are beautiful in their kind, though on account of our sins many things seem to us disadvantageous. For I observe the body and members of no living thing in which I do not find that measures, numbers, and order contribute to its harmonious unity. I do not understand where all these things come from if not from the highest measure, number and order, which lies in the immutable and eternal sublimity of God … For God governs this universe much better than each of us governs his own house. Hence, make use of what is useful, watch out for what is harmful, leave what is superfluous. When you see measures, numbers, and order in all things, seek their maker. You will not find him except where there is the supreme measure, the supreme number, and the supreme order, that is, in God, of whom it has most truly been said that he disposed all things in measure, number, and weight. In this way you will perhaps gather richer fruit when you praise God in the lowliness of a fly than when you cross the river on the height of some beast. trans. Roland J. Teske

Why “man”, in the eyes of medieval Christians the most important part of God’s earthly creation, should be made on the sixth and last day of the Creation, after the other animals and the rest of nature, was something that required explanation. Below we have the answer of Gregory of Nyssa, made in a work intended as a supplement to the Hexameron of his brother Basil. Gregory of Nyssa, De opificio hominis (On the Making of Man). Ch. 2.121 1. For not as yet had that great and precious thing, man, come into the world of being; it was not to be looked for that the ruler should appear before the subjects of his rule; but when his dominion was prepared, the next step was that the king should be manifested. When, then, the Maker of all had prepared beforehand, as it were, a royal lodging for the future king (and this was the land, and islands, and sea, and the heaven arching like a roof over them), and when all kinds of wealth had been stored in this palace (and by wealth I mean the whole creation, all that is in plants 21

Gregory of Nyssa, “De hominis opificio,” in Του Εν Αγίοισ ΠατρῸσ Ημων Γρηγοριου Ἐπισκοποῦ Νῦσσησ Τα Εὐρισκομενα ΠαντᾺ, S.P.N. Gregorii, Episcopi Nysseni, ed. J.P. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus (Paris: 1858), 123–257: Caput II.1.

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and trees, and all that has sense, and breath, and life; and  – if we are to account materials also as wealth – all that for their beauty are reckoned precious in the eyes of men, as gold and silver, and the substances of your jewels which men delight in – having concealed, I say, abundance of all these also in the bosom of the earth as in a royal treasure-house), he thus manifests man in the world, to be the beholder of some of the wonders herein, and the lord of others; that by his enjoyment he might have knowledge of the Giver, and by the beauty and majesty of the things he saw might trace out that power of the Maker which is beyond speech and language. 2. For this reason man was brought into the world last after the creation, not being rejected to the last as worthless, but as one whom it behoved to be king over his subjects at his very birth. … and for this reason He gives him as foundations the instincts of a twofold organization, blending the Divine with the earthy, that by means of both he may be naturally and properly disposed to each enjoyment, enjoying God by means of his more divine nature, and the good things of earth by the sense that is akin to them. trans. H.A. Wilson

A rather more complex explanation of why humans appeared last in the creation was incorporated in Nemesius of Emesa’s explication of its order. In many ways anticipating high medieval natural philosophers, in the late fourth century Nemesius combined material from Aristotle, Galen and other earlier thinkers with the Genesis account of the Creation to argue that the order in which living things were created was a climb up the scala naturae (ladder of nature): that is, a gradual progression from motionless beings with no feeling or perception to one equipped with all the senses, rationality and speech whom all the others had been created to serve, the human. This progression also ensured a bond between all things created and that man had something of everything created in him, an early Christian version of the human as microcosmos, of which more below. De natura hominis was translated into Latin by Alphanus of Salerno c.1080 and was influential in the High Middle Ages but was thought for many centuries to be by Gregory of Nyssa. Nemesius of Emesa, Περὶ φύσεως ἀνθρώπου (Lat. De Natura Hominis: On the Nature of Man) 1. The Place of Human Beings in the Scheme of Things22 22 Nemesius, “De Natura Hominis,” in PG SS Patrum Ægyptiorum Opera Omnia, Vol. 40/1, ed. J.-P. Migne (1863), 483–840: Bk 1.

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As a result beings that are altogether inanimate are not widely separated from plants that have the power of nourishment, nor these in turn from non-rational sensitive animals: nor are non-rational animals, indeed, wholly foreign to those that are rational, separated without any inborn and natural bond … Then again, subsequently, the Creator, as he moved on from plants to animals, did not at once proceed to a nature that changes its place and is sensitive, but took care to proceed gradually and carefully in this direction. He constructed the bivalves and the corals like sensitive trees, for he rooted them in the sea like plants and put shells around them like wood, and made them stationary like plants; but he endowed them with the sense of touch, the sense common to all animals, so that they are associated with plants in having roots and being stationary, with animals by the sense of touch. The sponge, at any rate, Aristotle tells us, although growing on rocks, both contracts and defends itself when it senses something approaching. For such reasons the wise men of old were accustomed to call all such things zoophytes. Again, he linked the bivalves and the like to the generation of animals that change their place but are incapable of going far, but move to and from the same place.23 Most of the animals with shells and worms are like this. Then in the same way he gradually added more senses to some, to others mobility over great distances, and progressed to the more complete of the non-rational animals. I call more complete those that have all the senses and can travel a long way. Again, when moving from the non-rational animals to the rational animal, man, he did not construct this all at once, but first he endowed the other animals also with certain natural forms of understanding, devices and resources for their preservation, so that they appear near to the rational animals, and thus he projected the truly rational animal, man. In the same way, too, if you investigate voice you will also find a gradual progress from the simple and undifferentiated vocalisation of horses and cattle to the varied and differentiated voices of crows and imitative birds, until he finished with the articulated and perfect voice of man. Again, he linked articulate speech to thought and reasoning, making it a messenger of the movements of the intellect. Thus he joined everything to everything harmoniously, and bound them together, and 23

Here Nemesius draws on Aristotle’s Historia Animalium, 1.1. 487b10, 5.16 548b10. The pinna is a two-valved mollusc, the sea-nettle a jellyfish or, in Aristotle, a sea anemone. However, Aristotle says a sponge resembles a plant.

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collected into one things intelligible and things visible, by the medium of the generation of man. trans. R.W. Sharples and P.J. van der Eijk

Later theologians or philosophers very rarely challenged anything that Augustine had written, but especially in the High Middle Ages they expanded on it with reference to the work of others, some of them pagan philosophers who wrote before the Church Fathers but whose own work was unknown in the Early Middle Ages. Influenced by conceptions of the soul acquired from Aristotle via philosophers of the Moslem world and the notion that there was an overarching hierarchy of beings (the scala naturae), which had developed from Platonic philosophy and Aristotle’s concept that the cosmos was permeated by hierarchy, Thomas Aquinas further interprets the brief descriptions of animals in the Genesis account of creation.24 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Bk 1, Question 72, a 1–425 a1. The different grades of life which are found in different living creatures can be discovered from the various ways in which Scripture speaks of them, as Basil says (Hexaemeron, Homily 8). The life of plants, for instance, is very imperfect and difficult to discern, and hence, in speaking of their production, nothing is said of their life, but only their generation is mentioned, since only in generation is a vital act observed in them. For the powers of nutrition and growth are subordinate to the generative life, as will be shown later on (1:78:2). But amongst animals, those that live on land are, generally speaking, more perfect than birds and fishes, not because the fish is devoid of memory, as Basil upholds (Hexaemeron, Homily 8) and Augustine rejects (De Genesi ad litteram 3), but because their limbs are more distinct and their generation of a higher order, (yet some imperfect animals, such as bees and ants, are more intelligent in certain ways). Scripture, therefore, does not call fishes “living creatures,” but “creeping creatures having life”; whereas it does call land animals “living creatures” on account of their more perfect life, and seems to imply 24

Aristotle is frequently ‘accused’ of devising the scala naturae, mainly in works not written by scholars of ancient or medieval philosophy, but he did not suggest an overall hierarchy. More on this in Chapter 2. 25 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris Angelici. Opera Omnia. Iussu Leonis XIII (Rome: Vatican Polyglot Press, 1888–1906): Liber 1, quaestio 72, 1–4. Hereafter Summa Theologiae is referred to as ST, and references refer to this Iussu Leonis XIII, Opera Omnia unless otherwise stated.

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that fishes are merely bodies having in them something of a soul, whilst land animals, from the higher perfection of their life, are, as it were, living souls with bodies subject to them. But the life of man, as being the most perfect grade, is not said to be produced, like the life of other animals, by earth or water, but immediately by God. a2. By “cattle,” domestic animals are signified, which in any way are of service to man: but by “beasts,” wild animals such as bears and lions are designated. By “creeping things” those animals are meant which either have no feet and cannot rise from the earth, like serpents, or those whose feet are too short to lift them far from the ground, like the lizard and tortoise. But since certain animals, like deer and goats, seem to fall under none of these classes, the word “quadrupeds” is added. Or perhaps the word “quadruped” is used first as being the genus to which the others are added as species, for even some reptiles, such as lizards and tortoises, are four-footed. a3. In other animals, and in plants, mention is made of genus and species to denote the generation of like from like. But it was unnecessary to do so in the case of man, as what had already been said of other creatures might be understood of him. Again, animals and plants may be said to be produced according to their kinds, to signify their remoteness from the Divine image and likeness, whereas man is said to be made “in the image and likeness of God.” a4. The blessing of God gives power to multiply by generation, and, having been mentioned in the preceding account of the making of birds and fishes, could be understood of the beasts of the earth, without requiring to be repeated. The blessing, however, is repeated in the case of man, since in him generation of children has a special relation to the number of the elect [cf. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 3.12], and to prevent anyone from saying that there was any sin whatever in the act of begetting children. As to plants, since they experience neither desire of propagation, nor sensation in generating, they are deemed unworthy of a formal blessing. trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province

Below Thomas Aquinas explains how humans have been created as superior to other animals in that they are microcosms of creation. The idea that the body was related to an allegorical concept of microcosm, according to which the cosmos is contained in the ‘little cosmos’ of the world and both are represented in miniature in the human body, was a medieval inheritance from

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the Greco-Roman ideal of harmonious and symmetrical parts, especially its manifestation in Neoplatonic thought. Thus the human body was believed to be a reflection of God’s ordering of the cosmos, and “man” to have a more equitable temperament because of the mingling of all elements in him, as well as spiritual substance. Other animals do not possess the latter, nor do they contain all elements, or if they do, they are in imbalance, but aspects of all of these animals are contained within the human. Aquinas’ explication incorporates concepts from elemental and complexion theory as well as Neoplatonism.26 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Bk 1a, Question 91, a 1 As God is perfect in His works, He bestowed perfection on all of them according to their capacity: “God’s works are perfect.”27 He Himself is simply perfect by the fact that “all things are pre-contained” in Him, not as component parts, but as “united in one simple whole,” as Dionysius says;28 in the same way as various effects pre-exist in their cause, according to its one virtue. This perfection is bestowed on the angels, inasmuch as all things which are produced by God in nature through various forms come under their knowledge. But on man this perfection is bestowed in an inferior way. For he does not possess a natural knowledge of all natural things, but is in a manner composed of all things, since he has in himself a rational soul of the genus of spiritual substances, and in likeness to the heavenly bodies he is removed from contraries by an equable temperament. As to the elements, he has them in their very substance, yet in such a way that the higher elements, fire and air, predominate in him by their power; for life is mostly found where there is heat, which is from fire; and where there is humour, which is of the air. But the inferior elements abound in man by their substance; otherwise the mingling of elements would not be evenly balanced, unless the inferior elements, which have the less power, predominated in quantity. Therefore the body of man is said to have been formed from the slime of the earth; because earth and water mingled are called slime, and for this reason man is called ‘a little world,’ because all creatures of the world are in a way to be found in him.

26 See Ch. 2, pp. 60–62 for a brief explanation of Neoplatonism. 27 Deuteronomy 32:4. 28 Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, “The Celestial Hierarchy,” Liber V. See below, p. 63. Aquinas followed Albertus Magnus in accepting that Pseudo-Dionysius’ works were compatible with Aristotle’s philosophy.

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ad.1. The power of the Divine Creator was manifested in man’s body when its matter was produced by creation. But it was fitting that the human body should be made of the four elements, that man might have something in common with the inferior bodies, as being something between spiritual and corporeal substances. trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province

In the twelfth century several poetic works had appeared that personified nature as an allegorical figure, the goddess Natura, and celebrated the nature of the cosmos. Bernardus Silvestris’ account of the creation, Cosmographia or De Mundi universitate sive Megacosmus et Microcosmus was loosely modelled on Plato’s Timaeus, the one work of Plato known to medieval scholars in the High Middle Ages,29 but there are influences from many Christian authors, including Boethius and the ‘Chartrians.’30 There are obvious traces of Neoplatonist thought and the concept of the human as microcosmos (referred to above) is prominent. Cosmographia is written in alternating prose and poetry in various classical metres and as an allegorical tale, which avoids any of the potential difficulties that might have arisen from writing of gods and goddesses and the like in Bernard’s era. Nevertheless, it is a serious work of philosophy, a statement of twelfth-century intellectual attitudes to humankind’s place in the natural order and affinity with it, in which Bernard described the ordering of the physical universe and the creation of ‘man,’ megacosmus and microcosmus respectively. Nature, divine providence, the celestial principle and other concepts were all personified. Cosmographia is not, therefore, founded on Genesis in the same way that the above commentaries or dramas are, but its conception of the nature and purpose of the cosmos and the characteristics of animals were made to conform with the twelfth-century perception of the biblical creation. Here Noys (from Gr. nous31) expounds the wonder of the created human to the 29

Of Plato’s dialogues Timaeus was the only one available in medieval Latin Europe, not in its full-length version but as Calcidius’ partial translation and commentary. 30 The terms ‘school of Chartres’ and ‘Chartrian’ are not favoured by all modern scholars, as the so-called Chartrians were associated with or taught at various places and there is no obvious common program that their works share, even if all of them were exponents of the liberal arts and most had an enthusiasm for Plato’s philosophy. Among the scholars associated with Chartres were Bernard of Chartres, Thierry of Chartres, William of Conches and John of Salisbury. For convenience, here I refer to them as a group, even if that group had less cohesion than the term ‘Chartrian’ might imply. 31 The classical Greek word nous (νόος) refers to a concept that is not easily expressed by any modern word. It is the faculty of the human mind necessary for understanding what is true or real, which may equate to “intellect”, “understanding”, “mind”, “thought” or

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goddesses in her summary of the microcosmos to come. The human soul has acquired knowledge of “the nature of the universe and the laws of destiny” while being guided through the spheres of the heavens by Urania but loses this knowledge when combined with the body. However, it is recoverable through philosophy and the arts, for which “man” is uniquely equipped. Bernardus Silvestris, Cosmographia, Microcosmus 1032 “That this sensible universe, the image of an ideal universe, may be completed through the completion of its parts, Man will be made, his form closely akin to the divine, a blessed and happy conclusion of my work, such as he has lived from eternity, a subject of the primary universe, a worthy and in no way inferior idea in my mind. He will derive his mind from heaven, his body from the elements, so that he may dwell bodily in earth, mentally in heaven. His mind and body, though diverse, will be joined into one, such that a sacred union may render the work agreeable to both. He shall be both divine and earthly, and will devote himself to both spheres, dealing wisely with the world, reverently with the gods. Thus can he conform to his dual nature and remain in harmony with his two defining principles. That he may both worship things divine and fully embrace earthly life, and meet the demands of this double commitment, he will possess the gift of reason in common with higher powers; only a thin line will separate Man from the gods.” “Brute beasts make plain the dullness of their faculties: their heads are bent forward, their faces downcast. But Man alone, his form bearing witness to the majesty of his mind, will raise his blessed head towards the stars, that he may claim the laws which the heavens and their unalterable courses as a model for his own life …” “It is my will that the elements be his: that fire burn for him, the Sun shine, the earth be fruitful, the sea ebb and flow; that Earth bear its fruits for him, the sea its fish, the mountains their flocks, the wilderness its beast for him, that he subordinate all to himself, rule on earth and govern the universe. I have established him as ruler and high priest of creation.” trans. Winthrop Wetherbee

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perhaps “awareness” or even “intuition.” It was usually translated into Latin as intellegentia or intellectus. Bernardus Silvestris, “Cosmographia,” in Poetic Works, ed. and trans. Winthrop Wetherbee (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 6–181: Microcosmus 10.

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In Microcosmos 13, Bernardus explains how Physis mixes the elements to construct “Man” so that he can fulfil his destiny despite a degree of disorder introduced into Creation through the evil influence of Silva. Other animals receive only a brief mention as an unfavourable comparison to the wonders of the human, whose construction is then expounded at length. Bernardus Silvestris, Cosmographia, Microcosmos 13.833 6. She [Physis] separated those properties which were substantially and in their natures simple. She mingles those closely related that they might become compound substances through this joining. Of fire and water, one is hot, the other cold: if dryness or moisture is joined by association to one or the other, a certain kinship is revealed by their cohesion and closeness. Of air and earth, one is moist, the other dry; if heat or cold is joined by association to one or the other, such a relationship is called a mixture. Thus Physis worked with extreme care at this mixing of qualities; for it pertained to the task at hand, and was clearly no idle matter. 7. She recalled that in the human anatomy certain parts were to be formed from simple, others from compound materials. And when the elements, through congruity ad proximity, adapted themselves to one another, that coherence appeared which in an animal is called complexion. Physis applied these elementary complexions to the construction of Man in a such a way that what arose from them would conform to the principles from which it arose. Melancholy and phlegm are the result, in the one case, of earthly gravity, in the other, of the lightness of water. Choler is kindles by fire, the sanguine is airy and mild. 8. Moreover, that carefulness on the part of nature which is seen in man in not also found in other animals. For an imbalanced mixture of humours is often apt to distort the complexion of brute beasts. The donkey is made sluggish by phlegm, the lion wrathful by choler; the dog is wholly imbued with his airy sense of smell. The human condition, unique and remarkable, is the product of a complexion of humours in which quality and quantity are balanced. Human nature has been wrought with all possible care, so that insufficiency and excess have very little effect on the healthy state of the work. For it was not right that the future abode of intellect and reason suffer imbalance or disordering uncertainty in its deliberations. trans. Winthrop Wetherbee

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The Naming of the Animals

We find repeated references to the naming of the animals by the first man, which is mentioned in the same verse as the creation of the beasts and birds, Genesis 2.19 (version two of the creation), in theology and philosophy throughout the Middle Ages and it was a popular theme in iconography, especially in bestiaries. Certain assumptions are common to all the exegeses: all assume that the first man was naming species, not individual animals, and however nuanced the discussion of the event becomes, the rational and linguistic ability of the human, unique to living beings on the newly created Earth, is not questioned. In medieval exegesis, the naming was usually seen in the context of the dominion of Genesis 1; the task was an indication of man’s superior nature, as we see in the following passage from Augustine, echoed by Bede. However, other reasons were sometimes emphasized in late antique works. In his tractate On Paradise Ambrose suggests that God gave the task of naming the animals to Adam so that he would realize that like (other) animals, he would need a female partner.34 Augustine subsequently mentioned the same aspect of the naming in his first commentary on Genesis, but alongside the significance of the act as evidence of man’s unique ability to reason. Ambrose of Milan, De Paradiso (On Paradise), 1135 Examine, now, the reason why God had by this time created out of the earth all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. How can we account for the fact that God brought merely the beasts of the field and the birds of the air to Adam? Animals were there, we know, each according to its kind. And so it is related further on: ‘Adam named all the animals and all the beasts of the field, but he found no helper like himself.’36 How can we explain this other than by saying that the untamed beasts and the birds of the air were brought to man by divine power, while man himself held power over the beasts that were tame and domesticated? The former lay within the province of God’s activity. The latter were due to the diligence of man. Besides this, there is a reason why everything was brought to 34 Genesis 2.19–21 states that God created the animals so that there would be helper for man among them, but in the Vulgate “there was not found” (Adam vero non inveniebatur adiutor similis eius) one like him among them (rather than “Adam found no …”), so God made woman. Ambrose did not use the Vulgate, his contemporary Jerome’s translation from Hebrew. In the Vulgate it is not clear who was doing the finding. 35 Ambrose, “De Paradiso,” in Sanctii Ambrosii Opera, Pars Prima, edited by Karl Schenkl (Prague: F. Tempsky: G. Freytag, 1896), 263–336: Cap. XI. 36 Genesis 2.19.20.

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Adam. In this way he would be able to see that nature in every aspect is constituted of two sexes: male and female. Following these observations, he would become aware that association with a woman was a necessity of his lot. trans. John J. Savage

Augustine of Hippo, De Genesi contra Manichaeos (On Genesis against the Manichaeans) 2.11.1637 Hence, God first showed man how much better he was than the cattle and all irrational animals, and this is signified by the statement that all the animals were brought to him that he might see what he would call them and give them names. This shows that man is better than the animals in virtue of reason, since only reason which judges concerning them is able to distinguish and know them by name. This latter idea is an easy one to grasp, for man quickly understands that he is better than the cattle. The former idea is a difficult one to grasp, namely, that by which he understands that the rational part in him that rules is distinct from the animal part which is ruled. Bede notes that the fish were not brought to Adam, from which he concludes that they must have been named gradually afterwards. In Bede’s exegesis this is not important, however, as it does not negate the purpose of the exercise of naming, which was not, in his argument, to give every single animal (species) a name at one time, but, as Augustine had written, to inform the first man of his superiority over animals, knowledge that will then be passed on to descendants. Bede, In principium Genesis (On the beginning of Genesis) 1.2:19c–29b38 The reason for bringing all the animals of the Earth and the birds of the heavens to Adam for God to see what he would call them and what names he would give them is this: that in this way God might demonstrate to man how much better he was than all the animals lacking reason … For from this it is clear that man by virtue of that reason is better than the beasts, for only reason which is better can distinguish and set them apart by name. trans. Calvin Kendall

37 Augustine, De Genesi contra Manichaeos: Liber II, Cap. XI. 38 Bede, In principium Genesis: Liber 1, 2:19c–29b.

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Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica, written in the mid-twelfth century, incorporates both material from late antique and medieval exegesis and a paraphrase of the events of the Bible. As a result, there are several interpretations or assumptions that do not necessarily follow from the biblical text, although it is largely faithful to the account of events in Genesis. It was the most influential medieval paraphrase of the Bible almost from the time it appeared and the basis for many ‘popular Bibles.’ Here the purpose of the naming of the animals from the start of the exercise is to show Adam that he commands them, is different from them and must obtain a mate from elsewhere, but several other implications are extracted from the Genesis account, for instance, that fish were also named by Adam and that for water creatures there are corresponding creatures on land, an aspect of the assumed symmetry of God’s creation. Peter Comestor, Historia Scholastica: Liber Genesis, 16: De impositione nominum animantium principaliter, et mulieris formation (On the naming of the animals and the creation of woman)39 God also said: It is not good for a man to be alone; let us help him beget children, that they may be like him. For similar things are naturally born of similar things. But lest the formation of a woman might seem to Adam to be unnecessary, because he thought it [she] would be among living things, therefore God brought to Adam all the living things of the earth and of the air. By which is to be understood, and the living of the waters. For the part should be taken as the whole; or they are all parts of the earth, because even those things which are created out of the waters have something in them of the earth; this is clear, as they are equivalent to the animals of the earth, because similar ones have been identified. And he caused all things to come together by the will with which he created all things; or perhaps they were made by angels. But he brought them for two [reasons], that man might impose on them names by which they might know that he had control over them, and that Adam would know that none of them were like him. And Adam gave them the names in the Hebrew language, which was from the beginning the only tongue.

39 Petrus Comester, Scolastica Historia: Liber Genesis, ed. A. Sylwan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005): Cap. XVI.

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Animals Wild and Tame

To those familiar with it, the Genesis account could be taken as evidence that humans had once peacefully co-existed with other animals and had no need to eat them, but in the Middle Ages these aspects of the prelapsarian or perhaps prediluvian era elicited little comment, if they were not overlooked entirely. On the time when humans lived in paradise Historia Scholastica, for instance, is entirely concerned with the future implications of Adam acquiring a wife and their state of innocence before sin, when there was no cause for shame. Bede, however, did ponder why God had given humans dominion over the animals in the prelapsarian era when they had no use for it. Bede, In principium Genesis (On Genesis) 1.1:26c/e40 It is proper to ask for what profit man received dominion over fish and birds and all the living creatures of the earth, and for what use or comforts these were created for man, if he never sinned, since the sequel of this passage declares that in the first creation they were not granted to him for food but only the green plants and the fruits of the trees. But perhaps it could be said that God foreknew that man would sin, and by sinning that he, whom God created immortal, would become mortal, and therefore that God instituted these comforts for him in the beginning, by which he as a mortal could care for his own fragility, gaining from them, that is to say, both nourishment and clothing and assistance in labour and travel. It is not proper to ask why man does not still rule over all living creatures, for after he would not submit himself to his creator, he lost dominion over those whom the Creator had subjected to his jurisdiction. Finally, as evidence of the first creation, we read not only that birds have rendered obedience to saints humbly serving God, but also that they have been spared from the yawning jaws of wild beasts, and that the poison of serpents has been unable to harm them. trans. Calvin Kendall

More typical was the representation in the sermon below, in which the thirteenth-century theologian Thomas of Chobham altogether ignores the peaceful prelapsarian human-nonhuman animal relationship and the era before the Flood, when humans were vegetarians. A purpose as didactic tools for humans is not inconsistent with peaceful coexistence, but Thomas also 40 Bede, In principium Genesis: Liber 1, 1.26c/e.

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states that when God created nonhuman animals he had in mind that humans could eat them and make things from them, thus implying a foreknowing of the post-Flood situation as posited by Bede.41 Thomas of Chobham, Summa de arte praedicandi (The Art of Preaching)42 The Lord created different creatures with different natures not only for the sustenance of men, but also for their instruction, so that through the same creatures we may contemplate not only what may be useful to us in the body, but also what may be useful in the soul. trans. Franco Morenzoni

Medieval writers relied heavily on classical material for much of their information, but those who adopted aspects of pagan classical philosophy made an effort to ensure that it conformed to Christian theology. The marriage was not always easy and the Church frequently intervened to keep philosophers on what it saw as the right track. However, works that were not exegetic, theological or philosophical sometimes incorporated material which, although it did not flatly contradict the Genesis account, put a different slant on how the existing relationship between humans and other animals had developed than previous medieval explanations. Parts of the Italian Pietro de Crescenzi’s fourteenth-century treatise on agriculture relied heavily on the first-century BCE work of the Roman agriculturalist Varro, and Crescenzi included a version of Varro’s explanation of the evolution of human society from one of hunter-gatherers to one that domesticated animals and practised agriculture.43 Varro suggests an evolution from hunting and gathering to animal domestication to agriculture, whereas Crescenzi explains it as from gathering to agriculture to animal domestication. The difference may be due to carelessness, as 41

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Medieval theologians argued that time as it existed on Earth had no meaning beyond the cosmos created by God, but no-one employed this argument to suggest explicitly that he created everything within the cosmos with the Fall and the Flood in mind: God could not be held directly responsible for the creation of evil. This quotation is repeated on p. 143 as the beginning of a longer passage on use of animals as exemplars. Thomas de Chobham, Summa de arte praedicandi, ed. F. Morenzoni (Turnhout: Brepols, 1988). Marcus Terentius Varro, Rerum rusticarum libri tres, ed. Heinrich Keil (Leipzig: Teubner, 1929): Bk 2.1. Both his and Crescenzi’s processes proceed by in stages in a way that would be considered simplistic now, but they are ‘modern’ in so much as they posit an evolution of human subsistence methods from hunting (or scavenging) and gathering to a society that was largely dependent on agriculture with domesticated animals. In English: Varro on Farming: M. Terenti Varronis Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres, trans. Lloyd Storr-Best (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1912).

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Crescenzi’s priority was to explain the management of land, plants and domestic animals, but he was well-educated and had practised as a lawyer and judge, and may have adjusted Varro’s evolution to fit better, as he saw it, with the Genesis account. Pietro de’ Crescenzi, Liber ruralium commodorum (Treatise on Agricul­ ture) 844 As Varro says, in the earliest times there were animals, and men who lived naturally on those things that the unworked land provided. Then from this life they came to the second way, that is, to agriculture and to pastoral ways, and for utility they began to work the fields, and take fruits, and to plant gentle trees and pick the fruits. And then they began to take the animals and enclose them and domesticate them. And they first took the sheep because of their usefulness and placidity, as they are extremely peaceful and accustom easily to the life of man, who extended the variety of his food with their milk and cheese and for their clothes the skins and the wool. Then they began to domesticate all the animals, which they knew were useful to the human race. And still of all species of domesticated animals it is said that many are preserved in various parts of the world. Because it is said that in Phrygia there are still many flocks of wild sheep, in Samothrace goats, and pigs in Italy, and in Dardania, Media, and Thrace many wild oxen, and in Phrygia and in Caonia wild asses.45 In some parts of Spain there are still wild horses. I will therefore speak of the animals which are nourished, which I can, thus, by the doctrine of ancient wisdom as well as by modern experience. If the situation of nonhuman animals before the Fall was largely ignored in exegesis, the action of a specific animal, the snake, in bringing about an end to the human period in paradise, human innocence and as a result tainting the whole of nature, was a different matter. As noted above, in events believed to be significant in history nonhuman animals only rarely took an active role, and then often as agents of some greater power. The tempting of Eve by the serpent (Heb. nachash) in the Garden of Eden must have been the most well-known animal action of this type. The early Hebrew nachash does not necessarily 44 Petrus de Crescentiis. Liber ruralium commodorum (Strassburg: Georg Husner, 1486): Cap. 8. 45 Caonia is a region in north-western Greece extending across what is now the Albanian border, in ancient times western Epirus. The regions are taken from Varro, and not entirely appropriate for Crescenzi’s time, although medieval writers were fond of archaisms in names of places and peoples.

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correspond to our ‘snake’ or the medieval Latin serpens, but to medieval people the snake was the culprit. In medieval historic, dramatic or poetic versions, or depictions, of the tale the snake appears in various forms, sometimes with legs or even wings, sometimes ugly, sometimes beautiful, and sometimes with a woman’s face or head. Genesis left many things unexplained, which gave considerable scope for embellishment. Among the unanswered questions are why the snake tempted Eve and why it spoke. The devil is not mentioned at all in Genesis and no connection is made anywhere in the Bible between the devil and the talking snake of the Garden of Eden, but in later antique and medieval interpretations, if the serpent was not the devil himself or one of his lieutenants, it acted on his behalf, allowed him to enter it, or he took its shape. In the tenth-century Irish Saltair na Rann version of the tale, the writer has the Devil use a combination of flattery and ingenious argument to persuade the snake to help him ruin Adam. Nevertheless, the serpent asks what it will receive in return for its cooperation in deceiving Eve; and as the Devil promises, the serpent’s collaboration with him has indeed been spoken of ever since. Saltair na Rann (The Psalter of Verses), lines 1133–117646 Lucifer, with a host of pure (?) troubles, went among the animals and the host outside Paradise, so that it is there he found the serpent. “It were not for nothing that you are outside,” said the Devil to the serpent, “for the swiftness of your guile, a clear sound, for your cunning, for your cleverness. It was a great peril and crime to place Adam above you, the junior of created things – failure of fame; it were no great crime for us to destroy him. Since you are most famous in battle, you were begotten first, you are more guileful in every way, o especially dear one, do not submit yourself to the junior. Take my advice without sorrow, let us make a bargain and treaty; listen yourself to my pure reasoning, and do not go to Adam. Give me a place in your body, according to my rule and plan, so that we may both go eagerly … [possibly with fame or on the spot], the two of us to Eve. Let us press on her together the fruit of the forbidden tree, so that she may press purely the food afterwards on Adam. Provided the two of them go together and against the command of their Lord, they will not be honoured by God here, they come without prosperity from Paradise.” “What reward have I, before every host,” said the serpent to the Devil, “for welcoming you into my fair body, to live together with me without 46 The Irish Adam and Eve Story from Saltair na Rann: 1, Text and translation, trans. David Greene and Fergus Kelly, (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1976): lines 1133–1176. The line numbers refer to the Irish-language poem.

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any fault? For directing you along a special path to destroy Eve and Adam, for going with you truly to the attack, whatever deed you may undertake?” “What is the greatest reward I will give you, according to the measure of our greatest crime? Our union according to habit, to fury, let it be continuously mentioned.” trans. David Green and Fergus Kelly

In the Middle English Cursor Mundi, the earliest version of which dates to c.1300 and is in a northern dialect, the snake is chosen for its speed, an unusual reason. The poem drew heavily on the Historia Scholastica. Cursor Mundi also implies that the devil (called “warlock” in the northern English version) selects the serpent partly because it is wily, but he then advises it how to accomplish what he wants, which seems odd when he subsequently enters the snake to carry out the deception himself. Cursor Mundi (Runner of the World)47 Now the man is set between two On either side he has a thistle Between Satan and his wife Adam is placed in much strife They were both set against Adam So as to get him into trouble Both of them were with one intent To overcome the man with trickery The cunning foe saw him at a distance He dared not come near Adam Namely in his own shape Presently to speed he turned to have fortune Therefore he sent a messenger He turned to one with speed Then he chose a little beast One that is not the most unwily That serpent is such an animal Most of trickery and of power Skilfully he taught it the guile To begin with the wife And through the wife to win over the husband 47 Cursor mundi (The cursur o the world): A Northumbrian poem of the XIVth century in four versions, ed. Rev. Richard Morris (London: K. Paul, Trench and Trübner, 1874–93).

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Then did this snake and didn’t cease In his skin Satan then was It is a wonder that he entered in that place But this hardship he allowed him That beast knew how to mitigate that pain Because he made lament that he allowed sin or live if he thought good And by reason of his own deed Should then be marked his reward To bow and live without end Or else to die and turn to woe When Adam and Eve transgressed by eating the forbidden fruit their expulsion from Paradise affected other animals too, as the whole of nature was contaminated by their action. In his Historia scholastica Peter Comester made the point that in more than one way the humans were being reduced to the level of beasts: “And you shall eat the herbs of the earth, as if you also will be equal to this beast … And God made for Adam and his wife coats of skin, that is, of the skins of dead animals, to carry with them a sign of their mortality.”48 Since the Book of Leviticus describes animals that have died from natural causes as unclean,49 the Genesis account suggests that deliberate killing was necessary to obtain their skins and flesh even before humans were given permission to eat animals, which occurred after the Flood, but the detail of how the first humans might have obtained the skins was not discussed at any length in any work of exegesis or commentary. In works such as Guiart de Moulins’ Bible historiale it is implied that use of animals for food and clothing was the normal state of affairs and had been almost from the moment of creation. For many commentators a satisfactory answer was simply to state that taking the words literally and imagining God as if he were a human butcher was absurd and that human knowledge and reason did not suffice to explain how God did things.50 In Lutwin’s fourteenth-century German poem Eva und Adam he 48 Petrus Comestor, Scolastica Historia: Liber Genesis: Cap. 23–24. 49 Leviticus 11.2–47. 50 La bible français de XIIIe siècle, 117, quoted in Peggy McCracken, In the Skin of a Beast: Sovereignty and Animality in Medieval France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 19. This Bible was a glossed, full translation of the Paris Bible, known as the “Thirteenth-Century Bible” or “Old French Bible” but often referred to by the French title above since Samuel Berger used it in 1884.

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adjusted the words of Genesis, “God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins and clothed them”, which occurred after their exit from Paradise: the clothes became “woollen garments”, thus evading the uncomfortable thought that God was killing and skinning animals.51 The consequences of the Fall for nonhuman animals were rarely commented on, as their fate was secondary to that of humans. In the passage below, animals bewail Adam’s fate at his request, as he does his penance for his crime. Lutwin, Eva und Adam, lines 1030–5652 [Adam] also set off to do his penance and when he found the Jordan stood in it up to his neck. He was overcome by sorrow and called out in plaintive tones and bitter suffering: “Oh Jordan, I say to you that you must help me in my lamentations. Together with all that moves in you and lives a natural life, fish or anything that swims, you must stand by me and mourn. They are not to mourn for themselves but for me, for they have done nothing wrong, but I have sinned.” When he had spoken he straightway saw the fishes round him: they remained still and did not swim. For the full forty days they abandoned their rivers and ponds and behaved as though they were sorry for him and bewailed the hard fate of him who stood there deprived of God’s grace. trans. Mary-Bess Halford

As a result of the Fall the human relationship with other animals changes: while some continue to serve humans, others are now in conflict with them. La bible historiale presents the predominant medieval view of this turn of affairs: the loss of dominion is a form of punishment for humans, at the very least a reminder of their forefather’s sin. This work was the most used medieval translation of the Bible into French, which drew heavily on Historia scholastica but included large sections of the Latin Vulgate.

51

The work retells the Creation story in German in 3,939 rhymed couplets. It includes a considerable amount of interpretation and even additions, as well as emphasizing Adam’s rationality as opposed to Eva’s sensual appetite (not to say stupidity). Mostly it follows the earlier Latin work Vita Adae et Evae. Little is known of Lutwin. Most extant versions are illustrated. 52 Lutwins Adam und Eva, ed. Konrad Hofmann and Wilhelm Meyer (Tübingen: Litterarischen Verein in Stuttgart, 1881).

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Guiart des Moulins, La bible historiale, 2253 Note here that because of his sin, man lost sovereignty over large animals like the lion so that he would know that he lost sovereignty because of his sin. And he also lost sovereignty over small animals like flies, so that he would know his own base nature. And he retained sovereignty over medium-sized animals so that they could comfort him and so that he would know that he had sovereignty. One consequence of the Fall for animals was that the communication between them and the human that had obviously been possible when the first man named them disappeared. Before the Fall they understood him, although it is not clear whether they could speak in a mutually intelligible language or simply that the man understood them. As we shall see, some animals in medieval saints’ lives appear to understand them, presumably because of the saint’s power to restore a form of prelapsarian state around him or her, but there was no direct comment on this loss of communicatory ability in any form of medieval writing. The postlapsarian loss of harmony between animals was commented on, albeit rarely. Some works did, however, lament the loss of harmony between animals. In the thirteenth-century French Bible anonyme, the animals are paired according to later perceived enmities and, as usual, there is a moral lesson for humans in the postlapsarian situation. Even this lost human-beast harmony existed in a hierarchical relationship, however, reflecting a society this whose economic basis was domesticated animals and agriculture, a society assumed to represent a natural state of order created by God. Bible anonyme, lines 387–40054 The wolf lies beside the ewe Neither takes note of the other The stag lies beside the lion At peace are the bear and the griffon And facing the falcon is the crane None move because of the other. The hare is beside the hound And the eagle beside the ostrich 53

Guyart des Moulins. La Bible historiaux, ou les histoires escolastres. Tome Ier, Ms 5057, fol. 8: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84581431/f18.item. 54 La Bible anonyme du MS Paris BNF. fr. 763, ed. Julia C. Szirmai (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1985), 93–94.

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All the beasts were friendly Not one opposed the other And the birds and fish were at peace and without strife. Each beast according to its ways Proffered its service to man. More frequently, medieval thinkers took enmity between “wild animals” (that is, those that did not obey humans and caused them problems) and humans and the savagery of (nonhuman) predatory animals toward prey animals as a natural state and many of them wrote as if it had been so from the Creation, as does Bernardus Silvestris below. Bernard Silvestris, Cosmographia: Microcosmos 11.1155 Here [in the Book of Memory] appeared, though not with the same certainty, the accounts of created natures that had been shown before. Here, however, much fuller and more careful information was given regarding those creatures that are beheld in bodily form. Here the four components of the world’s body were shown, summoned from their natural litigiousness to accept eternal determination. Next was shown the plan whereby love and compatibility were imparted, so that component parts might compose a compound body, and sundered plurality give itself over to unity. There was shown the close kinship between the watery and feathered races, though distributed into species distinct in property and shape. Next appeared the plan whereby Nature provides scales as a covering for one creature, feathers for another, whereby birds possess a language of sweet song, while fish remain perpetually silent. Here appeared the various four-footed creatures of a domestic gentleness, and others naturally driven to cruelty. The plan appeared where whereby blazing anger is a property of lions and boars, while in deer and the hare the fiery power grows weak. trans. Winthrop Wetherbee

As everyone familiar with the Book of Genesis knows, humans degenerated into wickedness after the Fall, and as a result God flooded the Earth and destroyed almost all living creatures. Late antique, medieval and Renaissance commentators on Genesis often felt it necessary to explain why animals were 55

Bernardus Silvestris, “Cosmographia,” ed. Wetherbee: Microcosmus 11.

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destroyed alongside the humans who had brought this catastrophe upon the Earth. But alongside Noah and his family God saved representatives of animal species. The reason for saving nonhuman animals was provided in the exegeses of the Church Fathers and repeated with little variation thereafter: just as in the case of the Fall, their fate was tied to that of humans. John Chrysostom says more about the animals in his discussion of the Fall and its consequences than his contemporaries Basil of Caesaria and Augustine of Hippo, but like them and other exegetes, he has an instrumentalist view of nature; the destiny of the animals in the Flood is entirely incidental to the fate of Noah and his family. As God created these creatures for the human, so they share in the kindness God shows to the human; animals may merit good treatment, but as reflections of God’s divine nature. John Chrysostom, Homily on Genesis 22:17: 6.756 Just as in the beginning when the first formed person sinned, the earth received the curse, so too in this case when the human being was on the point of being blotted out, the wild animals also share the punishment. Just as on the other hand, when the human being is pleasing to God, creation also shares in the human beings prosperity (as Paul also says, Creation, too, will be set free from its servitude to decay with a view to the freedom of the children of God’s glory), so too, when the human being is about to be punished on account of the great number of sins and to be consigned to destruction, the cattle and the reptiles and birds are likewise caught up in the deluge that is due to overcome the whole world. trans. Robert C. Hill

John Chrysostom, Homily on Genesis 26.1057 God did everything out of his esteem for the human being: as in the case of the destruction of human beings in the flood he destroyed along with them the whole range of brute beasts, so in this case too, when he intends to show his characteristic love for the good man out of regard for him, he extends his goodness to the animal kingdom as well. trans. Robert C. Hill

In medieval Europe almost all people must have known about the Flood and how Noah (Noe, in the Vulgate), built an ark to save his family and all animal species, having been warned of it by God. However, they will have known it in various forms, not necessarily its original and relatively brief version in 56 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 18–45, trans. Robert C. Hill (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1990): Homily on Genesis 22.17. 57 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 18–45: Homily on Genesis 26.10.

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Genesis (fifty-two verses, Genesis 6.13–8.19), as it was retold many times in popular works with a great deal of material added. Works by the learned often analysed the meaning of the events and handled the construction and the possible shape of the ark, while popular accounts and plays added matter such as the scorn of Noah by people other than his kin, the suspect behaviour of Noah’s wife and the devil boarding as a stowaway. The detail of how Noah rounded up the animals or accommodated and maintained order among them on the ark attracted less interest, but occasionally surfaced, in both popular drama and scholarly exegesis, especially in relation to ‘technical questions’ such as the structure of the ark. Hugh of St Victor wrote De Arca Noe Morali (Noah’s Ark and its moral lessons), comprising three theological works exploring the scriptural, historical, allegorical and moral significance of the ark. He added details of his own, including some technical ones and suggestions as to how the stores and inhabitants were accommodated, but these too had allegorical importance. The three little rooms on either side of the ark, for example, represent three cities on either side of the River Jordan, which figuratively cuts through the ark. In Hugh’s work the ark itself signifies the Church, a refuge from the mundane desires that deluge the soul, signified by the Flood, and in the little room allegory the animals that leave it and return to it signify the weaker people who frequently give in to the desires of the world (sin), but can always remedy the situation by returning to the Church (ark) to repent. Hugh of St Victor, De Arca Noe Morali, (Noah’s Ark and its moral lessons).58 And they say that one [deck] was appointed to receive the animals’ dung, the second for their food supplies, while in the third were the wild animals, in the fourth the tame ones, and in the fifth, which was at the top, the humans and the birds. … On the outer surface of the walls of this ark little nests or chambers were constructed, and these were fastened onto the walls in such wise as to allow entrance to them from without, while on the inside the surface of the wall remained unbroken. And these nests are said to have been made for those animals that cannot live either always in the water or always in the dry, like the otter and the seal. So much for the shape of the ark. 13, On the size of the ark we are told as follows: “The length shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth fifty cubits, the height thirty cubits.”59 58 Hugo de Sancto Victore, De archa Noe. Libellus de formatione arche, ed. Patricius Sicard (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001). Chapters following the English translation edition, Hugh of Saint-Victor: Selected Spiritual Writings, trans. a Religious of C.S.M.V. (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009 [1962]): Cap. 12–13, 15. Translation by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers, www.wipfandstock.com. 59 Genesis 6.15.

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There are, however, some who say that these dimensions would not be sufficient to contain so many kinds of animals and foodstuffs to feed them for a whole year. The learned answer these objections on these lines: they say that Moses, who as Scripture testifies concerning him was “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians”, put the number of cubits in this place according to the laws of geometry, an art in which the Egyptians excel; and, according to that, one cubit is reckoned the equivalent of six. Certainly, if this method of reckoning be applied to the dimensions of the ark, it will afford length, breadth and height sufficient to contain enough seed for the renewal of the entire world, and stock from which all living creatures could be bred anew. It must be understood, moreover, that there was no need for the animals that are generated not by sexual union but from the moisture of the earth, or from dead bodies, or some other corrupting thing, or for those that are born from the union of two different kinds, such as the two sorts of mule, to be included in the ark at all. From these considerations the conclusion emerges that it would not have been impossible for a place of such capacity to contain sufficient stock to renew all living things. … 15. … To the storey that adjoined the bottom was consigned the animals’ dung, which is a fit figure for the life of carnal persons; since what but rottenness do they produce so serve the longings of the flesh? The second storey after that contains the animals’ foodstores, which suitably signify those who as it were occupy a middle place in holy Church; in that they neither completely succumb to the forbidden desires of the flesh, nor by despising the world do they quite attain the level of the spiritual. But, since those who gather spiritual things from the spiritual through the word of God give the teachers the support of their worldly substance, what are they but foodstores for the holy animals? It is true that the third storey contains animals, but these are wild ones, and by them is indicated the life of spiritual persons, who, as long as they are contained in this corruptible flesh, are at one and the same time subject to the word of God, and yet carry in their flesh the principle by which they contravene that law. Animals therefore they are. Since they live by the life of their mind, but wild ones by reason of the forbidden desires of the flesh. In the fourth storey are the tame animals, for as the apostle says, “He that is dead is free from sin”,60 and according to the prophet, “In that very 60 Romans 6.7.

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day his thoughts perish”,61 For when they issue from the bonds of corruptible flesh, their forbidden desires are tamed. Man occupies the fifth storey, together with the birds. The vigour of reason and intelligence is denoted by man, and the mobility of incorruptible nature by the birds. When, therefore. “this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality”,62 then we, being spiritual in mind and body equally, will after own measure understand everything through the illumination of our minds, and have power to be everywhere through the lightness of our incorruptible bodies. trans. Community of St Mary the Virgin

Few popular medieval works detail animal species entering the ark by name. However, in the first play of the three Cornish Ordinalia, on the origin of the world (Origo Mundi), Noah lists domestic animals, those most useful to humans: “… Horses, cattle, pigs and sheep, bring within forthwith, but the blessed birds, they fly quickly and readily …”63 Birds can fly aboard, but of animals restricted to land only these four domestic ones are mentioned, presumably because they are among the most important to humans. The Chester play, on the other hand, lists fifty assorted mammals and birds. At first sight the order in which animals are named may appear to be random, but to a medieval audience the arrangement would make sense. The Noah (Noe) of the play mentions God’s injunction about clean and unclean beasts, which appears in Genesis,64 but this has no influence on the order in which animals are listed: these dietary rules, of course, had been abandoned by Christians by the fifteenth century.65 Nor does the moral symbolism of each animal as it appears in bestiaries or encyclopedias appear to have any influence. However, the 61 Psalms 146.4. 62 1 Corinthians 15:53. 63 Origo Mundi, in The Ancient Cornish Drama, Vol. 1, trans. Edwin Norris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1859), 2–221: lines 1065–68. The Ordinalia are in Middle Cornish with Latin stage directions. 64 “Clean” and “unclean” animals are not defined until later books of the Pentateuch, to Moses and Aaron in Leviticus 11 and thereafter in the law of the covenant in Deuteronomy 14, and it is these rules that were discussed among Christians, especially in Antiquity, usually without reference to the brief mention in connection with the ark. “Later” refers to the order of the Old Testament books and the history of Earth as it is presented there, not the chronological order in which the biblical books were compiled or added to the corpus. 65 The Chester Mystery Plays date back at least to the early 15th century, the Cornish Ordinalia to the fourteenth.

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importance of animals in the chain of being and usefulness or harmfulness to humans does influence the order. For instance, Shem lists the king of the beasts and the leopard first, the heraldic devices of the royalty, followed by the most useful domestic animals, while Japhet’s group are all small animals with claws, of which the household ones come first and troublesome ones next, the last being the hare, which was hunted but difficult to catch. The proper food for all the animals is also listed as provided in this play. Those we class as reptiles and amphibians, most of which were ‘irrelevant to humans,’ are missing altogether. Several of these were among those that were considered to generate spontaneously from putrefying matter or rubbish, which, as Hugh of St Victor noted, did not need to be saved to reproduce, but so were rodents, which do seem to be on the ark as Shem’s wife (whose gendered sphere is the home) mentions that the cats will chase them. Chester Mystery Play, The Watter Leaders and the Drawers of Dee Playe, lines 153–17066 Noah Have done, you men and women all By you lest this water fall That each beast were in stall And into the ship brought Of clean beasts seven shall be of unclean two, thus God asked me The flood is near, you may well see Therefore do not delay at all Shem Sir, here are lions, leopards in; horses, mares, oxen and swine goats, calves, sheep and cattle sitting here you may see Ham Camels, asses, man may find, buck and doe, hart and hind, All beasts of all manner and kind here on board, as thinks me Japheth Take here cats, dogs too, otters and foxes, polecats also, 66 The Chester Mystery Cycle, ed. Robert Lumiansky and David Mills (London: Oxford University Press, 1974 and 1986).

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hares hopping gayly can go here have cabbage to eat, Noah’s wife And here are bears, wolves sat, apes, owls, marmoset, weasels, squirrels, and ferrets; here they eat their meat. Shem’s wife Here are beasts in this house; here cats make out crows; here a rat, here a mouse that stand close together Ham’s wife And here are birds fewer and more herons, cranes and bitterns, swans, peacocks – and them before meat for this community Japheth’s wife Here are cocks, kites, crows ducks, curlews, whoever knows, rooks, ravens, many rows, each one in his kind. And here are doves, ducks, drakes, redshanks that run through lakes: and each fowl that accompanies a mate in this ship man may find. In addition, the story of the ark drew attention to the actions of two individual animals, a rarity in any medieval biblical exegesis or popular writing. They were the raven and the dove, sent out by Noah to check whether the flood had subsided. Like Hugh of St Victor, most medieval writers who handled this subject assumed that there was more to the tale of the Flood than simple description of punishment for human evildoing, and sought moral lessons from the birds’ actions, but like Hugh, they also speculated about the ‘reality’ of the events. In Genesis, when the raven fails to return no more is said of it, while the dove is sent out twice and returns on both occasions, the second time with an olive branch, evidence that the waters have receded.67 The two are contrasted in medieval exegesis and popular works, a contrast accentuated by their colours, 67 Genesis 8.6–11.

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black and white.68 Of the two birds it is the raven that attracts most attention in all kinds of medieval works. It is often, but not always, condemned as deceitful and inconstant. Some interpretations use the tale to emphasize the usefulness (perhaps equated with good) of a domestic bird, the pigeon, and the unreliability (bad) of a wild species, the raven. The latter was known for its predilection for carrion, including human corpses left unburied, which provided a favoured explanation for its failure to return to the ark. Origo Mundi (The Origin of the World), the first of the Cornish Ordinalia, lines 1097–1120 Noah The rain is clean gone away, And the water, I believe, abated: It is good to send out a crow, If it be dry ground over the world Shem I will send it from us It will not come again, I believe; If it finds carrion, certainly, It will always stay upon it. And then he shall send out a raven, and it returned no more. Noah Truly you have told me, To look for that raven; It is upon great carrion, Eating fast without pity, The dove with blue eyes, Liberate her outside, A more faithful bird, by the Father, I cannot where there is. Shem I will liberate her, Soon, oh father dear, And she will see, If there be dry land in any place. And then he shall send out the dove, which shall immediately return to the ship and be taken in. 68

Although in some accounts it is white but turns black after its deceit.

The Genesis of the Animals

Ham I will let her go, Outside, in the Father’s name, Now, go and look well If there be dry land in any country. Here the dove comes, bringing a branch of olive in her mouth. trans. Edwin Norris

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Animals in Medieval Natural Philosophy Our knowledge of medieval discussion of nonhuman animal cognition and social life comes from literature produced by a small minority of the population. In the Middle Ages only the upper echelons of society could read and write. Most churchmen above priestly level, cenobitic monks and nuns and many of the nobility were literate, and during the High Middle Ages the number expanded to include most clerics and nobility, university masters, lawyers, many merchants and other townspeople, and others involved in judicial or government administration. Moreover, almost all scholarly material was written in Latin, which was known to varying degrees by most of those listed above, often imperfectly by all but those with a good ecclesiastical or university education. Even in the late Middle Ages, the vast majority of the population, who worked on the land, and probably most craftspeople, would have been illiterate. Their attitudes to animals are obscure, but their relationship with the animals around them was no doubt determined above all by practical considerations. This factor also strongly influenced elite perceptions of nonhuman animals, as domestic animals were ever-present in medieval society and they were used by virtually everyone in one way or another. A short discussion on philosophical concepts concerning the nature of the animal soul or animal society with a few examples can only scratch the surface of a massive and complicated discourse and will hardly touch upon most of the finer points of discussion. The best that can be done is to give an idea of the way in which a variety of medieval philosophers or theologians approached questions of animal mental and social capacities, and of certain assumptions that pervaded their work, and the questions they attempted to answer. Nonhuman animals were not the focus of any work but came up as explanatory factors in discussion of theology, metaphysics and ethics. In encyclopaedic works, which engaged with the philosophical discussion to an extent, they appeared alongside other phenomena of nature, such as plants, minerals, celestial bodies, and colours. To a great degree, philosophy was the servant of theology, and throughout the Middle Ages certain theologians became alarmed when there was a threat that it would obtain a life of its own. Even in the later Middle Ages, after universities developed from cathedral schools, philosophy was studied as a preparation for a bachelor’s degree followed by a master’s degree in theology, law or medicine. It was studied at the faculty of arts. Education was based on the seven

© Koninklijke Brill BV, Leiden, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004721708_004

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liberal arts, a system deriving from antiquity; they were arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music, referred to as the quadrivium, and the so-called trivium, comprising logic, grammar and rhetoric. They required skill in thought, as opposed to the technical or practical skills required, for example, for architecture or surgery. During their study of the degree subjects, especially theology, students used philosophy as an auxiliary tool in their discussions of the quadrivium. Most people nowadays would probably refer to Thomas Aquinas as a philosopher, but he considered himself a theologian, albeit one who used philosophy to assist in establishing the basis for his theology. From the fourteenth century onwards, the period generally known as the Renaissance, the rise of humanism and natural sciences began to erode education founded on the seven liberal arts.1 Medieval theological or philosophical works took several established forms, especially commentaries on the Bible (or biblical exegesis), on the writings of the Church Fathers, and from the thirteenth century onwards, on the writings of Aristotle. Even in the early Middle Ages Christian thought owed much to classical philosophy. Up to the twelfth century it was inherited largely ‘second-hand’ from the Church Fathers and other early Christian writers who had had access to many of the classical works and had often been schooled by pagan philosophers. Stoic and so-called Neoplatonist philosophy had been particularly influential in forming their ideas, and the latter as a pagan movement was still alive in the fifth century. The influence of Hellenistic thought was in fact already present in the New Testament, most of which was written in Greek. A select few medieval works became an established part of the curriculum, notably Peter Lombard’s Sentences. Medieval scientia was not science as we know it: the Latin word meant ‘knowledge’ or ‘expertise.’ No concept of science as a discipline or subject of 1 Unless otherwise stated, ‘humanism’ in this work refers to the intellectual movement that began in later medieval Europe and continued to the end of the period covered by this book. Renaissance humanism was not a philosophical movement, nor did it involve any ideology; it implied a body of literary knowledge and linguistic skill founded on a revival of a late antique philology and grammar, although it did have social, political and philosophical consequences. Humanism in this sense has no connection to humanism as used nowadays to mean an emphasis on the value, agency and often moral superiority of human beings, despite assumptions by some historians and sociologists that there is a link. The second meaning has come into use in recent decades as many scholars have adopted a posthumanist perspective to erode and as far as possible eliminate the subjectivity (or intersubjectivity) that has been inherent in most earlier anthropology, sociology, philosophy and psychology. Posthumanism emphasizes the role of nonhuman agents, whether animals and plants or non-sentient things such as computers; where it examines the ethical implications of expanding moral concern and extending subjectivities beyond the human species it is a philosophical stance.

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study separate from philosophy existed in the Middle Ages, or for long afterwards, hence natural science as we know it did not exist either. The nearest thing to a predecessor, the study of nature and the physical universe that occurred before the development of natural science, was ‘natural philosophy’ (Latin philosophia naturalis). It was not simply the observation and study of what we would call the natural world, and both the purpose and method of medieval philosophers when they observed that world were fundamentally different from those of modern naturalists or zoologists. Modern research into ‘animal cognition’ incorporates ethology, behavioural ecology, and evolutionary psychology, and the term cognitive ethology is sometimes used as an alternative for the field. These disciplines did not exist in the Middle Ages. They belong to a society in which the extent and depth of scientific research has expanded dramatically so that researchers specialize in a relatively narrow field of knowledge. There are no longer any polymaths such as those of the Ancient World, Middle Ages or early modern period. Nevertheless, we may use terms such as ‘psychology’ or ‘natural science’ where the medieval philosophy in question approximates to our conceptions of these subjects. Most medieval philosophers tended to concentrate on the supposed ability of humans to comprehend something of God and his works, their transcendent nature and their capacity to exceed the confines of the material natural world, but because all recognized the physical and behavioural similarities between humans and other animals and their inclination to show the same passions, they compared them, albeit often with the intention of identifying the characteristics that made humans special. In other words, many philosophers felt that they had to understand the animal part of human nature to understand how the human could be what the animal was not, a method of defining themselves that human thinkers are still struggling to avoid today. While this anthropocentric worldview provided the main motivation for investigation of nature in the Middle Ages, it did nevertheless lead to investigation. Even if humans were understood as the most important component of the physical world because God made it for them and because their souls could transcend it, from time to time, increasingly so as the period progressed, some philosophers showed a genuine interest in the behaviour and physiologies of nonhuman animals. 1

Defining the Animal

Animals, as we saw in the last chapter, were a component of God’s Creation. In modern parlance ‘nature’ usually refers to something on planet Earth that

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is apart from humankind and human-made environments. Medieval theologians and natural philosophers seldom used the Latin word natura in this way, even if they regarded humans as distinct from earthly nature in that it was made for them and they alone possessed an immaterial part that was not destined to perish. From Aristotle’s era onwards, to most ancient and medieval natural philosophers, ‘nature’ (Gr. physis, φύσις) referred to the workings of the cosmos as a whole, which many non-Christian philosophers believed possessed its own dynamism almost as if it was an animal with its own soul, or as the principle that animated this cosmos. In the medieval Christian adaptation of this conception, the principle was God the Creator and nature his creation: even if Nature was personified as something distinct from God, as in Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy,2 or the “goddess” of the twelfth-century works of Bernardus Silvestris and Alan of Lille, Natura acts as God’s functionary in organizing his creation and has no creative or moral force herself. In his Etymologies, however, Isidore of Seville (c.560–636), having identified natura as creator as in classical traditions, had pointed out that God created “all things,” in which case, it would be identified with him. Isidore of Seville, Etymologia (Etymologies), Bk 11. De homine et portentis (The Human being and portents): 1. De homine et partibus eius (Human beings and their parts).3 1. Nature (natura) is so-called because it causes something to be born (nasci, ppl. natus), for it has the power of engendering and creating. Some people say that this is God, by whom all things have been created and exist. trans. Stephen A. Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach, Oliver Berghof

Isidore was archbishop of Seville for thirty-two years. He was predominantly a compiler of summaries or abridgements of others’ work (sometimes compendia themselves). His work on natural science, On the Nature of Things (De Natura Rerum) was the first by a Christian author that was more than a commentary on the creation as represented in Genesis; based on Greco-Roman scholarship in which Christian interpretation and allegories have been incorporated, 2 Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii Philosophiae consolatio, ed. Ludwig Bieler (Turnhout: Brepols, 1957). This work, together with Boethius’ other philosophical works and translations of classical material, had a huge influence on medieval thought. Boethius lived c.480–524. 3 See Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum Sive Originum Libri XX, ed. W.M. Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911): XI. De homine et portentis 1. All English translations of this work are from The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. Stephen A. Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach, Oliver Berghof. © Stephen A. Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach and Oliver Berghof 2006. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear.

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it describes the structure of the physical cosmos, discussing the principles of time-reckoning, astronomy, physics, meteorology and geography. It was of critical importance in assimilating Greco-Roman and medieval science. Even more influential than On the Nature of Things was Isidore’s twenty-volume encyclopaedia, Etymologies, an attempt to compile a summa of all knowledge. It contains a vast amount of classical learning (or fragments of it) that would otherwise have been lost, including virtually all that Europeans knew of ancient Greek philosophy before the twelfth century. However, its apparent completeness led most scholars of the early Middle Ages to look no further, with the result that some classical works were not copied and were lost through lack of interest. Etymologies appears to have been the most popular compendium in medieval libraries and retained its place into the Renaissance – after printing was invented in c.1470, ten editions were printed within the next sixty years. It exerted a powerful influence on medieval writers in that they often chose the encyclopaedic format for their works, while its Book 12, “De animalibus” (“On animals”), was mined for information by almost every bestiary writer as well as many others with animal-related interests. Isidore rarely gives us the origin of his information, but we know some of his sources, one of the most important for animal habits being the Physiologus.4 Isidore’s or his sources’ word etymologies are based on apparent similarities between the animal (or object) name and words that might conceivably be related to what the animal was thought to do (or the function of the object), but his inspiration was the same as that of medieval thinkers of greater stature, in that he believed that language used correctly could lead to the proper understanding of God’s creation. Isidore of Seville, Etymologia (Etymologies), Bk 12. De animalibus (On animals), 1. De pecoribus et iumentis (Livestock and beasts of burden).5 1. Adam was the first to confer names on all the animals, assigning a name to each one from its visible conformation according to the position in nature that it holds. 2. The different nations have also given names to each of the animals in their own languages – for Adam did not assign these names in the Latin or Greek language, or in any of the languages of foreign nations, but in that language which, before the Flood, was the language of all peoples, which is called Hebrew. 3. In Latin they are called animals (animal) or ‘animate beings’ (animans) because they are animated and moved by spirit. 4. Quadrupeds are so-called because they walk on four feet (quattor pedes); while these may be similar to livestock, 4 See Chapter 3 Section 3 for more on this work. 5 Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum Sive Originum Libri XX, ed. Lindsay: XII.1.

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they are nevertheless not under human control – such as deer, antelopes, onagers, etc. But they are not wild beasts, such as lions, nor are they beasts of burden, which could assist the useful activities of humans. trans. Stephen A. Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach, Oliver Berghof

Isidore explains that the names of the animals must reflect the organisation of their world just after its creation, as it was then that they were named by the first man, Adam. The classification of Book 12 follows the food laws of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, which in turn are based on the classification implied in Genesis: in the order that Leviticus takes them, four-legged animals that hop, jump or walk on land, scaly fish that swim with fins in the water, and two-legged birds that fly with wings in the firmament. There are additional sub-divisions introduced depending on whether animals are edible for humans or not, their size, and movement by creeping. Thus Book 12 follows the order of domestic animals, wild beasts, small creatures, serpents, worms, fish, birds and flying insects. As we saw in Chapter 1, interpretations of the type of animal signified by certain Latin terms such as quadrupes, iumentum and pecus varied a little.6 For Isidore, as for many other medieval writers, the distinction between what we would call domestic and wild animals, those which remained largely within human control and outside it after the Fall, was of enormous importance. Isidore handles humans in a separate chapter from other animals and notes some factors that distinguish them, although he does not say humans are not animals. The ‘upright posture’ argument mentioned below would be repeated numerous times by medieval thinkers. Isidore of Seville, Etymologia (Etymologies), Bk 11. De homine et portentis (The human being and portents): 1. De homine et partibus eius (Human beings and their parts).7 5. The Greeks called the human being ἄνθρωπος [anthropos] because he has been raised upright from the soil and looks upward in contemplation of his Creator.8 The poet Ovid describes this when he says: “While the rest of the stooping animals look at the ground, he gave the human an uplifted countenance, and ordered him to see the sky, and to raise his upturned face to the stars.”9 And the human stands erect and looks 6 These are the nominative singular forms; nom. plural: quadrupedes (m./f.) or quadrupedia (n.), iumenta, pecora. 7 Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum Sive Originum Libri XX, ed. Lindsay: XI. 1. 8 Here Barney et al. in their translation of Etymologies add: “(perhaps cf. ὤψ, “eye, face, countenance”).” 9 Ovid, Metamorphoses, Vol. 1, trans. Frank Justus Miller (Cambridge MS: Harvard University Press, 1916): 1.84.

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towards heaven so as to seek God, rather than look at the earth, as do the beasts that nature has made bent over and attentive to their bellies. trans. Stephen A. Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach, Oliver Berghof

All medieval thinkers counted humans among animals, but they also believed that humans had certain special attributes that distinguished them and which were non-animal. The two ways in which the word animal might be used were explained in the thirteenth-century Summa Halensis, a systematization of the Augustinian tradition in relation to the rediscovery of Aristotle’s natural philosophy that occurred around this time.10 Summa Halesensis, Bk 2, P 111 To this it must be said that this word “animal” is sometimes taken in a general way, and sometimes in a more specific way. For sometimes a genus is divided into two, one of which has its own proper name while the other does not; and that divided part that has no proper name retains the name of the genus, as is clear when we say that animals are divided into rational and irrational: the rational animal has its own proper name, the species “man”; but the irrational have not, and therefore they are referred to by the name of the genus and are called “animals.” When therefore animal is said to be a term with a double meaning, in one way it is the name of a genus common to rational and irrational things, but in another way it is the name of beasts. Similarly, “animal” derived from that which is “animal” [that is, as an adjective] is understood in two ways. For if it is derived from “animal” as the genus of man and brute animal, then it applies to man in every state, whether of innocence or sin or grace or glory; but if it is derived from “animal” as used of brute animals and it is used of a human (homo animalis), then it means he is similar to a brute animal. Whilst admitting that the human is an animal, the Summa insists that there are clear differences between humans and (other) animals, founded on human rationality.12 Relying heavily on quotations, especially from earlier works by 10

Alexander of Hales (d. 1245) probably began this work, but it was a collective Franciscan endeavour. Also known as the Summa fratris Alexandri and Summa universae theologiae. 11 Alexander of Hales. Doctoris Irrefragabilis Alexandri de Hales Ordinis Minorum Summa Theologica, Vol. 2. (Florence: Quaracchi, 1928): Liber II. 12 Ian P. Wei, Thinking about Animals in Thirteenth-Century Paris: Theologians on the Boundary Between Humans and Animals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 98–108.

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Basil of Caesaria, Gregory of Nyssa and Bede, it emphasizes other distinctions in the human, such as dignity, ability to suppress bodily desires, possession of speech, more beautiful body, upright posture and hands in place of front feet, but all subordinate to rationality. It was in this last respect that humans were made in God’s image, so that humans could exercise dominion over other animals however they wished. More commonly used of nonhuman animals than animal alone were bestia and brutus and their adjectival forms, often with each other or with animal. These two terms were used only of nonhuman animals, unless, like “homo animalis” above, used pejoratively of humans who sunk to the level of beasts through their imbecility, sinful behaviour or savagery. As we saw, bestia terrae had a more limited meaning in the Latin versions of the Old Testament and many exegeses, meaning wild animals. Animal too might be used, if rarely, in a more restricted sense, as below in the heading to Book 18 of Bartholomew the Englishman’s thirteenth-century encyclopedia, where it means land animals. Adelard of Bath (d. 1140) gives us an example of a relatively mild but still less than polite use of both bruta and bestiali in the same sentence. His works take the form of a dialogue with his nephew, who is exhorted to study philosophy (the liberal arts); here he accuses his nephew of unthinkingly following the writings of others. Adelard of Bath, Questiones Naturales (Questions on Natural Science), 6.13 Just as brute animals (bruta animalia) are led wherever one wants by a halter, but do not know where or why they are led, merely following the rope that holds them, so the authority of the written word leads not a few of you into danger, held and bound as you are by bestial credulity (bestiali credulitate). trans. Charles Burnett

Neither bruta nor bestia nor their adjectival forms referring to nonhuman animals necessarily implied morality or immorality. On the other hand, since anthropomorphism is considered an innate tendency in human psychology, many folk who attributed immorality to humans described as bruta, bestia

13 Adelard of Bath, “Questiones Naturales,” in Conversations with his Nephew, On the Same and the Different, Questions on Natural Science, and On Birds, ed. and trans. Charles Burnett (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 81–235: vi.

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or animalia probably extended moral judgement to nonhuman animals. This might be, at least in part, an explanation for punishments normally applied to human criminals but inflicted on nonhuman animals, in the later Middle Ages sometimes even after a trial of the animal.14 2

Categorizing Animals

Differentiation between groups on the basis of features, qualities, similarities or other criteria that are common to each group, that is categorization or classification, is a form of conceptual organization that facilitates (or simplifies) understanding of the world around us. It is fundamental to cognition in humans and many other animals, but here we are concerned largely with human recognition and understanding, which involves identification of the subject through the sensory system, perception and intentionality, affected by awareness that is facilitated, among other factors, by communication.15 In medieval natural philosophy, the approach taken to life forms was largely that used by Aristotle, whose method of analysis was initially transmitted to the medieval scholastics via Boethius’ translation of Porphyry’s Isagoge.16 It 14 See Chapter 6. 15 This is obviously a hugely complicated subject, and here there is space to mention only a few examples of works on it: There are numerous modern works on categorization and the difficulties with it, e.g. George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Jan Westerhoff, Ontological Categories: Their Nature and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005); Emmanuel M. Pothos and Andy J. Wills, Formal Approaches in Categorization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Lance J. Rips, Edward E. Smith, Douglas L. Medin, “Concepts and Categories: Memory, Meaning, and Metaphysics”, in Keith J. Holyoak and Robert G. Morrison, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), Chapter 11, 177–209; C. McGarty, K.I. Mavor, and D.P. Skorich, “Social categorization”, in J.D. Wright, ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2015), 186–191. On medieval theories of classification, see James A. Weisheipl, “Medieval Classification of the Sciences in Medieval Thought,” Mediaeval Studies 27 (1965), 54–90; and James A. Weisheipl, “The Nature, Scope, and Classification of the Sciences,” in Science in the Middle Ages, ed. David C. Lindberg (Chicago, 1978), 461–82. 16 See Aristotle, Categories, trans. J.L. Ackrill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), and Metaphysics, revised text trans. and commentary by W.D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), especially 998b22; “Isagoge”, in Five Texts on the Mediaeval Problem of Universals: Porphyry, Boethius, Abelard, Duns Scotus, Ockham, trans. Paul V. Spade (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1994), 1–19; and Isagoge in Boethius’ Latin, Aristoteles Latinus. I, 6–7, Categoriarum supplementa. Porphyrii Isagoge, Translatio Boethii, et Anonymi Fragmentum vulgo vocatum “Liber sex principiorum”, ed. L. Minio-Paluello (Bruges-Paris:

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became known as the ‘Porphyrian tree’: “Substance is itself a genus. Under it is the [category of] the body, and under the [category of] body the animate body, under which is the animal; under the animal is the rational animal, under which is man; and under the man are Socrates and Plato and particular men.”17 In the Middle Ages Isagoge was an introductory book in the study of philosophy. The influence of its hierarchy is obvious in the excerpt from Vincent of Beauvais’ encyclopaedia below, but neither Aristotle nor Porphyry stated that belonging under another category necessarily implied inferiority in status, which became a facet of the Great Chain of Being as known in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.18 In the classical theory of categorization, ideally the features required to belong to a category ought to be clearly defined and it ought to have clearly defined boundaries. The entities within the category have the same status and cannot belong to another category with the group of features chosen for categorization. These categories are also mutually exclusive. Whether medieval categorizations of animals can truly be regarded as taxonomy is a moot point; nowadays in its broadest sense taxonomy is the science of classification, but it is often taken to mean classification of organisms, both living and extinct. Medieval natural philosophers could take no account of extinct animals; though attempts were made to eliminate certain animals, at least from areas where they troubled humans, there was no concept of extinction of species in the Middle Ages, and it was not known that many species had become extinct in the past. Classification according to world view is a human habit. Unlike today, when taxonomy in its strict sense, biological classification, is the overriding way in which humans group animals, in the Middle Ages there were several methods of classification, depending in which the writer considered appropriate for his purposes. The Pentateuch provided a basic ‘taxonomy’ of animals for medieval theologians and philosophers. Examples of these were included in Chapter 1; animals could be classified by the groups in which they were created, corresponding to the day of creation; this, for instance, influenced William of Conches’ explanation of how they were created from the elements.19

Desclée De Brouwer, 1966). Categorization was also used by Plato, especially in the later dialogues: Parmenides, Sophist, Politicus and Philaebus. 17 Isagoge 22, ed. Spade: 4. 18 The conception still exists now as a way in which many people (but not scientists) see the biological classification of animals: from highest to lowest; mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, fish, others. 19 See Chapter 1 Section 1.

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More or less following Isidore, medieval encyclopedic works often placed animals in the books or sections within them under headings that appear not to be founded on one method of categorization, such as quadrupeds, birds, fish, serpents and vermes, to which they usually often added a section or sections on monstra, and sometimes monstra marina as a separate category.20 Nonhuman animals appeared alphabetically within the section thought appropriate by the writer/s. One of the most popular encyclopaedic works, well into the sixteenth century, was Bartholomeus Anglicus’ De proprietatibus rerum (On the nature of things). It was patterned on two earlier encyclopedias, the Etymologia of Isidore of Seville and De universo of Rabanus Maurus. Nonhuman animals occupied only three of the nineteen books, the whole intended to include all natural and supernatural phenomena. The order of subjects is ‘Neoplatonic,’ beginning with the scala’s highest beings in the incorporeal world, but in some encyclopaedic works, such as that of Bartholomew’s contemporary Thomas of Cantimpre, which begins with ‘man’, the order was different. One organizational principle in Bartholomew’s work seems to have been the relationship of form to matter, beginning with forms separated from matter (incorporeal substances), followed by forms in matter (corporeal substances), and forms unrelated to matter. The choice of nineteen books may have been based on the sum of the twelve signs of the zodiac and the seven (known) planets, thus signifying universality; if so, the requirement for nineteen categories will also have influenced the way in which Bartholomeus divided his material.21 Bartholomeus categorized animals primarily by the form of habitat or element in which they live: on earth, in the air, or in water. The title ‘On animals’ is a convenient term for earthly animals. The thirty-eight animals included under “Birds” are all capable of flight. While many recognized most flightless birds as aves because they had wings, all flying animals not classed as vermes (that is, those we class as insects) were aves, thus including animals such as bats, now known as mammals. In the Middle 20

21

The most influential of these works were by Rabanus Maurus (9th century, parts of Isidore’s works with added moralisations), Alexander Neckham (12th century), Thomas of Cantimpre (13th century), Bartholomew the Englishman (Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 13th century), Vincent of Beauvais (13th century), and Konrad of Megenburg (14th century, largely a reworking of Thomas of Cantimpre in Middle High German). For monstra see Chapter 4. According to M.C. Seymour, “Introduction,” in On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, de Proprietatibus Rerum: A Critical Text, Vol. 3, ed. M.C. Seymour (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). On the methods of organization in DPR, see also Sue Ellen Holbrook, “A Medieval Scientific Encyclopedia ‘Renewed by Goodly Printing’: Wynkyn de Worde’s English ‘De Proprietatibus Rerum’,” in Early Science and Medicine 3, no. 2, The Vernacularization of Science, Medicine, and Technology in Late Medieval Europe, 119–156 (1998), 120–23.

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Ages pisces (‘fish’) included all animals who lived in water, and Bartholomew included fish in the book on water. The category pisces not only incorporated mammals such as dolphins, but sponges, beavers because of their ‘fish-like’ tails and living partly in water, and puffins and barnacle geese believed to be generated at sea. Whales might be considered monstra. Bartholomew the Englishman, De proprietatibus rerum (On the nature of things), Contents22 1 De Deo – On God 2 De angelis – On angels 3 De anima – On the soul 4 De elementis – On the elements (the four elements; the humours of the human body) 5 De hominis corpore – On the human body 6 De etate hominis – On the states of humans (the ages of man; the biblical categories of man and woman) 7 De infirmitatibus – On illness (the meaning and causes of sickness; diseases; medicine and doctors) 8 De mundo et celo – On the earth and the heavens (the matter of the world; the spheres and circles of the heavens; the zodiac; the motion of the planets; the sun and moon) 9 De temporibus – On times (On time – the divisions of the year and day; the seasons) 10 De materia et forma – On matter and form (including the element of fire) 11 De aere – On the air (the element of air; weather and aerial phenomena such as wind, clouds, rain and lightning) 12 De avibus – On birds (the properties of flying animals; descriptions of 38 of them) 13 De aqua – On water (bodies of water and watercourses; fish) 14 De montibus – On mountains 15 De regionibus  – On regions (On the regions and peoples of the world – geography) 16 De lapidibus – On stones (and metals) 17 De herbis plantis – On herbs and plants 18 De animalibus – On [earthly] animals 19 De accidentalibus – On accidentals (the senses – sounds, odours, tastes, colours, weights and measures, numbers and music) 22

Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus Rerum (Nuremburg: A. Koberger, 1492), 13–19 (pages unnumbered).

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In the excerpt below, from the beginning of his De Animalibus, Albertus Magnus categorizes animals (among which he includes humans) by method of motion. De Animalibus is a commentary on Aristotle’s work of the same name, roughly contemporary with Bartholomew’s De proprietatibus rerum. Albert the Great, De Animalibus, Bk 1, Tract. 1, Ch 2.23 Concerning species, we shall inquire as follows: into those that walk according to their species, and into those that fly, with regard to all the natures and species of flying animals; and into those that swim with regard to all their properties: and into those that crawl, regarding the natures and habits of those of the serpent type and those similar to them, such as lizards and crocodiles and dragons. And finally, we shall complete the whole investigation by considering vermes and ringed animals according to their species, in all their diversity as known to us. Albert was aware that the order of presenting natural phenomena might affect the audience’s understanding of them, or at least their relationship to one another. In De Animalibus, Book 22.1.1 he declares alphabetical listing of animals a method unsuitable for philosophy (non proprius philosophiae), but in the next tractatus he nevertheless lists them in this way. This book of DA was heavily dependent on Thomas of Cantimpre’s De Natura Rerum, which also used alphabetical listing. Albert explains the main reason for using this method in his De Mineralibus – because of its use in contemporary medical works and encyclopaedias.24 A further example of categorization from the fourteenth century by Nicholas of Vaudémont, this time by way of life, comes at the end of the chapter. 3

Animals in the scala naturae

That nature had a hierarchical structure was an underlying assumption in all medieval works on it – the so-called ‘great chain of being’ or scala naturae (ladder of nature). The conception was founded on ideas of Plato and Aristotle, but not devised by them. A powerful influence on Christian thought were the 23

Albertus Magnus. De animalibus Libri XXVI, ed. Hermann Stadler (Münster: Aschendorf, 1916–20): Liber I, tractate I. Hereafter Albert’s De Animalibus is referred to as DA and references to the untranslated work refer to this edition. 24 Albertus Magnus, Book of Minerals, trans. Dorothy Wyckoff (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967): Bk 2, tractate 2.1.

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‘Neoplatonists.’ The term is modern, referring to the Platonists who followed in the footsteps of Plotinus (c.204–270 CE), who concluded that there must be a source of unity, the One, the first principle, equated with Plato’s “Good,” from which everything derived and to which everything strove to return. According to Plotinus, a second principle emanates from the One, identified metaphorically with the Demiurge in Plato’s Timaeus, which is reconciled with Aristotle’s energeia. From it proceeds the World Soul, and from that proceed individual and partial souls such as those of humans and other animals, and finally matter, in successive stages of lesser perfection. Matter is therefore the least perfect level of the cosmos. Each soul is connected to one body in the world of matter.25 According to Plotinus, they always leave something behind at the higher level, but because they lose something as they advance, different powers discover and add on different things to compensate for the loss in accordance with needs of the living thing. The result is the appearance of claws, crooked talons, sharp teeth, horn and other such things.26 It is not just parts or individual animals that may not be Forms or may be defective, but kinds (species), “venomous creatures.” The later Neoplatonists such as Iamblichus (c.242–c.325 CE) and Proclus (412–485 CE) devised a hierarchy of gods, archangels, angels, demons, heroes, sublunary archons, material archons and the human soul. Thus they combined Plato’s concepts of the soul, ‘otherworldliness’ and plenitude with the chain of being as an outgrowth of Aristotle’s classifications and theory of continuity. An aspect of this concept of continuity was that the scala naturae was assumed to have a series of more or less evenly spaced ascending (or descending) categories like the ladder’s rungs. However, further rungs could theoretically be added ad infinitum between each so that there was no fixed number of gradations, although at the same time the plenitude of the world was often taken to be finite. The hierarchy of beings descended further from the unseen world into the physical world. As far as the definition of animal species was concerned, human souls may have been the lowest of the hypostases, but humans

25

This is a grossly simplified description, intended only to illustrate that Plotinus’ Neoplatonism made hierarchy integral to the structure of the cosmos. 26 Plotinus, Enneads: Ennead 5, Bk 7.2; 5.9.14. For an English translation: Plotinus, The Enneads, ed. Lloyd P. Gerson, trans. John M. Dillon, R.A.H. King, Andrew Smith, George Boys-Stones and James Wilberding (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017). In Plato, Parmenides 13oc5–d3, Socrates says there is no Form corresponding to “any of the most ignoble and trivial things.” See “Parmenides,” in The Dialogues of Plato, Vol. 4, trans. B. Jowett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), 1–106.

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were at the top of the animal part of the ladder.27 The inferiority implied by lessening degrees of perfection and greater distance from the One (for which substitute God) was adaptable to Christianity and accorded with the hierarchy of the biblical Creation. Though most of the Neoplatonist works were unavailable in the early medieval Latin West, Neoplatonist thought was transmitted by such works as Chalcidius’ commentary on Plato’s Timaeus and Macrobius’ Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis (Commentary on the Dream of Scipio).28 The latter’s description of the Neoplatonist theory of emanation represents it clearly as the great chain of being: Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis (Commentary on the Dream of Scipio).29 Accordingly, since Mind (nous) emanates from the Supreme God and Soul from Mind, indeed forms and suffuses all below with life, and since this the one splendour lighting up everything and visible in all, like a countenance reflected in many mirrors arranged in a row, and since all follow on in continuous succession, degenerating step by step in their downward course, the close observer will find that from the Supreme God even to the bottommost dregs of the universe there is one tie, binding at every link and never broken. This is the golden chain of Homer which, he tells us, God ordered to hang down from the sky to earth. trans. George D. Economou

Unlike Chalcidius, Macrobius adjusted the Neoplatonic ‘chain’ by introducing Aristotle’s division between ether and the four elements, and thus those things that included ether and those that did not. The moon marked the boundary between ether and air, so there was a sharp division between the holy and unchangeable realm between the upper edge of the universe and the moon 27 In metaphysics, a hypostasis was the essential nature of a substance as opposed to its attributes. Neoplatonists argued that beneath the surface phenomena that reveal themselves to our senses are three higher spiritual principles, or hypostases, each one more sublime than the preceding (to Plotinus, the Soul, the Intellect, and the One). In its Christian theological sense, hypostasis refers to any of the three persons that constitute the Holy Trinity, or to the single person of Christ in which the divine and human natures are united, studied in Triadology and Christology respectively. 28 Chalcidius lived in the early fourth century and Macrobius around the turn of the fifth century. Somnium Scipionis was a work by Cicero. For Chalcidius’ work, see Chalcidius, Timaeus: A Calcidio translatus commentarioque instructus, ed. Jan Hendrik Waszink, Plato Latinus 4 (Leiden: Brill, 1962). 29 “Ambrosii Theodosii Macrobii, Commentariorum in somnium Scipionis,” in Macrobius, ed. Franciscus Eyssenhardt (Leipzig, B.G. Teubner, 1868), 465–652: Liber primus, xiv.5.

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and the changeable, perishable (mortal) sublunary world, in which all animals belonged.30 Chalcidius and Macrobius also took steps towards the metaphorical personifications of nature that would appear in the works of Boethius, later Bernardus Silvestris and Alan of Lille, and later still Chaucer. Proclus was the last great Neoplatonist philosopher, and his works exerted a huge influence on those of a fifth- to sixth-century Christian who claimed to be Dionysius the Aeropagite, mentioned in Acts 17.34 as an Athenian convert, so much so that he used many of Proclus’ passages almost word-for-word. Pseudo-Dionysius in turn strongly influenced medieval Christian thinkers. Despite some early doubts, most accepted the author’s claim to be the Dionysius of Acts, but its credibility was undermined from the fifteenth century onwards, first by the humanist scholar Lorenzo Vallas (d. 1457). Below, Pseudo-Dionysius justifies his use of lowly animals as symbols of the “excellent” celestial beings, which he subsequently does use, so that his description creates an image of the ‘brute animal’ hierarchy as well as the celestial. Pseudo-Dionysius the Aeropagite, Περὶ τῆς οὐρανίου ἱεραρχίας (The Celes­ tial Hierarchy), 1–231 1. To my fellow-presbyter Timothy, Dionysius the Presbyter … To further, then, the attainment of our due measure of deification, the loving Source of all mysteries, in showing to us the Celestial Hierarchies, and consecrating our hierarchy as fellow ministers, according to our capacity, in the likeness of their divine ministry, depicted those supercelestial Intelligences in material images in the inspired writings of the sacred Word so that we might be guided through the sensible to the intelligible, and from sacred symbols to the Primal Source of the Celestial Hierarchies. 2. That Divine and Celestial matters are fittingly revealed even through unlike symbols. … I consider, then, that in the first place we must explain our conception of the purpose of each Hierarchy and the good conferred by each upon its followers; secondly we must celebrate the Celestial Hierarchies as they are revealed in the Scriptures; and finally we must say under what holy figures the descriptions in the sacred writings portray those Celestial Orders, and to what kind of purity we ought to be guided through those forms lest we, like the many, should impiously suppose that those Celestial and Divine Intelligences are many-footed or many-faced beings, or formed with the brutishness of oxen, or the 30 “Macrobii Commentariorum,” Liber primus, xxi.13–15. 31 Translation by the Editors of the Shrine of Wisdom, from The Mystical Theology and the Celestial Hierarchies of Dionysius the Areopagite (Godalming, Surrey: Shrine of Wisdom, 2004): I–II: pp. 37–38.

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savageness of lions, or the curved beaks of eagles, or the feathers of birds, or should imagine that they are some kind of fiery wheels above the heavens, or material thrones upon which the Supreme Deity may recline, or many-coloured horses, or commanders of armies, or whatever else of symbolic description has been given to us in the various sacred images of the Scriptures.  … Accordingly this mode of description in the holy writings honours, rather than dishonours, the Holy and Celestial Orders by revealing them in unlike images, manifesting through these their supernal excellence, far beyond all mundane things. … In the case of the irrational or the insensitive things, such as brute animals among living creatures, or inanimate objects, we rightly say that these are deprived of reason, or of sense-perception. But we fittingly proclaim the sovereignty, as Supermundane Beings, of the immaterial and intellectual Natures over our discursive and corporeal reasoning and sense-perceptions, which are remote from those Divine Intelligences. In the Christian chain of being God is at the apex, above angels, which like him are entirely incorporeal and hence unchangeable. Beneath them are humans, consisting both of spirit and matter; their bodies and parts of the soul inseparable from it die, and are thus mostly impermanent. Lower are nonhuman animals and lower still plants. At the bottom are the minerals of the earth itself, consisting only of matter. Within these groupings there are also hierarchies. The lion, for instance, was the apex predator with its powerful senses and movement. Molluscs could not move and so belonged at the bottom of the animal hierarchy, closest to plants. The boundaries between the grades of being became less clear to Latin natural philosophers after the rediscovery of Aristotle’s natural works, as emphasized in his well-known observation: “Nature proceeds from the inanimate to the animals by such small steps that, because of the continuity we fail to see to which side the boundary and the middle between them belongs.”32 This conception was present in Nemesius’ On the Nature of Man, translated into Latin in the late eleventh century, as seen in his ‘Aristotelian’ scala naturae included in Chapter 1, but became widespread after the translation from Arabic of most of Aristotle’s works in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Unsurprisingly, medieval thinkers were especially interested in the ‘boundary beings’ and what distinguished

32 Aristotle, Historia Animalia 588b1; Aristotle XI: History of Animals, Books VII–X, trans. D.M. Balme, Loeb Classical Library 439 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 62–63.

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them as belonging to a given category. Aquinas reiterates Aristotle’s point in his Summa Theologiae, possibly nowadays the most well-known of all medieval theological-philosophical works, which drew heavily on Aristotle’s natural philosophy. It was intended as a summary to assist Dominican friars, but although it was not quite finished when Aquinas died in 1274, it became and then remained a key text in the canon of the Catholic Church. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Bk 1a, Question 78.1.a1.33 The modes of living are distinguished according to the grades of living things. For there are some living things, namely plants, which are purely vegetative. But there are others in which the sensitive exists along with the vegetative, but not movement from place to place; motionless animals such as shellfish. There are others that besides this have movement from place to place, namely perfect animals, which require many things to stay alive and consequently need to move to seek things necessary for life from a distance. And there are some living things which with these powers have intellect, namely men. trans. Timothy Sutton

Aquinas emphasized four grades of earthly living beings, plants, imperfect animals, perfect animals and humans. Although he does not stress motion as a defining characteristic of animals as much as some commentators, he follows the Islamic philosopher Avicenna (Ibn Sina, 980–1037) in referring to local motion as “progressive movement” in perfect animals but defines incomplete animals as those with sense and only insignificant movement. Accordingly, the zoophytes were “imperfect animals.”34 In late medieval discourse movement initiated within the organism, even if only exercised in one location, became a defining characteristic of animals. As in Albert’s definition below, Aquinas’ definition of an animal species as “imperfect” did not mean that its members lacked something they ought normally to have, Aristotle’s definition of imperfection, but that they lacked something most other animals had. Zoophytes were perfect in their species – that is, perfectly designed for a position between plants and animals. Their bodies resembled the former, but they resembled the 33 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Vol. 2 (1a. 75–83): Man, ed. and trans. Timothy Sutton (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970): Liber 1a, Quaestio 78.1.a1. 34 Formal name Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn bin ʿAbdullāh ibn al-Ḥasan bin ʿAlī bin Sīnā al-Balkhi al-Bukhari, given as Ibn Sina, which was corrupted to Avicenna in Latin Europe. He and the Andalusian Islamic scholar Averroes (Ibn Rushd: full name in Arabic: Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad Ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Rušd, 1126–1198), were the most influential commentators on Aristotle in the West.

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latter in that their locomotion and sensation was so restricted as to be negligible, not far removed from having none. Their mouths are turned towards their source of food, Albert stated, and resemble the roots of a plant, as they suck food through pores to filter out dirt. He describes some species of shellfish as follows: Albert the Great, De Animalibus, Bk 4, Ch. 3.35 There are certain margaritae whose nature is halfway between that of ostreae [probably oysters] and conchae ostrei [shellfish]. Of the senses they have only a weak sense of taste, in that it is a sort of touch. This is not a true animal but a sort of halfway thing, as we said. It has a soul in the manner that animal bones have a soul, apart from being somewhat softer than bones or shells. This creature seems to have animality only insofar as it expands slightly to obtain nourishment and contracts slightly when it draws near to something harmful. In the fourteenth century Nicholas Oresme, like his older contemporary John Buridan, emphasized that animal species showed a gradual increase in cognition and sensory powers, culminating in humans. This gradation of internal powers was reflected in external physical form and appearance, so that similar physiognomy to humans implied similar cognition and senses. Oresme does not show the same uneasiness about physical resemblance between apes and humans that we find in many medieval writers, although he is sure of humanity’s place at the top of the ladder. At the same time, Oresme recognises the link between language and rationality in humans. For some, to say that the higher nonhuman animals have no ability to reason (albeit imperfectly if they were to have it) is to say that they do not have human language. Nicholas Oresme, Expositio et quaestiones in Aristotelis De Anima (Exposition and questions on Aristotle’s On the Soul), Bk 3, Question 436 His [Aristotle’s] second conclusion is that the intellectual soul is much more noble and even more powerful than the souls of other animals, inasmuch as it also differs from them in type. And therefore we see that some animals, imperfect and with little cognition, do not diversify their activity, such as shellfish the like. And some are of more perfect cognition, 35 Albertus Magnus, DA: Liber IV, Cap. III. 36 Nicolai Oresme Expositio et Quaestiones in Aristotelis De anima, ed. Benoît Patar and Claude Gagnon (Louvain: Éditions Peeters, 1995): Liber III, Quaestio IV.

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and others still more perfect, and so graded to such an extent that some seem to carry out many things and have cognition similar to human cognition, such as are monkeys or similar animals; yet to a still greater extent man surpasses all other animals. He also says that such a superior power must be known and exercised because of the nobler arrangements of the organs of sense. Hence, because the external figure is in a certain way a sign of the arrangement of the internals, so with physiognomy: hence it is that in some animals, those animals which approach more closely to the likeness of man as regards figure are of greater energy; so much, as has been said of apes, that it seems to some that, if they could speak, they would reason like men, although in some cases not so perfectly. 4

Human and Nonhuman Souls and Their Faculties

The metaphysical tradition concerning the soul that was inherited by medieval thinkers went back to Classical Greece. In the Middle Ages all those concerned with theology or philosophy accepted that all living beings have a soul, which was generally acknowledged, at least after the rediscovery of Aristotelian natural philosophy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as a form that determined the structure of the matter which comprised the body.37 The intellective soul and certain physical aspects of the body that were thought to complement it distinguished humans from other animals, but humans shared with them the sensitive soul and many corporeal characteristics. The intellective soul not only enabled rational thought but could survive the death of the body to which it was attached, whereas all nonhuman animals, even though there was huge variation in their size, shape, colour and capacity to act in various ways, had a soul that was considered inseparable from the body. In Plato’s Dialogues, although they are not entirely consistent on the parts of the soul, the soul is merely housed in the body of an animal, and with the death of the body may be transferred to that of another animal, from a man to a woman (a step down, according to Plato) or to an inferior creature if the acts of the person had not been virtuous. Christian theologians rejected any suggestion of transfer from human to nonhuman, or that the soul existed before the birth of the body, but accepted that at least part of the human soul was separable from the body and would survive its death. 37 For more on the link between formal and material elements, see ST, Liber 2.1, q. 44.1 and 37.4.

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Aristotle had attempted to explain psychological phenomena by positing several capacities that are inborn in a living being, which are defined in relation to their activities and proper objects.38 The capacities of the soul serve as causal principles in the explanation of the various life forms. Unlike his teacher Plato, Aristotle considered it inseparable from the body. It is not clear that Aristotle thought any part of the human soul, as the actuality of the body, capable of surviving the death of the body, the capability later thought to be a key distinction between humans and other animals. Later commentators on Aristotle’s De Anima extracted differing implications from his philosophy.39 Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. 200 CE) understood the active intellect of Aristotle as God residing within the human, which meant it was immortal, but this was not immortality of the human. The human (parts of the) soul, according to his interpretation of Aristotle, died with the body. The fourth-century eclectic philosopher Themistius and the fifth-century Christian Philoponus both thought Aristotle implied the immortality of the intellectual part of the soul as he allowed for its separability from the body. Neoplatonist thinkers allowed for the immortality of the rational or intellectual part of the soul, which paved the way for the accommodation of Aristotle’s philosophy to Christianity, but the full realisation of this had to await the translation of Arabic texts in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries. Belief in the survival of the rational soul does not mean that medieval philosophers had a Cartesian notion of mind-body dualism; the soul or mind (not synonymous) was understood as interlinking with the body in all animals, humans included. Soul, emotion and senses, and in humans mind and intellect, and the body were all intimately linked; emotions, for instance, shaped understanding and were visible in the body, while memory was an active cognitive process rather than a simple store of information. Whether nonhuman animals had a mind (mens), the part of the soul usually held responsible for reasoning and judgement or ‘thought’, was a moot point. But nonhuman animals could accomplish many things. All accepted that they had emotions and could move themselves, and they were able to perceive the world around them through the external senses and process the sensed information through internal powers such as the common sense, memory, imagination, and following 38 Aristotle is therefore considered the founder of ‘faculty psychology.’ The theory is expressed mainly in his work On the Soul, the English translation of Greek Περὶ Ψυχῆς (Peri Psychēs), or De anima in the Latin translation. It was written c.350 BCE. However, what we might call Aristotle’s philosophy of mind also appears in his ethical writings and several more minor works on subjects such as sense-perception, memory, sleep, and dreams. See Aristotle, On the Soul, trans. J.A. Smith (Digireads.com, 2006), especially Bk 3. 39 Aristotle’s description of the intellect is notoriously difficult to interpret.

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the work of the Persian polymath Avicenna, the estimative power. However, there were many differences of opinion on precisely what these senses or powers did, and a few philosophers even allowed nonhuman animals limited cogitative power. In his consideration of the soul, the fourth-century bishop Nemesius argued that the soul uses the body as an instrument. He gives a systematic overview of pagan views of the soul and rejects most of them wholly or partially. Nevertheless, his own view is essentially Platonist, in that the (human) soul is distinct from the body, superior to it, and can exist without it. The connection between the two is the subject of Section 3 of On the Nature of Man. Nemesius of Emesa, Περὶ φύσεως ἀνθρώπου (Lat. De Natura Hominis: Eng. On the Nature of Man) Section 2. On the Soul40 Iamblicus takes the opposite course to them [Theodorus and Porphyry]; he says that there is a species of soul for each species of animal, that is, a different species [of soul]; at any rate he wrote a monograph That transmigrations do not occur from man into irrational animals nor from irrational animals into men but from animals to animals and from men to men. He seems to me to have divined better not only Plato’s judgement but the truth itself, as can be established on many other grounds, especially the following: non-rational animals do not exhibit any rational behaviour; for they possess neither skills nor learning nor plans nor virtues nor anything else that involves thought. From this it is clear that they have no share in rational soul. For it is also absurd to say that the non-rational are rational. For even if, when children are extremely young, they exhibit non-rational behaviour, we still say that they have a rational soul, since, as they grow, they exhibit rational activity. But a non-rational animal at no age exhibits rationality and would have a rational soul superfluously, since rational ability was going to be absolutely useless. For everyone is agreed with one voice that nothing was brought to be by God that was superfluous. If that is so, a rational soul that would never be able to exhibit its function would have been inserted into domestic and wild animals superfluously, and it would have been a reproach to him who provided an unsuitable soul for the body. For that is not the work of a craftsman nor one who understands order or attunement. But if someone were to say that in disposition animals behave rationally, but their form does not allow skilled activity, basing their argument 40 Nemesius of Emesa. “De Natura Hominis.”, in PG SS Patrum Ægyptiorum Opera Omnia, Vol. 40/1, ed. J.-P. Migne (1863), 483–840: Pars II.

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on humans – for if the fingers of their hands alone are taken away, nearly all skills are destroyed with them – this does not solve the problem. For the same absurdity remains, that God fitted the body with a soul that was not suitable, but superfluous, useless and ineffective, since it is prevented throughout their whole life from carrying out its characteristic activities. In addition they also conduct their argument from unclear and controversial premises: for whence comes the premise that in disposition animals behave rationally? So it is better to believe that a suitable soul is fitted to each body, and that animals have no disposition beyond the natural simplicity which they exhibit in their doings. For each species of non-rational animals behaves in accordance with its natural drive, for which need and activity it originally came to be, and for these it also received its appropriate formation. For the Craftsman did not leave them utterly without resource, but endowed each with its natural understanding, though not of a rational sort, and He implanted in some a resourcefulness as a sort of image of skill and a shadow of reason for the sake of two things: so that they might turn away from their immediate aims and take steps to guard those in the future, and in order to join together the whole creation to itself, as was said before. That they do not act in this way rationally is clear from the fact that each animal of a species does the same things in the same way and that their activities do not vary in number, except in degree. But still the whole species is stirred to action by a single impulse. For each hare is cunning in the same way, each wolf plays its tricks in the same way, and each ape mimics in the same way, which is not the case with man. For men’s actions take thousands of different routes. For reason is something free and self-governed, which is why the work of man is not one and the same for all men, as it is for each species of non-rational animal. For they are moved only by their nature, and what is natural is the same for all. But rational actions are different for different people, and they are not the same for all by necessity. trans. R.W. Sharples and P.J. van der Eijk

Nemesius makes a point of contrasting nonhuman and human animal souls. His premise is that as a unit designed and created by a rational being, all parts of each created being should function together to achieve the end result that we can observe in the being’s behaviour, just as no-one would design a working device that had parts which did not contribute to the function it was designed to fulfil. The belief that the physical attributes of humans are intended to enable the use of a rational soul endured throughout the Middle Ages and beyond.

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So too did the assumption that the nonhuman animals of each species act in a relatively uniform way. The most influential of the late Antique Christian thinkers was Augustine. He was almost entirely concerned with the human soul and not that of other animals and his references to their cognitive capacities (their soul) are scattered through his works, but his writings tell us that his concept of the distinction between them was founded largely on Aristotle’s and moderated through Stoic and Neoplatonist thought, so that the most important difference was that the human possessed rationality. Like Nemesius, he emphasizes that not only did the human soul enable rational thought, but as a consequence it could survive the death of the body, even though, according to Augustine, the two were a unity in a person’s lifetime on earth. One of his early works, the Magnitude of the Soul, takes the form of a dialogue between Evodius and Augustine in which the latter is mainly concerned with the question of the human soul’s materiality or immateriality and connection with the body.41 Augustine of Hippo, De quantitate animae (On the Magnitude of the Soul), Ch. 1342 Evodius: Well, I admit now that the soul is not a body or anything like a body, but please tell me what it is. Augustine: Consider, for the present, whether we have proved that it lacks entirely all quantity, for this is the question we are discussing now. For, what is the soul was the earlier topic of our discussion. That you have forgotten surprises me. You remember that you asked first: Whence is the soul? which, 1 recall, we handled in two ways: one, in which we inquired about its place of origin, as it were; the other, in which we considered whether it was composed of earth, or fire or any other of these elements, or of all together, or of a combination of some of them. And we agreed on this conclusion, that an answer to this question is as much beyond us as the answer to the question: Whence is earth or am I other one of the elements? For, it must be understood that, although God made the soul, 41 Quantitate might also be translated ‘Dimensions’ or ‘Measure’. These questions about the soul continued to preoccupy thinkers for centuries. In the fourteenth century John Buridan, in his Questiones in Aristotelis De Anima (Questions on Aristotle’s De anima) 2.9, simply stated that the existence of the immaterial and unextended soul in a divisible and extended body was a miracle and the position is established by faith alone. (Because they were based on lectures, there are three manuscript versions of this tractatus, the “third and final” being the one discussed). 42 Augustine, De Quantitate Animae; The measure of the soul, ed. Francis E. Tourscher (Philadelphia, PA: Peter Reilly, 1933): Cap. XIII.

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it has a definite substance which is neither of earth, nor of fire, nor of air, nor of water, unless, perchance, one should think that God gave to earth a nature that is exclusively its own and did not give to the soul a nature that is proper to it. If you wish a definition of what the soul is, I have a ready answer. It seems to me to be a certain kind of substance, sharing in reason, fitted to rule the body. trans. JOHN J. MCMAHON

Augustine of Hippo, De quantitate animae (On the Magnitude of the Soul), Ch. 27–28 (27, end) A: Would you agree that brute beasts are more excellent or happier than men? E: May God avert such monstrous madness. A. You have good reason for shuddering at such a conclusion. But what you just said forces us to that conclusion, for you stated that they have knowledge, not reason. Man has reason by which he arrives at knowledge with great difficulty. But, granting that he reaches it with ease, how will reason help us to rank men ahead of brute animals, since they have knowledge, and knowledge, it has been found, must be rated higher than reason. (28) E. I am forced either to grant that brute animals have no knowledge or to offer no objection when they are deservedly placed before me. But please explain the storv about Ulysses’ dog; what is the point of it? For, mystified at the wonder of it, I have been barking up the wrong tree. A. What do you think is the explanation, except a certain force of sense perception, not of knowing. Many animals surpass us in sense perception, and the reason for this is not to be gone into just now, but in mind and reason and knowledge God has placed us over them. The sense perception of animals, aided by the great force of habit, enables them to pick out the things that satisfy their souls, and this is done all the more easily because the brute animal soul is more closely bound to the body, and, of course, the senses belong to the body, the senses that the soul uses for food and for the pleasure that it derives from the body. But, because reason and knowledge, of which we are treating now, transcend the senses, the human soul, by meant of reason and knowledge, withdraws itself as far as it can from the body and gladly enjoys the delights of the interior life. The more it stoops to the senses, the greater its similarity to the brute animal. Hence it is that nursing infants, the more they are devoid of reason, the sharper are they to recognize by sense the touch and proximity

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of their nurses and will not bear the odour of others to whom they are not accustomed. trans. JOHN J. MCMAHON

Augustine’s understanding of the human soul involved a tripartite division into memory, intellect and will, just as the soul had three parts in Plato’s Republic and Timaeus, in that case irascible, desiring and rational. In his later works Augustine placed more emphasis on the unity of the soul: just as the three aspects of God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit were a unity, so was the human mind. As we have seen, in his commentaries on Genesis, Augustine unsurprisingly drew attention to the creation of ‘man’ in God’s image and the awarding of dominion over the animals, extrapolating from it the superiority of the human mind. Two further examples are given here, in the second of which he offers human domination of animals as ‘proof’ of this superiority, which he concludes ‘must be’ founded on reason because humans have no physical advantage. This argument had previously been made by Lactantius (c.250–c.325) and would be made again. On Free Choice of the Will is written as dialogue between Augustine and his friend Evodius. Augustine of Hippo, De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim (Literal Com­ mentary on Genesis in Twelve Books): Bk 3, 20:3043 This also cannot be overlooked: that having said “our image” he [God] immediately added “and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air” and the other irrational animals, to enable us to understand that man was made in the image of God in that part of his nature which surpasses the others [animals], that is, of course, reason or mind or intelligence, or whatever name we choose for it.44 trans. Roger Pearse

Augustine of Hippo, De libero arbitrio (On Free Choice of the Will), Bk 1, 7.16.55 and 9.19.6845 Augustine: … It is clear that many wild animals easily surpass human beings in strength and in other physical abilities. What is it in virtue of 43 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram, ed. Joseph Martin (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962): Liber III, 20.30. 44 The reference is to the creation of Genesis 1. See also the previous chapter of this book on Augustine’s conclusions based on the Genesis account of the Creation. 45 Augustine, De Libero Arbitrio, ed. W.M. Green (Turnhout: Brepols, 1970): Liber Unus, 7.16.55, 9.19.68.

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which a human being is superior, so that he can command many wild animals, yet none of them commands him? Is it not perhaps what we usually call reason or understanding? … Augustine: … Just as wild animals are broken by human beings and then remain tame, so too humans would suffer the same from animals in their turn, as the argument proved, were they not somehow superior to them. Now we did not find this superiority in the body; therefore, since it is apparent that it is in the soul, we found that it should be called ‘reason.’ trans. Peter King

Augustine was a Manichaean for ten years before his conversion to Christianity. He abandoned Manichaeism because he was dissatisfied with several aspects of it, one of which was its dualist approach to good and evil. Having become a Christian, he set out to “inquire through argument into the origin of evil.”46 The first book of On Free Choice of the Will was written in 387–388, the second sometime after, so that it was complete by 395. Will and the freedom to choose became a vital aspect of the human, possessed by no other animal. In the High Middle Ages disputation occurred concerning the human will, especially between ‘intellectualists’ and ‘voluntarists’, but no-one argued that nonhuman animals had anything resembling free will: how could they have, without an intellect and the ability to understand a precept?47 Augustine explained that will was closely tied to the question of good and evil. Nonhuman animals had no will or intellect and no understanding of morality, nor can they be judged as bad or good, but they had a natural inclination to maintain their bodies intact. If they suffer, it is a sign of their desire for integrity of their bodies, a wondrous sign of the sublime and supreme Creator. Augustine of Hippo, De libero arbitrio (On Free Choice of the Will), Bk 3, 23.69.232–24.71.24848 A: … Although these slanderous critics are not serious investigators of such questions (they are instead full of hot air), they often shake up the faith of the less educated with even the sufferings and travails of animals: 46 Augustine of Hippo, “Reconsiderations 1.9,” in On the Free Choice of the Will, On Grace and Free Choice, and Other Writings, ed. and trans. Peter King (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 127–34: Bk 1, 9.1. 47 Intellectualism and voluntarism: For Aquinas, for instance, reason was the first principle of human action and intellect invariably has the first word, although the will plays a vital role and the agent remains free, but for voluntarists such as Henry of Ghent and Peter John Olivi, such precedence indicated that the will was subject to the intellect rather than having a predominant role in human conduct and the universe. 48 Augustine, De Libero Arbitrio, ed. Green: Liber tertius, 23.69.232–24.71.248.

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“What evil have animals done to deserve to suffer such great distress? What good do they hope for, since they are vexed with such great distress?” Well, those who speak or think this way have an unbalanced assessment of things. Since they cannot recognize what the highest good is, nor how great it is, they want everything to be the way they think the highest good is, for they are not able to think of a highest good apart from the highest physical objects, which are the heavenly bodies and are less subject to corruption. Hence they demand, quite out of order, that the bodies of animals suffer neither death nor any corruption – as though they were not mortal, despite being at the lowest level of living creatures, or as though they were bad precisely because the heavenly bodies are better. Now the pain that beasts feel reveals a certain wondrous power in their souls, praiseworthy of its kind. It is quite clear from this [power] how in governing and animating their bodies they pursue unity. What else is pain but a sense of division and intolerance of corruption? Accordingly, it is as plain as day how eager and dogged the soul is in pursuing unity throughout the whole of its body. The soul confronts the physical suffering that threatens to destroy its unity and integrity not with pleasure or indifference, but instead with reluctance and resistance. It would not be apparent, then, how great the drive for unity is in the lower animals of the Creation, if not for the pain of beasts. And if it were not apparent, we would be less aware than we need to be that they were all fashioned by the supreme and sublime and inexpressible unity of their Creator. … … A human being begins to be wise or foolish at the time when he could have wisdom, were he not to neglect it so that his will is guilty of the vice of foolishness; he must then be called one or the other. No-one is so silly as to call an infant foolish, although it would be more ridiculous if he wanted to call the infant wise. Therefore, an infant cannot be called either foolish or wise, despite already being human. From this it is apparent that human nature admits an intermediate state that cannot rightly be termed foolishness or wisdom. Thus even if someone were endowed with a soul in the same state as those who lack wisdom through their neglect, no one who saw that he was in that state through nature, rather than through vice, would rightly call him a fool. Foolishness is not any ignorance at all about things to be pursued and avoided, but only ignorance stemming from vice. Accordingly, we do not call an irrational animal “foolish,” since it did not receive the ability to be wise. Yet often we apply terms to things by some likeness rather than strictly, although blindness is the worst vice in the eyes, in newborn animals it is not a vice, and cannot be called “blindness” strictly speaking. …

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… As though human nature did not admit any state intermediate between foolishness and wisdom! It is one thing to be rational, another to be wise. By reason one becomes capable of apprehending a precept, to which one ought to be faithful, so that one does what is prescribed. Just as the nature of reason takes in the precept, so observance of the precept takes in wisdom; what nature is prescribed to take in is the will for observance. And just as the rational nature deserves to receive the precept, so to speak, so too does the observance of the precept deserve to receive wisdom. Now that by which humans begin to be capable of apprehending a precept is the very thing by which they begin to be able to sin. There are two ways for someone to sin before becoming wise: (a) he does not accommodate himself to receiving a precept; (b) he does not observe it once received. The wise person, however, sins if (c) he turns away from wisdom. Just as the precept does not come from the one who receives it but from him Who issues it, so too wisdom does not come from the one who is illuminated but from him Who illuminates. Therefore, what are the grounds on which the Creator of human beings should not be praised? A human being is something good, and better than an animal in virtue of the fact that he is capable of apprehending a precept. He is better still when he has taken in the precept, and better yet again when he complies with the precept; and better than all these when he is happy in the eternal light of wisdom. Sin, however, is evil in neglecting either to receive the precept, or to observe it, or to continue in the contemplation of wisdom. trans. Peter King

In his mystical work heavily influenced by Neoplatonist thought acquired via earlier Christian writers, Periphyseon (or De Divisione Naturae, The Divisions of Nature) the ninth-century scholar Johannes Scotus Eriugena (“Ireland-born”, c.815–c.877) presented nature as the entire cosmological domain, including both created nature and the Divine Creator. Periphyseon is concerned with the essentially dialectical relation between Creator and created. To Eriugena God was immanent in all natural phenomena: all people and all beings, including animals, reflected attributes of God, towards whom all are capable of progressing and to which all things must ultimately return. God was equated with the “One”, beyond being, the Supreme Good to which the soul must retrace its steps through virtue. Eriugena’s contention that all souls, human or nonhuman, were superior to any body and would become part of the primordial life or soul, the “One” or God, implied a form of afterlife for nonhuman animal souls, even if his view of the nature of the soul departed somewhat from

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the Western philosophical norm. Eriugena’s assertion that God is the “essence of all things” and the “form of all things” (essentia omnium, forma omnium) led to accusations of eliminating the distinction between God and creation; Periphyseon was condemned by Pope Honorius III at a council at Sens in 1225 and by Gregory XIII in 1585. However, the passage from Book 4 of Periphyseon quoted here does not conflict with the common medieval view of the human as animal. Having illustrated that “the animal is the meeting-place of soul and body in sensation,” Eriugena gives an allegorical meaning to ‘cattle’, ‘quadrupeds’ and ‘reptiles’ as motions of the senses that exist in humans and explains how the ‘bestial’ elements might conflict with reason, mind and their rational motions, found only in humans on Earth but existing also in celestial beings. Johannes Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon or De Divisione Naturae (On Nature or The Division of Nature), Bk 4: 752b–753a49 I believe, therefore, that this threefold division implies a threefold motion in the form of life which adheres to the bodies of the land animals and effects the union of soul to body. But this threefold motion becomes intelligible in man only, the only rational animal. For subject to his reason he has certain motions which may be symbolised by the word “cattle” or “four-footed things”. For instance, by his skilled zeal to understand the sensibles he moves his five-fold sense in disciplined order towards cognition of them, and to this motion it is reasonable to give the name of “cattle”, for it is of no small assistance to the rational soul in acquiring true and accurate knowledge of all the sensibles, dispelling all falsehood. For there is, as it were, a kind of four-footed motion of the senses subject to reason. For everything in sensible nature of which we obtain knowledge through the sense is composed of four elements, or rather is constituted out of such a composition. For consider the corporeal species and you will see that of whatever material each is composed it exhibits the qualities of the four elements. Whatever you hear or smell you may be sure is a product of the air of the four elements, and in like manner whatever you taste or touch arises from the combination of earth and water. So the term “quadruped” is not inappropriate to the bodily sense, seeing that every sensible has its origin in the four elements and nowhere else. But there are certain motions arising from the lower nature which might correctly be termed irrationals, which are resistant to reason. 49 Johannis Scotti Eriugenae Periphyseon (De divisione naturae), Vol. 4: Books 4–5, ed. I.P. Sheldon-Williams (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1995): Liber IV, 752b–753a.

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These, such as rage and covetousness and all the inordinate appetites of the corporeal senses, are wrongly attributed to sensible creatures. And since these motions which infect human nature belong properly to the brute creation, they are not improperly called beasts, especially as they are in continual revolt against the discipline of reason, and can rarely, if ever, be tamed thereby, but are ever seeking to attack savagely and devour the rational motions. Moreover in the rational animal there are certain other motions, though not manifesting themselves, by which the body joined to that nature is administered. These motions are situated in the auctive and nutritive part of the soul. And since they perform their functions by their natural facility and as it were hiddenly – for they in no way agitate or disturb the disposition of the soul but, provided that the integrity of nature is preserved intact, pervade by a silent progress the harmony of the body – they are therefore not improperly given the name of reptiles. Now in all animals except man two only of these aforesaid three types of motion are found: that which resides in the sense and strictly speaking lacks the control of reason, and is therefore called bestial; and that which is attributed to the nutritive Life Force, and resembles the reptile. Man participates in these together with all other animals, and conversely all the other animals participate in them in common with him. Do you now see how it is that man is in all animals and all animals in him, and that yet he transcends them all? And if anyone look more closely into the admirable and well-nigh ineffable constitution of nature herself, he will clearly see that the same man is a species of the genus animal and also transcends every animal species, and thus admits an affirmation and a negation: for it may rightly be predicated of him: “Man is an animal”; and “Man is not an animal.” For when consideration is given to his body and his nutritive Life Force, to his senses and to his memory of sensibles, and to all his irrational appetites, such as rage and covetousness, he is altogether an animal; for all these he shares in common with all the other animals. But in his higher nature, which consists in reason and mind and the interior sense, with all their rational motions, which are called virtues, and with the memory of the eternal and divine things, he is altogether other than animal. For all these attributes he shares with the celestial essences, which by the excellence of their substance transcend in a manner beyond our comprehension everything which is contained in the animal nature. … … A. Neither reason nor divine authority would permit me to hold that in the one man there are two souls. Indeed, they would forbid it, and it

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is not right that any true philosopher should maintain such an opinion. Rather I declare that man consists of one and the same rational soul conjoined to the body in a mysterious manner, and that it is by a certain wonderful and intelligible division that man himself is divided into two parts, in one of which he is created in the image and the likeness of the Creator, and participates in no animality but is utterly removed therefrom; while in the other he communicates with the animal nature and was produced out of the earth, that is to say, out of the common nature of all things, and is included in the universal genus of the animals. trans. I.P. SHELDON-WILLIAMS, revised by JOHN J. O’MEARA

The twelfth-century natural philosopher Adelard of Bath (d. 1142) produced several original works and translated some important Greek and Arabic works on astronomy, astrology, philosophy, mathematics and alchemy into Latin. Adelard was strongly influenced by Arabic learning, as he had travelled in Spain, Sicily and the Near East, and repeatedly invoked Arab thought as his aid in controversial matters. His own work remained influential until it was eclipsed by Aristotle’s teaching in the fourteenth century, especially his Questiones Naturales (Questions on Natural Science), divided into three parts: On Plants and Brute Animals, On Man and On Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. The limits of contemporary knowledge and understanding led him to conclusions that would be entirely out of place nowadays: for instance, as stars move voluntarily they must be animate and possess souls, and as they are alive they must feed, taking the moistures of the earth and the waters, thinned out as they rise to the upper regions.50 But in the same work, Adelard came close to arguing that animals had reason. Adelard of Bath, Questiones Naturales (Questions on Natural Science), 1251 Nephew: Indeed, brute animals have sensation, but no judgement nor understanding about what they perceive with their senses. Adelard: If they have no judgement about what they sense, they would have no intention to seek or avoid anything as a result of what they sense. For example, whatever you see about which you have no understanding, you neither seek nor avoid as a result of that sensation. This happens all the time both to you and to anyone else. But if brute animals have no intention concerning things, let him who can tell me why a dog is diverted very quickly from the place to which he was making in great haste. If he sees anything in his path – I do not say, which actually harms 50 51

Adelard of Bath, “Questiones Naturales”: lxxv. Adelard of Bath, “Questiones Naturales”: xii.

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him but which could harm him. What, I ask, turns that desire so quickly into an opposite action? Brute animals clearly must have intentions of seeking and avoiding. Therefore they have some judgement about why they seek or avoid something. But because that judgement does not belong to the body, it can only exist in the soul. For it is necessary for them also to have souls. Moreover, every spoken word heard by anyone either gives rise to understanding in him or does not. If it does not give rise to any understanding in the listener, he makes no movement of activity because of that word, because it has not meant anything to him. So, when something meaningful is spoken to brute animals, it either gives rise to understanding in them or does not. If it gives rise to no understanding in them, then it would neither persuade them into any movement of activity nor cause that movement. So if this were the case, animals would not begin or avoid anything that they intended to do because of the words they heard. Tell me then, if you can, how a dog, when he hears a spoken word, spontaneously and immediately stops what he is doing and does the opposite. Moreover, sensations and the discernment about sensations are not the same. For sensations occur in the body and around bodies, but discernment concerning anything  – but especially in identifying similar things – cannot occur except in the soul. But brute animals make use of discernment of sensations. For, again, a dog senses the scent of the wild animal that he is following, but if he comes across another animal of the same kind, then when he picks up the scent of both animals, he discerns between them, and mindful of his master’s command he spurns the one and follows the other. For he has somehow pictured in his mind “This is the one which I must follow, but that is another scent, different from this.” In noticing that difference there is considerable subtlety in discerning judgement. Therefore it is necessary that brute animals too have the fundamentals of discernment. trans. Charles Burnett

Adelard departed from mainstream thought in his attitude to the nonhuman soul; in response to the suggestion that animals’ souls perish as soon as they are separated from the body, “for they [brute animals] do not seek punishment or rewards for their deeds”, he answers that the soul is incorporeal and very different in character from the inconstant and perishable body, being its guide and the active nature of the being, and to suggest that it too perishes is to take

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leave of one’s senses (deliro). In what way precisely animal souls were immortal is not explained further. Nevertheless, Adelard consistently maintained rationality as the cornerstone of human distinction from all other animals. Adelard of Bath, Questiones Naturales (Questions on Natural Science), 1552 Nephew: … Why, I ask, when those [animals] which are less worthy have a means of defence inborn in them, does man, who is more worthy than all these lesser natures, not have inborn weapons. Like horns or deadly tusks and cannot avoid a deadly foe by the lightness of flight? The result is that, because he has not been given these things by the Creator, he laboriously puts together for himself weapons which he has looked for outside himself, and, when it is necessary, he puts more confidence in the legs of another animal than in his own. That creature, therefore, which is dearer to the Supreme Good is the more deprived of the supreme help. Adelard: I shall free myself first by the common answer. For I agree that man is dearer to the Creator than the other animals. Nevertheless, it is not appropriate either for arms to be innate in him, or for very swift flight to be attached to him. For he has that which is much better and more worthy than these  – I mean reason, by which he excels the very brute animals so much that they are tamed by it, and, once tamed, bridles are put on them, and, once bridled, they are put to various tasks. Thus you see how much the gift of reason is superior to bodily instruments.53 trans. Charles Burnett

Like Augustine, Adelard does not attempt to deny the superiority of many animal physical or sensory attributes, but their importance is diminished and they are far outweighed by the human attribute of reason. Furthermore, like Lactantius and Augustine, as evidence of inferiority to humans Adelard cites animals’ subjugation to humans. Adelard’s assertion that identification of the correct scent and recognition of their owners constituted discernment was a step too far for many contemporaries, such as William of Conches. William’s Dragmaticon was written in the form of a dialogue between the duke of Normandy and ‘a philosopher’; here he explains the imagination in response to one of the duke’s questions. 52 Adelard of Bath, “Questiones Naturales”: xv. 53 See Chapter 12 for a further passage from this discussion, in which humans, who have the ability to use weaponry only when required, are compared to ‘animals permanently armed for war.’

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William of Conches, Dragmaticon Philosophiae, Bk 6, Ch. 24. Imagination and the other functions of the soul54 Besides this there is a certain function of the soul called the imagination. Imagination is the power of the soul by which we perceive the shape and colour of a thing absent. This power is necessary in humans lest they forget things. For we carry with us, through the imagination, the shape and colour of a person we have seen, and, therefore, when we see him again we instantly recognize him. Furthermore, we often imagine things we have never seen, but in analogy to a thing of the same kind as we have seen. That is why imagination is said to arise from sight. For what we imagine, we imagine either according to the way we saw it or in analogy to a thing of the same kind that we have seen. As when in Virgil the shepherd Tityrus was imagining that Rome, which he had never seen, would be similar to his own town.55 For Augustine says: “I imagine the Red Sea, which I have never seen, in the likeness of another sea which I have seen, but I change the colour.”56 Imagination is common to ourselves and brute animals. For this reason brute animals are seen to recognize their own masters, to shun one thing and seek another. They do not do this from discrimination, as some people affirm, but from imagination. These, most serene duke, are the functions of the soul that are common to ourselves and brute animals and in which we are outdone by brute animals. For the lynx sees more sharply than humans, a dog smells more keenly, and a hare moves faster. Those, then, who look for their happiness in shapes, colours, smells, tastes, and sexual excitement place their happiness below that of the brute animals. Therefore, the senses were given to humans so as to serve them, not rule them. People are not any happier because of them, in fact, they are made more miserable. For if we should lack every sense but retain reason and intelligence, we would not only be happier, we would be the happiest of all beings. For surely it was a most wise man who said, “Behold, death enters through the windows.”57 trans. Italo Ronca and Matthew Curr

Like Adelard, William concedes that many nonhuman animals have superior senses to humans, but he reduces the value of these abilities by explaining that 54 Guillelmus de Conchis Dragmaticon philosophiae, ed. I. Ronca et al.: Liber VI, Cap. XXIV. 55 Virgil, “Ecologues,” in Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid: Books 1–6, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1916), 23–89: Eclogue 1, 20–21. 56 This quotation does not occur in any of Augustine’s works: we should probably attribute it to William’s faulty memory and thus to his own imagination. 57 Jeremiah 9.21.

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human reason and intelligence are not only much more valuable, but that the senses will be detrimental to humans if they allow them to dominate their lives. He goes on to explain that senses are bodily in that they affect only things pertaining to the body, they are performed by bodily instruments, and they are put into action by the soul only when the soul is in the body; “There are other functions that are common to us and divine spirits, which exalt humans above the animal species, indeed make them truly human.”58 From the twelfth century onwards many more works of the classical natural philosophers and commentaries by Moslem thinkers were translated into Latin, almost all from Arabic, as a result of which more extensive discussion of the nature of animal cognition occurred. Most importantly, and despite opposition, Aristotle’s natural philosophy was assimilated into medieval scientia. His conception and categorization of life on Earth was largely compatible with both the biblical account and Augustine’s. In early medieval Europe there was relatively little discourse on why animals behaved as they did, so that little change in ideas of animal cognition occurred from those expressed by thinkers of late Antiquity, insofar as they were known in post-Roman Europe. Aristotle’s conceptions filtered through in certain translated works, such as Nemesius’, but in Latin Europe after the fifth century Aristotle’s own works on natural philosophy and most of Galen’s works were unknown, and of Plato’s only Timaeus was known in an abridged form. Very few theologians or philosophers of Latin Europe knew Greek.59 Vincent of Beauvais’ summary in his encyclopaedic work, the third and longest in the trio of such works produced in the thirteenth century, summarizes the Latin medieval conception of the soul once Aristotelian ideas had been absorbed. Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum maius (Great mirror), 3. Speculum doctrinale (Mirror of doctrine), Bk 15, De naturalis philosophia (On natural philosophy), Ch. 17460 58 Ambrosii Theodosii Macrobii, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, ed. Jacob Willis (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1963): Liber 1, 16.9. In English, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio. 59 For this reason many modern authors think of ‘medieval philosophy’ as beginning in the Carolingian era and would consider John Scotus Eriugena the first medieval philosopher, but Deirdre Carabine, who has made a special study of Eriugena, has also characterized Periphyseon as the final achievement of ancient philosophy. He was one of the few medieval western European philosophers before the fifteenth century who understood Greek, which was still learnt in Ireland in his era. During the period of his life about which we have (very limited) knowledge, Eriugena was at the court of Charles the Bald in West Frankia. 60 Vincentius Bellovacensis. Speculum quadruplex sive Speculum maius naturale, doctrinale, morale, historiale, Vol. 3. Speculum doctrinale (Vienna: Akademische Druck-  und Verlagsanstalt, 1964): Liber XV, Cap. CLXXIIII, col. 1498.

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According to Aristotle, the powers of the soul are five, namely vegetative, sensory, appetitive, locomotive, and intellectual. According to Avicenna, however, there are three, the vegetative, the sensitive, and the rational: for under the sensitive it includes the three middle of the five aforesaid. In plants there is only the vegetative, and there it should not be called a power, but the soul. But in the brute animals there are two; nor should the vegetative power in them be called the soul, but the power which is subject to the sensitive. But there are three in man, two of which should not be called the soul in him, but a power of the soul, because they are subject to the rational soul. A vegetative soul differs from the others because there is no cognition; but the other two differ from each other, because the sensitive does not have the potential to be carried toward the spiritual, whereas the rational has. Likewise, the rational differs from the others, because it can be separated [from the body and other parts of the soul], whereas the others are inseparable. The rational differs from the intellectual, because it moves from form to form of reasoning, whereas the intellectual does not.61 The vegetative powers of the soul are three, namely, nutritive, augmentative, and generative. The sensible power is divided into apprehensive and motive. The apprehensive is also subdivided into external and internal apprehensive. The exterior is divided into five senses, namely, sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. The interior is likewise divided into five, viz., the common sense, the imaginative, the cogitative, the evaluative, and the memory. The motive power is twofold, one which commands motion, the other which directs motion. The commanding motive is also twofold, namely, concupiscible to attract, and irascible to repulse. But the rational power is divided into the power of knowing and acting, each of which is called intellect, that is, the theoretical and the practical. Especially after the ‘discovery’ of Aristotle’s natural philosophy, not everyone was happy simply to accept the unity of living body and soul in humans simply as “mysterious” (that is, beyond our understanding), as Eriugena did, and its nature was disputed. However, this disputation did not affect attitudes to nonhuman animals, as the important factor distinguishing their souls from the human soul was that they were not rational, were inseparable from the body, and died with it. Almost all the differences of opinion that caused heated

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controversy and sometimes brought condemnation from the Church concerned the human, but this does not mean nonhuman animals were not discussed. Many of their works took the form of commentaries on earlier works, especially Aristotle’s. In their discussions of animals late medieval natural philosophers began to consider nonhuman animal actions and the cognition that might lie behind them in more detail, but they were wary of attributing to them any form of cognition that might be called “rational,” the forms of thought or activity that belonged exclusively to the rational soul. The result was a tendency to expand the powers of the sensitive soul, attributing to some animals “quasi-rational” powers, and so on. According to late medieval natural philosophy, the behaviour of nonhuman animals, beyond the basic requirements of life such as growth, reproduction, nutrition, which belonged to the vegetative (or nutritive) soul, which plants could also carry out, was attributable to the sensitive soul and its powers. In the first excerpt from Aquinas below he explains how the sensible soul differed from the intellectual (rational) soul. It is assumed (and elsewhere he argued) that each animal has one soul, and that the soul is distinct from its capacities. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Bk 1a, Question 75.362 Philosophers of old made no distinction between sense and intellect, and attributed each alike to a bodily agency, as we have noticed. Plato, however, distinguished between intellect and sense, yet attributed each to an incorporeal principle, maintaining that sensation, like understanding, belonged to the soul of itself alone. And from this it followed that souls of brute animals are subsistent.63 But Aristotle established that understanding, alone among the acts of the soul, took place without a physical organ. For sensation and the acts consequent upon it manifestly take place along with a certain physical change in the body; as in seeing, c has no proper activity. Colour, according to its kind, affects the pupil of the eye; and the same for the other senses. So it is clear that the sensitive soul has no proper activity of its own, but that every one of its acts is of the body-soul compound. Which leaves us with the conclusion that since souls of brute animals have no activity which is intrinsically of soul alone, they do not subsist. Because everything acts as it exists. Hence, 1: Though man is of the same generic type as other animals, he is a different species. Specific difference depends on difference of 62 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Vol. 2, ed. and trans. Sutton: Liber 1a, quaestio 75.3. 63 Something subsists if it exists necessarily as opposed to existing contingent on space and time.

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informing principle. There is no need for every such difference to set up a generic difference. 2. Sense is related to sense-objects as intellect to intelligible objects in that each is in potentiality to its object. But in another way they are unlike, in that the impression of the sense-object on the sense goes with physiological change; that is why the intensity of the object of sensation can injure the sense. This does not happen to the intellect; if the intellect has mastered the things that are most profoundly understandable, it can then handle lesser matters with comparative ease. If bodily fatigue attends intellectual activity, this arises per accidens, outside the proper scope of intellectual activity, and is due to the fact that the intellect needs the sensitive powers to supply it with images. 3. A moving power is of two kinds. One commands motion, namely appetitive power. Its activity in the animal soul is never without physiological change; anger, joy and such passions all involve it. The other is that which executes motion by making the members adapted to the appetite; its act is to be set in motion, not to set in motion. Hence it is clear that causing motion is not an act of the sensitive soul apart from the body. trans. Timothy Sutton

The two excerpts from Aquinas’ ST below are extracted from his explication of the soul’s sensitive powers. In the Middle Ages the internal senses were regarded as faculties of the soul, each faculty having a distinct psychological function. These senses are processes by which the animal becomes aware of aspects of things external to it and from them can form a coherent perception that includes the sensible qualities acquired from the external senses. The common sense enables an animal to combine the different sensible features of a single external object perceived by its external senses, such as smells, colours, sounds, or sensations from touch, into a single perception of that object. All animals can make a cognitive estimation of whether an object perceived by the senses and of which a phantasm has been produced in the imagination is something to be sought after or avoided. The capacities of intellect and will, Aquinas goes on to explain, belong to humans alone. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Book 1a, Question 78.1a64 The soul has five kinds of powers as enumerated, but there are three kinds of souls and four modes of living. The reason for such variety is this, that 64 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Vol. 2, ed. and trans. Sutton: Liber 1a, quaestio 78.1a.

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the various sorts of soul are distinguished from one another according to the different ways in which the activities of the soul transcend the activities of inanimate bodies. For the whole physical world is subject to the soul and related to it as its matter and its instrument. Thus there is one particular activity of the soul which so greatly transcends the physical that it is not even exercised through a bodily organ, and this is the activity of the rational soul. Another level of activity, below this, takes place through a bodily organ but it is not itself a physical transaction, and such is the activity of the sensitive soul. (For though hot and cold and moist and dry and other such physical qualities are needed for sense activity, their activity is not the medium in which the activity of the sensitive soul has its being, but is needed solely to render the organ ready.) Then the lowest level of activity belonging to a soul is that which takes place through a physical organ and by virtue of physical qualities. This sort of activity is more than physical because physical change depends on external agents, whereas this has an internal source. For this is common to all activities of the soul; anything animate in some fashion moves itself. And such is the activity of the vegetative soul. Digestion and its sequel takes place through the instrumentality of heating, as the De Anima says. trans. Timothy Sutton

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Bk 1a, Question 78.465 So for the reception of sense forms there is the particular sense and the “common” sense. Their retention and conservation require fantasy or imagination, which are the same thing; fantasy or imagination is, as it were, a treasure-store of forms received through the senses. Instinct grasps intentions which are not objects of simple sensation. And the power of memory conserves these: it is a treasure-store of intentions of this kind. A sign of this is that the reason for remembering in animals is an intention of this kind, the fact that something is harmful or serviceable, and the fact of pastness, which is what memory bears upon, falls into this category. Consider now that so far as sense forms are concerned there is no difference between men and other animals; they are affected in the same way by external sense objects. But when it comes to the intentions just discussed there is a difference, for other animals perceive such intentions solely by natural instinct, whereas man perceives them by a process of comparison. And so what we call natural instinct in other animals, in man we call cogitation, which comes upon intentions of the kind in question 65 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Vol. 2, ed. and trans. Sutton: Liber 1a, quaestio 78.3.

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through a process of comparison. Which is why it is also called the particular reason, to which medical scientists assign a fixed part of the body, the middle of the head; for it compares individual intentions the way the reasoning intellect compares universal intentions. As to memory, man not only has it the way other animals do, but also in the form of reminiscence, a quasi-syllogistic search among memories of things past in their individuality. Avicenna did indeed maintain a fifth power, somewhere between instinct and imagination, a power which composes and divides imagined forms, as when from the image of gold and the image of mountain we compose the single form of a golden mountain which we have never seen. But this activity is not found in animals other than man, in whom the power of imagination suffices to account for it. It was to this power that Averroes attributed this activity in a book he did On Sense and Sensibles. And so there is no need to maintain more than four powers of the sensitive soul, namely the common sense and imagination, instinct and memory. Hence. 1. No internal sense is described as common the way a predicate is, as a general classification, but it is common in the sense of being the root and source of the external senses. 2. Each particular sense judges its proper object, discerning it from other things that come under the same sense, for instance, discerning white from black or green. But neither sight nor taste can discern the difference between white and sweet, because to discern a difference between two things you have to know both. Hence it must belong to a common sense to discriminate; all sense perceptions are referred to it as to a common terminus. It also perceives sense-perceptions, as when someone is aware that he is seeing. This could not take place through any particular sense, which knows only the sensible form by which it is affected. Sight arises from the physical impression and this leads to another impression in the common sense, which perceives the act of sight. trans. Timothy Sutton

A very important role in the sensitive soul of nonhuman animals was played by the estimative power, which lay somewhere short of reason, but accounted for the animal’s ability to identify whether things in its vicinity were beneficial or harmful to its wellbeing. That nonhuman as well as human animals could do this was undeniable, as many actions they took revealed. However, appraising threats and benefit was not all that the estimative power did, as it might have

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other cognitive functions; opinions differed somewhat on what these were. The philosopher who did most to develop the theory of this power and ultimately to introduce it to medieval thinkers when Arabic texts were translated was the Persian polymath Avicenna. It was he who asked the question, “Why does the sheep flee the wolf?”, in the Middle Ages perhaps the most repeated of the many recurring examples of animal behaviour used in discussion of what lay behind their actions. John Blund’s (c.1175–1248) work was one of the earliest at the University in Paris that used Aristotelian natural philosophy, probably from just after 1200.66 Blund obviously found Avicenna’s De anima the most useful of those texts available to him (which included Aristotle’s own version) for his purpose of describing the nature of the soul.67 The propositions concerning the estimative power that Blund rejects are included in full below, as they are possible interpretations of its functioning that would have allowed some form of reason to nonhuman animals. John Blund, Tractatus de anima (Treatise on the Soul), Ch. 19. De estimatione (Concerning estimation)68 Next concerning estimation, and so we should examine what estimation is and what it is for. From Avicenna we know that estimation is a power placed in the middle ventricle of the brain in order to perceive non-sensed intentions which are in individual and sensed things. It judges whether a thing should be avoided because of an intention if this intention is harmful or is to be desired because of an intention if this is useful. An example is the power that is in a sheep which judges that it should flee from a wolf, and that a lamb which belongs to this sheep should be looked after. The Commentator [Avicenna] calls an intention an individual quality which is not picked up by sensation, which is either harmful or useful to a thing. An example of harmful is that quality in a wolf which causes the sheep to flee from it; an example of useful is that property which the sheep has which causes the lamb to approach it. But there is an objection that imagination perceives nothing except according to the image which it receives from the common sense. Similarly, 66

This is the only surviving work by Blund. There are three manuscripts, one ascribing the work to him. 67 Avicenna’s commentary on De anima was part of his Kitāb aš-šifā (Sufficientia in Latin, Book of Healing in English). 68 Iohannes Blund, Tractatus de Anima, ed. Daniel Callus and R.W. Hunt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012): Cap. XIX.

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the common sense intuits nothing except according to the likeness formed within it of the external thing by the external sense. Therefore, for the same reason, since estimation is a power which comes after imagination, nothing will be formed in the organ of estimation except from the impression formed first in the imagination, and whatever is in the imagination has arisen from sensation. Hence estimation does not intuit an intention unless a likeness of the intention was first of all constituted in sensation. Therefore, an intention is a thing which comes under sensation. Moreover, since the wolf is a separate thing from the sheep, in what way is a likeness of the intention which exists in the wolf constituted in the estimation unless there was first an impression formed in the sensation of the sheep by the intention which exists in the wolf, since sensation is a medium between the thing sensed and the imagination? For in what way can a fire which is far off from a man heat the man, unless the air between receives heat from the heat of the fire? Solution. It should be stated that an intention is a thing received by the estimation and which does not fall under sensation in such a way that it would be perceived by the soul by means of sensation. So it does not require another power to perceive the intention, nor is its image in sensation or in imagination. However, an image of the intention arises in estimation by means of perception and its image is not in sensation or imagination, but an image of the intention occurs in the estimation without there existing any likeness of the intention of any of those which are between the organ of estimation and the subject of the intention, as was said above concerning sight, that the image of the thing seen is in sight, but there is not something similar to the image in the intervening air. However, because this might seem to someone difficult to understand, it can be said that a likeness of the intention occurs in sensation and imagination, but the soul does not perceive according to them, because sensation and imagination are not by nature in agreement with the proper subject of the intention. Yet the organ of estimation is of a similar nature to that which is within the organ itself and properly the subject of an intention, and thus according to the estimative power the perception of an intention occurs. As has been said above, both composition and division happen by means of estimation, However, it is not in keeping with estimation to link some things together unless the extremities of that composition have already been perceived, Therefore, when the sheep through estimation links things in its soul, it first of all perceives this “to flee from” and then

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the thing designated by the term “wolf.” Yet this same “to flee from” is a universal, and that term “wolf” signifies a universal. So in this way universals are perceived by estimation, and hence brute animals perceive universals.69 Moreover, regarding the composition or division of estimation there is either truth or falsity. Therefore, since it is true that the sheep should flee from the wolf, according to the power of estimation it can perceive that it is true and, for the same reason, that its composition could be perceived to be false. Hence, since by means of the estimative power what is true and what is false can be inferred, brute animals can discern the true from the false: so brute animals can reciprocally make use of reasoning. Solution: With regard to the first question, it should be stated that universals cannot be apprehended by brute animals. For estimation only perceives individuals. Thus, according to the estimative power it is not perceived that a wolf should be fled from, but rather it is perceived that this wolf should be fled from, which is a sensation, or which was first of all in a sensation. And since by means of the term “this wolf” an individual is signified, that which is later signified by this term “to be fled from” is linked to the individual by this determinaton “from this wolf.” With regard to the other question, it should be said that although there is composition and division in the estimative power, and regarding that there is truth and falsity, yet it is not by means of the estimative power that truth or falsity is perceived to be there, but only by means of an intellect and reason. Thus, even if brute animals perceive that in which there is either truth or falsity, yet the true in as much as it is true is not

69 Universals. Among animals, the ability to recognize qualities or characteristics that particular things had in common, that is, to abstract from particulars, was thought to be solely a human one. Both humans and other animals could recognize an (the/this/that) animal or a given animal such as a pig (by its colour, etc.) at a given time, but extrapolation from observations of particulars to a general understanding of the nature of ‘animality’ or ‘the pig’ as we might use the term to refer to the whole species and its characteristics (‘pig-ness’), the universal, required a process of abstraction only possible for those animals that possessed reason and intellect. Universals could be represented by three major kinds of characteristics: properties, that is, tall, heavy and so on; type, for instance, in modern biology an animal or plant genus such as Ovis (sheep and related) or Urtica (nettles and related); and relations, such as familial connections. In the Middle Ages the reality of universals would also be denied by several philosophers, and the argument continues to this day.

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perceived by them, nor the false in as much as it is false, for they do not perceive truth or falsity since they lack understanding and reason. Of the commentaries on Aristotle’s De animalibus that of Aquinas’ teacher in Paris, Albertus Magnus, stands out: in the mid-thirteenth century he wrote his De animalibus in twenty-six books. If we can judge by the number of surviving manuscripts, over forty, Albert’s De animalibus was the most popular commentary on Aristotle’s work of the same name in the Middle Ages. Albert’s interest in nonhuman animals clearly extended beyond simply referring to them so as to understand the animal part of human nature or to understand how the human could be what the animal was not. It is, however, improbable that he ever encountered a pygmy: at most he would have had second- or third-hand knowledge originating from sailors or tradesmen, but it is more likely that his pygmy is constructed from references in classical works. Albert the Great, De animalibus (On Animals): Bk 21, Ch. 270 Let us speak first of the methods of perfection concerning the soul, and examining the perfection of the soul, we shall first investigate that which concerns the number of the powers and of the virtues of the soul. But let us use the art which Aristotle handed down at the beginning of the first philosophy, by saying that we see that all animals have some sense and reception of sensibles.71 From sensation, however, memory transpires in some, but not in others. And we know from this that memory does not transpire in some from sensation because it is memory that makes the sensible, when it is absent, return from that which was earlier received through the senses. Just so, we see that vultures, having been sated, withdraw from the place of the corpse, and afterwards return there again from the memory of the place and the corpse, and in this way sheep return to their flocks and birds to their nests, and the like. But those animals that follow no sensible other than the present one and do not return to the absent sensible on the basis of the one which was previously received, have no memory of what was previously acquired, just as flies, when they are driven away, fly back oblivious of blows they received earlier. We see also that they do not maintain a specific dwelling-place, and we notice that they follow a present sensible only. Furthermore, we see that certain animals possess a certain prudence in collecting things 70 71

Albertus Magnus, DA: Liber XXI, Cap. XXII. A sensible (the noun) is something perceptible to the senses or to reason or understanding, or perceptible as real.

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for themselves and yet may not be instructed.72 This is clear with the bees, which have great prudence in gathering up things and are nevertheless not instructed, and likewise the ants. For it happens that as a result of prudence they provide themselves with stores. But a sign that they cannot be instructed by the teaching of men is they do not respond to their voices, nor are they afraid of their threats, nor do they seem to flee terrible sounds. For this reason some also say that they do not hear sounds. But whatever may be said about their hearing, it is undoubtedly true that they do not listen to instruction so that they can be called by name and instructed as many other animals are, such as the dog, the monkey, and certain others. For hearing is possessed by animals in two ways: by some it is possessed only insofar as it is a sense, and it is possessed by others insofar as it is a sense that may receive instruction. And in the second manner animals also participate in two ways. This sense is receptive to instruction in that through sounds and voices it grasps indications of the intentions of the one who is making sounds or calling, for in this way sounds and voices instruct. This happens in two ways, because when sounds and voices occur, they sometimes produce a confused sign of the intention and sometimes a clearly defined one. But they make a confused sign in brute animals, and they make a well-defined one in man. And therefore all animals which have hearing as a sense that may receive instruction, and with this retain a memory by which the signs of instruction are perceived in a confused or well-defined way, are instructible and perceive the discipline either in either a confused or a well-defined way. And therefore many animals do many things in response to the voices of men, just as the elephant bends his knees before the king on hearing the voice of the one commanding him, and dogs do many such things. But bees and other small animals do not perceive sounds or voices in a manner that enables instruction, although they thrive with a great capacity of memory. In some animals, this, therefore, is the cause of their instructability. The lack of this instructability occurs chiefly in very small animals, as in bees, wasps, achathys, fleas and other such vermes. 72 Acting prudently meant arranging present things to provide for the future by recalling past things: this is the definition John Buridan (c.1300–1361) gives in his Summulae de demonstrationibus (Compendiums of [Logical] Demonstrations), which seems to conform to what all late medieval philosophers understood by the term prudentia (prudence). See Johannes Buridan, Summulae de demonstrationibus, ed. Lambert M. de Rijk (Nijmegen: Ingenium, 2001): Liber VIII, 5.4.4.

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Certain animals, however, seem to participate a little in experience. For experience is born of many memories, because many memories of the same thing create a power and faculty of experience; and we see that many animals besides man have some experimental knowledge in particular instances, just as we observe that to counter the poison a weasel (mustela) wounded while fighting with a snake takes an endive leaf, which is called by some the pig’s snout:73 and we have introduced many such things that animals do in the preceding books. Nonetheless, they do not participate sufficiently in experience, as they do not through experience come close to art and reason, although, as we have already said, they participate in experience to some degree. Some animals, however, are so elevated in these powers that they have a certain imitation of art, although they do not attain art. And we see that this occurs in two ways in animals: for some seem to be instructible by both sight and hearing, because they replicate what they see and retain what they hear, like monkeys. In addition, some thrive in the instruction of hearing to such an extent that they even appear to signify their intentions to each other, like the pygmy who speaks despite being an irrational animal. And thus, as regards animal virtues, the pygmy seems to be the most perfect animal after man, and it seems that among all animals he conserves his memories and recognizes so much from audible signs that he seems to have something imitating reason, yet he lacks reason. For reason is a power of the soul that goes through the experiences received from memory, extracting the universal from the particular or syllogistic dispositions, and from it devising the first principles of arts and sciences through similar dispositions.74 The pygmy does not do this. He does not 73 74

“rostrum porcinum.” The syllogism was first defined by Aristotle in Prior Analytics. The Stoics defined it slightly differently, but Aristotle was followed in the Middle Ages, the concept being clarified in Latin especially by Boethius (c.475–562), Peter Abelard (1079–1142) and finally John Buridan. A syllogism at its simplest is a form of deductive reasoning consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. For example: All foxes are animals, the major premise; Reynard is a fox, the minor premise; therefore Reynard is an animal, the conclusion. Only one who had rationality could reason in this way. The major premise is supplied by intellectual acts regarding, and the pursuant intention of, the end supply and the minor premise is supplied by deliberation, resulting in judgement and choice. Rather than being represented by a simple minor premise, the deliberation of the agent would often be better represented as a longer argument with several premises, or as an iterated series of two-premise arguments finally reaching to the action. However, one might encounter an incomplete syllogism, the so-called ‘disjunctive syllogism,’ one that lacks a premise: e.g. “All foxes are four-footed beasts”, and the conclusion: “Reynard is

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distinguish what he acquires by hearing from the intentions of the sensibles, and he commends what he hears to memory as if commending the intentions of the sensibles, and in this way he conveys and signifies the accumulated information to others by means of speech. Hence the pygmy is able to speak, yet he does not argue or speak of the universals of things, but rather his voice is directed to the particulars of things of which he speaks. For his speech is caused by a shadow of defective reason. Though no medieval natural philosopher ever suggested that any animal other than the human had a rational soul, which meant they were unable to reason or syllogize, the degree to which their actions were understood as indicating cognition that might approach what humans were capable of varied. In this passage Roger Bacon suggests that animals may act in an orderly way “as though they were inferring a conclusion from premises,” albeit without perceiving their own pattern of thought or distinguishing the end from the beginning during the cognitive process. Roger Bacon, Perspectiva, Part 2, Distinction 3, Ch. 975 At the end of this discussion of the mode of seeing by means of straight lines according to the three modes of vision (sense alone, knowledge, and syllogism), it is appropriate to enquire which faculty of the soul is responsible, in knowledge and syllogism, for things seen by means of the sense of sight. And if we employ the terms ‘knowledge’ and ‘syllogism’

a four-footed beast”; the minor premise “Reynard is a fox” is missing, and without this premise one might infer that Reynard is a dog, a horse, or any other quadruped. This was one form of enthymeme, another being one with a major premise that did not necessarily tell the whole truth; e.g. Pigs eats acorns, therefore they frequent woods with oak trees. In this case, whereas the general premise of a syllogism ought to be true and require the ensuing deduction, the general premise of an enthymeme is merely probable and could lead only to a tentative conclusion. Syllogisms were used in logical discussion or dialectic, but in rhetoric the enthymeme was more common: enthymemes are usually developed from premises that conform to the audience’s world view or ‘common sense.’ In the Reynard enthymeme above, there is an assumption that the audience will take Reynard to be the fox of the well-known tales. It was generally accepted that nonhuman animals cannot form syllogisms, enthymemes or exempla because these involve the use of universals and/or deduction. Nevertheless, most medieval thinkers recognized that nonhuman animals made judgements, regarding whatever cognitive process led to them as apparent deduction. 75 Roger Bacon and the Origins of Perspectiva in the Middle Ages, ed. and trans. David C. Lindberg (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996): Pars II, Distinctio tertia, Capitulum nonum.

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as they are used by the common run of philosophers in logic, natural philosophy, and metaphysics, this must be the rational soul, since syllogism and knowledge, as understood in these sciences, pertain to it alone. And Alhacen calls this part of the soul ‘the discriminative faculty’, and according to him it reasons and understands. Sometimes these and similar terms are employed in such a way as to imply, literally interpreted, that it is the intellective and rational soul. Now it is apparent, when a dog sees a man whom it has seen before, that it recognizes him, and monkeys and many [other] animals [also] do this. And they distinguish between things they have seen of which they have memory; they know one universal from another, as man from dog or wood; and they distinguish individuals of the same species. Therefore, that cognition which the perspectivists call ‘cognition through knowledge’ properly belongs to animals as well as to humans: consequently, it must occur by a power of the sensitive soul. It is clear that the cognition called ‘cognition by syllogism’ is similar, since motion is grasped through it. Now a dog flees when somebody raises a stick in order to strike it, and it would not do this unless it perceived the stick to change position absolutely and [also] to approach it. Similarly, when an animal such as a dog, cat, wolf, or the like catches some animals that it plans to eat, as long as the prey remains still, the predator stands motionless: but when the quarry flees, then the predator pursues until it apprehends the quarry if it can: and this would not occur unless the predator perceived the changing position of the prey relative to itself. Thus it perceives motion, rest, and distance. It must be conceded that animals have some cognitions of this kind by a certain natural industry and instinct of nature, without deliberation; and the faculty by means of which this occurs is the cogitative faculty, which is the mistress of the faculties and which makes use of the other faculties of the soul. What is required here is the recollection of such visibles and the distinguishing of universals and particulars; and this recollection is a function of the imagination (as was stated above) if it occurs with regard to light and colour and the twenty common sensibles, since imagination is the repository of species coming from them. However, if this recollection should be of things that pertain to estimation and memory, then it is a function of the memory. For although a lamb flees a wolf that it has not [previously] observed, nevertheless, if it has seen the wolf previously, it flees more rapidly and purposefully upon seeing it again. A distinction is thus made by the cogitative faculty, assisted by memory, which is the repository of insensible intentions concerning sensible matter, as has been

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explained above. Thus animals have that cognition by which things previously seen are distinguished from others. But there is an equivocation here or, rather, an error of translation, because we lack the proper word for this kind of cognition. It is necessary, likewise, for the term ‘syllogism’ to be narrowed from present purposes. For surely no argument can disguise the fact that animals perceive the remoteness of things, as well as motion and rest, although this is not true of the other common sensibles. As for argument, we must recognize that the arranging of an argument in proper form and the distinguishing of the conclusion from the premises are functions only of the rational soul. But a certain gathering of several things into one by natural industry and instinct of nature (the several things representing premises and the one resembling a conclusion, since it is gathered from the several things) can easily be discovered in animals. For we see tormented monkeys preparing surprise attacks against people and organizing many things to achieve retribution: and thus they gather into one what they learn from many [experiences]. We also see spiders constructing their webs, not randomly but in various geometrical structures, so that flies will be easily captured. Wolves eat earth in order to be heavier when they grasp a horse, bull, or deer by the nose, so that by the weight of the earth they easily drag the animal down and hold it.76 Also I have observed a cat that coveted some fish swimming in a large stone container, and when it could not catch them because of the water, it pulled the stopper and allowed the water to run out until the container was dry, so that, with the water gone, it could catch them: thus the cat conceived of several actions in order to achieve its intended purpose. And the bee makes all of its cells hexagonal, thus selecting one of the figures that entirely fill space, in order to leave no empty space between cells; and it wants no such space in order to ensure that neither the honey nor am immature bee will fall outside the hive and perish; thus, for the sake of this purpose, which resembles the conclusion [of an argument], it gathers in the course of its cogitation many things regarding premises. This occurs in an infinity of cases in which brute animals cogitate about many things in an orderly fashion for the sake of the one thing that they propose [to do], as though they were inferring a conclusion from premises. However, they do not organize their cogitation in mode and figure, nor in their deliberation do they distinguish the end from the beginning. Nor do they perceive themselves to produce such a pattern, since their 76

A common but false belief about wolf behaviour in the Middle Ages.

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cogitation proceeds as it does by natural instinct alone. And this pattern is similar to argument and syllogism, and therefore the authors of [works on] perspectiva speak of ‘argument’ and ‘syllogism’. And certainly it is more appropriate for them to call this cognition ‘syllogistic’ than to call the distinguishing of universals and particulars that have been previously seen ‘cognition through knowledge.’77 trans. David C. Lindberg

Above Roger Bacon denies to animals a certain kind of intellectual selfawareness. However, some medieval philosophers were ready to claim that animals are aware of themselves, if in a simpler way than humans. In his explication of animal senses, the thirteenth-century Franciscan scholar Peter John Olivi argued that animals are aware of their own bodies and the relative importance of their body parts, suggesting that animals are aware of this because their common sense can turn towards itself in an incomplete way. Olivi distinguishes the sensitive appetite from the common sense and argues that the common sense provides the cognitive information required by the sensitive appetite, which moves the animal and its other powers. He goes further than most other medieval philosophers in asserting that the common sense incorporates estimation and performs more than one cognitive activity simultaneously, and so becomes a provider of consciousness in nonhuman animals. The appetitive power was held to be a separate power by both Olivi and others because estimative apprehension alone did not necessarily result in action. Peter John Olivi, Summa 2, Question 62: That the common sense is one of the potential senses78 First, because it seems to act in all their organs; or when the extremities of the foot and head are pierced at the same time, and at the same time the sun is seen, and the voice is heard, and the food is tasted and smelt: then in the same instant the common sense perceives and judges all things to be different; but this cannot take place except in the same parts in which the aforesaid are sensed by the five senses. For if you say that in the same instant the species of those objects are conveyed to the organ of common sense, say, to the brain, against this there are three 77 Roger Bacon and Origins of Perspectiva in the Middle Ages, ed. and trans. by David C. Lindberg (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 247–51. 78 Peter John Olivi. Quaestiones in secundum librum Sentenarium, 62, Vol. 2, ed. Bernard Jansen (Florence: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1924): Quaestio 62.

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objections. The first is that the species, contrary to their nature, will hold various and crooked courses, and will go through those things which are not provided with the means to retain and convey them. The second thing is that the kind of tearing or burning that is felt by the touch will need to be done from the foot to the brain, as is appropriate to the object of the touch or its species. The third is because the common sense feels nothing except through the intermediate acts of the particular senses, it will be necessary that the species of their acts run or be produced throughout the whole medium up to the brain, and then, if it is sensitive, it will have the act of feeling everywhere. All these things are absurd. But if you say that the actual sight of the common sense is directed from the brain to all the parts of the body so that it immediately feels everything that is felt in them, just as the eye does everything near and far which it looks at with one glance, or if you say that the actual sight of the common sense is so direct from the brain to all parts of the body that it immediately perceives all things felt in them, just as the eye makes everything near and far appear as one aspect: against this would be that the common sense would then be directed to and perceive whatever exists in the intermediate parts. We experience the opposite, for when someone feels that his hand will be pricked, he does not feel that there is something in his arm, or at least not always. Secondly, it is argued, because no particular sense can have any act of feeling, unless the common sense actually extends there and feels that same thing, as Augustine expressly says in Chapter 12 of the Literal Meaning of Genesis, it must be said that it [the common sense] is different [from the other senses]. There is a fourfold proof for this difference. The first is because it apprehends and judges the objects of the different senses at the same time, which none of the external senses can, as is proved in the first question. Now, that it judges at the same time is proved not only in man, but also in brute animals: for when a dog sees or gnaws at a tasty piece of food, he withdraws from the food on hearing a threatening voice or on feeling a physical blow, then it must be that by some single power he apprehends not only that at the same time, but he also judged the pre-eligibility or greater usefulness or harmfulness of one over the other. But if you say that this can be done through two powers, there is an objection, because to compare one thing to another, or to feel their mutual difference and comparison, is one act related to two contrary things, and entails the mutual comparison of both as one object; but the same act must be from one power.

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The second is that, in the sensitive soul, even of brute animals, it is necessary that there be some power that can apprehend the acts of the particular senses, which they themselves cannot do, at least not so fully, so it must be done by some power. For it is necessary that there be some appetitive power that commands the movement of animals and moves them by commanding them to move now to this and now to the opposite, which it cannot do unless it has with it some power dictating to it all that it commands and the manner of commanding. Therefore, as it must be that the appetitive power controls all its bodily members and senses, which it applies to its actions or withdraws from them; so it is necessary that it have one judgemental power assisting it, which makes judgements concerning all their (the bodily members’ and senses’) acts, and notices their pleasures or pains, and prefers the one to the other, or shows that it is to be preferred. Further, when a dog or a snake exposes another member in order to protect its head, or exposes some part for the preservation of the whole, then it prefers the whole to the part and the head to the other bodily member. Therefore there must be in them some common power which at the same time shows both alternatives and their mutual comparison and the preference of one to the other, although not with that fullness and depth of reflexive judgement with which this is done by the intellect. The third reason is that when many forms concur in the same matter, it is necessary that one is superior to all and presiding over all and ruling and connecting all. But as was shown in the first question concerning the powers of the soul, the formal essences of the powers of the soul are its formal parts. Therefore, in the sensitive soul of animals, it is necessary to have one power presiding over all others and governing them all, which indeed cannot be an appetitive power, because it is the most material of all senses and underlying all. But if you say that this is the appetitive commanding motion, then it is necessary to have some cognitive [power] commensurate and corresponding to it, since the order of the appetitive to the cognitive is the most essential for the appetitive power. In his commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, the Franciscan friar, theologian and philosopher John Duns Scotus (c.1266–1308) considered various questions arising from it, one of them being that of prudence (prudentia), a controversial cognitive capacity in discussion of animal cognition. Many nonhuman animals carry out procedures that help them to survive or prosper in the future, which might suggest an ability to memorize seasonal change and how they had handled it in the past, hostile species that have preyed on theirs in the

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past, and so on: that is, it might suggest that they employ prudentia, which in the medieval definition would involve rational deliberation and comparison. However, Duns Scotus argues that ‘brute animals’ do not in fact base their acts on cognition of the future; the actions they carry out in respect of preparing for it outwardly resemble what humans do, but they may be described as prudent only in a metaphorical way. John Duns Scotus, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis, Libri I–V (Questions on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Books 1–5) Bk 1, Ch. 3. Is there prudence in brute animals?79 I answer that prudence is in brute animals metaphorically, and this not with respect to those which they pursue or flee from natural instinct, as a lamb follows its mother and flees a wolf, and a swallow constructs its nest, and an ant gathers grain for the winter, because these things are not done from memory, for an ant born in the summer cannot remember the winter, and still it gathers the grain. However, memory is still an aspect of the prudence of brute animals, and also those things that are done by natural instinct are necessarily implemented by the whole species, and it is not possible for them to carry out [a given] act in different ways. But prudence, as in us, is a deliberative method, not concerning the end, but those means determined towards the end, and not about necessities but contingencies. So prudence concerns those things that they can do in different ways, for example, the ant collecting or storing in this place or that, and gathering from this heap or that – from the memory of the place where the first grain came and of the heap from which it first picked it up – and that the spider prefers to make a web where there is a greater abundance of flies, or a swallow to build a nest where access is more difficult. As to the first argument, it is clear at first that this [definition of prudence as the right reason to do things] is the definition of prudence properly speaking. To the second argument, in which Aristotle says, “they participate in experience to a minor degree.”80 Just as they experience in one way, so they compare in another, although not with that way

79 John Duns Scotus. Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis, Libri I–V, ed. R. Andrews, G. Gál, R. Green, F. Kelly, G. Marcil, T. Noone, and R. Wood (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute Press, 1997): Liber I, Cap. III. 80 Aristotle, Metaphysics, Vol. 1: Books 1–9, trans. Hugh Tredennick (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989): Bk 1, 980b21.

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of comparison that is employed in reasoning and which is carried out through discourse from the known to the unknown. To the third argument, that something that cannot be cognized by an external sense is cognized by the inner sensory cognition, although the species of the thing is in the external sense: this is said of the cognition of substance through the intellect, not by sense, although according to some, substance multiplies its species alongside the species of an accident. But the sense does not cognize through that species, although it is in that species; this is due to the lack of cognitive power, not of the species of the thing represented. For example, the medium does not see colour even though the species of colour is there. Against the response to the second argument: Brute animals do many things from cognition in the same way as they would be done by a man cognising by the discourse of reason; therefore they seem to have similar cognition. The premise is clear; just as a man syllogizing would argue, “by a shorter way we arrive at the destination, this is shorter, therefore, etc.”, and by such a discourse he would choose the shorter route so as to obtain something. In the same way it seems that a dog chooses to pursue a hare, and so on with others. To this [objection] it is said that although certain things act in the same way, just as a man acts from deliberation, it is not necessary to conclude that they have similar cognition, for that which is elicited from deliberation could also be chosen not from deliberation but from the sensory appetite alone. Thus both actions appear to take place in a similar way, but each would not be the master of his own action in the same way. Therefore, brute animals can act as if they had prudence, or the capability to make a comparison of the past with the future, although they have none; for the ant made provision for the winter, as if it cognised the coming winter, yet it does not seem to cognize this, since [the cognized matter] it has no existence in itself, but only in its cause, or in a necessity if it is necessary, or in a contingency if it is contingent. It does not seem, therefore, that a future entity can be cognised by anyone to whom it is a future entity, necessarily or by conjecturing with probability, unless from the cause. However, properly speaking, cognition of the effect from the cause is done through comparison, which is denied to brute animals. Therefore prudence as it exists in them does not seem to involve foresight of the future from the memory of the past. … [There follows an additional response beginning with a discussion of how Aristotle assesses cognition in brute animals, with Duns Scotus’ expansion on that] … Thus it is to be noted that he [Aristotle] does not distinguish

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here between imagination and memory, nor between sensation and the estimative [power]; and yet every apprehensive power has a corresponding appetitive power. Therefore every animal has appetites of two sorts, one sensitive, the other estimative. Thus every animal, just as it has sense, also has some estimation. But where these powers are without other retentive powers, there is neither appetite nor apprehension of an appropriate sensible [thing], or for something of agreeable nature; there is only [apprehension or appetite] for the sensible that relates to the estimative, and this only when this sensible [thing] is present. Now, no one can be called prudent properly or figuratively if they pursue only something which is present. However, someone who has imagination retentive of the species of a sensible, and a memory retentive of a species deemed suitable, will, by virtue of an act of imagination, imagine the sensible thing and deem it suitable in its absence. And although the appetite does not rouse the appetite of imagination, because what is strongly imagined is not pleasurable to the sense, still the appetite of the estimative power will be aroused if it is by nature suitable. And thus, from this sort of memory and estimation and appetite, the act of the brute animal in pursuit of something absent, not pleasing to the sense, but suitable by nature, is very similar to the act of prudence in us, because it is similar as far as execution is concerned. For if we were not to proceed from prudence, but after the apprehension of any suitable thing  – and by long deliberation we would have determined that it was suitable – we would not pursue such a course because it is pleasurable; nothing seems to be wanting in them except this deliberation, but because of this want there is no dissimilarity in their pursuit [of something]. For as it is said above, we do many things without deliberating, just as if we were deliberating. There is the greatest similarity, if that which is suitable is suitable for use by them, not at the time when they search for it, but in the future, for then they seem to provide for the future. But they never do this because of cognition of the future, but because of present cognition in the estimative power of something present or past. In his consideration of many of the points Aristotle made in his Prior Analytics, John Buridan suggests that nonhuman animals have the capacity to make what he calls an experimental judgement (iudicium experimentale). Making this judgement means acting on a particular sensible thing or event on the basis of previous experience of a similar particular thing or event that is recognised in the memory. The animal therefore has to have the capacity to identify

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similarities between separate things before its memory comes into play, but Buridan emphasizes that this does not involve abstraction into thinking that all the things in question are or always will be that way. John Buridan, Quaestiones in analytica priora (Questions concerning [Aristotle’s] Prior Analytics), Bk 2, q. 20a: Utrum per inductionem probatur propositio immediate (Whether an immediate proposition is proved by induction)81 In the second way, the principles of this kind are evident to us through memory, such as that that fire was hot, and that James was writing at the time. And yet those principles have a place in the arts and in prudence. For often in moral matters, in order to correct, and to reward, or to punish, we must reason from the particulars of the past that are known to us through memory. Other principles are evident to us through experience, which experience presupposes sense and memory. For example, if you knew by the senses that fire A was hot, and then the same thing about fire B, and so on among many others, after seeing fire C and not touching it, you will judge by the memory of others and because of the similarity between that fire C is hot: and this is not, properly speaking, judgement by the senses, because you do not touch it, nor only through memory, because memory is properly nothing except those previously known, and yet the fire itself has never been seen nor known; but this trial is called ‘experimental’. And not only do men, nay equally brutish men, use judgement of this sort; hence the dog fears the stone if someone has injured it. And all the aforesaid principles are singular, and are principles in art or prudence, and not in speculative or demonstrative science. 5

Animal Society

The subject of possible animal socio-political organisation was discussed mainly after the rediscovery of Aristotle’s natural philosophy. According to Aristotle, human speech, and by extension the logos (translated into Latin as ratio), enabled political organization. The meaning of logos is difficult to express in English: it incorporated word, reason and speech, and therefore 81

John Buridan, Quaestiones in analytica priora: Liber 2, Quaestio 20a. http://www.buridanica.net/texts.php. “Induction” in the sense used in logic: inference of a generalized conclusion from particular instances.

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implied activities that were predicated on verbal communication such as theory, law, and so on. Logos or ratio enabled the formation of socio-political units such as states. Aristotle’s main models for human political organization were the Greek polis, a city-state that might be a democracy, oligarchy or monarchy, and in the past might have been a tyranny, and the Macedonian monarchy. Aristotle, Πολιτικά (Latin Politikê, Eng. Politics), Bk 1.282 Now the reason why man is more of a political animal than bees or any other gregarious animals is evident. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the only animal whom she has endowed with the gift of speech. And whereas mere sound is but an indication of pleasure or pain, and is therefore found in other animals (for their nature attains to the perception of pleasure and pain and the intimation of them to one another, and no further), the power of speech is intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and likewise the just and the unjust. And it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a household and a state. trans. Benjamin Jowett

Despite denying animals the ability to comprehend or express morality and any concept of justice, and therefore to organize a state, Aristotle does appear to concede a form of socio-political organisation to gregarious animals. He recognized that animals were ‘political’ in the sense that because of biological needs they had to live together in groups. However, he left several questions unanswered. In the Middle Ages, as in the case of the discourse concerning the soul and cognition, although there was broad agreement on those things that distinguished humans from other animals and enabled them alone to form a true political community, there was more dispute about whether human language and political organization were ‘natural’, that is, inherent in the human when first created, or human-created after this. There was also disagreement about the development of different human languages: Like John Blund above, most accepted that humans had one language originally, usually thought to be Hebrew. Albertus Magnus and other medieval natural philosophers experienced state organizations that differed from Aristotle’s models, although both monarchies and city-states existed in medieval Europe, but this did not negate 82 Aristotle, Politics, Vol.1, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885): Bk I.II, 1253a7-18.

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anything he had written. Just as they recognized the differences in animal species as far as capacities related to the ‘levels of perfection’ were concerned in their discussion of the scala naturae, so here differences in social organization are noted, but again considered imperfect by human standards and a product of natural instinct. Medieval writers recognised the part that biological needs played in causing humans to organize socially and politically, but also that political life as practised by them required language, rationality and the ability to make choices. Albert the Great, De Animalibus (On Animals), Bk 1, Ch. 383 An animal is called ‘civic,’ which, in imitation of city life, performs all its activities on behalf of the unit and carries out each task for the communal benefit.84 But not every social animal that lives with many others performs this type of operation for the unit. Of those that do carry out actions on behalf of the unit are man, the wasp, the bee, the ant and the crane. But in cranes it is less apparent than in the others, because the cranes do not perform any activity for the unit except keeping watch and determining the order of the flight. The other mentioned animals, however, carry out many activities for the unit for the common causes of work and food, from which common expediency is served. Now, of those that are similar in this way some are ruled by a king whom they obey, such as cranes, bees and men. For these have a king and a prince among them, who are concerned with the common interest. But some of the gregarious animals, such as ants and locusts, do not have a king. They go out in ordered formations just as if each of them had been assigned to govern the community to look after common concerns. And so it is among men, where there are two types of governments, namely, that of a kingdom which is entrusted to the government of one, and that of aristocracy and timocracy, which are civil structures assigned to many by whom they are governed. Albert’s references to bees in Book 1, Chapters 3 and 4 differed from previous analyses in that he is concerned merely with them as examples of animal society. In late Antiquity and the Middle Ages the honeybee colony was thought to be an example to humans or the monastic community of an ideal society in having a hierarchical structure in which ‘everyone knew their place’, with a 83 84

Albertus Magnus, DA: Liber I, Cap. III. “Civic” here is used as a translation of civitatense. Civitatensis can mean both city-dweller and city-dwelling (adjective), so it also implies political and social.

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‘king’, lower officials, workers and so on. Moreover, it provided a moral example because of bees’ supposed celibacy. At the beginning of Chapter 4 of the same book, Albert declares that “… no animal save a human alone participates perfectly in a lifestyle. The perfect lifestyle is, in its parts, one of honour and has its end happiness.” For him (and Aristotle) socio-political life, as practised by humans, has a moral dimension, hence his reference to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics: Albert the Great, De Animalibus (On Animals) Bk 1, Ch. 485 That which is called ethics serves three purposes: subordinating the passions to moral virtue, directing the acts to equity under law, whether it is natural or positive, and ruling the intellect by right reasoning, which is the medium of intellectual virtue. Animals, therefore, do not participate in an ordered way of life, but participate only in some form of imitation: for the principle of their operations does not have virtue, but a certain natural inclination of nature to a likeness of virtue. Thus the turtle and the dove imitate chastity, the goose and the cat shame, and the lion liberality, communicativeness and bravery. But for the same reason they do not do what they do to the purpose of domestic happiness, which comprises the wealth of the home and the family: nor to the purpose of social happiness that comprises the perfect government of a people achieved with prudence: nor to the end of monastic happiness, which is the constant contemplation of truth with the pure and wondrous delight derived from it. But those that provide a dwelling for themselves, such as the fox, sometimes do not provide for the wealth of the dwelling. So, while they do have that aspect of economy which consists of being protected from external harm, they do not have that aspect which attends to a sufficiency of riches laid up in the house. Sometimes both of these aspects of economy are imitated, but the end is not imitated. Such are the bee and the ant, which construct nests and fill them with stores. But they do not collect these stores so that they may organically serve a society of other animals, whether they be of the same or a different species. One swarm of bees or ants does not serve another in anything like the way the riches in the storehouses of men serve one another to assist in governing states and nations.

85

Albertus Magnus, DA: Liber I, Cap. IIII.

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In the passage from Albertus Magnus quoted in the previous section, he argued that certain animals, namely pygmies, could speak, but they could not form universals. As many have observed, it is difficult to envisage how his pygmies are supposed to have used speech, unless we are to assume that some generality was possible beyond simple particulars, as use of only the latter would make vocal linguistic communication impossible.86 Albert links the intellect with speech and says the former is necessary for true socio-political organization, but does not spell out how human language was perceived to be qualitatively different from nonhuman animal communication in such a way that it enabled morality, political organization, and justice as clearly as Aquinas does below.87 The focus in philosophy was on vocalized expression and what lay behind it, but as we see in other chapters, there was also recognition of nonhuman animal communication of other sorts among people with more practical concerns, such as hunters, medical practitioners and those who reared animals.88 Many of the philosophical discussions presage those that continue today, although far more is known about animal communication nowadays and the terminology differs. Thomas Aquinas, Sententia libri Politicorum (Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics), Bk 1, Question 1.b89 There is a difference between speech and simple voice. Voice signifies pain and pleasure, and therefore other emotions, such as anger and fear, all of which are directed to pleasure and pain, as Aristotle says in the second book of the Ethics. Thus, voice is given to other animals, whose nature allows them to experience pleasures and pains and to communicate these to one another by certain natural voices, as lions do by roaring and dogs do by barking; we have exclamations instead of these. However, human speech signifies useful and harmful things, from which it follows that it signifies justice and injustice, for justice and injustice consists of someone being treated equally or unequally regarding useful and harmful things. And so speech is proper to human beings, because it is proper to them, in contrast with other animals, to have knowledge of good and evil, just and unjust, and the like, which speech can signify trans. R.J. Regan

86 87 88 89

For instance, Toivanen, The Political Animal in Medieval Philosophy, 210. This does not mean the two of them were in absolute agreement. See chapters 5, 9 and 4 respectively. Aquinas, “Sententia libri Politicorum,” in Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris Angelici. Opera Omnia. Iussu Leonis XIII (Rome: Ad Sanctae Sabinae, 1971): Liber I, Quaestio 1b.

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There is an assumption in the passage above that all animals within a species behave in the same way, just as Nemesius claimed, and there is an apparent implication that human cognition precedes speech in the sense that they have it because they have the capacity to think about morality and justice, which are beyond the capacities of nonhuman animals. Giles of Rome was a pupil of Aquinas. He does not disagree with anything his teacher wrote above, but in the passage quoted below he appears to argue that human possession of intellect disinclines them from using the natural instinct that other animals have, and that ‘nature’ knew this would be so at the creation, and so gave them speech. Giles of Rome, De regimine principum (On government of the princes), Bk 2, Ch. 1.190 The fourth proof is taken from speech and teaching, by which we are instructed. Other animals are sufficiently inclined to actions that are necessary for them by natural instinct and without being introduced to them beforehand, so that a spider would make a web due to the instinct of nature, if it had never seen spiders do so otherwise. So also swallows would make a nest properly, if they had never seen birds nesting. If a dog has never seen dogs giving birth, natural instinct teaches her how to behave in childbirth. But when a woman gives birth, she does not know how to behave unless she has been sufficiently informed by midwives. Therefore, since human beings are not sufficiently inclined to actions that are necessary for them by natural instinct, nature has given them speech or language, so that they would teach each other by it, and one would receive teaching from another. In the fourteenth century there was some attempt to define the categories of social or gregarious animal in a more systematic way. As Juhana Toivanen writes, Nicholas of Vaudémont (fl. late 14th c.) attempted to present “a systematic taxonomy of the terminology,” taking material from earlier natural philosophy.91

90

Giles of Rome, Egidius de regimine principum (Rome: Bernardino Guerralda, 1502), Libri secundi, Cap. 1.1. Accessed 13.7.2023. https://archive.org/details/hin-wel-all-00000256-001 /mode/2up. 91 Toivanen, The Political Animal in Medieval Philosophy c. 1260–1410 (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 49.

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Nicholas of Vaudémont, Quaestiones super VIII libros Politicorum Aristotelis (Commentary on the eight books of Aristotle’s Politics), 1.492 These names – social, gregarious, and political – are related to each other in such a way that “social” is an umbrella term (superius) for the other two. For that reason, every gregarious or political animal is social but not vice versa, because every animal is social with other animals of its own species. This is clear also because there is a kind of natural friendship among those who belong to the same species. Properly speaking, gregarious applies only to animals that roam in groups, as is clear from cranes and [other] birds. And properly speaking, ‘political’ applies only to men, because political life aims at some virtue. Secondly, it must be noted that these four differences – namely domestic, wild (silvestre), plain-dwelling (campestre), and aquatic – apply indifferently to plants and animals, yet a domestic [animal may] become wild and vice versa. It follows that these differences are not essential. trans. Juhana Toivanen

Nicholas appears to class virtually all animals as social, even those who merely meet up for procreation (this would nevertheless exclude those believed in the Middle Ages to be generated by other means). The “four differences” categorize animals by way of life. “Political” may be a sub-category of “gregarious”, or both may be sub-categories of “social,” but all three may be separate categories; it is not clear from the passage. 92

The work was previously attributed to John Buridan, and still appears in old copies either under this name or more recently as Pseudo-John Buridan. Toivanen has used the 1513 edition, but with amendments from other manuscripts, and the quotation is from his tentative edition.

Chapter 3

Animals as Exemplars The biblical account of the Creation was universally accepted among Christians of Europe in the Middle Ages. ‘Man’ was at the centre of this creation, and it was widely recognised that he had something in common with everything in it: at the most basic level, existence as part of nature in common with its inanimate objects, but also life in common with plants and life and the senses in common with other animals. But among the creations that had a physical form, humans, for whom the Earth was made, were uniquely equipped to ‘read’ and attempt to interpret the meaning of all that surrounded them, both living and non-living. God created the cosmos, and it followed that some understanding of his purpose in doing so could be obtained by humans through the two means of interpretation of the scriptures and examination of ‘the ‘book of nature.’ It is a view that conforms to a theology in which creation was centred on the logos. Though nonhuman animals possessed a sensitive soul and resembled humans more than plants, and to varying degrees had the ability to perform many of the same actions as humans, bestiaries, encyclopaedias and many other works often pointed out that animal behaviour seemingly comparable to that of humans is mere example; in their role as pointers showing humans the way to God, animals function as the rest of nature does and are similarly subsidiary to humans in Creation. Where their behaviour sets an example to humans, it is not a product of their rationality, but that of a rational Creator. Rather than asking how animals function in a cosmos in which they and us are incidental and accidental products, a common modern scientific approach, medieval thinkers asked for what purpose they functioned in the way that they did. 1

Animals as Didactic Tools

That the fauna of the Earth had a didactic purpose for humans was clearly stated in a passage from the Book of Job: But ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know

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that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind.1 The idea of nature as something that gave knowledge of God appears early in Christian thought: the apostle Paul had written that “Ever since the creation of the world his [God’s] invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.”2 Tertullian (c.155–240 CE) stated plainly that there were two ways to gain knowledge of God: “We conclude that God is known first through nature, and then again, more particularly, by doctrine; by nature in his works, and by doctrine in his revealed word.”3 Basil of Caesarea implied that Moses himself had ‘read the book of nature’ before he wrote the books of Genesis: Basil of Caesarea, Hexameron, Homily 1.14 Moses, who, banished by those whose benefactor he had been, hastened to escape from the tumults of Egypt and took refuge in Ethiopia, living there far from former pursuits, and passing forty years in the contemplation of things that are; Moses, finally, who, at the age of eighty, saw God, as far as it is possible for man to see Him …”5 trans. Blomfield Jackson

Augustine too referred to the ‘book of nature’: Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 68, On the chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew where the Lord says, “I confess to you Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the knowing …6 1 Job 12:7–10. 2 Romans 1:20. The context here is that there is no excuse not to perceive God in his works. 3 Tertullian. Adversus Marcionem, ed. Ernest Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press): I, 18. The argument that nature reveals God’s purpose is not the main point of the work, which is an attack on the fellow Christian Marcion’s ‘heresy’. 4 Basil of Caesarea, “Homiliæ IX in Hexaemeron,” in S.P.M, Basilii, Cæsarae et Cappadociæ Archiepiscopie, Opera Omnia quæ exstant, Vol. 1, ed. J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Graeca. Paris: 1857, PG 03-494. 5 Strangely, Basil writes Ethiopia instead of the land of Midian. He is discussing imitation of Moses and possibly he sees the sojourn in Midian as comparable to the actions of the desert fathers in the wilderness of southern Egypt. 6 Augustinus, Sermones de novo testamento (51–70A): Sermones in Matthaeum I, ed. P.-P. Verbraken et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008): Sermo LXVIII.

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Other people, so as to find God, read a book. But there is in fact a very great book: the book of created things. Examine it above and below, observe, read. God did not write letters in ink so you could understand him; he set before your eyes those things he has made. Why search for a louder voice? Heaven and Earth cry out to you, “God made me!” The ‘book of nature’ was both parallel to the scriptures as a method of acquiring knowledge of God’s purpose and one derived from it, as the foundation of the concept was the biblical Creation and the naming of the animals. The idea was strongly expressed in the Middle Ages from the twelfth-century renaissance onwards. Like Tertullian, Hugh of St Victor argued that God spoke to his people in two ways, through the scriptures and through the created world: Hugh of St Victor, De Tribus Diebus (On the Three Days), Bk 2, 4.37 For this whole sensible world is a kind of book written by the finger of God, that is, created by divine power (virtue), and each creature is a kind of figure, not invented by human determination, but established by the divine will to manifest and in some way signify the invisible wisdom of God. However, just as when an unlettered person sees an open book and notices the shapes but does not recognize the letters, so stupid and carnal people, who are not aware of the things of God, see on the outside the beauty in these visible creatures, but they do not understand its meaning. On the other hand, a spiritual person can discern all things. When he considers externally the beauty of the work, he understands internally how wondrous is the wisdom of the Creator. Therefore, there is no one who does not find God’s works wonderful, but the foolish person admires only their appearance, whereas the wise person, through what he sees externally, explores the deeper intent of the divine wisdom, just as in one and the same writing, one person notices the colour or shape of the figures, whereas another praises their meaning and signification. trans. Boyd Taylor Coolman and Dale M. Coulter

Characteristically for Hugh, as earlier for Augustine, to be formed means to be taught how to read, to attend to the other, and for this purpose God sent yet 7 Hugo de Sancto Victore, De Tribus Diebus, ed. Dominique Poirel (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002): Liber I, Cap. IV.

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another book. As Hugh explains in On the Sacraments, “Wisdom was a book written within; the work of wisdom [that is, creation] a book written without.”8 But human sin had darkened our eyes to these books, so God sent another volume, one that not only signified but illumined: the book of the Incarnation of the Son of God. Christians might explain this concept directly, but as a preconception it provided the basis for a huge number of other didactic works, among them the medieval bestiaries. Because each creature “was established by the divine will to manifest and in some way signify the invisible wisdom of God” its every part and characteristic might have some signification, and this was particularly so if it was referred to in the Scriptures. In Chapter 2 we encountered Pseudo-Dionysius’ Celestial Hierarchy, a work that was certainly familiar to many medieval thinkers, and in which the author justified use of ‘irrational beasts’ to symbolize the qualities of the celestial beings. Pseudo-Dionysius the Aeropagite, Περὶ τῆς οὐρανίου ἱεραρχίας (The Celes­ tial Hierarchy)9 But now, since this has been sufficiently explained, I think, according to our ability, let us pass on to the sacred unfoldment of the symbolism which depicts the Celestial Intelligences in the likeness of beasts. The form of a lion must be regarded as typifying their power of sovereignty, strength and indomitableness, and the ardent striving upward with all their powers to that most hidden, ineffable, mysterious Divine Unity and the covering of the intellectual footprints, and the mystically modest concealment of the way leading to divine union through the Divine Illumination. The figure of the ox signifies strength and vigour and the opening of the intellectual furrows to the reception of fertilizing showers; and the horns signify the guarding and unconquerable power. The form of the eagle signifies royalty and high soaring and swiftness of flight and the eager seizing of that food which renews their strength, discretion, and ease of movement and skill, with strong intensity of vision which has the power to gaze unhindered, directly and unflinchingly upon the full and brilliant splendour of the brightness of the Divine Sun. The symbolism of horses represents obedience and tractability. The shining white horses denote clear truth and that which is perfectly

8 Hugh of Saint-Victor, De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei, ed. J.-P. Migne, PL, MPL176, 0173-0618B: Liber Primus, Pars sexta, Cap. V. 9 Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Translated by the Editors of the Shrine of Wisdom, The Mystical Theology and the Celestial Hierarchies of Dionysius the Areopagite: II: pp. 87–88.

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assimilated to the Divine Light the dark, that which is hidden and secret; the red, fiery might and energy; the dappled black and white, that power which traverses all and connects the extremes, providentially and with perfecting power uniting the highest to the lowest and the lowest to the highest. If we had not to bear in mind the length of our discourse, we might well describe the symbolic relations of the particular characteristics of animals already given, and all their bodily forms, with the powers of the Celestial Intelligences according to dissimilar similitudes: for example, their fury of anger represents an intellectual power of resistance of which anger is the last and faintest echo; their desire symbolizes the Divine Love; and in short, we might find in all the irrational tendencies and many parts of irrational creatures, figures of the immaterial conceptions and single powers of the Celestial Beings. This, however, is enough for the prudent, for one mystical interpretation will sufficiently serve as an example for the explanation of others of a similar kind. In his exegesis of the Book of Job, Pope Gregory I (c.540–604) quotes verses from the scriptures and then expands on them in similar fashion to many later preachers. He interprets the rhinoceros as representing the haughty who “tossed” the early Church as if on its horn and expands on the biblical verses to give a detailed exposition of what the horn signifies.10 Gregory the Great, Moralium Libri sive Expositio in Librum B. Job (The Books of Morals or An Exposition on The Book of Blessed Job): Part 6, Bk 31, Ch. 211 “Will the rhinoceros be willing to serve you?” For the rhinoceros has a quite untamed nature, so that, if it is ever captured, it cannot be kept by any means. For, it is said, unable to tolerate captivity, it dies immediately. But its name when interpreted means in the Latin tongue, ‘a horn on the nostril.’ And what else is designated by the nostril, but folly; what else by the horn, but pride? For that folly is usually understood by the nostril, we have learnt by the testimony of Solomon, who says; “Like a ring of gold in a swine’s nostrils, such is a beautiful and foolish woman.”12 For he saw heretical doctrine shining with brilliancy of eloquence, and yet not conforming to the proper understanding of wisdom, and he says, A ring 10 Job 39.9. In the Latin Vulgate the animal is a rhinoceros, but in modern editions of the Bible it is a wild ox. 11 Sancti Gregiorii Magni Moralium Libri Sive Expositio In Librum Beati Job. Pars II, ed. J.-P. Migne, PL, MPL 76, 571–72: Liber XXXI, Cap. II. 12 Proverbs 11.22.

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of gold in a swine’s nostrils, that is a beautiful and elaborate expression in the understanding of a foolish mind: it is dependent on gold through its eloquence, yet, through the weight of earthly intention, like a swine, it does not look upwards. And he proceeded to explain this, saying, A beautiful and foolish woman, that is heretical teaching: beautiful in words, foolish in meaning. But that pride is frequently understood by a horn, we have learned on the evidence of the Prophet, who says; I said to the wicked, do not behave wickedly, and to the sinners, do not lift your horn.13 What, therefore, is designated by this rhinoceros, but the mighty of this world, or those supreme powers of its kingdoms, who, elated by the pride of foolish boasting, while they are puffed up by false honour without, are made inwardly destitute by real miseries? In hunting treatises dogs generally receive a good press as valuable aids to the human hunters, but the aristocracy who managed the hunts would have been well aware of their didactic and allegorical natures too. Different quarry animals similarly symbolized either good or evil forces, yet both groups were treated in just the same way when hunted. An extensive treatment of this aspect of these animals in a hunting treatise is given by “Queen Theory” in Le Livre du Roy Modus et de la Royne Racio: Henri de Ferrieres, Le Livre du Roy Modus et de la Royne Racio, Pages 42–45: What the five gentle beasts and the five stinking beasts represent to the world14 The apprentice asks the queen what are the moralities and images that can be found and the figures of the ten beasts for which King Modus has shown us all the venery, and how they are captured and hunted by dint of dogs. To this Queen Racio responds and says: Among these ten beasts are five which are called gentle, and five which are named stinking. The sweet beasts are: the deer, the doe, the fallow deer, the goat and the hare. And they are called gentle for three reasons: the first is that from them comes no bad smell: the second, they have hair of a pleasant colour, which is blond or fawn: the third is that they are not biting beasts like the other five, that is, they have no teeth for biting; and for these reasons they can well be called sweet beasts, for which one can show no moralities and figures, like people or times of peace. If you want to say how: You 13 Psalms 75.4. 14 Henri de Ferrieres, Le Livre du Roy Modus et de la Royne Racio, ed. Elzear Blaze (Paris: Elzear Blaze, 1839): feuillets 42–45. The title given here (after the pages) is a conflation of two section titles (for gentle and stinking beasts respectively).

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have elsewhere in this book the properties that deer possess, of which the ten branches [of the antlers] that adorn his head were given to him by God to defend him from three enemies, that is people, dogs and wolves. And the ten branches represent the ten commandments of the king that Jesus Christ gave to man to defend himself from three enemies, from the flesh (lust), the devil, and the world; between the commandments God showed himself crucified on the head of the deer to Saint Eustace, who was converted to reflect in this mirror that you gaped at. … But we will tell you of the other five beasts which are said to be stinking and are so named for the odour which comes from them, which is strong and pungent; similar conditions occur among people who live in this world. If you will first tell of the properties of the boar; for just as the deer is the greatest of the gentle beasts, so is the boar the greatest of stinking beasts. The boar has ten properties which represent the ten commandments of the Ante-Christ  … The first property that the boar has is that he is black and heretical. And also I can say that people who by their sin lose spiritual light, and who have put their hearts in earthly things, are black, heretical and dreadful, and full of darkness. And these conditions are those of many people who reign in present time. For their earthly thoughts block out the spiritual lights. This is why I can say that such people are black and heretical like the boar. The second property of the boar is that he is cruel and treacherous, and there are many people of this condition in this world who have neither charity nor humility, and so are full of vices and sins … If we will tell you the conditions and properties of the other four beasts. We’ll start with the sow, then the wolf, the fox and the otter. 2

The Symmetry of Nature

Allegorizing was typical of Christian methods of exegesis and engendered the doctrine of signatures that provided a guide to the uses of plants as well as the concept of correspondence between the earthly and marine realms. The idea was related to the concept that God’s creation had a purpose and was aligned with the logos. Perfection in creation implied perfect symmetry, and for each inhabitant of the land there was an equivalent creature in the sea.15 In his Historia Naturalis Pliny had mentioned that there were parallels between

15

This belief was also common in Judaism and Islam.

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sea creatures and animals found on land or even inanimate objects, an idea that matched the Christian concept of creational symmetry. Pliny, Historia Naturalis (Natural History), Bk 9, Ch. 216 That the forms not only of terrestrial animals, but even of inanimate objects, are found in the sea can easily be understood by all those who take trouble to examine the grape-fish, the swordfish, the sawfish, and the cucumber-fish, the last so strongly resembling the real cucumber in both colour and smell that this is easily to be understood by all who will take the trouble. But late antique and medieval writers who used Pliny’s work ignored his proviso; having described the belief that all that is found on land is paralleled in the sea as “vulgar opinion,” he conceded that this may be true, but pointed out (as he believed) that there were many more things in the sea than on land. Among the strange phenomena mentioned by Alexander Neckham are the knight fish and the monk fish, which he classes as monsters of the sea, and therefore unnatural.17 In Gervase of Tilbery’s Otia Imperialia, however, written shortly after Neckham’s encyclopedia, they are sea creatures that parallel things on land. Otia Imperialia was widely distributed and twice translated into French in the fourteenth century. It included a considerable amount about the nature of Britain, a large proportion of which was anecdote and fabulous folklore: Gervase of Tilbery, Otia Imperialia (Recreation for an Emperor), Third Part: Continens mirabilia uniuscujusque provinciae, non omnia, sed ex omnibus aliqua (Containing the marvels of each province, not all, but some of them), Ch. 63: De Delphinis18 Whoever has gone on record as an investigator of the waves of the sea, or himself investigated the sea, let him hear and strongly affirm that there is no form of any living creature found among us [who live in Britain] on

16 Pliny, Natural History, Volume IX: Books 33–35, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952): Bk IX, Ch. II. 17 Neckham, De Natura Rerum 25; Alexandri Neckam De naturis rerum, libro duo: with the poem of the same author, De laudibus divinæ sapientiæ, ed. (London: Longman, 1863), 144–45. 18 Des Gervasiüs von Tilbury Otia Imperiali, ed. Felix Liebrecht (Hanover: Carl Rümpler, 1856): Tertia Decisio, LXIII.

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dry land whose likeness, from the navel upwards, may not be observed among the fish of the ocean around Britain: the monk fish with a scaly cowl, the king fish with a crown, the knight fish who rides armed, the dog fish with an open mouth, and the pig fish that is called dolphin but which is commonly supposed to have the character of a knight, though disguised among the waves of the sea by a pig-like form. Gervase’s work was intended to entertain Emperor Otto, but the inclusion of these “fish” in other works such as Neckham’s shows that the concept of corresponding living entities on land and in the sea was accepted, and it remained so into the early modern era.19 3

Physiologus and the Bestiaries

The medieval bestiary’s ancestor was the Physiologus, a Greek-language combination of zoological fact, fiction, allegory and Christian moralization which originated in the early Christian era, probably in Egypt.20 Latin “physiologus” is usually translated into English literally as “naturalist”, but it has been suggested that “allegorist” would be a better translation in this case, meaning ‘allegorist of nature’, especially its animals. Though referred to as if he were a single person, there is no certainty that there was an original work with one author. Much of the Physiologus subject matter is found in other ancient works, but it adjusts this matter in such a way as to make it useful for allegory. Pliny, Aelian, Plutarch and Timothy of Gaza were probably among the sources for the (spurious) information about the hedgehog below.21 The iconography and allegory 19

For Henry the Young King, son of Henry II or England, Gervase had previously compiled a Liber facetiarum (Book of entertainment), but unfortunately it is lost, so we have no idea whether it included similar material to that in the Otia Imperialia. 20 The Physiologus is so-called because so many sections begin with the words, “The physiologus (allegorist) says … For a standard study of it, see Nikolaus Henkel, Studien zum Physiologus im Mittelalter, Hermaea: Germanistische Forschungen. Neue Folge, 38 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1976). On the Latin versions, see Florence McCulloch, Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries, Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 33 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962), 21–25, and Henkel, Studien, 21–38. ‘Physiologus’ has normally been translated as ‘naturalist’, but Curley has suggested (and I agree) that ‘allegorist’ is a more suitable translation: Michael J. Curley, Physiologus: A Medieval Book of Nature Lore (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2009): xii. 21 Pliny, Naturalis Historia 133; Aelian, De Natura Animalium 3.10; Plutarch De sollertia animalium (On the intelligence of animals), 971F; Timothy of Gaza, Indian Animals or

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of Physiologus had an enormous impact on medieval human thought about other animals, albeit often through intermediary works such as Isidore of Seville’s. The earliest Latin version of the Physiologus probably appeared in late Antiquity, but it was subsequently translated into most vernacular languages of west and central Europe. The earliest extant Latin manuscripts belong to the eighth and ninth centuries, versions designated as Y, C and B. Physiologus, 16. On the Hedgehog22 The hedgehog does not quite have the appearance of a ball as he is full of quills. Phvsiologus said of the hedgehog that he climbs up to the grape on the vine and then throws down the berries (that is the grapes) onto the ground. Then he rolls himself over on them, fastening the fruit of the vine to his quills, and carries it off to his young and discards the plucked stalk. And you, O Christian, refrain from busying yourself about everything and stand watch over your spiritual vineyard from which you stock your spiritual cellar. Make a cache in the halls of God the King, in the holy tribunal of Christ, and you will receive eternal life. Do not let concern for this world and the pleasure of temporal goods preoccupy you, for then the prickly devil, scattering all your spiritual fruits will pierce them with his quills and make you food for the beasts. Your soul will become bare, empty and barren like a tendril without fruit. After this you will cry out, “My own vineyard I have not kept,” as the scripture of the Song of Songs bears witness.23 In such a way have you allowed that most wicked spirit to climb up to your place, and he has scattered your abstinence. Thus he has deceived you with the barbs of death in order to divide your plunder among hostile powers. Rightly, therefore, did Physiologus compare the ways of animals to spiritual matters. trans. Michael J. Curley

In the Physiologus the wild ass has two natures, that is, characteristics that allow two contrasting allegories. Its ‘other’ nature appears in a separate entry in the work and there represents the devil. So too did the monkey, which appears in the same entry.

Quadrupeds and Their Innately Wonderful Qualities, ch. 6. In the Middle Ages Timothy’s four-volume work survived only in a summary. 22 Physiologus: A Medieval Book of Nature Lore, ed. and trans. Michael J. Curley (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 23 Song of Songs 1.6.

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Physiologus, 26. On the Other Nature of the Wild Ass and the Monkey The monkey represents the very person of the devil since he has a beginning but has no end (that is, a tail). In the beginning, the devil was one of the archangels, but his end has not been found (He has no tail since, just as he perished in the beginning in heaven, so also will he perish utterly at last, as Paul the herald of truth, said, “The Lord Jesus will slay him with the wrath of his mouth”).24 It is fitting that, in addition to not having a tail, the monkey lacks beauty also. And he is quite ugly in the region where he lacks a tail. Just so the devil has no good end. Physiologus, therefore, spoke well. trans. Michael J. Curley

It might be noted that humans also lack a tail, but throughout the Middle Ages and obviously to some in late Antiquity too, it appears that the monkey attracted especial vilification precisely because it more closely resembled the human than most other animals. To some it may have seemed almost a parody of humans, and it must have created unease among many people given the supposed gulf between themselves and other animals. In some later bestiaries the monkey is vilified to an even greater extent than in the Physiologus. From the twelfth century onwards we have expanded versions of Physiologus B, and these and subsequent versions are usually classed as bestiaries.25 The medieval bestiary drew on many sources additional to the Physiologus. Up to the early fifteenth century numerous adaptations in both verse and prose, translations into vernacular languages and school texts were made, many of them involving quite drastic changes. Bestiaries were produced over a period of approximately four hundred years. Unsurprisingly, they changed somewhat during this period, but there was also considerable continuity in style and content. Change in audience must have been one of the influences on form, but it is difficult to quantify. The Latin bestiaries inspired vernacular versions, the earliest being in Old English and German, while from the early twelfth century French-language ones appeared. All the third-family bestiaries were English, but bestiaries were also popular in France and most vernacular ones were written in French. In the late Middle Ages or Renaissance Italian bestiaries appeared and Catalan translations of them. The increase in the number of 24 2 Thessalians 2.8. 25 On the development of the bestiary from the Physiologus, see McCulloch, Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries, 15–44, or Willene B. Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-Family Bestiary. Commentary, Art, Text and Translation (USA: Boydell Press, 2006), 8–14, but see also the caveats of Sarah Kay, Animal Skins and the Reading Self in Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 149.

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vernacular bestiaries indicates that they were increasingly used by lay people, while the corresponding decline in the number of Latin bestiaries suggests that fewer were produced for monasteries, most likely because of the decline in the number of lay brothers after the twelfth century. Montague Rhodes James’s grouping of bestiaries into four families has been the most widely used (though no longer accepted by everyone) since Florence McCulloch’s study of 1962.26 It is based on the arrangement of the original Physiologus chapters and the sources of additional chapters. Extracts from the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville were first added to the Physiologus, then, in the twelfth century, material mainly from the third-century Liber Memorabilium by Solinus, Basil of Caesarea’s Hexameron, Ambrose’s fourth-century commentary on the six days of creation, and occasionally Rabanus Maurus’ De Universo. The twelfth-century bestiaries, which make up most of the surviving ones, included twice as many subjects as Physiologus and there are also more luxury copies. McCulloch’s third family includes only five extant bestiaries of the thirteenth century, which incorporated Isidore’s account of the Fabulous (Monstrous) Nations and elements of Bernard Silvestris’ twelfth-century Cosmographia. The net effect was that after Isidore’s material, information on the physical causes of animal behaviour as well as spiritual entered the bestiaries. There was also a greater emphasis on moral teachings at the expense of the more mystical aspects of Physiologus. The use of the bestiary format eventually extended into all fields of literature, while in the Middle Ages a ‘bestiary style’ of animal representation might be found not only in the group of related texts we call bestiaries, intended to be didactic and possibly entertaining as well, but it in marginalia of other books, carvings and misericords. In addition, some bestiary descriptions of animals have no attached spiritual/moral allegory

26 Montague Rhodes James, Bestiary: Being A Reproduction in Full of Ms. Ii 4. 26 in the University Library, Cambridge, with supplementary plates from other manuscripts of English origin, and a preliminary study of the Latin bestiary as current in England (Oxford: Roxburghe Club, 1928); Florence McCulloch, Mediaeval French and Latin Bestiaries, University of North Carolina Dept of Romance Studies 35 (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1962). The James-McCulloch classification is arguably Anglocentric and is now to some extent obsolete as some of the definitions underlying it have been undermined. However, because their class distinctions are still so widely used they are still referred to here when discussing ‘English’ bestiaries (though only one of these was written in English  – the Middle English Arundel MS 292, British Library, based on the metrical Latin Physiologus of the eleventh-century Italian monk Theobaldus.). For the problems of national bias in bestiary classification and an attempt to correct them, see Sarah Kay, “The English Bestiary’, the Continental ‘Physiologus’, and the Intersections between them”, Medium Ævum 85, no. 1 (2016), 118–142.

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and some are very brief, which suggests that these were included purely in an attempt to include all known animals. The tiger is one of those animals that was not in the Physiologus and has no allegory. It appeared with little variant in most bestiaries. Bestiary: tiger (Cambridge II.4.26) Tigris the tiger gets his name from his speedy pace, for the Persians, Greeks and Medes used to call an arrow “tigris.” The beast can be distinguished by his manifold specklings, by his courage and by his wonderful velocity. And from him the River Tigris is named, because it is the most rapid of all rivers. Hyrcania is his principal home. Now the tigress, when she finds the empty lair of one her cubs that has been stolen, instantly presses along the tracks of the thief. But this person who has stolen the cub, seeing that even though carried by a swiftly galloping horse he is on the point of being destroyed by the speed off the tigress, and seeing that no safety can be expected from flight, cunningly invents the following ruse. When he perceives that the mother is close, he throws down a glass ball, and she, taken in by her own reflection, assumes that the image of herself in the glass is her little one. She pulls up, hoping to collect the infant. But after she has been delayed by the hollow mockery, she again throws herself with all her might into the pursuit of the horseman, and, goaded by rage, quickly threatens to catch up with the fugitive. Again he delays the pursuer by throwing down a second ball, nor does the memory of his former trick prevent the mother’s tender care. She curls herself round the vain reflection and lies down as if to suckle the cub. And so, deceived by the zeal of her own dutifulness, she loses both her revenge and the baby. trans. T.H. WHITE

In this strange account there is no reference to anything biblical, but it obviously appealed to medieval readers. Neither scribe nor illustrator is likely to have encountered a tiger. The origins lie in classical sources. Around the turn of the fifth century BCE Ctesias described the mantichore in his Indica, probably a confused and exaggerated account of the tiger, as suggested by Pausanius in the second century CE.27 Aristotle refused to commit to the mantichore’s 27 Ctesias, Indica, fragment 45.15; Pausanius, Description of Greece, Vol 4, Books 8.22–10: Arcadia, Boeotia, Phocis and Ozolian Locri. Trans. W.H.S. Jones (Harvard University Press, 1935): Bk 9.21.4. The fragments of Ctesias and their locations (in other authors’ works) may be found in Ancient India as described by Ktesias the Knidian, trans. J.W. McCrindle (London: Trübner, 1882).

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reality, but it appeared in the works of Pliny, Aelian and Solinus alongside the tiger as a separate animal.28 They all told of the tiger’s speed, but in their accounts the thief takes more than one cub and gives them up one by one to delay the pursuing tigress, escaping with the last one. The mirror tale probably appeared first in Claudian’s Rape of Proserpine and was elaborated by Ambrose into what would become its bestiary form, this time with glass balls instead of mirrors, while the etymology of the bestiary was taken from Isidore.29 At the beginning of the thirteenth century Pierre de Beauvais in his bestiary had the tigress recognize her own reflection in the glass and halt to admire it, rather than mistaking it for her cub.30 The mirror replaced the glass ball in the bestiary/encyclopedia tradition in the thirteenth century. In Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’Amour the lover is said to be bewitched just as the tiger is by the mirror, and the mirror first appears in a straight account of the tiger in Bartholomeus Anglicus’ Properties of Things, at about the same time as the invention of the mirror made of glass backed by reflective lead.31 Both mantichore and tiger appeared in the bestiaries. In the medieval descriptions the tiger has some facets that distance it from humans and some that do not. The images in the mirrors depicted in the bestiaries that mention them vary from replica images of the tiger’s face to near-human or ape-like faces. It is uncertain what the bestiary reader is supposed to take from the text or the images as no allegory is provided, but the tiger’s mirror image as human suggests that in some way its actions mirror those of humans. A general facet of bestiaries was their dependence on the

28 Aristotle, Historia Animalium 501a2 (History of Animals, 2.1); Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus), Naturalis Historia (Natural History): Bk VIII.3.75; Aelian (Claudius Aelianus), On Animals, Volume I: Books 1–5, trans. Scholfield. Loeb Classical Library 446. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958): Bk IV.21; C. Julii Solini Polyhistor (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2009): LII.37–38. Polyhistor is also named Collectanea rerum memorabilium. 29 Claudian (Claudius Claudianus), Claudian, De Raptu Proserpinae, ed. Claire Gruzelier (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993): 3.263; Ambrose, Hexameron, 6.4.21; Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, Bk XII.2.7. 30 Le bestiaire: Version longue attribuée à Pierre de Beauvais, ed. Craig Baker (Toronto: Champion, 2010): 2.140. Pierre’s Bestiaire (long version) includes seventy-one animals, two of which are rarely mentioned elsewhere: the muscaliet, which is smaller than a hare but has a similar body, with legs and tail like a squirrel, ears like a weasel’s, a muzzle like a mole’s, teeth like a boar’s and hair like a pig’s; and the orphan bird, which has attributes of the eagle, peacock, swan and crane. 31 Richard de Fournival, Le Bestiaire d’Amour par Richard de Fournival Suivi de la reponse de la Dame, ed. C. Hippeau (Paris. Auguste Aubrey, 1860): Le tigre; Bartholomeus Anglicus, Properties of Things, Lib. Decimusoctavus, cii. De tigride.

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reader’s recognition of likeness between his or her behaviour and that of the animal in question. In general bestiary and encyclopaedia descriptions of domestic animals are more accurate than descriptions of others. The entry on the sheep in Oxford MS Bodley 764 (thirteenth century) begins with the dubious explanation of the Latin name ovis derived from Isidore’s Etymologies, but the description of the sheep’s teeth and behaviour is presumably based on observation of a familiar animal. In this bestiary the sheep’s behaviour becomes a special quality, however, because of what it represents and its moral implications. Bestiary, Oxford MS Bodley 764 The sheep is a soft animal with wool, a defenceless body, and a peaceful nature; it gets its Latin name, “ovis”, from oblations or offerings, because the men of old when they first made sacrifices did not slaughter bulls but sheep. Many sheep are double-toothed, having two upper teeth in addition to eight normal ones, and these were especially singled out for sacrifices by the gentiles. At the beginning of winter the sheep eat voraciously, seizing the grass insatiably, because they feel the onset of the coming winter and are anxious to stuff themselves with food before the arrival of the frost destroys the grass. Sheep represent the innocent and simple among Christians, and the lord himself exhibited the mildness and patience of a sheep. Isaiah says of the death of the innocent Saviour: “He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opens not his mouth.”32 The sheep in the gospels are the faithful: “The sheep hear his voice.”33 And in the psalm, “You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field.”34 The sheep are the people of two kinds, fed by a man (that is, Christ), of whom the prophet says, “And it shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall nourish a young cow, and two sheep, and it shall come to pass for the abundance of milk they shall give, he shall eat butter.”35 Note also the wicked sheep in the Psalter: “Like sheep they are laid in the grave, and death shall feed on them.”36

32 33 34 35 36

Isaiah 53.7. John 10.3. Psalms 8.6–7. Isaiah 7.21–22. Psalms 49.14.

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Humans had made use of the donkey as a beast of burden for millennia, but usually considered it obdurate and stupid. In the 1120s, in his introduction and dedication of his bestiary to Henry I of England’s second queen Adeliza of Louvain, Philippe de Thaon depicted these two stereotyped characteristics of the ass to represent a people (religion), the Jews, who were stereotyped in the same way for their refusal to recognize Christ. Philippe of Thaon, Bestiary37 By the ass we understand The Jews by great reason. The ass is foolish by nature, As the scripture says; Never will he depart from his way If one does not drag him entirely from it. trans. Thomas Wright

Imaginative descriptions of animals that were rarely or never seen are not so surprising, but bestiaries also contain numerous inaccuracies regarding many wild animals that lived in the European countryside. Hence we read this of the eagle: Guillaume le Clerc, Bestiaire38 The eagle is the king of birds. When it is old it becomes young again in a very strange manner. When its eyes become dim and its wings are heavy with age, it seeks out a clear and pure fountain, where the water bubbles up and shines in the clear sunlight. Above this fountain it rises high up into the air and fixes its eyes upon the light of the sun, gazing at it until the heat sets its eyes and wings ablaze. Then it descends into the fountain where the water is clearest and brightest, and plunges and bathes three times, until it is fresh and renewed and recovered from its old age. The eagle has such keen vision that if it is high among the clouds, soaring through the air and sees the fish swimming beneath it in a river or in the sea, it dives down upon the fish, seizes it and drags it to the shore. In a strange manner also, if the eagle’s eggs should be taken unknown to it and others placed in its nest, when the young are grown, before they fly away, it carries them up into the air when the sun is shining at its brightest. Those that can look into the rays of the sun without blinking, it loves 37 The Bestiary of Philippe de Thaon, ed. Thomas Wright (London: R. and J.E. Taylor, 1841). 38 Le Bestiaire Divin de Guillaume Clerc de Normandie, ed. C. Hippeau (Nabu Press, 1970).

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and holds dear; those which cannot endure to look at the light, it abandons as lowborn, and takes no further notice of them. Isidore gives the information about the eagle’s sharpness of sight, but also tells the reader that it can look directly into the rays of the sun, information he may have taken from Lucan and Pliny.39 Like many other animals, the eagle had (supposed) habits that could signify both negative and positive attributes. Just as the eagle renewed its youth in the water, the man with old garments and dim eyes should seek the spiritual spring and raise the eyes of his mind to God. Rebirth in the fountain also signified baptism. The eagle catches fish from on high just as Christ descended from heaven to catch souls; the eagle’s ability to look directly into the sun represents Christ’s ability to look directly into God; the eagle represents Christ, who came from heaven to catch souls; and as the eagle lifts its young to the sun, so angels lift worthy souls to God. The eagle’s beak was also said to grow so that it had to break it on a rock and let it grow again: the rock on which the eagle sharpens its beak is Christ, on whom man can sharpen his soul. In some bestiaries, on the other hand, the eagle signified evil spirits and ravishers of souls, those who lay in ambush for the spirit, while its descent from the sky to the earth to find food represented the fall of Adam, who ate what was forbidden. The eagle’s rejuvenation probably derives from verses of Psalms in the Old Testament – “Your youth will be renewed like the eagles”; “… my youth is renewed like the eagle’s” – since this idea is not found in ancient literature.40 We would expect many medieval people to have been aware of the unreality of many descriptions and some falsehoods were pointed out by scholars such as Albert the Great, yet they reappeared in later bestiaries, probably because the compilers were most concerned to convey the traditional allegorical messages. Though much of the mythology was derived indirectly from classical works, scholastic Aristotelianism remained largely outside the monastic bestiary tradition even after it was accepted in the universities in the thirteenth century. However, the inaccuracies need not imply that the bestiary compilers and artists were oblivious to the reality of animals’ appearance and behaviour. Especially in the second and third family bestiaries, the accounts often have a bipartite structure as if to emphasize the duality of the nature of the animals

39 Etymologies of Isidore of Seville: Liber XII, 7:10–11; Lucan, Pharsalia (De Bello Civili – On the Civil War): Bk 6, v. 799–800; Pliny, Natural History: Bk 10, 3–6. 40 Latin Vulgate, Psalms 102:5 and 103:5: Renovabitur sicut aquilae iuventus tua.

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and their symbolical meanings, but this does not necessarily indicate that medieval bestiary compilers or readers saw these aspects as distinct. Among modern scholars there has been a tendency to see the bestiary as predominantly either a work of natural history or a Christian didactic work.41 The distinction is a modern one, not a medieval one, and there is no indication of it in the manuscript headings or the content. The animals are classified according to all their dimensions, physical, moral and spiritual, so that their “nature” includes its allegorical aspects.42 The taxonomy of the bestiaries thus included factors other than the physical, which is dominant in taxonomic classification nowadays. The addition of more zoological information in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries did nevertheless reflect an increasing interest in creating bestiaries as mini-encyclopedias, a change of emphasis from the Physiologus. Both bestiaries and encyclopaedias included numerous mythical animals, such as the mantichore already mentioned, the centaur, the unicorn, the dragon, the basilisk and the phoenix. Probably some readers believed in a fabulous animal and some doubted its reality, but neither the doubters nor those who recognized one or two errors in accounts of familiar animal behaviour would necessarily dismiss the whole work as a result: since the moralizing and spiritual elements were integral to the nature of the beasts, they probably contributed to a general acceptance of the accounts even when they did not fully conform to observed behaviour. Most mythical animals, like the dragon below, had qualities that signified evil and many were destroyers of humans. A number of bestiary animals have arch-enemies or animals that they fear; in this case the dragon is the arch-enemy of the elephant, but it fears and avoids the sweet breath of the panther. The concept may have appealed as an aspect of God’s rational and ordered creation, which has a natural symmetry or ‘balance of nature’, a concept that is still prevalent today in a slightly different form despite the evidence of instability.

41 For instance, Ron Baxter states that “… we are not in any sense dealing with zoology”, whereas T.H. White concluded that the second family bestiary is “a serious work of natural history.” Baxter, Bestiaries and their Users in the Middle Ages (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), 184; The Book of Beasts: Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century, ed. and trans. T.H. White (New York: Dover Publications, 1984), 231. 42 Susan Crane, Animal Encounters: Contacts and Concepts in Medieval Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 71. She notes that the booklists are usually designated “Liber de natura/naturis bestiarum” and mentions two manuscript headings, “Here begins a treatise on the names of beasts and their nature” and “Here begins a bestiary concerning the natures of animals, and the first concerning the lion.” The mss are respectively Cambridge, St John’s College MS C 12 MBB, 32–33 (Hic incipit tractatus de moninibus bestiarum et earum natura) and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 88A: MBB, 33 (Incipit bestiarium de naturis animalium et primo de leone).

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Bestiary, Oxford MS Bodley 76443 The dragon is like the devil, the fairest of all serpents, who often leaves his cave to rush into the air; the air glows because of him, because the devil rises from his abyss and transforms himself into an angel of light, deceiving fools with hopes of vainglory and human pleasures. The dragon has a crest because the devil is the king of pride; its strength does not rest in its teeth but in its tail, because having lost all power, the devil can only deceive with lies. It lurks on the paths which elephants use because the devil lays the coils of sin in the path of all who make their way towards heaven and kills them when they are suffocated with sin. trans. Richard Barber

The phoenix, a mythical creature said to live in Arabia, was an exception to the rule as it provided an example of resurrection and how a human should prepare for death: Bestiary (Cambridge II.4.26)44 This bird, without anybody to explain things to it, without even the power of reason, goes through the very facts of the resurrection – and that, in spite of the fact that birds exist for the good of men, not men for birds. Let it be an example to us, therefore, that the author and creator of mere birds did not arrange for his holy ones to be destroyed for ever, but wishes the seed to be renewed by rising again.45 Whereas this example repeats the generally accepted concepts that animals were without reason and were created for humans, a few bestiary entries for animals with positive traits make far more of their affinity with humans than their differences. In their section on the dog the second-family bestiaries included an example where it was pursuing quarry and faced with a dividing of the ways and the problem of which to follow. The ultimate source of this quandary as a literary device was, according to the second-century CE Roman cynic Sextus Empiricus, the third century BCE Stoic Chrysippus.46 Sextus challenged Stoic arguments that animals had no rationality, but the example that the writers probably knew was that of Ambrose, who made it absolutely clear that dogs 43 Bestiary, trans. Richard Barber (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1999). 44 The Book of Beasts, ed. and trans. White. 45 White, 1984, 127, translated from Cambridge II.4.26. The phoenix was ultimately derived from Greek mythology, but it has several parallels in other cultures. 46 Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 4 vols., trans. Robert Gregg, (Essex, CT: Prometheus, 1990): Liber 1.69, 1.64.

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were devoid of reason and were trained to act in the way that they did “by nature.”47 More so than Ambrose, some bestiaries that mention this scenario, while stating that the dog is irrational and acts “as if” syllogizing, present the dog himself as making the decision by doing just that, the ‘humanness’ of his action emphasized by the use of direct speech. Bestiary (Cambridge II.4.26)48 When a dog discovers the track of a hare or stag and comes to a fork in the path or a crossing of the ways because it has divided into several parts, then the dog silently puzzles over the situation, seeking along the start of each way. He shows his sagacity in following the scent, as if enunciating a syllogism. “Either it has gone this way,” says he to himself, “or that way, or indeed, it may have turned twisting in that other direction. But as it has neither entered this road nor that road, obviously it has taken the third one.” And so, by rejecting error, the dog finds the truth. trans. T.H. White

The implication of animal rationality is unusual; although the dog often has positive attributes these are usually dependent on its service to humans. Yet, as we have seen, even dog behaviour can symbolize negative qualities: for instance, it returns to its vomit as do those who fall into sin again after having confessed. There are other examples that suggest animal wisdom: lions conceal their tracks and foxes colour earth red to simulate death. A curiosity that might suggest moral superiority is the depiction of the elephant in one manuscript of Guillaime le Clerc’s bestiary, in which it appears to remain in Paradise when Adam and Eve are expelled and to represent their state before the Fall.49 In other cases, special abilities were attributed to various animals, such as the swans and vultures able to interpret signs unknown to humans. Almost all bestiaries of the High Middle Ages were illustrated with art that derives from as many sources as the text.50 Their representations of animals are often highly inaccurate, even of those that lived in areas where the 47 Ambrose, “Exameron,” in Sancti Ambrosii Opera I, ed. Carl Schenk (Leipzig: Freytag, 1896): Liber Sextus: IV.23. 48 Bestiary, trans. Barber. 49 BnF fr. 14969, a thirteenth-century English Franciscan manuscript of the work. The image is on folio 59r. See the discussion (and black and white image) in Sarah Kay, Animal Skins and the Reading Self, 152–56. 50 Some of the illustrations originate from antiquity, early versions of the Physiologus obviously having included pictures as well, some from ancient zoological or geographical works, and some from illustrated versions of the commentaries by Basil and Ambrose on the Six Days of Creation.

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illustrators worked. Hugh of Fouilloy began the first Prologue to his Aviary with the following words: “Desiring to fulfil your wishes, dearest friend, I decided to paint the dove whose wings are silvered and the hinderparts of the back pale gold.” Bestiary artists were presumably chosen for their ability to illustrate, perhaps to use their imagination, not for their sound knowledge of fauna, hence the prevalence of ‘unnatural animal colours’ like gold, and oddities such as whales depicted as big scaly fishes, crocodiles that resemble dogs, and serpents with wings, feet or ears. The artistic quality of illustrations varies according to the ability of the illustrator and the requirements of the intended readers. As in the case of the text, the illustrators’ model was likely to be previous illustrations, which had acquired authenticity through familiarity and repeated copying. These illustrations had as much influence on iconography as the text did on literature and thought, and obviously influenced people’s conceptions of animals. Hugh of Fouilloy, De natura avium (On the nature of birds). Prologus 251 Because I must write for the unlettered, the diligent reader should not wonder that, for the instruction of the unlettered, I say simple things about subtle matters. Nor should he attribute it to levity that I paint a hawk or a dove, because the blessed Job and the prophet David bequeathed to us birds of this sort for our edification. For what Scripture means to the teachers, the picture means to simple folk. For just as the learned man delights in the subtlety of the written word, so the intellect of simple folk is engaged by the simplicity of a picture. I, however, work more to please the simple folk than to speak to the teachers and as it were pour liquids into a full vase. For whoever instructs the learned man by words pours liquids as if into a full vase. trans. Willene B. Clark

Hugh explicitly mentions that the diagrams in his Aviarium were designed to aid memory. His use of simplicium may indicate prejudice about the mental capacities of the lower classes, but he lived in a society in which the majority, perhaps to be equated with “simple folk”, were unschooled. The dedication in Hugh’s Aviarium is to a lay brother named Rainier, the “dearest friend” of the first prologue; lay brothers received only sufficient religious instruction to lead the Christian life and perform their duties for the monastery, so might

51 Hugh of Fouilloy, The Medieval Book of Birds: Hugh of Fouilloy’s Aviarium, ed. and trans. Willene B. Clark (Binghampton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992): Prologus II.

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be included among the simple folk. Hugh of Fouilloy’s book is a rarity in covering only one class of animals, although the actions of birds had long been used in divination and other quasi-magical practices. Aviarium differs from other bestiaries not only in this respect but in its more individual literary style and layout. Hugh often incorporated his picture of the bird within the text, which was written around it, a method that would be appreciated by graphic designers nowadays. It opens with a long passage on the dove and its allegorical meanings in the scriptures, provides short passages on the four winds, and then turns to the hawk and its prey, the turtledove and the sparrow. Each of the following twenty-three chapters handles one bird, using information derived mostly from Isidore of Seville and Rabanus Maurus. The book was often paired with a bestiary in a manuscript, which enabled the reader to encounter land animals at the same time, but also occasionally provided contrasting interpretations of the same birds. Where Hugh’s idea of a white heron originated is uncertain, unless he had observed an albino one himself, as the white varieties live only in the Americas. Hugh of Fouilloy, De natura avium52 (On the nature of birds): Ch. 52. De ardea (The Heron)53 “The bird is called a heron (ardea), as if to say ‘high’ (ardua) because of its lofty flights … for it fears rain and flies above the clouds so that it cannot perceive the storm clouds, Moreover, when it flies, that means a tempest is coming. Many people call this bird Tantalus.”54 Whence Hrabanus said, “This bird can signify the souls of the elect which, daring the turmoils of this world, lest by chance through the devil’s plotting they be completely overwhelmed by the storms of persecution, raise their attention above all temporal matters, and their minds toward the clear weather of the celestial home, where they continually see the face of God.”55 Granted that the heron seeks its food in the water, nevertheless is builds its nests in forests and in tall trees, because the righteous man who is maintained by fleeting and temporal things places his hope in exalted men: not only is his flesh nourished by temporal things, but also his soul 52 Hugh’s book was given an assortment of names by medieval scribes: this is just one of them. 53 Hugh of Fouilloy, Medieval Book of Birds: Cap. LII. 54 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, Liber XII.7.21. Tantalus was punished with perpetual thirst while standing in a lake in Hades, by Zeus for divulging secrets. The name was possibly given to the heron as a wader. 55 Rabanus Maurus, The Nature of Things: Liber XXII.VI. See below for the full reference to the work.

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is delighted by the eternal. With its beak the heron endeavours to defend the chicks in the nest, lest they be seized by other birds. In the same way, with forceful invective, the righteous man smites those wayward people whom he knows to be prone to deceit. Certain herons are in fact white in colour, others ashen. Each colour, however, is considered to good advantage, if by white is meant purity and by ashen penitence; for both those who are penitent and those who live purely are of the same species. And therefore the colour of the heron and its way of life provide to monks a model of salvation. trans. Willene B. Clark

Many bestiary manuscripts were lavishly illustrated, the Aberdeen and the Harley Bestiaries being good examples, and these were probably gifts for secular nobility. The lay nobility still relied on the clergy to interpret scripture for them, but these bestiaries were more than the equivalent of the modern ‘coffee table books’ and would also have been prestigious to own. That the lay nobility was the target audience of many vernacular bestiaries is suggested by the illustrations in some produced from the twelfth century onwards, which often have little relation to the text other than the animal in question, or the illustrator’s imaginative idea of it. It seems that the illustrations were intended to appeal to the taste of the secular aristocracy, hence the number of often bloody hunting scenes. There are other features of a medieval work that post-medieval printed editions lack and which likely influenced their readers, not only the script and the original language but the medium. In the Middle Ages the text and pictures were written and painted on parchment, animal skin, which was a particularly appropriate material for the medieval bestiary and may have been used to augment the content.56 Production of bestiaries continued into the Renaissance, but many of the later ones lacked the pictures. Among those who produced a bestiary was Leonardo da Vinci. Although it draws heavily on earlier bestiaries, in some places it differs; for instance, Leonardo’s cranes have kings, whereas earlier bestiaries mention only that they have leaders when they fly in “military formation”, while Albertus Magnus had said they appoint them only for specific tasks.57 Leonardo’s descriptions have no relation to his drawn anatomical studies of animals and it is likely that considered the bestiary a literary genre rather 56 Sarah Kay, Animal Skins and the Reading Self, 2–5. 57 Oliver Evans, “Selections from the Bestiary of Leonardo Da Vinci”, Journal of American Folklore 64, 254 (Oct–Dec 1951), 394.

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than anything related to science.58 Nevertheless, he made the effort to produce the work, his motivation either the value of the moralizations or simply amusement.59 Leonardo organized the first of his groups of entries under the moralization or metaphor that an animal exemplified rather than the animal itself, his main example in this being the encyclopaedist and physician Cecco d’Ascoli (1257–1327), but his text is much shorter. These examples suggest that by the fifteenth century many, at least among scholars, were coming to regard the bestiary as something unrelated to zoology, but the medieval practice of using interpretations and symbolism of animal behaviour to impart moral, religious or mythological messages remained popular and was still considered useful. Leonardo da Vinci, Bestiary60 Cruelty The basilisk is so cruel that, when he does not succeed in killing animals with his poisonous stare, he turns it upon plants and herbs, causing them to dry up. Hypocrisy The crocodile will seize a man and kill him immediately with his jaws. Then he will weep and wail for him in a mournful manner. When he has finished his lament, he will devour him cruelly. So it is with the hypocrite, who weeps when he is happy, showing a tearful countenance, while in his savage heart he rejoices all the time. Treachery When the moon is full, the oyster opens its shell. When the crab sees it thus, he will insert a stone or stick inside the shell, so preventing the oyster from closing it again, whereupon the crab devours him. So it is with he who opens his mouth to tell a secret; he becomes the victim of an imprudent listener. Vanity The peacock is subject to this vice above all other animals because he is always fixated with the beauty of his tail, spreading it out like a wheel

58 Simona Cohen, Animals as Disguised Symbols in Renaissance Art (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 27–29. 59 Leonardo produced other works in a similar vein: for instance, his caricatures of human faces were both observations of humanity and amusing, while his riddles and fables were probably also amusement. 60 Leonardo da Vinci, “Selections from the Bestiary of Leonardo da Vinci,” trans. Oliver Evans, The Journal of American Folklore, 64. 254 (Oct–Dec 1951), 393–96.

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and uttering cries to attract the attention of nearby animals. And this is the hardest of all vices to overcome. trans. Oliver Evans

4

The Medieval Encyclopaedia of Nature

The descriptions of animals in the medieval enyclopaedic works, which were usually intended to provide information on everything in the cosmos, in many ways resembled that of the bestiaries; for reasons already given, as well as their behaviour and physical characteristics, their didactic and exemplary functions were included. In the ninth century, in his 22-book De Universo, Rabanus Maurus selected material from Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies and added moralization and mystical material. He handles things in descending order according to the cosmic hierarchy, taking the Creator God as his starting point, with the animals appearing in Book 8. Rabanus Maurus, De Universo de Rerum Naturis (On the Natures of Things), Bk 8.3: De serpentibus (On serpents)61 And the serpent received its name because it crawls by secret approaches: it crawls not by open steps, but by the smallest of scales. However, those which stand on four legs, like lizards and scorpions, are not called serpents, but reptiles. But snakes are reptiles, because they reproduce with their chest and belly, and they have as many poisons as there are many kinds, as many causes of destruction as there are many species, as many causes of pain as there are many colours. And the serpent signifies the devil, as it is in Genesis: “The serpent was more cunning than all the living creatures of the earth”;62 or malicious men and heretics, of whom the Psalmist says: “They have sharpened their tongues like serpents: the poison of asps is under their lips.”63 Here the malice of the heretics, and their deception, is beautifully described. For tongues signify words which, polished by the scales of iniquity, strive to wound the hearts of the simple. They are rightly compared to snakes, because they spew out poison with their words. Hence they are compared to unhearing asps. For they contend with such a purpose that the obstinacy of the mind will never be overcome by the truth. Also, the meaning of the serpent is transferred to 61

Rabanus Maurus, “De Universo de Rerum Naturis,” in B. Rabani Mauri Fuldensis Abbatis et Mogunti Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, Vol. 5, ed. J.-P. Migne (1864), PL 09-612: Liber VIII: III. 62 Genesis 3. 63 Psalms 13.

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another role, as it is in the Gospel: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert: so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have life eternal.”64 For there the serpent signifies the death of Christ, who saved the human race, which the cunning of the serpent in ancient times, by its malicious persuasion, deprived of the salvation conceived by the Creator. Produced at the end of the twelfth century, Alexander Neckham’s De Naturis Rerum expanded knowledge of the natural world by including animals that were newly discovered or omitted from late antique works because they did not live in the Mediterranean region or Near East and sometimes posing questions about genuine animal behaviour. However, like Rabanus, he also included allegory and moralisation, including, on occasion, more than one possible lesson to be drawn from an animal’s actions. Here he follows the more common allegory of the pelican’s alleged killing of its fledglings and revival of them with its own blood with a different one, but one which parallels and complements the other rather than contradicting it. Alexander Neckham, De Naturis Rerum (On the Nature of Things), Bk 2, Ch.74. Of the Pelican Again65 The things of nature permit a variety of moral interpretations. And so I’d like to deal with the pelican in a different way than we considered, but concisely. We have said, then, that the penitent is indicated by the pelican, in that he indeed conforms to the said emaciated bird. For this bird is lean; in this way the penitent ought to enervate his body. This bird is also isolated. Thus the penitent ought to avoid the evils of conversation, but also intercourse. But the nature and customs of that bird are usually referred to Christ himself. This bird kills its chicks, and the transgression of the commandment given by the Lord to the first parents caused them to suffer death. All the generations succeeding from Adam were also struck down because he was given up to punishment and delivered up to death. For three days the pelican mourns his offpsring, and the Lord in a manner mourns his own during his three days of suffering. This bird

64 John 3. 65 Alexander Neckam, De Natura Rerum et De Laudibus Divinae Sapientae, ed. Thomas Wright (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green, 1863): Liber secundus, Cap. LXXIV.

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opens its sides and revives the chicks with blood. Thus the sacraments of our redemption flowed out from the open side of the Lord. In the encyclopaedias that followed the twelfth-century renaissance there is some tension between naturalism and exemplarity. Nevertheless, the style of most of the descriptions of animals in the encyclopaedias of the Franciscan Bartholomew the Englishman and the Dominican Vincent de Beauvais differ little from the bestiary. Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum naturale (Mirror of Nature), Bk 18, Ch. 27, De capra66 There is a beast called in Greek dorcon and in Latin capra. The Physiologus says that she is very fond of high mountains and that she likes to graze on the slopes of the mountains. This animal has remarkable eyesight and can see a great distance. From one valley to another, if he sees men walking, he will guess perfectly well whether they are hunters or simple travellers. In the same way Our Lord Jesus Christ loves the high mountains, that is to say, the prophets, the apostles, the partriarchs and the righteous. He of whom it is said in the Song he leapt on the mountains. And just as the goat loves to graze on the slopes of the hills, so Our Lord feeds in the Holy Church. For the good works of Christians and the charity of the faithful are the food of God […]. And just as the goat is able to distinguish and recognize at a great distance, so God is master of all sciences, of all things and all beings that exist in this world. Among men, he sees those who will go far. He sees everything, governs everything, keeps watch over everything. Vincent’s contemporary and fellow Dominican Thomas of Cantimpre and those who followed his model such as Konrad of Megenburg took more account of naturalism, frequently citing Aristotle. Thomas’ Liber de Natura Rerum, Book 9 concerns vermes, a taxonomic group that consisted mainly of small animals, most of them considered useless to humans. However, the term as used in the Middle Ages did not correspond to today’s “vermin”, descended from vermes, as only some of the vermes were ‘pests.’ As an insect, the bee 66 Vincentius Bellovacensis. Speculum quadruplex sive Speculum maius naturale, doctrinale, morale, historiale. Vol. 1. Speculum Naturale (Vienna: Akademische Druck-  und Verlagsanstalt, 1964): Decimusoctavus liber, XVIII, Cap. 27.

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belonged among vermes, but it was admired for many qualities, among them its supposed chastity and industriousness. Honey and bees were mentioned frequently in the Bible, usually in a positive light. Bees’ mode of living was considered an example of an ordered society for humans to follow. Thomas also wrote a much longer work on monastic organisation with bee society as the model, Bonum universale de apibus (The universal virtue of the bees). In this he was following a long tradition, which he acknowledges: not only Ambrose, but Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine of Hippo and others had eulogized the bee in the same way. Thomas of Cantimpre, Liber de Natura Rerum (The Book of Natural Things): Bk 9. De Vermibus (On Vermes): 2. On bees67 Bees, as Ambrose relates, in every species of animals have a common offspring; there is common work for all, common food, common activity, common use and produce, common flight – what more? – generation is common to all, the integrity of the virgin body and childbirth are also common to all, since they do not mix with one another in any intercourse, nor are they enfeebled in lust, nor are they shaken by the pains of childbirth, and yet suddenly they release the greatest swarm of children. They appoint a king for themselves, they create a people, and although they are placed under kings, they are still free. For they hold both the prerogative of judgement and the affection of devotion to faith, because both as if appointed by themselves they carefully weigh and honour, so much that no controversy or discord is ever stirred up against it. 5

Animals in Homilies and Sermons

Many lay people in the Middle Ages would have become familiar with the nonhuman animal as example through listening to sermons. Sermons were the main method of mediating biblical texts and exegesis to the masses, but in a simplified form that was made relevant to them and often embedded in a reading intended to transmit some other message. The many exempla, role models, quotations and narratives that could be taken from the Bible were employed

67

Thomas of Cantimpre, Thomas Cantimpratensis, Liber de natura rerum, 1: Text (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973): Liber IX, De Vermibus: II. De Apibus.

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for different aims, so that sometimes ad status sermons were tailored to suit specific audiences with a choice of material they could relate to. Biblical events were often taken out of context or even delivered in the form in which they were presented in medieval biblical dramas. Rhetorical treatises such as Alan of Lille’s Summa de Arte Praedicatoria, written in the twelfth century, aided in preparing sermons by supplying suitable biblical texts, and experienced preachers provided model sermons in Latin, which others could adapt and translate as required. Sermons were usually preached during Mass (the technical term for this type of sermon being pericope), preceded and followed by liturgical actions, or even including them. They were normally delivered from the pulpits of churches, but sometimes from a sacred location nearby, such as outside below the churchyard cross or on a village green. In the early Middle Ages bishops held the office of preacher. The established methods of exposition or exhortation used in oration, including the use of animals as exemplary material, must have become almost second nature to those who delivered sermons. According to Eadmer’s Life, in 1097 the retinue of Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury was treated to an ‘impromptu sermon’ as they approached his manor of Hayes and a hunted hare took refuge under his horse’s legs, causing them to laugh. Eadmer, Vita Sancti Anselmi (The Life of St Anselm), Book 2.6868 Yet Anselm was moved to tears and rebuked them for making fun of the unhappy beast with the following words: You laugh, do you? But there is no laughing, no merry-making, for this unhappy beast. His enemies stand round about him, and in fear of his life he flees to us asking for help. So it is with the soul of man: when it leaves the body, its enemies – the evil spirits which have haunted it along all the crooked ways of vice while it was in the body – stand round without mercy, ready to seize it and hurry it off to everlasting death. Then indeed it looks round everywhere in great alarm, and with inexpressible desire longs for some helping and protecting hand to be held out to it, which might defend it. But the demons on the other hand laugh and rejoice exceedingly if they find that the soul is bereft of every support. trans. R.W. Southern

68 Eadmerus Monachus Cantuariensis. Liber de Sancti Anselmi Similitudinibus, ed. J.-P. Migne: PL, MPL 159, 0605A–0708D: Liber secundus, xviii.

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Anselm does not have concern for the hare as a hunted animal, but for the human soul it represents, hunted by demons. In this case, the dogs (“enemies”) who pursue the hare also take on an allegorical nature, representing demons. In other circumstances, as a servant to humans the dog might represent a positive feature such as fidelity. Animals could have multiple meanings, and even the same action performed by one of them could have contrasting interpretations depending on its context. Early medieval discourses that explained sacred texts are referred to as homilies, some of which we have already encountered. John Chrysostom made great use of animals in his homilies, usually to emphasize that the human who did not use his or her rationality, who sought only material and physical reward and who succumbed to vice sunk to the level of beast. In the process, in the example below, he lists the base attributes associated with particular animals. These conceptions remained throughout the Middle Ages. John Chrysostom, Homily 769 I mean, when I see you living an irrational life, how am I to call you a human being and not an ox? When I see you robbing others, how am I to call you a human being and not a wolf? When I see you committing fornication, how am I to call you a human being and not a swine? When I see you being fraudulent, how am I to call you a human being and not a serpent? When I see you with venom, how am I to call you a human being and not a snake? When I see you being a fool, how am I to call you a human being and not an ass? When I see you committing adultery, how am I to call you a human being and not a lusty stallion? When I see you disobedient and forward, how am I to call you a human being and not a stone? … How, do you ask, am I to become a human being? If you keep the thoughts of the flesh under control, those brutish thoughts, if you expel lewd habits, if you expel an inopportune desire for money, if you expel that wicked tyrant, if you make your own place pure. But how do you become a human being? By coming here where human beings are created. If I receive you as a stallion, I turn you into a human being; if I receive you as a wolf, I turn you into a human being; if I receive you as a serpent, I turn you into a human being, not changing your nature but transforming your free will.”

69 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 1–17, trans. Robert C. Hill (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2000).

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In the example below Aelfric expands on John 10:11–16, in which Christ describes himself as the good shepherd. Following the excerpt below Aelfric quotes Ezekiel 34:7–16, which uses the same allegory of unguarded sheep devoured by a predator. Already an archetypal predatory beast in ancient times, the wolf was the top predator among nonhuman animals in medieval Europe, a rival predator of animals to humans who liked to hunt and a consumer of livestock humans reared for their own consumption, and therefore all the more suitable to be compared with the devil as predator of men’s souls. Aelfric, Homily: Dominica II post Pasca (Homily for the Second Sunday after Easter)70 Every bishop and every teacher is placed as a shepherd over God’s people, that they may shield the people against the wolf. The wolf is the devil, who lies in ambush about God’s church, and watches how he may fordo the souls of Christian men with sins. Then shall the shepherd, that is, the bishop or other teacher, withstand the fierce wolf with doctrine and with prayers. With doctrine he shall teach them, that they may know what the devil teaches for men’s perdition, and what God commands to be observed for the attainment of everlasting life. He shall pray for them, that God may preserve the strong and heal the weak. He is to be accounted strong who withstands the precepts of the devil; he is weak who falls into sins. But the teacher will be guiltless, if he direct the people with doctrine, and mediate for them with God. These two things he shall do for the people, and also help others with his own; and if it so happen, give his own life for the saving of the people. The hireling flees when he sees the wolf. He is a hireling and not a shepherd, who is engaged in worldly things, and loves dignity and perishable rewards, and has no inward love for God’s sheep. He takes heed of treasures, and rejoices in dignity, and has his reward in this life, and will be cut off from the everlasting reward. You do not know who is a hireling, who a shepherd, before the wolf comes; but the wolf makes manifest in what manner he watches the sheep. The wolf comes to the sheep, and some he devours, some he scatters, when the fierce devil instigates Christian men, some to adultery, some he inflames to covetousness, some he lifts up to pride, some through anger he divides, and with diverse temptations spiritually slays: for the hireling is excited neither by care nor love, but flees, because he considers worldly advantages, and leaves unheeded the loss of the sheep. 70 The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church: The Sermones Catholici, or Homilies of Aelfric, Vol. 1, ed. and trans. Benjamin Thorpe (London: Aelfric Society, 1844): XVII. Dominica secunda Post Pasca.

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The unrighteous powerful man also is a wolf, who robs Christians, and oppresses the humble with his power: for the hireling, or the mercenary, dares not withstand his unrighteousness lest he lose his dignity, and the worldly gain which he loves more than Christian men. Concerning this the prophet Ezechiel wrote, thus saying, “Ye shepherds, hear the word of God: My sheep are scattered through your heedlessness, and are devoured …” trans. Benjamin Thorpe

The style of sermonizing changed in the High Middle Ages. Bishops delegated the responsibility of delivering sermons to licensed clergy.71 The preacher no longer commented on the whole pericope, but a segment of it known as the thema. The Franciscan and Dominican friars were often the most skilled preachers of the High Middle Ages and into the sixteenth century, besides seeking out new audiences, especially among the growing urban populations. Universities, which emphasized biblical exegesis, became major centres for the education of preachers, who reordered the exegetical material to suit the liturgy and the occasion. The emphasis of most sermons was on faith and moral behaviour; the themata were chosen from specific books of the Bible to suit the moral teaching of the sermon and then elaborated upon with the use of allegory, and biblical quotations or paraphrases of them were used as “proofs” during the delivery. A variety of sources, including scripture itself, hagiography, classical and medieval naturalist works, bestiaries, fables and even folk tales contributed to the content. Hence, much of the literary material about animals from these sources would have become known to those unable to read because of its adaptation for use in sermons. In theory the structure of sermons was tightly regulated, but in practice the preacher had a lot of leeway in his interpretation of quotations, his translation of Latin examples into the vernacular and his choice of non-biblical material. However, from the fourteenth century onwards and especially during the Reformation, contemporary sermons were criticized for over-emphasis of rhetoric at the expense of biblical truth. Because of the methods of structuring sermons and their purpose, animals as a collective category, an animal species or an individual animal almost invariably appeared as their theme in allegorical tales and as symbols. They had an important place in the medieval symbolic imagination and were an integral part of the lives of almost all medieval people – as noted earlier, it was almost impossible, even for those living in towns, to go through a day without 71

On the Bible and sermons generally, see Eyal Poleg, “A Ladder Set Up on Earth: the Bible in Medieval Sermons,” in The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages, ed. Susan Boynton and Diane J. Reilly (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 205–27.

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encountering and noticing a variety of domestic animals. Animal symbology and analogy were used to create a ‘canon’ of animal symbolism for use in sermons, which could be related to the reality of a society in which animals were ever-present. The English theologian Thomas of Chobham (1160–1233/4) saw animals as having a special place in the symbolic and instructive creation, as we can see from this passage from his guide to preaching: Thomas of Chobham, Summa de arte praedicandi (A summation of the art of preaching), Bk 7, Ch.2.1.2. De Inventione in narratione (On the devising of the narrative)72 Thus the worst prelate leaves his parishioners in the dust of this world where they are often trampled by passing demons, unless the Lord cherishes them and causes them to rise with the warmth of his charity. And so in every animal in the world there can be some property which will suit the devil, or one that belongs to God. For just as a lion gives birth to its dead offspring and does not raise them up except by the voice of the roaring father, so Christ died and was raised by the power of his father. And again, from the moment of generation we humans are begotten children of wrath and death, just as in the chapter Ephesians II; but at the voice of the Son of God calling us, by his grace we are all raised up from death.73 And in this way many properties of animals can be assigned to God. The Lord created different creatures with different natures not only for the sustenance of men, but also for their instruction, so that through those same creatures we may contemplate not only what may be useful to us in the body, but also what may be useful in the soul. As the Apostle says to the Romans in chapter 1: “God’s invisible nature is clearly perceived in those things that are visible.”74 Humbert of Romans, master-general of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) from 1254 to 1263, also recommended the use of the ‘book of nature,’ especially its creatures, in sermons. Even in his instructions he uses animal simile. At the end of his chapter on the qualities required of the preacher he explains how many natural phenomena, including several animals, figure the preacher himself, using biblical exempla as “proofs” and thus employing the same method recommended for sermonizing. 72 Thomas de Chobham, Summa de arte praedicandi, ed. Franco Morenzoni (Turnhout: Brepols, 1988): Liber II, Cap. II.1.2. 73 See Ephesians II.2.1–10. 74 Romans 1.20.

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Humbert of Romans, De erudicione praedicatorum (On the Teaching of Preachers), Ch. 2. The Qualities Necessary for Preaching75 2.8. The Knowledge required by a preacher. … After the study of the Holy Books, should follow the study of creatures, for the Creator has placed in these many profound lessons. St Anthony, the hermit, observes that they are like a book, containing many edifying thoughts for those who take the trouble to read. The Redeemer often had recourse to this type of knowledge in His discourses, as, for instance, when He said: “Look at the birds of the air. … See how the lilies of the field grow …”.76…. thirdly, preach according to the needs of his hearers, as St Gregory advises in his Pastoral, where he enumerates thirty-six varied subjects that a preacher may use; fourthly, guard against verbosity, loudness, unbecoming gestures, lack of order in the development of his thoughts, and other defects which are disastrous to preaching. Speaking of this subject, St Gregory explains the words of Ezekiel: “The sole of their foot was like the sole of a calf”,77 by noting that the soles of the feet of a saintly preacher resemble those of the calf because of their form and that they symbolize (the sole of the foot being divided in two parts) the proper division of the subject under treatment. … 2.12. Some figures of the preacher. It is said that they imitate “eagles” which swoop down on carcasses; and preachers, in much the same way, search from afar the souls dead in sin. “Wheresoever the carcass shall be, the eagle is immediately there.”78 Every holy preacher anxiously hastens to wherever sinners are to be found in order to shed over them the life-giving light, which dispels the darkness of death into which sin has cast them. Preachers are like the “cock,” whose song announces dawn: “Who gave the cock understanding?”79 The gloss explains that the preacher, in the midst of the darkness of the present life, awaits the coming of the light which will rise upon the world, and announces the light by his words, just as the cock announces the day by his song. And again, they are compared to “ravens,” for in these birds are certain good qualities found in preachers: “Who provides food for the

75 Humbert of Romans. “Liber De Eruditione Praedicatorum,” in B. Humberti de Romanis Opera de Vita Regulari, ed. Fr. Joachim Joseph (Rome: A. Befani, 1889): Cap. II.VIII. 76 Matthew 6:26–28. 77 Ezekiel 1:7. 78 Job 39:30. Humbert does not quote the first words of the verse: [Latin Vulgate] pulli eius lambent sanguinem (“the eagle’s young shall suck up blood”). 79 Job 38:36.

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raven, when her young ones cry to God?”80 Is not the raven the preacher, whose little ones, the gloss tells us, with beaks open for nourishment, wail in the bottom of the nest? In order to facilitate his mission God gives the preacher an abundance of grace not only for his own use but also for the nourishment of those placed under his charge. The preacher is compared to a “dog”: “There are,” according to Isaiah, “dumb dogs who cannot bark.”81 To bark is to preach, says the gloss, and the preacher is likened to the dog because he ought to run here and there devouring souls and gathering them into the Church, as it is written in the Book of Psalms, and ordinances. “King Ahasuerus,” it is written in Esther, “sent letters to all the provinces of his kingdom”;82 that is, according to the gloss, God has recourse to the preachers to make known to the world his warnings and reprimands. trans. the Dominican students of the Province of St Joseph

Many preachers showed remarkable originality when devising moral interpretations of the animal images they used, particularly in the later Middle Ages.83 The renowned twelfth-  to thirteenth-century bishop and preacher Jacques de Vitry (1160–1240) was in many ways an innovator in his sermons. In his Sermones feriales et communes, a collection of twenty-five model sermons based on the first three chapters of Genesis, he used fables and folklore in various ways, but especially as moral examples in imagery. In the example below he uses an animal fable derived from one recorded by Phaedrus (first century CE) to illustrate his point and makes what may seem to us a tenuous interpretation of a verse from the Book of Job, “If my land has cried out against me and its furrows have wept together, …,” arguing that “land” can symbolize the parishioners who complain of their priest’s neglect.84 80 Job 38:41. 81 Isaiah 56:10. 82 Esther 1 22. Ahasuerus is said to have ruled from India to Nubia and over 127 provinces: in other words, he is an Achaemenid Persian king. There are no references to any events of his reign in Esther, but modern scholars take the name to be Xerxes (Old Persian Xšayāršā > Babylonian Aḥšiyaršu > Hebrew Ăḥašwêrôš) and the name appears as such in many modern English bibles. The Septuagint, the Vulgate, the Midrash of Esther Rabbah, Josephus’ history and other earlier sources have the king as Artaxerxes I. 83 On the use of animals by two fourteenth-century preachers, Cardinal Pierre des Prés and the Dominican Pierre de Palme, both at the Avignon curia, see Blake Beattie, “The Cardinal’s Frogs: Constructing Animal Imagery in Two Fourteenth-Century Curial Sermons,” Medieval Sermon Studies, 62, no. 1 (2018), 29–41. 84 Job 31.38. See also Carolyn A. Muessig, “The Sermones Feriales et Communes of Jacques de Vitry: A Critical Edition of Sermons 10 and 11 on Animals,” in Medieval sermon studies, 47, no. 1 (2003): 33–49. The Roman writer Phaedrus (c.15 BCE–50 CE, not to be confused

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Jacques de Vitry, Sermones feriales et communes (Festive and general sermons), De ceruo et bobus et de negligencia pastorum (On the deer and the oxen, and the negligence of shepherds)85 For the fire of the malice of prelates corrupts simple parishioners by evil example. By the earth, the parishioners are understood; whence Job: “If my land cries out against me.” This happens when parishioners complain about prelates who do not seek the advantage of their subjects and neglect the care of their souls. But the chief shepherd will not neglect their negligence; as it is said of the stag, who, when he was fleeing and by the presence of the hunters, entered the oxen’s byre, and consuming the fodder which was placed before the oxen in the manger, he did no little damage to his master. The attendant or the oxherd, however, by his negligence did not take note of the master, nor did he distinguish the stag from the oxen. Then the stag began to rejoice and feel safe. And one of the oxen said to him: “You now rejoice in the negligence of the oxen; but your joy will soon be turned into mourning. For our lord, who will visit this stable assiduously, has eyes before and behind, and you will not be able to hide from his eyes.” On the same day the lord arrived and, having seen the stag, which wasted his goods to no purpose, ordered him to be skinned and cut into pieces, to be thrown into hellish hot baths. But he ordered the negligent servant to be tortured to death by various torments. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the just judge, who lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen. Later in the thirteenth century another famed sermonizer, Berthold of Ratisbon, preached in all the German-speaking regions of Europe as well as Bohemia and Moravia. In the many sermons of his that have survived he made less use of animal material than Jacques, but here he compares the poor to fish. Berthold of Ratisbon, Von Vier Stricken (On the Four Nets)86 So are some men deceivers and liars like the craftsmen. … You fishermen, you must catch fish with manifold devices; and these fish signify the poor with Phaedrus the late fifth-century Greek member of Socrates’ circle, used as an interlocutor in Plato’s dialogues) was the first person to translate the Greek prose fables attributed to Aesop into Latin and probably to put them into verse. It was these versions of the fables that became known in west-central Europe in the Middle Ages. Jacques uses fable 8 from Phaedrus’ Book 2. 85 Die Exempla aus den Sermones feriales et communes des Jakob von Vitry, ed. Joseph Greven (Heidelberg: Carl Winter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1914): Prolog und Exempla der Sermones feriales et communes, no. 2. 86 In Berthold von Regensburg: Vollständige Ausgabe Seiner Predigten mit Anmerkungen und Wörterbuch, Vol. 1, ed. Franz Pfeiffer (Vienna: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1862): Sermon XXX.

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folk; for the fish is a very poor and naked beast; it is ever cold, and lives ever in the water, and is naked and cold and bare of all graces. So also are the poor folk; they, too, are helpless. Wherefore the devils have set the bait for them that is called untruth, because they are poor and helpless; with no bait could the devil have taken so many of them as with this. Because the fishes are poor and naked, therefore they devour one another in the water; so also do poor folk; because they are helpless, therefore have they diverse wiles and invent many deceits. 6 Physiognomy Alongside complexion theory, the physiognomic tradition functioned to identify innate characteristics of the soul from the appearance of the body. Physiognomy is now generally regarded as a pseudoscience, but it was regarded as scientia in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.87 The recognition of human faces is a neurological mechanism that human individuals use every day in social interaction, discovering people’s natures by their looks. As Martin Porter mentions, it appeals to the innate phsyiognomical consciousness of the human mind, a natural faculty of visual literacy.88 Early works claimed to be recovering an ancient theological linguistic method that revealed windows into the soul of the human and the soul of the creation of God, but its origin may have been more lowly, as a method of divination or the like, if it was used for prophesy as the Syrian magician Zopyrus is said to have done. Like Aristotle’s natural philosophy, several works, together with the word physiognomy, became known in early medieval west-central Europe only in the twelfth century. However, it would be unwise to assume that no similar concept existed there before this time, as physiognomy must have been known to the church fathers and there are references to analogous ideas. This ‘physiognomy’ may be no more than folk wisdom, not dissimilar to the still common belief that one can discover a lot about people from their faces.

87 Early practice of medicine was also tied to magic, so this would not be surprising. See George Boys-Stones, “Physiognomy and Ancient Psychological Theory,” in Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam, ed. Simon Swain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007): 19–124. Its more suspect practitioners in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance perhaps returned to its roots! 88 Martin Porter, Windows of the Soul: The Art of Physiognomy in European Culture 1470–1780 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 18–19.

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Again, Greek and Arabic texts provided the foundation for European Christian thought in the High Middle Ages. Galen had provided the medical framework for physiognomy, although he had criticized earlier Greek physiognomists for not explaining causation sufficiently.89 Aristotle’s main, if accidental, contribution to its dissemination in medieval Europe was that a work named the Physiognomonica was attributed to him, which gave physiognomy a status and authority it might not have had otherwise.90 It was translated from Greek to Latin in c.1260 by Bartolomeo de Messina, who worked at the court of King Manfred in Palermo. This work was subsequently commented on just as the genuine works of Aristotle were, by William of Aragon (c.1240–1300), John Buridan and several others. In principle the physiognomy method was simple:91 Physiognomonica, 192 But still better instances of the fundamental connexion of body and soul and their very extensive interaction may be found in the normal products of nature. There never was an animal with the form of one kind and the mental character of another: the soul and body appropriate to the same kind always go together, and this shows that a specific body involves a specific mental character. Moreover, experts on the lower animals are always able to judge of character by bodily form: it is thus that a horseman chooses his horse or a sportsman his dogs. Now, supposing all this to be true (and it always is true), physiognomy must be practicable. Three methods have been essayed in the past, each having had its special adherents. 1. The first method took as the basis for physiognomic inferences the various genera of animals, positing for each genus a peculiar animal form, and consequently upon this a peculiar mental character, and then 89 Galen, Works on Human Nature: Volume 1, Mixtures (De temperamentis), ed. and trans. P.N. Singer and Philip J. van der Eijk (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019): Bk 2.6. In Latin, see Claudii Galeni opera omnia. Editionem curavit, ed. Carl Gottlob Kühn, 20 vols. (Leipzig 1821–1833), Vol. 1, 624. 90 This work is possibly derived from the works of two unnamed authors of the third century BCE. The word physiognomy originated in late Middle English, derived from Old French phisonomie, via medieval Latin from Late Greek phusiognōmia (φυσιογνωμία), erroneous for earlier Greek phusiognōmonia, ‘judging of a person’s character (by his features)’ (the first component from phusis, φύση, ‘nature’, the second component from gnomon, γνώμων, ‘one who knows, interpreter’). 91 Gilbert Dagron, “Image du bête ou image de dieu, La physiognomie animale dans la tradition grecque et ses avatars byzantines,” in Poikilia: Études offertes à Jean-Pierre Vernant (Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 1987), 70. 92 “Physiognomonica,” in The Works of Aristotle, Vol. VI, Opuscula, trans. T. Loveday and E.S. Forster (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913): I.

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assuming that if a man resembles such and such a genus in form he will resemble it also in soul. trans. T. Loveday and E.S. Forster

The second method draws its inferences only from human beings, especially different races, while the third was based on facial expressions that are observed to accompany specific conditions of mind, especially ‘passions’ such as anger or fear. The second section of the work, possibly originally a separate work, concentrates on animal behaviour and dividing animals into male and female types from which it deduces correspondences between human form and character. This method is explained in the fourth-century CE Physiognomonia: Anonymous Latinus, Physiognomonia, 893 Many animals too are separated according to this [masculine and feminine] division of types, those that dwell on land, those that are winged, those that dwell in water, and those that crawl; for the lion and the boar are compared to the masculine type, the leopard, deer, and hare to the feminine, the eagle and hawk to the masculine, the peacock, partridge, and magpie to the feminine. trans. Ian Redpath

Though physiognomy relied on study of physical attributes, it went beyond this ‘study of empirical data.’ Polemon’s De physognomonia liber was probably written in the early or mid-second century CE, and in this work some form of divinely inspired overall impression (Greek epiprepeia) was formed by the physiognomist.94 It was paraphrased and perhaps developed further in Adamantius’ fourth-century work. Polemon’s work and another by one Loxus (both now lost), adjusted the earlier method of interpretation by suggesting that the “physiognomator” should decide on meanings of frequently contradictory signs by taking full account of contrary signs alongside dominant ones. Greek material was transmitted most of all through the second book of Rhazes’ Kitāb al-Manṣūrī, translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona as Liber

93 “Anonymous Latin Book of Physiognomy,” ed. and trans. Ian Redpath, in Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul, Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 549–635: 8. 94 Polemon of Laodicea (Marcus Antonius Polemon) lived c.90–144 CE, but the earliest known version of his treatise is in a fourteenth-century Arabic translation. On this work, see Simon Swain, “Polemon’s Physiognomy”, in Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul, ed. Swain, 125–202.

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Almansoris.95 Other important works were the Arabic translation (and probable adaptation) of Polemon’s treatise and the Anonymus latinus quoted above, a fourth-century compilation of material that became available in Europe in the twelfth century.96 Anonymous latinus claimed to have had at hand the books of Loxus, Aristotle (that is, Pseudo-Aristotle) and Polemon, who seems from a reading of the work to be the most important source of the three. In the later classical, Arabic and medieval European treatises it became the practice simply to present the aphorisms without the reasoning they were based on. Anonymous Latinus, Physiognomonia, 4697 For soon when you are looking at those things which we have mentioned with regard to the similarity of some animal, it will occur to you that one man is similar in character to a lion, another to a leopard, another to an eagle, and another to a partridge, especially when the difference between masculine and feminine, whose distinctions we set out above, is very clear. Nor will there be any doubt in declaring that the man who is similar to a bear is cruel and insidious; that the man who is similar to a leopard is insidious, unbending, savage and daring; and that the man who is similar to a horse is upright, boasting, and desirous of honour and praise. However many are the species of animals, they each have their own properties, to which the similarity of the individual men is to be referred. And so you will discern whether he corresponds to the masculine or feminine and to which animal he is most similar, and after the character of the animal you will make a pronouncement as much from the consideration of individual parts as from the whole which we have frequently mentioned. trans. Ian Redpath

Anonymous Latinus, Physiognomonia, 127–2898 The tortoise is a lazy, stupid and greedy animal that is of no use to either to itself or to anyone else. Any woman who is referred to this type of animal is as follows: she has a short neck, a broad back, broad feet, a wrinkly 95

The translation was made in the 1180s. The work was also known as Liber regalis or Liber ad regem almansorem. 96 The Arabic “Leiden Polemon” may be adapted but is as likely to be fairly representative of Polemon’s treatise as any other that drew on it. See Robert Hoyland, “The Leiden Polemon”, in Swain, ed., 329–464. 97 “Anonymous Latin Book of Physiognomy,” ed. and trans. Ian Redpath, in Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul, Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 549–635: 8. 98 “Anonymous Latin Book of Physiognomy.”

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face and very wrinkly cheeks. A woman of this sort is useless, ineffectual and unpleasing. The snake is a fierce, harmful, insidious animal which has a terrible spirit when it stands firm, but which seeks to flee when it is scared, and is devoted to gluttony. Men who are referred to this type of animal will be as follows: they will have a small, thin, round head, small, round, bright eyes, a long, thick neck, an abrupt mouth, a long body, a pointed chest, and they will move their head quickly and easily. Men of this sort will be murderers, daring, timid, and devoted to malice. trans. Ian Redpath

Michael Scot wrote the first known medieval European work on physiognomy, Liber phisionomie, in c.1230. Within the next 300 years his example was followed by Aldobrandino of Siena (d. c.1296), whose Régime du corps was the first to be written in the vernacular, Peter of Abano, Roland L’Ecrivain (d. c.1469), Michael Savanarola (1385–1468), Marsilio Ficino (c.1474, a work no longer extant) and Bartolomeo della Rocla (also named Cocles, 1467–1504). Physiognomy was also dealt with in Book 8 of the Latin version of the Secretum Secretorum (Secret of Secrets).99 It was partially translated from Arabic into Latin in the early twelfth century and completely in about 1230, subsequently being widely disseminated in vernacular languages. Others included physiognomy in their commentaries on Aristotle’s zoological works: for example, Albertus Magnus explained it at some length in Book 1 of De Animalibus.100 He also wrote a separate commentary on the Secretum Secretorum. Animals’ features were also linked to their nature, but, as noted earlier, although many commentators had noted the extraordinary variety of creatures within God’s Creation, within a species their traits were generally believed to be constant, whereas humans had the capability to overcome their innate character. As in humoural theory, humans were therefore perceived as being much more variable than animals, exhibiting a range of behaviour and appearance that encompassed those of many animal types. This belief conformed to the idea that the human was a microcosm of the cosmos that had attributes of all other living beings. 99

Many manuscript versions claim it was translated from Greek. It contains much material of Greek origin, including some derived from genuine Aristotelian theory. However, it also contains much material traceable to Middle Eastern Islamic sources. All known versions of the Secretum Secretorum derive from one of two Arabic versions, extant in about 50 manuscripts. See W.F. Ryan and Charles B. Schmitt, eds., Pseudo-Aristotle: The ‘Secret of Secrets’: Sources and Influences (London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1982), 1. 100 Albertus Magnus, DA: Liber I. tract. II.2–10.

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Secretum Secretorum (Secret of Secrets, ‘Ashmole’ version), 8: Of conditions of man101 Understand well, that the most glorious God never created a creature wiser than man. And he never included in any other beast that which he included in man, and you shall find in no other beast custom or manner, but that you shall find in man. For he is as bold as a lion, fearful as a hare, generous as a cock, covetous as a dog, hard and severe as a crow, meek as a turtle, malicious as a lioness, secluded and tame as a dove, rough and gleeful as a fox, simple and meek as a lamb, swift and light as a doe or a roebuck, slow as a bear, precious and dear as an elephant, vile and dull as an ass, rebellious and verbose as a little king, meek and humble as a peahen, wicked as a stork, beneficial as a bee, dissolute and vagabond as a boar, wild as a bull, dumb as a fish, capable of reason as an angel, lecherous and malicious as an owl, advantageous as a horse, injurious as a mouse.102 Although doubts that physiognomy had any scientific basis had been expressed in the ancient world, notably by Pliny, the esteem in which classical works and particularly Aristotle, the supposed author of Physiognomonia, were held enabled its survival into the Middle Ages and long after. The idea that nonhuman animals had a subsidiary role to humans in the cosmos, including a function as exemplars that could guide humans to the correct path, as well as the tendency to consider them as species rather than individuals, no doubt strengthened the concept that they had unvarying traits. This tendency is reinforced by the human failure to distinguish animal faces or facial expression easily. The ability to discern different faces rapidly narrows after birth so that only certain kinds of faces that are experienced in early life remain easily distinguishable.103 Adults may process faces more efficiently than children, but this processing is not applied efficiently to animal faces that they have long since lost the ability

101 “‘Ashmole’ version,” in Secretum secretorum: nine English versions, ed. Mahmoud Manzalaoui (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). 102 There are some uncertain translations from the Middle English: “secluded”, trans. from privé, which could have other related meanings (secret, hidden, etc.); “peahen”, trans. from powe, which more commonly means “paw” in extant texts, but here the animal (from earlier Anglo-French) makes more sense: “generous” trans. from large, but there are other possible translations such as “prodigal”; “beneficial” and “advantageous” are both translations of ME profitable; “covetous” is a possible translation of nygardous. 103 For a general introduction to this, see Vicki Bruce and Andy Young, In the Eye of the Beholder: The Science of Face Perception (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

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to distinguish.104 In addition, humans tend to emphasize the visual sense in recognition of individuals because of its importance relative to their other senses, which was not the same in other animals. Medieval people were presumably no different from us in these respects, but as in the bestiaries, a moral aspect and characterisation was often deduced from the supposed likeness to an animal. Albert the Great attempts to find physiological causal explanations that link anatomy and physiognomy, whereas his sources provided mainly astrological explanations. Albert mixed physiognomical aphorisms with material on the anatomy of animals as well as humans. However, besides demonstrating the ‘scientific validity’ of physiognomy, Albert wished to show that a person’s fate was not absolutely determined by her or his physical appearance; in this respect he was trying to prevent a similar problem of misunderstanding to that faced by modern researchers discussing genetic predisposition, who argue that a person’s genetic makeup contributes significantly to their character but does not predetermine their actions. Albert believed that the patterns of celestial movements gave caused in matter certain accidental properties, as far as that matter would allow. The passage follows closely the Anonymi de Physiognomini Liber, and the reference to Plato below in fact belongs to Polemon (in Albert’s De Animalibus, Phylemon). Albert the Great, De Animalibus (On Animals) Bk 1. Tract 2.2. On the Science of Physiognomy considered with respect to the appearance of a person’s members: Dealing with the parts of the head as far as the eyes105 So let us begin at the top, that is the hair, by stating that hair which stands erect, either black or the colour of water, and which is dirty and thick, indicates a violent personality; such people resemble the boar and also the pig, and the boar is violent, as is the pig. Soft hair, however, which is sparse and exceedingly thin, is indicative of a scarcity of red blood, and is said to signify a weak-minded and lazy nature. But if the hair is too unkempt, it proclaims a cunning, harsh, timid person who is avaricious. Hair, however, which is too pressed down and hangs over the forehead indicates a wild nature, and in this respect resembles the hair on a bear’s 104 Charles A. Nelson, “The development and neural bases of face recognition”, Infant and Child Development, 10 (March–June 2001), 3–18. Infants can discern between macaque faces at six months old, but, without continued exposure, are unable to by the time they are nine months old; however, those shown photographs of them during the intervening three months do not lose this capacity. 105 Albertus Magnus, DA: Liber I, tract. II.2.

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head, for which reason Plato declared that such men were ursine. If the hair is turned upwards flowing towards the brain, it announces someone clever in wickedness but less so in wisdom. Michael Savonarola’s Mirror of Physiognomy appeared in 1442. Almost all the medieval treatises on physiognomy were dedicated to rulers. Savanorola’s, like several other fifteenth-century scientific-philosophical texts of the late medieval-Renaissance era, was addressed to the court, which influenced the style and form of the work. The commentary format was giving way to a compendium of medical, astrological and ethical digressions that was supposed to have practical use, rather as the regimens had. As in most of the physiognomic treatises, a large part of Savanarola’s, in this case Part 2, was concerned with astrology. This passage occurs in a section on the physiognomy of the ear and employs a traditional description of Attila as having pointed ears and sharp canines. In his case a historical personage with a reputation for savagery had acquired features commensurate with physiognomic theory. In the Mirror the example functions as a rhetorical link to a long medical-philosophical digression on monstrous births. Michael Savanorola, Speculum phisionomie (The Mirror of Physiognomy), 74rb–75va106 Perhaps you will recall in this place what was written about Attila, the prince and king of the Hungarians, to whom nature has granted ass’s ears like a monster; and you will desire even with no small expectation that we may have to physiognomize each of these things. I for my part know that you know that nature has endowed this man with canine teeth, and all things without the course of the human species are said to be congenital in this place, in which respect he seems to have produced both man and wild nature. Whereby in him arise mingled and inhuman passions, so that even in this age he is called the scourge of God. 7

Symbols of Ferocity, Valour and Lineage

Depicted on banners, shields, and in the Middle Ages garments worn over armour (the original ‘coats of arms’), or engraved or embossed on helmet parts, 106 Translated from the Latin passage in Gabriella Zuccolin, “The Speculum phisionomie by Michele Savonarola,” in Universality of Reason: Plurality of Philosophies XII, Palermo, Italy, 16–22 September 2007 (2012), n. 36, 883.

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shield fittings or sword hilts, many animals signified courage and ferocity, qualities required in battle. In the pagan period they probably also had magical properties or were associated with deities. A high proportion of these animals were predatory or those that resisted humans fiercely in the hunt, often the same who featured as worthy foes in the late medieval hunting treatises. Most of the evidence for this is visual, and in pre-literate societies archaeological, but there are literary references. The boar features in classical myth as a fierce enemy and appears on items of Celtic-Germanic military equipment from the Iron Age and Early Middle Ages. From our period examples on helmets are from the Germanic-speaking cultures.107 Helmets adorned with boar’s crests or representations of boars are mentioned five times in the Old English epic poem Beowulf. Two examples are given below. The manuscript is dated to the last quarter of the tenth century or the first quarter of the eleventh, but it includes older elements. The origins of the tale and the degree of adjustment, perhaps over several centuries, are disputed. Beowulf, lines 1283–88, 1323–29108 So they went on their way. The ship rode the water, broad-beamed, bound by its hawser and anchored fast. Boar-shapes flashed above their cheek-guards, the brightly forged work of goldsmiths, watching over Those stern-faced men … … Alas for the Danes! Aeschere is dead. He was Yrmenlaf’s elder brother and a soul-mate to me, a true mentor. My right-hand man when the ranks clashed

107 They include the Anglo-Saxon Benty Grange and Wollaston (Pioneer) helmets, both from the seventh century CE, which have boars mounted on the crests, a detached boar from Guilden Morden that appears to have belonged to a crest, a crest ridge terminal that probably belongs to a helmet from Horncastle, the Sutton Hoo helmet with boar eyebrow terminals, a plate on the Valsgärde 7 helmet from Uppland, Sweden, which depicts two warriors with boar’s crest helmets, and the comparable sixth-century Torslunda plates, also from Sweden. 108 “Beowulf,” in The Beowulf Manuscript: Complete Texts and the Fight at Finnsburg, ed. R.D. Fulk (Cambridge, MS: Harvard University Press, 2010). The facing page modern translation in this edition is in prose. Of the verse translations, that of Seamus Heaney (in the bibliography) is by far the most effective.

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and our boar-crests had to take a battering in the line of action. trans. Seamus Heaney

The first instance may refer to decorated plates or eyebrows on the helmets, while the second refers to crests. There are also several occurrences of “battleboar” or a related heiti representing the helmet in Old Norse skaldic poetry, such as the one below. Hildigǫltr is also listed as a heiti for a helmet in Nafnaþulur. Snorri Sturluson, Háttatal 2109 Hamðir’s110 tunic ( fang  – mail shirt) falls around the ruler of the fires of spear-crash where the family-pillar of princes hides the limbs of the shoulders with rings. He covers the forest of the brain’s farmstead with the battle-boar and the distributor of gold swings the battle-pollack in his hawk’s perch. trans. Kari Ellen Gade

Another vital piece of defensive equipment, the shield, might also have animal ornament, either on the boss or the shield covering. The immediate predecessor and to some extent model for the armies of the kingdoms that arose from the ruins of the western empire, which initially had Germanic-speaking elites, was the army of the later Roman Empire (fourth and fifth centuries). Many of its shield designs are probably those preserved in the Notitia Dignitatum.111 Some included animals, some of which, such as the wolf as the succourer of Rome’s supposed founders, had emblematic significance, but these designs appear to have been military unit emblems.112 The boar is not the only animal that appeared on early medieval combat equipment: among others represented were birds of prey, horses and bears. Some were associated in poetry with ferocity, some with scavenging of corpses on battlefields, such as the 109 “Háttatal,” in Poetry from Treatises on Poetics, Vol. 2, ed. Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 1094. 110 Hamðir was a mythical hero. Kennings used in the passage: fires of spear-crash – fúra stilli fleinbraks – battle; family-pillar of princes – hylr ættstuðill – the ruler; limbs of the shoulders – limu axla – arms; brain’s farmstead – hair and head; battle-boar – helmet; distributor of gold – munificent man; battle-pollack – sword; hawk’s perch – hand. 111 The Notitia dignitatum et administrationum omnium tam civilium quam militarium (List of all official dignities and administrations, both civil and military). It describes imperial court and provincial government offices and army units, and is extant in several 15th- and 16th-century copies, coloured ones deriving from the Codex Spirensis of 1542. 112 More so than the known shield designs of the early Empire, these ones show a bewildering variety of motifs and patterns that appear to follow no single rule.

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raven and the wolf. The boar and raven also featured in some Celtic tales that have traces of pre-medieval pagan beliefs. Among the early medieval pagan Germanic-speaking peoples animals that could be aggressive were probably thought to convey protection or power to the owner, as may be indicated in some lines of Germanic heroic poetry such as the first section from Beowulf above, while birds of prey and wolves were also associated with death in combat and transfer to the afterlife. Animals were represented on standards and banners which also appear to have acquired magical properties. Helmets, standards, swords and horns as musical instruments of war were often named, although the scope for decoration on the last two was more limited. As a result of conversion to Christianity the use of animals on equipment for war remained emblematic but became more decorative and symbolic than protective, as belief in its magical or protective value disappeared. Medieval heraldry differed somewhat in its usage and function from the shield symbolism of antique or ‘barbarian’ armies. Its ancestry is uncertain: Germanic totems, Roman standards and Frankish imperial seals all having been proposed. Several scholars have argued that the animal ornamentation on ‘barbarian’ military equipment of the fifth to seventh centuries CE expressed and promoted male identity and social status, which seems probable, but although equipment was doubtless individual among the warrior elite there is no suggestion of a family adopting specific devices as hereditary.113 Animals continued to be used as shield designs by Christians in the early Middle Ages, just as they had for many centuries, and pictorial evidence suggests that (supposedly) ferocious ones or those associated with status such as horses continued to be popular. Heraldic shield emblems, badges and crests came into use in the twelfth century, probably first on standards, then on garments and finally on the shields carried by individual aristocratic warriors.114 They enabled identification of a military contingent as the badge of its leader that would also appear on his standard. However, they subsequently became hereditary coats of arms permanently associated with the family of their knightly (or equivalent) bearer, with sons’ arms distinguished by specific markings (cadency). Daughters used them as well, and marriage unions became marked by the display of both coats of arms (marshalling). As exclusive symbols of identity and lordship they no longer necessarily had a direct connection to warfare. Tournaments, a ritualized and 113 For example, Lotte Hedeager, “Migration Period Europe: the formation of a political mentality,” in Rituals of Power from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, ed. F. Theuws and J.L. Nelson (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 15–57. 114 Earlier shield and standard designs have also been called ‘heraldry’ by many researchers, but here I use the term to refer to the west-central European use of hereditary family identity emblems that developed from the late Middle Ages onwards.

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increasingly regulated form of combat in which participants could display their chivalric paraphernalia, contributed significantly to the development of heraldry. Animals were frequently used as a main charge in coats of arms. The first tractatus on the legal aspects of heraldry was written by the Italian Bartolo da Sassoferrato (1314–57), an internationally renowned jurist of the Middle Ages. His reputation as the preeminent civil law jurist of Western Europe lasted for the rest of the Middle Ages, so his works were influential. These tractati were treatises by legists (those who handled civil law rather than canon law) on a single subject, contrasting with the commentaries on the whole corpus of civil law. The second part of Bartolo’s treatise on arms and insignia covered, among other things, the colours and forms that heraldic emblems should have, dealing with animals first.115 Bartolo da Sassoferrato, Tractatus de Insigniis et Armis (Treatise on Arms and Insignia), Ch. 15–17116 15. However, the question arises as to how the aforementioned animals should be depicted, whether as if they were standing upright, or as if they were walking on flat ground, or in what way? I answer: The said animals must be depicted in their nobler attitude and in such a way that they show their vigour; in this way, too, we see that it was customary from ancient times that the prince was shown in majesty, the pontiff in pontifical robes. 16. Now to this purpose I note that there are animals whose nature is wild, such as the lion, the bear and the like, and these must be drawn in a posture of ferocity. The lion will therefore be represented erect, with biting jaws and raking paws, and the same for similar animals; for in this attitude they show their vigorous nature more. 17. There are some animals that are not ferocious, and in these their nobler actions must be viewed in a different way. Hence, if someone were to bear a horse for his arms, he should not represent him erect and standing on its hind feet, for this would be mistake for a horse; therefore, it must represent him erect and with the front legs elevated in some way, like a jumping horse, for in this act his vigour is shown more. Usually the animals chosen were fierce – lions (especially favoured by royalty), leopards, bears, boars, wolves, bulls, griffins and dragons. The same traits that 115 Bartolo was granted a coat of arms himself (Or a lion with forked tail gules) by Emperor Charles IV in 1355, and this may have inspired his treatise. 116 Bartoli a Saxoferrato, Tractatus de Insigniis et Armis, ed. and trans. F. Hauptmann (Bonn: P. Hauptmann, 1883): Kap. 15–17.

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caused large predatory animals to be called cruel and savage in many writings become positive in Bartolo’s description, as the nobler characteristics of the animal that display vigour. In a society that valued war as masculinity they were suitable emblems for the warrior class because they symbolized the aggression and valour of their bearers. Heraldic animals had stylized features such as raised tail, open jaws or beaks and clawing front feet, but otherwise the depiction was related as much or more to the pictures in bestiaries as any reality. The term “armed” was used of animals with horns, claws, teeth, tusks, talons or beak displayed. ‘Ferocious animals’ might be represented by the heads only, but even this allowed display of tusks or teeth. Despite the assertion of Queen Racio (above) that the stag was among the gentle beasts without offensive weapons, it frequently resembled a ‘weaponbearing animal’ in heraldry: apart from its antlers, its hooves were striking out in the rampant position, the place of the claws clearly displayed on predatory animals.117 Horses and unicorns might be displayed similarly – notwithstanding Bartolo’s indication that while non-ferocious animals should be displayed in vigorous attitudes, they should differ from the attitudes of ferocious animals. Nevertheless, heraldic animals might represent traits other than ferocity, valour and vigour, such as wisdom, resourcefulness and loyalty. Some were chosen because of their positive characteristics in the bestiary-encyclopaedic tradition, like the pelican, the phoenix, or another mythical bird, the martlet, which demonstrated continuous effort because it was always on the wing and never landed to roost. Like the lion among quadrupeds, the eagle ranked first among birds and frequently represented the highest nobility. Other emblems, including animals, were chosen as canting arms, because their name resembled the bearer’s family name or home (or occasionally some function or attribute) in a visual pun or rebus, such as three cocks as the arms of the Scottish Cockburn family or the wolf as the emblem of the Ulfssons of Sweden. Associations like this often provided the reason for appearance of less aggressive animals such as hares or fish. In fact, the earliest known use of arms by a peasant, Jaquier le Brebiet in 1369, is three sheep (brebis) held by a girl. Sometimes tales were associated with a coat of arms to explain their origin, in this case the arms of the city of Bern. The incident involving Duke Berchtold V of Zähringen (1160–1218) is alleged to have occurred in the late twelfth century and Conrad wrote his chronicle in the early fifteenth. Regardless of whatever contact Berchtold may have had with bears, the etymologies are incorrect.

117 Rampant means on the hind legs with the head in profile. Rampant guardant is the same posture but with full face, reguardant looking back. Combattant signifies two animals fighting on hind legs.

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Conrad Justinger, Berner Chronik (Chronicle of Bern), 9118 A bear was caught in the oak forest, after which the city of Bern was named, and after it was also named the Duke of Beringen: And when there was a lot of game in the same oak forest, Duke Berchtold hunted together with his advisors and servants, and wanted to name the city after the first animal caught in the forest; so the city of Bern was named and gave the burgers in the city of Bern a coat of arms and a shield, namely a walking black bear on a white ground.119 But why the same shield has since been changed to the coat of arms is explained in this chronicle. Thus the city of Bern increased in status, in wealth and in great honours, as it still continues to do by the grace of Almighty God. In addition to depictions of animals themselves of their heads, a large class of heraldic decorations became known as furs, representing animal skins used as garments: the stylized ermine pattern alluded to the spotted coat of the ermine or stoat, vair (alternating rows of blue and white bell-shaped figures) to the sewn-together hides of a squirrel. The animal, albeit dead, thus remained in a linguistic and visual sense as protection for the human. Towards the end of the Middle Ages several treatises appeared that related the (supposed) history of the rise of heraldry, its terminology, the emblems and their colours, and the offices associated with arms. The excerpt below comes from a translation of one or more works in French by the Scottish pursuivant Adam Loutfut in 1494, a combined heraldic manual and bestiary, in which it is mainly the aspects of the animal that can be associated with knighthood and chivalry that are selected. Like the bestiaries written before Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’Amour (mid-thirteenth century), the heraldic bestiary section begins with the lion, whose supposed characteristics were relatively easy to associate with knighthood. With some other animals it was not so easy, and many have only short entries with rather strained associations. Many late medieval heraldic treatises said the leopard should be depicted face-on (guardant) to the observer, and position became one way of distinguishing it from a lion in heraldry, although which of the two was the original animal in some arms, such as those of the royal house of Denmark, was not certain and customs differed somewhat from region to region.120 118 Conrad Justinger, Die Berner-Chronik, ed. G. Studer (Bern: K.J. Wyss, 1871). 119 The duke referred to was Berchtold V of Zähringen (1160–1218, r. 1186–1218). 120 The three blue lions/leopards passant in the Danish arms were finally decreed to be lions in 1819. The colours are first recorded from 1270, but the arms appear on a seal of Knud IV (House of Estridsen) from c.1194.

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Adam Loutfut (trans.), Deides of Armorie, lines 251–372121 The lion is called king of beasts and, as Isidore says in his 12th book of beasts, in all perils he shows him very glorious and very valiant, for when he is pursued by the hunter and the hounds, he does not flee nor does he hide, but sits in the field where he may be seen and if any person injures him he will chase him throughout his life and take revenge on him even should he [himself] die: and he is a very gentle beast and loves those who do him good; and as Aristotle says, the bones of the lion are so hard that when they strike on them the fire flies as it does when they strike a hard stone; and of himself he is so courteous that when he has taken his prey he will rarely eat it alone but calls company to eat it or leaves a part to them. Therefore they that first bear the lion in their arms and presently bear them should be hardy, valiant, strong and assured, gentle and gracious among their companions. The leopard is a very cruel beast, and in token of cruelty and hardness he has his face always to the observer: and as says Isidore in his 12th book, he is generated by adultery of leopard and lioness; and he is a very agile beast so that oftentimes he acts by force of leaping; and desires blood marvellously; and is spotted with many colours.122 And it signifies that he that first bore it was cruel, hardy and agile; and some say that Merlin, the prophet, was the first man that bore it because he was born of magic in adultery; and just so the first duke of Guyenne was born of a fee, and therefore the arms of Guyenne are of a leopard; and it is a beast the prince and lords bear in arms, but they that bear him in his proper colour should be a bastard, and therefore no princes bear him in his real colour but they bear him in another colour in signification of his property and not of his nature.123 By the late Middle Ages the primary function of heraldic emblems was to emphasize their bearer’s heritage. When ritual and systems of signification became part of noble identity they are open to being undermined by use by 121 Adam Loutfut, The Deidis of Armorie, Vol. 2, ed. L.A.J.R. Houwen (Edinburgh: The Scottish Text Society, 1994). The subtitle “HERALDIC BESTIARY” has been inserted at the beginning of the list of animals by the editor. 122 In fact, Isidore and other medieval sources say the leopard was a cross between a pard and a lion, not a leopard and a lioness. 123 Here “magic” is given as the translation of faarie, but the word could also mean a fairy or demon, as Merlin was believed to be the son of a nun (herself a king’s daughter) raped by a demon. In medieval English literature the tale was told by Geoffrey of Monmouth and adopted by later writers.

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other classes or for ‘non-noble purposes’ and the right to use them become contested: in the late Middle Ages the use of coats of arms by squires or others who had no expectation of becoming knights and organisations such as guilds of merchants, craftsmen and corporations attracted similar complaint to hunting of animals or ownership of animals reserved for nobles or the adoption of ‘noble’ clothing colours by non-aristocratic people. Treatises such as the Deidis of Armorie deplored this state of affairs and argued that only men of true noble birth should be able to have heralds and pursuivants, the messengers and envoys.124 Heraldry also attracted other notice in rhetoric or literature. Writers express in words what the visual sign shows and used heraldic emblems as metonyms for their bearers or their families or associates, and as a result heraldic animals acquired metaphorical meanings unintended by their owners. In this poem about Richard II of England (perhaps already dead when it was written), he is criticized for choosing poor advisers and mismanaging the kingdom. The clothes and manner of the court are satirized, and in the excerpt below his distribution of his white hart badge to acquire followers and failure to use this wealth to assist the poor. The anonymous poet makes great play on Richard’s emblem, the hart, and its homophone heart. Richard the Redeless (Richard without counsel), Second stage, lines 99–120125 Yet I trust your intention was from the first I suppose, if I think well of the multitude of people, That you were all the mightier for the many signs That you and your servants spread so thickly about; And that they were more trustworthy and truer than others To love you for the livery that allegiance destroyed; Or else for a reason that caused harm to yourself, That common people of the district who had the means Should know by their deceit that the king loved them For their special badge surpassing another. If that was your purpose, it exceeds my ability To judge the discretion of your well-doing. Thus were you deceived through your false harts (hearts), That never were worn to trust, so God save my soul! But had the good greyhound been not aggrieved, But cherished as a leader, and ruler of your pack, 124 Deidis of Armorie: lines 251–372. 125 “Richard the Redeless,” in Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger, ed. James M. Dean (Kalamazoo: Teams, 2000): Passus secundus, lines 99–120.

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You would have had hearts now at your will to go and to ride. And also in certain, the truth for to tell, I wonder not greatly, though head-deer you failed; For little on your life it drives you to pity Common people that cry out with ribs so lean, For want of their food that flatterers stole. 8

Animal Behaviour as Portents

A portent was one of the ways – perhaps the most spectacular one – by which the supernatural communicated with humans, something observable that had a specific kind of meaning, usually good or evil. A variety of meanings were attached to them (personal, political, religious, moral, eschatological, and so on). Isidore of Seville, Etymologia (Etymologies): Bk 11.3. De portentis (Portents)126 1. Varro defines portents as beings that seem to have been born contrary to nature – but they are not contrary to nature, because they are created by divine will, since the nature of everything is the will of the Creator. Whence even the pagans address God sometimes as “Nature” (Natura), sometimes as “God”. 2. A portent is therefore not created contrary to nature, but contrary to what is known nature. Portents are also called signs, omens, and prodigies, because they are seen to portend and display, indicate and predict future events. … 4. Some portents seem to have been created as indications of future events, for God sometimes wants to indicate what is to come through some defects in newborns, just as through dreams and oracles, by which he may foreshadow and indicate future calamity for certain people or individuals, as is indeed proved by abundant experience. 5. In fact, to Xerxes a fox born of a mare was a portent for the destruction of the [Persian] empire. A monster to which a woman gave birth, whose upper parts were human, but dead, while its lower body parts came from diverse animals, yet were live, signified to Alexander the sudden murder of the king, for the worse parts had outlived the better ones. However, those monsters that are produced as omens do not live long – they die as soon as they are born. 6. There is a difference between a “portent” (portentum) and “an unnatural being” (portentuosus), Portents are beings of transformed appearance, as, for 126 Isidore, Etymologia: Liber XI.iii.

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instance is said to have happened when in Umbria a woman gave birth to a serpent. trans. Stephen A. Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach, Oliver Berghof

Isidore details the distinction between the different types of portents in (3). The adoption of Christianity in Europe did not change belief in portents or the nature of events they might signify, even though the divine mover behind them had changed, which is why examples from the pagan world were still valid for Isidore. Omens gave whoever saw them some indication, often vague, of what was going to happen, and reading them was akin to fortune-telling. Individual prodigies, on the other hand, marked temporal peculiarities, sudden irruptions of the marvellous that had to be interpreted. They might be hybrid or ‘monstrous’ births, comets, or rains of blood. Such phenomena were regularly recorded in monastic annals, as an important purpose of recording events was to try to understand God’s purpose, so portents were obviously significant. Celestial events are most noted, but among the “earthly” omens were a large number involving animals. This is how Gregory of Tours saw the appearance of wolves, the archetypal animal of the wilderness, in a town in 582. He does not make it clear what he thought the events were portending, nor does he make any mention of hunger as the wolves’ motive, although it is clear from the context that this was what drove them to seek food outside their natural habitat. Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum (History of the Franks), Bk 6.19127 The portents appeared again this year. The moon was in eclipse. In the neighbourhood of Tours real blood flowed from the broken bread. The walls of the city of Soissons collapsed. There was an earthquake in Angers. Wolves found their way inside the walls of Bordeaux and ate the dogs, showing no fear whatsoever of human beings. trans. LEWIS THORPE

Generally, like the wolves, the beasts involved in portents were not mythical or monstrous species, which may have been anomalies that provoked wonder by their very existence but were products of ungeneralizable conspiracies of causes and were believed to exist permanently in that form in some distant land. All portents were temporary anomalies: as Isidore mentions, deformed

127 Gregory of Tours. Gregorii Episcopi Turonensis Libri historiarum X, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison (Hanover: Hahn, 1951): Liber VI.

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offspring born as prodigies soon died. Similarly, portentous animal actions were aberrations after which the animal concerned reverted to species-typical behaviour. The animals involved were ‘everyday’ animals who went largely unnoticed precisely because they were commonly encountered by humans and their ways familiar, so it was deviations from the norm that were noticeable. Just as other unusual phenomena of nature might, when animals acted ‘atypically’ they were presumed to be acting under some form of compulsion.

Chapter 4

Animals in Field, Park, and Forest Interaction with other animals for most humans in the Middle Ages would have been during their daily routine of milking sheep, cows and goats, ploughing, shearing sheep, transporting goods, and also killing and preparing animals for sale or consumption. Much of the evidence for medieval agriculture and animal husbandry is pictorial, and of written sources many are accounts or tax returns. There was no even distribution of domestic animal species according to terrain or climate. The management of domestic animals changed most of all in line with the alteration of the landscape, but also as a consequence of changing patterns of management and landholding, altered human and animal mobility and urbanization that resulted in new demands. Livestock management was not, however, a purely reactive process. Changes in animal anatomy may occur in response to environmental change (here referring to the animals’ habitat more than climate change) or as a result of direct human intervention, especially feeding and breeding techniques. A ‘breed’ in the modern sense denotes a bloodline, but bloodlines were not documented before the eighteenth century: as used here, the term ‘breed’ is a synonym of landrace or morphotype. However, medieval farmers were aware of the significance of animal inheritance and they did practice selection of the best animals for reproduction. Since most livestock increased in size in the Roman period, management had obviously been practised then on villa estates, but even in areas that had formerly been part of the Empire livestock size declined after the disintegration of the western empire, almost to the sizes it had had in the Iron Age. 1

Animal Husbandry

Here the main concern is human attitudes to domestic animals in their most common capacity during the Middle Ages, as workers in the fields and mills, beasts of burden and draught animals. As we have seen, medieval people did distinguish in a general way between animals who served or were useful to humans and those who were not, corresponding closely to our distinction between ‘domestic’ and ‘wild.’ However, this distinction is often not easy to make; for example, while few would question that oxen kept in stalls overnight or during the winter and pulling the plough during the day were domestic, non-working animals such as pigs kept for their produce are normally classed © Koninklijke Brill BV, Leiden, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004721708_006

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as domestic but most were driven to woodland during the day to forage for food such as acorns, the practice known as “pannage” in Anglo-Norman England and previously as “denbera.” Communities normally had a swineherd who drove them there for pannage every morning. The practice of keeping them in sties permanently increased only slowly at the end of the period. Many animals kept in enclosed parks, even those normally considered wild such as deer, were semi-domesticated as they were fed during times of fodder scarcity, but they were hunted rather than slaughtered. The Colloquy (“Conversation”) of Aelfric, abbot of the Benedictine abbey in Eynsham, Oxfordshire, is a dialogue between a schoolteacher and his pupils, who practise assorted trades. The dialogue form had been in common use in western European monastic schools for centuries. Aelfric wrote it to assist novice monks in learning Latin, but it gives us an insight into many everyday occupations in the tenth century and to an extent how those who needed to interacted with animals.1 Aelfric of Eynsham, Colloquy2 Ploughboy: Master, I have to work far too much; I go out at dawn, driving the oxen to the field, and I yoke them to the plough; I dare not in the severest weather lie hid at home, for fear of my lord; and when I have yoked the oxen together, and fastened the ploughshare to the plough, I have to plough a whole acre every day, or more. Master: Have you any companion? Ploughboy: I have a boy who threatens the oxen with a goad, and he is also hoarse with the cold and his shouting. Master: What more do you perform in the day? Ploughboy: Certainly I do more besides that. I have to supply the mangers of the oxen with hay, and give them water, and carry their dung outside. Master: O indeed! This is a great labour. Ploughboy: Yes, it is a great labour that I have to fulfil, for I am not free. Master: What do you say, Shepherd, have you any work? Shepherd: Indeed, I have. In early morning I drive my sheep to the pastures, and I stand by them, in heat and cold, with dogs, lest the wolves should devour them, and I bring them back to their folds, and milk them 1 Gem used the Latin of MS. Cott. Tib. A. 3, which had an OE gloss that he takes as written by Aelfric. The Latin text listed in the bibliography is the MS in St John’s College, Oxford, edited by W.H. Stevenson. 2 Aelfric of Eynsham, “Colloquy,” in An Anglo-Saxon Abbot Aelfric Of Eynsham: A Study, trans. S. Harvey Gem (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1912), 184–85.

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twice a day, and I move their folds besides. I also make butter and cheese, and I am faithful to my lord. Master: Oxherd, what do you work at? Oxherd: Master, I labour much. When the ploughman unyokes the oxen, I lead them to the pastures, and all night I stand by them watching against thieves, and then, early in the morning, I give them over to the ploughman, well fed and watered. Master: Is that boy one of your companions? Oxherd: He is. trans. Samuel Harvey Gem

Towards the end of Charlemagne’s reign the Capitulare Brevium Exempla de Villis laid down regulations for the management of royal estates. The estates were large and all the varieties of animals commonly kept by humans, and often the work they did or their produce when slaughtered, were represented. The smaller farm animals listed in (19) were typical of small households, which depended heavily on eggs and dairy produce and especially cereals, at least until the rise in meat consumption during the plague period of the fourteenth century. Capitulare de villis (Capitulary for the Administration of the Estates)3 10. That our mayors and foresters, our stablemen, cellarers, deans, toll-collectors and other officials shall perform regular services and shall donate pigs in return for their holdings: in lieu of manual labour, may they see to their official duties well. 17. A steward shall appoint as many men as he has estates in his district, whose task will be to keep bees for our use. 18. At our mills they [the stewards] are to keep chickens and geese, according to the mill’s capacity – or as many as possible. 19. In the barns on our chief estates they are to keep no fewer than 100 chickens and no fewer than 30 geese. At the smaller farms they are to keep no fewer than 50 chickens and no fewer than 12 geese. 21. Every steward is to maintain fishponds on our estates where they have existed in the past, and if possible he is to enlarge them. They are also to be established in places where they have not yet existed but where they are now operable.

3 Die Landgüterordnung Kaiser Karls des Grossen (Capitulare de villis vel curtis imperii.), ed. Karl Gareis (Berlin: J. Guttentag, 1895): 10, 17–19, 21, 23–25, 35, 66.

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23. On each of our estates the stewards are to have as many byres, pig-pens, sheepfolds and goat-pens as possible, and under no circumstances should they be without them. And in addition they are to have cows provided by our serfs for the performance of their service to us, so that the byres and plough-teams are in no way weakened by service on our demesne. And when they have to give meat to the dogs, let them have lame but healthy oxen, cows or horses which are not mangy, and other healthy animals; and as we have said, our byres and plough-teams must not be diminished as a consequence of this.4 24. Every steward is to do his utmost with anything he has to provide for our table, so that everything he supplies is good and of the best quality, and as carefully and cleanly prepared as possible. And each of them, when he shall serve at our table, is to receive corn for two meals a day for his service; and the rest of the provisions, whether in flour or in meat, are likewise to be of good quality. 25. They are to report on the first of September on whether there will be food for the pigs. 35. It is our wish that tallow be made from fat sheep and also from pigs; in addition, they are to keep on each estate no fewer than two fattened oxen, which can either be used there for making tallow or can be sent to us. 66. They are to provide an account to us of the male and female goats, and of their horns and skins; and each year they are to bring to us the newly salted meat of the fattened goats. The anonymous English treatise “Husbandry” refers less to the management of the land itself than to the accounts of the bailiff and the checking of them. The following four excerpts belong to the late thirteenth century and after. This was a period when keeping written accounts on rural estates became common, possibly indicating that more care was being devoted to estate management, but a development that occurred in tandem with a general increase in written recording of laws and commercial activity.

4 In the initial clause, “ad canes dandum” was amended by Benjamin Guérard (in 1857) to “ad carnes dandum”, “to provide meat” rather than “to provide meat to the dogs” on the assumption that cattle managed by peasants would be eaten by the estate owner’s household. This amendment has been followed by many since, but the original meaning of provision of meat for (presumably hunting) dogs, is equally likely.

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Hosebonderie (Husbandry)5 And the dairy maid ought to look after all the small stock which are kept on the manor such as sucking pigs, peacocks and their issue, geese and their issue, capons, cocks, and hens and their issue in chickens and eggs. And be it known that the sow ought to bear pigs twice a year and at each farrowing she ought to bear at least seven piglets. And every goose ought to produce five goslings in the year and every hen one hundred and fifteen eggs and seven chickens. Of these, three ought to be made capons and if there are too many female birds they ought to be exchanged for male birds while they are still young so that each hen is reckoned to yield four hens and three capons a year. And for every five geese you ought to keep one gander and for every five hens one cock. And every cow ought to bear one calf in the year and every ewe one lamb. And if there be a cow or ewe which did not bear that year, an inquiry ought to be made through whose fault this was, whether the fault is with the bailiff, the reeve, or the keeper, whether it happened through bad supervision, through lack of food or neglect in mating or whether the reeve could have changed the cow or the ewe for another one in time but did not. And if the officers are found guilty of any of this then they ought to be charged with the entire issue or its value. And also, if any beast died in any way through their fault they ought to answer for the live beast or its value. trans. DOROTHY OSCHINSKY

It is apparent that the primary concern of estate owners and officials was economic and that the animals produced as much return as possible from their labour or produce. Because domestic animals that routinely provided labour or food were an economic asset, there was an incentive to look after them, but human beings frequently place their immediate requirements above any long-term considerations and did not necessarily calculate how many beatings an animal could take or how much it could carry or pull before it suffered permanent injury. Since many people lived at near-subsistence level or were 5 “Husbandry,” in Walter of Henley and other Treatises on Estate Management and Accounting, ed. Dorothea Oschinsky (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1971), 417–445. The titles of works from this edition and which head quoted passages are those from Walter of Henley's Husbandry: together with an anonymous Husbandry, Seneschaucie, and Robert Grosseteste's Rules, ed. Elizabeth Lamond (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1890). After this 1890 edition appeared other manuscripts were discovered and all were thoroughly edited by Oschinsky. Some used by Lamond were corrupt. As well as the English translation of this passage, that from “Seneschaucie,” and the translation by William Lambarde below, are from Walter of Henley and other Treatises…, trans. Dorothea Oschinsky. Copyright 1971 by Clarendon Press, an imprint of Oxford University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear.

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under pressure to do their own work and several days’ work each month for their lord, there would always be a temptation to push their animals to the limits, and one of the tasks of seneschals and bailiffs, as well as preventing theft of either the animals themselves or their fodder, was to ensure that those who used or managed the animals during the day left them fit to operate efficiently on the next day. But like the “lame oxen” of Charlemagne’s Capitulare, all working animals grew weaker with age if some other misfortune did not befall them beforehand. Once an animal was no longer capable of performing its useful tasks or cost more to feed and house than it earned for its owner for any length of time, it made economic sense to kill it. Even if it was still of value when alive, an animal’s owner would kill it if there was no less costly method of feeding the household when food was short.6 The Seneschaucy, dated by Dorothea Oschinsky to some time before the mid-1270s, is also a quasi-legal text which describes the duties of the steward, bailiff and others subordinate to the seneschal in considerable detail, in a language that resembles that of contemporary English legal documents, but there is mention of how those on estates ought to manage land and animals where they concern those managed by the bailiff, whose duties included ensuring that animal assets were not lost or rendered incapable of work. Seneschaucie (The Office of Seneschal), Chs. 2 and 67 2. Ici comence le office le bailiff (Here begins the office of the bailiff). A horse or draught animal might be lost through lack of supervision, it might run to the mares and perish, fall into a ditch or some water and be drowned; the loaded cart might overturn and kill the horse, or the carter pierce its eye or crush its leg or thigh whereby the horse or draught animal will be lost. Similar accidents may happen to oxen, cows, and other farm animals. Through lack of supervision wethers, ewes, and hogs may be killed by dogs, they may drown or be stolen; wethers and ewes may occasionally fight or get strangled with the shepherd reporting that they met with an accident; also they may be sold or killed; all of which has happened. For that reason an early inspection is good because one may easily identify a fresh carcass or a fresh skin. A shepherd who accounts before someone who knows little about such loopholes will have a good bargain if he can acquit himself of ten or twenty sound carcasses stolen or taken from the fold by merely returning the correct number of skins. 6 Many animals such as oxen, however, were owned jointly by a village or the estate on which the tenants lived. 7 “Seneschaucy,” in Walter of Henley and other Treatises on Estate Management and Accounting, ed. Dorothea Oschinsky (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1971), 261–306: Ch.vi.

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6. Ici comence le office dez tenurs dez charues (Here begins the office of the plough-keepers). The plough-keepers ought to be men of understanding who know how to sow, how to mend and repair broken ploughs and harrows, and how to cultivate and crop the land well. The ploughmen ought to know how to couple and lead the oxen without striking or hurting them, they ought to feed them well and keep the fodder safe so that it is not stolen or taken away. They ought to keep the beasts safely in the meadows and in the several pastures and impound any other cattle found there. trans. Dorothea Oschinsky

The Italian Pietro de’ Crescenzi (1233–1320), though educated at the university in Bologna and practising as a lawyer and judge, is now known largely for his treatise on farming, written after his 1290 retirement when he lived alternately in Bologna and on his estate, the Villa dell’ Olmo. It was influential beyond Italy. He used the works of Roman authors such as Columella and Varro extensively as well as Albert the Great’s, supplemented with his own experience. As the title of his work suggests, his concern, as with all those who worked on the land, was to extract the most profit from efficient use of the animals, whether that be wealth or benefit from eating them. By far the greatest part of his Book 9 is taken up with horses and cures for their ailments, a reflection of the horse’s importance to the medieval household and its status: unlike the ox, it was not eaten in many regions of Europe. According to Pietro, different breeds of ox were suitable for different tasks, and the meat of some was better than others. It is not surprising that the edibleness of animals was a central concern when they were described in farming treatises, but nutritional and medical uses to humans were also integral to descriptions of animals in other works. Pietro de’ Crescenzi, Liber ruralium commodorum (Book of rural benefits), Book 9, Ch. 66. Of the diversity and variety of oxen, and of all their uses8 Among the generation of oxen, there are some which are black and large and strong, and almost indomitable, and they are called bufoli, who are not very able to pull carts, nor to put to the plough, but bound, artificially, with certain chains, they strive to pull great weights on the ground, and very willingly dwell in the water, and their skins are not as good as those of the other oxen because they are very large.9 Also their meat is too melancholy, 8 Petrus de Crescentiis, Liber ruralium commodorum (Strassburg: Georg Husner, 1486): Liber IX, Cap. LXVI. 9 Medieval carts were generally of the two-wheeled type. Four-wheeled wagons for farm produce came into extensive use in the early modern period. “Black” may mean ‘dark’ in many cases, just as “white” often meant off-white or grey.

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and yet it is not good, nor of very good taste: and it appears very beautiful raw, but when it is cooked it becomes very dirty. There are also other oxen that we commonly use, and they are of three types: of which some are larger, which properly suit the plains: some are small, which are more properly used in the mountains, and some are midway between, which are suitable for either place. Still there are other oxen, who are very young, whose flesh is of temperate complement, so that it gives good nourishment to a man, and excellently preserves his fortitude and sanity. Others are of perfect age, which properly, given their strength, are to be put to fatiguing tasks, and their hides are excellent for making shoe soles, and their flesh is half melancholy, and not very pleasant except to those who have strong and warm stomachs, and to those who are much troubled. Walter of Henley’s treatise, dateable to c.1280, stresses many of the same things as Pietro’s. He detailed methods of feeding and housing oxen so that they would be in good condition to work and fodder (expense) was not wasted, emphasizing that tillage should be efficient and costly replacement of draught animals avoided. From the eleventh century onwards the horse sometimes replaced the ox as a draught animal in some regions, horses gradually became more affordable as transport animals, and by the thirteenth century they were also pulling carts. Oxen remained the main draught animal in many parts of southern Europe, such as Languedoc, Italy and Iberia, even in 1900, but further north the horse was used more, often in mixed teams. Here Walter compares the two. Horses have their advantages, but in general he favours the ox because it was less expensive to keep and once it was worn out its flesh and other products still had value. Walter of Henley, Le Dite de Hosebondrie (Treatise on Husbandry), Ch. 710 With an ox plough [with two horses]11 you shall till, rather than with a horse plough, if the land is not stony so that the ox cannot help himsclf with his feet. Wherefore, I will tell you; the horse is more costly than the ox. And the ox plough shall till as much in the year as the horse plough 10

11

“Walter,” in Walter of Henley and other Treatises on Estate Management and Accounting, ed. Dorothea Oschinsky (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1971), 307–43: c.36 – c.39. The stemma of Walter’s Husbandry included 32 manuscripts of this treatise, in many redactions and variants, often debased. Reconstructing an original was therefore a complicated and difficult process: see Oschinsky, pp. 113–143 on this and the dating of the treatise. The translation is William Lambarde’s 16th-century one of the Anglo-Norman text Cambridge Corpus Christie College MS 301, provided in Oschinsky’s book, in which I have modernized spellings and replaced certain rare or obsolete words. i.e. with a plough that has a team of oxen and two horses besides.

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shall (because) the malice of the ploughmen does not (allow that) the horse plough shall go at a faster pace than the ox plough. Besides this, on hard ground the horse plough shall stand still whereas the ox plough will go through. Will you see how the horse costs more then the ox [I will tell you]. It is the custom, and of right, that beasts of the plough shall (feed at the manger) between the feast of saint Luke [18 Oct.]and the feast of the Cross in May [3 May], that is 28' weeks. And if a horse is kept in plight to do his days work, he ought to have at the least every night the sixth part of a bushel of oats, of the price of a half penny and at the least 12 d. in grass in summer and every week one with another at the least one penny in shoeing [if it has to be shod on all four feet]; the sum is 13 s, 6 d. yearly besides litter, hay, and chaff. And if the ox is kept in condition to do his work, then it behoves that he has at the least weekly three sheaves and a half of oats [for the cost of 1d.] and in the summer season 12d. of grass; the sum is 3 s. 4 d. and ten oat sheaves yield one bushel of oats by estimation. And when the horse is old (and worn out) then has he nothing but his skin. But when the ox is old with 10 d. of grass he will be made fat to kill or to sell for as much as he cost you. trans. William Lambarde (modernized)

By the thirteenth century, horses were pulling carts, an important vehicle for road transport. As humans saw it, horses had a social hierarchy, as is reflected in the extensive vocabulary used to distinguish between types of horses according to purpose and quality. Nowhere is the product value of animals clearer than in writings on pigs. Unlike other domestic animals, their value to humans was almost entirely as food. Hence they were slaughtered as soon as they grew to full size. Walter of Henley, Le Dite de Hosebondrie (Treatise on Husbandry)12 Make trial of your hogs once a year and if you find any that is not sound remove them away. Keep no boar nor sows except such as be of a good kind. (Your other sows have spayed so that they lose their ability to farrow). Then is their bacon as much worth as of a barrow hog. In winter keep them [so that they do not perish and] so that they may have strength to farrow; for the space of three months they have need of help: that is in February, March and in April, and two times in the year your sows will pig if it be not through evil keeping. One good keeping it is for hogs to keep

12

“Walter”, ed. Oschinsky: c.93 – c.95.

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them in long in the morning and to let them lie dry. [Have your piglets gelded while they still suckle and then they will grow the better]. trans. William Lambarde (modernized)

Bees were kept all over Europe throughout the Middle Ages: honey was used in food, in cooking, in medicines and in brewing, and in the later Middle Ages, if not before, there was a lively export trade in different varieties. Beeswax was also a very important product. The Land Register of King Valdemar II of Denmark (1202–1241) reveals that considerable amounts of tax were paid in honey in various regions of the kingdom. As Albert the Great and others had stated, it was impossible for humans to ‘teach’ bees as one might teach (train) many other animals, which made control more difficult13 The Danish medieval laws also include regulations concerning beekeeping, such as the not unlikely event that bees harm other animals by stinging them, claiming colonies of bees, and the problem of colonies interfering with one another, all of which were more difficult to regulate than deliberate theft or destruction (handled in no. 41 after the rules below). Fencing in bee colonies would also have been necessary in areas where wild animals such as bears were likely to plunder the honey. Jyske Lov (The Law of Jutland), Bk. 3, 38–4014 38. About bees. He who has bees, he shall himself protect them with a fence, so that other men’s animals cannot cast them down [the hives] or damage them, but if the fence is so low that another man’s domestic animals can get inside the bee enclosure and harm them, he has himself to blame and will get no other compensation. If a man’s animal is stung to death outside the bee enclosure, he who owned the bees shall not pay [compensation] for it. But if it is stung to death inside the bee enclosure, he who owned the bees must pay compensation for the damage, because he did not have a lawful fence. 39. If a man’s bees fly another man’s bees up ( flyghæ annæns [mansz bi] vp). If a man’s bees fly another man’s bees up, then he who has the bees that were flown up shall with other neighbours announce this to the one who owns the other bees.15 If he who has these lively bees will establish a partnership with the other, with regard to both the bees that have flown up and also the other’s [bees], then this can be so. But if he will not, and those bees 13 See Ch. 2, p. 93. 14 Kong Valdemars Jordebog, ed. Svend Aakjær, Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur (Copenhagen: Akad. forl., 1980): Tredie bog, 38–40. 15 “Flyghæ vp” here presumably means overhaul so that the two swarms were mingled.

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later kill the bees that flew up the other’s, he can then blame it on himself, because he would not share both gain and loss with the other. 40. If a man finds bees. If a man finds bees in open land and if no man follows those bees, then he can keep what he has found, even if he has neither land nor woodland in that field. But if a man finds bees in another man’s woods, then he cannot take them away if they have flown into a tree, and will not get any share in them unless he follows them to a stump. If he follows them from his own house, then he shall have either a third of them if they should be taken in, or one øre in money (øræpænning) if he who owns the tree wants to redeem them, because wherever they fly from a man’s sight, then they belong to the one who finds them.16 If a man finds a swarm of bees in the churchyard, then they belong to the one who finds them and to no other man. Treatises on agriculture such as those of Pietro de’ Crescenzi and Master Fitzherbert also give considerable attention to beekeeping. Fitzherbert begins his section on it by emphasizing that for little expense honeybees bring a good return, which justifies the effort of setting up the hive and getting them to settle in it, a process which he goes on to describe. He has a good understanding of how the bees operate, which is not surprising as bees had been ‘farmed’ for thousands of years and hives had been constructed at least as early as 2,400 BCE in Egypt. Traditional beehives merely provided a home for the bee colony, without an internal structure, so the bees created their own honeycomb inside. This meant that often the comb could not be moved without destroying it. In the Middle Ages skeps (upturned basket-like structures) were also used, for instance in Britain, but the bee colony usually had to be destroyed to get the honey from them.17 Wax honeycombs were crushed, which meant that less honey was yielded from them than nowadays, but more beeswax. Anthony Fitzherbert, The Book of Husbandry: 122. Of Bees18 Bees incur little cost but good attendance; at the time that they shall cast the swarm, it is convenient that the hive be set in a garden or an orchard, 16

This entry is obviously also relevant to the chapter on law. For similar rules about ownership of bees and whether they are in sight or not, see Jyske Lov 40, quoted on pp. 175–76, and Henry of Bracton, De legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, 2, quoted on p. 274. 17 The word skep comes from ON skeppa, basket, but they have been used for over 2000 years, possibly first in Ireland. Concerning honey farming and beekeeping in early Europe and its background, see Eva Crane, The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting (London: Routledge, 2000), Part V, 20–28 and Part VI, 32. 18 Anthony Fitzherbert, The Book of Husbandry, ed. Walter W. Skeat (London: Tübner, 1882): 122.

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where they may be kept from the north wind, and the mouth of the hive toward the sun.19 They most commonly caste in June and July, and they should have some low trees near the hive so that the swarm may light upon the branches and when the swarm is formed, take a hive, and splint it within with three or four splints, that the bees may knit their combs thereto; and coat the splints and the sides of the hive with a little honey. And if you have no honey, take sweet cream, and then set a stool or a form close to the swarm,20 and leave a clean washed sheet on the stool, and then hold the small end of the hive downward and shake the bees into the hive, and shortly set it upon the stool, and turn up the corners of the sheet over the hive, and to leave one place open, that the bees may come in and out: but you must not fight nor strive with them for no cause; and leave nettles upon the boughs to which they were attached, to drive them from that place; and so watch them all that day, so that they do not go away; and at night, when all have gone up into the hive, take it away and set it where it shall stand, and take away the sheet, and have clay tempered to lay about it upon the board or stone where it shall stand, so that no wind can get in, but the board is better and warmer. And leave an hole open on the south side, three inches broad and an inch in height, for the bees to come in and out. And then to make a covering of wheat-straw or rye-straw, to cover and house the hive about, and set the hive two feet or more from the earth upon stakes, so that a mouse cannot come to it, and also neither beasts nor swine. … And beware, that no wasps get into the hive, for they will kill the bees and eat the honey. As indicated by some of the passages above, many working animals or animals kept for produce were owned by a landowner and used by tenants or jointly owned by villagers. It was common practice that tenants who owed a certain amount of work to the landlord or took turns to manage the animals for common benefit were made responsible not only for their welfare while using them, but for any damage they might cause.

19 Swarming usually occurs within a two-  or three-week period in spring. Secondary and smaller swarms that appear afterwards and are accompanied by a virgin queen are known as cast swarms. See Eva Crane, Beekeeping, Part I. 20 Swarms are vulnerable at this time as they have only the nectar or honey they carry in their stomachs. A swarm will starve if it does not quickly find a home and more nectar stores, which the keeper provides here.

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The Halmote Court Rolls of the Prior and Convent of Durham, East Merrington, 138121 It is ordained by common consent that each tenant should keep the animals when his turn comes, and for the day in which he has their custody, he should respond and give satisfaction for injuries made in the grain or herbage to the one or ones who have had the losses, under penalty of paying 4d. The landowner or villagers employed or appointed shepherds, herdsmen or swineherds to look after herds or flocks of animals that might be driven out to pasture or graze. In these cases, all those who used or guarded the animals had a responsibility to the others, and some law codes detailed procedures to be followed if they did not fulfil them. The example here is from Sweden, Magnus Eriksson’s Landslag, the first code there to apply to the whole realm, instituted in the mid-fourteenth century. It continued in use for the rest of the Middle Ages, with only relatively minor revisions in 1442 when it was ratified as King Kristoffer’s Landslag.22 In such laws the compensation paid for different animals is an indication of their relative value to their owner/s. Magnus Erikssons Landslag (Magnus Eriksson’s Land Law), Byggninga­ balken, 35. Om vallgång med boskap (Concerning herding and grazing of livestock)23 Peasants live together in a village: then the collective made a herd with their cattle. There they shall do right to each other. Now one of them neglects their grazing; he must take the oath of twelve men, or pay a fine of two pennies, which the herdsmen themselves must pay. Now if he loses an ox or a cow, or whatever kind of animal it is, if he can’t get it back, he compensates for it in full, each according to its value, according to the word of two men. 1. Now a wild animal takes a creature from a shepherd. If he himself is there and gets the carcasses from it, he is not fined. If he does not get the remains of it, he compensates for it in full. 2. If the cow calves in the field and the calf is lost, he pays one örtug. If he loses a kid or lamb, he pays four pennies. 21 Halmota Prioratus Dunelmensis, 1296–1384, containing extracts from the Halmote Court Rolls of the Prior and Convent of Durham A.D. 1296–A.D. 1384, ed. William Hylton Dyer Longstaffe and John Booth (London: Whittaker, 1889), 16–179, Extract 1 345–83. 22 Kjell Å Modéer, Historiska rättskällor i konflikt: en introduktion i rättshistoria, 3rd edn (Stockholm: Nerenius & Santerus, 2010). 23 Magnus Erikssons Landslag: Codex iuris communis Sueciae Magnæanus, ed. D.C.J. Schlyter (Lund: Berlinqska Boktryckeriet, 1862): Byggninga Balken, XXXV.

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Now the peasant farmer’s cattle is caught in the handiwork of another, who has set a snare or laid logs, and it dies. If the cattle are lawfully killed, the shepherd shall pay half the compensation to the owner of the cattle. If the gill is not lawfully made, the person who made the gill shall pay the full amount. If the shepherd loses an ox or cow and cannot get them back, he loses his rent. If he loses young cattle, he loses one penny of his rent. For a goat or a sheep one örtug, for a calf, lamb and kid four pennies, for an old pig one penny, for a pig less than a year old one örtug. If a peasant farmer strikes a shepherd, whether with a stick or a rod, if he is not maimed or injured by it, he is without compensation.

As nowadays, there was perception that many domestic animals were stupid, particularly those who exhibited herd behaviour. In general, wild animals were not thought so stupid, and it is they that represent nobility (anthropomorphized) in the beast epics, even if many of them were ‘bad nobles.’24 Notably, the deer, even though a herd animal, is attributed “discretion” by Albert the Great. The view of the literate that those ‘born to subservience’ were often stupid extended to people of the lower classes, such as peasants. Albert the Great, De Animalibus (On Animals), Book 8, tractatus 2.1. On the Stupidity and Prudence of Various Animals, and Especially on the Discretion of the Deer25 In another way too, animals vary in accordance with their habits, which accords with their ability to learn and their prudence, or something similar to prudence, which guides animals in their actions. For some are domestic and others are wild, and some are bold and some timid, while some possess something like intelligence and some do not, so that they seem to be stupid and witless. It is commonly said that in sheep, rams, and wild boars the lack of intelligence and prudence is greater than it is in other quadrupeds, because they wander around fruitlessly and without purpose, so that they leave suitable places for deserted places and remain out in the rain, for which reason also they will often not move from an unsuitable place unless the shepherd moves them by threatening the rams, causing the sheep to follow the rams. So too, when sheep are forced to leave by a fire that is burning their pens, they run back into the fire. The horse and the mule do the same, but not as often as the sheep. 24 See Chapter 8, pp. 339–42, on the animals of the Reynard tales. 25 Albertus Magnus, DA: Liber VIII, tractatus II.1.

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Albert may have thought the sheep stupid, but he also attributed feelings to it. Despite the invaluable service the donkey had given to humans ever since its domestication, it was usually denigrated for its stubbornness and stupidity. Bartholomaeus Anglicus concurs on the ass’s nature but shows appreciation of its value to humans and acknowledges the harsh treatment it receives in return. Bartholomew the Englishman, De Proprietatibus rerum, Bk 18. De animalibus (On land animals): vii. De asino (On the ass)26 The ass is fair of shape and of disposition while he is young and tender, before he becomes older. For the elder the ass is, the fouler he becomes from day to day, and hairy and rough, and is a melancholy beast, that is cold and dry, and is therefore rather heavy and slow, and unlusty, dull and witless and forgetful. Nevertheless he bears burdens, and puts up with travail and thralldom, and uses vile and little food, and gathers his food among briars and thorns and thistles. And the ass has another wretched condition known to almost all men. For he is put to work overnight, and is beaten with staves, and prodded and pricked with sharp instruments, and his mouth is squeezed with a snaffle, and he is led hither and thither, and often withdrawn from leas and pasture that is in his way by the refraining of the snaffle, and finally dies after vain travails, and has no reward after his death for the service and travail that he had while living, not so much that his own skin is left with him, but it is taken away, and the carrion is thrown out without interment or burials; but a certain amount of the carrion by eating and devouring is sometimes buried in the stomachs of hounds and wolves. A German song from slightly earlier portrays the donkey in still another light, but given that it is a goliardic song it is difficult to know which elements of it might be satirical and which not. It may be that some are most distressed at the loss of a valuable asset, but the reaction of some nuns and the priest Alfrâd suggests genuine affection for the animal. Whether the composer thinks a dead donkey is worth crying over is another matter. The song belongs to a collection of poems in Latin, possibly collected by an English scholar on the continent sometime after the last datable song (1039) and taken to the church of Saint Augustine at Canterbury. The dialect of a few vernacular parts found in some of the songs is North Rheno-Franconian Old High German, suggesting that the Goliard or Goliards who composed them came from the north or 26

Bartholomeus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus rerum: Liber XVIII, vii.

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middle Rhineland.27 The songs survived in a copy of the manuscript kept in Cambridge University Library. “Carmina Cantabrigiensia” (“The Cambridge Songs; a Goliard’s Song Book of the 11th Century”) 28. Sacerdos et Lupus (The priest and the wolf)28 There is one place, called Hôinburh, in which Alfrâd, strong and faithful in strength, fed the ass. As he was going out into a wide field, he saw a ravenous wolf running [towards him]: he hid his head and showed his tail. The wolf ran up: he bit his tail, the ass kicked with both legs, and fought a long battle with the wolf. When he felt that his strength failed him, he uttered a loud lamentation and called out his lady that he was dying. Hearing the loud voice of the donkey, Alfrâd ran. “Sisters,” he said. “Come, help me. I sent my dear donkey to the grass. I hear his great cry, I hope with him that he will fight the wolf.” The cry of the sisters penetrated the cells, a crowd of men and women rushed to catch the bloodied wolf. For Adela Alfrâd’s sister complains to Rikila, she finds Agatha, and they run as hard as they can, for they would destroy the enemy. But he broke the donkey’s ribs and out gushed a wave of blood, and he devoured all the flesh at once, and entered the forest. When the sisters saw this, they tore their hair, beat their breasts, and wept at the senseless death of the donkey. The last carried a small chicken; Alfrâd wept for him the most, hoping that the child would grow up in time. Both gentle Adela and sweet Fritherun came to strengthen and heal Alverâde’s heart. “And you, my sister, do not grieve! The wolf does not care about the cry of the distressed: the lord will give you another donkey.” There is insufficient evidence to tell us whether most or all domestic animals were named by their owners, or more likely by those who handled them day by day. The “dear donkey” above is not named by the composer of the song, despite the sisters’ regard for it. But shepherds and herders probably used some form of identification other than marks or brands. As we know from modern times, it is also possible for the human to have some form of attachment for 27 Folios 432–41 of the manuscript MS Gg. 5.35. A few of the songs also survived in Germany. The goliards were a group of mainly young clergy who wrote satirical Latin poetry in the 11th and 12th centuries, but the term goliard came to mean simply jongleur or similar by the fourteenth century. Its origin is unknown. See Bryan Gillingham, The Social Background to Secular Medieval Latin Song, Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen 60/3 (Ottawa: The Institute of Mediæval Music, 1998). 28 The Cambridge Songs; a Goliard’s Song Book of the XIth Century, ed. Karl Breul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915): Sacerdos et Lupus.

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his or her animal and still slaughter it when required. In one of the fabliaux, satiric tales of twelfth and thirteenth-century northern France, the shepherd names a missing sheep. The poem is typical of the genre – bawdy, anti-clerical, misogynistic and often crudely humourous; a travelling butcher is refused accommodation on a dark night by an arrogant and rude priest who has contempt for the common folk, but having discovered that a nearby flock of sheep belongs to the priest, the butcher steals the best and returns to the priest’s house by a detour, carrying it as his own and calling himself David. The priest greedily accepts his offer to share the meat with him in return for a bed. They eat the mutton, and when the priest sets out to church early next morning the butcher sleeps with his maid and then his wife, offering each of them the sheep’s fleece in return. He then sets off to the church and sells the skin to the priest for a knock-down price, saying he has no wish to carry it home. The priest realizes he has eaten his own sheep and bought his hide, and the women of the house (after an argument) that they have sold their bodies for nothing, when the shepherd appears at the priest’s house: Eustache d’Amiens, Le Bouchier d’Abevile (The Butcher of Abbeville), lines 516–56129 “The devil take you! What’s with you you no-good tramp? What brings you here? What’s with this frown from ear to ear, son of a sow? You slob! You creep! You should be out watching your sheep! I ought to give you a good shaking.” “But one of your sheep has been taken, master, the best of all the herd! I can’t think how or what occurred.” “So, now you’ve gone and lost a sheep! That shows what kind of watch you keep! You should be hanged or thrown in prison!” The shepherd answered, “Master, listen. Late in the evening yesterday I met a stranger on the way back into town, whom I had never 29 The Fabliaux: A New Verse Translation, ed. and trans. Nathaniel Dubin (New York: Liverlight, 2013): “Le Bouchier d’Abevile.” Numbered 45 in Dubin’s collection, it is one of the few that has a named author. The book has the original Old French version as well. Here I have changed three modern North American insult words to more ‘international’ English-language ones.

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seen in the fields or road, wherever, who eyed my flock most carefully and made a point of asking me who owned such admirable beasts, and I said, ‘Sire, they are our priest’s.’ He, I imagine, was the thief.” “David, by my Christian belief! Our guest last night!” exclaimed the priest. “I’ve been outsmarted! I’ve been fleeced!! He’s fucked all the women in my house and sold me my own skin! …” “The sheepskin, would you recognize it?” Master, what? If I’ve a chance to look, I’ll know at a glance. For seven years I’ve had that flock.” He takes the hide and has a look. The ears and head identified the sheep that had supplied the hide. “Aha! By God,” the shepherd shouted, “sir, that’s Cornello, don’t you doubt it, my most favourite animal and much the gentlest of them all! By St Vincent, whose faith I keep, I’d say out of a hundred sheep there’s no fatter or finer beast.” trans. Nathaniel E. Dubin

2

The Lot of the Working Animal

The keeping of animals for produce and food was not questioned in the Middle Ages, as it was believed that God had created nonhuman animals to serve humans, but just as it was the Fall and subsequent events that had caused many animals to become hostile to humans, so many animals who were ‘naturally amenable to humans’ had to be encouraged to do their tasks and sometimes tamed.30 In his Book of Beasts Ramón Llull (1232–1316) imagined the perspective of anthropomorphized animals. In Aelfric’s Colloquy above, hardship is the lot of the humans who manage or hunt animals, but here we read that the 30

See Ch. 1, pp. 31–39.

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lot of the working animals is worse. The Book of Beasts is the seventh book of Llull’s Felix (or Book of Wonders), but differs from the other six in that the narrator disappears and we have series of animal fables, the central character being a cunning fox who manipulates her way into the confidence and highest service of the lion king but ultimately overplays her hand.31 It owes nothing to the Reynard epics other than the fox’s name and its genre as a satire of human political-courtly behaviour, and has more in common with some Arabic tales in which animals discuss their subservient relationship to humans.32 Ramón Llull, Félix, Book Seven, which handles the Beasts. 37: The Election of the King33 One day it came to pass that the horse and the ox met, and each asked the other about his situation. The horse said that he was very overworked in the service of his master, for every day he was ridden and made to gallop up hill and down hill, and was in harness day and night. The horse desired greatly to be free of this servitude to his master, and he would have willingly undergone submission to the lion. But because of the fact that the lion ate meat, and because the horse had received some votes in the election of king, he was afraid to return to the land where the lion reigned, and preferred to suffer beneath the dominion of man, who does not eat horseflesh, rather than be in the company of the lion, who does. After the horse had told him about his situation, the ox replied that he too was very overworked, every day, from ploughing, and that his master would not let him eat the wheat grown on the land he ploughed, but instead, when he was finished with his ploughing and exhausted from it, he was sent to graze on the grass the sheep and goats had been eating while he was out ploughing. The ox complained bitterly about his master, and the horse consoled him as best he could. While the ox and the horse were conversing in this way, a butcher came to see if the ox was fat, for the ox’s master had offered him up for sale. The ox said to the horse that his master wanted to sell him to be killed and given to man to eat. The horse said this was a poor reward for the service he had rendered. For a long time the horse and the ox wept, and the horse advised the ox to flee and return to his native land; for it was better to be 31

The fox is not explicitly stated to be a vixen, but the name Na Renart is feminine gender, translated ‘Dame Reinart’ by Bonner. 32 Llull was familiar with much Arabian literature. 33 “The Book of the Beasts,” in Doctor Illuminatus: A Ramon Llull Reader, ed. and trans. Anthony Bonner (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993): The Book of the Beasts, Ch. 37.

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in danger of death, but in peace among one’s own kind, than in danger of death and suffering under an ungrateful master. trans. Anthony Bonner

Later, when the ox has returned to the lion’s kingdom and he is taken by the fox/vixen to see the king, the ox declares that “the snake had spoken the truth when he said that the most evil and false animal in the world is man.” Apuleius was a second-century Roman author, but his work Metamorphoses (or Asinus Aureus  – The Golden Ass  – the name by which it was commonly known to medieval people) was very well-known and influential in the Middle Ages; the working conditions in which Lucius, having unintentionally turned himself into a donkey instead of a bird with a witch’s ointment, were as applicable then as they had been when it was written, bearing out what Bartholomew had to say of the animal, and would have been familiar to many medieval readers. At this point Lucius has ended up as servant to a baker. The use of equines here might be described as industrial processing of agricultural produce, but it illustrates a human tendency to drive animals to their limits and even to regard them as expendable, whatever treatises might say about maintaining their health, when they are outside the human moral compass. Rotary mills were used throughout the classical and medieval periods, and horse-, mule-. and donkey-driven ones existed from at least the fourth century BCE, the earliest known being Carthaginian.34 These animals had a superior stamina to humans and freed millers or their human servants from an onerous task, increasing output in the process. Watermills were known to the Greeks and Romans, and the use of windmills grew in Europe from the twelfth century onwards, but all three types continued in widespread use until their decline began with the advent of steam power in the nineteenth century. Apuleius, Asinus Aureus (The Golden Ass) Bk 9.11, 12–1335 In that place there were many animals turning various millstones, not just during the day, but even all through the night: by lamplight they turned on and on, those never-sleeping flour-milling contraptions. But for me, so that I should not be horrified at the beginning of my service, the new master provided me with clean places at length: for he also made the first day a free one and stocked the stall abundantly with food. However, that 34

Mariette de Vos, “The Rural Landscape of Thugga: Farms, Presses, Mills, and Transport”, in Alan Bowman and Andrew Wilson, eds., The Roman Agricultural Economy: Organization, Investment, and Production (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013): 143–218 (p. 178). 35 Apuleius. The Golden Ass, Being the Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius, trans. W. Adlington, rev. S. Gaselee (Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press, 1971): Liber IX. 11, 12–13.

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leisure and happiness did not last long, for on the following day I was tied to the millstone in the morning with my face covered, so that I would not become giddy from retracing my steps around and around but maintain a certain course. But not forgetting my prudence, I gave myself an easy apprenticeship to training. Although when I was a man I had often seen many such mills and knew well enough how they should turn, I stood in feigned ignorance, thinking that I would be thought less fit for this kind of service and entrusted with lighter work and be fed as an idler. But in vain I practised my skill, for several servants immediately surrounded me, armed with staves, and suddenly giving a signal and shouting, they rained blows upon me, so that I abandoned all my plans: and the sudden change caused the whole group to laugh. Most of the day had now passed and I was almost worn out when my yoke was undone; I was freed from my device and tied to the stall. But although I was exhausted and very much in need of getting my strength back, almost dead through hunger, still my natural curiosity, and no little anxiety, struck me; delaying eating of the plentiful food that was available, I started to observe the workings of this dreadful place with something approaching delight. […36] Now, as for my stabled comrades, how can I describe them? Such aged mules and worn-out donkeys! Around the stalls their bowed heads were gnawing at masses of straw, the loose skin on their necks covered in putrefying sores, and their nostrils periodically gaping with their feeble coughs, chests chafed by the continual rubbing of their harnesses, ribs bared through ceaseless beating, hooves splayed from their constant walking round and round, and skin covered in dirt and roughened with mange from emaciation. 3

Foresta and Parks

In medieval Europe, the purpose of these game reserves and parks was not protection of species as we would know it nowadays, but to ensure that numbers of the protected animals were maintained at a sufficient level for the king and privileged aristocracy to hunt and eat. In effect it was a transference of large numbers of previously free animals into the ownership of a select group of humans. The forest animals were no more protected from killing than farm animals on their owners’ land. Nevertheless, this was a form of conservation, 36

The passage describing the appalling condition of the human slaves occurs here; something more relevant to Roman times.

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as the forest areas were protected from subsequent clearing for cultivation and there were attempts to maintain sufficient quarry animals for the hunts. Deer hunting was sometimes suspended if deer numbers fell too low. In England, Henry III did this for two years in Feckenham Forest in 1271 and Henry VII did the same for three years in Pickering Forest in 1489.37 Preservation of those animal species suitable as food for humans or quarry in the hunt, however, meant elimination of other species such as wolves, rivals to humans as predators and considered inedible. The establishment of parks, enclosed areas of land within which the owners had the right to hunt any game, was a development in England after the Norman Conquest. The crown granted the right to “impark,” an area of land, which meant surround it with a ditch and hedge, fence, or stone wall, the usual demarcation being a wooden pale, and virtually every park had a hunting or park-keeper’s lodge and observation platform. Parks were often attached to a residence such as a castle; the description of Sir Bertilak’s estate when it is first noticed by Gawain in his quest to meet his fate at the hands of the Green Knight is clearly based on the parks which were common in England by c.1400, the approximated date of the poem. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 2, lines 763–77038 No sooner had he signed himself three times than he became aware, in those woods, of high walls in a moat, on a mound, bordered by the boughs of thick-trunked timber which trimmed the water. The most commanding castle a knight ever kept, positioned in a site of sweeping parkland with a palisade of pikes pitched in the earth in the midst of tall trees for two miles or more. trans. Simon Armitage

Evidence that these boundary features were common in the English landscape by the High Middle Ages is also provided by the Pipe Rolls, in which they frequently mark the edge of land donated or owned by named people. Below is an example of a deed granting the right to impark to an abbot, and another to retain the right to a secular landowner. Despite repeated church rulings banning its clergy from hunting and the carrying of weapons in the early Middle 37 John Aberth, An Environmental History of the Middle Ages (London, Routledge, 2013), 189. 38 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. and trans. Simon Armitage (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007): II.

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Ages, senior churchmen owned parks and chases and took part in hunts just as lay nobility did, especially in the High Middle Ages and later. Carta Abbatis Beate Marie Eboracensis (Charter granting the right impark to Abbot Robert of St Mary’s, York), 120439 John, by the grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, [etc.], to the Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, Counts, Barons, Justiciaries, Sheriffs, Prefects, and all their bailiffs and faithful servants. Know that we have granted and confirmed by the present charter to Robert the Abbot of St. Mary of York that he may enclose his wood in Normanby called Gauthscou and make a park out of it, which he is to hold peacably, freely, and quietly, like a free park with all its appurtenances to do there what he would. Moreover, we have granted and by this charter confirmed to the aforesaid Abbot that he and his successors may forever take foxes and hares in our forests throughout Yorkshire freely without any contradiction, and we forbid upon pain of forfeiture that anyone should hinder them from [exercising] the aforesaid [rights]. Witnesses: Galfrid son of Peter Earl of Essex, Robert Earl of Clare, [etc.]. Given by the hand of the lord of Chester from the City of Winchester on the 13th day of April in the fifth year of our reign [1204]. Carta Radulphi de Bolemer (Charter granted to Ralph of Bulmer by Edward II)40 Edward, by the grace of God, King of England, Lord of Hibernia and Duke of Aquitaine, greetings to the Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, Priors, Earls, Barons, Justiciaries, Sheriffs, prefects, ministers, and all their bailiffs and faithful [servants]. Be it known that, with good memory, Lord John, formerly King of England, our great-grandfather, by his charter which we have examined, granted to Alan of Wilton and his heirs a license that they may enclose his wood of Thornton Riseborough, and make of it a free park, and that they may keep dogs in the aforesaid town to run in that park, and to have a warren at Wilton outside the forest, with the appurtenances, namely Wilton Coatham, Lazenby and Lackenby, as is more fully included in that charter, and Alan by virtue of the aforesaid charter enclosed the forest and repaired the park, and granted it with its appurtenances [the liberties of the warren] to our beloved and faithful Ralph of Bulmer. We, wishing to make a special concession, granted to the same 39 The Honor and Forest of Pickering, ed. Robert Bell Turton (London: North Riding Record Society, 1897): Duchy of Lancaster Records, 98–99. 40 Honor and Forest of Pickering, 118.

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Ralph that he and his heirs should have and hold the park and the liberties of the aforesaid warren, as Alan had them by virtue of the aforesaid charter, without the let or hindrance of the king, his heirs, the Justiciaries, the Escheators, sheriffs, or other bailiffs or officers of any kind. We further granted and by this charter of ours confirmed to the same Ralph that he and his heirs for ever shall have free warren within all his demesne lands of Bulmer and Wellburn in the county of Yorkshire, provided that those lands are not within the bounds of our [royal] forest, so that no one shall enter those lands to hunt in them, or to take anything else that belongs to the warren without the license and agreement of Ralph himself and his heirs, upon forfeiture of ten pounds. Witnesses [etc.], Given by our hand at Berwick-on-Tweed, on the 7th of November in the fourth year of our reign [1308]. While written sources may name parks and chases, landscape archaeology has provided most of the evidence for the extent and location of parks that had disappeared during the late Middle Ages or early modern period, and sometimes of their uses. Often a number of deer were ‘donated’ (allowed to be taken from the king’s forest) to inhabit a park. However, recent research has shown that the main limiting factor for anyone who wanted to establish a park was wealth and that the crown took little interest beyond granting the right to have one. Although deer were the most common animals in such parks, wild boar and livestock were sometimes kept in them as well. In the medieval accounts relating to Blansby Park in Yorkshire we find, among others, the following references from the High Middle Ages: “£4 9s 8d for cattle agisted [taken in and fed for payment] in Blansby Park …” “no pannage of pigs this year in Blansby Park …” “Six cartloads of hay bought at Kekkemarsh and carted 9 miles to Blansby Park for 17 mares, 7 three-year-old colts, 5 three-year old fillies, 5 two-year-olds, 6 yearlings and 10 foals and the deer in the Park. …”41 Even the ‘wild’ animals were semi-domesticated, as they had to be fed, sheltered in winter and as far as possible kept free of disease. Hence areas were set aside as grass pastures and artificial ponds constructed (also useful for wildfowl and fish), while hay, browsewood and oats were gathered as winter fodder and dead animals disposed of. Needless to say, the landowner employed a number 41 Honor and Forest of Pickering, 216, 217, 225.

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of watchers and foresters to guard all the animals. The whole enterprise was very expensive to maintain, but even if its main purpose was to enable hunting and a ready supply of game meat, a privilege of the highest secular and ecclesiastical aristocracy, parks could also provide income as they were integrated into the local economy. By the end of the thirteenth century there were over 3000 parks in England, where they were more heavily concentrated than anywhere else. However, they were established in most areas in the High Middle Ages: for instance, by 1230 there were fifty parks even in Denmark. This was at the height of medieval agricultural prosperity, which created income for the nobility. During the previous 250 years royal forest land had contracted throughout Europe as more land was cultivated, and privately owned land, including parks, had increased in number. Many parks were used for other purposes during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but a revival occurred in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Parks, chases, forests and cultivated land itself all constituted a taming of the wilderness. The park was a substitution of some form of order for chaos. Rather like the Romans, the aristocracy of the large medieval kingdoms often equated untamed landscape with untamed peoples, whether they be the Baltic Slavs (the so-called ‘Wends’), Prussians, Estonians or Irish. In 1612 Sir John Davies, James I’s attorney-general in Ireland, wrote that if there had been more development of “forrests, chaces, and parkes” in Ireland after the initial (Anglo-Norman) conquest the land would have been long since subdued: in other words, a reason that the Gaelic Irish had been so difficult to overcome was not just that the people were obdurate and uncivilized, but that the land remained as wilderness.42 Pigs did little damage to woodland, nor did the encouragement of bees for ‘honey-hunting’, but other domestic animals that did more harm were also driven into the woods. Horses and cattle created areas of wood pasture and sheep and goats did even more damage, destroying the trees. Overgrazing contributed to the agricultural crises that occurred as the climate became less friendly to agriculture in the fourteenth century. To an extent medieval people were aware of the problem, hence goat grazing was often forbidden in forest regulations, but it continued as the priority of poorer folk was survival.43

42 43

Fiona Beglane, Anglo-Norman Parks in Medieval Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2015), 141–42. The effects of medieval clearance for agriculture, mining, charcoal burning, salt extraction, and timber and resin collection in privately owned woodland areas also drastically

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The large parks containing deer and boar were not the only “animal enclosures” created by the nobility. Attached to many were smaller “little parks,” usually near the residence, which were part-gardens and contained animals for viewing only. Among the functions of the park was simply a display of wealth and power, for the benefit of guests but also the owner himself, essentially the same function as a menagerie. The account roll for the manor of Downham in 1345–46 records payments made to men “to drive deer from one part of the park to another so that the bishop may see them.”44 The owner was the newly appointed bishop of Ely, Thomas de Lisle. As we see below, Count Robert II of Artois’ park at Hesdin contained items designed to make him stand out even among his own class. For smaller game there were smaller parks called warrens, as referred to in the 1308 charter above. Some depictions of ladies hunting smaller animals with bows and arrows clearly portray them in warrens. Rabbits (conies) and hares seem to have been the most commonly hunted game animals there, but warrens also contained foxes, badgers, otters, wildcats (lynx?), martens, squirrels, partridge, pheasants, plovers and larks. Some of the mammals were ‘pests’, hunted to prevent them from taking game animals. Stone-lined burrows known as pillow mounds were constructed for the rabbits, but they began to escape into the countryside in large numbers. Rabbits were widespread in France by the end of the Middle Ages and in England by the eighteenth century. In England warrens existed only outside the royal forest, but as in the case of the larger parks a landowner needed a license to create one. A fine of £10 was set for trespass. These warrens might hold large numbers of small animals: in the example of a court case below, Walter Moton, warden of the wood at Ross and the bailiff of the bishop’s lands, was first accused of entering the bishop’s chase at Ross and taking 500 stags and hinds, 500 fallow deer and 300 roe deer, as well as doing other damage, amounting to £100 in all. Here he is accused of poaching in the warrens, and in yet another hearing after this, he failed to account for receipt and expenditure of funds. He was forced to resign. The bishop’s claim concerning the value of the damage done was probably exaggerated, or at least difficult to prove  – Walter was ordered to pay £4 in damages in both poaching cases  – but the animals listed here appear to be those typically kept in warrens.

44

diminished tree cover, and the results are still apparent in Europe. The royal forests were protected from much of this over-use. Quoted in Aberth, An Environmental History of the Middle Ages, 182. Ely Diocesan Records, D10/2/17.

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Registrum Johannis de Trillek Episcopi Herefordensis (The Register of John of Trillek, Bishop of Hereford, AD 1344–1361), February 12, 135445 Pleas made at Westminster before J. de Stonor and his associates, justiciaries of the lord king of the bench, on the eighth of St. Michael, in the 26th year of the reign of King Edward the Third from the conquest, etc. Roll 2. Walter Motone in mercy for several defaulters. The same Walter was summoned to answer to John, bishop of Hereford, concerning the plea wherefore he entered by force and arms the free warren of the bishop himself at Ross, Upton, Ledbury, and Eastnor, and in it without license and of his own free will drove away and took hares, rabbits, partridges, and pheasants, and other less common things, to the grave damage of the bishop himself, and against king’s peace, etc.; and thence the same bishop, through Nicholas de Rook, his attorney, complains that the aforesaid William, on the Monday next after the feast of St. James the apostle, in the year of the reign of the lord king of England, now the 26th, by force and arms, with swords, bows, and arrows, he entered the free warren of the bishop himself at Ross, Upton, Ledbury, and Eastnor, and there he drove without license and of his own free will and took and carried off five hundred hares, mullet, millet, and two hundred pheasants, and other things, etc., from which he [the bishop] says that it has deteriorated and has a loss to the value of 1000 pounds.46 And from there he produces a suit. To stock their tables for guests most nobles employed huntsmen or used servants as and when required. Caring for the hunting animals and organizing the hunts were important tasks and those who served a ruler in this capacity could rise to attain a higher position (in name if not breeding), just as they might in war. At every court in Europe the men who supervised these matters had considerable status and privileges. At the end of the thirteenth century Latins began to manufacture their own ‘animals.’ In tales there had long been a fascination with automata that imitated the actions of humans or other animals. They were known by some to have existed in the Islamic world and Byzantium for several centuries, and some types even dated from the Hellenistic period. Among the gifts given by Harun-al-Raschid to Charlemagne was a water clock with moving animal models attached. In the late thirteenth century Count Robert II of Artois had a 45 Registrum Johannis de Trillek Episcopi Herefordensis, AD. MCCCXLIV–MCCCLXI, ed. Joseph Henry Parry (London: The Canterbury and York Society, 1912): 19, AD 1353, Feb. 12. 46 The “M” here (1000) may be a mistake: in the previous case concerning poaching of larger animals, the damage was claimed to be the value of £100.

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number of automata constructed for his park at Hesdin. His daughter Mahaut (Mathilda) inherited his possessions and maintained the “engines” at considerable cost. Our main evidence for them comes from the accounts of the estates. These automata included artificial birds and monkeys. Accounts of the Château of Hesdin, 1312 and 131447 1312: … To open and mend the engines of the pavilion, to open to re-cover the monkeys of the pavilion and put a horn on each, to remake images in the arch Madame and in several lius by the castle. For it instruments with white gleaming pewter surface, with which we have tinned the heads of the nails of the windows of the manor lodge. To cure 4 badger skins to cover the monkeys of the pavilion, and for 80 white nails to fix them, 2 s. 8 d. … 1314: … To repaint the gables of the entrance chamber in the hall as escus. For 4 hundredweight of fine gold to gild the apple trees and birds of the gloriette, at 16 s. the hundred, worth 64 s. The mechanisms that worked the birds, which squirted water, and made the monkeys move, are not known, but hydraulic power was most common at this date. These wonders explored the boundary between nature and artifice by attempting to (re)create nature, as or more impressive to observers than ‘controlling’ it by enclosing actual living animals in the park or displaying exotic animals. Nature and artifice were not so distinct in the minds of medieval natural philosophers or other educated people as they are in ours; the cosmos was thought of as a well-ordered moving system created by God, one reason for the late medieval interest in creating astronomical clocks that often incorporated religious symbolism: that is, displaying the linear progression towards the apocalypse as well as the cyclical movement of hours, days and seasons. The Hesdin “engines” fell into disrepair after Mahaut’s time, but the estate passed to Philip “the Good”, duke of Burgundy at the end of the fourteenth century and he restored or adjusted them and added more. He created a sort of theme park where visiting aristocracy who entered the pavilion could not escape without being soaked with water, hit with sticks and being covered in soot and flour.48 47 Archives départementales antérieures à 1790, Pas-de-Calais, Série A, Série D. Accessed 6.8.2023. https://www.archivespasdecalais.fr/Chercher/Fonds-et-collections/Archives -anciennes. 48 Medieval humour was sometimes rather vicious (by our standards), but the nobility could afford to have a few expensive garments ruined and could express their wealth by changing into another set of expensive clothes.

Chapter 5

Hunting The distinction between wild and domestic animals, as noted earlier, is not always clear because the distinguishing factors do not always coincide for each animal species. One determinant was whether a nonhuman animal lived beyond human control and had to be hunted by them if they wanted its produce, or was maintained and enclosed by humans and slaughtered by them for consumption. The determination of which animals could be hunted, when they could be hunted and where was closely connected to questions of ownership, which were determined by law, in the eyes of medieval theorists both divine and human. The question of ownership of animals and who had the right to hunt them is handled in Chapter 6, whereas the nature of the hunt and the human attitudes to hunting as an activity and the nonhuman animals involved in it are the main focus here. 1

Defining the Medieval Hunt

In the Middle Ages the nobility tried to ensure that hunting large game was largely their preserve. Nevertheless, a large section of the population engaged in the seeking out and capture or killing of wild animals. For most medieval authors, these activities were distinguished with different names according to the prey. Hugh of St Victor, Eruditionis Didascalicae Libri Septem (Didascalion1), Bk 2, Ch. 26. De venatione (On hunting)2 Hunting is divided into game-hunting, fowling, and fishing. Game-hunting is practised in many ways – with nets, foot-traps, snares, pits, the bow, javelins, the spear, by encircling the quarry, or smoking it out, or pursuing it with dogs or hawks. Fowling is done with snares, traps, nets, the bow, birdlime, and hook. Fishing is done with dragnets, lines, hooks, and spears. To this discipline belongs the preparation of all foods, seasonings, 1 The name by which the work is commonly known in English; lit. trans. Seven books of Instructive Learning. 2 Hugh of Saint-Victor, Eruditionis Didascalicae Libri Septem, ed. J.-P. Migne, PL, MPL 176, 0739–0838D: Liber Secundus, Cap. XXVI.

© Koninklijke Brill BV, Leiden, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004721708_007

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and drinks. Its name, however, is taken from only one part of it because in antiquity men used to eat solely by hunting, as they still do in certain regions where eating of bread is extremely rare, where flesh is the only food and water or mead the drink.3 Three hundred years earlier, essentially the same methods of capturing and killing animals were listed in Abbot Aelfric’s Colloquy, intended to assist novice monks in learning Latin. Aelfric of Eynsham, Colloquy4 Huntsman: I am a huntsman. Master: Whose? Huntsman. The king’s. Master: In what way do you practise your art? Huntsman: I make myself nets, and set them in a fitting spot, and I urge on my dogs, to chase the wild animals, till unawares they get into the nets, and so they are entangled, and I cut their throats when in the nets. Master: Don’t you know how to hunt without nets? Huntsman. Yes, I am able to hunt without nets. Master: How do you manage that? Huntsman: I hunt the wild animals with swift dogs. I take stags, and boars, and fallow deer, and goats, and sometimes hares. Master: Were you hunting today? Huntsman: I was not, because it is the Lord’s Day, but yesterday I was hunting. Master: What did you catch? Huntsman: I took the stags in nets, and I cut the throat of the boar. Master: How was it that you were daring enough to cut the throat of the boar? Huntsman: The dogs drove him towards me, and I, standing towards him, suddenly cut his throat. Master: You were very daring then. Huntsman: A huntsman must not be fearful, for various beasts haunt the woods. Master: How do you dispose of what you have caught? 3 Vincent of Beauvais repeated this paragraph almost word for word in his Speculum Doctrinale, 11: De arte mechanica (On the mechanical arts), 101: De venatione (On hunting). 4 “Ælfrici colloquium,” in Analectica Saxonica: A Selection, in Prose and Verse, from Anglo-Saxon Authors, ed. Benjamin Thorpe (London: John Russell Smith, 1868), 18–36: pp. 21–26.

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Huntsman: I give whatever I catch to the King, as I am his huntsman. Master: And what does he give you? Huntsman: He clothes and feeds me well, and sometimes he gives me a horse, or a bracelet, that I may the more willingly practise my art. Master: What craft do you know? Fisherman: I am a fisherman. Master: And what do you gain by your craft? Fisherman: Food, and clothing, and money. Master: How do you catch the fish? Fisherman: I get into a boat, and place my nets in the river, and I throw in a hook, and baskets, and whatever they catch I take. Master: What if your fishes are not clean? Fisherman: I throw the unclean away and take the clean ones for food. … Master: What kinds of fish do you catch? Fisherman: Eels and pike, minnows and burbot, trout and lampreys, and any fish that swim in the river. Master: Why don’t you fish in the sea? Fisherman: I do sometimes, but it is a long way to the sea, so I seldom go there. Master: What do you catch in the sea? Fisherman: Herrings and salmon, dolphins and sturgeons, oysters and crabs, mussels and winkles, cockles, plaice, soles and lobsters, and the like. … Master: Fowler, what have you to say? How do you deceive the birds? Fowler: I have many ways of deceiving the birds; sometimes by nets, sometimes by snares, sometimes by lime, sometimes by whistling, sometimes by a hawk, sometimes by a trap. Master: Have you a hawk? Fowler: I have one. Master: Do you know how to tame them? Fowler: Yes, I know how. What use would they be to me unless I knew how to tame them? … Master: How do you feed your hawks? Fowler: They feed themselves, and me in the winter, and in the spring I let them fly away to the wood, and I catch young ones in the autumn and tame them. Master: And why do you allow those whom you have tamed to fly away from you?

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Fowler: Because I do not like feeding them in the summer, for they eat too much. Master: Yet many persons keep the hawks which they have tamed through the summer, that they may have them ready again. Fowler. Yes, they do, but I am not inclined to bestow so much labour on them, as I know how to catch others, and many of them. trans. Samuel Harvey Gem

The term ‘hunting’ refers specifically to taking wild mammals, while the taking of wild birds might be called fowling, falconry or hawking. However, here I use the word ‘hunting’ in a general sense to refer to the taking of both mammals and birds and specify it as referring only to mammals where necessary. Reasons for hunting varied from pest control, acquisition of food or raw materials and recreation to the symbolic. Human hunting of nonhuman animals is an activity that is probably older than the homo sapiens species, although early hominids may have been scavengers rather than hunters. The social importance of hunting is inextricably linked to the value attributed to animal flesh in most human diets, perhaps even the cause of its importance. The animals that provide meat have to be trapped at the very least, possibly chased and outwitted, and perhaps even ‘fought.’ If the animal quarry is large or moves quickly and uses stratagems to evade capture, taking or killing it is much easier when two or more humans cooperate in the hunt. It is possibly the effort and sometimes danger involved that has made meat such a valued prize for humans. Unlike warfare, in which many of the same personal arms have been used, hunting has become progressively easier and less dangerous for humans. The reason is simply that nonhuman opponents in the hunt have not had the capacity to counter human technology, at best being able to recognize some of the new dangers and learning to avoid humans as much as possible. There is little evidence that any weight of armour was worn in the hunt, not least because it was impractical for a long chase. The great advance was in use of projectiles, from thrown stones to spears, to spears-throwers, slings, bows and crossbows, with specially designed arrowheads to match. Firearms were inaccurate and more useful for firing at mass targets even in the 1500s. Nets and traps had been used for millennia and advances in their design were gradual. Hunting still had its dangers for hunters in the fifteenth century, but not necessarily from the quarry animals, and when this was the case the dangers were often created by the hunters’ own insistence on making the confrontation with the

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quarry a contest when none would have been necessary were the sole object procurement of meat.5 Hunting and fowling had several functions in the Middle Ages, much as they had in Antiquity. For the elite hunting was a not only a pastime but an essential aspect of a male education, a demonstration of control over the wild and perhaps courage, and practice for warfare. Hunting large animals gave good training in leadership skills as well as weapon and riding skills, practice in use of weapons and knowledge of the importance of terrain. It also required mutual trust and cooperation between the members of the hunting party, whose members would frequently have been the same who fought together on campaign. Those who mentioned these ‘military’ aspects of the hunt, such as King Alfonso XI of Castile (1311–1350) and Machiavelli (1469–1527), did not mention another aspect that may have been important, which was accustomisation to killing, probably because they did not recognize killing nonhuman animals as in any way comparable to killing humans.6 Whatever the ostensible educative functions of hunting, it was a pastime to which the European knightly classes became addicted and which they practised wherever they went. On their travels European nobility normally took as many of their household goods with them as they could, even on campaign; during his destructive expedition of 1360 in northern Burgundy, the English king Edward III and his nobles still found time to hunt. John Froissart, Chroniques [Ch. 25]: How the king of England, as he went, wasted and destroyed the country; and how he came to Aguillon, and there tarried; and of the great provision that came after his host7 Also the king had some thirty falconers on horseback, with hawks, and some sixty pairs of hounds, and as many greyhounds, so that almost every day either he hunted or hawked at the river, as it pleased him, and many others among the great lords had hounds and hawks, as well as the king. Despite the emphasis placed on forms of hunting practised by the aristocracy in medieval vitae and hunting manuals, their agents also hunted to acquire fresh meat for their tables and must have taken far more animals than the 5 The danger to human hunters is now negligible, and even in the Middle Ages the risk to humans of being injured by a missile from fellow hunters or perhaps a fall from a horse seems to have been greater than the risk of injury by the quarry animal. 6 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. and trans. George Bull (London: Penguin, 2013): Ch. 14. 7 Froissart, John, Oeuvres De Froissârt: Chroniques, Vol. 6. Edited by Kervyn De Lettenhove (Brussels: Victor Devaux, 1869): Ch. 25, as given in most English translations.

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aristocracy themselves did. Claims by members of the aristocracy that their hunting controlled the numbers of animals that threatened human livelihoods are not very credible, as this sort of hunting was practised much more efficiently by professional and mainly lower-class agents. For poorer folk hunting might be a necessary supplement to their diet, but there was also a thriving black market in illegally taken meat and all social classes engaged in poaching. The major hunting treatise of the ancient world, Xenophon’s, and Arrian’s supplement to it, were known to medieval noble hunters and many of their methods were still used, although the medieval ritualized noble hunt was invariably conducted by the aristocracy (but not necessarily by their assistants) on horseback.8 In the High Middle Ages several hunting treatises were written in west and central Europe, which emphasized the stylized hunt par force of hounds. Already in the second century CE Arrian had shown disdain for Xenophon’s recommended methods of killing deer, and his attitude conforms closely to the later medieval aristocratic one; Arrian, On Hunting, 249 This is how those who have good hounds and horses hunt, not deceiving the beasts with traps or purse nets or nooses or in general with tricks and cleverness, but in straight competition. And the spectacle, in my opinion, is not to be compared with those others, but they are like robbery or theft, these are like war fought out with all one’s strength; and the one group approach the wild animals like pirates secretly sailing up on them, the others, like the Athenians defeating the Persians in the sea battle around Artemisium, or around Salamis and Psyttalea or again around Cyprus, so also they overcome the wild animal in open fight. trans. A.A. Phillips and M.M. Wilcock

There was a hiatus between the early third-century poetic hunting treatise of Pseudo-Oppian (or Oppian of Aramea), which seems to have achieved no great fame, and the first short medieval ones of the Carolingian period, but if we may assume that Arrian’s attitude was widespread among the aristocracy of the mid- to late Roman Empire, such an attitude probably also prevailed among the aristocracy of early medieval western, central and northern Europe. Their inheritance was also from the ‘barbarian’ peoples who had previously lived beyond the frontiers of the western Empire and both classical written 8 For both treatises and commentary: Xenophon & Arrian on Hunting (Κυνηγετικός), ed. and trans. A.A. Phillips and M.M. Willcock (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1999). 9 Arrian, “On Hunting,” in Xenophon & Arrian on Hunting, 91–127: 24.4–5.

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sources and zooarchaeology tells us that hunting of large animals was also important to their elite.10 Einhard, Vita Caroli Magni (Life of Charlemagne), Bk 3.2211 He [Charlemagne] exercised himself continually in riding and hunting, for such was the custom of his people: only with difficulty could you find another nation on earth who can measure with the Franks in this art. The above is the brief mention Charlemagne’s biographer and courtier Einhard made of his hunting prowess, which nevertheless emphasizes its importance. In the ninth century the Frankish monk Notker the Stammerer gave several more detailed accounts of Charlemagne’s or his people’s hunting prowess in his Gesta Karoli. He was writing some hundred years after the alleged events he describes, but even if his tales are part-fabrication they illustrate Carolingian attitudes to hunting. Notker claims that Charlemagne, dressed in a sheepskin himself, led his courtiers on a hunt across rough terrain and through thorny undergrowth until their clothes were in rags, this being an exercise intended to teach them humility and frugality, supposedly the way of the Franks.12 He also claims (dubiously) that the “Persian” ambassadors to Frankia fled at the sight of bison and aurochs. The aurochs does not appear in the later hunting treatises as its numbers were diminishing by the time they were written, but it was a very large animal, standing about 1.8 metres at the shoulder.13 Notker obviously considers Charlemagne’s act in attacking the bison or aurochs with a sword heroic, even if we might consider it reckless. According to Gaston III of Foix (see below), it was difficult and risky even to attempt to kill a wild boar with a sword, but an admirable feat if it should succeed, and if it did indeed happen as Notker claims, it seems probable that Charlemagne was attempting a ‘fine kill.’ In Notker’s account, although Isembart outdoes Charlemagne by killing the animal, Charlemagne has outdone him in courage by attacking it at close quarters. And according to Notker, it is the animal that is “furious” at failing to do worse injury with its attack, whereas the king appears to remain

10 See Eric J. Goldberg, In the Manner of the Franks: Hunting, Kingship, and Masculinity in Early Medieval Europe (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020); Lora Webb, “Animal feelings: senses of the Carolingian hunt”, Postmedieval 12 (2021), 153–171. 11 Einhard. Einhardi Vita Karoli Magni, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz (Hanover: Hahn, 1845): Liber III, XXII. 12 Monachus Sangallensis (Notkerus Balbulus). De Carolo Magno, ed. G. Meyer von Knonau (St Gallen: Fehr’sche Buchhandlung, 1920): Liber II, VIII. 13 The last recorded aurochs died in Poland in 1627.

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unruffled. Notably, when Charlemagne returns from his auroch hunt, his queen Hildegard describes the beast killed by Isambard as an “enemy.” Notker the Stammerer, Gesta Karoli (The Deeds of Charlemagne), Bk 2.8 Then Charles, who would never endure idleness and sloth, went out to the woods to hunt the bison and the aurochs; and made preparations to take the Persian envoys with him. But when they saw the immense animals they were stricken with a mighty fear and turned and fled. But the undaunted hero Charles, riding on a high-mettled charger, drew near to one of these animals and drawing his sword tried to cut through its neck. But he missed his aim, and the monstrous beast ripped the boot and leg-thongs of the emperor; and, slightly wounding his calf with the tip of its horn, made him limp slightly: after that, furious at the failure of its stroke, it fled to the shelter of a valley, which was thickly covered with stones and trees. Nearly all his servants wanted to take off their own hose to give to Charles, but he forbade it saying: “I mean to go in this fashion to Hildigard.” Then Isembart, the son of Warin (the same Warin that persecuted your patron Saint Othmar), ran after the beast and not daring to approach him more closely, threw his lance and pierced him to the heart between the shoulder and the windpipe, and brought the beast yet warm to the emperor. Like Einhard, in the above excerpt Notker uses hunting as a method of displaying the prowess of the king, but below it also functions as proof of the Franks’ prowess as a people and a demonstration of their right to empire. The dogs exported to the “Persians” seem to be equivalents of the later medieval greyhounds and alaunts (similar to mastiffs).14 Notker implies that such hounds were largely unknown in the Middle East, but comparable dogs certainly were. Dogs were not favoured in Moslem society, but they were used for hunting. Possibly as hunters alaunts were rare in the Caliphate, but from the same region similar looking dogs are portrayed as early as the seventh century BCE in Assyrian reliefs showing King Ashurbanipal (r. 669–631 BCE) hunting lions from his chariot.15 Notker the Stammerer, Gesta Karoli (The Deeds of Charlemagne), Bk 2.9 Soon after, the unwearied emperor sent to the emperor of the Persians horses and mules from Spain; Frisian robes, white, grey, red and blue; 14 The “Persia” Notker refers to is the Caliphate, and their king/emperor (usually called Aaron in his Gesta) is Harun-al-Raschid (r. 786–809). 15 From the palace of Nimrud, now in the British Museum.

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which in Persia, he was told, were rarely seen and highly prized. Dogs too he sent him of remarkable swifness and fierceness, such as the king of Persia had desired, for the hunting and catching of lions and tigers. The king of Persia cast a careless eye over the other presents, but asked the envoys what wild beasts or animals these dogs were accustomed to fight with. He was told that they would pull down quickly anything they were set on to. “Well,” he said, “experience will test that.” Next day the shepherds were heard crying loudly as they fled from a lion. When the noise came to the palace of the king, he said to the envoys: “Now, my friends of Frankland, mount your horses and follow me.” Then they eagerly followed after the king as though they had never known toil or weariness. When they came in sight of the lion, though he was yet at a distance, the satrap of the satraps said to them: “Now set your dogs on to the lion.” They obeyed and eagerly galloped forward; the German dogs caught the Persian lion, and the envoys slew him with swords of northern metal, which had already been tempered in the blood of the Saxons. At this sight Haroun, the bravest inheritor of that name, understood the superior might of Charles from very small indications, and thus broke out in his praise: “Now I know that what I heard of my brother Charles is true: how that by the frequent practice of hunting, and by the unwearied training of his body and mind, he has acquired the habit of subduing all that is beneath the heavens. …” Asser’s account of King Alfred’s hunts differ from Notker’s of Charlemagne’s hunts in that Alfred is portrayed as setting an example of virtue to his people while demonstrating enlightened kingship. Hunting appears to be aligned with the practical arts, which included agriculture, another aspect of taming the wild. This alignment had been emphasized during the Carolingian Renaissance, which likely influenced England. However, in both Asser’s and Notker’s works we can see many of the concepts that reappear in the later treatises: the hunt as a demonstration of power and status by the noble organising it, bonding between nobles, reinforcement of the existing social structure, demonstration of religious and noble virtue, and exercise, as well as its close link to warfare. Asser, Vita Ælfredi regis Angul Saxonum (Life of King Alfred) 22 and 7616 22. An enthusiastic huntsman, he strives continuously in every branch of hunting, and not in vain; for no-one else could approach him in skill 16 Asser’s Life of King Alfred together with the Annals of Saint Neots erroneously ascribed to Asser, ed. William Henry Stevenson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959): 22 and 76.

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and success in that activity, just as in all other gifts of God, as I have often seen for myself. 76. Meanwhile the king, amidst the wars and the numerous interruptions of this present life – not to mention the Viking attacks and his continuous bodily infirmities – did not refrain from directing the government of the kingdom; pursuing all manner of hunting; giving instructions to his goldsmiths and craftsmen as well as to his falconers, hawk-trainers and dog-keepers; making to his own design wonderful and precious new treasures which far surpassed any tradition of his predecessors; reading aloud from books in English and above all learning English poems by heart; issuing orders to his followers; all these things he did himself with great application to the best of his abilities. 2

Quarry Animals

Both the animals that assisted in the hunt and some of those that were hunted were attributed forms of ‘nobility’ by the writers of hunting treatises and chivalric romances. The same group used specialized vocabulary for many parts of animals and actions taken during the hunt, especially the ritualized hunt par force (with hounds). In England many of the terms were French or derived from French, unsurprisingly when almost the entire aristocracy after the Norman Conquest was Norman-French in origin. However, also in other lands the terminology was specialized.17 While it was necessary to have distinct names for different types of dog used for different purposes and for certain actions that were special to the hunt, much of this terminology was used in place of everyday words that would have served the same purpose and to distinguish characteristics of certain hunted animals from others in an way unnecessary to hunting. This terminology became an aspect of a ritualized activity that was exclusive to the upper class, so that knowledge of it became a sign of superior breeding and gave certain quarry animals a special status as foes. In the earliest hunting treatises in Anglo-Norman French (soon translated to English) and French, from the early and mid-fourteenth century respectively, this vocabulary is already evident and necessary for the aspiring aristocratic hunter to learn.

17 On German medieval terminology, see David Dalby, Lexicon of the Mediaeval German Hunt. A Lexicon of Middle High German terms (1050–1500) associated with the Chase, Hunting with Bows, Falconry, Trapping and Fowling (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1965).

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Twiti begins with the hare, in his opinion the most marvellous beast (as quarry). The hare retains this status in all the subsequent English hunting treatises, but it does not have the same status in the treatises of any other country. In England the boar and the wolf had almost disappeared by the end of the fourteenth century and the number of red deer was already declining, but the hare was also valued because of its “trickery” when pursued and the time required to chase it down. In addition, it had a (seemingly) peculiar nature in being able to switch gender and having some characteristics of both ruminants and non-ruminants. Hares do not in fact ruminate, although they digest food in a similar way to ruminants. The belief that it could be both male and female was probably a misunderstanding, already widespread in ancient times, caused by the jack’s abdominal testicles descending only during the breeding season.18 When describing the use of the horn and its different calls appropriate for different quarry animals and stages of the hunt, Twiti says the horn should not be blown when hunting the hare; according to him, this should be done only when hunting male beasts. William Twiti, L’art de Venerie (The Art of Hunting), lines 1–2719 All those that will learn the art of hunting. I shall teach them as I have learned up to this time. Now we will begin with the hare. And why rather with the hare than another beast? I shall tell you why: for he is the most marvellous beast that is on the earth that possesses grece (fat of non-ruminants), crotz (defecated pellets) and roungez (ruminates). And this does no other beast except him on this earth. And sometimes she is male and sometimes female, and because of this a man may not blow the horn when hunting for it as he may for other beasts, such as the hart and the boar and the wolf. And if he were only male a man might blow the horn for him as he does for other beasts: for the hart, the boar and the wolf. And therefore all the fair words are put on her: when you shall seek 18 No reason is given in old treatises, but this is a plausible suggestion for the origin of the belief given by Rachel Hand in her English Hawking and Hunting in the Boke of St. Albans: A Facsimile Edition of sigs. a2–f8 of ‘The Boke of St. Albans’ (1486) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 124, n. 1335. 19 “The Middle English Text of William Twiti’s THE ART OF HUNTING in MS A”, in The Middle English Text of The Art of Hunting by William Twiti, ed. David Scott-MacNab (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2009): 3–12, lines 1–27. MS A in Scott-MacNab’s study is the most accurate translation from the Anglo-Norman L’art de Venerie to Middle English. The specialized terminology of the ms has been retained.

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them there are you[r] fair words. She is hunted and the hart also and the wolf and the boar. And you, hunter, tell me how many beasts are flushed from cover without being first aquiled (detected and tracked) by a lymer (type of bloodhound)? I shall tell you: the buck, the doe, the fox and all other vermin. Sir, I would know how many beasts are tracked by the lymer and how many by the brachez (scent-hounds). All those that are enchaced (hunted) are tracked by the lymer, and all those that are aquiled (flushed from cover) are tracked by the brachez. Now is to ask how many are skinned by being raced (having their pelts torn off over their heads) and how many skinned by being escorched (cut out of their hides). All the beasts that have talȝ (tallow), and fumee (fewmets – the faeces of deer) are escorched, and all that possess grece (the fat of non-ruminants) and fen (fiant, the faeces of non-ruminants) are raced. And how many beasts possess fient and how many fumee? All those that have talȝ have fume, and all that have grece have fient. Now is to ask, how many beasts have oos (dewclaws of red deer) and how many argos (ergots – the dewclaws of boar and fallow deer)? The hart has oos, and the boar and the buck have argos. The hierarchy of quarry animals in terms of value as opponents in the hunt differed slightly according to region. Edward Duke of York’s Master of Game was mostly a translation of the Livre de Chasse but had some additions from other sources such as the version of William Twiti’s treatise with amendments by John Giffard. Although the Master of Game includes animals such as the boar and wolf, there is only the one translated chapter on each, concerning largely their habits, whereas there is much about the hare. In continental treatises large and potentially dangerous animals had pride of place, although their ability to give a long chase and use evasive tactics was another consideration. The red deer was most prized. It was bigger and could run for longer than the fallow deer or the roe deer, and the male red deer was more impressive and ran for longer than the female. The male red deer were given different names according to their year and the corresponding number of tines on their antlers (referred to as “horns” in the medieval treatises). According to Gaston de Foix, the hart, with ten tines, was the one that should be hunted.

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Le Livre du Roi Modus was the first hunting treatise in French. It differentiates the animals of the chase and the vocabulary used for their characteristics as follows: Henri de Ferrières,20 Le Livre du Roi Modus et de la Reine Ratio (The Books of King Method and of Queen Theory), Page 7: Ey devise comme on doit parler de vénerie, et les termes d’icelle (The manner in which we should speak of hunting, and the terms used in it)21 All things were assigned by me and not otherwise. If the word were not assigned by me, it would be confusing to him who spoke it: for the word well pronounced proceeds from science, especially since the manner of the words is assigned according to the profession. You must know that thus, like beasts, words differ; because those that are spoken in the venery of stags and red beasts are not the same as those in the venery of black beasts. And the words differ according to the diversity of the beasts. But remember these words. As they apply to the life of beasts, they are pronounced in five ways. Some say they graze, others say they eat, others say they pasture, others say they feed (viandent), and others that they browse. As for the hunting of stags and all other red beasts, one must say eat (menger); and these words for eating were ordered by me for the black beasts and for the others, one must say eat (menger); and these words of consumption were ordained by me for beasts which have no top teeth, such as stags and hinds, goats and those beasts. The droppings of wild beasts are named in four ways: some are called fumées, others layes, others crotes, others tercurias. Those of the stags and red beasts mentioned above are called fumées, those of black beasts are called layes, those of hares and conies are called crotes (droppings), and those of the foxes (‘goupilz’) and stinking beasts are called fientes (droppings); those of otters are called tercurias or esprintes. There is another way of speaking of the orders of the piedz of the beasts, because the piedz of the stags, the black beasts and the wolves are called traces, but not the types of the other beasts, because they are called piedz. Especially in French treatises, quarry animals were defined as “red” or “black,” the former being the red deer, roe deer, chamois, mountain goat and hare and the latter the boar, wolf, fox, otter and bear. They corresponded closely to the “gentle” 20 Attributed; the supposed author, Henri de Ferrières, cannot be identified in any other source. 21 Henri de Ferrieres, Le Livre du Roy Modus et de la Royne Racio, ed. Elzear Blaze (Paris: Elzear Blaze, 1839): feuillet vii.

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(doulce) and “stinking” (puans) beasts,22 the characteristics of the former symbolically associated with good and the latter evil. These ‘symbolic’ aspects of the animals were described by Queen Ratio in the second part of Le Livre.23 The boar came second in the league of worthy foes to be hunted, as seen above. In many myths or romances in which the protagonists face boars as foes, the animals have links to the supernatural, much like the Calydonian and Erymanthian boars of Greek myth. The boar may well have been valued more highly in early medieval Europe than it was later; especially in pagan and/or early Christian societies it features strongly in art and appears as a symbol of valour on helmets or other military equipment. Moreover, it survives as an otherworldly animal of (usually negative) power in tales of hunts from Celtic-speaking regions.24 The greatest of these boars was Twrch Trwyth (“the boar Trwyth”), who appears in the Welsh tale Culhwch and Olwen. Twrch Trwych was once a man, who was transformed, but his actions while being hunted by Arthur are those of the enchanted ferocious boar he has become, a terrible force of destruction as he devastates parts of Ireland, Wales and England and kills twenty-two named men and numerous others when he stands “at bay.” The violent encounter on the River Nyver is described as if two forces are arrayed for a military encounter. Eventually Twrch Trwych plunges into the sea off Cornwall, having lost all his seven piglets (at least two of them killers themselves) in the hunt. Culhwch ac Olwen (Culhwch and Olwen), Chwilio am y (The Hunting of Twrch Trwyth)25 Twrch Trwyth then set out for Presselau, and Arthur went after him with all the forces in the world, and sent his men into the hunt: Eli and Trachmyr, and Drudwyn the pup of Greid son of Eri with them. Gwarthegydd son of Caw with the two dogs of Glythvyr Ledewig at hand, and Bedyr with Arthur’s dog Cavall at his side, and Arthur deployed all 22 “Beasts of the chase of the stinking foot,” “vermin.” 23 See Ch. 3, “Animals as Exemplars,” pp. 116–17. 24 See Miranda Green, Animals in Celtic Life and Myth (London: Routledge, 1992), especially 169–71, 218–20. 25 “Mal y cavas Kulhwch Olwen,” in The White book of Mabinogion: Welsh tales [and] romances produced from the Peniarth manuscripts. ed. J. Gwenogvryn Evans (Pwllheli: subscription edition, 1907): cols. 499–500. Culhwch ac Olwen has been included with the four branches of the Mabinogi and six other tales as the Mabinogion since the early nineteenth century. In the form known they most probably date to the twelfth or thirteenth century, but all include accretions of earlier material, some much earlier material than others. Culhwch ac Olwen is complete in the Red Book of Hergest of c.1400 and there is a fragmented version in the White Book of Rhydderch of, c.1325. It includes events and persons with antecedents in earlier Celtic tradition, both the boar and Arthur’s hound, who both appear in the Historia Brittonum, while the first is also mentioned in the De Mirabilibus Britanniae.

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his men along the banks of the Nyver, The three sons of Cleddyv Divwlch came also, men who had won great renown at the slaying of Chief Boar Ysgithyrwyn. But Twrch made from Glynn Nyver and went as far as Cwm Kerwyn, where he stood at bay and killed four of Arthur’s champions: Gwarthegydd son of Caw, Tarawg of Dumbarton, Rhun son of Beli Adver and Ysgonan the Generous, and having killed these men Twrch stood at bay a second time in the same place and killed Gwydre son of Arthur, Garselid the Irishman, Glew son of Ysgawd and Ysgawyn son of Panon, and he himself was wounded. trans. Jeffrey Gantz

Even without magical or supernatural associations, boars appear ‘larger than life,’ like the boar hunted in the Middle English Gawain and the Green Knight. In another Middle English romance, The Avowing of Arthur (c.1400), a huge boar is hunted by Arthur after it has killed many good knights and hounds. Their remains litter the area in front of the boar’s den. The boar is represented as “bold”, as if a knight, and appears to be able to butcher, flay and cook human victims. It functions as a demonic rival to Arthur, as befits Queen Ratio’s representation of it as the Anti-Christ in Le Livre du Roi Modus, and Arthur elicits saintly aid in his battle with it. Whereas the boar’s violence in the Avowing is portrayed as destructive, Arthur’s violence preserves the lawful natural order, emphasized by the opening of the poem in which men are rational, courteous, and devout Christians, all qualities that no beast can possess.26 The Avowyng of Arthur, lines 17–4827 This is no fantasy or fable You know well of the Round Table Both works are ninth-century. In Irish mythology the boar Triath may be an analogue. See William Forbes Skene, ed. and trans., The Four Ancient Books of Wales: Containing the Cymric Poems Attributed to the Bards of the Sixth Century, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: R. Clark, 1868); J. Gwenogvryn Evans, ed., The Poetry in the Red Book of Hergest (Delhi: Kalpaz, 2017); John Morris, ed. and trans., Nennius. British history and the Welsh annals, History from the Sources: Arthurian Period Sources 8 (London: Phillimore, 1980). 26 These aspects and other implications of the tale are discussed at some length by Karl Steel in his How to Make a Human: Animals and Violence in the Middle Ages (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2011): 189–203. 27 “The Avowyng of Arthur,” in Sir Gawain. Eleven Romances and Tales, ed. Thomas Hahn (Kalamazoo, MN: Medieval Institute Publications, 1995).

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Of ready and worthy mean Held in high esteem Paragons of chivalry, Kindness and courtesy Hunting most expertly, As hardy and wise men. To the forest they go To hunt buck and boar To the hart and to the hare That breed in the woods The king tarried at Carlisle The hunter arrives one day Saying, Sir, there roams in my district A very fearsome swine, He is a terrifying boar – Such a one I never saw: He has caused me great concern And injured my hounds, Slain them cunningly By fighting most fiercely. There was none so brave Dared linger in his range, To him I lost my spear And much of my other gear, No blows may injure him, Nor cause him any wounds. He is of massive build He destroys all that he has met. There is no bull so broad That moves in the woods Gaston Febus’ Livre de Chasse is arguably the most famous treatise on hunting ever written. Gaston’s advice on hunting the animals of the chase warns of the habits of each that might endanger the hunters and how the dogs should be handled in the chase. The boar is not such a challenge to pursue as a deer, but the “beauty and nobility” of killing a boar with a sword and the verbal challenge to it to attack when it is at bay turn the last stage of the hunt into a form of duel and the boar into a worthy opponent for the noble hunter, so that the

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feat of killing it reflects to his credit. Accordingly, the boar was respected by aristocracy as a valiant and “noble” opponent, albeit a ‘hereditary enemy’ of humankind. Gaston Fébus, Livre de Chasse (Book of the Hunt), Ch. 53. Ei devise comment on doit chassier et prendre le sanglier (The method by which you should hunt and catch the wild boar)28 And when the huntsman wants to hunt the wild boar and he has been allowed to run, he must not let all the dogs run, because a wild boar flees for a long time and kills and wounds a certain number, and if he has no fresh and new dogs he might fail to catch up with it. He must therefore establish two or three relays. The huntsman must ride while following his dogs closely: and if he wishes, when he is on horseback, to carry a spear in his hand, he is quite justified, although it is a more beautiful and nobler thing to strike the wild boar with the sword. But he cannot always strike him with the sword, for if a wild boar attacks a man face to face and they [the hunter’s assistants] do not come and beat him from behind, or the greyhounds do not hold him, he will never touch him with his sword. Whereas, if he has his spear, he will often be able to reach it by throwing it, if he knows how to do it, when he could not reach it with the sword. But he must see how he will throw his spear, because if he missed his shot and the spear got stuck in the ground before he could hold his horse, as long as he was properly bridled, he would instantly be impaled on the shaft of the spear stuck in the ground. This is how I have seen horses die and riders hurt themselves, by the shaft of the spear penetrating the body. So when he has thrown his spear, as soon as he releases it he has to tilt his horse to the right, and this is why: a man can only throw his spear in front of him or a little to the left, but never to the right; therefore he must turn in that direction, for there is great danger. And if he wants to dismount at bay, he will go more surely with the spear than with the sword. When he has both the spear and the sword, he has two weapons, and when he has only the sword, he has only one. And if he wants to have crossbowmen or archers hit him when he finds him or gets him at bay, the animal will die faster. If the huntsman is in demand, he will not use so much mastery in pursuing a wild boar as a deer, because, as I said, a 28

Gaston Fébus, La Chasse de Gaston Phoebus, Comte de Foix, collationnée sur un manuscrit ayant appartenu à Jean 1er de Foix, avec des notes et la vie de Gaston Phoebus, ed. Joseph Lavallée (Paris: Journal des Chasseurs, 1854): Chapitre cinquante-troisième.

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boar does not play tricks like a stag, except to stay at bay and wait for the dogs. And when he will be barked, the huntsman must pull up his horse, without shouting or turning. And if he is in terrain that is neither too thick nor too rough, he must attack the beast with the spear or the sword. But if he is in rough terrain and he attacks it, he risks being injured, him or his horse. He must therefore call in front of the boar and shout to him, saying: “Advance, master! Advance! Onwards, on!” Animals like bison or aurochs were becoming rare by the time the high medieval treatises were written, but they were likely valued as opponents in earlier times, as they were in Notker’s anecdote of Charlemagne’s hunt, and possibly still were in the later Middle Ages where some survived in east-central Europe. They were not as fast or elusive as red deer, but probably more dangerous, as indeed was the boar, and perhaps comparable to the bear in status as quarry. The bear was valued as a quarry animal in Iberia, as by Alfonso XI in his treatise, but not so much elsewhere, perhaps because it did not provide the type of chase most wanted. It was not fast or elusive, but it was dangerous to approach and might travel long distances before stopping at bay, when it had to be approached and was extremely dangerous to tackle. Nets and pits could be used, but as Gaston Febus mentioned, such methods were not for the noble. Gaston also notes that it was not possible for one man to bring down a bear: he suggests two, even if the bear were wounded by crossbow bolt or spear beforehand. The bear hunts Alfonso describes were major operations, initially involving large numbers of people forming lines of beaters approaching from several directions, and then several groups of hunters each with a pack of perhaps five or six dogs following a bear that had been disturbed. The hunt might last up to a week, with the dogs following the bear in relays and the king often approaching at the end with a bigger pack of hounds when the bear finally halted at bay. Gaston died after returning from a difficult bear hunt. Alfonso XI, Libro De La Montería (Book of the Hunt) Ch. 9: (Section) “Del otro cabo de la sierra, catante el Burgo, del hondo hay estos montes.” (“At the other end of the mountain range, facing the Burgo, at the foot there are these mountains.”)29

29 Rey D. Alfonso XI, Libro de la Montería, Vol. 2, ed. José Gutierrez De La Vega (Madrid: Fundicion de M. Tello, 1877): Capitulo IX.

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Las Cabreras de Navaluenga is a fine forest for bear, winter and summer. The voceria is high on the sierra and downwards along the ridge lo La Pedriza de Pero Sancho: the armada is at El Homo de Varrialejo. Once in this forest we left Sanu Maria def Tlemblo on a Tuesday and roused a bear, and they did not succeed in setting hounds after him until he reached Las Cabreras above Navaluenga at the hour of vespers. They found the bear in Las Cabreras, and saw him leaving through the snow, and sent eight hounds after him and were close behind him until he first slept. Then they perceived that the night would prevent them from disturbing him and the huntsmen might well perish from cold, so they descended from the sierra to a house that they found in the middle of the forest. … … At first light on Friday they took up the scent at the top of the pass and followed the bear three leagues through the snow. When they left the snow behind, our huntsmen Diego Bravo and Martin Gil followed the trail for two leagues along a track, which the bear never left until he turned off and went into a little patch of woodland that would not have held a roebuck, and they set twelve hounds onto him at noon. Then he went twice through our armada on the hill where we were waiting on the day we left Santa Maria, and he turned at bay in the vineyards of Santa Mana del Tiemblo. Alfonso Martinez de Bavia said that there was nobody there to kill him as they could have done, as the huntsmen were some distance away. … … So the hunting of this bear continued through five days and four nights, and hounds followed him all day, and at night some stayed with him until midnight and others right through till dawn; and since this hunt was so determinedly pursued, we set it in writing to show that when some exceptionally fine quarry is found and is not killed that day, if one pursues it with purpose it will be killed on the second or the third, if the huntsmen do their work like huntsmen. Many chivalric romances included accounts of hunting, and like every extant hunting treatise some included a comprehensive account of cutting up the body of the dead animal. By showing his knowledge of the rules and the correct jargon of venery the writer demonstrated that he was a person of status, just as the protagonist who carried out the process in the tale was. In Gottfried’s Tristan the hero is shocked when the hunters from Mark of Cornwall’s court lay out the dead hart “like a boar”, and proceeds to tell them how excoriation should be done. Almost the whole chapter is about how to cut up the hart and distribute its parts, the correct horn calls and what formation the hunting

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party should adopt as it returns to Mark’s castle, aspects of the par force hunt that also concern the treatises. Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan, 430 They confessed to themselves that everything about him (Tristan) was noble, his clothes rare and magnificent and his figure of perfect build. They all flocked round to see what he would do. And now the homeless boy, young master-huntsman Tristan, went up to the hart and, taking hold of it, tried to lay it on its back, but failed to shift it because it was too heavy. Then he asked them politely to place it to his liking and prepare it for breaking up. This was quickly done. He took his stand at the hart’s head and then began to strip it. After making an incision he slit it from the muzzle down under the belly. Then he returned to the forequarters. These he stripped in due order, first right then left. Next he took the two hind-quarters and flayed them likewise. He then started to peel away the hide from the flanks and everywhere from the holds, working down from the head. Then he spread his hide on the ground. He again went back to his forequarters and detached them from the breast, leaving the latter entire. The quarters he laid on one side. He addressed himself next to severing the breast from the chine and from the flanks, including three ribs on either side (That is the way to break up a hart. Those who know how to take out the breast are sure to leave these ribs on it.) Then he quickly turned and removed the hind-quarters most expertly, both together, not one by one. To the two steaks where the back sweeps over the loins towards the scut for a palm and a half, and which those who know how to break up a beast call ‘the haunch’, he left what duly belongs to them. He severed the ribs on both sides, cut them away from the chine and then the paunch as far as the great gut. And since this ill became his beautiful hands he said, “Two serving-men, here, quick! Move this further off and get this ready for us!” Thus the hart was dismembered and the hide removed according to the rules of the chase. trans. A.T. Hatto

Other romance writers such as Thomas Mallory credited Tristram (Tristan) with inventing the noble method of hunting.

30

Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan und Isold, ed. by Friedrich Ranke (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1962).

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Thomas Mallory, Le Morte d’Arthur, Bk 8, Ch. 331 And after, as he grew in might and strength, he laboured ever in hunting and in hawking, so that never gentleman more, that ever we heard read of. And as the book says, he began good measures of blowing of beasts of venery, and beasts of chase, and all manner of vermin, and all these terms we have yet of hawking and hunting. And therefore the book of venery, of hawking, and hunting, is called the book of Sir Tristram. Wherefore, as it seems to me, all gentlemen that bear old arms ought of right to honour Sir Tristram for the goodly terms that gentlemen have and use, and shall to the day of doom, that thereby in a manner all men of worship may distinguish a gentleman from a yeoman, and from a yeoman a villain. Here Mallory explicitly mentions the most important reason for the type of hunt emphasized by the nobility and why the hunted animals had to be treated in certain ways; whatever the practical use of ‘Tristram’s method’ and terminology, an important purpose of the arcane and complicated vocabulary and carefully ordered dismemberment was the creation of a type of knowledge exclusive to the aristocracy. The technical jargon and dispassionate way in which these operations are described (and presumably carried out) de-emphasize the violence done to the animal. Though they concentrate on hunting with hounds, some of the hunting treatises give advice on other methods of killing animals, not necessarily ‘fair’ methods. Here King Modus advises someone who is too poor to own a pack of hounds to use a particularly painful method of killing numbers of wolves. The method is repeated (briefly) by Gaston. Henri de Ferrières, Le Livre du Roi Modus et de la Reine Ratio (The Books of King Method and of Queen Theory), leaf 7032 Another man asks how, when he has no hunting dogs, he will be able to kill wolves, of which there are so many in his country that they destroy all his beasts. Modus responds: I will teach you how you can kill all the wolves that are in your country; As it happens at the end of February that the wolves leave their families, which are starving, find the wood that is in your country which the wolves haunt and where they convene the most; drag a thigh or shoulder of a newly dead beast to the wood, and drag it through the wood from path to path, and through the points where they cross, and then 31 The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, Vol. 2, ed. Eugène Vinaver (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990): Bk VIII, Ch. III. 32 Henri de Ferrieres, Le Livre du Roy Modus: feuillet lxx.

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to the place where you will leave the dead beast, and take care that you have plenty of needles which are sharp at both ends, and they must each be two inches long, and take two of them and put them side by side, and tie them loosely in the middle with a thread of sope from the tail of a horse, so that you can twist them one against the other, and when they are well twisted, put them back side by side, and cut them into a piece of meat, and do not make the morsel so large that the wolf cannot swallow it. And so you will make a great abundance of such pieces, in which you will put the needles in this way, and put the pieces on the beast; and when the wolves come to eat, they will swallow three pieces, and when the morsel is digested and diminished in their bodies, the needles will dislocate and pierce the guts, and all the wolves will be found dead throughout the wood. Half a millennium earlier, an instruction in the Carolingian Capitulare de villis, one of the capitularies issued by Carolingian rulers that concerned the administration of their estates, reveals the same attitude to wolves: Capitulare de villis, 6933 They [the stewards] shall at all times keep us informed about wolves, how many each of them has caught, and shall have the skins delivered to us. And in the month of May they are to seek out the wolf cubs and catch them, with poison and hooks as well as with pits and dogs. The wolf was an especially vilified animal, but Modus’ proposed method for hunting otters with dogs also lacks ‘heroic’ attributes. Otters were efficient killers of fish and regarded as pests simply because they were rival predators to humans, just as the wolves were in the woods and fields. As now, the concern about protecting animals expressed in laws, in the Middle Ages meaning reserving certain animals or habitat areas for hunting by only a privileged few, was for species rather than individuals, and an animal might therefore change status according to its numbers. In 1339 the roe deer was reclassified as a beast of the warren in the English royal courts, meaning it was no longer protected, largely because, as Edward of York says at the beginning of his section on it: “The roebuck is a common enough beast.” It was perceived to be driving out other deer that were more highly valued as quarry, such as the larger and more powerful red deer. The attitude to some of the lesser valued animals was ambiguous: Edward of York calls the roebuck “foolish” and in the 33 Die Landgüterordnung Kaiser Karls des Grossen: 69.

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same sentence mentions his cleverness in evading capture. It was still a beast of the chase and according to Edward provided a good hunt.34 Edward of York, The Master of Game, Ch. 5. Of the Roo and of His Nature (Of the Roe deer and his nature)35 And when he can run no longer he goes and enters some small brook. When he has gone up and down the brook for some time he remains in the water under some roots so that there is nothing above the water save his head. And sometimes the hounds and the hunters pass above him or by the side of him without his stirring. For although he is a foolish beast, he has many ruses and tricks to help himself. He runs incredibly fast, for when he starts from his lair he will go faster than a brace of good greyhounds. They haunt thick coverts of wood, or thick heaths, and sometimes in marshes, and commonly in high areas where there are hills and valleys, and sometimes in the plains. 3

Animals Who Assisted in the Hunt

There were two mammal species that regularly assisted humans in hunting in Europe, the horse and the dog, and several species of raptors that took birds, especially waterfowl. More will be said below of the birds. Both horse and dog were valued companions to the humans who trained and used them. Dogs especially were required to react in specific ways to certain sounds, including spoken words or horn calls. Dogs detected and tracked quarry animals, but also recovered wounded or dead animals shot by hunters or caught by hawks. Though the horse was not so important to success in hunting as the dog, in the chase par force (by force of hounds) and when hunting with falcons or hawks the aristocratic hunter or hawker was always mounted: just as in warfare, possession of a good horse was a sign of superior social status. Careful management of the mount was essential when attempting to kill quarry animals that were potentially dangerous to both horse and rider, as we saw above. As the German king and emperor Frederick II emphasized in his essentially practical treatise on falconry, even when fowling certain qualities were essential in the mount. 34 It is the favoured animal for aristocratic hunting in modern France. 35 Edward, Second Duke of York, The Master of Game: The Oldest English Book on Hunting, ed. William A. Baillie-Grohman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005): Cap. V.

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Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, De Arte Venandi cum Avibus (The Art of Hunting with Birds), Bk 4: Crane Hawking with Gyrfalcons and other Falcons, Ch. 7: Of the equipment suitable for a falconer hunting cranes36 The falconer’s horse should by gentle and stand quietly, and he must not gallop without permission of the rider. When the falconer drops the reigns on the horse’s neck (to perform task for the falcon with his free hand), the animal must not increase his gait. He must be quick to obey and agile in turning right or left as desired. He must be swift and not frightened by unforeseen or unusual objects. He must not whinny when on duty, because that will drive away the birds. He should not be difficult to handle or hard-mouthed, lest when he hurries to bring assistance he may trample on the falcon. trans. CASEY A. WOOD AND F. MARJORIE FYFE

Most hunting manuals began discussing hunting dogs by reiterating tales of dogs who had shown exceptional loyalty to their masters. However, although dogs were amenable to human companionship, they had to be trained for their specific tasks and humans considered some better or worse than others. As in with horses, bred for war as well as hunting, there is evidence that dogs were bred specifically for qualities in hunting in the Middle Ages. The basic division of hunting dogs was into scent-hounds and gazehounds (respectively, dogs that followed the quarry by scent or by sight), but they were also named according to their mode of action, the type of animal they hunted, or their build, although it is also obvious that these factors would often tend to correspond in breeds suited to given tasks. It is difficult to identify these dogs with modern breeds, even when the name is the same, as breeds can be altered fairly quickly by human intervention as their tasks change: the greyhound, for instance, was first named in England in the twelfth century, but those named as such thereafter were not necessarily precisely the same animals as any of today’s greyhounds.37 36

Federigo Svevia, De arte venandi cum avibus, ed. A.L. Trombetti Budriesi (Rome: Laterza, 2007): Liber IV, Cap. VII. There are two manuscript versions of De Arte Venandi cum Avibus, one with six books (as in the Italian edition listed here and the Wood and Fyfe translation), based on Bologna (University Library) MS Lat 419, and those with only two that originated with the Vatican manuscript (MS Pal. Lat. 1071). Friderici II Imperatoris cum Manfredi Regis Additionibus, ed. Gottleib Schneider (Leipzig: I.G. Muller, 1788) and many of the others available in Latin are the second version, which also had Albertus Magnus’ De Animalibus section on falconry appended, although Frederick’s work seems to have no connection with this work other than its subject. 37 Edmund Russell, Greyhound Nation: A Coevolutionary History of England, 1200–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 22–26, 145–53.

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Edward of York, The Master of Game, Ch. 14. Of Running Hounds and their Nature38 Of all kinds of running hounds, there are some which are good, and some which are bad or evil, as with greyhounds. But the best kind of running hounds, and the most likely to be good, is called brown tan. Also the goodness of running hounds, and of all other kinds of good hounds, comes from true courage and from the good nature of their good father and of their good mother. And also, as with training of greyhounds, men may well help to make them good by teaching by methods such as leading them to the wood and to fields, and by always being near them, in giving them many good portions of the quarry’s entrails when they have done well, and by berating and beating them when they have done something wrong, for they are beasts, and therefore they need to learn that which men want them to do. Medieval people had no knowledge of the phylogenetic tree, but they recognized a greater (physical) affinity between humans and most mammals than with birds. Though falcons were highly valued hunters in this capacity, they are rarely described as companions or ‘loyal’ in the same way as dogs or horses might be. Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, De Arte Venandi cum Avibus (The Art of Hunting with Birds), Bk 2, Of falcons used in hunting; Ch. 48: Of classes of falconers and the aims of the true falconer39 One should always bear in mind that the very nature of wild birds of prey makes them intensely diffident towards man, while their peculiar instincts and deeply anchored habits render them entirely alien to human beings, whom they shun, fearful of harm to their plumage and other members. trans. CASEY A. WOOD AND F. MARJORIE FYFE

The terms “hawk” and “falcon” refer to two distinct groups of raptors and medieval falconers were aware of the difference, but the terms were not used with exactitude in the Middle Ages, although the names of specific raptor species were. The main distinction drawn was between “hawks of the tower” and “hawks of the fist”, that is, according to how they were employed to hunt on

38 39

Edward of York, The Master of Game: Cap. XIV. Federigo Svevia, De arte venandi cum avibus: Liber II, Cap. XLVIII.

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behalf of humans.40 Though medieval people knew that humans adapted animals for their use, there was no knowledge of the genetic change that can alter a wild species over many generations so that it inherits an amenability to living alongside humans, as had occurred with dogs and some species of horses; in many modern works, it is this inherited trait that defines an animal species as domestic.41 In these modern terms, taming is not domestication, as it involves only the conditioned modification of an animal’s behaviour so that it tolerates the presence of humans and acts for them in its own interest, and seen in this light, falcons or hawks were tamed rather than domesticated. Their medieval handlers knew it was more difficult to tame and condition hawks or falcons to remain with their handlers, let alone act on their behalf, than to train dogs or horses. Frederick II’s treatise meticulously describes all handling and feeding operations to get the best hunting out of a falcon. Among the procedures, he argued that it was essential to seel (temporarily blind the bird by sowing its eyelids shut) a wild falcon to make it dependent on its owner, and that it was even beneficial when the falcon was an eyas (an unfledged nestling taken from the nest for training). Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, De Arte Venandi cum Avibus (The Art of Hunting with Birds), Bk 2, Ch. 33: Of the enclosures for falcons and their feeding42 Having described the preparation of the mews in which the young falcons should by placed to feed and to mature, we must now say a word about their food and its preparation. It is necessary to distinguish between suitable and unsuitable foods and to know in what manner and amounts the various viands may be given. It is also important to understand how often and at what hours birds should be fed. The best means of acquiring this knowledge is to observe the feeding methods of the mother bird, for her system of nourishing her young is far better than any man may devise, and it should therefore be adopted. … Young falcons should be given the flesh of domestic fowl, like hens and pigeons, only when it is impossible to secure birds of the fields, such 40 “Hawks of the tower” were not hooded and allowed to climb on thermals, whence they stooped on their prey (which was driven into the air by pointers or spaniels), then returned to the lure. The “hawks of the fist” were trained to come only to the fist, not to the lure. They were short-winged hawks and never falcons, with lower status than the hawks of the tower. 41 Using our definitions. Because they did not know of the genetic change, medieval people obviously did not distinguish a group of them as domestic in this sense. 42 Federigo Svevia, De arte venandi cum avibus: Liber II, Cap. XXXIII.

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as [wild] pigeons, doves, thrushes, larks, wrens, partridges, and other small birds that are generally considered good as food. Or, failing wild birds, they may be given small wild animals – goats, gazelles, fawns, hares and rabbits. In default of all of these, feed them the flesh of such domestic animals as sheep, goats, pigs, lambs and kids – always choosing the healthiest specimens. However, the flesh of domestic animals does not agree with the growing falcon as well as that of wild beasts, for the farm animals live in less pure air and consume less suitable food than their wild counterparts. The former also get less exercise while searching for food and have more superfluous fat. … 2.37: Of the seeling of falcons As soon as the falcon has been caught and as soon as she has been placed on the hand, she must be seeled, the sharp points of the talons blunted, jesses fitted to the feet, a bell affixed to one foot and, if necessary, the swivel and the leash adjusted. The operation of seeling is performed because it is necessary to occlude the falcon’s eyes so that she cannot distinguish objects about her. … If it be argued that it is not necessary to seel the eyes of eyases, since they are already on more or less intimate terms with men and surrounding objects and are thus naturally quieter than older, wild-caught falcons, it is nevertheless true that as a result of this procedure the nestling not only becomes tame much sooner but has better limbs and flight feathers and is more amenable to training; hence it is good practice to adopt it. trans. Casey A. Wood and F. Marjorie Fyfe

In the so-called Book of St Albans, also referred to more accurately as The Book of Hawking, Hunting, and Blasing of Arms (or similar), hawking takes up more space than the chase and there is a long list of hawk ailments and how to cure them. Possibly the emphasis on hawking is because the author of the hunting and hawking section was a woman, probably Juliana Barnes (Berners), if the words of the 1486 edition, “Explicit Dam Julyans Barnes in her boke of huntyng” are correct. Aristocratic and even wealthy bourgeois women frequently engaged in hawking; there are instructions for good hawking practice in the Ménagier de Paris, a manual of advice to a young wife, and numerous medieval illustrations of female falconers. An addition to the Book of St Albans, a supplement on fishing, is also attributed to Juliana. It concerns mainly fly-fishing, although that was not an aristocratic pursuit. At the end of the Book of St Albans section on hawking there is a list of which birds should serve which noble ranks or other people. We cannot be sure whether this was intended to be serious or wholly or partly humorous, or perhaps merely to demonstrate the relative qualities of the different species, thus creating a form

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of scala accipitrum. The eagle was not used in Europe by humans for hunting and the identities of the two birds listed with it are uncertain. Regardless of its purpose, even if satirical, the list reflects the medieval preoccupation with classification and ranking in nature, which included human society. Juliana Berners, Boke of St Albans, first section, on hawking43 These hawks belong to an Emperor: These are the names of all [this] manner of hawks. First an eagle, a Bawtere, a Melowne,44 The simplest of these three slay a hind calf, a fawn, a roe, a kid, an elk, a crane, a bustard, a stork, a swan and a fox on open ground. And these cannot be enlured, nor reclaimed because they are so ponderous to the carrying perch. And these three by their nature belong to an Emperor. These hawks belong to a king. There is a gyrfalcon, a tercel of a gyrfalcon. And these belong to a king. For a prince: There is a falcon gentle and a tercel gentle. and these are for a prince. For a duke: These is a falcon of the rock. And that is for a duke. For an Earl: There is a peregrine falcon. And that is for an Earl. for a Baron. Also there is a Buzzard and that hawk is for a Baron. Hawks for a knight. There is a saker and Sacret, And these are for a Knight. Hawks for a Squire. There is a lanner and lanrett. And they belong to a Squire. For a lady. There is a merlin. And that hawk is for a lady. An hawk for a young man. There is an hobby. And that hawk is for a young man, And these are hawks of the tower: and being lured to be both called and reclaimed. And yet there are more kinds of hawks There is a Goshawk. and that hawk is for a yeoman. There is a Tercel. And that is for a poor man. 43 44

Juliana Berners, The Boke of St Albans, ed. William Blades (London: Elliot Stock, 1881). The rather random capitalisation (or lack of it) has been retained as in the earliest printed work. If not a variant name for eagle or eagle species, the bawtere may be a European vulture (Griffon vulture?), as often suggested, but the identification of the melowne as a merlin, as also sometimes suggested, seems unlikely as it is listed below as the lady’s “hawk,” presumably because of its small size, which makes it unsuited to be associated with the eagle or an emperor and certainly not “ponderous to the perch.” The certainly identified bird of the three “emperor’s birds,” the eagle, was not used for fowling in Europe. The eagle could not slay elk, fawns, kids and similarly sized animals, as claimed here.

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There is a Sparrowhawk. And he is an hawk for a priest. There is a Musket. And he is for an holy-water clerk. And these be of a different type, for they fly to the Quarry and to the jetty and to the Jetty carrier.45 Despite the frequent emphasis in many of the treatises on the training required to make “dumb beasts” act as required, there is also a recognition of the assistant animal’s agency, albeit often a tacit acknowledgement. The humans who managed the hunt also had to learn from their assistants, especially dogs. The two species had lived alongside one another in a symbiotic relationship for perhaps 15,000 years, although, of course, medieval people were unaware of this or of any genetic adaptation. To make full use of the dogs’ abilities humans had to learn to recognise their traits and what their actions signified, and to respond to their agency, even if it was not acknowledged as such. Alfonso XI, Libro de la Montería (Book of the Hunt), Bk 646 Understand whether they made a good start or a bad one, or whether the dogs are pursuing large or small deer, or whether they are close to it, or whether they will reach it, or if they are distant from it; or whether they will be able to catch it or not; or if they follow a bear, or if they pursue a group of animals; or if they have cornered a small deer or [other] deer, and clearly understand it in the few dogs. And to know how to understand this, you must know it in these things here. First of all, if you see the happiness of the dogs that insist on making more noise, and that they are all going in one line, you will understand that they set off well; furthermore, if they caused him [the quarry] to run by rousing him from sleep, within a very short time after they have been released, the hunter will experience the happiness of the dogs that go close to him and that catch up with him. And you will also understand in the barking if they have quickened the step, and sound is harsh and fearful, that they pursue good deer, and that they have overtaken it. And if you see that they are silent at times, and that they take to barking quietly, understand that it is a bear, and that they have caught up with it; and that silence that they keep is born of the fear that they have of the bear when it stops and senses them. Also, be aware if the voices of the dog or dogs are higher pitched, and very hurried; and whoever hears that they are travelling a greater distance understands that they are pursuing small deer. Furthermore, if he 45 These are the lower status “hawks of the fist.” 46 Alfonso XI, Libro de la Montería, Vol. 2: Capitulo VI.

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sees that the dog or the dogs are committed and bold, and that the team is happy, understand that they have caught a small deer. And if the joy of the dogs is poured out, each one on its own, and the voices of the dog or the dogs are hurried and sharp, understand that they are tracking a group of animals. And if you see, in addition, that sounds the dog or the dogs make are very high-pitched and very hurried, and that they walk a lot, and wander through the mountains, understand that they have the scent of deer. And also, in order to understand if they will be able to achieve it, you have to recognize it as follows. If you see that the dog, or the dogs that run barking in delight, although they start by making muted sounds from time to time, they become more and more eager in their baying so that they bay twice as much, understand that they will be able to reach [the quarry] easily. And if you see, even though they are keen in making the first barks, that later on the voices become louder and intermittent and they are slackening in them, you must understand that they will not be able to catch up with it. Though by far the most common species, dogs and hawks were not the only animals that cornered or attacked quarry for humans in medieval Europe. In Italy cheetahs were used from the twelfth century onwards, and caracals from a century earlier. The names used in medieval sources are confusing, as leopardus, pardus or lonza could refer to either cheetah or leopard. There are few written records apart from accounts, but the Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys on the reign of Charles VI of France refers to the use of leopardi, probably cheetahs, by Gian Galeazzo, the Visconti ruler of Milan from 1385 to 1402. The chronicle hints that for Galeazzo hunting with unusual animals was one of his cultivated eccentricities. Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys: Chronicorum Karoli Sexti (Chronicle of the Abbey Church of St Denis: The Chronicle of Charles VI), Bk 24, Ch. 1847 Not only did he glory in surpassing the princes of his time by the magnificence of his palaces and pleasure-houses where he went to rest from his affairs, but he was also the only one who imagined having a separate road from the public roads, reserved for his entourage when he went from one town to another; one could not pass along it on pain of a fine. He 47 Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys: contenant Le Règne de Charles VI, de 1380 a 1422, Vol. 3, ed. and trans. Louis François Bellaguet (Paris: Imprimerie De Crapelet, 1841): Liber XXIV, Cap. XVIII.

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never travelled through his provinces without being escorted by armed men, who stood at his side and at a certain distance so as not to soil their effeminate master with dust. He also displayed more magnificence in hunting than other lords. It was not with packs of dogs, although his subjects fed a large number of them at their own expense in the towns and villages, but with leopards and other tame animals that he hunted. Cheetahs were valued because of their speed and they caught prey by coursing, whereas caracals used stealth and sprang on their prey (often birds) from some distance.48 They were relatively easy to train. Knowledge of these animals was acquired from the Moslem world, but they were widely used in India and the Far East as well. Pictorial evidence shows that these felines were transported on carts or the backs of horses behind the human rider, occasionally hooded, and released when the time was right when used for hunting.49 In the book of travels whose author claimed to be an English knight named Sir John Mandeville, which was written in French and appeared in the second half of the fourteenth century, the author refers to hunting with big cats in Cyprus, possibly unaware of their use in Europe further west; “In Cyprus men hunt with papions, which are like leopards; and they catch wild beasts very well, better and more swiftly than hounds. And they are somewhat bigger than lions.”50 The Travels include a large amount of dubious material gathered from earlier ancient and medieval works and it is doubtful that the author travelled to all the places he mentions himself, as he claims, but his method was not reprehensible in the Middle Ages. There is no reason, however, to doubt the hunting with “papions,” probably cheetahs (which are not, of course, bigger than lions). Though the hunt par force was of great social importance to the aristocracy, it was certainly not the most common form of hunt: even less so was it the most productive, as it was a very inefficient method of securing meat. When nobility required a large quantity of meat they sent out their hunters to acquire it. The chief of the hunters was an important post and one which could lead to advancement in the king’s or noble’s household. The methods described after the par force hunt in some hunting manuals may have been more common but they receive less attention; for instance, they take up barely a third of Gaston’s 48 Archeo-zoological evidence of caracals in southern Italy is almost non-existent, but the same is true of hawks or falcons, which were most certainly used there. 49 For instance, in the Adorationdes Mages of Gentile da Fabriano, 1423, Florence, Musée des Offices, Inv. 1890 n. 8364. 50 Sir John Mandeville, Travels, 5.

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treatise. In the earliest (thirteenth-century) hunting treatise of the Middle Ages, written in Latin by an unknown author who acquired the information from the German knight Guicennas,51 there is a description of the method of driving game towards concealed archers or crossbowmen lying in wait. This style is akin to the “drive” or English “bow and stable” hunting and was later elaborated into a hunt that amounted to ritualized slaughter. In the latter, lesser folk did most of the work, driving the quarry animals into a space, in the case of deer often into water, where the nobles shot them from prepared positions, or “trysts.” This ‘hunt’ was little more than target practice. In addition, artistic representation suggests that by the fifteenth century the aristocracy had abandoned the recommendations of Frederick II and Guicennas to use ‘camouflage clothing’ in falconry, the hunt par force and bow and stable hunting, as the hunts involving the wealthy became vehicles for display of clothing as well demonstration of knowledge of hunting and its arcane vocabulary, the ways of the quarry and skill in riding and arms. Guicennas, De Arte Bersandi (The Art of Hunting), 10–1152 Stalking requires at most six hunters and no more, but it can be two or four fewer. But by common sense there should be six: three shooting and three herding the game. But the crossbowmen should wear doublets, hats, and hoods of a similar colour to the trees, so that the game cannot recognize them when they stand by the trees. They shall carry with them a quiver filled with five arrows and three spears, the arrows to shoot at game, the spears to defend themselves if need be. But if an area should not be affected by war, they may also carry two bolts for shooting at birds. A letter of the Italian lady Isabella d’Este describes the staging of a late fifteenth-century par force hunt, which, as noted, might be increasingly elaborate by this time. The hunting described in this account was obviously arranged so that she, her sister Beatrice and other ladies had the maximum opportunity to observe it, presumably from a viewing point, possibly in a hunting park. Given the variety of quarry that appeared there in a short space of time, all the

51

Kurt Lindner interprets the German name as Guicennans: in the Latin text it is Guicennas. He was known and respected for his skills by the huntsmen of Frederick II, and had died before the text was written. 52 Guicennas, De arte bersandi: Le plus ancien traité de chasse de l’Occident, ed. G. Tilander (Uppsala: G. Tilander, 1956): Cap. X–XI. The four extant mss are short and the work appears to be unfinished, but Tilander’s research leaves many questions unanswered; see Lewis Thorpe’s review in Scriptorium, no. 12.2 (1958), 327–329.

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animals must have been driven into the vantage area or perhaps released from confined areas beforehand. Isabella d’Este, Letter to her husband, Francesco II Gonzago, Marquess of Mantua, 27 August 149253 Today we went out hunting in a beautiful valley which seemed as if it were expressly created for the spectacle. All the stags were driven into the wooded valley of the Ticino, and closed in on every side by the hunters, so that they were forced to swim the river and ascend the mountains, where the ladies watched them from under the pergola and green tents set up on the hillside. We could see every movement of the animals along the valley and up the mountainside, where the dogs chased them across the river; but only two climbed the hillside and ran far out of sight, so that we did not see them killed, but Don Alfonso and Messer Galeazzo both gave them chase, and succeeded in wounding them. Afterwards came a doe with its young one, which the dogs were not allowed to follow. Many wild boars and goats were found, but only one boar was killed before our eyes, and one wild goat, which fell to my share. Last of all came a wolf, which made fine somersaults in the air as it ran past us and amused the whole company; but none of its arts availed the poor beast, which soon followed its comrades to the slaughter. And so, with much laughter and merriment, we returned home, to end the day at supper, and give the body a share in the recreations of the mind. trans. Julia May Cartwright

Among the less prestigious methods of hunting Gaston Febus describes capturing animals in pits, but he also reveals his contempt for it: it was not a contest and was a method worthy only of lower-class folk. Gaston Fébus, Livre de Chasse (Book of the Hunt), Ch. 61 With this method boars and other animals can be hunted with pits. The stag and the boar, the bear, the wolf and other animals may also be captured in pits. A large pit is made three fathoms deep, wider at the bottom than at the opening, so that the animal cannot get out of it, and it is covered with small branches and grass. Fenders are set up on each side, as done when hunting partridges with an arbour. To hunt like this, 53 Julia Mary Cartwright, Beatrice d ́Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475–1497 (Frankfurt am Main: Outlook Verlag, 2018), 136, translated from Alessandro Luzio and Rodolfo Renier, Della Relazioni di Isabella d’Este Gonzaga con Ludovico and Beatrice Sforza. Archivio Storico Lombardo, XVII (Milan: Tipografia Bortolotti Giuseppe Prato, 1890), 350.

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you need three men, one at each end of the fenders54 and the other in the middle, well covered. And when the animal is between the pit and them, they must feel at ease and not be wary and believe that the ground is flat, and the gap between fenders must be narrow at the entrance, and of the width of the pit, and no more open than that, so that the animal thinks it can cross them: the longer and wider they are, the better. One must examine the runs and escape routes of the wood where one wants to hunt. For biting beasts, the pit should be under cover, and for gentle beasts, in the open air. The best is to dig the pit in the middle and to place fenders on all sides, in front, behind and on the sides, of the width of the pit: one can thus receive the game coming from all sides. But enough said, for it is a hunt for villeins, commoners and peasants. At the end of the fourteenth century someone wrote a book to guide a fifteen-year bride in the duties, conduct and moral attributes that should be adopted by a wealthy bourgeois wife, the Ménagier de Paris referred to above. Instruction is given by the older husband. The bourgeoisie were obviously emulating the aristocracy in many respects, here by taking part in hawking. There is also a reference to women using bows to hunt small animals, and there are many illustrations of women hunting in warrens and probably parks as well as hawking. There were different seasons for hunting the various animals, which include numerous species that are no longer hunted or eaten nowadays. Le Ménagier de Paris (‘The Good Wife’s Guide’), Dist. 3, Article 2. Hawking treatise55 36. Item: toward the end of September and afterward, when hawking quails and partridges is over, and even in winter, you can hawk – as is said – magpies, jackdaws, teals from the river, or the other spotted ones with long legs that live in the fields and run on foot along the sandy riverbanks, along with blackbirds, thrush, jays, and snipes. This hunting can be done on foot with a bow and arrow. If the blackbird disappears into a shrub and dares not leave it because of the sparrow hawk who spies it from above, the lady or maiden who knows how to shoot can kill it with an arrow. In that way, from season to season you can have amusement from your sparrow hawk. trans. Gina L. Greco and Christine M. Rose

54 A fence of wattle or similar leading outwards from the pit. 55 Le menagier de Paris, ed. Georgine E. Brereton and Janet M. Ferrier (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981): Distinction III, Article II.

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Medieval Conservation?

As we have seen, game preserves of various sorts were established in the Middle Ages to ensure that numbers of the protected animals were maintained at a sufficient level for the king and privileged aristocracy to hunt and eat. Possibly the most influential secular law code of the Middle Ages was the German Sachsenspiegel (Saxon Mirror), compiled in the mid-thirteenth century. Though named as Saxon, it provided the foundation for other law codes in Bohemia, Poland and Hungary as well as Germany. The version below is an adjusted one from the fourteenth century. Der Sachsenspiegel (The Saxon Mirror), Bk 2, Ch. 6156 61. Once God created man, he gave him dominion over fish, birds and all wild animals. We have proof of this from God that no-one can forfeit his life or health because of these things. However, three places in Saxony ensure peace to animals – except to bears, wolves and foxes – by the king’s authority. These areas are called game preserves. One is in the heath of “Koine,” the second the “Harz,” and the third is the “Magetheide.” Anyone who takes game must pay the king’s fine, which is six shillings. Anyone riding through the game preserve shall ride with unstrung bow or crossbow, his quiver closed, his racers and trackers on leash, and hounds coupled. If someone is hunting game outside the forest, and the hounds follow it into the preserve, he may follow them provided that he does not sound (his hunting horn) nor incite the dogs, and does nothing wrong there. When he takes the game, he must call his hounds off. No-one may trample crops while hunting or chasing, nor may one [go through a field] once the grain gets its head. trans. Maria Dobozɏ

The extent of English kings’ land and possible rights to hunt on others’ land before the Norman Conquest are uncertain, but it seems that they mainly hunted on their own land, a situation similar to that implied in the Norwegian Gulating Law, of which more later. The situation changed after 1066. With a new kingdom at their disposal, the Normans established a more extensive network of forests 56

Eike von Repgow, Sachsenspiegel: Die Wolfenbütteler Bilderhandschrift Cod. Guelf. 3.1 Aug.2o: Vol. 2, ed. and trans. Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand (Berlin: Akademie Verlag. 1993): Buch II, Kap (Art.) LXI. Some chapter (or article, as named in some Sachsenspiegel editions) numbers are missing or misplaced in the Wolfenbüttel ms. and there are other discrepancies. Neither do the chapter numbers of this ms necessarily correspond to those in other Sachsenspiegel manuscripts, although they are generally close. See Maria Dobozɏ’s comments on this in Saxon Mirror: A Sachsenspiegel of the Fourteenth Century, ed. and trans. Maria Dobozɏ (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1999), 38.

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and later parks than existed anywhere else in Europe, with the possible exception of Gascony, which had a close connection to England. Foresta were first created in Frankia during the Carolingian era as royal hunting domains: they included woodland, but other terrain and villages as well, and the Norman French had adopted the practice. Richard FitzNigel’s Dialogue on the Exchequer, already mentioned in Chapter 4, gives the strongest impression of conservation of wild animals in the king’s forests, complete with a characteristically naïve medieval etymology of the word ‘forest.’ The wild animals were supposed to be ‘safe’ from most people, but not, of course, from those who could hunt them legally. In addition, as noted above, it was not only wooded areas that were forests. Richard FitzNigel, Dialogus de Scaccario (Dialogue on the Exchequer), Bk 1, Ch. 1257 Master: The king’s forest is a safe abode for wild animals, not all of them but only the woodland ones, and not everywhere, but in particular places suitable for the purpose. That is why it is called ‘forest’ ( foresta), as though the e of feresta were changed into o. Student: Has the king a forest in every county? Master: No, only in the wooded ones, where wild beasts have their lairs and plentiful feeding grounds. It makes no difference to whom the woods belong, whether to the king or the nobles of the realm; in both alike the beasts wander free and unscathed. trans. Emilie Amt

Such was the concern of the English crown over animal stocks during the Middle Ages that it instituted a number of enquiries into how royal deer were being kept, and the justices of the forest eyre found on several occasions that those given the stewardship of a forest had disposed of hundreds of deer. Sir Richard Cholmley was arraigned for his stewardship of Pickering Forest over the period 1499–1503, but managed to convince the justices that he had improved the condition of the deer. An inspection suggested that their number had increased under his stewardship, and it seems that one method he had used to prevent poaching was to donate a certain number of deer to lords and gentlemen who owned neighbouring lands to ensure their cooperation – that is, to prevent them from poaching and perhaps to enlist their help in preventing poorer folk from doing so. If the neighbours of the park owner suggested this, it amounted to a protection racket, but Richard Cholmley gave no hint that this was the case. 57 Richard FitzNigel, Dialogus de Scaccario: The Dialogue of the Exchequer, ed. and trans. Emilie Amt (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007): Liber I, Cap. XII.

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Touching upon the spoil of woods and deer and Pickering lieth. To Sir Reynold Bray Knight Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster58 Roger Hastings knight, one of the king’s foresters by inheritance of the king’s forest of Pickering in the County of Yorkshire shows to your mastership that where Richard Cholmley knight is the king’s officer there and master of the said forest and park within the said lordship, which Richard Cholmley and his deputies and servants having rule under him have made, done and suffered great waste in the said forest and park, both in woods and in deer, as hereafter follows, which will be to the destruction of the said woods and game unless remedy by your wisdom be therefore provided. [There follows a long list of timber and animals given to or taken by named individuals, including many knights and clergy.] … The said Sir Richard says that the bill of complaint is untrue and uncertain and a matter feigned and surmised from malice to vex and trouble the said Sir Richard … [There follows a list of those indicated to have taken wood, each of whom Richard claims has not done so during his tenure.] … Furthermore the said Sir Richard says that he has given certain deer to the lords and gentlemen borderers to the said forest to the intent that they should be loving and favourable to the king’s game there and with that that the said Sir Richard will aver that the king’s deer, game and woods within the said forest is well saved and kept as it ought to be and in far better condition than they were at the time of the entry of the said Sir Richard, and that he will abide by the report and proof of that country. As noted in Chapter 4, hunting of certain animals might be suspended in a foresta if their numbers fell too low, thus conserving the species for future hunting in that preserve.59 In addition, a fence month was enforced every year, during which period no hunting of the animal in question, or perhaps the adult male or female, was permitted. Similar measures were enforced in other realms: the month for each animal varied, but usually coincided with the breeding season. The perspective of the majority of people, those who were forbidden the right to hunt in these game preserves, is rather different from FitzNigel’s. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle there is a verse obituary to William I written shortly after his death in 1087, which refers to his forest laws. The statement that 58 The Honor and Forest of Pickering, ed. Robert Bell Turton (London: North Riding Record Society, 1897), Appendix, Class XXV. AA. 4 (1). 59 See pages 186–187.

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William loved the deer means that he loved to hunt them, and to ensure abundant game for himself he created large areas of royal forest in which the rights of others to hunt game were denied, but it also carries the implication that he loved the deer more than his people. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 1086 [1087]60 He had fallen into avarice and he loved greediness above everything else He established many deer preserves and he set up many laws concerning them such that whoever killed a hart or a hind should be blinded. He forbade (hunting of) harts and also of boars. He loved the wild deer as if he were their father. And he also decreed that the hares should be allowed to run free. His great men complained of it, and his poor men lamented it; but he was so severe that he ignored all their needs. But they had to follow above all else the king’s will, if they wanted to live or hold on to land, land or property (or esteem) or have his good favour. Woe, that any man should be so proud as to raise himself up and reckon himself above all men. May almighty God show mercy on his soul and forgive him his sins 60 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Vol 1: Original Texts, ed. Benjamin Thorpe (London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1861): Anno mlxxxvi. The year of William’s death was 1087, but the entry is for 1086 in the Peterborough manuscript (E). This is the latest Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ms and the one that continues to the latest date. On the manuscripts, see “Introduction,” in M.S. Swanton, ed., The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (London: Dent, 2000), xi–xxxv.

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The same accusation was levied especially at Henry I, William’s youngest son and king from 1100 to 1135. The twelfth-century historian and Augustinian canon William of Newburgh was himself of Anglo-Saxon descent. William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum (History of the Affairs of the English) Bk 1, Ch. 361 Thus Henry reigned, with great felicity and glory, thirty-five years and some months, at the expiration of which he slept with his fathers. He was a man adorned with many princely virtues, though he obscured them greatly by his concupiscence, in imitation of the lustfulness of Solomon. He was, also, immoderately attached to beasts of chase, and, from his ardent love of hunting, used little discrimination in his public punishments between deer killers and murderers. trans. Joseph Stevenson

In his Policraticus John of Salisbury approached this same injustice from a different angle (see below). It seems that not only most common folk of England but many among the clergy retained a conception that the principle of res nullius ought to apply to wild animals: after all, God had ordained that nonhuman beasts existed for the benefit of all humans.62 Though in England the laws were made less draconian in the reign of Henry III, also the period in which afforestation reached its height in England, both before and after that there are records showing that severe punishments were not applied in many cases. But peasants still resented the restrictions and there was a growth in the number of parks and chases granted by the king to the aristocracy, in which they had exclusive rights to the game.63 After the failure of the Peasants’ Revolt the Game Law of 1390 restricted common access to game still further, the ostensible reason given in the preamble being the prevention of assemblies that might be preludes to revolt. Statutes of the Realm, reign of Richard II, 139064 Item: Forasmuch as diverse artificers, labourers, servants, and grooms, keep greyhounds and other dogs, and on the holy days, when good 61

William of Newburgh, Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, Vol. 1, containing the first four books of the Historia Rerum Anglicarum of William of Newburgh, ed. Richard Howlett (London: Longman and Trübner, 1884): Liber Primus, Cap. III. 62 “Res nullius” means literally “nobody’s thing,” a term derived from private Roman law signifying something legally defined as an object not yet acquired, or abandoned by its owner, but which can be appropriated by any specific subject. 63 See Chapter 6 for more on parks and chases. 64 Statutes of the Realm, Vol. 2: Richard II to Henry VII, ed. John Raithby (London: Dawsons, 1963), 65 (Rot. Parl. III, 273, in French).

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Christian people be at church hearing divine service, they go hunting in parks, warrens, and connigries of lords keeping and others, to the very great destruction of the same; and sometimes under such colour they make their assemblies, conferences, and conspiracies to rise, and disobey their allegiance; It is ordained and assented, that no manner of artificer, labourer, nor any other layman, which hath not lands or tenements to the value of 40 s. by year, nor any priest nor other clerk, if he be not advanced to the value of 10 l. [pounds] by year, shall have or keep from henceforth any greyhound [hound, nor other dog] to hunt; nor shall they use ferrets, heys, nets, harepipes, nor cords, nor other engines for to take or destroy [deer, hares, nor conies, nor other gentlemen’s game] upon pain of one year’s imprisonment; and that the Justices of the Peace have power to enquire, and shall enquire of the offenders in this behalf, and punish them by the Pain aforesaid. In other realms restrictions on hunting by the common folk also became more severe towards the end of the Middle Ages. An example of the royal desire to restrict the hunting of many animals to themselves, their servants and other nobles, which also reflected the problem of widespread poaching in his kingdom, is this 1386 ordonnance of Charles VI of France. Charles VI of Valois, 1386 Ordonnance65 Charles by the grace of God King of France. To all who see these Letters: Salut. It has come to our knowledge through the report of several trustworthy people, both our Council and others, that several non-noble people, labourers and others, without loyalty to the privileged, unless they have approval from Noble people or other warren rights or privileges, have and hold with them dogs, ferrets, ropes, snares, nets and other instruments to take large red and black beasts, rabbits, hares, partridges, pheasants and other beasts and birds whose hunting does not belong and should not belong to them; whereby it has happened and happens each day that the said non-nobles by doing what is said, abandon their ploughing or trades and commit several thefts of large beasts and of rabbits, of partridges and pheasants, and of other beasts and birds, as much in our warrens as in those of the Nobles and others among our subjects; by which it has happened many times that when We and the nobles of our said Kingdom have wanted to take stock from them we found in several places little or no sign of beasts or birds, and by this it from Us and from said Nobles has been and is often impeded; 65 Archives Départementales de l’Hérault, Série A1, ed. Josef Berthelé (Montpellier: Lauriol, 1918): folios 219 v ° to 200 v °, transcribed by Jean-Claude Toureille.

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if no remedy was to be found there, several dissensions, disputes and discord could arise and spread between our noble and non-noble subjects, and several other inconveniences would ensue; similarly the said non-nobles by persevering in this, are often imprisoned, and for this treachery imposed with great fines; and by the idlers who persist in doing so, become thieves, murderers, spies of paths, and maintain a bad life, as a result of which it transpires and often happens that they end their lives with a hard and shameful death; which is to the great confusion of our people, or detriment of the public thing of our Kingdom, and causes great damage to Us and our subjects. To make matters worse for the peasantry, some animals that were protected for hunting or kept by the landowners for their own purposes were a pest to them. As the Chronicle writer mentioned, hares who damaged crops were to be permitted to run free. In addition doves, which ate seeds, were kept in dovecotes close to their fields. In most peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, such as the Jacquerie in France in 1356–58, the Peasants Revolt in England in 1381, the Wars of the Remences in Aragon in 1462 and 148466 (the only ones to achieve a measure of success), the Dózsa Rebellion in Hungary in 1514 and the Peasants’ War in Germany in 1524–25, among the demands or complaints of the rebels was to alleviate restrictions on peasant rights to hunt or fish and not to prevent them from protecting their crops from animals kept by landowners. The leaders of peasant revolts were often churchmen or aristocrats who were disaffected for various reasons, and increasingly certain religious reformers aggravated the tension, but their demands that animals should be freed from aristocratic control were not motivated by concern for them. In the articles drawn up by the Upper Swabian Peasants’ Confederation in early 1525 freedom from aristocratic ownership and their monopoly on the right to hunt them is demanded in order that they become a resource for all humans as God had intended. Behind this complaint lie essentially the same grievances as those of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle writer 460 years earlier.

66 From Catalonian remença, derived from Latin redementia, stressing the possibility of redemption from servitude.

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The Twelve Articles, Article 467 Fourthly, it has been the custom until now that no poor man should be permitted to take venison or wild fowl or fish in flowing water, which to us seems quite improper and unbrotherly as well as selfish and not in accordance with the word of God. In some places the authorities preserve the game to our great annoyance and loss, irresponsibly permitting unreasoning animals to destroy to no purpose our crops that God grants to grow for the use of man, and yet we must endure this quietly. This is neither godly nor neighbourly. For when God created man, he gave him dominion over all the animals, over the birds of the air and over the fish in the water. 5

Hunting of Rival Predators

With the exception of the wolf-hunting with needles recommended by King Modus, all the methods of hunting referred to above were practised for profit, amusement or to obtain food, but, as the needle-hunting suggests, certain animals, foremost among them the wolf, were deliberately hunted simply because they were regarded as a menace. Modus seems to be proposing a method that could be used by anyone who has a problem with wolves. Wolves were rival predators to humans; the kings or other nobles who encouraged the hunting of nonhuman predatory animals were those for whom hunting was an essential part of their culture, who wanted the animals that wolves took as their own quarry. As noted above, hunting of predators was sometimes (not entirely convincingly) justified as protecting livestock, but the chief predator of Europe, the wolf, tended to hunt in packs in the wild. Those who preyed on sheep or other domestic animals were more likely to be lone wolves who could not run with the pack, wolves who were starved of prey in the wild, or wolves presented with opportunities on the edge of the wild, for instance on transhumance routes. Nevertheless, as in the Sachsenspiegel above, permission still had to be granted to hunt wolves or other ‘vermin’ legally in the king’s foresta, where all animals were his. In the example below Talbot may take only a limited number of the other animals, but he is allowed to hunt the wolf by any method.

67 Zwölf Bauernartikel 1525, ed. Christoph Engelhard (Stadtarchiv Memmingen). Accessed 8.6.2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20190413172754/https://stadtarchiv.memmingen .de/quellen/vor-180203/zwoelf-bauernartikel-1525.html.

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Calendar of the Patent Rolls: Edward I, 1272–1281. Clarendon, March 30, 128168 Licence, during pleasure, for Richard Talebot to hunt and take with his own hounds the fox, the cat, the wolf and the hare throughout the king’s forest of Dene, and to take by nets or in any easier way the wolf there, so that he do not take of the greater deer, or course in the king’s warrens or those of any other person. Similar permits were sometimes given, however, to hunt foxes, wildcats and otters by any means: all were considered a threat to animals that humans hunted, if not to the large quarry animals that wolves could kill. They and other potential predators of livestock, including bears in mainland Europe, would also avoid humans if possible. In the Middle Ages many undomesticated animals diminished in number, but the main cause was certainly habitat destruction – the aurochs, for instance, inhabited marshy and wooded areas that were drained and denuded of trees as more land was cultivated, and the last one is recorded as dying in 1627. However, hunting may have contributed to the decline of some animal populations, especially of wolves. They have now been eliminated from many countries, but in most of them the process was begun in the Middle Ages and completed in more recent times. In England, however, it appears that they had been wiped out by the early fifteenth century, in this case as part of a deliberate policy. Wild boar disappeared in the same century. Wolf-hunting was time-consuming and had its risks, and professional wolf-hunters were sometimes employed or given land in return for service. At the pleas of the forest held at Derby in 1285 it was mentioned that a bovate of land was a serjeanty assigned to two foresters for the taking of wolves in Peak Forest.69 One was appropriately named John le Wolfhunte and the other Thomas Foljambe. Their duties were stated to be as follows: Pleas of the Forest held at Derby, 30 September 1285, before Roger Lestrange, Peter de Leach, and John FitzNigel, Justices of the Forest70 68 Calendar of the patent rolls preserved in the Public Record Office. Prepared under the superintendence of the Deputy Keeper of the Records. Edward I. 1272–[1307] (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode for H.M. Stationery Office, 1901): Clarendon, March 30, 1281. 69 A bovate was an eighth of a carucate, which was the area of land that could be ploughed by eight oxen or approximately 120 acres. The legal term serjeanty designated a form of land tenure in which a tenant holding of the king rendered him exclusive services in a status below that of a knight. 70 Plea roll of the Peak forest eyre 1285, before Roger Lestrange, Peter de Lenche and John son of Nigel John son of Nigel’s roll: National Archives, Kew, Ref. DL 39/1/5. Date: 13 Edw I.

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… Each year, in March and September, they ought to go through the midst of the forest to set traps to take the wolves in the places where they had been found by the hounds and if the scent was not good because of the upturned earth, then they should go at other times in the summer (as on St Barnabas Day, June 11th), when the wolves had whelps (catalos) to take and destroy them, but at no other times and they might take with them a sworn servant to carry the traps (ingenia) they were to carry a bill-hook and spear, and hunting-knife at their belt, but neither bows nor arrows; and they were to have with them an unlawed mastiff trained to the work. All this they were to do at their own charges, but they had no other duties to discharge in the forest. 6

Illegal Hunting

Not only were the savage punishments prescribed for poaching by the early Norman kings of England alleviated somewhat in the reigns of their successors, but it seems that many poachers who were caught were treated leniently and sometimes set free on grounds of their poverty. Others were imprisoned, or outlawed if they did not appear in court as ordered. Poaching was certainly not practised only by the peasantry and was clearly widespread, although its impact is difficult to measure. When park owners were absent raids on their parks increased, and poaching increased generally in times of disorder.71 For poorer folk, as much or more than a necessary method of acquiring food, it was a form of social protest. Nobles appear to have had no compunction about taking animals from other nobles’ parks, chases or warrens and the king’s forests or warrens, often as a regular practice or simply as they travelled through, but also as a method of attacking other landowners with whom they had disputes. The second example below involves a flagrant violation of the law by landowners’ sons, pages, a clergyman and a woodward. Since they were in the woods all day, there was a high probability of being spotted, and the result was that most ended up in prison. William Tuluse was evidently behind the enterprise and the deer meat was divided amongst the perpetrators and their families. There are many records of “clerks” (churchmen) poaching, and bishops were both victims and perpetrators of it. Poorer folk who engaged in poaching might work with or for wealthier people, benefitting from their protection or 71 See, for instance, Stephen A. Mileson, Parks in Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 171–72; Naomi Sykes, “Animal Bones and Animal Parks,” in Robert Liddiard, ed., The Medieval Park: New Perspectives, (Macclesfield: Windgather Press, 2007), 49–62: pp. 56–57.

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help should they be caught. Poaching rings operated from distribution centres in towns, raising the practice to the level of ‘organised crime.’ Some records and finds suggest, unsurprisingly, that poachers rarely bothered with such niceties as closed seasons or conserving animals of certain ages or condition. For example, fifty fawn hides were discovered in one cache in the eyre of the Forest of Dean.72 Illegally taken meat confiscated by the king or his lawcourts was often distributed to the poor or unfortunates such as lepers and poorer folk sometimes took carrion, seemingly without any regard for the rule that meat of uncertain origin should not be eaten. Pleas of The Forest at Huntingdon on the Octave of the Nativity of St John the Baptist in the Fourteenth Year of the Reign of King Edward before Roger L’Estrange, Peter of Lench and John Fitz Nigel Justices Assigned for Hearing and Determining the Same Pleas73 Philip de Colleville and his servants, whose names are not known, were wont to enter the lord king’s warren of Cambridge, with the greyhounds of the same Philip, and to take hares in the same without warrant in the time of King Henry until his death, and also in the time of the lord king who now is, until the twelfth year of his reign. The same Philip did not come, nor was he attached, therefore the sheriff is ordered to cause him to come at Huntingdon on the first Tuesday in Lent. And he did not come; therefore of him ten pounds. Pleas of the Forest in the County of Northampton on the morrow of St Michael in the Fifty-Sixth Year of the Reign of King Henry the son of King John, before Roger of Clifford, Matthew de Colombières, Nicholas of Romsey and Reynold of Oakley, Justices assigned for hearing and determining the same pleas. It is presented etc. that Simon the son of William Tuluse, Richard of Ewyas, the page of William Tuluse, William of Wotton, Ralph of Drayton, the chaplain at Wootton, Simon of Hanslope, the page of the aforesaid Simon, Alan the son of Hugh of Lowick, the woodward of Robert de Nowers of his wood of Bulax, John Messias of Lowick, Robert Pette of Lowick, Ralph Iuelhering of the same town, Robert of Grafton, Henry of Drayton and others of their company, whose names are to 72 Cyril E. Hart, Royal Forest: A History of Deans Woods as Producers of Timber (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 42. 73 Select Pleas of the Forest, ed. G.J. Turner (London: Seldon Society, 1901): Cambridgeshire, 1286. The following passage is from the same source, year 1272.

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be ascertained, entered the forest aforesaid on Wednesday the feast of St Bartholomew in the fifty-sixth year with bows and arrows; and they were shooting in the same forest during the whole of the day aforesaid and killed three deer without warrant, and they cut of the head of a buck and put it on a stake in the middle of a certain clearing, which is called Harleruding, placing in the mouth of the aforesaid head a certain spindle; and they made the mouth gape towards the sun [the east], in great contempt of the lord king and his foresters. And the foresters, when they were at last perceived by them, hailed them; and the evildoers shot at them against the peace of the lord king. And the foresters, after raising the hue upon them, fled and could not resist them. The aforesaid Richard of Ewyas, Alan, Ralph, Robert, and Henry came [to the hearing]; and being convicted of this they are detained in prison. And the aforesaid Simon Tuluse and Simon his page did not come; therefore an order is sent to the sheriff of Berks that he cause them to come on the Monday next before the feast of the apostles Simon and Jude … And because the aforesaid Alan, the sworn woodward, was an evildoer with respect to the venison, therefore by the assize of the forest let the aforesaid wood of Bulax, which he had in custody, be taken into the hands of the lord king. trans. G.J. Turner

The Middle English poem, The Parliament of Three Ages gives us a vivid account of a lone poacher and his dog in action: stalking and killing by stealth and wary of foresters, other hunters and wild animals that may interfere with his kill. The title refers to the dream he has when he falls asleep, following the quoted section. As in this case, poachers generally hunted on foot as it was less conspicuous and used only dogs as animal assistants, which is evident from the confiscations of them made after successful prosecutions. After the description of the shooting of the hart and before the last few lines included below, there is also a detailed description of how the dead animal is skinned and cut up. The method does not differ significantly from the breaking up of the victims of the hunt par force, although it has to be done as quickly as possible; allowing for the undoubted upper-class origin of the poet, this is a hint that behind the elitist jargon and ritualized process of the treatises and romances, the method of destruction of the quarry animal’s body also made practical sense. The poacher has no need to concern himself with dividing parts of the animal among human recipients according to rank or to award specific parts to certain animals, although the mention of the pelvis as the “corbyns bone” derives from this practice. At the end of the poem, after the poacher wakes up,

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he sets off for the town. Although many have interpreted this as forgetting his poached meat, it is more likely that the poet simply doesn’t mention this and that the poacher intends to sell it through the ‘black market in quality meat’, if it is not intended for consumption by kin or associates. The Parlement of the Thre Ages, lines 22–25, 34–65, 92–9974 Both my body and my bow I masked with leaves And turned towards a tree and waited there a while And as I looked into a glade not far to the side I saw a hart with a head, one suited for the purpose, … (Description of the hart follows) And good meat for a king, catch him who might, But there followed him a soar that served him very attentively That woke and warned him when the wind dropped, So that none so sly should harm him in his sleep, And he went on his way before any danger befell I then let my leash fall down lightly And made my hunting dog lie down at the trunk of a birch, I shrewdly judged the wind by the movement of leaves, Stalked most stealthily to avoid breaking sticks And crept to a crab-apple tree and hid under it Then I tightened my bow and prepared to shoot, Set the stock of my crossbow in position and aimed at the hart But the soar that followed him lifted its nose And looked cautiously about and sniffed the air eagerly Then I stood stock still and moved not a foot further For had I taken aim or moved or made any signs All my sport that I long awaited would have been lost But gnats annoyed me greatly and bit my eyes; And the soar paused, advanced cautiously and stared all about But at last he bent down and laughed to his mate, And I drew back the catches and struck the hart, And it happened that I hit him behind the left shoulder So that the blood flowed out on both sides And he stumbled and bellowed and dashed through the thicket As if all that lived in the wood had been thrown into confusion And soon the soar that accompanied him returned to his companions And they, terrified by his approach, fled to the moors, 74 The Parlement of the Thre Ages: An Alliterative Poem on the Nine Worthies and the Heroes of Romance, ed. I. Gollancz (London: Oxford University Press, 1915): [I].

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And I hurried to my hound and seized him at once And loosed my leash and let him find the scent The briars and the bracken were running with blood; And he took up the pursuit and sought after him There he had crept behind a crag and sunk to the earth Down he had fallen dead as a doornail; … (Description of the ‘unmaking’ follows) … And [I] heaved all [the remains] into a hole and hid it with ferns, Covered it over with heather and with hairmoss So that no forester of the fee would find it Hid the antlers and the head in a hollow oak, So that no hunter should seize it or be able to see it, I hastened quickly away for fear of being betrayed, And set out to one side to see how it turned out To hide from wild swine that find boon by nose. At the other end of the poaching scale from the lone illegal hunter were the operations of gangs. In Feckenham Forest Geoffrey du Park, clerk and priest of Feckenham, led a gang that used ‘blyndebycches’, large purse nets, to ensnare large numbers of game animals.75 Some gangs led by disaffected or feuding landowners were almost private armies. Their activities targeted parks and chases as the assets of those they felt aggrieved at and might resemble a chevauchée as much as poaching. Nonhuman animals were the unwitting victims.76 From 1387 to 1392 one of these forces operated in Yorkshire led by Sir William Beckwith and caused so much destruction on John of Gaunt’s hunting preserves, besides setting up its own ‘parliament’, that it became known as the “Northern Rebellion.”77 Calendar Rolls of the reign of Richard II, Canterbury, May 28 139378 Pardon, at the supplication of the earl of Rutland and Henry de Percy ‘le Fitz,’ to Richard Walthewe for the following felonies, viz. for coming 75 Jean Birrell, ed., Records of Feckenham Forest, Worcestershire, c.1236–1377 (Trowbridge: Cromwell Press and Worcestershire Historical Society, 2006). 76 The chevauchée was a planned fast-moving and destructive military raiding expedition, as practised in this era especially by English armies in France led by Edward III and his son Edward the Black Prince. Like many of these raids on hunting preserves, Beckwith’s were carried out while John of Gaunt was absent on campaign. 77 See also Chapter 4. 78 Calendar of the patent rolls preserved in the Public Record Office. Prepared under the superintendence of the Deputy Keeper of the Records. Richard II. Vol. V: 1391–1396 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode for H.M. Stationery Office, 1905): Canterbury, May 28 1393.

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armed with others to the duke of Lancaster’s [John of Gaunt’s] castle called ‘Haywrocastell’ on Tuesday after St. Martin in the twelfth year, and lying there to kill Robert Doufbiggyng, who was taking the place of Robert de Eckley, master forester of the forest and chase of Knaresborough, then in the castle to save his life and especially because the said Robert de Eckley put him (the said Robert Doufbiggyng) in the said office and would not permit Adam de Bekwyth and Richard Bernnand and others conspiring with them to do such wrongs and effect such unlawful appointments and alliances as they had ordained amongst them at their parliament called ‘Dodslowe’ held at diverse times of the year, in subversion of the law and oppression of the people, disinheriting of the said duke and loss of life of his ministers; also for destroying, along with others, the park of Haywra and doing mischief in other parks and chases within the forest of Knaresborough; and for coming with others to Skirgill on 20 June in the thirteenth year, and there breaking the gate of a fortlet ( forcelletti) of the said duke’s, entering the house and destroying goods and utensils of Robert Doufbiggyng, value 40 shillings, abducting the groom of Robert de Eckley, knight, and his greyhound, and detaining them for two days; and for coming with others on 1 June in the thirteenth year to the house of Robert Doufbiggyng at Rodeshagh and slaughtering 16 oxen and cows and destroying household utensils, value 8 livres, and to the house of William de Nessefeld at Beruby and destroying a horse, a mare, a boar and other goods of his, value 12 marks. 7

Criticism of Hunting

Written criticism of aristocratic hunting from the Middle Ages was not common, and when it was made the grounds were that over-enthusiastic hunters were damaging themselves, or more rarely because they were damaging the rural infrastructure to the detriment of people dependent on it. In the twelfth century, in Book 1 of his Policraticus, John of Salisbury attacked the frivolous pursuits of courtiers, and by extension those of the aristocracy, in a satirical discourse written in an exaggerated style with numerous references to classical sources and their protagonists as well as biblical allusions. His suggestion that no man of distinction who is enthusiastic about hunting can be named is plainly not serious, as virtually every noble of John’s own era and many senior clerics (despite the official ban on their hunting) were keen hunters. At the end of Chapter 4 he takes care to state that he is merely criticizing excessive enthusiasm for hunting or hunting that damages the community at large,

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while seeking “a little amusement.” However, like the peasant rebels of later centuries, he criticizes some for claiming wild animals as theirs by right before they are taken. Furthermore, some hunting practices clearly were damaging the rural economy, and many of John’s criticisms of the aristocratic preoccupation with hunting, the values they attach to it and their protection of their exclusive right to do it at others’ expense are not so easy to dismiss. While John is not concerned about violence to animals or the effect the violence inherent in killing and dismembering animals might have on hunters, he can perceive the absurdity of the way in which different species, sizes and genders of animals are valued and celebrated by hunters. John of Salisbury, Policraticus, Bk 1, Ch. 1, The Greatest Danger to the Favourites of Fortune; and Bk 1, Ch. 4, Hunting, Its Origin, Its Forms, and Its Practice, Lawful and Otherwise79 1. … Who more bestial than he who, neglecting duties, rises at midnight, that with the aid of dogs keen of scent, his active huntsmen, his zealous comrades, and his retinue of devoted servants, at cost of time, labour, money, and effort, he may wage from earliest dawn till darkness his campaign against beasts? … 4. … Can you name any man of distinction who has been an enthusiast in the sport of hunting? The heroic son of Alceus, although he pierced the bronze-hoofed hind and brought sweet calm to Erymanthus’ grove, had in view not his own pleasure but the general good.80 Meleager slew the boar that ravaged Caledonia, not to give pleasure to himself but to free his country from the scourge.81 The founder of the Roman race laid low the seven huge stags not to sate his vanity and pleasure but to keep himself and his followers alive. It is from their purpose and result that deeds are judged. An act is seemly if the cause that preceded it is honourable. Whoever formed an army of hunters and dogs except for the purpose of battling beasts with courage not his own? Why shouldn’t he? Perhaps he will bag a tiny beast, a timid hare, with his elaborate equipment. But if the booty be more glorious, a deer maybe or boar, and the hunter’s efforts 79 Ioannis Saresbriensis Policraticus, sive De nugis curialium, et vestigiis philosophorum, libri octo. Accedit huic editioni eiusdem Metalogicus. Cum indice copiosissimo (Leiden: Ioannes Maire, 1639): Liber I, Cap. I; Liber 1, Cap IV. 80 Reference to Virgil, Aeneas; see The Aenid in Latin by Virgil (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015): Liber VI, lines 801–03. For a translation, Vergil, The Aeneid, trans. Shadi Bartsch (New York: Modern Library, 2021). 81 Ovid, Metamorphoses, ed. and trans. Frank Justus Miller, 2 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1916), Vol. 1: Liber VIII, lines 266–424.

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be conspicuous, spontaneous applause bursts out, the huntsmen are wild with joy, and the head of the victim with the usual trophies will be born before the conquering hero.82 One would think that the capture of the king of the Cappadocians was being celebrated, to judge by the blare of trumpet and squeal of pipe proclaiming the victory. When a female animal is caught, then gloom prevails, or when a noble beast is laid low by the cunning of the trappers rather than by their prowess. If a wild goat or hare be the victim, it is thought unworthy of the glory of a triumph. Then, too, there are no exultant blasts of horn or trumpet from the eighth grade of Capricorn until the beginning of Gemini. The triumphant pipe and horn are silent unless a wolf or lion, more dreadful foe, or tiger or panther becomes our prey – a triumph which, thank God, is rarely ours. Despite this, the long space of the year is taken up with the various interests of the hunt. … … Wild animals, which are gifts of nature and become the lawful property of those who get them, are claimed by presumptuous man even under the watchful eye of God; and the uniform right over all of them wherever they exist is upheld by him as though he had thrown his encircling net around the whole universe. A fact that excites surprise is the frequent practice of declaring it a crime to lay snares for birds, to weave nooses, to allure by tunes or whistle, or to trap them in any manner whatsoever. The punishment prescribed is confiscation of goods or loss of life or limb. You have heard it said that birds of the sky and fishes of the deep are common property, but those that hunting claims, wherever they nourish, belong to the royal treasury. Stay your hand; touch them not; for under pain of treason you may fall a victim to the hunter. Farmers are kept from their fields that wild beasts may have liberty to roam. So that feeding ground for them may be increased farmers are deprived of their fields of grain, tenants of their allotments, the herds and flocks of their pasturage. Hives are excluded from flowery places and the very bees are scarcely allowed to roam at liberty. … … That it may be evident that I am attacking with my pen hunting and other diversions of courtiers judiciously rather than in a spirit of hatred, I would gladly agree to count hunting among things called indifferentia (neither good nor evil) were it not for the fact that the inordinate pleasure that it causes impairs the human mind and undermines reason itself. 82

This practice, bearing the head of the dead quarry in front of the procession as it returns home, not to mention the ‘music’ that accompanies this, is attested in several sources that have accounts of the noble hunt, among them Tristan.

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It should not, however, be indiscriminately condemned on this score; wine intoxicates but the intoxication is the fault of the one who drinks; the old often exhibit a senility that is not the result of age but of their own defects. Therefore it is quite possible, depending upon the circumstances, time, manner, individual, and purpose, for hunting to be a useful and honourable occupation. … … But enough of this, as our purpose is not a formal treatise on hunting but that of deriving a little amusement at the expense of the frivolities of courtiers. Consideration must be given to place also; that is, hunting should be pursued on preserves, on common or on public land, provided that no injury is done the community and provided the locality is not exempt from such disturbance by reason of its sanctity or renown. For the bold trespasser is caught in the law’s net and punished. The activity, however, is laudable when moderation is shown and hunting is pursued with judgment and, when possible, with profit, with the result that the advice of the dramatist Terence is followed: “Moderation in all things.”83 trans. Joseph B. Pike

Some 350 years later, in 1509, in his In Praise of Folly Erasmus portrayed the ritual performances surrounding the hunt – admittedly among a long list of other forms of behaviour – as empty and absurd posturing. Shortly before this passage Folly has pondered whether all defects of sense and understanding should be considered madness, and concluded that anyone with these defects should at least be thought close to a madman: “The greater a man’s madness is the greater his happiness, if it is of that sort that stems from excessive folly …” The concern is with the human, not the animal victim, who serves in this passage, like other beasts alive or dead, as a metaphor for the level to which the human who takes part in such activities can sink – far from raising his stature, the ritualized hunt reduces him to the level of the beasts he hunts. Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, Moriae Encomium or Stultitiae Laus (In Praise of Folly)84 Among these are to be numbered those who take an excessive delight in hunting, and think no music compares to the sounding of horns and the yelping of beagles, if they were to take physic, they would without 83

Publii Terentii [Terence], “Andria,” in Comoediae sex, ed. Edward St. John Parry (London: Whittaker and co., 1857), 5–78: Act 1, Scene 1. 84 Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami Colloquia Familiaria et Encomium Moriae (Leipzig: Caroli Tauchnitu, 1828).

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question think the finest virtues to be in the dried white dung of dogs. When they have cornered the game, what curious pleasure they take in dismembering it! Common butchers may cut up cows and sheep, but no-one below the rank of gentleman may break up a wild beast killed in the hunt. He removes his hat, falls devoutly on bended knee, and drawing his hunting hanger (for a common knife will not suffice), after various ritual gestures performed in due order proceeds to dissect all the parts as artificially as the most adept anatomist, while all who stand around look on in silent admiration as if the spectacle were a novelty, although they have seen it a hundred times before: and he who is able to taste of the blood of the animal thinks himself bettered by it: and though constant feeding on such a diet can only assimilate them to the nature of the beasts they eat, yet they still swear that venison is meat for princes, and that their living on it raises them to the rank of emperor.

Chapter 6

Animals and Law 1

Natural Law

Medieval Christian Europe inherited a view of many classical philosophers that the cosmos was an ordered system, but in the Christian view created by a rational God; hence even in the early Middle Ages animals were thought to be subject to the ‘law’ that governed an ordered cosmos. A corollary of order was that everything in it conformed to some form of ‘natural law.’ The idea of natural law developed in antiquity, especially in the classical world, where it was expounded by the Greek Sophists and Aristotle and was central to Stoicism. Roman jurists singled out natural law (ius naturale) alongside civil and popular law as a reflection of the laws of nature and the natural order. Cicero argued that any law of the state that conflicted with natural law could not be accepted as law. Though Roman institutions broke down in the West during the fifth century, the classical conception of the law of nature survived and it became identified with the law of God, providing a foundation for the political and legalistic theories of the Middle Ages. In the eastern Mediterranean, where the Roman Empire survived in more than name, the sixth-century emperor Justinian (r. 527–565) ordered that the rather chaotic and sometimes contradictory records of Roman Law be codified and rationalised, and the Corpus Juris Civilis, as it would later become known, especially the part called the Digest, had a strong influence in western Europe from the early twelfth century onwards. According to it, animals had an instinctive knowledge of a natural law inherent in the cosmos, or at least in its living beings, and this law also functioned as the basis of laws governing certain ‘animal’ actions of humans. Digesta seu Pandectae (Digest, Gr. Πανδέκτης), 1. De justicia et jure (On justice and law), 31 Natural law is that which nature teaches to all animals, for this law does not apply exclusively to human society but to all animals, whether born of the earth, the air, or the water. The union of man and woman, which we call matrimony, procreation and bringing up of children derive from this law. We therefore see that all animals that are not humans, including wild animals, are considered to have knowledge of this law. 1 The Digest of Justinian, ed. and trans. Alan Watson. 3 vols. (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009): Vol. 1: Digest, Book I.[3]. © Koninklijke Brill BV, Leiden, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004721708_008

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In the early seventh century, Isidore of Seville stated that “All laws are either divine or human. Divine laws are based on nature, human laws on customs.”2 His first three classes of law, ius naturale, ius gentium (the law of nations) and ius civile (civil law) were adopted by Gratian in the twelfth century in his Decretum, where he emphasized that the first was older than the other systems of justice and the basis for them. Natural law goes back to the origin of humans (ab exordio rationalis creaturae) and is immutable because it is founded in moral precepts, the law which is included in the Gospel, “by which everyone is commanded to do to another what he wishes to be done to himself, and is forbidden to do to another what he is unwilling to have done to himself.” It was therefore equated with divine law. A more fully argued exposition of a similar concept appeared shortly afterwards (c.1150), in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus; “Law is the gift of God, the mould of equity, the pattern of justice, the image of the divine will.”3 Although he did not specifically explore ‘natural law’, his conception of justice was to have a powerful influence. However, there was still no clear exposition of how natural law functioned in governing humans, except perhaps by divine providence. During the Middle Ages natural law was an integral part of religious doctrine. Prior to the thirteenth century it was mainly the concern of jurists, but during that century it would become the actual expression of divine reason guiding the world and the basis of law created by the state. In his commentary on the early and medieval Christian theological teachings assembled by Peter Lombard, the Summa Aurea, William of Auxerre realized that the term ‘natural law’ was used in several different senses: the harmony of all things (emphasized by John of Salisbury); something that involved all instinctive functions and therefore all animate creatures (as in the Digest above); and that which was dictated by natural reason. In his Summa de Creaturis, Albertus Magnus asserted that natural law is the first principle of law, and the obligations laid upon man by the Decalogue are there because in the beginning he was endowed with reason. The law of was present in all human action concerning the preservation of life. In this definition the domain of natural law included those human actions listed by the Digest, but it did not govern animals. Albert’s pupil Thomas Aquinas gave us the clearest exposition of this concept. He returned to it several times, but there was no significant change in his approach. The final version was in his Summa Theologiae 1. Aquinas mentions four kinds of law: (1) eternal law; (2) natural law; (3) human law; and (4) divine law. Eternal law is those laws that govern the nature of the cosmos, that is, ‘laws’ as a manifestation of its divine order. Divine law relates to the standards that must be satisfied by a human being to achieve eternal salvation, equated with 2 Isidore of Seville, Etymologia: Liber V (De legibus et temporibus), ii. 3 Ioannis Saresbriensis Policraticus (1639): Liber VIII: XVII.

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the old and the new laws explicated in the Old (Hebrew) and New (Christian) Testaments respectively. Its precepts are disclosed through divine revelation, not by reason alone. The natural law is comprised of those precepts of the eternal law that govern the behaviour of beings possessing reason and free will. The first precept of the natural law, according to Aquinas, is ‘to do good and avoid evil’, and only by the path of reason can ‘man’ find the guidance that will free him from error. Thus Aquinas’ natural law theory is one of morality: that which is good and evil is derived from the rational nature of human beings. Good and evil are therefore objective and universal. His view was that adopted by the Church and maintained by it thereafter. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I–II, q. 93, a. 5: Utrum Naturalia Contingentia Subsint Legi Aeternae (Whether Natural Contingencies are Eternal Laws)4 I answer that; We must speak otherwise of the law of man than of the eternal law which is the law of God. For the law of man extends only to rational creatures subject to man. The reason of this is because law directs the actions of those that are subject to the government of someone: wherefore, properly speaking, no-one imposes a law on his own actions. Now whatever is done regarding the use of irrational things subject to man, is done by the act of man himself moving those things, for these irrational creatures do not move themselves, but are moved by others, as stated above [q.1, a.2). Consequently man cannot impose laws on irrational beings, however much they may be subject to him. But he can impose laws on rational beings subject to him, in so far as by his command or pronouncement of any kind, he imprints on their minds a rule which is a principle of action. Now just as man, by such pronouncement, impresses a kind of inward principle of action on the man that is subject to him, so God imprints on the whole of nature the principles of its proper actions. And so, in this way, God is said to command the whole of nature, according to Psalm 148.6: “And he established them [the sun, moon, stars, and the waters above the heavens] for ever and ever; he fixed their bounds which cannot be passed.” And thus are all actions and movements of the whole of nature subject to the eternal law. Consequently, irrational creatures are subject to the eternal law through being moved by Divine providence, but not, as rational creatures are, through understanding of the divine commandment. trans. Fathers of the Dominican Province

4 Aquinas, Opera Omnia, Vol. 7: Prima Secundae Summae Theologiae a Quaestione LXXI ad Quaestionem CXIV: Quaestio XCIII, Articulus V.

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Humans, as rational beings with a more developed society than any other animals, devised their own laws to maintain order within it, which was necessary because of the propensity to sin caused by the Fall and human ability to choose not to follow the universal divine law. In his De legibus, part of his enormous Magisterium divinale et sapientiale, William of Auvergne (1180/90–1249) set out to explain the laws of the Old Testament. His explanation of why humans should be disciplined is followed by an argument that capital punishment of heretics, about whom he was especially concerned, is entirely justified, after which he then attacks other “errors” such as Mohammedanism. The argument he puts forward for enforcing correction on humans presupposes human propensity to err and nonhuman animal inferiority and subjection to humans, which involves disciplining them as a matter of course. In addition, it presupposes a gulf between humans and all other animals. According to William, humans are clearly superior to other animals, hence all the more reason to discipline them. As he explains later in his work, animals are innocent and cannot sin, although they may have natural impurities. William of Auvergne, Magisterium divinale et sapientiale (Teaching on God in the mode of Wisdom), De De legibus (On faith and law), Ch. 15 We ask, therefore, from such erring ones, whether the little ones are to be corrected, at least with light whippings. There are those who answered that they did not. It is left undone, then, and they are open to all vices and insanities. And so they are corrected less than dogs, donkeys, and horses, when discipline of this kind should be applied to animals and not to children, and improvement should be sought through training of other animals but children should pay the penalty for the neglect of them, and be allowed to deteriorate in every way. … Since men are also animals, it is not because they are animals that they will be spared discipline, since if this were the reason no discipline would be enforced on animals: therefore, it must be that no discipline will be expended on them because they are human beings. Thus, as men, they are neglected, and regarded as inferior to other animals. Yet it is evident from the fact that men are incomparably nobler and more precious than other animals that they are more to be educated, more to be cared for with every form of protection and discipline.

5 William of Auvergne, Guilielmi Alverni Opera Omnia, Vol. 1, ed. F. Hotot (Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1963), 18–102: Tractatus de legibus, Cap. I.

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Nonhuman animals were an integral component in all medieval human polities and their presence had to be noted in the rules or customs intended to maintain social cohesion. For most of the Middle Ages in human-devised law their status differed little from inanimate objects that could not be held responsible for their actions. Because humans were owners of domestic animals and recognized as such in human law, they had an obligation to control their actions whenever deemed possible, and it was this that was regulated in the law. Animals came within the rules concerned with people’s status and conduct towards one another, that is substantive law,6 as property in the form of moveable objects owned by humans, whose movement from the ownership of one human to another, and injury or death at the hands of humans or other animals owned by humans, took forms that were permitted or not permitted. In rules concerning transfer of animal ownership the animals do not differ from other property; however, in rules concerning action by animals this may have been understood as Aquinas understood it, as if movement by an external force or the nature implanted in animals – the animals were not ‘making decisions’  – but there was sometimes an underlying implication of animal agency, that is, action initiated by the animal. In addition, in many cases in which an animal was subject to noxal surrender, or in England declared deodand (see below), there was an underlying implication, and occasionally an explicit statement, that the owner should know his or her animal’s character, which meant that the animal was something more than an object. One category of animal kept by humans did not appear in medieval human law – the pet, that is an animal kept purely for companionship who had no ‘useful purpose’ such as being reared as food for humans, or working as a draught animal or a beast of burden. Pets became popular with the upper classes in the High Middle Ages but remained legal nonentities well into the modern period. There were of course many variations in legal classifications and procedures in different medieval realms or in the regions within them, but there was also considerable overall uniformity. Medieval courts may be classed as royal, manorial, town or ecclesiastical. Many of the courts presided over by local landowners (seigneurial courts) were in fact held by royal prerogative. From the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries the kings of Latin Christendom took control (in theory) over all judicial proceedings involving serious breaches of the peace, a process that was achieved by or accompanied the issuing of law codes, but the proceedings might still be handled in seigneurial courts with a royal prosecutor acting as plaintiff. 6 As opposed to procedural law, concerned with the administration of the processes and the conduct within them of the human actors involved in them.

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Animals in the ‘Laws of the Barbarians’

Law was oral tradition beyond the northern boundaries of the Roman Empire and was only gradually supplemented and then replaced by written law, a process which began in earnest in the High Middle Ages. Aquinas’ view that humans could not impose their law on animals because they were not responsible for their actions was an explication of earlier views, reflected in the earliest written laws of post-Roman ‘barbarian’ Europe, the Leges Barbarorum (‘laws of the barbarians’, sometimes referred to as ‘Germanic Law’).7 These ‘codes’ included customs of the Germanic-speaking rulers of the successor kingdoms (or dukedoms) that had been handed down orally, but were also influenced to varying degrees by Roman law. The Salic Law (of the Franks) and the Anglo-Saxon laws were those least affected by Roman law. The Anglo-Saxon laws were written in Old English, but the others were in Latin. Most were recorded in writing in the Carolingian era (750–887). There is some debate as to the level of royal intervention in their reform and whether the continental leges were regarded as official, royally endorsed law or were simply used practically and flexibly alongside customary oral tradition to assist in solving disputes. Except in those cases when wild animals are mentioned, animals are property and appear most frequently as objects stolen or misused, often requiring compensation by an offending person to the owner. These tariffs give an insight into the relative value of the animals in the society in question as well as the social stratification of the humans compensated. However, some of the laws also concern damage or injury caused by an animal, for which the owner was often responsible and had to compensate any human victim or owner of an animal victim. The payment to a victim or his/her relatives by the perpetrator of the crime was referred to as wergild if the victim was killed or injured or an animal was stolen. The law code of the Burgundians was probably issued by King Gundobad in about 500, but perhaps revised by his successor Sigismund (d. 523), although the oldest of the surviving manuscripts of the text date to the ninth century. It deals largely with domestic laws concerning marriage and inheritance as well as regulating weregild and other penalties.8 The Lex Romana Burgundionum is a separate code, probably intended to apply to the Burgundians’ Gallo-Roman subjects. The oldest copy dates to the seventh century. The LRB has no corresponding rule that differs from that of the LB below. 7 The Visigothic Law is associated with Euric and purportedly the earliest (c.480). 8 Weregild is “man payment”; in old Germanic law, the compensation paid to an injured party by a person committing an offence against him or his family if he or a female member of the family is killed as a result of the offence.

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In the Burgundian code injury by an animal is often considered something that happens “by chance”, no different, for instance, from an injury caused by a falling tree or rock. The principle was the same as that followed in Justinian’s code, noxal surrender, so that the injuring animal was handed to the man who lost by its action. Exceptions to the rule applied when an owner had the ability to control an animal that had done damage and had previously been warned to do so. Other rules concerned the handling of animals considered to be someone else’s property. Lex Burgundionum (The Law of the Burgundians), 18, 209 18.1. Of those things which happen by chance. If any animal by chance, or if any dog by bite, causes death to a man, we order that among Burgundians the ancient rule of blame be removed henceforth, because what happens by chance ought not to conduce to the loss or discomfiture of man. So that if among animals, a horse kills a horse unexpectedly, or an ox gores an ox, or a dog gnaws a dog, so that it is crippled, let the owner hand over the animal or dog through which the loss is seen to have been committed to him who suffers the loss. … 23. Of injuries which are caused by animals. 1. If a man has enclosed or shut away an animal from his crops or from any place where it can do damage, and if the man to whom the animals belong drives them by force out of the courtyard of him who confined them as a voluntary act of presumption before the value of the damage done has been established, let him pay six solidi to him against whom he used force and let there be a fine of six solidi for the estimated loss. If a slave does this, let him receive a hundred blows; likewise concerning the estimated loss. 2. If any animal is impaled while being driven from a field, from a meadow, from a vineyard, or from a wheat field, let nothing be required from him who was driving it away. 3. But if a man undertakes to remove animals belonging to himself from a field or from any place while they are being guarded in an enclosure because of the damage they have done, let him pay a single tremissis for each animal, and let the amount of the fine be three solidi. 4. If anyone’s pigs have done damage in a vineyard, in the meadows, in the tilled fields, or in the acorn-bearing forests, and the master of the pigs has been warned twice that he must guard his pigs, and he does not wish to, let him to whom they did the damage have the power to kill the best from the herd of pigs and turn it to his own use. 9 The Burgundian Code: Book of Constitutions or Law of Gundobad, trans. Katherine Fisher Drew (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949; repr. 1972): XVIII and XX.

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5. But if there is no contest (i.e., the master has not been warned), and so the man damaged kills the pig, let him pay a solidus for the pig, with the further provision that that which the pigs have destroyed will be compounded. trans. Katherine Fisher Drew

In the Visigothic law animals owned by a human had to be killed by him or her if they caused injury to humans and were adjudged “vicious,” but the owner became responsible to compensate for the injury if he or she did not kill it after it had been recognized as a danger to others. This law recognizes the circumstance that an animal may be provoked by a human, in which case the provoker is responsible for any injury that may result. Owners of dogs were not responsible for their violence even if they were accidentally irritated, unless they could be shown to have somehow made the dog commit the act against anyone not committing a crime. Special rules for dogs recognize their exceptional situation as guards of property or herders, but also acknowledge that they may have the capacity to act like wolves. Less is said of animals in the Alemannic laws, in which the owner of a domestic animal who kills someone is responsible for compensating the family of the dead person as if he had done the deed himself. In all Germanic codes, the amount of compensation corresponded to the social status of the injured party, and was more for men of each class than for women. As in many other law collections, such as the early Irish ones, cutting off a horse’s tail was an insult to the owner. The first eleven specified cases involve a person’s removal, use for work, abuse, injury, or operations on the body of an animal belonging to another person, and cases where animals injure one another; sometimes the animal had to be replaced, sometimes double the value of it was paid as compensation. The following twelve cases are quoted in full. Forum Judicum (The Visigothic Code), Bk 8: Concerning Acts of Violence and Injuries; Title 4: Concerning Injury to Animals and Other Property10 12. Where an Animal Causes Injury to Anyone; Where any quadruped, while under the control of owner, causes any damage, the owner shall either surrender said animal to the party who sustained the injury, or make such other amends as shall be ordered by the judge. 13. Where an Animal is Injured, or Killed, by a Blow; Where anyone strikes a beast of burden belonging to another, so that, by reason of the 10 The Visigothic Code: (Forum judicum), ed. and trans. Samuel Parsons Scott (Boston: Boston Book Company, 1910): Book VIII, Title IV.

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blow, said animal is either crippled or killed, he who struck the blow shall be compelled to give to the owner of said animal another of equal value and shall be entitled to the animal that was injured. If said person should not have a beast of burden wherewith to restitution, as aforesaid, he shall pay the appraised value of the animal to the owner thereof. A similar rule shall apply to horses and to all other animals. 15. Where Anything Intended to Frighten an Animal is Fastened to it, and it should be either Injured, or Killed, in Consequence; Any person who should be known to have attached to a horse’s tail, the head or bones of a dead animal, or anything else by which it might be frightened, and, in consequence, the horse, while running, should be injured, or killed; said person shall be compelled to immediately give to the owner a sound animal, on account of his transgression of the law. Where, however, the horse sustains no injury, the offender shall receive fifty lashes, and, if he be a slave, he shall receive a hundred lashes with the scourge. 16. Where a vicious animal, while on the premises of its owner, kills anyone; Where any person has in his possession an ox, a bull, or any other animal which is known to be vicious, said animal must at once be killed, lest it injure someone. If, after the owner has been informed by the neighbours of the vicious disposition of said animal, he should still retain possession of it, and defer killing it through fear, or for some other reason, and said animal should subsequently kill, cripple, or wound anyone, said owner shall give the satisfaction required by law in case of homicide; that is to say, the regular compensation provided in the cases of men and women, children and slaves, of both sexes. … 17. Where Anyone Rids himself of a Vicious Animal, or Still Retains it in his Possession; Whoever has in his possession a vicious ox, or any other dangerous animal, must either kill or dispose of it, and notify his neighbours that he has done so. If he should not kill or dispose of it as aforesaid, but should keep it, he shall be liable for any damage caused by said animal while under his control. 18. Where anyone teases an animal and is injured by it, he alone shall be responsible for the injury; Whoever shall provoke a vicious ox, dog, or any animal, to attack him, shall alone he responsible for any damage resulting to himself from the attack of said animal. 19. Where a dog that has been irritated, whether the provocation was wanton or not, is proved to have injured or killed anyone; Where a dog bites another person not his owner, and said person is known to have been crippled or killed, in consequence thereof, no responsibility shall attach to owner of the dog, unless it shall be proved that he caused said

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dog to make the attack. If, however, he should encourage his dog to seize a thief, or any other criminal, and the latter should be bitten while in flight, and should be crippled, or die from the effects of the bite, the owner of said dog shall incur no liability therefor. But if he should cause said dog to injure an innocent person, he must render satisfaction according to law, in the same manner as if he himself had inflicted the wound. 20. Concerning a Vicious Dog; Where a vicious dog, belonging to anyone, kills sheep, or destroys other animals, and is caught, the owner of said dog must, as soon as he is notified, surrender it to him whose sheep were first injured, in order that he may kill it. If, however, he should be unwilling to kill the dog himself, or surrender him, as aforesaid, the owner of the dog shall be liable to double the value of any animals thereafter destroyed by him. trans. Samuel Parsons Scott

Paces Alemanni If a horse, ox or pig kills a man, the entire weregild is paid. (E cod. P) 3

Animals in High Medieval Law

In England before 1066, satisfaction for damage, injury or sometimes death caused by an animal was considered an accident and satisfaction was given by noxal surrender, the animal that caused the damage being known as the bane, to the damaged person, or to his family in the event of his death. However, wergild might also be paid as compensation for actions that resulted in a person’s death. For instance, in the Laws of Alfred (24): “If a beast injures a man, [its owner] must hand over the beast [to the injured man] or come to terms [with him].”11 La bane survived as the term for a thing causing death into the later medieval period. During the Anglo-Norman period death or injury by animal action without deliberate human incitement remained “misadventure.” However, the law was transformed, by a process that remains unclear, so that if a jury of twelve 11 “The Laws of Alfred,” in The Laws of the Earliest English Kings, ed. and trans. F.L. Attenborough (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), 62–93: [law] 24. An exception was the dog, for which compensation was paid for bites, rising to the wergeld according to the wound if the owner kept the dog even after he had previously had to pay compensation for its bites.

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men determined guilt, an animal or object that was the immediate cause of the death of a human being became deodand – from Latin deo dandum – that is, ‘given to God.’ In practice the instrument of damage, “any personal chattel whatever, animate or inanimate, which, becoming the immediate instrument by which the death of a human creature was caused,” was “forfeited to the king for sale, and a distribution of the proceeds in alms to the poor by his high almoner, for the appeasing of God’s wrath.”12 However, it might be immediately distributed to the poor, or forfeited to the lord of a liberty. In the thirteenth century the practice appears to have been for the thing that caused the death, whether it be ox, boat, horse or anything else, to be taken by the sheriff or some other officer (perhaps a constable of a castle or coroner) and sold, and at the eyre an order was made for this officer to account for its value.13 The justices could specify a specific purpose for which the money should be used. Records suggest that few of the proceeds were used for ‘pious purposes,’ instead being employed for public works such as repair of bridges or given to assorted people, poor or not. In addition, an animal might be wrongly declared forfeit by manor courts, impoverishing their owner but augmenting the income of the crown or its agents. Where the doctrine originated is impossible to determine. By the second half of the thirteenth century the coroner’s rolls were full of references to all sorts of objects as well as animals. The rules by which something was deemed deodand or not were not easily explained by the commentators. In theory the law distinguished, for instance, between a thing in motion and a thing standing still. Behind the distinctions made was a medieval conception of when some ‘thing’ could be said to have (a form of) agency or not. Between 1250 and 1256 the cleric and jurist Henry of Bracton completed a survey of the application of the English common law in the king’s courts, for which several jurists probably did the preparatory work. It is generally regarded as the outstanding common-law treatise of the Middle Ages, focusing on property rights and criminal law with reference to actual court decisions. Bracton explained the distinction between death by misadventure or accident and death by intention in his treatise, although here he makes no mention of deodand.

12 Corpus Juris: being a complete and systematic statement of the whole body of the law as embodied in and developed by all reported decisions, Vol. 18, ed. William Mack and William Benjamin Hale (London: Butterworth and co., 1920), 489. 13 The word eyre (Middle English, from errer – to travel) was used either for the circuit travelled by an itinerant (royal) justice or for the circuit court he presided over.

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Henry of Bracton, De Legibus Et Consuetudinibus Angliæ (On the Laws and Customs of England), De placitis coronae (Of pleas of the crown)14 Of homicide through misadventure and accident: Accidental homicide, which was touched upon above, may be committed in many ways, as where one intending to cast a spear at a wild beast or does something of the sort, as where playing with a companion he has struck him in thoughtless jest, or when he stood far off when he drew his bow or threw a stone he has struck a man he did not see, or where playing with a ball it has struck the hand of a barber he did not see so that he has cut another’s throat, and thus has killed a man, not however with the intention of killing him; he ought to be absolved, because a crime is not committed unless the intention to injure exists. It is will and purpose which mark maleficia, nor is a theft committed unless there is an intent to steal, as may be said of a child or a madman, since the absence of intention protects the one and the unkindness of fate excuses the other. In crimes the intention is regarded, not the result. It does not matter whether one slays or furnishes the cause of death. But here we distinguish between true cause and cause in misadventure, by animals which lack reason, or other movable things, which provide the occasio, as a ship, a tree that crushes and the like. Properly speaking stationary things, as a house or a rooted tree, provide neither the cause nor the occasion, nor do moving things sometimes, neither a ship nor a boat in salt water, though it may in fresh, by mishandling, but he who conducts himself stupidly, as in many other cases. trans. S.E. THORNE

If a horse or other animal in motion killed a person, whether infant or adult, or if a cart ran over them, it might be forfeited to the crown as a deodand, but if death were caused by falling from a cart or a horse at rest, the law made the chattel a deodand if the person killed were an adult, but not if they were below the years of discretion. The record below states that the victim was killed by a mare in motion, which had been declared deodand but the value assessed incorrectly. In the second case the oxen pulling the timber were assessed for value, at least some of which went to the victim’s children.

14

Henry de Bracton, De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliæ, Vol. 2, ed. G.E. Woodbine, trans. S.E. Thorne (Cambridge MS: Harvard University Press, 1976): De Placitis Coronae, F136.

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Case of death by misadventure, Huntingdonshire, 128615 Margery daughter of William Springolf was struck in the head by a kicking mare, so that three days later she died. The first finder and four neighbours come and are not suspected, nor is anyone else. Judgement misadventure. Price of the mare 3s., for which the sheriff will answer. And the vills of Somersham and Earith falsely appraised that deodand. Therefore, they are in mercy. And the twelve jurors concealed a part of that deodand. Therefore, they are in mercy. Placita Corone de Hundredo de Swinesheved extra Bristolliam Anno Quinto Regis Henrici (Pleas of the Crown for the Hundred of Swineshead outside Bristol in the Fifth Year of the Reign of King Henry [III]), [2]16 Walter, John’s son, was crushed to death by some wood that six oxen were hauling. No one is suspected. Judgement: misadventure. The value of the oxen was fifteen shillings and ten pence, a moiety [of which sum] is given for God’s sake (pro Deo) to William de la Hay, and the other moiety is given to Walter’s children. Englishry is presented.17 They are paid. Placita Corone, (Pleas of the Crown for the Hundred of Pimhill, Shropshire Eyre Roll of 1256)18 William son of Herbert was crushed by a wagon and died three days later. Judgement: misadventure. Value of the cart and oxen, 24 shillings and six pence. On this there was testimony that Hugh the chaplain of Momeresfeud took an ox from the deodand as heriot for the Abbot of Shrewsbury, because William made a will and enjoyed church law, leaving

15

Anne Reiber DeWindt and Edwin Brezette De Windt, eds., Royal Justice and the Medieval English Countryside: The Huntingdonshire Eyre of 1286, the Ramsey Abbey Banlieu Court of 1287, and the Assizes of 1287–88, Part One: Introduction and Texts (Leiden: Brill, 1981). 16 Pleas of the Crown for the Hundred of Swineshead and the Township of Bristol in the Fifth Year of the Reign of King Henry the Third A.D. 1221, ed. Edward James Watson (Bristol: W. Crofton Hemmons, 1902): 2. 17 Englishry (OF Englescherie) was a legal name for a person who had the status of an Englishman, a commoner of native English origin as distinguished from a member of the Anglo-Norman elite. Persons unknown who were found slain were assumed to be Norman in the early years after the conquest, which required a fine from the hundred for murdrum, so Englishry meant that the dead person was established to be English and no fine was paid. 18 In Alan Harding, The Law Courts of Medieval England (London: Routledge, 2020), Documents 12, Crown Pleas, 149–50.

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the ox to the church of Momeresfeud of which the Abbot of Shrewsbury is rector. Judgement on William. In cases of misadventure and deodand, animals were equivalent to inanimate moveable objects, both distinguished from “reasonable creatures,” namely human beings. The death of a human (a reasonable being) was classed as “casual death” if he or she were killed by either animal or object by mischance, without will, offence or fault. There was no hint of intent by the animal if one was declared deodand, nor of innocence or guilt; the human was adjudged capable or incapable of fulfilling their responsibility and in the latter case had to surrender the animal or object, after which he or she no longer had liability. The case revolved around the owner’s humanness rather than his or her property, the animal. In late twelfth and thirteenth centuries written custumals, collections of customary law, appeared in England, France, Germany and Scandinavia, influenced by Gratian’s canon law (Decretals). Of these the German Sachsenspeigel had the greatest influence, as adaptations of it were used in other regions of Germany, Poland, Bohemia and Hungary. It was the first German law collection to be recorded in writing since the Lex Saxonum in the Carolingian era. There is little resemblance between the two; whereas the Carolingian laws mainly concern crimes, only 24% of the Sachsenspeigel entries do. The name of the custumal, speigel (mirror) is a clue that like many other medieval law collections it was not ‘the letter of the law’ as modern laws are, but a guide to legal procedures and customs that includes a concept of righteousness as well as lawfulness and justice, founded on biblical and political principles. The “mirror” of medieval literature was a metaphor for a text that enables reality to be looked at and measured against the ideal, in this case activities of the human temporal world in the light of eternal justice. Nevertheless, the work and similar ones represent a first step towards codification and towards the judicial systems of today, and a transformation from a compensation-based system to a penal one.19 The inspiration for the original writer of the Sachsenspeigel, Eike von Repgow, and his probable mentor Count Hoyer of Falkenstein, advocate of Quedlinburg, was likely the rapidly changing social conditions of the High Middle Ages, especially with the growth of towns and new settlement of lands

19 Recording these ‘laws’ and then cases in writing meant that eventually previous cases became precedents that would determine how a similar case was handled.

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east of the Elbe, and a corresponding growth in the number of courts which were making it difficult to keep track of legal customs or know which were appropriate in new territories or towns with settlers of mixed territorial origin. We have no manuscript of Eike’s original text, probably completed in the 1230s, but there are over 400 later adaptations that are extant, the excerpt below belonging to the Wolfenbüttel manuscript of c.1360.20 The rules of Sachsenspeigel Book 2 on recompense for damage caused by animals resemble other European rules in the provision that only one who looks after, or continues to look after, such an animal after the damage is responsible for it. Noxal surrender is retained in specified circumstances. The concern with damage to crops appears in most European law collections. The Sachsenspeigel also maintains compensation by the owner of any animal for damage it did but allows a human to take the life of any animal who attacks him. Wild animals, that is, those who usually live outside the control of humans, have to be in an enclosure if they are “kept”; in effect, they have become owned by the keeper, but that keeper has to take special care because they may represent a bigger risk to other humans or their property than animals who are normally domesticated. In Book 3 the old ‘weregild’ payments for animals are recorded as a way of assessing their relative value, but the term has shifted in meaning as the wer originally referred only to humans and was used only in this way in the early Middle Ages. Nonhuman animals are valued according to their usefulness to humans in terms of the food or labour they provide. In this Sachsenspeigel they differ from inanimate possessions insofar as many of their species have much more capacity to do damage to other property, which may incur compensation from one human owner to another. Der Sachsenspiegel (The Saxon Mirror), Bk 2, Ch. 40, 62, 63, Bk 3, Ch. 5221 2.40. If someone’s dog or breeding boar or ox or whatever kind of beast kills or injures a person or an animal, his owner shall make compensation for the harm done according to the proper weregild or value if he takes the beast into his care after the damage occurred. However, if he turns it out, refuses it shelter in house or barn, and gives it no 20 21

On the Sachsenspeigel and the choice of this ms for translation, see the introduction to the English translation by Maria Dobozɏ: The Saxon Mirror (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 1–42. Eike von Repgow, Sachsenspiegel: Die Wolfenbütteler Bilderhandschrift Cod. Guelf. 3.1 Aug.2o, ed. and trans. Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand (Berlin: Akademie Verlag. 1993): Buch II, Kap. XL, LXII, LXIII, Buch III, Kap. LII.

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food and water, then he is not responsible for the damage. In that case the injured party can initiate a legal action for the animal [to obtain compensation] for the damage. Under no circumstances does the judge ever lose his court fine when an animal causes damage. Harm of whatever kind done by a man’s horse or his livestock while under the supervision of his servant or others of his household shall be paid by the person in whose care it was. If that person flees, and the horses or oxen and cart are found with evidence of the deed on them, and it is proven with an oath, then the owner of the animal and cart must pay indemnity if he cannot clear himself. He must pay the value of the horse or the other draft animal and the cart which has been taken into custody, or he must forfeit the animal, and the other person keeps it in payment for the damage. If a man allows his hogs or geese, which can not be confiscated, to feed on his neighbour’s grain or another’s crops, and then that man sets his dogs on them, and they bite the animals, wounding or killing them, he pays no penalty. 2.62. A person who keeps a mean dog, or a tame wolf, or a deer, or a bear, or a monkey shall make compensation for any harm the animal may cause. If he tries to transfer it after the damage has been done, he is nevertheless liable unless he can prove with two witnesses that he kept the animal only until the time it did the damage. If a man beats a dog or a bear to death while it is trying to do him harm, he pays no penalty if he dares to swear on the relics that he acted in self-defence. 2.63. If a person wants to keep wild animals outside of the preserve, he shall keep them in an enclosure in his custody. … 3.52. Now hear about the wergild of birds and animals. A chicken is compensated with a halfpenny, as is a duck; a goose with one penny; a broody hen or goose during their hatching period and a call duck with three pennies. The same compensation payment applies for piglet and a kid while they are still suckling. For a cat and a lamb four pennies shall be paid; six for a calf, one shilling for a foal during its suckling stage, and the same for the guard dog. The tariff for the dog called sheepdog is three shillings; for a horse, a yearling pig, and a cow it is four shillings; for a draft ox and a grazing horse eight shillings; and for a workhorse able to do a full day’s work, the tariff is twelve shillings. Younger animals are valued according to their age. The tariff for a riding horse with which a man serves his lord is one pound. No tariff has been set for a knight’s horse, saddle horse, small horse, or for fattened pigs. Instead, one shall return them and all moveable goods or make restitution according to the

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appraisal of the owner unless the person paying the compensation is able to reduce it with his oath. trans. Maria Dobozɏ

The Law of Scania (Dan. Skånske Lov, Swed. Skånelagen) is the oldest of the Danish provincial laws, written down in runes between 1202 and 1216. The Danish Archbishop of Lund, Anders Sunesøn, translated them into Latin soon afterwards.22 As a provincial law, the initiative must have come at least partly from the Scanian ting (regional ‘parliament’) in Lund. It applied to Scania, Halland, Blekinge and Bornholm, but influenced the other Danish provincial laws and those of Sweden as well, which appeared from the later thirteenth to the early fourteenth century. The penalties for harm done to humans by animals in the possession of other humans are compensatory, as in the leges barbarorum; the owner, or as stipulated in (103) and (104), rearer/breeder, is responsible, not the animal. Bears (and perhaps wolves?) might be kept for certain entertainments. The rearing of such animals is obviously considered more dangerous, and perhaps suspect, than keeping of domestic animals. Here grimmi, that is savage, fierce or cruel, means capability or supposed inclination to kill humans or domestic animals; it does not include predators such as hawks, which are no less bloodthirsty than wolves or bears when killing other animals. As well as gentleness, the adjective bliþæ (pl.) implies friendliness and hence greater tractability to human control, and it is in this that the hawk differs from bears and wolves. Skånske Lov (Scanian Law), 103–10523 103. If a man breeds ( feþær) wild animals or wild birds, whatever kind they are, he shall answer for them and their actions; if a man receives a wound from them, he who has them shall pay for the wound as if he had done it himself; if they kill a man, he who has them shall pay a full man’s compensation as if he himself had killed the man. If they get loose and another man kills them, he shall not pay for them, just as he would not if he killed a wild animal; if they are killed while bound, he who killed shall pay a fine for shaming for them, and not more. 22 From the Danish Codex Runicus, AM 28 8:o, University of Copenhagen, which includes two law texts written in runes in the same hand. 23 Skånske Lov, ed. P.G. Thorsen (Copenhagen: Berlins Bogtrykkeri, 1864): 5. 19–22. In Codex Iuris Scanici (Skåne-Lagen), ed. D.C.J. Schlyter, Samling af Sweriges Gamla Lagar, Corpus Iuris Sueo-Gotorum Antiqui 9 (Lund: Berlinqska Boktryckeriet, 1859), the numbering of these passages is 101–03.

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104. If a man breeds bear or wolf or other animals or birds of a cruel (grimmi) nature and they kill a man, he who has them shall pay nine marks. If they wound a man, he who has them shall pay three marks. If he keeps animals of a gentle (bliþæ) nature such as deer or a hawk, and they kill a man, he who has them shall pay three marks. If they wound a man, he who has them shall also pay three marks. 105. If a man receives a wound from another man’s domestic animal, whether it is horse, cattle or dog or whatever, for free men medical expenses and no more shall be paid; and for an unfree man [payment] for both lost labour and medical expenses. If a man is maimed by them, the maiming shall be paid for, and the medical expenses, and no more than three marks shall be paid for maiming done by such animals. If the maiming is minor, it shall be paid for according to the inspection of good men. The laws of two islands on the periphery of Europe, Ireland in the early Middle Ages and Commonwealth Iceland (c.1000–1266), differed from others in their detailed consideration of all matters concerning domestic animals, their actions and the value to humans if stolen or sold in a deficient condition, and so on. In both regions cattle were the most important livestock and the main measure of wealth, and dairying was of great importance, hence there were also provisions dealing specifically with animals that failed to produce sufficient milk, or misuse or theft of dairy products. The statutes of early Irish law (or Brehon law) comprised what would now be called a civil code: without any concept of punishment imposed by the state, they resembled the early Germanic codes and were concerned with contracts, property, inheritance and the payment of compensation for damage. They functioned in early Christian Ireland and were only partially eclipsed by English law after the Anglo-Norman invasion of 1169 in the areas controlled by English lords, but were restored in most areas as English control weakened from the thirteenth century onwards. The Senchus Már took into account the ‘natural behaviour’ of certain domestic animals, especially in the mating season; of these, the bull was the most potentially dangerous. The fines payable (or not) for all sorts of specified circumstances, such as larger animals injuring smaller, injuring animals of the same herd or another, or injuring those humans who did or did not work with them, in which bulls might do injury, were handled in great detail. Similarly, different consequences of bee stings are detailed. Just as certain animals were designated “vicious” in the Visigothic code, here some bulls are considered “wicked,”: the term may mean the same, but the Irish terminology is not only anthropomorphic but implies immorality.

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Senchus Már (Great Ancient Tradition), Leban Aicle (Book of Aicill)24 That is, the bulls and rams are exempt during the proper season wherein they bull the cattle. They are exempt for injury to the idler while in their own proper place, whether they were provoked or not, and to the idler who provoked them, whom they charge out upon; there is one-fourth fine due by them for injuring the idler who did not provoke them, upon whom they charge out, or for injuring the profitable worker who did provoke them, whether within or without; a half fine is upon them for injuring the profitable worker who did not provoke them, while the excitement of the bulling is upon them, and when it has gone off them, there is a half fine for injuring the idler, and a full fine for injuring the profitable worker. The bull is exempt for injuring any other animal that may come to interrupt his bulling or his grazing, except a bull of his own herd; for if it is he, there is one-half fine upon each of them for the other if it be not the bulling season, and if it be the bulling season, it (the fine) is one-fourth. He [the bull] is exempt for injuring any other animal of his own herd, whether it be the bulling season or not, and every animal of another herd in the bulling season, which he has bulled and which was brought to him, provided only it was not through wickedness he did the injury; but if it were, there is half fine for wickedness upon him, and the excitement of his bulling takes the other half off him. … … What shall be due from a bee for making the animal bleed? The proportion which the full meal of honey that is due from a bee for making a person bleed bears to the hive that is due from it for killing him, is the proportion which the ‘eric’-fine for blinding or killing the animal bears to that which will be due from a bee for making it bleed, i.e. four-fifths is the proportion for its lump-wound, three-fifths for its white wound which leaves a sinew in pain, or green, or swollen, or red. trans. Commissioners for Publishing the Ancient Laws and Insti­ tutes of Ireland

The collection of laws of the Icelandic Commonwealth, to which the name Grágás (“Greygoose”) was given in the sixteenth century, was supposedly based on the Norwegian older Gulatingslov, but there is no close resemblance between the surviving laws.25 It is possible that since the Grágás laws were 24 “Leban Aicle,” in Ancient Laws of Ireland, Vol. 3, ed. Commissioners for Publishing the Ancient Laws and Institutes of Ireland (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1865–1901), 83–547 (227). 25 The reason for this name is unknown.

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recorded in writing after 1266, when the Norwegian king Håkon VI was recognised as ruler and the Commonwealth ended, more consistency has been imposed on the Grágás laws than there really was. The Commonwealth society was dominated by free farmers, although the difference in wealth and status increased with time. The farmers usually had servants and slaves, who sometimes seem to hold less value than animals. Almost all the animals on the island were domestic and the measure of value was the cow, just as it was in early medieval Ireland. The general drift of the laws was that animals should be returned to their correct place, the farmyard, and that people were expected to treat any livestock on their farm as well as if it were their own, except in specified circumstances. However, in both the laws and the literature of commonwealth Iceland animals were sometimes recognised as having independent agency; in certain circumstances, for instance, a horse might end up with a human other than its owner but neither that non-owner nor any farm-owner he and the horse come across was held responsible for this, as long as they tethered it when the opportunity arose. Horses who were not bridle-tamed are not mentioned. Grágás (Greygoose), 2: Festa-Þattr; 164. Um hross reiðir (On horse riding)26 If someone’s bridle-tame horse runs after a man as far as the next farm, then he is to request men there to catch the horse, and then he is under no penalty even if it runs after him to another farm. If they refuse, the penalty is a fine. Likewise at the second farm. If he asks at the third farm and no help is given there, then the penalty for those who refuse him is lesser outlawry, given that he has already asked at two farms, but otherwise a fine, and those cases lie with him. … … If a horse approaches a man in uninhabited parts of the country, he incurs no penalty for it running after him if he tethers it at the next farm, even if it runs from one quarter into another or over moorlands which make a watershed between districts on either side. trans. Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote, Richard Perkins

The “even if” clause above refers to circumstances which would otherwise incur outlawry for the non-owner with the horse, which were stated elsewhere. More Grágás laws concerned horses than any other animal, but there were also similar laws to the above regarding dogs. 26 Grágás: Islændernes lovbog i fristatens tid, udg. efter det kongelige Bibliotheks Haanskrift, Vol. 1, ed. and trans. Vilhjálmur Finsen (Copenhagen: Berling, 1852).

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Grágás (Greygoose), 2: Um Sættir; 241. Um hunds bit (On dog bites) A man who releases a dog or handles him in such a way as to indicate that he is willing to have it go with him, then he is responsible for it even if another man owns it. If a dog goes along with a man and the man asks for food to be given to him or does anything for him when they come to a house, then the man is responsible for the dog even if another owns it, but not if he disregards the dog. trans. Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote, Richard Perkins

In many circumstances animals were considered to have immunity from penalty in case of damage caused, but not if they injured other animals or people. Precautions had to be taken by the owner, for instance tying up a fierce dog or white bear, or restricting access from others’ land to rams on the winter nights or to bulls in any season, if he were not to suffer penalty as well.27 In these laws below, just as the owner is outlawed and loses the protection of laws (in the case of lesser outlawry for three years), so, in effect, is the animal who inflicts the damage, as he loses his immunity. Grágás (Greygoose), 2: Um Sættir; 242. Um gripunga (On bulls) If as man owns a bull three winters or older or hurts someone by tossing him, or wounds men’s stock or hurts them by tossing them, then the penalty is lesser outlawry. A bull has no immunity in respect of injuries done to it as soon as it inflicts injury on anyone, given that it is three winters old or older. If it kills someone, then the penalty is the same as when a dog kills someone, and men have the right to settle in such cases without prior leave [from the law council]. The penalty is also the same if any injury deemed a major wound is inflicted on anyone by him. Each man is responsible for himself against swing of horn and hoof. trans. Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote, Richard Perkins

The law codes in medieval Christian Iberia had much in common with others in Europe, deriving in part from the old Germanic bannum, the authority to command forces in war and enforce it. However, the circumstances of a frontier society that existed in Iberia for most of the Middle Ages, which ensured 27

Rams or billy-goats were liable to make ewes or nanny-goats pregnant, and if they did this in the winter to sheep/goats other than the owner’s the owner of the pregnant animal had the right to castrate them. The precaution to prevent this was a flap attached to the ram or goat.

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the granting of fueros to local towns in a similar way to charters further north, allowing considerable independence, led to their expansion to become detailed municipal law codes in the twelfth century. Two such codes drawing on customary law appeared in the late twelfth century, that of Teruel in Aragon and Cuenca in Castile, after these places were taken from the Almohads. The latter code is extant in versions from the mid-thirteenth century onwards and had a strong influence, being issued as copies to several towns, but Alfonso XI began to replace it with his royal code (Fuero Real) in the fourteenth century. Many of the Cuenca regulations concerning animals are related to their provision and use in military campaigns, and these appear in considerable detail, but the code also covered dealings between citizens regarding domestic animals in a relatively straightforward manner, without much distinction being drawn between animal species or character. Nonhuman animals were not held responsible for their actions causing harm, but noxal surrender was provided for in lieu of a fine. Forum Conche de Cuenca (Code of Cuenca), Ch. 1128 3. The animal that injures or kills another [animal]. If an animal injures or kills another, its owner should pay the damage that has been done according to the oath of the plaintiff and of a single resident, or he should place the harmdoer in the hands of the plaintiff, if he [the plaintiff] can prove it; otherwise he [the accused owner] should clear himself with any resident and should be believed. 4. The animal that injures a person. The owner of the animal that injures of wounds someone should pay the doctor all the costs of his healing. The same should hold true in the case of a fracture of an arm or leg. 5. The animal that kills a person. If an animal kills someone, the owner of the animal should pay three hundred solidi or surrender the harmdoer. Be it known that the owner of the animal has to choose between paying the fine or surrendering the harmdoer, both for the fatality and for other injury. 6. Nine days having lapsed, no one should respond for the damage caused by an animal. No one should respond for the damage caused by a dog or another animal that has not been reported within the term of nine days, starting from the day of the damage.

28 The Code of Cuenca: Municipal Law on the Twelfth-Century Castilian Frontier, ed. and trans. James F. Power (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000).

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7. A frightened animal. If an animal frightened by someone, or some ox because of a fly, cause any damage, its owner should not pay any anything or surrender the harmdoer; he then who has frightened it has to pay the fine or the damage that occurred because of this. Equally, if a horse running loose or wild kills someone or causes any other harm, neither the rider nor the owner should pay any pecuniary penalty for this or depart as an enemy; but if one of them is suspect, he should swear with twelve citizens and should be believed. trans. James F. Powers

The Carta de Logu of Arborea, a judicate in west-central Sardinia, was a constitution and law code instituted by Marianus IV, judge or ‘king’ of Arborea who conquered almost all of Sardinia.29 However, disorder ensued after his death in 1375 and his son Hugh’s in 1383. His daughter Eleonora of Arborea eventually became regent and revised the law so that it became one of the most advanced and coherent legal codes of the late Middle Ages and lasted in that form to 1827. It elaborated on Sardinian custom and municipal law, but was also influenced by the Roman-Byzantine and canonical tradition and the jurists of Bologna and Catalonia. A manuscript of the law from the third quarter of the fourteenth century has survived.30 The Carta is much concerned with clear proof of ownership such as marking animals and keeping them separate from others’ herds. Like the laws above, it provides for compensation from owners if animals damage others’ property, for outright theft of animals, and any interference with others’ animals, alive or dead, deemed to constitute theft. In medieval Sardinia ‘wild cattle’ were a problem to farmers, who were given the right to kill them; they were obviously capable of doing more damage to their property than wild goats or sheep, but there was probably also a concern about contamination of domestically bred stock, so much so that killing of domestic cattle was acceptable if it occurred inadvertently during the elimination of wild animals mixed into the herd.

29 There were four independent judicates which had origins in the Byzantine administration of the early Middle Ages, which fell away after the Arab conquests in Africa and southern Italy. However, in the later Middle Ages the island was subject to repeated invasions and partial conquests by external powers. Various rulers of Arborea had aspirations to rule the whole island. Thus the Carta de Logu did not appear out the blue, as there are various extant statutes and other documents in Sardo from the judicates from the eleventh century onwards. 30 Ms BUC 211.

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Carta de Logu d’Arbarê (Charter of Law of Arborea) 115. Bestiamen in bingas (Cattle in the vineyards)31 Likewise we order that, if in the vineyards, in the gardens or in the fields there is domestic cattle together with wild cattle, and the owners of the vineyards, orchards or fields, or their servants or herdsmen, throw something at the wild cattle but injure and kill the tamed cattle, he who unintentionally felled or injured them shall have no liability nor damage. Anyone who has cultivated land in the mountains, where it is not customary to plough the land, and where wild cattle pass through, must keep it well fenced. If you do not fence it well, the damage caused to it will not have to be estimated and you will not have to pay for the tethering and keeping of the animals; if, on the other hand, it is well fenced in, the animals will have to be slaughtered, according to the provisions of the other chapters on wild cattle. Exceptions to the rules on domestic animals damaging property were those concerning donkeys and, less surprisingly, dogs. A donkey’s ears are obviously conspicuous, but it is not clear whether their removal was a punishment for the animal, which would imply its agency, or the owner (or both). The donkey did not have the status of a horse to a knight but would often have been ridden as well as used as a pack animal. The provision was presumably included as a traditional practice, and there was no requirement for a formal trial. Carta de Logu, 114. De su molenti in lavores (Of donkeys in the fields)32 We likewise order that the ear of a donkey found in the seeded fields (levore) will be cut off the first time; the second time his other ear will also be cut off and, from then on, if it is found there again, the owners of the fields or their herdsmen will be able to tether it and deliver it to the village administrator (curadore); he will send him without delay to Oristano, to our court. If he flouts these rules, the agent will pay the court 100 soldi, as provided above. The owner of the donkey will have to compensate the owner of the fields for the damage. 31 Carta de Logu dell’Arborea, trans. Giovanni Lupino (Nuoro: Edizioni Il Maestrale, 2022): Ordinamentos de sa Guardia de sus Laores, Vingnas et Ortos (It. Ordinamenti della Custodia dei Semineri, delle Vigne e degli Orti), CXV. My translation is from this Italian translation. 32 Carta de Logu dell’Arborea: Ordinamentos de sa Guardia de sus Laores, Vingnas et Ortos, CXIV.

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The fate of a dog that caused damage or the cost to the owner depended on its reputation, but it seems that handing over a dog (for whatever reason) to the injured party might have been preferable to paying compensation. That dogs had different reputations may be a tacit acknowledgement of variability of personality within a breed, although it could be attributable to the owner’s handling of the dog. Carta de Logu, 150. De su cane qui fagherit damnu (Of the dog that causes harm)33 We likewise order that if a guard or hunting dog, going about his task, causes damage to livestock, his owner shall be obliged to make restitution for the damage produced, if it is a dog that has a bad reputation. But if the shepherd fails to prove that the dog in question caused other damage besides that, the owner, if he does not want to recompense the damage, will be required to hand the dog over to the shepherd. If, however, the shepherd succeeds in proving that the dog has already caused other damage, the owner will pay according to the provisions above. 4

Human Ownership of Animals and the Right to Hunt Them

The principle that operated in most of early medieval Europe, certainly in the areas formerly subject to Roman rule, was that of res nullius, that something belonged to no-one either because it had never been appropriated (as in the case of a wild animal) or because it was abandoned by its owner but acquirable by appropriation. During the Middle Ages game preserves, forests and parks were established to ensure that numbers of the protected animals were maintained at a sufficient level for the king and privileged aristocracy to hunt and eat. As noted in Chapter 3, this amounted to the transference into their ownership of large numbers of previously ‘free’ wild animals; though preserving forest areas from cultivation, this was not nature conservation or preservation of habitat as most people would recognize it nowadays: the preserve or forest animals were no more protected from killing than farm animals on their owners’ land. Thus wild animals especially valued in the hunt were ‘protected,’ but the protection might be removed if they were so numerous that they were seen to become a threat to other valued animals, as occurred with the roe deer in England, which, as noted earlier, was demoted to a ‘beast of the warren’ in 1339.

33 Carta de Logu dell’Arborea: Ordinam en tos de Comonarjos (It. Ordinamenti dei Socci), CL.

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Some animals, especially predators, had no protection in any realm throughout the Middle Ages. The Norwegian Gulathing Law, one of the four laws of medieval Norway, each followed in several fylke (administrative districts, perhaps derived from older petty kingdoms), regulated relations between the king and his agents, the clergy and the peasantry. Parts of the law appear to be a social contract between the people on the one hand and the Church and the king on the other. The extant earlier version of this law dates to the thirteenth century, but it retains elements similar to those of earlier Germanic laws from further south. As regards hunting animals, like Bracton below, the concern is with claims to human ‘ownership’ of the quarry animals. Here bears and wolves belong to no man, but all have the right to hunt them as they have outlaw status. The bear-hunting method referred to below, in which the bear was trapped in its cave or den, usually as it woke up from hibernation, was common in northern Europe. Den ældre Gulatingslov (The older Gulating Law), Naboretten (Neighbour rights)34 93. About water and hunting grounds Everyone must have his stretch of water and his hunting grounds, which he has had from ancient times. No one should set traps on another man’s land, and if he does, he must pay a settlement for it and hand it over decommissioned to the landowner. 94. About bear hunting Bears and wolves are outlaws at all times. No man will be responsible for their deeds, with the one exception that the bear is encircled in its den; then the man shall give notice to the others that it is his quarry. Now it is being brought down by others; then they hunt on behalf of the one who owns the quarry. Now men go bear hunting and go to the den above the forest and drive the bear out; then those who drive it out will be punished if it bites anyone, but if it runs into the woods, they will not be fined. 95. About animal hunting We should hunt animals with weapons – he who can, he who owns land. Now people go on animal hunts; then he who wants to hunt the animals with dogs must go where he himself owns the land.

34 Den ældre Gulathings-Lov, ed. R. Keyser and P.A. Munch (Oslo [Christiania]: Gröndahl, 1847): Naboretten, XCIII, XCIV, XCV.

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The one who flushes out the animal owns it – even if others bring it down – as long as he himself will hunt it. Now the animal goes to swim; then he who disables it down shall possess the shoulder of the beast. It must be redeemed with the skin on, or the meat can be taken without the skin. Now the animal runs away from the hunting trail and is killed by others; then they own half each – the one who brought it down and the one who originally pursued it.35 Now a man goes hunting with dogs on someone else’s land; then he hunts on behalf of the one who owns the land. The skin goes to the dog if people slaughter an animal. If a man finds a seal or a fish above the coastal slope, it belongs to the land. And if he leads it away, he must bring it back and answer to the landowner if he is sued. If a man finds a dead animal on land, he shall have his own find, no matter what animal it is. Among many other things, Bracton’s treatise handles the circumstances in which animals are classed as property of humans and in which they can be hunted by anyone. The latter are those generally considered “wild.” Henry of Bracton, De legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae (On the Laws and Customs of England), De adquirendo rerum dominio (Of acquiring the dominion of things36 How the dominion of things is acquired by the jus naturale or the jus gentium. We have treated above of the classification of things. Now we must explain how the dominion of things is acquired according to natural law or the jus gentium (starting first with the older law, which, alongside the human race itself, proceeded from the nature of things) and then how it is acquired according to the civil law, which came into existence later, after polities came to be founded, magistrates created and laws committed to writing. Of wild beasts. By the jus gentium or natural law the dominion of things is acquired by many means. First by taking possession of things that are owned by no-one, and do not now belong to the king according to the civil law, no 35 Lit: the one who raised it, as also in the third sentence of the section, þa a sa dýr er reisir (‘he gets the animal who raises it’). 36 Henry de Bracton, De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliæ, Vol. 2: De adquirendo rerum dominio, F8.

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longer being common as previously, such as wild beasts, birds and fish, that is, all the creatures born on the earth, in the sea or in the heavens, that is, in the sky, no matter where they may be taken. When they are captured they become mine, because they are forcibly kept in my custody, and by the same measure, if they escape from it and recover their natural liberty they cease to be mine and are again made the property of the taker. They recover their natural liberty when they escape from my sight into the free air and are no longer in my keeping, or when, though still within my sight, their pursuit is no longer feasible. Of fishing, hunting, and capture The taking of possession also includes fishing, hunting and capture. It is not pursuit alone that makes a thing mine, for though I have wounded a wild beast so severely that it may be captured, it nevertheless is not mine unless I capture it; rather it will belong to the one who next takes it, for much may happen to prevent my capture of it. And so if a wild boar ends up in a net you have placed, even though he is entangled in it, if I have disentangled him and carried him off, he will be mine if he comes into my power, unless custom or the king’s privilege rules to the contrary.37 When bees are in hives. The taking of possession also includes confinement, as in the case of bees, which are wild by nature. For if they settle in my tree they are no more mine, until I shut them up in a hive, than are birds who make their nest there, and therefore if another hives them he will be their owner. A swarm that flies out of my hive is taken to be mine as long as it remains in my sight and pursuit of it is still feasible, otherwise it becomes the property of the taker. But if another takes it he does not make the swarm his if he knows it belongs to another; indeed he commits a theft unless he has the intention of restoring them. All these rules are correct, but sometimes and in some places other rules hold good by custom.38 Of tame beasts and birds. What has been said applies to animals which always remain wild. But if wild animals are tamed and habitually go and come back, or fly away and return, as do deer, peafowl and pigeons, another rule is applicable, namely that they are considered ours as long as they have the intention 37 38

The same principle as in Justinian’s Institutes 2.1. Movement of bee swarms from one owner’s property to another’s posed a problem that was given special attention in several law collections: see, for instance, for France, The Etablissements de Saint Louis, ed. and trans. F.R.P. Akehurst (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996): The Customs of Touraine and Anjou 172, pp. 106–07; and for Sweden, Magnus Erikssons Landslag: Byggningabalken 29 (pp. 120–21).

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of returning, for if they cease to have that intention they cease to be ours. They are taken no longer to have the intention of returning when they lose the habit of returning. The same is true of wild hens and wild geese that have become tame. Regarding domestic animals a third rule is applicable, that though they fly out of my view they remain my hens and geese, no matter where they are, and he who takes them with the intention of keeping them commits a theft. trans. S.E. THORNE

In England, France and central Europe certain districts were designated areas in which rights to hunt animals were restricted. Either the laws including these provisions were included among others in custumals or sometimes town law, or, as in England, they functioned as a parallel set of rules to the common law. The medieval word foresta designated an area where activities and those who carried them out were restricted by law, managed by officials accountable to the king: it was thus an administrative rather than an ecological term.39 The vegetation and landscape was not as important as the animals that lived in the district, which might include wetlands, meadows and even fields and villages as well as woodland. Areas called “waste” in English and Scottish records were sometimes taken as forests by the king because they harboured wild animals. As noted, the aristocracy of Latin Europe attempted to reserve hunting of certain animals for itself: these were deer, elk, ibex, chamois, wild boar, bear, bison (wisent), aurochs, wolves, tarpan (wild horse), lynx and certain large waterfowl.40 The Merovingian rulers had already established some forests in Francia by the late seventh century, but Charlemagne greatly expanded the royal forestae in his empire, as well as establishing animal parks in Roman style. Restrictions on the privilege to conduct the chase continued to grow in the Carolingian period, not only in the areas ruled by the Carolingian family.41 Before the 9th century, in the East Frankish kingdom a forest (Ger. forestis) was an area whose natural resources were legally designated for the king’s use, but as occurred elsewhere in Europe, from the eighth century the Church 39 In this chapter ‘forest’ refers to this forest and is not used in its modern sense. 40 There is controversy about the tarpan: many believe that there was only one species in west-central Europe in the Middle Ages, but this may not be the case. It had disappeared from Italy and the eastern Mediterranean in Antiquity. Albertus Magnus reported it as living in Germany in c.1200, but it had vanished from west and central Europe except Iberia by the end of the sixteenth century. Icelandic and Swedish Gotland horses are descended from them. 41 East Francia is usually termed Germany after the accession of Henry I “the Fowler”, the first of the Ottonian dynasty, in 919. The last Carolingian ruler had died in 911. The Salian kings ruled after the Ottonians, from 1024 to 1125.

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and the nobility also established such forestes or took over former ones. As hunting continued or even increased in importance as an aristocratic activity in Ottonian and Salian Germany, the form of hunting privilege exercised by kings became known as wildbann, functioning in the Wildbannforst or Bannforst/Bannvürst (“ban forest”). However, others could acquire hunting rights through delegation for a fee known as wildgeld. The management of a wildbann lay in the hands of a vogt (bailiff). Together they and foresters guaranteed oversight of the king’s forest. In the fifteenth century the term wildbann was superseded by that of Forst (“forest”), a district over which ‘forest sovereignty’ was exercised.42 In Anglo-Saxon England and Scotland, and probably its preceding Pictish kingdoms and the kingdoms of Dal Riata and Strathclyde, the concept of game was res nullius. There were few restrictions, but the situation changed after the Norman conquest of England.43 The ‘Norman system’ was copied in Scotland from the mid-twelfth century onwards, although there res nullius still operated to a greater extent. For most of its existence in England the forest law corresponded to the common law and had its own forest eyre justices who acted like the itinerant justices of the common law eyre. In 1217 the clauses of the Charter of Runnymede (1215) concerning forest law were removed and reissued as a separate Carta de Foresta, and it was only after this that the former became known as Magna Carta (that is, great by comparison with the forest charter). As we shall see, the enforcement of the Forest Laws tells us much of medieval hunting. An exchequer official of Henry II gave the earliest extant definition of the English royal forest in the late 1170s. Even if his statement that the forest law was separate from the common law is generally true, it is unlikely to have been wholly separate. Some justices served in both eyres. Richard FitzNigel, Dialogus de Scaccario (Dialogue on the Exchequer), Bk 1.12: Quid foresta regis et quae ratio appellationis (What the king’s forest is and the reason for the name)44 Master: … The whole organization of the forests, the punishment, pecuniary or corporal, of forest offences, is outside the jurisdiction of the other courts, and solely dependent on the decision of the king, or of some officer specially appointed by him. The forest has its own laws, based … not on the Common Law of the realm, but on the arbitrary legislation of the King. 42 See the excerpt from the Sachsenspeigel in the previous chapter, p. 228. 43 See also Ch. 5. 44 Richard FitzNigel, Dialogus de Scaccario: The Dialogue of the Exchequer, ed. and trans. Emilie Amt (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007): Liber I.xii.

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No-one was permitted to hunt in the royal forest except the king or those who had his warrant. Landowners whose land was within forests had to employ a woodward to enforce the law, but were granted the rights to hunt game on their own land on a certain number of occasions. In these cases any deer in the forest was considered the landowner’s own, even if it came from elsewhere, as deer were not marked and “know no boundaries.” A chase was a free liberty, usually granted by the king to favoured nobles or clerics: for this reason, forest law tended to be applied there, although this was not strictly necessary. These “free chases” were valuable privileges, over which great landowners sometimes fought protracted legal disputes. One such concerned the chase of Malvern, between the bishop of Hereford, Thomas de Cantilupe, and Gilbert de Clare, the earl of Hereford, and lasted from 1275 to 1278.45 A park was strictly a form of enclosure, land surrounded by some form of physical boundary, usually a paling. Sometimes a royal grant was given, but not always. The park was not necessarily for animals, but that was the most common purpose. Wild animals were supposed to be free to pass in and out, but enclosing ditches were made so that they could only pass in. Although many animals in the park and forest were species that might be considered wild and might be hunted, being let out of the park into the surrounding countryside if it was too small for a hunt, they were semi-domesticated in that they were maintained to be available as food, whether hunted first or not. Some deer were tamed completely and used as decoys to lure other animals to their death, as were some more commonly domesticated animals such as horses, giving the decoy its name, “stalking horse.” In late medieval southern Europe kings and princes also established hunting parks on the pattern of those above, often attached to palaces, but this involved considerable difficulties in Italy. The duchy of Milan, for instance, had a variety of terrain suitable for hunting different animals, from red deer to bears, but was a patchwork of differently administered territories, hence the efforts of the Visconti and Sforza rulers to obtain power to override even the most fundamental laws and rights to property.46 5

Trials, Execution and Cursing of Nonhuman Animals

The relative authority and extent of jurisdiction in the different courts varied from realm to realm, but the main functional distinction was between 45 Aberth, Environmental History of the Middle Ages, 181. 46 Probably the main concern was obtaining land and wealth with which to reward their followers.

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ecclesiastical and secular courts.47 They usually had authority to handle different matters. Whether the ecclesiastical actions were ‘trials’ in the strictest sense is debateable, but procedures of both types were similar, so that precedents derived from ecclesiastical courts could be applied in secular courts and vice versa. In some regions during the later Middle Ages and thereafter animals were tried for crimes. Whether the extant records represent the tip of an iceberg or there were in fact relatively few of these trials is not clear at present. The same courts handled both human and animal transgressions. As it did for humans, the court at which animal cases were heard depended on the nature of the transgression. Ecclesiastical courts presided over by churchmen dealt with public nuisance offences, frequently destruction of crops destined for human consumption. If an animal physically injured or killed a human being, it was tried and punished by a judge in a secular court. Since the pattern of an animal’s behaviour is species-related, certain species tended to appear in certain courts. Ecclesiastical tribunals usually had jurisdiction over groups of undomesticated animals, such as swarms of insects or colonies of rodents, while secular tribunals usually hosted trials involving individual domesticated animals. Both ecclesiastical and secular courts carefully adhered to the procedural rules and legal customs that had been established for human criminal defendants. The carcasses of executed animals were usually buried in the same places as the corpses of human criminals, or under the gallows. Consuming the flesh of executed animals was considered taboo and generally forbidden. Much of the original inspiration and justification for holding animals accountable for their transgressions, and the way in which they were executed or their flesh disposed of came from the Hebrew law of the Old Testament. In Genesis 3:14–15 God curses the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and thereafter several passages insist that animals be held accountable. In Genesis 9 it is clearly stated clearly that the law of blood-revenge which God revealed to Noah after the Flood applies to both animals and humans, while verses in Exodus and Leviticus mandate stoning of animals (oxen) who kill humans and the death of both humans who commit bestiality and the beasts involved. There is also a biblical interdiction against consumption of animal flesh injured by other animals. 47 The nineteenth-century legal historian Karl von Amira made a technical distinction between the judicial proceedings by ecclesiastical courts against non-domesticated animals (Thierprocesse) and the trials and capital punishment of animals by secular tribunals (Thierstrafen): see Karl Von Amira, “Thierstrafen und Thierprocesse.” Mitteilungendes Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 12 (1891), 545–605.

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Genesis 9.5–6: For your lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning; of every beast I will require it and of man; of every man’s brother will I require the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed: for God made man in his own image. Exodus 21.28: When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall be clear. But if the ox has been accustomed to gore in the past, and its owner has been warned but not kept it in, and it kills a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death. Exodus 22.19: Whoever lies with a beast will be put to death. Exodus 22.31: You shall be men consecrated to me; therefore you shall not eat any flesh that is torn by beasts in the field; you shall cast it to the dogs.48 Leviticus 20.15–16. And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and you shall slay the beast. And if a woman approach any beast, and lie down thereto, you shall kill the woman, and the beast: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” The purpose of the ecclesiastical trials was usually to prevent the animals from doing any further damage, rather than to punish them for any they had already perpetrated. Complainants named groups of natural pests as defendants, generally defined by the area they plagued or lived in. In the Middle Ages they included a large variety of small vertebrates and insects.49 As these animals invariably failed to respond to a summons and it was impossible to seize any of these hordes of creatures and bring them to court, the judges prosecuted them as groups and in absentia. The Church sought to use its authority to intercede with God and his servants so that they might compel destructive animals to 48 Jewish Rabbinic law, on the basis of two passages in Exodus, did provide for the examination of the case of an ox so that it could be adjudged harmless and its owner liable. https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6817-goring-ox. 49 As listed by Edward Payson Evans, animals known to be prosecuted in ecclesiastical courts during the Middle Ages (up to 1525) were: moles (824, 1479), rats (1451, 1479, 1512–13, 1522), mice (1120, 1519), snakes (9th c.), eels (1225), snails (1487, 1488, 1500), worms (15th c.), weevils (1460, 1478, 1479, 1488, 1516), caterpillars (1120, 1481), locusts (886, 1516), cockchafers [may bugs] (1320), bloodsuckers [mosquitos? leeches?] (1451), unspecified beetles (15th c.), unspecified flies (1121, 14th c., 1500), unspecified insects (1512–13) and unspecified vermin / pests (1509). In later trials assorted birds, grasshoppers and termites also appear, and they too may have been prosecuted in the Middle Ages. See Evans, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals (London: Heinemann, 1906). Evans’ research was published in 1906, and these numbers can be taken only as indicative.

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desist from their devastations and to retire from all places devoted to the production of food for human consumption. Following a complaint to the ecclesiastical court the judge receiving it sent someone to investigate the extent of the alleged damage after which the court would demand and prayers and perhaps processions to assuage heavenly anger; if this failed, the court would summon all of those in the offending group of animals to appear in court and it was usually then that it would appoint a procurator to represent them. Parts of the records of two of these cases are given below. In 1478 the priest Bernhard Schmid, in the name and by the authority of the Bishop of Lausanne, pronounced a solemn malediction against some insects named inger, possibly weevils, in which he admonished, denounced and cited them for destruction of crops and fruit, summoning them to appear in court if they did not leave. One of the arguments used in their defence when such animals multiplied and consumed foods intended for humans was that they were merely doing what God had intended them to do when he created them; however, such an argument would be invalid if they were not created alongside the other animals in the beginning. Since they were not mentioned as present on the Ark, the prosecution argued, they were obviously a mistake and were not supposed to survive the Flood. In this case, it was claimed, the inger were “imperfect creatures” and not among the genera (Geslechts) on Noah’s Ark, implying that they were of unnatural origin.50 Diebold Schilling, Die Amtliche Chronik (The Official Chronicle [of Bern 1468–1484]), Ch. 358: Das der vorgenant lútpriester von Bern die wúrm und enger vermant und fúr den vorgenanten bischof citiert. (How the aforementioned priest of Bern admonished the worms and inger and summoned them before the aforementioned bishop)51 “Thou irrational and imperfect creature, called unnatural because thy species was not found in the ark of Noah in the time of the slaughter and destruction of the flood, you have come in numberless bands and have done great harm in the ground and on the ground, and caused a noticeable cessation of the feeding of men and irrational animals. And so that you and your followers are no longer possessed of that and similar [land], my gracious lord and bishop of Lausanne has commanded me in his name to get you to yield and to abstain, and so by his grace’s 50 Wiflisburg is Avenches, now in Switzerland. 51 Die Berner Chronik des Diebold Schilling 1468–1484, ed. Gustav Tobler (Bern: K.J. Wyss, 1901): Kap. 358.

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commandment and also in his name as an authority and in the power of the high holy trinity and by the power and merit of the Redeemer of the human race, our Guardian Jesus Christ, and by the power and authority of the holy churches, I command and admonish you, within six days from now, to leave all and any fields and those adjoining, where you have done harm secretly or openly, or where you may still do harm, especially to leave all orchards, fields, gardens, pastures, grazing land, trees, cattle, and all places where the crops of men and animals grow and spring forth, so that you and your associates may not cause any harm to the fruits and crops of men and animals, secretly or openly. If, however, [when the six days have passed] you do not comply with this order and commandment, and think you have reason not to do so, I order, notify and summon you to appear before me and, by the authority and obedience to the holy church on the sixth day after this execution, to appear one hour after midday in Wiflispurg, to justify yourselves, or to give an answer for your conduct through your advocate before his grace the bishop of Lausanne, or his vicar and representative. And then my lord of Lausanne or his representative will act against you according to the rule of law with curses and other punishments, as is then due in such a case according to the form and established practice of justice. Dear child! I order you to pray with devotion on your knees with three paternosters and Ave Marias, in praise and honour of the Most Holy Trinity, and to implore her mercy and help, so that the invaders may be eliminated.” When all this was proclaimed and performed by the aforementioned priest, there was no sign that these proclamations and curses were of any use; then the almighty God, who wanted to communicate his mercy to all of us, gave us this plague such as never happened in the old times for the sake of our sin, so that we would be corrected. Other maledictions can have had no more effect than this one, as they could not even induce psychosomatic illnesses in their targets. In the Middle Ages, however, not only did most people presumably believe that anathema could work, but they had little other option than to trust in such solutions if they wished to remove a threat to their livelihoods from numbers of animals. If the ‘pests’ did not leave, as in the case above, the sins of the people had obviously been sufficiently grievous for God to refuse his help. In the extant records those appointed to defend the animals in court seem to have used every argument possible to state their clients’ cases. In 1519 a complaint against Lutmäuse (probably field mice) was filed by a certain Schwarz

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Mining at Stelvio (Stilfs) in Tyrol.52 He stated that these harmful animals did extensive and noticeable damage, so much that if they were not caused to leave, the people of the area would be unable to feed themselves. The response by the defence and the verdict are recorded below. Antwort and Urtel of the case following the complaint against the Lutmäuse in Stilfs, 151953 Answer: Thereupon Grienebner intervened, and gave this answer and put his Procurator in the right: he understood this charge against the little animals; but it is well known that they are sitting there with certain possessions and practises, which they would be denied: because of which he stands in the hope that today their practises and possessions will not be taken away or denied with any judgement. In the event that a verdict would be issued that they would have to give way, he hopes that they will be given a different place and somewhere where they are able to survive: even with such a departure, they should be granted free safe conduct from their enemies, that is dogs, cats or others: he is also in hope that if one is pregnant, that the same allowance will be made and a day appointed that she may bear fruit and then also leave with it [the offspring]. Judgement: To complaint and answer, charge and counter-charge, and to inquiries and everything that comes with justice, it is recognized with judgement and right that the harmful little animals which they call the Lutmäuse, those of Stilfs in Acker and Wiesmader according to the complaint, within fourteen days are to be allowed to go away and never come there again in perpetuity; but where one or more of the little animals is pregnant or does not want to go because of youth, they shall have free safe conduct from everyone for 14 days; but those who wish to go in this way must travel within fourteen days. In this case the judge may be taking into account that the field mice have a purpose as part of God’s creation, which they should not be denied. There is no single explanation for the advent of these animal trials in the late Middle Ages. In this period there was a general movement towards greater royal control over judicial procedures, but ecclesiastical procedures and canon law had a huge influence on the development of secular law and leading ecclesiastical scholars such as William of Auvergne or Thomas Aquinas who mentioned 52 Given the nature of the complaint, the animals might have been moles. 53 As recorded in Joseph Hormayr, Taschenbuch für die vaterländische Geschichte, vol. 34 (Leipzig: G.Reimer, 1845), 239–40.

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the matter argued that nonhuman animals could not sin or be tried. On the other hand, representatives of the Church had earlier cursed and expelled animals from certain districts, as related in saints’ lives such has that of Bishop (St) Permin, who is alleged to have expelled venomous reptiles from Reichenau in 728. In the tenth century Bishop Egbert of Trier (in office 977–993, also kanzler of Emperor Otto II) is said to have laid a curse on some swallows, forbidding them to enter his church on pain of death after they had disrupted services with their noise and “sacrilegiously defiled his head and vestments with their droppings when he was officiating at the altar.”54 In an era of increasing legal intervention in everyday life, the ecclesiastical trials may be a formalisation of such activities. According to the Annales Ecclesiastici Francorum in 824 a group of moles was excommunicated in the valley of Aosta in Italy, the earliest extant (reliable) record of animal excommunication. But how did excommunication of animals make sense, when they were not and could not be members of the Church? Anathema, which was sometimes imposed, made a little more sense in this respect, even if it was equally ineffective. Secular trials differed from ecclesiastical ones in that charges were typically brought against individual animals, which were domesticated or a related species rather than wild, and the punishment inflicted on the guilty was corporal rather than supernatural. Although other French customals of similar date appear to accept them as standard, in the late thirteenth-century French Coutumes de Beauvaisis, the jurist Philippe de Beaumanoir stated that such trials were juridically invalid because beasts had no knowledge of good and evil and could not have malicious intent; the only purpose for such trials, he claimed, was to fill the coffers of seigneurial authorities.55 In the extant records animals that appeared as criminal defendants included pigs, cows, bulls, horses, mules, donkeys, oxen, goats, sheep, and dogs, but in our era pigs appeared in court especially frequently. This is not surprising, as they were allowed to roam the woods, meadows and, increasingly as pannage decreased and towns grew, streets, and would eat almost anything that could be chewed. The court cases suggest that their meals sometimes included children. The earliest surviving records of the secular prosecution of nonhuman animals in western Europe come from the second half of the thirteenth century. We have records of secular prosecutions from regions corresponding to modern southern and eastern France, Switzerland, southern and western Germany and northern Italy, although it is difficult to know how prevalent such trials were: in his book The 54 Evans, Criminal Prosecution, 28. 55 Les Coutumes de Beauvaisis, par Philippe De Beaumanoir, ed. Arthur Beugnot (Paris: Jules Renouard et cie, 1842): Notice, p. cxi.

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Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals, Evans documented some thirty prosecutions and excommunications of animals between the ninth and the sixteenth century, but some court records may have been lost, if indeed they were kept properly in the first place.56 Judgement of June 14, 1494, by which a pig guilty of having killed a child on an estate of Clermont, France, is condemned to be hanged and strangled.57 To all those who will see or read these present letters, Jehan Lavoisier, licentiate in the law, and grand mayor of the church and monastery of Monsieur Saint-Martin de Laon, Order of Prémontré. and the aldermen of this same place: as it was brought to us and recorded by the procurator-fiscal or syndic of the religious, abbot and convent of Saint-Martin de Laon, that in the cense of Clermont-lez-Montcornet, belonging in all high, medium and low justice to the aforementioned religious, a young pig had strangled and defaced a young child being in the cradle son of Jehan Lenfant, cowherd of the said cense of Clermont, and of Gillon his wife, informing us and requesting us for this reason, that we would proceed with the said case as justice and reason would demand and require: and that since, in order to know and cognize the truth of the said case, we have heard and examined by oath, Gillon, wife of the said child, Jehan Benjamin, and Jehan Daudancourt, tenants of the said cense, who have told us and affirmed by their oath and conscience, that on the day after Easter last, the said Lenfant was looking after his animals and the said Gillon his wife departed from the said cense, to go to the village of Dizy … having left the said little child in her house … She placed him with a young daughter, aged nine years … during which time the said daughter went away to play around the said cense, and left the said child lying in his cradle; and during said time the said swine entered into said house  … and chewed and ate the face and throat of the said child. … Soon after the said child, as a consequence of the bites and the mutilation that the said pig gave him, departed from this world … We, in detestation and horror at the said case, and in order to set an example 56 Evans, Criminal Prosecution, 265–286. No full investigation of the sources has been done since Evans’, but various modern scholars have checked some of his sources and found that he was quite scrupulous. His interpretations of the motives behind the trials, however, founded on ideas of primitivism and backwardness, are no longer accepted by anyone. 57 Evans, Criminal Prosecution, Appendix O, 354–55.

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and maintain justice, have declared, judged, sentenced, pronounced and appointed, that the said swine, currently held prisoner and locked up in the said abbey, will be, by the master of the works, hanged and strangled on a fork of wood, near and joining sinister forks and high justices of the said monks, being near their cense of Avin … In witness of this, we have sealed these letters with our seal. Obviously ‘irrational animals’ without human logos could not be taken into consideration or play any part in procedural law, while their part in substantive law was severely restricted. Nevertheless, despite the obvious inability of animals to follow court proceedings or make any statement in their own defence, the medieval legal authorities took them seriously. Although it appears so, there can be no certainty as to whether medieval jurists thought nonhuman animals capable of committing a crime ‘with malice aforethought.’ Lawyers for a convicted animal sometimes appealed to a higher court against an unfavourable verdict, which might result in a change to the lower tribunal’s judgement or even an acquittal. For example, a sow and a she-ass condemned to be hanged had their sentence changed so that they were executed by a blow to the head. No animal charged with initiating and engaging in the act of killing a human escaped condemnation, but others charged with complicity were exonerated or pardoned. An example of the latter is given below, the details of the crime and conviction detailed at the beginning of the record. It seems that a whole herd of pigs was considered too great an economic loss to the priory. It also appears that oxen or horses were more likely to be spared than animals of lesser value.58 Letters Patent granting a petition of Friar Humbert de Poutiers given at Montbar, on the 12th day of September of the year of grace 1379. Thus signed by Monsignor the Duke: J. Potier.59 Philippe, son of the King of France, duke of Burgundy, to the bailiff of our lands in the county of Bourgoingue, greetings. Hear the supplication of brother Humbert de Poutiers, prior of the priory of the city of Saint-Marcel-lez-Jussey, concerning that on the 5th day of this present month of September, Perrinot, son of Jehan Muet, known as Hochebet, common swineherd of the said city, guarding the pigs of the inhabitants of the city or area of jurisdiction of that city, and at the cry of one of the 58

Esther Cohen, The Crossroads of Justice: Law and Culture in Medieval France (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 164. 59 Carlo D’Addosio, Bestie Delinquenti: (Naples: Luigi Pierro, 1892): Sentenze di processi penali di bestialità, Documento I, 277–78.

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pigs, three pigs standing among the aforementioned pigs ran up to the aforementioned Perrenot, attacked him and knocked him to the ground between them, as well as [the plea] by Jehan Benoit de Norry that he [Perrenot] guarded the pigs of the said supplicant, and by the father of the said Perrenot was found fatally wounded by the said sows, and if as here Perrenot confessed it [what had happened] in the presence of his said father and of the said Jehan Benoit, and fairly soon after he was dead. And since the aforementioned supplicant, to whom belongs the justice of the said city, was not reproached for negligence, his mayor arrested all the said swine to do justice in the way appropriate, and still detains them prisoners both those of the said city and some of those of the said supplicant, for according to what the aforementioned Jehan Benoit says, they were found together with the said sows, when the aforementioned Perrenot was thus injured. And the said prior begged us that we would agree to consent that by doing justice to three or four of the said pigs the remainder be delivered. We bow to his request, and have with special grace granted and consented, and hereby grant and consent that by doing justice and the execution of the said three sows and one of the swine of the said prior, that the remainder of the said swine be set free, notwithstanding that they were at the death of the aforementioned swineherd. At Savigny-sur-Etang in 1457 six piglets were exonerated of blame after they and their mother had been imprisoned and tried for the murder of a five-year-old boy, Jean Martin, after being found with the body. The sow was deemed guilty and sentenced to be hanged by her hind legs to a gallows tree, but because of their tender age and the bad example set by their mother the offspring were pardoned, although they had been stained with blood – a judgement which appears to suggest that the pigs were thought of as if humans. In these trials the community provided and paid for the accused animals’ defence, and some records show that lawyers used complex legal arguments on behalf of the defendants. If they were charged with a criminal offence, animal defendants were housed in the same jails as human prisoners. In 1408, in Pont de Larche, a pig accused of killing a child was kept in the town prison for twenty-three days before being hanged. A receipt has survived showing that the jailer charged two deniers tournois a day for the pig’s board, the same as for a man.60 If convicted in a secular court, they awaited their punishment, 60 Evans, Criminal Prosecution, 142–43.

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which was usually death, as a human would, and the court paid for the services of a professional executioner to carry out the sentence, as shown in the following document. The sow, sentenced to death before a local tribunal for badly injuring the face and arms of a child and causing its demise was sentenced to be executed by being maimed in her head and upper limbs and then hanged. The professional executioner, named a “master of high works”, carried out the punishment in the public square near the city hall, but unusually (as far as we know), the pig was dressed in human clothes for the event and the execution was subsequently commemorated with a fresco painted on a wall of the local church of the Holy Trinity.61 The pig may have been dressed in clothes as mockery, or to show that her execution was an example to the human onlookers. Acknowledgement by the hangman of Falaise of having been paid ten sous and ten deniers tournois for the execution of an infanticidal sow, and also ten sous tournois for a new glove, by the Viscount of Falaise.62 Original receipt of January 9, 1386, passed before Guiot de Montfort, tabellion at Falaise, and given by the executioner of this city the sum of ten sols and ten deniers tourneys for his pain and salary for having dragged, then hanged on the justice de Falaise a sow of the age of approximately 3 years, which had eaten the face of the child of Jonnet le Maux, who was at cradles and was approximately three months old, so much so that the said child died of it, and ten sol tourn – for a new glove when the executioner carried out the said execution: this receipt is given to Regnaud Rigault, Viscount of Falaise; the executioner declares therein that he is quite content with the said sums, and that he leaves the king and the said viscount free of them.63 Guilty animals were usually hanged, but they might be beheaded, stoned to death or buried or burned alive. The mandate for stoning came from Exodus 21:28. The blow to the head sometimes administered was a distinctly ‘animal’ method of execution, also used for routine slaughtering of domestic animals such as pigs. It is possible that some recorded differences in execution method were due to animal physiology rather than any concept that they deserved a different fate than humans, but the Falaise mode of execution clearly invoked lex talionis, “the law of retaliation”, which required that the 61 In 1820, the walls of the church were whitewashed, and unfortunately, the fresco painting was covered over. Evans, Criminal Prosecution, 141. 62 Evans, Criminal Prosecution, Appendix G, 335. 63 “… free of them”: that is, free of any further obligation to pay him.

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same injuries be inflicted on a criminal as those she or he had inflicted on her or his victim. Burning was the usual fate of animals who had been involved in acts of bestiality, albeit through no intent or ‘fault’ of their own. The human perpetrator suffered the same fate; these cases, treated increasingly severely towards the end of our period, arose from the fear of human closeness to other animals.64 In 1474 a cockerel was executed by fire for a rather different ‘crime’, witnessed by a large crowd. Although there is no description of a trial here, Gross implies that a public executioner carried out the burning. This form of execution was commonly used for convicted witches and heretics, and the process may have been based on the witch trials that were becoming more frequent in the fifteenth century.65 The basilisk was mentioned in most bestiaries and encyclopaedias, including that of Vincent of Beauvais mentioned below. Vincent was uncertain whether the egg is incubated by a toad, a snake or the heat of the dung.66 Johan Georg Groẞ, Kurze Baßler Chronick (A Short Chronicle of Basel)67 On Thursday before the feast of St Laurentius they burned a cockerel on the Kohlenberg, together with an egg that he had laid. Men feared that a wurm would hatch out of it.68 The executioner cut open the cock and found three more eggs in it. Then, as Vincent writes in the 16th book of Speculum Naturale, ch. 77, it has always been held true that a cock in his old age may lay an egg, from which comes a basilisk, if it is hatched by a snake called coluber in dung. Hence the basilisk is half a cockerel and half a snake. He also says that some have said they’ve seen basilisks hatched from such eggs. 64 See Ch. 7 for a further discussion of this ‘crime,’ adjudged such because it eroded the human-nonhuman animal divide. 65 Esther Cohen, Crossroads of Justice, 33–34. 66 See Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Naturale, 20.22–24. In assorted sources the basilisk is described as being hatched from the egg of a snake or toad by a cockerel and is usually portrayed with a mix of reptilian (or amphibian) and bird features. The cockatrice, which first appears in medieval English works, appears often to have been another name for the basilisk but is also shown or described as a dragon with birdlike features, said to be hatched from a chicken or rooster egg by a snake. The basilisk exuded poison and could kill by sight, smell, and contact, not only animals but plants as well. The gaze of the cockatrice was said to turn a person to stone, a power also attributed to the basilisk in many sources. 67 Kurze Baßler Chronick (Basel: Johan Jacob Genath, 1624), 120. 68 Wurm meaning a dangerous serpent or dragon-like creature.

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Although researchers generally divide animal trials as either ecclesiastical or secular in form, medieval people had long believed that humans could be possessed by demons and there was no reason why animals should not be. A miracle that combined both was Jesus’ exorcism of demons from two men and transfer of them to a herd of swine, whereupon they had stampeded to their death in the sea.69 Writing two centuries before the Basel burning, Thomas Aquinas was in no doubt about demonic possession of animals: direct petitions to God and incantations against the devil were sensible because the devil could lead an animal astray. If God cursed a beast, the curse must not be regarded as a curse of the animal itself, but as an indirect way of cursing a rational agent (a demon or servant of the devil). In what might be read as a criticism of the actions of some earlier saints, he argued that human cursing of animals as irrational beings served no purpose and would be unlawful. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II, q.76, a.2: Utrum Liceat Creaturam Irrationalem Maledicere (Whether it is permissible to curse an irrational creature)70 I answer that benediction and malediction, properly speaking, regard things to which good or evil may happen, that is, rational creatures: while good and evil are said to happen to irrational creatures in relation to the rational creature for whose sake they are. Now they are related to the rational creature in several ways. First by way of ministration, in so far as irrational creatures minister to the needs of man. On this sense the Lord said to man: “Cursed is the earth in thy work,”71 so that its barrenness would be a punishment to man. Thus also David cursed the mountains of Gelboe, according to Gregory’s expounding.72 Again the irrational creature is related to the rational creature by way of signification: and thus our Lord cursed the fig tree in signification of Judea. Thirdly, the irrational creature is related to rational creatures as something containing them, namely by way of time or place: and thus Job cursed the day of his birth, on account of the original sin which he contracted in birth, and on account of the consequent penalties. On this sense also we may understand David to have cursed the mountains of Gelboe, as we read in 69 Matthew 8:28–32. 70 Aquinas, Opera Omnia, Vol. 9: Secunda Secundae Summae Theologiae a Quaestione LVII ad Quaestionem CXXII: Quaestio LXXVI, Articulus II. 71 Genesis 3:17. 72 Pope Gregory I, Moral. 4.3.

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2 Samuel 1:21, namely on account of the people slaughtered there. But to curse irrational beings, considered as creatures of God, is a sin of blasphemy; while to curse them considered in themselves is idle and vain and consequently unlawful. trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province

However, cursing of animals which are cursed by Satan would be a cursing of Satan, as the animal had become his instrument. This is presumably the concept behind an anathema pronounced against caterpillars in 1481: “And if, at the instigation of Satan, they are not obedient to this our order, or rather the order of the Church and God, we curse and excommunicate them …”73 It was usually determined that any produce of animals executed for killing humans was unusable, contaminated by the act; as mentioned in Chapter 5, this principle was established well before trials of animals began. However, this prohibition was not always enacted; in the Low Countries the meat of the animals was often distributed to the urban poor. It is difficult to identify the motivations behind the trials of animals. They occurred in the context of intellectual argument and bureaucratic procedures increasingly employed by the Church for defining, identifying and punishing humans deemed to be a threat to the universal Christian (human) community. The trials of nonhuman animals did not represent justice for them; the sole ‘right’ the animals had was to be subject to human justice and to be punished as if humans: they were not granted the right to sue or even to have a human sue on their behalf – only to be sued. Many of the legal reforms that took place in the High Middle Ages benefitted the king’s or the Church’s coffers, as they increasingly became the ultimate arbiters of justice and fines or confiscations often went to them. Manorial courts remained outside ecclesiastical or royal control, and although they rarely dealt with serious breaches of the peace, they did handle animal trials.74 However, there could be no financial motive for the trial and execution of animals, as this profited no-one economically, especially when the dead animal 73

Pronounced by Jean Rolin, cardinal bishop of Autun, published in Mâcon on 17 April 1481 and referred to by celebrated French jurist Barthélemy de Chasseneuz (1480–1541): see D’Addosio, Besti Delinquenti, case 54, p 8. He gives the date as 1487. Barthélemy is famous, among other things, for his use of every judicial procedure possible to defend a group of rats in Autun. 74 These courts were rare in parts of Europe. For instance, in Scandinavia, where law had developed in regional assemblies dominated by the local nobility, their use was very limited.

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was deemed unfit for consumption and perhaps for use as materials as well. Given that medieval communities took animal trial processes seriously, to the extent that they went to considerable expense and trouble to ensure that judicial process was properly followed, there must have been other motives. A variety of explanations have been offered: People began to think of nonhuman animals in a more anthropomorphic way under the influence of beast epics and the like in which animals behaved as humans. A difficulty with this argument is that the tales and images were propagated more among the literate elite. Similar tales may have been prevalent among the mass of illiterate people throughout the Middle Ages, as much of their folklore was orally transmitted and not recorded. It is likely that people had sometimes taken revenge on nonhuman animals for attacking humans throughout the ages, but in an era when disputes were increasingly settled in law courts rather than by private vengeance, some began to think that vengeance on animals should also be enacted in the courts. The prosecution of homicidal animals was intended to eliminate a social danger, on the premise that an animal which had already proved itself capable of harming humans might do so again. The trials were designed to deter other criminals, both human and animal, from committing similar crimes.75 It is, however, unlikely that the punishments inflicted upon animal defendants were supposed to serve as a warning to other animals, since the audiences for the executions were humans. Ecclesiastical trials and anathemas against ‘vermin’ benefited the Church by emphasizing its power to impose supernatural sanctions, reminding people to pay their tithes. Possibly any failure of the plaintiffs to pay tithes, thus incurring God’s wrath, would be one of the explanations if the pests did not leave their crops alone as instructed.76 The search for disruptive people increased with the economic decline and devastating plagues of the fourteenth century, adjudged as punishments sent by God because of the sins of man. There is no indication that homicidal acts by animals were thought to bring down God’s wrath upon humans, but failure to try and punish them, particularly if they were perceived as overturning the

75 W.W. Hyde, “The prosecution and punishment of animals and lifeless things in the Middle Ages and modem times,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 64/7 (1916), 696–730 (718). 76 This was state explicitly in a trial of some insects (animalia, Gallice urebecs) at Troyes in 1516. The argument is emphasized in Peter T. Leeson, “Vermin Trials”, The Journal of Law & Economics 56, No. 3 (2013), 811–836.

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natural order ordained by God, might have been thought to incur his wrath. That some reckoning was due is included in the deodand law of England. The trials were intended to establish cognitive control over a world that forever threatened to fall into disorder. People needed to believe that the natural universe was lawful.77 When an event such as an animal killing a child occurred it appeared to defy all reasonable explanation, so people turned to the courts to make sense of such events by “redefining them as crimes and placing them within the rational discourse of the trial.”78 Medieval jurists believed that an animal, especially a domestic one, who attacked a human being had violated and become a living denial of the divinely ordained hierarchy of creation. The trial and punishment of the animal restored the cosmic equilibrium.79 Concerning the last three suggestions, the trials may have represented a public and ritualized method of reassuring humans that they had power over the natural world and re-establishing cosmic order, but this raises the question of why a method that allowed arguments in the animals’ favour was used at all. Esther Cohen describes the trials as “rituals of inclusion” that extended the reach of human justice “by imposing its normative boundaries upon the whole world.” She argues that the trials “allow the community to domesticate chaos by providing a consensus explanation of social reality to replace what would otherwise seem to be frightening and uncontrollable activity.”80 Whatever appearances may suggest, the animal trials did not necessarily involve personifying the defendants, nor did they provide evidence of similarity or equality between humans and animals. On the contrary, it was clear proof of human superiority, of the legal lordship man held over nature. Even ordinary and illiterate folk probably had some conception of the “basic truth” that animals were subject to the universal law that placed them below man in the universal 77 Nicholas Humphrey, “Bugs and Beasts before the Law”, in his The Mind Made Flesh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), ch. 18, 235–254 (247). 78 Paul Schiff Berman, “Rats, Pigs, and Statues on Trial: The Creation of Cultural Narratives in the Prosecution of Animals and Inanimate Objects”, New York University Law Review 288 (1994), 318–319. 79 Jacob J. Finkelstein, “The Ox that Gored,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 71 (Philadelphia: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1981), 48–7; Esther Cohen argues strongly against this interpretation, “Law, Folklore and Animal Lore”, Past & Present 110 (1986), 6–37 (17–18); see also Philip Jamieson, “Animal Liability in Early Law”, Cambrian Law Review 45 (1988), p. 57. For a more recent perspective, see Peter Dinzelbacher, “Animal Trials: A Multidisciplinary Approach,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 32. no. 3 (2002), 405–421. 80 Cohen, Crossroads of Justice, 292.

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hierarchy. As for why these animal trials continued even though they were inconsistent with official Church doctrine, the opinions of secular folk, including lawyers acting as their voice, need not have accepted the doctrine, even assuming they fully understood it. As in the 1494 case excerpt above, much of the initiative for trying animals may have come from common people, albeit perhaps incited by lawyers, whatever the underlying or unconscious motives. In the Middle Ages an action was brought against someone for murder only if an aggrieved relative or the lord whose vassal the victim had been made an accusation against them; the initiative to prosecute did not come from the government or its agents as it might now. No-one in medieval Europe questioned the God-given superiority of humans over other living creatures, but aside from this there were probably many views of animals, as reflected in the allegories of the bestiaries, anthropomorphic tales or philosophy. Then as now, the vast majority of people were not philosophers and their beliefs did not necessarily have any coherence. Beliefs might often be contradictory, just as many people nowadays would deny the existence of animal intention or comprehension but suspend this opinion whenever they interact with their pets. Motivations would have varied from community to community and more than one is likely to have existed in any given animal trial or informal punishment. Modern researchers have shown a lot of interest in these trials in recent decades, but most human ‘punishment’ of, or revenge on, nonhuman animals for their transgressions of order or custom as conceived or devised by humans is likely to have occurred without formal legal procedures. ‘Executions’, that is, killings designed for display or otherwise enacted in unusual ways, of wild animals still occur, and we have records of specified forms of killings and mutilations of domestic animals carried out by custom according to the ‘offence.’ 6

Execution of Animals for Involvement in Bestiality

Homicide against humans was not the only crime for which nonhuman animals were executed under the law in the late Middle Ages, as involvement in bestiality also incurred this penalty. Before bestiality became a matter for the secular law courts it was handled with penances imposed by the Church, a matter explored more fully in Chapter 7, but by the fifteenth century punishment for bestiality had escalated so that execution of both convicted humans and their animal victims was possible. The animals were not tried or adjudged guilty, but appeared in the testimony during court cases in which the initiator of the act was invariably the human on trial. Whether a nonhuman animal

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involved was a willing or unwilling participant was not considered, and if the human perpetrator was guilty and condemned to death by burning, so too was the animal, apparently executed by this method to remove the contamination of society brought about by such a heinous act. Zoophilia was condemned in the Bible and considered an unnatural and immoral act by the Church, but also a threat because it eroded the human-nonhuman divide. The Norwegian decree below was probably made in the 1460s. ‘Decree issued by King Christian I and the council of the Norwegian realm’,81 Article 182 This is the first article, that those men who are outlaws according to ecclesiastical law are those who commit sin with their relatives and in-laws in the first and second degrees. Their property is to be divided half to the king and half to the church regardless of whether they come to confession or not. And those who commit the bad and unseemly act of mixing with cattle or other such bad act that is against nature are also to become outlaws and their property to be divided as mentioned. They shall beg for their life with the king regardless of whether they come to confession or not. trans. Torstein Jørgensen

Also in the late fifteenth century, from France and Spain, we have the first recorded cases of capital punishment inflicted by secular courts for those found guilty of sexual contact with animals, as well as the execution of the tainted animals. ‘The Process of Jean Beisse’:83 Jean Beisse, aged approximately 24 years, native of the place of Greslart, parish of Marboc, near Châteaudun, and at present a labourer, living in the vicinity of Megnanville, parish of Filacé, married for three years, having been accused and convicted of having twice carnally known a cow which he had, and put his member in its reproductive organ for two succeeding days, and, to do so, took a saddle onto which he climbed, which 81 Christian I became king of Denmark and later the Scandinavian Union (Norway and intermittently Sweden), The realms had their own councils. The Norwegian council was chaired by the archbishop of Nidaros and comprised the suffragan bishops and leading laymen of the Norwegian realm. 82 Norges Gamle Love II, 270, n. 160. 83 Gaston Dubois-Desaulle, Étude sur la Bestialité au point de vue historique, medical et juridique (Paris: Charles Carrington, 1905): 152–53.

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cow he later sold, then, having found a white hairy goat in his yard, he had taken it to his cowshed, and inserted his member in it and spilled some of his semen there, and had not finished before the woman Ganille of Megnanville and a lad arrived unexpectedly in the cowshed. To do this, he did not bind the goat, but only held it with both hands from behind; furthermore, having confessed that he penetrated another white goat that had a little reddish hair in the said stable and put his member in its genitalia and not spread his seed there because he had feared to close a gate adjoining the said stable to ensure that he was not surprised there for the crimes, were condemned by sentence of Jehan Roncellet, lieutenant of the bailiwick of Dunois, assistant to the advocates, procurator, appointee of M. the count of Dunois and several others, to be led to Gibet and there to be put to death and by burning, destroyed by fire and his body reduced to ashes, and similarly the said beasts to be burnt and reduced to ashes, and his goods acquired and confiscated, to be audited by the Lord Count. This sentence pronounced on Thursday 10 November 1468. trans. from the French by Gaston Dubois-Desaulle

Chapter 7

Beast-Humans and Human Beasts Human belief in or construction of animal-human hybrids or belief in metamorphosis from human to animal or vice versa, like use of animals as exemplars, is founded in the close resemblance between human and nonhuman animals, especially many mammal species, and the part-human, part-beasts aided humans in understanding themselves. In addition, humans may consider other humans as ‘animal in nature.’ Humans form social and political groups on the basis of perceived kinship or common race, ethnicity, language, religiosity and even social behaviour, usually a combination of more than one of these, and often characterize humans of other socio-political groups or those from their own group who do not conform to the social norm as ‘less than human’, more often than not as nonhuman animals. Representation of people by an animal can in turn influence conception of the animal itself. The line between representation of a human as an animal and belief that a human actually has acquired animal characteristics and in a sense become part-animal might even have become blurred in the minds of some people. With the exception of the metaphorical characterization of a warrior as courageous or fierce like a wild animal perceived to have these qualities, in the medieval Christian world representation of a human as a nonhuman usually had negative connotations. Attitudes to creatures that were believed to be a reality and had both human and animal parts were more ambivalent and partially dependent on their perceived nature, but they were at least suspect. Medieval Christian folk believed that domestic animals had been created as such and had no knowledge that their ancestors had lived in a world without them, in which the lifestyle of humans resembled that of nonhuman animals much more closely. The feeling of commonality that European humans may well have had with nonhuman animals in the era before the development of pastoralism, farming and associated animal domestication lay thousands of years in the past, except perhaps in some thinly populated regions in the far north. Nonetheless, the therianthropes that frequently appear in European Upper Paleolithic or Mesolithic cave- and rock-art or as carved figures reappeared in the art and myth of some farming societies long after cattle, horses, sheep, goats and pigs had been domesticated, such as that of Archaic and

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Classical Greece (c.700–300 BCE), and some of these therianthropes, as well the idea of human-animal hybrids, were inherited by medieval Europeans.1 Without written evidence, it is difficult to know whether images that represent half-human, half-nonhuman animal beings were thought of as representing a stage of metamorphosis from one to the other or hybrids. For our purposes, metamorphosis is a process in which the two beings involved exist together, only in constantly changing proportions during the process of transformation from one to the other, whereas hybridity denotes a double being of two parts in which both exist permanently in combination (as we will see below in the excerpt from Albert the Great, medieval definitions of the Latin equivalent terms might be different). Both combinations destabilize certitude about reality and present a challenge to a worldview in which boundaries between species and genders are clear. Fortunately, we have written sources to assist us in understanding how hybrids and metamorphoses were understood in the Middle Ages, at least by the literate elite. Some of the classical half-humans were classed as monsters, considered either beasts or deformed humans. There was discussion of the possibility of metamorphosis (transformatio, mutatio) throughout the Middle Ages. Such practices as alchemy necessarily required acceptance of its feasibility. However, most concerning to many was the possibility that the human body and/or soul and human rationality could be reduced or “lost” through transformation into another animal or by transformation of nonhuman flesh into human matter, as discussed in Chapter 8 on animals as food. 1

Monstrous Beings, Monstrous Races

In the Middle Ages a variety of semi-human beings or animal-human hybrids were considered monstra. Some were of classical mythological origin, while others derived from ancient Greek and Hellenistic travellers’ or travel writers’ tales, most of them probably distortions of reality but some fictitious. The most important single source of information on them for medieval Europeans was Pliny’s Naturalis Historia, compiled in the 70s CE. Early medieval thinkers 1 There can be no certainty as to the conceptions behind the human-painted or carved animal or part-animal, part-human figures of prehistory, although the closer in time and culture to societies in which totemism or shamanism is known to have existed the more likely the images are to be connected with these phenomena.

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emphasized the role of the monstrous as portentous, a wonder that had a cultural role in assisting people to define themselves as human and their place in the world around them (cf. Latin monstrare – to show, to guide, to reveal, monere – to warn). Races of people that diverged from the norm were defined as monstrous. In the High Middle Ages the noun “monster” came into more common usage to refer to a living being who belonged to such a race. Like nonhuman animals, monsters provided an example to humans of what they were not. Both had a didactic purpose as part of God’s creation. These creatures were relegated to the periphery of the known inhabited world, often designated by “the Orient”, or perhaps “India / the Indies,” which was known only from the tales mentioned above, or ‘Ethiopia,” a vague conception of ‘somewhere in Africa or the south.’ Whether many or most medieval people believed in monsters as a reality is uncertain, but even if they did not the monstra played an important role in the medieval imagination. Nevertheless, for medieval thinkers, concerned with maintaining the boundary between humans and other animals, beings that had animal as well as human attributes or parts, if accepted as possible or actual, presented a particularly difficult problem. To the distinction between rational and non-rational within the category of animals, which gave humans their exalted status, was added another distinction, between natural and unnatural within the category of sentient beings, but even the classification as monstra did not eliminate the threat to human exceptionalism that they represented. Monstra were frequently portrayed without many of the attributes of civilization, such as clothes, but many of their characteristics were those identified as especially human in comparison with other animals, such as speech, possession of hands and upright posture. Augustine recognized that if monstrous peoples did indeed exist, they would have to be recognized as human if they were descendants of Adam. As for how they might form part of God’s purpose, he stated that these monstra belonged to the plenitude of God’s creation, which had to incorporate wonders. Augustine of Hippo, De civitate Dei (City of God), Bk 16.82 It is not necessary for us to believe in all these types of humans who are said to exist. But indeed, whoever, anywhere is born a man, that is, a rational, mortal animal, no matter how unusual he seems to us in the form of his body, or colour, movement, or sound, or whatever power, part, or quality of his nature, still, no one of the faithful can deny that he comes from the one protoplast. We can distinguish, therefore, between 2 Augustine, De civitate Dei, ed. Bernard Dombart and Alphonse Kalb (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955): Liber XVI.

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that which pertains to the nature of many and that which is marvellous because of its rarity. … So it should not seem absurd to us if, since in some races there are individual humans who are monstrous, so in the universal human race there are some monstrous peoples. Therefore, to conclude carefully and with caution, either these things that are written about some races do not exist at all, or if they do, they are not humans, or, if they are from Adam, then they are humans. trans. Marcus Dods

As mentioned in Chapter 3, in his Etymologies, Isidore of Seville describes at some length the purpose and types of creatures or people born as portents, explaining that they are natural, but contrary to “known nature.” Others are “unnatural” in that they have slight mutations. These monstrous beings were described at length in Book 11. The excerpt below follows from the passage quoted on pp. 163–64. Isidore’s concept of monstrosity is constructed by taking the form of the human body as the norm; hence any creature that had abnormal growth or reduction in body parts, projections or outgrowths of body parts, excess or deprivation of bodily parts, and mixture of nonhuman animal and human parts was monstrous. His definition of monstrous as disharmonious provided the foundation for later medieval writers and illustrators to depict the monstrous races as hybrid abominations that would remind their audience of their own sinfulness. Later writers would dispute whether some of the monstrous races were beasts or (monstrous) men. Isidore’s reference to the pagans referring to God as Nature would include writers like Pliny, who had a pantheistic concept that was probably not fully understood by Isidore, in which Nature was divine, a god or goddess who appeared to have created all other things for the sake of the human race, which “was not created nearest in kind to God to be close to the beasts in baseness.”3 It resembled the medieval Christian view insofar as it is a teleological view of nature, in that everything in nature has been formed and adapted for the purpose of humans. Isidore of Seville, Etymologia (Etymologies), Bk 11. De homine et portentis (The human being and portents): 3. De portentis (Portents)4

3 Pliny. Natural History, Volume I: Books 1–2, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952): Liber II.I., Liber II.V. “God” here refers to Pliny’s conception of the creator god. 4 Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum Sive Originum Libri XX, ed. W.M. Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911): XI. De homine et portentis III. See also pp. 163–64, where earlier relevant sections of this chapter are quoted.

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7. Portents, then, or unnatural beings, exist in some cases in the form of a size of the whole body that surpasses common nature…; in other cases in the form of a smallness of the whole body, as in dwarfs (nanus), or those whom the Greeks call pygmies (pygmaeus) because they are a cubit tall. Others are so called due to the size of parts of their bodies, as for instance a misshapen head, or due to superfluous parts of their limbs, as in the case of the two-headed and three-headed individuals, or in the case of the cynodontes (i.e. “dog-toothed” people), who have a pair of projecting fangs. 8. Yet others are so-called due to missing parts of the body, individuals in whom one corresponding part is deficient compared with the other. … 12. Just as, in individual nations, there are instances of monstrous people, so in the whole of humankind there are certain monstrous races, like the Giants, the Cynocephali, the Cyclopes, and others. … trans. STEPHEN A. BARNEY, W.J. LEWIS, J.A. BEACH, OLIVER BERGHOF

Isidore followed his explanation of portents with a detailed list of “unnatural beings,” which included many human-beast hybrids. Six centuries later, in the book of his encyclopedia that concerns land animals, Bartholomaeus Anglicus included a chapter on satyrs which digressed into a list that includes many of these “monsters,” themselves, of course, derived from classical sources. It seems that Bartholomew does not accept them as fully human. Bartholomew the Englishman, De Proprietatibus Rerum (On the Proper­ ties of Things), Bk 18, De animalibus (On land animals): 48. De faunis et satiris (On the fauns and satyrs)5 There are some animals with monstrous forms and they do not fully share in human rationality, hence they are taught to speak by neither art nor nature. They are of savage and brutish mind and brutish desire, whence these animals are subject to great lust, so much so that they kill women during sexual intercourse if they catch any wandering in the woods. Therefore they say that their lust cannot be satisfied, as said earlier, they can behave like a rational human in many actions, and they imitate men even in the voice, as Isidore says in his Book 11, De potentis. Satyrs are somewhat like men and have a crooked nose and horns in the forehead, and feet like those of goats. It is said that Saint Anthony saw such a creature in the wilderness, and he asked what he was, and he answered Anthony, and said I am mortal, and one of those that lives in the wilderness. 5 Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus Rerum (Nuremburg: A. Koberger, 1492): Liber XVIII, XLVIII.

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There is a diversity of these monsters: for some of them are called cynocephali because they have heads like those of hounds, and seem by their barking beasts rather than men; and some are called cyclops, and have that name because each of them has just one eye, and that in the middle of the forehead; and some are completely without head or nose, and their eyes are in the shoulders; and some have plain faces without nostrils, and their lower lips stretch so that they cover therewith their faces when they are in the heat of the sun; and some of them have closed mouths and just one opening in their chests, and breathe and suck as it were with pipes and veins, and these are considered tongueless, using signs and gestures instead of speech. Also in Scythia there are some with such great and large ears that they spread their ears to cover the whole of their bodies with them, and these are called panthios by the Greeks. And there are others in Ethiopia, mentioned by the Arabs, each of them having only one foot so great and so large that they shade themselves with the foot when they fall back on the ground in the sun’s strong heat: and yet they are so swift that they are compared to hounds in speed of running. And therefore among the Greeks they are called cynopodes. Also some (creatures) have the soles of their feet turned backward behind the legs, and eight toes on each foot, and such creatures wander around in the desert of Libya. Also in Scythia there are animals of human form but with the feet of horses. More so than Bartholomew, his contemporary encyclopaedist Thomas of Cantimpre grappled with the problem of the possible humanness of the satyr. In the (clearly difficult) process he misrepresents what Augustine had said and contradicts himself, ultimately leaving the impression that the arguments for differentiation of humans and other animals had no sound basis or consistency. In his account of the onocentaur he is similarly undecided on whether it is a monster that appeared at the Creation or something wholly unnatural formed from the union of human and beast. It appears among the quadrupeds of Book 4 rather than in the short Book 3 on monstrous men. Thomas of Cantimpre, De Natura Rerum (On the nature of things), Bk 4. De Animalibus Quadrupedibus (On four-footed animals): 82. De Oncentauro (The onocentaur)6 The onocentaur, as Isidore and Adelinus say, is a monster and a hybrid animal by nature. For he has a head like that of an ass and a body like a man’s. Others say that the onocentaur has a horse’s body and the upper 6 Thomas Cantimpratensis, Liber de natura rerum, 1: Text (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973): Liber IV, LXXXII.

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part is human. It has a rough face and a hand formed of stiff hair fashioned for every action. The onocentaur has a bristly head, and as they are about to speak they can produce a voice, but when the lips are unaccustomed to it they cannot form a human voice. The Philosopher Adelinus says that this monster was not created among other beasts of the same kind from the beginning of creation, but is seen wherever and whenever in any part of the world, begotten from the adulterous intermixture of man and bull or of man and of horse. But many contradict this opinion. The blessed Antony saw this monstrous animal, while seeking in the desert, as blessed Jerome writes in his account of Paul the first glorious hermit; but he asserts that it is doubtful whether the devil devised it or nature created it. Many, however, say that this monstrous animal exists in Eastern parts and was created naturally, like many other monsters worthy of wonder and owing existence to the creator. After pursuing him, as the Experimenter says, he throws sticks or stones. Among the monstrous races were the cynocephali mentioned by Bartholomew, creatures with a human body and the head of a dog. In a letter to the presbyter Rimbert, the ninth-century theologian Ratramnus, making use of well-established categories of species and race developed by Boethius, weighed up the cases for and against their humanity. Having gone through many arguments that they are beasts he concluded that they must be human on the grounds that they domesticate other animals. Like many other medieval thinkers, domestication, for which one might substitute domination, of other animals was for him a defining characteristic of humans, a proof of superiority and different status. Ratramnus, Epistola de cynocephalis ad Rimbertum presbyterum scripta (Letter to Rimbert the presbyter concerning the dog-headed)7 For you inquire what you ought to believe about Cynocephalus, namely, whether they are descended from the race of Adam, or have the souls of beasts; a problem which can be determined in a succinct way. If they are to be considered to belong to the race of men, there ought to be no doubt that they have descended from the offspring of the first man. For it is not lawful to believe that human origin can be derived from any other source than the substance of the first parent. But if they are reckoned among the bestial races, they share with men only the name, not the nature. In the 7 Ratramnus. Epistola de cynocephalis ad Rimbertum presbyterum scripta., ed. J.-P. Migne, PL 121: 1153–56.

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meantime it should be noted that, if we shall be content with the opinion of our men, namely, of doctors of the church, they should be reckoned among beasts rather than among men, since both the form of their heads and their canine barking shows that they are similar not to humans but to animals. In fact, the heads of humans are on top and round in order for them to see the heavens, while those of dogs are long and drawn out in a snout so that they can look at the ground. And humans speak, while dogs bark. … It is added to these things to which your letter bears witness that all the kinds of domesticated animals that are managed in our regions are managed among them. I consider that this could not be if they had a bestial and not a rational soul, since the living things of the earth were subjected to men by heaven, as we know from having read Genesis. But it has never been heard or believed that animals of one kind can by themselves take care of other animals, especially those of a domestic kind, keep them, compel them to submit to their rule, and follow regular routines. Albert the Great takes a ‘scientific’ approach in his explanation of the reason for monstrous births, in the process saying that animals that appear to be human-beast hybrids are not born of copulation between humans and beasts but are flaws of nature. Albert the Great, De animalibus (On animals), Bk 18, Tract. 1, Ch. 6. De monstruosis partubus, in quibus non remanet similitude nisi in genere proximo tantum (On Monstrous Births, in Which There Remains Only a Resemblance to the Proximate Genus)8 Regarding monsters and their causes, therefore, first to note is that when the moving principles and movements of those which are present in the sperm consequent to the nature of the species and the matter of the individual are destroyed for some cause acting strongly in the opposing direction, only the universal power of the genus remains, and it cannot be removed while the material is preserved, for otherwise nothing would be generated from such matter. If, however, the universal power remains in the matter which has a balanced complexion, then the generation will be monstrous because the universal power of the genus moves towards life and a special cause acting in opposition to the species will introduce

8 Albertus Magnus, DA: Liber XVIII, Tract. I, Cap. VI.

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another form. This is caused largely by two things - that is. by celestial power, and by the matter conceived. It certainly results from heavenly power since there are certain places in the heavens where the celestial light-bearing bodies that move towards generation are gathered together, and when this occurs generation of man cannot take place. But these will be more appropriately discussed in another study. This results from matter, for instance, when the matter of many things is compounded into one, or even when a defect of some members is present in diminished matter. As a result of a power acting in an opposing way, a man’s body may have the head of a ram or a bull, as is said of the minotaur in the fables of the poets: and the judgement is the same for comparable instances. But such cases occur more in other animals than in men. Sometimes a calf is born with the head of a man, or a lamb with the tail of a bull. On occasion this kind of generation takes place from bodily parts that are not flawed, so that the whole part is a perfect member fulfilling the function of the member but not in any part of itself corrupted or flawed. But some physicians attribute all these monstrous similarities to forms that appear in two or three species of animals, which seem mixed in with the monsters. They say that these things come from the mixing of the sperms of two or three animals of different species during copulation. But we are of the opinion that from the copulation of very different animals such a monster as they describe cannot develop because one of the sperms would corrupt the other. It is rather from the union of like animals that the generation of which we have already spoken in the preceding text occurs. And a sign that such generation does not take place is the difference in the period of gestation of these animals, which varies considerably. For man, dog and bull have very different gestation periods, and yet we see that some monstrous births are a result of a confused mix or parts of the aforesaid animals. One is a monster because of the multitude of members that belong to its species and these are of diverse form and shape. An instance of that is one generated with many feet or many heads. And the causes of these monsters are closely related to each other and quite similar, for animals which are monstrous and have flawed members have closely linked natural causes. Albert restricted the meaning of hybrid (hibrida) to crossbreeds of two four-footed species. Closeness in shape, gestation period and size of uterus of the parent animals are the criteria enabling hybrid births.

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Albert the Great, De animalibus (On animals), Bk 22, Tract. 2.55. Ibrida (Hybrids)9 The hybrid animal is a quadruped that is born of two genuses, namely of the wild boar and the domestic pig, just as the tyturus is born of a ewe and a goat. Conversely, the musino is from a she-goat and a ram. For animals that have the same gestation period and an equivalence of the uterus and which are not far apart in shape, are intermingled, as we have said earlier. The twelfth-century theologian and monastic reformer Bernard of Clairvaux had little to say directly about the behaviour or habits of nonhuman animals, but he was concerned about the dangers of mixing distinct categories or species as a violation of boundaries and about curiosity that might lead to closeness between humans and the “unlikeness” of other animals. Nevertheless, mixtures could be wondrous or miraculous. His preoccupation with hybridity is reflected in many of his writings: he referred to the dissident Augustinian canon Arnold of Brescia as “the man with the head of a dove and tail of a scorpion”, but also to himself as a chimera, neither cleric nor layman. In his Apologia, written in 1129 as a defence of the austere way of life at the new Cîteaux Monastery in the face of criticism, not least from the powerful abbey of Cluny, Bernard attacked the excessive and expensive luxury and frivolousness of existing monasteries, expressing his fear that monks would be distracted from their study of the scriptures and associated material by their Romanesque carvings. In the process he displays his disturbance at the idea of hybrid human-animals. Medieval interest in human-animal hybridity (which Bernard obviously shared) was such that all sorts of combinations were devised: among the eight monsters that Bernard lists, of which seven are hybrids, he lists only one well-known creature, the centaur. Bernard of Clairvaux, Apologia (Explanation in defence), Letter 2910 What excuse can there be for these ridiculous monstrosities in the cloisters where the monks do their reading, extraordinary things at once beautiful and ugly? Here we find filthy monkeys and fierce lions, fearful centaurs, harpies, and striped tigers, soldiers at war, and hunters 9 Albertus Magnus, DA: Liber XXII, Tract. II, [55]. 10 “Epistolae. II, Corpus epistolarum 181–310 and II, Epistolarum extra corpus 311–547,” in Sancti Bernardi Opera, Vol. 8, ed. Jean Leclercq. C.H. Talbot and Henri Rochai (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1977): Epistola XXIX.

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blowing their horns. Here is one head with many bodies, there is one body with many heads. Over there is a beast with a serpent for its tail, a fish with an animal’s head, and a creature that is horse in front and goat behind, and a second beast with horns and the rear of a horse. All round there is such an amazing variety of shapes that one could easily prefer to take one’s reading from the walls instead of from a book. One could spend the whole day gazing fascinated at these things, one by one, instead of meditating on the law of God. Good Lord, even if the foolishness of it all occasions no shame, at least one might balk at the expense. trans. Michael Casey and Jean Leclecq

By the thirteenth century there were increasing references to the wild man (or woman), which sometimes went by other names such as the English woodwose. Their image probably owes something to the biblical description of King Nebuchadnezzar made wild by God,11 the Roman god Silvanus, and classical faun-type creatures, among other exemplars. By 1500 the wild man was beginning to displace the monsters in the medieval imagination as a liminal being between human and beast, appearing in numerous representations and heraldry. The Norwegian Konungs skuggsjá (c.1250) has one of the earlier descriptions of such a creature, in this case alleged to have inhabited Ireland. Konungs skuggsjá (King’s Mirror), Ch. 1112 It also happened in that country – which seems very strange – that in a forest was caught a creature of such a nature that no one could be certain whether it was a human or another animal, for no-one could persuade it to speak, nor could anyone be sure that it understood human speech. Yet it was in all respects formed as a human being; it had both hands and feet and a human face: but the whole body was covered with hair like other animals. Covering its back was a mane like that of a horse, with long and drooping hairs that fell down on both sides of its back so that they dragged along the ground as it moved forward with a stooping posture.

11 Daniel 4.33. 12 Konungs skuggsjá, Speculum regale. Konungs-skuggsjá. Konge-speilet: Et philosophiskdidaktisk skrift, ed. Rudolf Keyser, Peter Andreas Munch, Carl Rikard Unger (Christiania (Oslo): C.C. Werner, 1848): Kap. x1.

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2 Metamorphosis More than any other writings, those of Augustine of Hippo provided the basis for the official position of the Roman Church in the Middle Ages that one animal species, especially the human, could not metamorphose into another species of animal. Augustine of Hippo, De civitate Dei (City of God), Bk 18: What we should believe concerning the transformations which seem to happen to men through the art of demons13 These things are either false, or so extraordinary as to be with good reason disbelieved. But it is to be most firmly believed that Almighty God can do whatever He pleases, whether in punishing or favouring, and that the demons can accomplish nothing by their natural power (for their created being is itself angelic, although made malign by their own fault), except what He may permit, whose judgements are often hidden, but never unrighteous. And indeed the demons, if they really do such things as these on which this discussion turns, do not create real substances, but only change the appearance of things created by the true God so as to make them seem to be what they are not. I cannot therefore believe that even the body, much less the mind, can really be changed into bestial forms and lineaments by any reason, art, or power of the demons; but the phantasm of a man which even in thought or dreams goes through innumerable changes may, when the man’s senses are laid asleep or overpowered, be presented to the senses of others in a corporeal form, in some indescribable way unknown to me, so that men’s bodies themselves may lie somewhere, alive, indeed, yet with their senses locked up much more heavily and firmly than by sleep, while that phantasm, as it were embodied in the shape of some animal, may appear to the senses of others, and may even seem to the man himself to be changed, just as he may seem to himself in sleep to be so changed, and to bear burdens; and these burdens, if they are real substances, are borne by the demons, that men may be deceived by beholding at the same time the real substance of the burdens and the simulated bodies of the beasts of burden. … These things have not come to us from persons we might deem unworthy of credit, but from informants we could not suppose to be deceiving us. Therefore what men say and have committed to writing about the Arcadians being often changed into wolves by the Arcadian gods, or 13 Augustine, De civitate Dei: Liber XVIII: XVIII.

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demons rather, and what is told in song about Circe transforming the companions of Ulysses, if they were really done, may, in my opinion, have been done in the way I have said. As for Diomede’s birds, since their race is alleged to have been perpetuated by constant propagation, I believe they were not made through the metamorphosis of men, but were slyly substituted for them on their removal, just as the hind was for Iphigenia, the daughter of king Agamemnon. For juggleries of this kind could not be difficult for the demons if permitted by the judgment of God; and since that virgin was afterwards found alive it is easy to see that a hind had been slyly substituted for her. But because the companions of Diomede were of a sudden nowhere to be seen, and afterwards could nowhere be found, being destroyed by bad avenging angels, they were believed to have been changed into those birds, which were secretly brought there from other places where such birds were, and suddenly substituted for them by fraud. But that they bring water in their beaks and sprinkle it on the temple of Diomede, and that they fawn on men of Greek race and persecute aliens, is no wonderful thing to be done by the inward influence of the demons, whose interest it is to persuade men that Diomede was made a god, and thus to beguile them into worshipping many false gods, to the great dishonour of the true God; and to serve dead men, who even in their lifetime did not truly live, with temples, altars, sacrifices, and priests, all which, when of the right kind, are due only to the one living and true God. trans. Marcus Dods

In contrast to Augustine, though citing examples of metamorphosis related by some of the same informants, Isidore of Seville considers these occurrences (transformationes) biological processes like those believed in his era to have occurred in nature. Despite the official position of the Church, this opinion did not disappear even among the educated: Isidore’s words are repeated almost verbatim in the thirteenth-century encyclopedia of the Dominican scholar Vincent of Beauvais.14 Isidore of Seville, Etymologia (Etymologies), Bk 11. De homine et portentis (The human being and portents): 4. De transformatis (Metamorphoses)15 1. There are accounts of certain monstrous metamorphoses and changes of humans into beasts, as in the case of that most notorious sorceress 14

Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Naturale, 31.122, col. 2390 (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlaganstalt, 1964 [1624]). 15 Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum: XI. De homine et portentis, IV.

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Circe, who is said to have transformed the companions of Ulysses into beasts, and the case of the Arcadians who, led by chance, would swim across a certain pond and would there be converted into wolves. 2. That the companions of Diomede were transformed into birds is not a lie from story-telling, but people assert this with historical confirmation. Some people claim that witches (striga) were transformed from humans. With regard to many types of crimes, the appearance of the miscreants is changed and they wholly metamorphose into wild animals, by means of either magic charms or poisonous herbs. 3. Indeed, many creatures naturally undergo mutation and, when they decay, are transformed into different species – for instance, bees, out of the rotted flesh of calves, or beetles from horses, locusts from mules, scorpions from crabs. Thus Ovid: If you take its curved arms from a crab on the shore a scorpion will emerge and threaten with its hooked tail16 trans. Stephen A. Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach, Oliver Berghof

The extent to which pre-Christian (perhaps ‘shamanic’) practices, many of which involved metamorphosis into animals, survived in the lower social strata of society throughout the Middle Ages is uncertain. Theories of scholars such as Carlo Ginsburg who have asserted that such practices survived alongside a folk belief in spirits and goddesses into the early modern period and underlay the stereotyped picture of witchcraft (which included humans taking the form of animals) have rested largely on extrapolating back from knowledge of practices recorded at the end of the Middle Ages or especially the early modern period.17 However, suggestions of their survival in the earlier Middle Ages appear in Church regulations and penitentials, the reality perhaps distorted to associate with them with the devil. In about 906 Regino, the former abbot of Prüm Monastery in Lotharingia, was asked by the archbishop of Trier to compile regulations for governance of the Church. The resulting Canon Episcopi included the first canon law description of witchcraft, which ends with the following condemnation of belief in metamorphosis, a condemnation echoed in subsequent canon law and which therefore represented the official stance of the Roman Church. 16 17

From Ovid, Metamorphoses, Vol. 2: Books 9–15, trans. Frank Justus Miller (Cambridge MS: Harvard University Press, 1916): Liber XV, lines 369–71. See Carlo Ginsburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1983); Emma Wilby, Cunning folk and Familiar spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2010 [2005]).

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Regino of Prüm, Libri duo de synodalibus causis et disciplinis ecclesiasticis (Two books on synodal causes and ecclesiastical disciplines), Bk 2, Ch. 361: De mulieribus quae cum daemonibus se dicunt nocturnis horis equitare (Of women who say they ride with demons in the night hours)18 It is therefore to be publicly proclaimed to all that whoever believes in such things, or similar things, loses the Faith, and he who has not the right faith of God is not of God, but of him in whom he believes, that is the devil. For of our Lord it is written, “All things were made by Him.”19 Whoever therefore believes that anything can be made, or that any creature can be changed or transformed to better or worse, or be transformed into another species or likeness, except by God Himself who made everything and through whom all things were made, is beyond a doubt an infidel. Some of the beliefs described below, even if altered somewhat during transmission and through Christian influence and other societal change, may have been survivals from the pre-Christian era. In Christianised regions of Europe elements of pagan religiosity survived mainly as folk belief, some of which was suspect to the Church and represented as the devil’s work in its sources. However, at the beginning of the Middle Ages there were still regions north and east of the former western imperial frontiers where pagan beliefs dominated. With the exception of the Sami in northern Scandinavia and some peoples in the north and east of what is now Russia, all of Europe was nominally Christian by 1500, but the conversion was piecemeal and gradual, achieved sometimes by conversion of rulers who then enforced it and sometimes by conquest.20 As noted in the introduction to this chapter, in pre-Christian societies the distinction between humans and other animals may not have been as great as it was after Christianization. There are three identifiable groups of people who may have thought they could metamorphose into animals: people who had the ability to visit otherworlds or communicate with supernatural and non-human beings, such as priests and priestesses with shamanic attributes (bearing in mind that some chieftains may have combined sacral and other functions), 18 Reginonis Abbatis Prumiensis Libri Duo de Synodalibus Causis et Disciplinis Ecclesiasticis, ed. F.G.A. Wasserschleben (Leipzig: Guil. Engelmann, 1840): Liber II, Cap. CCCLXXI. 19 John 1:3. 20 Ireland right at the start of our period, and the Germanic-speaking peoples who entered the Roman Empire in the late fifth century, the Franks and remaining Burgundians around 500, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the seventh century, the Saxons in the late eighth century, Rus in the ninth to tenth century, the Scandinavians in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Finns, Estonians, Prussians and Letts in the thirteenth century, and finally Lithuania in the fourteenth to fifteenth century.

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groups of young men sent away from their communities as part of their initiation into manhood, and ‘animal warriors’, the last two overlapping to some extent. But we have no medieval literary evidence of these groups from the Middle Ages written by pagan Germanic-, Slavic-, Baltic- or Finnic-speaking people.21 It is impossible to be certain whether pagan humans believed they could metamorphose into non-human animals in certain circumstances, or believed that they acquired some aspects of an animal’s nature, or merely adopted animal skins and voices to intimidate opponents and as a form of group identification. Written sources that hint at or mention metamorphosis, like Burchard’s below, are almost all from the Christian period and therefore give us a view of how post-conversion writers understood aspects of their history, if they regarded them as anything more than fantastic stories. In Völsunga saga the actions of King Sigmundr and his son Sinfjǫtli when they behave like beasts in the forests are seen as the result of some evil magic, but the episode may be a distorted memory of an initiation ritual involving death and rebirth, in which the two act like wolves or become part-wolves.22 During this period Sinfjǫtli becomes a warrior and learns some ‘rules’ in the process. In the pagan era there appear to have been no clear barriers between worlds, and it is possible that in the ritual context the forest was not part of the earthly world but an otherworld to which the heroes travel. Völsunga saga (Saga of the Volsungs), Ch. 823 One time, they went again to the forest to get themselves some riches, and they found a house and two men with thick gold rings sleeping inside 21 The pre-Christian evidence for pagan belief comes mainly from archaeology and to a lesser extent place-names. Many horses, dogs and wild animals were buried with apparently high-status humans, although burials of human bodies with other animals’ heads had not been made since the Bronze Age. Some pre-Christian runestones have texts, but they are often difficult to interpret and tell us virtually nothing that might relate to metamorphosis. In addition, there is Finnic folk poetry that was passed down orally until it was recorded by collectors in the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. It has many layers of material probably going back at least to the Iron Age, some of which clearly originate as shamanic journeys in animal form, but it is extremely difficult to assign these layers to periods of anything less than many hundreds of years. Among those who argue that practices akin to shamanism continued into the European Iron Age is Neil Price: see his The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2013). He sees the phenomenon as ‘circumpolar,’ but in the same period it may have extended further south, for instance, among nomadic pastoral peoples who entered central Europe such as the Avars and Magyars. 22 As argued, for instance, by Otto Höfler in his Kultische Geheimbunde der Germanen (Frankfurt am Main: Diesterweg, 1934). 23 Völsunga saga: The Saga of the Volsungs; The Icelandic Text According to MS Nks 1824 b, 4 °, ed. and trans. Kaaren Grimstad (Saarbrücken: AQ-Verlag, 2000): VIII. Kapítuli.

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it. They had been placed under a spell: wolfskins hung over them in the house. Only every tenth day could they take off the skins. They were the sons of kings. Sigmund and Sinfjǫtli put on the skins and could not get them off. And the strange power was there as before: they howled like wolves. They both understood the sounds. Now they set out into the forest, and each went his own way. They agreed then that they would risk a fight with as many as seven men and no more, and that the one being attacked by more would make his wolf’s howl. “Do not break this agreement,” said Sigmund, “because you are young and daring. Men will want to hunt you.” Now they went their own ways. And when they were separated, Sigmund came across seven men and uttered his wolf’s howl. When Sinfjǫtli heard that he joined him and killed them all. They parted again. Before Sinfjǫtli had gone very far through the forest, he met eleven men and fought them, and the outcome was that he killed them all. He was badly wounded and went under an oak tree to rest there. Then Sigmund found him and they travelled together for a while. Sinfjǫtli said to Sigmund: “You got help to kill seven men. I am a child compared to you, but I did not call for help to kill eleven men.” Sigmund leapt at him so fiercely that Sinfjǫtli staggered and fell. Sigmund bit him in the windpipe. That day they were not able to remove the wolfskins. Sigmund laid Sinfjǫtli over his shoulders and carried him home to the hut, and sat over him, bidding the trolls to take the [accursed] wolfskins. One day Sigmund saw two weasels, and one bit the other in the windpipe and then ran into the woods, returning with a leaf and laying it over the wound. The other weasel sprang up healed. Sigmund went out and saw a raven flying with a leaf that it brought to him. He drew it over Sinfjǫtli’s wound and immediately he sprang up healed, as if he had never been wounded. After that they travelled to the underground hideout and remained there until they could take off the wolfskins. Then they took them and burned them in a fire. The raven, which had associations with Oðinn and the Valkyries in the tales of Norse mythology as they have come down to us, enables their return to the world of humanity. Warrior groups that identified with animals, or perhaps deities associated with those animals, are known to have existed in various parts of the world. In the Norse sagas and verse there are several references to men who may have donned wolfskins or bearskins in battle and may have fought in a frenzy. This is a possible explanation for Sinfljoti’s behaviour in Volsunga

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saga. The Norse animal warriors may or may not have been included among the berserks mentioned in many sources, most famously in Ynglingasaga. Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, Ynglingasaga24 they [Odin’s warriors] went without coats of mail, and behaved madly like dogs and wolves. They bit their shields and were as strong as bears or boars and neither fire nor iron could hurt them. This is called going berserk. The earliest description of them is probably Haraldskvæði, usually dated to c.900, in its description of Haraldr hárfagri’s (Harald Fairhair’s) victory in Hafrsfjord (traditionally dated to 872). The poem relates a conversation between a raven and a valkyrie, in which the bird tells of Haraldr’s exploits:25 Fagrskinna, Ch. 2, Haraldskvæði (Harald’s Poem) or Hrafnsmál (Words of the Raven), stanzas 12, 13 and 1926 Of berserks’ gear I will ask you. imbiber of carrion-sea; what is the state of those who storm into warfare, men bold in battle? They are called wolf-skins, warriors who carry bloody shields in battle; spears they redden when they join the fighting, drawn up side by side there; only on men of action, as it seems, that ruler sharp-witted shows reliance, shield-hewers in battle. 24 Snorri Sturluson. “Ynglingasaga,” in Heimskringla eða Sögur Noregs konunga Snorra Sturlusonar, Vol. 1, ed. N. Linder and H.A. Haggson (Uppsala: W. Schultz, 1869). 25 In Heimskringla the whole poem is said to have been composed by the skald Þórbjǫrn hornklofi; Fagrskinna attributes it to Hornklofi, except for verses 18–22, which are attributed to Þjóðólfr of Hvinir. Some modern scholars think the stanzas about the Battle of Hafrsfjord originally comprised a different poem from the opening ones and were written by another poet. 26 Fagrskinna, Nóregs konunga tal, ed. Finnur Jónsson (Copenhagen: Samfund til Udgivelse af Gammel Nordisk Litteratur, 1902): Kap. II.

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… They [The warships] were laden with warriors and with white shields. spears brought from Britain, blades of Frankish forging. The berserks bellowed; battle was upon them. Wolfskin-wearers howled and weapons rattled. trans. Alison Finlay

Berserk might mean “bare-sark” (“bare of shirt”), a possible reference to a habit of fighting unarmoured or even without a shirt and currently the more favoured interpretation, or “bear-shirt”, corresponding to ulfheðinn, “wolf-skin.”27 In the saga, in which this poem is included, the ulfheðnar appear to be Harald’s retinue or comitatus, and in the fourteenth-century Saga of Hrólf Kraka, which purports to tell of a king who reigned in the sixth century CE, the king’s comitatus are berserks, possibly a function of many such warriors in the pagan era. There is also circumstantial evidence for a special association with Odin, but their nature and function in the pagan period is open to question.28 Most interesting in Hrólfs saga is the implication that Bọðvar Bjarki (‘warlike little bear’), a possible analogue to the Old English Beowulf, has the ability to become or appear as a bear during a battle. Bǫðvarr is the son of Björn, a man transformed into a bear by the sorceress Queen Hvit (a Lapp), which she does while striking him with wolfskin gloves. The “great battle” in the saga suggests not merely wearing of skins and association with beasts, but metempsychosis, appearance in bear-form while the human body is in a trance. Hrólfs saga kraka (Saga of Hrólf Kraki), Ch. 5029 Hjörvarðr and his men saw a great bear advancing in front of King Hrólf’s army. The bear was always next to the king and it killed more men with its 27 An argument against “bear-shirt” has been that a bear’s skin would be a severe encumbrance in battle, but there is no reason why such warriors should not have worn the skins only for ritual performances and not at all or only parts of bear skins (perhaps the head part) in battle. 28 For this evidence see Jens-Peter Schjødt, “Óðinn, Warriors, and Death,” in Judy Quinn, Kate Heslop and Tarin Wills, eds., Learning and Understanding in the Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross (Odense: Odense University Press of Southern Denmark, 2007), 137–51. 29 Hrólfs saga kraka og Bjarkarímur, ed. Finnur Jónsson (Copenhagen: S.L. Møller, 1904): 50. Kapítuli. The chapter number is 33 in the English translation listed in the bibliography.

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paw than five of the king’s champions could. Blows and missiles bounced off the animal as it used its weight to crush King Hjörvarðr’s men and their horses. It tore everything within reach with its teeth, causing a deep fear to spread through the ranks of King Hjörvarðr’s army. Hjalti looked around for his companion Bǫðvarr but did not see him. … Hjalti now ran back to the king’s chamber, where he found Bǫðvarr sitting idle. Hjalti spoke: “How long must we wait for this most famous of men? It is a great disgrace that you are not on your feet. You should be testing the strength of your arms, which are as strong as a bear’s. …” Then Bǫðvarr rose: “You need not try to frighten me. … But you, Hjalti, by disturbing me here, have not been as helpful to the king as you think you have. … In truth, I can tell you that in many ways I can now offer the king far less support than before you woke me.” After Hjalti’s challenge Bǫðvarr stood up and went out to the battle. The bear was gone from King Hrólf’s army.30 There are other mentions or hints at shape-changing in the sagas, including among women who practice sorcery, seiðr, though they do not appear as animals in the extant tales, and parallels with magical practices recorded among the Sami in the early modern period. Like some other heroes, Sinfljoti is born of an incestuous union and in seiðr. Such practices and beliefs in shifting between worlds and species may have been widespread in pagan societies, but this is a subject beyond us here. There are no references to animal-warriors in western European sources of the Viking Period; English records describe Vikings as wolves, but this is probably a general reference to their uncivilized and predatory character. However, there is a description of beast-like warrior behaviour in a Christian source, namely Leo the Deacon’s (Λέων ο Διάκονος, b. c.950) account of the behaviour of Sviatoslav’s Rus army before Preslav in 971.31 Leo was secretary to the Byzantine emperor John Tzimiskes and was present at the battle. Sviatoslav’s army was multi-ethnic; he and many of his elite warriors (družina) were probably of Viking origin and some of the warriors may have been recent arrivals from Scandinavia, but the army certainly included many Slavs (including Bulgarians) and possibly Finnic-language troops.

30 Hjörvarðr has the analogue Heoroweard in Beowulf; there is a clear link between the tales, even if Bǫðvarr is not himself Beowulf. 31 The History of Leo the Deacon, ed. and trans. Alice-Mary Talbot and Denis F. Sullivan (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2005), 184–86.

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Leo the Deacon, Historiae Libri X (History in Ten Books), Bk 8.432 The Tauroscythians, on the other hand, when they saw the approach of the disciplined army towards them, were seized with panic and terror, in their astonishment at the unexpected turn of events.33 But they quickly seized their weapons and shouldered their shields (these were very strong, and made so that they reached to their feet, for greater protection), and drew up into a strong close formation and advance against the Romans on the plain before the town (which is suitable for cavalry), roaring like wild beasts and uttering strange and weird howls. The Romans came to blows with them, and fought stoutly and accomplished worthy feats of warfare. trans. Alice-Mary Talbot and Denis F. Sullivan

In general berserkers (when named as such) appear in the Fornaldarsagor (tales of past times) and Íslendingasögur (Icelandic family sagas) as cruel, violent and threatening to women, living outside the bounds of society and often coming from the periphery of the Norse world (from the West Norse perspective), for instance Sweden. They have lost any ‘heroic’ aspects they may have had and are cut down in droves by the saga heroes. This demotion is probably a reflection of the Christian view of warrior animal cults associated with pagan gods. The tradition of men that shape-shifted or metamorphosed into wolves was widespread in Europe, but especially strong in Scandinavia and Ireland, where werewolves were associated particularly with the former kingdom of Osraige (Ossory). There was a tradition that a werewolf warrior named Laignech Fáelad was related to its kings. The name appears in a late Middle Irish (c.1050–1200CE) document, Cóir anmann (the Fitness of Names or Elucidation of Names), but it is not certain how the association with Osraige began. Cóir anmann (The fitness of names)34 Laignech Fáelad, that is, he was the man that used to shift into fáelad, i.e. wolf-shapes. He and his offspring after him used to go, whenever they 32

Leo the Deacon, The History of Leo the Deacon: Byzantine Military Expansion in the Tenth Century, ed. and trans. Alice-Mary Talbot and Denis F. Sullivan (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2005): Book VIII.4. 33 Leo frequently uses the anachronistic term “Tauroscythians” to refer to the Rus. The Byzantines, as we now usually refer to them, continued to refer to themselves as “Romans”, even though Greek was the main language of their empire, as it was of course the surviving part of the Roman Empire. 34 Cóir anmann: a late Middle Irish treatise on personal names, Vol. 2, ed. and trans. Sharon Arbuthnot (London: Irish Texts Society, 2007).

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pleased, into the shapes of the wolves, and, after the custom of wolves, kill the herds. Wherefore he was called Laignech Fáelad, for he was the first of them to go into a wolf-shape. trans. Sharon Arbuthnot

The origin of the myth may be ‘wolf-like’ behaviour of pillaging warrior bands. The fianna of the Fenian cycle (an Fiannaíocht), which was popular in Ireland from the tenth century onwards, were young men who lived in the wilderness and had supernatural or animal powers, especially the leader Fionn Mac Cumhaill. The tales include elements of centuries-old mythology but re-interpreted as relevant to the tenth and succeeding centuries. In origin the fianna may have been as the warbands or retinues of Irish chieftains who raided in the fourth and fifth centuries, an era when wealth could be acquired especially by raiding Britain. Kim McCone concludes that the fian of the early Christian period included both noble and royal sons undergoing their warrior education and outcasts from society, not necessarily of noble stock.35 Their life in the wilderness associated them with animals and mysterious or supernatural forces that were believed to flourish outside the confines of civilised society, and the dord fiansa, the war-chant of the fianna, may even have involved howling. Initiation into the fianna involved an abrogation of social status and rights, and tests such as being hunted by existing fianna and dodging the spears of nine men. Like those of the hypothesized berserks of Scandinavia, their practices and association with paganism fell out of favour after Christianisation; Christian sources of the early medieval period condemn contemporary fian bands as “consecrated to the devil,” swearers of evil oaths, practisers of diberg (‘brigandage’), associated with destruction of churches, the murder of clerics and the rape of women. In his twelfth-century History and Topography of Ireland Gerald of Wales recorded a considerable number of tales (which we would class as folklore) and which reinforced his prejudices against the Irish. Among them is a tale of werewolves from Osraige. The tale is one manifestation of what Caroline Walker Bynum called the “werewolf renaissance of the twelfth century.”36 Some accounts such as the Middle Irish De Ingantaib Érenn (On the Wonders of Ireland) and the thirteenth-century Latin De mirabilibus Hibernie (quoted below, after Gerald’s tale) might appear to suggest metempsychosis, that the soul abandons the human body for that of a wolf, while the Konungs Skuggsjá 35 Kim McCone, Pagan Past and Christian Present in Early Irish Literature, Maynooth Monographs 3 (Maynooth: An Sagart, 1990). 36 Caroline Walker Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2001), 94.

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states that men in Ireland were turned into wolves as punishment for evildoing. The last two mention transformation into wolves as an Irish rather than a specifically Osraige trait. In Gerald’s tale the wolf form is merely a skin covering the body and soul of the human, and in the later recension Gerald cited Augustine to argue that metamorphosis such as that in the classical tales could not occur. Gerald of Wales, Topographia Hibernica (The History and Topography of Ireland), Part 2, Ch. 19: “De lupo cum sacerdote loquente.” (“The wolf who talked with a priest.”)37 About three years before the coming of our lord John into Ireland, it happened that a priest, journeying from Ulster towards Meath, spent the night in a wood on the borders of Meath.38 He was staying up besides a fire which he had prepared for himself under the leafy branches of a tree, and had for company only a little boy, when a wolf came up to them and immediately broke into these words: “Do not be afraid! Do not fear! Do not worry! There is nothing to fear!” They were completely astounded and in great consternation. The wolf then said some things about God that seemed reasonable. The priest called on him and adjured him by the omnipotent God and faith in the trinity not to harm them and to tell them what kind of creature he was, who, although in the form of a beast, could speak human words. The wolf gave a Catholic answer in all things and at length added: “We are natives of Ossory. From there every seven years, because of the imprecation of a certain saint, namely the abbot Natalis, two persons, a man and a woman, are compelled to go into exile not only from their territory but also from their bodily shape. They put off the form of man completely and put on the form of a wolf. When the seven years are up, and if they have survived, two others take their place in the same way, and the first pair return to their former country and nature. My companion in this pilgrimage is not far from here and is seriously ill. Please give her in her last hour the solace of the priesthood in bring to her the revelation of the divine mercy.” 37 Gerald of Wales, Topographia Hibernica et Expugnatio Hibernica, ed. James F. Dimock (London: Longman, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1867): Distinctio Secunda, “De Mirabilibus Hibernia et Miraculis,” Cap. 19. The chapter is numbered 52 in The History and Topography of Ireland, trans. John O’Meara, listed in the bibliography. 38 Refers to Prince John (1166–1216), later (1199) king of England. He was appointed lord of Ireland in 1177.

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This is what he said, and the priest, full of fear, followed him as he went before him to a certain tree not far away. In the hollow of this tree the priest saw a she-wolf groaning and grieving like a human being, even though her appearance was that of a beast. As soon as she saw him she welcomed him in a human way, and then gave thanks also to God that in her last hour he had granted her such consolation. She then received from the hands of the priest all the last rites duly performed up to the last communion. This too she eagerly requested, and implored him to complete his good act by giving her the viaticum. The priest insisted that he did not have it with him, but the wolf who in the meantime had gone a little distance away, came back to him and pointed out to him a little wallet, containing a manual and some consecrated hosts, which the priest according to the custom of his country carried about with him, hanging from his neck, on his travels. He begged him not to deny to them in any way the gift and help of God, destined for their aid by divine providence. To remove all doubt he pulled the skin off the she-wolf from the head down to the navel, folding it back with his paw as if it were a hand. And immediately the shape of an old woman, clear to be seen, appeared. At that the priest, more through terror than reason, communicated her as she had earnestly demanded, and she then devoutly received the sacrament. Afterwards the skin which had been removed by the he-wolf resumed its former position. trans. John O’Meara

Patricius, De mirabilibus Hibernie (On the wonders of Ireland):39 Of men who turn themselves into werewolves40 There are some men of the Irish race, Who have this wondrous nature from ancestry and birth: Whensoever they will, they can speedily turn themselves Into the form of wolves, and rend flesh with wicked teeth: Often they are seen slaying sheep that moan in pain. But when men raise the hue and cry, 39 This Patricius has been identified with Patrick (Gilla Pátraic), bishop of Dublin. See Elizabeth Boyle, “On the wonders of Ireland: translation and adaptation”, in Elizabeth Boyle and Deborah Hayden, eds., Authorities and adaptations: the reworking and transmission of textual sources in medieval Ireland (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2014). 233–261. 40 “De mirabilibus Hibernie,” in Versus S. Patricii episcopi de mirabilibus Hibernie, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 71 C, ed. J.E. Cross (1971), 247–254.

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Or scare them with staves and swords, they take flight [like true wolves]. But whilst they act thus [as wolves], they leave their true [human] bodies And give orders [to their women] not to move them. If this happens, they can no longer return to them [their own bodies] If any man harm them or any wound pierce their flesh, The wounds can be seen plainly in their own bodies: Thus their companions can see the raw flesh in their jaws Of their true body: and we all wonder at the sight. trans. Aubrey Gwynn

In the twelfth century several new literary tales of werewolves were written, perhaps revised versions of older oral tales. Marie de France’s lay Bisclavret is among the most well-known. Marie’s lay shares many features with the anonymous and slightly earlier lays Melion and Biclarel, although Melion behaves more like a savage wolf while in wolf form, leading a pack and killing numerous domestic animals in a war of vengeance against human society. Nevertheless, “even though he was a wolf, he retained the reason and memory of a man,” and similarly, Biclarel “was not stripped of his wits, even though he had changed into a beast.”41 At the very start of her tale Marie mentions the savage garwaf (werewolf) of tradition, who lives in the woods, does extensive damage and eats men, but then declares, “I leave such matters for the moment, for I wish to tell you about Bisclavret”, the Breton man turned wolf who is obviously of a different nature to the garwaf. The knight of the tale, hitherto occasionally a wolf but condemned to remain in wolf form by the trickery of his wife, does take the form of the beast, but like Gerald’s werewolves, retains the character he had as a man, which is recognized by the king despite the knight’s wolfen appearance and inability to speak. Having been taken to the king’s court, the bisclavret’s sole act of violence is to attack his wife’s replacement husband. Given the bisclavret’s otherwise peaceable nature, his attack is adjudged by the other humans an act that must have reasonable cause. The wife fares even worse than her husband when Bisclavret encounters her in a wood, as he tears the nose from her face. Bisclavret is threatened from all sides, but a “wise man” again points out that the wolf must have some grudge against her and her husband – that is, some reason for his act. All is set for the truth of what has occurred to be revealed. 41 Melion and Biclarel: Two Old French Werewolf Lays, ed. and trans. Amanda Hopkins, Liverpool Online Series: Critical editions of French texts 10 (2005). https://cpb-us-w2 .wpmucdn.com/blogs.cofc.edu/dist/d/449/files/2011/08/Melion-and-Biclarel-TEXT -ONLY.pdf.

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Marie de France, Bisclavret42 A whole year passed by until one day the king went hunting and headed straight for the forest in which Bisclavret was living. When the hounds were unleashed they came upon Bisclavret and the dogs and the hunters spent the whole day in pursuit until they were just about to capture him, tear him to pieces and destroy him. As soon as he saw the king he ran up to him and begged for mercy. He took hold of his stirrup and kissed his foot and his leg. The king saw him and was filled with dread. He summoned all his companions. “Lords,” he said, “come forward! See the marvellous way this beast humbles himself before me! It has the intelligence of a human and is pleading for mercy. Drive back the dogs and see that no-one strikes it! The beast possesses understanding and intelligence. Hurry! Let us depart. I shall place the beast under my protection, for I shall hunt no more today.” … The king held court and all his barons and those who held fiefs from him were summoned so that they could help him celebrate the festival and serve him all the better. Amongst them, richly and elegantly attired, was the knight who had married Bisclavret’s wife, He did not realize and never would have suspected that Bisclavret was so close by. As soon as he arrived at the palace, Bisclavret caught sight of the knight and sped toward him, sinking his teeth into him and dragging him down towards him. He would soon have done the knight serious harm if the king had not called him and threatened him with a stick. On two occasions that day he attempted to bite him. Many people were greatly astonished at this for never before had he shown such behaviour towards anyone he had seen. Throughout the household it was remarked that he would not have done it without good reason. The knight had wronged him somehow, for he was bent on revenge. trans. Glyn S. Burgess and Keith Busby

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In the Hellenistic and pagan Roman worlds and early Germanic society zoophilia had not been taboo, while gods took animal form to have sexual intercourse with women and they sometimes produced half-animal, half-human offspring. 42 Les Lais de Marie de France, ed. Jean Rychner (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1966). There are several manuscripts of the lays: this edition is based mainly on ms H (British Library, Harley 978).

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One of the Roman authors frequently consulted by Christian thinkers was Aelian, who told numerous tales in which animals fell in love and had relationships with humans. However, medieval authors who refer to his works expunged or skated over these elements. The Bible, especially Leviticus 18.23, 19.19 and 20.15–16, forbade sexual relations between humans and other animals. In the Christian era, bestiality, human homosexual love and coitus interruptus were regarded as ‘sins against nature’, that is, clearly contrary to the natural order and hierarchy inherent in God’s creation. Basil of Caesarea lumped them all together as misdemeanours, so defined because they were not intended for procreation. In the early western penitentials the attitude was the same, but, as we see below, increasingly sexual offences were differentiated according to severity, bestiality and homosexuality requiring the heaviest penances, while the former eventually incurred severe punishments. Though there were stories of witches copulating with the devil or demons in animal form, almost all case records of bestiality involve men as the transgressors. In the tenth century Bishop Burchard of Worms compiled a collection of twenty books of canon law in collaboration with several contemporaries, which had a strong influence on the later canon law compilations Panormia (c.1094–5) attributed to Ivo of Chartres and Concordia Discordantium Canonum (1139–40) of Gratian (Decretum Gratiani). The following is from Burchard’s penitential concerning pre-Christian and sinful practices. Burchard of Worms, Decretum or Decretorum Libri Viginti (Decretum in Twenty Books). Bk 19: De paenitentia (On Penitence) or Corrector sive medicus Burchardi, Ch. 5: Interrogationes quibus confessor confitentem debet interrogare (Questions which the priest must ask the confessor) – Item de fornication (Again of fornication)43 Did you fornicate contrary to nature, that is to say as you mated with men but with animals, that is to say with a mare, a cow, a donkey or any other animal? If you’ve done this once or twice and you don’t have a woman with whom you could satisfy your pleasure, you will do a penance of forty days on bread and water, the period called Lent, for the next seven years, and if you do not you will never be without penance again. If, however, you have a wife, you will do ten years penance on the established days. But if you are in the habit of committing this crime, you will do a penance of fifteen years on the established days. If this happened in your youth, you will do a penance of a hundred days on bread and water. 43

Burchard of Worms. Burchardi Wormaciensis Ecclesiae Episcopi Decratorum Libri Viginti, ed. J.-P. Migne: PL, MPL 140, 0537–1057: Liber Decimus Nonas, Cap. V, Item de Fornicatione. This penitential is numbered 126 in modern and translated editions.

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In the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries Ivo of Chartres expanded on earlier canonical works. In his Decretum he included examples of penances for humans who engaged in bestiality from different penitentiaries then in use, but also in the provisions touching on the subject that any beast taking part in a sexual act with a human should also be killed, as stated in Leviticus 20.15–16, so as to expunge the memory of such an act. Ivo of Chartres, Decretum, 9. 91. Item de quadrupedum fornicatoribus. Ex Romano penitentiali44 Also concerning the fornicators of four-footed animals. According to the Roman penitentiary, if there are found to be those who sin against nature with quadrupeds or males, they must be punished with a harsh and strict penance. Wherefore bishops or priests by whom the judgement of penance is imposed should endeavour in every way to eradicate this evil by its roots. Ivo of Chartres, Decretum, 108: Questionum Augustini super Leviticum cap. 75 (Augustine’s question regarding Leviticus ch. 75) If a woman approaches any animal and copulates with it, you will kill the woman and the animal must be put to death, for they are both responsible. He asked, How is the animal guilty when it is irrational and not in any way capable of reading? Cattle is believed to have been ordered to be killed because, contaminated by such a crime, the memory of the deed is degrading. The above attitudes are reflected in another of Gerald’s tales about the despicable Irish, who were, according to him, especially susceptible to practising bestiality, most commonly with cattle. Here the human participant is largely to be blamed as someone who should have known better, having been equipped with rationality and the capacity for knowledge, but the beast too is complicit in the crime. Besides the reason for killing them mentioned by Ivo, unchecked 44 Ivonis Carnotensis episcopi Opera omnia, Part 1, ed. Jean Fronteau (Paris: Laurent Cottereau, 1647): Decretum IX. Hec pars continet de incesta copulatione et fornicatione diversi generis, et in qua linea fideles coniungi et separari debeant, et de correctione et penitentia singulorum: XCI. Item de quadrupedum fornicatoribus, ex Romano penitentiali. (This part is about incestuous copulation and fornication of different kinds, and in what circumstances the faithful should have or avoid conjugal relations, and about the correction and penance for each [misdemeanor]: XCI. Also about those who fornicate with quadropeds, from the Roman penitential.) A modern edition of the Latin work is available: “Ivo of Chartres: work in progress.”: http://ivo-of-chartres.github.io/decretum/ivodec_4.pdf with date / revision stamp 2015-09-23 / 898fb.

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lust was considered characteristic of beasts, hence they were willing partners in the act even though they did not have the mental capacity to consider restricting their urges. Gerald of Wales, Topographia Hibernica (The History and Topography of Ireland). Part 2, Ch. 23: De hirco ad mulierem accedente (On the goat who had intercourse with the woman)45 Rothericus, king of Connacht, had a tame white goat that was remarkable of its kind for the length of its coat and the height of its horns. This goat had bestial intercourse with a certain woman to whom she was entrusted. The wretched woman, proving herself more a beast in accepting him than he did in acting, even submitted herself to his abuse. How unworthy and unspeakable! How reason succumbs so outrageously to sensuality! That the lord of the brutes, losing the privileges of his high estate, should descend to the level of the brutes, when the rational submits itself to such shameful commerce with a brute animal! Although the matter was detestable on both sides and abominable, yet it was less so by far on the side of the brute who is subject to rational beings in all things, and because he was a brute and prepared to obey by very nature. He was, nevertheless, created not for abuse but for proper use. Perhaps we might say that nature makes known her indignation and repudiation of the act in verse: Only novelty pleases now: new pleasure is welcome; Natural love is outworn Nature pleases less than art; reason, no longer reasoning, Sinks in shame. trans. John O’Meara

As we have seen, by the fifteenth century the ecclesiastical condemnation and demand for penance for bestiality that had begun in the Carolingian era came to be seen as insufficient and the crime of bestiality was increasingly dealt with by secular powers as well as the Church. Henceforth, not only would the human convicted of initiating the act be executed, but the animals he used as well.46

45 Gerald of Wales, Topographia Hibernica, ed. James F. Dimock: Distinctio Secunda, “De Mirabilibus Hibernia et Miraculis”: Cap. 23. This is Ch. 56 in The History and Topography of Ireland. 46 Ch. 6, pp. 293–95.

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Offspring of Human-Beast Unions

In the Middle Ages most “monstrous births” were considered mistakes of nature (presupposing that nature had been created with a purpose) or products of demonic and occasionally magical intervention. However, despite ecclesiastical denial of their possibility, a few tales reminiscent of pre-Christian ones of descent from unions between animals and humans and which assume that they could produce offspring with characteristics of both continued to be recorded well into the Middle Ages. The monk Jocelyn of Furness wrote his (imaginative) hagiographic life of Waltheof of Northumberland in the early twelfth century, the protagonist having been executed by order of William I in 1076. Waltheof’s son and namesake was abbot of Furness Abbey. According to Jocelyn, Waltheof’s grandfather had bear’s ears, inherited from his own great grandfather, a bear. Obviously aware that sexual unions between animals and humans were transgressing the natural order, Jocelyn makes it clear that God permitted this union of Waltheof’s ancestors as a special case. Jocelyn of Furness, Vita Waldevi (Life of Waltheof )47 They say that long ago a certain nobleman, whom the Lord allowed, contrary to the usual order in human procreation, to be born of a white bear as father and a mother of noble stock, fathered Spratlingus, Spratlingus fathered Ulsius and Ulsius fathered Beorn, who was nicknamed Beresune, that is, “bear’s son.” This Beorn was of the Danish people, a renowned count and warrior. As a sign that because of his origin he belonged to more than one species, however, nature had caused him to inherit from his forefathers the ears of a bear. In all other respects he had his mother’s appearance. Gerald of Wales provides a tale of a half-human, half-animal child from Ireland. “That people” is, of course, the Irish, elsewhere in the History themselves compared to beasts. Gerald of Wales, Topographia Hibernica (The History and Topography of Ireland), Part 2, Ch. 21: De semibove viro semiviroque bove (Of the half-ox man and the half-man ox)48 47 “Vita Waldevi,” in An Edition and Translation of the Life of Waldef, Abbot of Melrose, by Jocelin of Furness, ed. George McFadden (UMI Research Press, 1991). 48 Topographia Hibernica et Expugnatio Hibernica, ed. James F. Dimock (London: Longman, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1867): Distinctio II, Cap. XXI. The chapter is numbered 54 in the The History and Topography of Ireland, translated by John O’Meara.

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Shortly before the coming of the English into the island, a cow from a man’s intercourse with her – a particular vice of that people – gave birth to a man-calf in the mountains around Glendalough. From this you may believe that once again a man that was half an ox, and an ox that was half a man was produced.49 It spent nearly a year with the other calves following its mother and feeding on her milk, and then, because it had more of the man than the beast, was transferred to the society of men. trans. John O’Meara

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Humans Acting Beasts

In the Middle Ages the Church was concerned not only about unnatural human contact with other animals but human imitation of them. There was opposition to festivities and rituals that did not belong in the Christian calendar, many of them concerned with fertility of either humans or land, which were perceived to be pagan and contrary to Christian belief. Many involved donning animal masks, heads or coats, not only a pagan practice but one that elided the distinction between human and nonhuman animal. The fifth-century bishop Caesarius of Arles, who lived in Gaul when Christianity was only partially established there, condemned the carnival that celebrated the Kalends (Roman kalendae) of January, the turn of the year. Before turning to what he sees as reversion of the natural order, humans acting as beasts, men acting as women and so on, Caesarius expounds the common Christian view that pagan gods were originally humans who became seen as deities through the machinations of the devil (euhemerism), explaining that Janus’ followers who had been fooled in this way made him an even more unnatural being, a monster or demon. In the view of Caesarius and many of his ecclesiastical successors, acting the beast in some sense reduced the human to a beast. Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 192. On the Kalends of January50 The day of those calends which are called the Calends of January, beloved brethren, derived its name from a dissolute and wicked man, Janus. This Janus formerly was the chief leader of the pagans. Ignorant and rustic 49 A reference to Ovid. See P. Ovidii Nasonis, Ars Amatoria, ed. Hans H. Øberg (Denmark: Domus Latina, 2010): Liber secundus, line 24. 50 Caesarius of Arles. Sancti Caesarii Arelatensis sermons, ed. D. Germani Morin (Turnhout: Brepols, 1953): Sermo CXCII.

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men feared him as if he were a king, and they began to worship him as a god; … Now because to them the Calends of January were said to complete one year and begin another, they placed this Janus as it were, both at the beginning and at the end, for he was believed to end one year and begin another. From this stems the fact that ancient worshipers of idols themselves fashioned two faces for Janus, one facing the front and the other the rear: one to look at the past year, and the other to see the coming one. Moreover by thus ascribing two faces to him, foolish men have made him a monster, even while they want to make him a god; what is unnatural even in animals they have willed to be a marked characteristic of their god. And so, in the clearest manifestation of their error and in judgement upon it, while wishing, in their empty devotion to images, that he seem a god, they have openly revealed him a demon. From this arises the fact that in these days pagan men have perverted the order of all things and cloak themselves with detestable ugliness, so that those who worship make themselves like the one who is adored. For in these days miserable men and, what is worse, even some who are baptised, assume false forms and unnatural appearances, and certain features in them are especially worthy of laughter or rather of sorrow. For what wise man can believe that men are found to be of sound mind, if they are willing to make themselves a small stag or to be changed into the condition of wild beasts? Some are clothed in the skins of sheep, and others take the heads of wild beasts, rejoicing and exulting if they have transformed themselves into the appearance of animals in such a way that they do not seem to be men. From this they declare and show that they have not only the appearance of beasts but also their feelings. For although they want to express in themselves a likeness to different kinds of animals, still it is certain that the heart of sheep is within them rather than only their likeness. Moreover, how shameful and how disgraceful it is when those who were born as men are clothed in the tunics of women. trans. Sister Mary Magdeleine Mueller

Caesarius’ condemnation was repeated many times, among others in the Burgundian Penitential and by Eligius of Noyon (seventh century) Regino of Prüm (late ninth century), and in the eleventh century by Burchard of Worms in his Corrector. Thirty days penance was not particularly heavy, law 62 having listed two years penance on the appointed days “because you have forsaken God your Creator, and have turned to vain idols, and have become an apostate,” that is, for a series of other magical practises associated with the Kalends.

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Burchard of Worms, Decretum, 19: De paenitentia (On Penitence) or Corrector sive medicus Burchardi, Ch. 5: Interrogationes quibus confessor confitentem debet interrogare (Questions which the priest must ask the confessor) – Item de arte magica (Again about the magic arts)51 Have you done that thing which the pagans did and still do on the calends of January disguised as a deer or a heifer? If so, you will do penance for thirty days on bread and water. Inclusion of practises in penitentials is not necessarily evidence of their continued existence in the era of the writer, at least not in their fifth-century form. Veneration of Janus, which Burchard does not mention, had probably died out long before his time. However, it has been argued that elements of the Kalends of January and Saturnalia survived as the medieval ‘Feast of Fools’ ( festum stultorum), an annual celebration on the day of Christ’s circumcision first certainly attested in twelfth-century France, but which then spread elsewhere. It involved inversion of the social and ecclesiastical order and socially provocative behaviour, including wearing of costumes and masks, and was repeatedly condemned and to some extent curbed by the Church. In the thirteenth century Robert Grosseteste, for example, explicitly forbade it in his cathedral of Lincoln “since it is full of vanity and defiled with pleasures, hateful to God and beloved of demons.”52 It was to some extent fused with the less objectionable Feast of the Ass (Fête de l’âne), the celebration of the flight into Egypt after Jesus’ birth, in which the donkey played a part, but otherwise did not particularly feature animals. More local fertility rituals involving animal costume that sometimes had no Christian component continued, and some survive to this day, albeit usually as maintenance of tradition rather than belief in the rituals’ efficacy. In the Middle Ages aspects of ‘pagan tradition’ probably became fused with other activities.53 51 Burchardi Wormaciensis Ecclesiae Episcopi Decratorum Libri Viginti: Liber Decimus Nonas, Cap. V – Item de arte magica. This penitential is numbered 99 in modern and translated editions. 52 Robert Grosseteste, Letter XXXII, in Roberti Grosseteste Episcopi Quondam Lincolniensis Epistolae, ed. Henry Richards Luard (London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1861), pp. 118–19. Grosseteste wrote the letter to his dean William and the chapter of Lincoln, probably in 1236, as part of an ongoing endeavour to cleanse the cathedral chapter of corruption and bad practice, also described in Epistle XXII of the same year. On the festival, see Max Harris, Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011). 53 The origin of mumming in Britain, for instance, is uncertain. Mummers existed in the later Middle Ages, but the term may have been a general one for performers who dressed up, and it is not known whether the seasonal performances they later performed on

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Humans Compared to Beasts

Though humans were thought of as distinct from other animals both mentally and physically, they were often represented as animals or compared to them even when they did not choose to playact animals or wear animal masks and skins. As in the Summa Halesensis explanation of the double meaning of “animal”, these representations occurred when the humans in question were thought of as reduced or degraded to an inhuman state.54 Like animals or even monsters, they became otherized. Many biblical exegetes and theologians used sinking to the level of beasts as a metaphor of human degeneracy or a constant danger for those humans who did not attempt to seek redemption from the state of sin humans had been in since the Fall. But in addition, chroniclers often compared humans who chose to live outside their political or social community or who belonged to other ethnic or religious groups to animals, particularly when they threatened violence. Nevertheless, the quotations are comparisons: the destructive human agents are likened to animals, but few say they are animals. The conceptions tell us how human groups characterized other groups of humans that threatened them, but they also tell us what people thought of wild animals, particularly predators; they were by nature despoilers, ravenous and vicious. William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum (The History of English Affairs), Bk 2, Ch. 32 [events in 1174]55 but after the Scottish king had toiled at Prudhoe for many days with useless labour, (which was highly injurious to his own people), on hearing that the military force of the county of York was raised against him, he crossed the Tyne and invaded the county of Northumberland. Everything was consumed by the Scots, to whom no kind of food is too filthy to be devoured, even that which is fit only for dogs; and while they were grasping their prey, it was a delight to that inhuman nation, more savage than wild beasts, to cut the throats of old men, to slaughter little children, to rip open the bowels of women, and to do everything of this kind that is horrible to mention. trans. Joseph Stevenson

Plough Monday or at Christmas and Easter were especially associated with them then. The derivation of the word ‘mummer’ is disputed. 54 See Chapter 2, p. 54 for the quoted passage. 55 William of Newburgh, Historia rerum anglicarum Willelmi Parvi, de Newburgh, Vol. 1, ed. Hans Claude Hamilton (London: Londini: Sumptibus Societatis, 1856): Liber I, Cap. XXXII.

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Gerald of Wales, Descriptio Kambriae (The Description of Wales) Bk 2, Ch. 5. De gravi eorum exactione, et immoderantia. (Of their severe exactions and immoderation.)56 In times of scarcity their abstinence and frugality are most remarkable, but, when they [the Welsh] have gone without food for a long time, their appetite becomes enormous, especially when they are sitting at someone else’s table. In this they resemble wolves and eagles, which live by plunder and are rarely satisfied. trans. Lewis Thorpe

When their raids began the Vikings fulfilled two criteria for otherization by the Christianized lands of Europe, as hitherto largely unknown people from the northern periphery of Europe and as pagans. Even after the Danes (or other Scandinavians) had been converted to Christianity, they did not lose their image as savages similar in behaviour to predatory animals. Asser, De rebus gestis Aelfredi (Life of King Alfred), 36 (year 871)57 When they [Æthelred and Alfred] had reached the gate of the stronghold [Reading] by hacking and cutting down all the Vikings whom they had found outside, the Vikings fought no less keenly; like wolves they burst out of all the gates and fought with all their might. ‘Battle of Maldon’ 96 (year 991)58 Then because of his pride the earl set about allowing the hateful race too much land; over the chill water then began to call the son of Byrhthelm [= Byrhtnoth] (warriors listened): ‘Now a path is opened for you: come quickly against us, men at war. God alone knows who will control the battlefield.’ Then the wolves of slaughter rushed forward, they cared nothing for the water, the host of Vikings, west across the Blackwater, across the shining stream they carried their shields. trans. Donald Scragg

56 Itinerarium Kambriae et Descriptio Kambriae, ed. James F. Dimock (London: Longman, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1868): Liber II, Cap. V. 57 Asser’s Life of King Alfred together with the Annals of Saint Neots erroneously ascribed to Asser, ed. William Henry Stevenson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), 36. The text is numbered by paragraphs. 58 “The Battle of Maldon,” in Donald Scragg, The Return of the Vikings: The Battle of Maldon 991 (Stroud: Tempus, 2006), 139–49.

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It was not necessary to be physically violent to earn comparison with wolves. To Bernard of Clairvaux, the peaceful proselytising of the heretic Henry of Lausanne merely disguised the violence he was doing to Christ and his Church. Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistola (Letters), Letter 241. Announcement of the mission to Languedoc in 114559 We have heard and known of the great evils which the heretic Henry inflicts every day on the Church. He is now busy in your territory, a ravening wolf in the guise of a sheep. But according to the indication given by our Lord, we can tell what sort of man he is by his fruits. Churches without people, people without priests, priests without the deference due to them, and Christians without Christ. trans. B. Scott James

Saxo Grammaticus’s attitude to the Slavs of the north Baltic coast was not dissimilar to the earlier English attitude to his own people, the Danes: even after the Pomeranians had converted to Christianity, he represented them as unchristian. Here, however, he refers to the still pagan Slavs of Karentia (Venzer Burgwall) on Rügen and what he characterizes as their depraved and animal-like sexual habits. Medieval rhetoric frequently associated sexuality with bestiality, although it should be added that medieval attitudes to sex were many and varied. The Gesta (a modern name for it) was written in c.1200 and includes no dates, but the description here is included in his account of events of 1159–60. Saxo Grammaticus, ‘Gesta Danorum’, (History of the Danes), Bk 14. Ch. 3860 Nor was it surprising that they feared the power of their Gods, if they recalled how frequently they had been punished their sexual crimes. For when the men had intercourse with the women within that fortress they would stick together like dogs, and could not force themselves apart from this posture by their own efforts; sometimes they used to suspend the pair of them, hanging up against each other, from poles, and would make their strange union a laughable spectacle for the people. This prodigious filthiness increased their solemn worship of base images, and they believed it was their strength which brought about what was counterfeited by the conjurations of demons. trans. Eric Christiansen

59 Sancti Bernardi Opera, Vol. 8: Epistolae. II, Corpus epistolarum 181–310 and II, Epistolarum extra corpus 311–547, ed. Jean Leclercq. C.H. Talbot and Henri Rochais (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957–1977). 60 Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum / Danmarks Historien, Vol. 2, ed. Karsten Friis-Jensen, trans. Peter Zeeburg (Copenhagen: Gads, 2005): Liber XIV, Cap. XXXVIII.

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Much medieval literature did not distinguish between Moslems and other “pagans”, but lumped them all together as ‘the others’ who did not follow the true path, so that they too were compared unfavourably to animals. In art Saracens were occasionally depicted with dogs’ heads and pagan enemies with distorted savage features. Though from Iceland, which in Europe could not be further geographically from the lands the saga’s central character (the son of the Greek emperor) supposedly visits on his travels, the following example from a probably fourteenth-century romance is typical of many Catholic European representations of ‘pagans’ (including Moslems). It includes a lot of learned material acquired from mainland Europe. Kirialax saga61 You pagans are wilder than all creatures in the world because you believe in that creature which corrupted itself with many evil deeds and then made many wonders with devilish power, but we Christians believe not in a creature but in the Creator of all creatures and humans know that Saturn and Jupiter were human and came from humans, full of sorcery and a spirit of Python.62 And for such disbelief he will cast you down to Hell and all of those who believe in him but before then you will suffer earthly dishonour and defeat. trans. Sverrir Jakobsen

The Book of Good Love, from c.1330 and written in Castilian, is a miscellaneous collection of fables, songs and first-person tales by a priest who is utterly unsuccessful in love. In this passage he makes an expedition into the mountains where he encounters ugly peasant women who want to dominate him. The description is a parody of medieval depictions of idealized women, but especially in later medieval literature peasants and women were often compared with animals. They were ‘closer to animals’ in the scala naturae, which incorporated social and gender hierarchies. Jan Ruiz, Libro de buen amor (The Book of Good Love): De lo que contesçió al Arçipreste con la serrana é de las figuras della (About what befell the Archpriest with the mountain woman, and her characteristics), stanzas 1012–101463 61 Kirialax Saga, ed. Kristian Kålund (Copenhagen: Samfund til Udgivelse af gammel nordisk Litteratur, 1917). 62 Acts 16.16–18. Belief in the spirit of Python derives from Acts 16, which refers to a slave girl who had “a spirit of divination,” divination in the Greek being pythōna, a word rooted in Greek pagan mythology. In Acts she is represented as possessed by a demon. 63 Juan Ruiz, Libro de Buen Amor, ed. Raymond S. Willis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972): stanzas 1012–1014.

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Her head was very large and disproportionate, with short, black hair like that of a sleek raven. Her eyes were sunken and red; she saw little and not very well. Her footprint was larger than that of a female bear. Her ears were like those of a yearling donkey. Her neck was black, wide, and full of hair, short. Her nostrils were long, like a curlew’s beak. She could drink in a few days all the water in a large lake (or could consume the entire fortune of a rich merchant). Her female mastiff-like mouth, with large, fat lips, contained teeth that were wide and long, like those of a horse, strewn about in a disorganized fashion. Her eyebrows were wide and blacker than a thrush’s. Anyone who plans to get married should pay attention! trans. MaryAnne Vetterling

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In the Middle Ages there were two genres of tale-writing in which animals were used to symbolize humans, the fable and the beast epic. For scholars examining medieval attitudes to animals, especially since Joyce Salisbury wrote her Beast Within, there has been a question as to whether the integration of human and nonhuman animal characteristics in the characters of these tales may have influenced humans into thinking of animals as more like themselves.64 Fables were a form inherited from antiquity, most supposedly written by a sixth-century slave in Greece, Aesop, but some are known to be older and many others later. In the early Middle Ages the beast fables were known in “vulgar” and “elegaic” Latin versions deriving mainly from those translated by Phaedrus (1st century CE) but known as the works of Romulus, who seems never to have existed. The earliest fables of ‘Romulus’ were in prose, but to these were added various versified versions in the High Middle Ages, among them forty-two by Alexander Neckham in his Novus Aesopus, 102 by Marie de France, and a cycle of thirteen penned by the Scottish poet Robert Henryson in the fifteenth century, the Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian.65 In many of the fables that use animals to represent human types the animal could be changed for others of a different species without affecting the moral of the story, as the protagonist has no mentioned characteristics specifically associated with its species. Some fables are known in more than one version with different animals as the main protagonists.

64 For instance, Joyce Salisbury, The Beast Within (London: Routledge, 2011), 143–45. 65 Alexander Neckham’s aesopic poems are available in Édélestand Du Méril, M., Poésies Inédites du Moyen Âge precedes d’une Histoire de la Fable Ésopique (Paris: Librairie Franck, 1854), 169–212.

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Most of the fables are timeless or easily adapted to different cultures, advising the reader to use wisdom and avoid pitfalls, especially believing people who speak falsely. Others give straightforward moralizing aphorisms. In the fable of the wolf and the well-fed dog below, which seems to have been popular, the two animals are suitable to present a human dilemma; although medieval people were not aware of the domestic dog’s origin, they were wild and domestic counterparts recognized as similar. Walter the Englishman, De Lupo et Cane (Of the Wolf and the Dog), Elegaic Romulus, 5466 A wolf of the forest meets a dog. The wolf says: “You shine in your beautiful coat, there is a beautiful abundance in you.” The dog answers words with words: “With kindness he enriches me, the master of the house feeds me. At night I watch for thieves, barking warnings, I keep the house safe: I am given a bed of straw.” This wolf then speaks: “I want to live with you Let’s share our food at our leisure.” The dog replies with the words: “I want you to live with me; One table and one hand will give us something to eat.” He agrees and looks at the dog’s neck He considers and asks, “Why have your hairs fallen out?” He said: “In case I should be able to sin during the day by biting I wear the chain in daylight; as the night passes I wander.” The wolf returns the words: “The value is not so great for me That I would like to become a slave because of love of the belly. The free beggar is wealthier than the rich slave; The slave has neither himself nor his own, the freeman has; Freedom, the very sweet good, created the other good things: Unless it is seasoned, the food tastes of nothing to me. Freedom of the soul is the food and true pleasure in which thing the rich cannot be richer. I do not wish to sell mine for vile profit; He that sells these riches, acts so as to become poor. It is not good for all liberty to be sold for gold This heavenly good is more than the wealth of the world.”

66 “Gualteri Anglici Romuleæ Fabulæ,” in Léopold Hervieux, Les Fabulistes Latins Depuis Le Siècle D’auguste Jusqu’à La Fin Du Moyen Âge Par Phedre Et Ses Anciens Imitateurs Directs Et Indirects, Vol. 2 (Paris: Librairie de Firmin-Didot et Cie., 1894), 383–426: XIV.

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Many of Marie de France’s fables are traditional but diverge from their earlier models and the values they teach by placing greater emphasis on the medieval noble ideals of honour and loyalty and the negative themes of treachery and shame. Hierarchy is often in the background, but as in those fables whose earlier versions are known, the animal species chosen is often significant only in a general sense, for instance, in that one is predator and the other prey, and could often be changed without loss of effectiveness. In the fable below, the choice of animals is influenced by their habits insofar as ants were known to prepare ‘stores’ for winter and crickets to ‘sing’ in summer. Marie’s fables appear to promote cunning, mistrust of others and self‐reliance as well as wisdom in conducting one’s affairs, and the message in this one appears particularly bleak: the cricket may have pleased others, but it now has nothing that can help it in times of scarcity, neither stores nor anything to bargain with, nor should it have expected others to repay it, so it suffers through its own fault. Marie de France, The Ant and the Cricket, Fable 8767 A cricket in the winter season came upon an anthill And he wandered in. He asked for food. He needed food, he said, because his lodgings were all bare. The ant said: “What did you do last summer During those long August days? You should have made provision for your needs!” “I sang,” said Cricket, “and I pleased the other creatures, But now I find not one of them is willing to repay me. So I stopped in here.” The ant said, “Don’t try singing now to me! Better, in faith, to stock up food in Summer Than to come begging at ants’ doors, Shivering to death! Why should I give you food? You can’t give help to me!” Moral: Each must diligently take thought for his own livelihood. trans. Jeanette Beer

Henryson’s fables, although his main source for seven of them was the elegiac Romulus, are considerably longer than earlier versions and incorporate many 67 “Fabulae dictae Romulus Mariæ Gallicæ,” in Léopold Hervieux, Les Fabulistes Latins Depuis Le Siècle D’auguste Jusqu’à La Fin Du Moyen Âge Par Phedre Et Ses Anciens Imitateurs Directs Et Indirects, Vol. 2 (Paris: Librairie de Firmin-Didot et Cie., 1894), 483–586: LXXXVII.

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of the characteristics of the beast epic. The animals engage in disputation, often in a manner that comes across as humorous to the reader, but in almost all of them their arguments avail them nothing and they come to a gruesome end. Five of the fables appear to originate in beast epic rather than earlier fables. But unlike Reynard, the fox in Henryson’s Trial of the Fox, despite his eloquence, is hanged for his crimes. Another interesting aspect of these fables is that, like some of the beast epics, the narrative alternates between description of the actual animal’s nature and behaviour of the same animal which is clearly anthropomorphic. The first excerpt below is one example, in which the reason that the toad can swim is described accurately during a discussion that follows her offer to take the mouse across the river, where there is abundant food.68 The toad responds to the mouse’s suspicion by arguing that the proverb is not correct, that beauty may conceal perfidy and a silken tongue may lie. The hungry mouse abandons her argument and accepts the lift, whereupon the toad tries to drown her, but both are spotted by the kite. Both toad and mouse suffer a grim fate, described in graphic detail – this is the outcome of their disputation, and reality negates all their rhetoric and clever maxims.69 Robert Henryson, Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian: The Paddock and the Mouse70 “I am wondering then, said the little mouse How you can keep afloat without feather or fin. This river is so deep and dangerous. It seems to me that you should drown if you wade in Tell me therefore what ability or skill You have to bring you over this dark water.” To explain this the toad thus began. “With my two feet,” she said, “webbed and wide Instead of oars I row the stream continuously And though the depth would be perilous to wade Both to and fro I swim at my own will. I may not drown because my open gill Always ejects the water I take in Therefore of drowning I have no dread.” 68 Henryson replaces the frog of the earlier versions of this fable with a toad, possibly because it was thought even more ugly and therefore more suitable for his version. 69 In Marie de France’s version of this fable, unlike in any other known version, the mouse escapes. 70 The Poems of Robert Henryson, ed. Denton Fox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981): Fable 13.

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The mouse looked at her crumpled face, Her wrinkled cheeks and her wide lips. Her overhanging brows and her voice so harsh Her crooked legs and her coarse skin She jumped back and to the toad cried, “If I have any knowledge of physiognomy, You have some element of falseness and cruelty. “For scholars say the tendency of man’s thought commonly proceeds according to the physical make-up For good or evil, as nature will dictate A perverse will, a twisted appearance: The old proverb is testimony to this conclusion Distorted morals accompany a distorted face.” (But the mouse eventually accepts the toad’s offer, only to be seized by her …) As they were fighting thus, the kite sat on a twig, And to this miserable battle paid close attention And with one swoop before either realized, He clutched his prey between his talons Then soon to the land he speedily flew with them Keen for that catch, whistling with many a “Pew!” Soon he released them and slew both without pity, Then he disembowelled them, that butcher with his bill And neatly flayed them skin over head But all their flesh would hardly be half a meal, And all the guts, for that greedy kite, When their debate I thus heard settled He took flight and flew over the fields Whether this is true, you can ask those who saw. In the High Middle Ages the beast epic developed, with longer tales that no longer merely stated the events followed by a moral but had a satirical purpose. The animals in the epics have a nature related to a supposed traits of the real animal and an ability to speak as humans. They debate at length, employing rhetoric and syllogisms and citing the Bible, canon law, maxims and scientia, and even read beast epics themselves, all too often to no effect as the ‘reality of nature’ determines their fate. The first poem cited here, the twelfth-century English Owl and the Nightingale is, however, something of an exception among beast debate poems. The two birds dispute about who is the superior, or perhaps who is the least unappealing. Although the poem might conceivably be read symbolically and the speech

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and disgust felt by the birds at each other’s nature may be anthropomorphic, the wealth of (mostly accurate) detail about the birds’ actual appearance, habits and even the geographical spread of their habitats makes a symbolic reading and human identification with either bird difficult. These two birds are not just symbols of opposing mores but naturally hostile to one another. The excerpt below is part of the nightingale’s opening attack on the owl. Following this diatribe the owl responds in kind, pointing out that the nightingale is colourless, eats spiders, filthy flies and worms, and so on. The Owl and the Nightingale, lines 71–9171 You are ugly to look at And disgusting in many ways Your body is short, your neck is small Your head is bigger than the rest of you Your eyes are coal-black and huge Just as if they were painted with woad: You stare as if you would consume All that you could grasp with your claws Your beak is hard, sharp and curved, Just like a hook that is bent: You clack away with it often and longAnd that is one of your songs! But you also threaten my flesh, With your claws you would mash me You would be more suited to eat a frog Snails, mice and foul creatures Are your natural and your proper food You sit around at day and move by night It is known that you are a fiendish beast, A late twelfth-century beast epic that is known to have been very popular was Speculum stultorum (A Mirror of Fools), in which the central figure is a donkey, Bucellus, who sets out on a journey to find a way to lengthen his tail. The work is a satire on society and particularly the clergy. On his travels Bucellus visits Salerno to obtain drugs, which he loses when attacked by a Cistercian monk with dogs. He studies in Paris but cannot remember the name of the city even after eight years of study, and then decides to join a religious order but takes 71 The Owl and the Nightingale, ed. E.G. Stanley (London: Nelson’s Medieval and Renaissance Library, 1960).

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the easier option of founding a new one with rules formed of the easiest parts from the others. Throughout he speaks at length and often pompously and nonsensically. Ultimately his former master finds him and he ends up back where he started – that is, where he belongs. The donkey converses, mainly with humans, and in this sense acts as if a human, albeit a stupid one, but his animal characteristics such as his ass’s body and his braying voice constantly get in the way of his foolish dreams. In this excerpt, Bucellus, having embarked on his plan to create a monastic order, is dreaming of becoming a bishop. Nigel of Longchamp, Speculum stultorum (A Mirror of Fools), lines 1668–8772 Perhaps I’m destined for the bishopric. And will obtain that office in my land. Indeed the world sees stranger things occur Than my advancement to the bishop’s chair. And if the bishop’s vestments I should take, Where could the mitre sit upon my head? With ears erect, in style pontifical, For mitre there will be no place at all. The mitre holds not all the bishop’s power, Though it’s the sacred emblem of his rank. The mitre then does not concern them most. But rather it’s the power that with it goes. The mitre shall not gild this head of mine Without the bishop’s powers, so help me God! The mitre nor its horns shall crown this head, Unless there’s present what accompanies it. When all things else are lacking which belong, What joy is there to hold the empty form? Full bishop I shall be, for I don’t want His honours as a mule, but as a horse. trans. Graydon W. Regenos

The Reynard the Fox tales are nowadays the most renowned among the beast epics of the Middle Ages, though not widely read. Reynard became the anti-hero of several medieval European collections of animal tales that satirize contemporary human (aristocratic) society and the chivalric epic. The tales 72 Nigel of Longchamps, Speculum Stultorum, ed. and trans. Jill Mann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

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of Reynard were drawn from a variety of sources, including fables. The foe of the fox in the first epic tale seems to have been a bear, but in the mid-twelfth century mock epic Ysengrimus (really a series of tales or fables), probably by Nivard of Ghent, the schemes of the ambitious wolf who gives the work its name are ruined by Reinardus. The wolf is usually taken to represent a greedy corrupt cleric, who, outwitted by the lowlier fox, ends up being humiliated and ultimately consumed by animals he would hope to dominate. Subsequent tales have Reynard as the main character and Ysengrim in the main supporting role among a gallery of other animals. Reynard is an amoral, scheming and self-seeking thief, murderer and rapist who triumphs over brute strength by his wits as he searches for food and evades punishment for his crimes. The twelfth-century ‘branches’ of the French Roman de Renart were possibly elaborations on a central tale similar to Heinrich’s Middle High German poem Fuchs Reinhard (c.1180). In the thirteenth century the branches were recast as a rather more coherent cycle. The Flemish rhymed adaptation of these tales by Willem (late thirteenth century) became sources for Dutch and Low German manuscripts, which in turn were used by William Caxton to produce a printed English version in the late fifteenth century. The tales were popular in the High Middle Ages in France, Germany and Flanders, and became popular in England right at the end of the period. So popular were they in French-speaking regions that renard replaced goupil as the word for fox. The animals of the Reynard tales are heavily anthropomorphized: not only do they give long rhetorical speeches, but, for instance, they conduct court cases, use human tools and ride horses. The tale/s are thus a humorous inversion of the (supposed) natural hierarchy, but the animal social stratification of the tales also both reflect the scala naturae within the ‘animal kingdom’ and human social stratification (itself believed to be ‘natural’) since the animals are also parodies of human beings. Even so, hunger and the quest for food lie behind almost all the actions of the fictional animals, just as the search for food is an animal preoccupation in nature. The animals chosen as the individual characters of the tales have one or more of the same supposed traits as their natural counterparts. In turn, the anthropomorphized animals probably influenced the human perception of the actual animal. Foxes hunt silently, alone and usually at night: if the anthropomorphized Reynard’s talking and riding was humanlike and a source of amusement, he was considered fox-like in that he was devious. Moreover, once the tales were transformed into a coherent epic, the whole story becomes one of the breakdown of the quasi-legal order in the animal society as the self-seeking animals, not least King Noble (the lion) dissemble, abuse their power and break the rules under pressure from Reynard’s machinations. It may be a ‘necessary ending’ that beasts prove

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incapable of morality and maintaining a society with rules designed to protect all, just as the disputation of Henryson’s mouse and toad and Bucellus’ efforts to improve himself come to nothing, but since the animal society of the Reynard epic is also an allegory of human society, it may also be a warning to humans against descending to the level of ‘lawless’ beasts. The first excerpt below is from Le Roman de Renart, the well-known episode (based on a fable) in which Renart descends into a well but escapes by tricking the wolf Ysengrin into descending in the other bucket, this causing the lighter one, holding the fox, to rise. However, the preamble to the well incident is an account of Renart’s raid on a compound containing hens that could be a description of an actual fox’s action, if we make allowance for Renart’s thoughts described as human-like. The second excerpt is from the thirteenth-century Van den Vos Reynaert (translated from Middle Dutch), in which Reynaert has evaded justice yet again, having tricked the king into locking up the bear Bruun and the wolf Ysingrijn and promised to the king that he will lead him to some treasure, and to the assembled animals that he will become a pilgrim. He then cunningly persuades one of his former accusers, the hare Cuwaert, to enter his den. The talking is followed by a very animal meal. Roman de Renart, Branch IV73 With game lacking, Renard had gone hunting quite a distance from his house. A narrow path hidden by undergrowth led him to open land at the end of which was a fence forming the enclosure of some large buildings. It was the Abbey of the White Monks, people who are hardly ever found to be short of good provisions. The barn was to the left of the cloister and Renart wished to pay a pious visit there, but the walls were high and solid. What a pity that was! There, undoubtedly, was gathered everything a fox could want: hens, roosters, capons and ducks. Renart, as he looked under the door, saw the henhouse where what he loved best in the world must live, and his eyes couldn’t tear themselves away from the irritating sight. Was there then, no exterior window, no hole, no skylight? How he began to despair and, to better follow the course of his sad thoughts, he was going to squat at the bottom of the door, oh happiness! A slight pressure causes the badly closed gate to give way and offers him an unexpected passage. Immediately there he is in the courtyard. But entering is not everything: when he is seen, his skin may well remain as a pledge. So, advancing cautiously, he arrives within reach of the hens: they are as 73 Le Roman de Renart édité d’après les manuscrits C et M, I, ed. Naoyuki Fukumoto Noboru Harano and Satoru Suzuki (Tokyo: France Tosho, 1983): Branch IV.

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good as his. But what if the hens cry out? This reflection stops him and even makes him turn back, when shame prevents further retreat in the courtyard and vividly signifies to him that it is as well to be beaten up as to starve to death. He then returns to the objects of his desire by another detour which should better ensure his advance and his retreat. Soon he notices three sleeping hens perched on a long piece of wood beyond a pile of hay. Renart pounces on them, strangles them one after the other, eats the heads and wings of the first two, and takes the third. Willem, Van der Vos Reynaert, lines 3090–313874 When they entered the hole, Cuwaert and Renaert together, they found Lady Hermeline there with her small cubs. She was worried and afraid, for she thought that Reynaert had been hanged. And then she saw that he came home again and was carrying staff and scrip; it struck her as a great marvel. She was glad and said at once: “Reynaert, how did you escape?” Reynaert said: “I was caught, but the king let me go. I have become a pilgrim. Lord Bruun and Lord Ysingrijn have become hostages for me. The king has – thanks be to him – presented Cuwaert as a peace offering, to do with as we please. The king acknowledged that Cuwaert was the first to accuse us falsely before him. And by the loyalty that I owe you. Lady Hermeline, Cuwaert awaits grievous punishment. I have every reason to be angry with him!” And when Cuwaert heard that, he turned round and wanted to flee, but he could not do it for Reynaert had cut off the way to the gate and seized him at once by the throat with murderous intent. And Cuwaert shouted pitifully: “Help me, Belin! Where are you? This pilgrim is biting me to death!” The shouting soon ceased, for Reynaert had straightaway bitten his throat asunder. Then Reynaert said: “Now let us eat of this good, fat, hare.” The cubs ran to the food and started to eat together. They did not in the least regret that Cuwaert had lost his life. Hermeline, Reynaert’s wife, ate of the flesh and drank the blood. Ah, how often did she wish the king well, who, in his generosity, had so delighted the little cubs with a delicious meal. trans. Thea Sommerfield

74 Of Reynaert the Fox / Van den Vos Reynaerde, ed. André Bouwman and Bart Besamusca (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009).

Chapter 8

Animals as Food Humans have to eat to survive, but except in times of absolute necessity they do not simply eat whatever is edible and closest to hand. Carnivores have to eat meat to survive, whereas omnivores do not. Although nonhuman animals may show a preference for some foodstuffs over others, unless they are domesticated by humans they exercise control over what they eat only by searching and finding whatever they require: they cannot grow or rear their own food, whereas humans, unless they live in a subsistence economy in which general shortage of food may make it necessary to eat whatever is available, have a considerable ability to choose which varieties of food they eat. When they select food from the available edible material, humans do not do so solely on grounds of palate or perceived nutritional value, although the assumption that regular consumption of a given food type such as meat or other animal products is necessary to survival even when there is no shortage of other food may become a conviction. The type of food eaten and how it is eaten varies and may determine whether a person belongs to a given cultural group or not. It may be a marker of social status or as a sacrifice define a group’s relationship to the world in which it lives. Within human societies a hierarchy of food types develops based on their associations. As it still does in the West and almost all other cultures nowadays, in medieval Europe the prevailing ideology supported the use and consumption of animal products, including animal flesh. This belief system rests on a variety of defence mechanisms and assumptions that are rarely challenged. In the European society of the Middle Ages and Western society since then, as well as most other known human societies, meat, that is parts of animals, is valued highest and plant food lower, despite the relatively low nutritional value of meat for humans. The origin of this hierarchy is uncertain as it lies in the distant past, long before writing had developed. As noted in the chapter on hunting, the high value given to meat probably derives from hunting of large animals, an activity that had a high social importance as proof of leadership, cooperative skills and courage, especially among men.1 Strength, aggression and virility were all needed to hunt large game in the Palaeolithic era, and although the importance of these factors has gradually diminished as hunting 1 See, for instance, Nerissa Russell, Social Zooarchaeology: Humans and Animals in Prehistory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 144–75, especially 155–68.

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equipment has improved, the association remains. Moreover, what humans eat becomes part of them, their flesh and muscle, and in most omnivorous cultures there was some notion that the strength of the animal killed and consumed was transferred to the eater. As explained below, for medieval Christians the transference of animal matter to humans also caused difficulties, related to beliefs about the resurrection of the human body and fear of anthropophagy. In the Middle Ages, many contemporary human practices that had developed in the distant past were assumed to have been inherent in humans when they were created, but the Book of Genesis implies that meat-eating began only after the Flood. However, the force of the permission given to humans to eat other animals was such that it might be taken as an instruction and a practice ‘natural’ to humans in their fallen state. Cooking, which is a practice peculiar to humans, because of its capacity to transform even the same edible raw material into many forms, has played a large part in turning food into a cultural product. In medieval Europe, as in almost all contemporary human societies, it was a mark of humanity. Medieval people did not eat raw meat and drinking of blood was confined to a few peripheral areas, although both might be eaten cooked. Secondary animal products such as eggs and dairy produce, sometimes referred to as “white meat” in the Middle Ages, did not enter the human diet until several animal species had already been domesticated, and consumption of milk in its raw form requires that older children and adults are tolerant of lactose. Although most milk was consumed as processed products such as butter and cheese, by the Middle Ages the incidence of lactose intolerance in the population of Europe was low, as dairying and consumption of milk had been practised there for over four millennia. Medieval folk were not aware that humans had not consumed dairy products for most of their history, or that adults had ever been lactose-intolerant. Long-established cultural practices associated with agriculture and domestication of animals also went unquestioned. Both images and written sources indicate that processing of plant products and dairying had been largely the task of women since agriculture, and then secondary animal product consumption, began. In medieval Europe, cleaning and preparing offal from animals was also a woman’s task. Because foodstuffs are valued for reasons other than nutrition, in all human societies many edible foods that are readily available are not eaten. Some animals become taboo as food, perhaps because they are valued aids to humans, and others disgust people because of their appearance or habits. While the primary considerations for most European people acquiring food nowadays may be availability, cost and promotion by food producers, in recent decades concerns about environmental effects, human health and ethical treatment of nonhuman animals have come to the fore. The concerns of Christians in

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the Roman Empire, Middle Ages and Renaissance were usually different from modern ones; the spiritual health of the human was as important as physical health and nonhuman animal welfare was barely mentioned. Nevertheless, in the Middle Ages the eating of animal products was controversial and engendered much discussion. Food had enormous religious importance to medieval folk. Fasting was painful but thought necessary, and gluttony came to be regarded as the worst form of lust.2 The Fall had resulted from eating forbidden food, while salvation could come from partaking of Christ’s flesh and blood in the eucharist. In medieval Europe there was an ideological inducement to avoid excessive consumption of food, particularly of ‘luxury’ animal products, if not to avoid them altogether, especially among religious communities or ascetics. Thus on the one hand there was cultural pressure to consume animals or their products, while on the other there was pressure to avoid them. Religion provided the impetus for both attitudes and the controversies arose from varying interpretations of scripture. 1

Eating as Differentiator of Humans from Other Animals

The medieval Church was concerned to distance its human flock from other animals in various ways, one of which was the avoidance of bestial eating. In his Hexameron, Ambrose of Milan argued that animals did no more than pursue “the pleasures of the stomach toward which they incline,” seeking their sustenance in the earth. Ambrose of Milan, Hexameron, Day Six: 33 Do you wish the creatures that have been generated to be put to the use of man? You will far better accommodate creatures to man’s pleasure if you do not deny to all creatures that which is true to their natures. In the first place, nature has intended that every species of cattle, beast, and fish has its stomach extended, so that some crawl on their stomachs. You may observe that even those animals that are supported on their legs are, because of their four-footed step, bound to the earth and thus lack freedom of action. They have, in fact, no ability to stand erect. They therefore seek their sustenance in the earth, solely pursuing the desires of the belly 2 The days when people were supposed to fast or days of penitence were often called “lean days,” and the others “fat days.” 3 Ambrose of Milan. “Exameron,” in Sanctii Ambrosii Opera, Pars Prima, ed. Karl Schenkl (Prague: F. Tempsky; G. Freytag, 1896), 3–261: Dies sextus (Exameron VI), [3].

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toward which they lean. Be wary of bending over like cattle; take care that you do not incline, not so much physically as they do, but morally. Look to the conformation of your body and adopt a corresponding appearance of loftiness and strength. Leave to animals alone the right to feed in a prone position. Why, contrary to your nature, do you bend over unduly while eating? Why do you take pleasure in that which is a violation of nature? Why do you graze on the produce of the earth like cattle, fixated on food both day and night? Why do you dishonour yourself by submitting to bodily allurements, in servitude to its desires? Why do you divest yourself of the intelligence which the Creator has given to you? Why do you associate yourself with the beasts, from whom it was will of God that you dissociate yourself when He said: “Do not become like the horse and the mule who have no understanding.”4 Ambrose describes the physiology of assorted animals as determined by the act of feeding. To avoid being animal, he recommends that humans adopt an upright position to feed. To most people nowadays this eating position may seem natural for humans, but this had not always been the case, the Roman upper classes having eaten while reclining. Humans had to eat just as other animals did, but how they ate enabled them to differentiate themselves from other animals, as did the practice of cooking meat before eating it and, in the Middle Ages, eating only animals that had died by human agency. 2

The Old Law Dietary Restrictions in Christianity

Many modern assessments of the ‘reasoning’ behind ancient and medieval carnism or abstinence from animal-derived foods include the idea that rejection of certain animals as food, even if ostensibly divinely ordained, originated in concepts of health, or that the meat of carnivores was not eaten because its taste was too strong. In his book on anthropophagy, the anthropologist William Arens argued that those animals who invert their own natural order or subvert the human interpretation of the natural order of things “are the very species which human beings often exclude from their diet whenever possible because of their unsavoury nature.”5 There is no indication that the biblical 4 Psalm 32.9: Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you. 5 William Arens, The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 140–41.

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dietary rules and abstention originated in considerations of human (physical) health or taste. The biblical dietary laws named many animals as unsuitable to be eaten, but although they were frequently described as unclean, this word or the equivalent does not necessarily imply dirty in the sense of risk to health. Many of the animals that are not eaten by Jews and Moslems are not notably dirtier or more disease-prone than animals they do eat. Jewish-Christian polemical confrontations concerning the laws centred most of all on the pig. Medieval Christian theologians interpreted the exclusion of swine as a moral injunction to avoid swinish behaviour rather than a ban on eating pork. In the excerpt on p. 390 below, Hildegard of Bingen does link the pig’s uncleanliness with a lack of healthiness as food, but says that sometimes eating piglets or certain parts can help to cure sickness. In medieval bestiaries and other sources pigs were condemned as filthy, but Christians ate huge numbers of them. Pigs also created unease in humans because they were omnivorous, tore at flesh with their teeth and might occasionally attack and even eat people; hence Hildegard’s contention that the pig has wolflike habits. The Jewish and Moslem rules forbid the consumption of blood, the source of life, and the meat of certain animals. Because Christianity was originally an offshoot of Judaism its influence was strong. Rules were both inherited from it and developed in opposition to it, and thus animals as food became a subject of disputation and polemic. The gospels tell us little of Jesus’ eating habits other than that he and John the Baptist observed the Jewish fasts, and nonhuman animals rarely figure as deserving any form of consideration in the New Testament. There had been pressure to amend the dietary rules of Judaism to make the faith more attractive to new converts almost as soon as Christianity extended beyond its Jewish roots and its apostles sought to attract gentiles to their faith. The apostle Paul played down the importance of dietary rules that might divide the multi-ethnic Christian community. Acts 15 relates a conflict between those who wished to amend or at least place less emphasis on the dietary rules, Paul and Barnabas, and those based in Jerusalem who wished to retain the Judaic rules. Paul minimized the importance of differences in dietary rules when communicating with gentiles: for instance, in his letter to the Roman Christian communities, “the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”6 The conflict with the traditionalists ended in a compromise decision by Jesus’ half-brother James, leader of the Church, who decreed that the gentiles may join the faith and should not be troubled by Jewish laws, but nevertheless “should abstain from 6 Romans 14:14.7.

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the pollutions of idols and from unchastity and from what is strangled and from blood.”7 In the fourth century there was a noticeable movement to distance Christianity from Judaism, which is apparent in the writings of Augustine of Hippo and John Chrysostom, among others, so that subsequently there was some confusion over the reason for the dietary rules and precisely what they meant, or whether they should be followed at all. Augustine emphasized that in eating habits the type of food was not as significant as moderation in consumption of all foods, a matter discussed further below. Jewish criticism of Christians for eating unclean food was countered by Christians. By interpreting the dietary prohibitions in a figurative way, many Christians suggested that they themselves were the ‘ruminant animals’ of the Old Testament, digesting the scriptures that the Jews failed to digest because they saw only the literal sense. An extension of this was for Christians to identify themselves with the clean animals and Jews as the unclean. Bruno of Segni, Expositio in Leviticum 11 (Exposition of Leviticus 11)8 To ruminate, what is it but to diligently examine the Holy Scripture and to break it in most minutely in the mind of the heart, and to bring it to spiritual intelligence by revolving for a very long time? The Jews, therefore, neither divide the hoof, nor chew the cud, since they neither receive both Testaments nor understand spiritually by cud what they receive; for literally swallowing alone and whole, they mind nothing else than the letter. One argument against the Jewish position was to claim that the prediction that all meat would be permissible as food once the borders of Israel had been expanded had been fulfilled by the spread of Christianity. The statement that the unclean animals would eventually become clean when Israel regained sovereignty ultimately rested on the interpretations made by several rabbinical sources, for instance the midrash to Psalm 146 (“The Lord will loose the bonds”), “Some say that of every animal whose flesh it is forbidden to eat in this world, the Holy One, Blessed be He, will declare in the time-co-come that the

7 Acts 15.20–21. There is still considerable dispute over Paul’s understanding and interpretation of Jewish law. 8 “Expositio in Leviticum,” in S. Bruno Astensis, Abbas Monti Casini et Episcopi Signiensium Opera Omnia, Vol. 1: Expositio in Psalmos, ed. J.-L. Migne: PL 164, 0377–0464.

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eating of its [the unclean animal’s] flesh is permitted”;9 or Leviticus Rabbah 13.5, which interpreted the unclean animals as allegories of various lands that would one day be restored to Israel.10 Peter Alphonso’s Dialogue, written at the beginning of the twelfth century, was obviously popular, as over eighty manuscript copies are still extant. It is presented as a disputation between Moses, his Jewish self before conversion to Christianity, and his current Christian persona Peter. Using his detailed knowledge of Jewish religious texts and belief, Peter’s Dialogue raised defence of the Christian deviation from the Old Law to a new level, inadvertently coming across as markedly more anti-Jewish than earlier works and setting a pattern for future polemics. Peter Alphonso, Dialogi contra Iudaeos (Dialogue against the Jews), Title 1211 Moreover, this argument can be provided for all unclean things. But even Moses attests to the acceptability of the meats in the future, after Christ’s advent, when speaking to the people of Israel with these words: “When the Lord God will have enlarged your borders, as he has said to you, and you want to eat the flesh that your soul desires, and if the place which the Lord your God will choose, that his name should be there, be far off, you will kill from the herds and flocks that you have, as he has commanded you, and you will eat in your towns, as it pleases you. Even as the roe and the hart are eaten, so will you eat them. You will eat both the clean and the unclean alike.”12 Before the advent of Christ, the borders of lsrael were indeed narrow, because they did not have the entire land that the Lord had promised them through Moses. The Lord, however, enlarged the borders of Israel after Christ’s advent, when the apostles preached his law throughout the entire world. But even the place that the Lord chose so that his name would be there is now far off, because that ancient temple of the Lord has been destroyed. Therefore, now one can eat all meat without transgression, whether clean or unclean, just as you please. trans. Irven M. Resnick

9

Now usually understood as “The Lord sets prisoners free”. See The Midrash on Psalms, trans. William G. Braude, 2 vols, Yale Judaica Series 13 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), vol. 2, 5.4, Psalm One Hundred Forty-Six, 366. The date of this midrash is uncertain. 10 The Leviticus Rabbah dates to the fifth or sixth century. Midrash Rabbah: Leviticus, ed. H. Freedman and Maurice Simon, trans. J. Israelstam and Judah J. Slotki (London: Soncino, 1939), viii (Introd.) and 168–76. 11 Petri Alfonsi Dialogus: Kritische Edition mit deutscher Übersetzung, ed. Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann, Darko Senekovic and Thomas Ziegler, trans. Peter Stotz (Florence: Sismel Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2018): Duodecimus titulus. 12 Deuteronomy 12.20–22.

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In the Middle Ages dietary practices were visible distinguishing marks of religious identity, although we should not assume that the rules laid down by religious authorities, which represented an ideal, were always followed. Attempts at segregating communities and their meat markets by administrations from local to state level, particularly in late medieval Iberia, where there were substantial Moslem and Jewish populations in the reconquered southern regions, were rarely wholly successful. After the conquest of the last Moslem kingdom in Iberia, Granada, in 1492, the united monarchy of Castile and Aragon (Ferdinand and Isabella) compelled non-Christians to leave or convert. For the Spanish Inquisition, instituted in 1478, the food consumption habits of the conversos provided the most visible evidence of whether they had genuinely converted or not.13 Use of diet by Ferdinand and Isabella’s secular authorities as allies of the Church to identify ‘false Christians’ was not new: eight hundred years before, the Visigothic king Recceswinth had extracted promises from Jews to abandon their dietary restrictions as well as other practices. “Judaizing Christians” were forbidden to follow any of the Jewish rites and faced severe penalty, possibly death, if they did.14 Lex Visigothorum (The Visigothic Code), 12.2.8. (March 654): Concerning the Prevention of Official Oppression and the Thorough Extinction of Heretical Sects15 Jews shall not divide their food into clean and unclean, according to their custom. The blessed apostle Paul said, “To the pure all things are pure,” but nothing is pure to those who are defiled, because they are unbelievers; and, for this reason, the execrable life of the Jews and the vileness of their horrible belief, which is fouler than any other repugnant error, must be destroyed and cast out. Therefore, no Jew shall distinguish food as clean or unclean, as established by the customs and traditions of his ancient rites. No-one shall perversely refuse to eat food of any kind whose condition is demonstrated to be good. No one shall reject one article of food and accept another, unless the distinction is such that is considered useful and proper by all Christians. Anyone identified violating this law shall be subjected to the punishment instituted for that violation. trans. Samuel Parsons Scott

13

See Jillian Williams, Food and Religious Identities in Spain, 1400–1600 (London: Routledge, 2017). 14 See Bernhard Blumenkranz, Juifs et chrétiens dans le monde occidental, 430–1096 (ParisLouvain: Peeters, 2007), 116. 15 The Visigothic Code: (Forum judicum), ed. and trans. Samuel Parsons Scott (Boston: Boston Book Company, 1910): Book XII, Title II.VIII.

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Despite the distancing of Christian practices from those of Judaism, the gentile Church reiterated James’ rules for several centuries in penitentials and canons. Throughout this long period there were contradictory impulses regarding both the apostolic decree and meat-eating in general. A variety of motives were proposed for the decree of Acts 15, many of which had little relation to its origins in Jewish dietary rules. The canons derived from seventh-  and eighth-century ‘penitential books’ listing tariffs for sins, which were copied in a large area of western Europe as Irish monks played a significant role in converting to Christianity the barbarian kingdoms that had emerged from the wreckage of the western Roman Empire. The Irish Canons of Adamnán and many of the penitentials derived from them forbade consumption of meat that was blood-laden, such as that from animals “strangled”, that is, killed in such a way that their blood was not drained, or killed after being wounded in their limbs or other extremities so that blood had flowed only from there and not from the body.16 In these we also encounter another prohibition, on the human consumption of animals not killed by humans. The Old Irish Penitential of Ms B23 also forbade the consumption of an assortment of other ‘animal products’ that one might think a human would have had to be truly desperate to eat or drink. Old Irish Penitential: De Gula (On Gluttony), Ch. 117 2. Anyone who eats the flesh of a horse, or drinks the blood or urine of an animal, does penance for three years and a half. 3 Anyone who eats flesh which dogs or beasts have been eating, or who eats carrion, or who drinks the liquid in which the carrion is, or who drinks the leavings of fox or raven or magpie (?) or cock or hen, or who drinks the leavings of a layman or laywoman or of a pregnant woman, or who eats a meal in the same house with them, without separation of seat or couch, does penance for forty nights on bread and water. 4. Anyone who drinks liquid in which there is a dead mouse does seven days’ penance therefor. Anyone who drinks the leavings of a cat does five days’ penance. Anyone who drinks or eats the leavings of a mouse does penance for a day and a night. Theodore says that although food be touched by the hand of one polluted or by dog, cat, mouse, or unclean animal that drinks blood, that does the food no harm. 16 The Irish Penitentials, ed. Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1963), 177, 181, 260. Adamnán of Iona lived c.624–704. The Canons of Adamnan are believed to have been copied from an Old-Irish Treatise on the Law of Adamnan (OI Cáin Adomnáin), found in only two manuscripts but derived from the lost Book of Raphoe, probably written in the ninth century. 17 The Irish Penitentials, ed. Bieler, Ms B23, Royal Irish Academy: Cap. I.

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5. Anyone who breaks a fast that is proclaimed in church keeps a double fast thereafter as penance. 6. Anyone who is sick is allowed to eat meals at any hour of the day or night. trans. Ludwig Bieler

The Anglo-Saxon collection of canon law known as the Iudicia Theodori (The Judgements of Theodore) provides what would become a more standard list of animals not to be eaten or sometimes even whose parts could not be used. The Paenitentiale Umbrense was one of the five versions of it. Paenitentiale Umbrense, 26. De Usu vel Abiectione Animalium (On the Use or Rejection of Animals)18 1. Animals that are torn by wolves or dogs are not to be eaten, neither shall the hart nor the goat be if found dead, unless perchance they shall first be put to death while still alive by a man; but dogs and pigs may eat them. 2. Birds and other animals, if they are strangled in nets are not to be eaten by men, nor should man accept them if they are found dead, because in the four chapters of the Acts, cf. Act 15:29 the apostles prescribe abstention from fornication, from blood and [things/animals] strangled or [sacrificed in] idolatry. 3. It is permissible to eat fish because they are of a different nature. 4. They do not prohibit the horse; however, it is not the custom to eat it. 5. It is lawful to eat the hare, and it is good for dysentery and to mix with pepper for pain. 6. If bees kill a man, they must also be killed in haste; the honey may be eaten. 7. If by chance the pigs will eat the flesh of dead bodies or the blood of men we do not believe that we should be rid of them, nor of hens. Those pigs who taste man’s blood will be eaten; (8) but it is not permitted to eat the flesh those who ate the lacerated corpses of the dead until they have absorbed it during the course of a year. 18 “The Paenitentiale Umbrense (U),” in Anglo-Saxon Canon Law: Iudicia Theodori, ed. M. Elliot: XXVI, accessed May 2, 2022: http://individual.utoronto.ca/michaelelliot/manu scripts/texts/transcriptions/pthu.pdf. The same penitential is named and numbered differently in many older editions of these Anglo-Saxon penitentials; e.g. In Di Bussordnungen der abendländischen Kirche, ed. F.W.H. Wasserschleben (Haller: Ch. Graeber, 19851): II.II. De angelsächsischen Bussordnungen, 1. Theodorus, A.4. Capitula Cottoniani, 181–221: XI, pp. 211–212.

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9. Animals should be killed after they have mated with a man, and the flesh should be cast to the dogs; but what they produce may be used and their hides can be taken. But where there is doubt they should not be killed. Rules 1, 2, 3, 6 and 7 were also issued as decrees 64 and 65 of the Synod of Worms in May 868.19 Rule 6 clearly indicates that the food of animals who have killed a human is contaminated; having killed a man the bees have to be destroyed quickly as honey made before the act is safe to eat, but if they were to carry on making honey it would be polluted and all would be inedible. In the case of the pig who eats dead flesh or human flesh its meat is edible only after the consumed human flesh is assumed to have been expelled. Up to the eleventh century the Church continued to forbid the consumption of blood and even in the twelfth century Gratian’s collection of canon law, known as the Decretum, declared those who violated the apostolic decree on the eating of blood, flesh from strangled animals or those sacrificed to idols anathema.20 The late medieval position of the Roman Catholic Church on what should or should not be eaten is summed up in the following conciliar decree from the Council of Basel, which took place from 1431 to 1445 and which endeavoured to restore the unity of the Catholic Church after the Schism and bring others into the fold.21 The decree concerns union with the Eastern Church, reiterating the Roman Church’s position. It refers to the message of Jesus in Matthew 15.11–12 and Mark 7.14–15, “Hear and understand: not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man,” interpreted as his attitude to eating habits. This verse, alongside Acts 10:11–15, in which Peter had a vision and was instructed by a heavenly voice to eat any type of four-footed beast, had been used since Late Antiquity to argue that the Jewish dietary restrictions were redundant. The second reference in the quotation concerns Acts 15:1–21. The consiliar decree interprets abstention from consumption of those things listed by James as necessary and applicable only in communities that still have a Jewish population.

19 See Leviticus 17.15, Judges 14.18 and Ezekiel 4.14 for the origin of these rules. 20 Decretum magistri Gratiani: https://geschichte.digitale-sammlungen.de/decretum -gratiani/online/angebot Distinctio 30, C. XIII. Item de eodem, accessed May 5, 2022. 21 At the time when this decree was issued the council had chosen an antipope as Felix V, to oppose Eugene IV. Though this council was not recognized by the Catholic Church as ecumenical at this stage, this particular decree has nothing controversial in it.

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Council of Basel, 1431–1445, Conciliar Decree, Session 11, 4 February 144222 It firmly believes, professes and teaches that every creature of God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because according to the word of the Lord not what goes into the mouth defiles a person, and because the difference in the Mosaic law between clean and unclean foods belongs to ceremonial practices that have passed away and lost their efficacy with the coming of the gospel.23 It also declares that the apostolic prohibition, to abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled, was suited to that time when a single church was rising from Jews and gentiles, who previously lived with different ceremonies and customs. This was so that the gentiles should have some observances in common with Jews, and occasion would be offered of coming together in one worship and faith of God and a cause of dissension might be removed, since by ancient custom blood and strangled things seemed abominable to Jews, and gentiles could be thought to be returning to idolatry if they ate sacrificial food. In places, however, where the Christian religion has been promulgated to such an extent that no Jew is to be met with and all have joined the church, uniformly practising the same rites and ceremonies of the gospel and believing that to the clean all things are clean, since the cause of that apostolic prohibition has ceased, so its effect has ceased. It condemns, then, no kind of food that human society accepts and nobody at all neither man nor woman, should make a distinction between animals, no matter how they died; although for the health of the body, for the practice of virtue or for the sake of regular and ecclesiastical discipline many things that are not proscribed can and should be omitted, as the apostle says all things are lawful, but not all are helpful. trans. NORMAN P. TANNER

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Cultural Taboos

Taboos may have or acquire a religious aspect, but there were also animals that were not eaten in the Middle Ages for other reasons. Various taboos developed in Christian Europe even though there were no restrictions on which animals could be eaten such as those of the Jews or Moslems. The meat of carnivorous 22 “Council of Basel-Ferrara-Florence-Rome – 1431–1445”, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol. 1: Nicaea I to Lateran V, ed. Norman P. Tanner (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990): pp. 577–78. © Norman P. Tanner, 1990, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol. 1, Sheed & Ward, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. 23 Timothy 4.4; Matthew 15.11.

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animals was not favoured as food, and this is still the case. The prohibition is repeated in many medieval sources, including secular ones, but they give no reason for it. Echoing Arens’ words quoted above, Nick Fiddes and Karl Steel also note that carnivores are functionally close to humans and rivals at the top of the food chain. Carnivores such as wolves are rivals to humans in that they not only hunt and eat animals also killed and eaten by humans but may even kill and eat the humans themselves. Apes too had an unsavoury nature, as they appear to physically parody humans and may take their food. There are exceptions to the rule. The bear can kill and eat humans and ‘invade their space’ for food but was (and is) sometimes eaten, in the Middle Ages either occasionally as a symbolic act as much as sustenance or in peripheral northern regions. Another animal that ate other animals and was eaten by humans was the omnivorous pig. In the penitentials cattle were considered cleaner than pigs because they ate only grass and leaves. This might also imply that cattle were cleaner than humans, but it seems that as masters of the animals humans were simply thought to be ‘above the law.’ As we have seen, carrion was also food generally forbidden to humans; a pig that ate carrion could be food for humans, but the penitentials allowed this only after it had returned to its state before it had eaten the carrion, after a period during which the flesh derived from it was thought to have gone. As stated in the Paenitentiale Umbrense, there was no religious prohibition on eating horsemeat, and it is not certain that the avoidance of it was an attempt to distance Christianity from pagan practice, as often stated in modern works. Burying of sacrificed horses to accompany deceased humans who possessed at least some wealth occurred among Germanic-, Baltic- and Slavic-speaking pagans in various contexts.24 Horses clearly had a sacral significance and were sometimes eaten as part of the sacrificial rituals, especially funerary and royal initiation rituals, which was noted as Christian missions were sent to them. Scholars have posited an Indo-European origin to the practice, perhaps a mythical link between Indo-European kingship and the horse.25 There are accounts of such practices in Scandinavia in sources from 24 E.g. Thomas A. DuBois, “Rituals, Witnesses, and Sagas”; Ulla Loumand, “The horse and its role in Icelandic burial practices, mythology and society”, in Anders Andrén, Kristina Jennbert, et al., eds., Old Norse Religion in Long-Term Perspectives: Origins, Changes, and Interactions (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2006), 74–78 and 130–34 respectively; A. Bliujienė; et al., “Human–horse burials in Lithuania in the late second to seventh century AD: A multidisciplinary approach”, European Journal of Archaeology 20 (2017), 682–709: Audrone Bliujiene and Donatas Butkus, “Burials with Horses and Equestrian Equipment on the Lithuanian and Latvian Littorals and Hinterlands (from the fifth to the eighth centuries)”, Archaeologica Baltica 11 (2009), 149–62. 25 See, for instance, Anders Kaliff and Terje Oestigaard, The Great Indo-European Horse Sacrifice: 4000 Years of Cosmological Continuity from Sintashta and the Steppe to

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the Christian era, such as this one from Hervarar Saga, referring to an early twelfth-century king (the last recorded pagan one) in Svealand. Hervarar Saga ok Heiðreks (The Saga of Hervör and Heidrek) 1626 Svein, the king’s brother-in-law, remained behind in the assembly, and offered to perform sacrifices on behalf of the Swedes if they would give him the kingdom. They all agreed to accept Svein’s offer, and he was then recognised as king over all of Sweden. A horse was then brought to the assembly and cut into pieces and divided up for eating, and the sacred tree was smeared with blood. Then all the Swedes abandoned Christianity, and sacrifices were begun again. They drove King Ingi away, and he went to Västergötland. Sacrifice-Svein was king of Sweden for three years.27 A memory of eating horsemeat as part of a king-appointing ritual also appears in a late twelfth-century source. As this source would have it, King Hákon was really a Christian and did much to promote Christianity in Norway during his reign, but under pressure from his pagan wife and the people he did the minimum necessary to procure the kingship.28 Ágrip af Nóregskonungasọm (Summary of the History of the Kings of Norway), 529 And later the Þrœndir rose against him at Mærin and asked him to serve the gods like other kings in Norway, “or we will drive you from the kingdom, if you do not in some way act in accord with our wishes.” Because

26 27

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Scandinavian Skeid, Occasional papers in archaeology 72 (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2020). Hervarar Saga ok Heiðreks, ed. G. Turville-Petre (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1976): [16]. “Swedes” is used here as a translation of Svíar and “Sweden” of Svíþjóð. They could just as well be translated as Svear and Svealand, the people and their region which comprised Tiundaland, Fjädrundaland, Attundaland and Sialand or Roslagen (the regions that later became Uppland), Södermanland, Hälsingland and Närke in the Middle Ages. Svein was recognised as king only over Svealand or parts of it, while Inge was apparently still recognised as king in Västergötland. The probably earlier Historia Norwegiae and the certainly earlier skaldic poem Hákonarmál differ. They do not mention the liver ritual, but they say that although Hákon had been brought up a Christian while at the English court, he reverted fully to paganism when he returned to become king in Norway. The post-Ágrip sources Fagrskinna and Heimskringla also insist that Hákon was a Christian, and in Snorri’s account there is a full-blown confrontation at the sacrificial feast where the king is inaugurated. Ágrip af Nóregskonungasǫgum, ed. and trans. M.J. Driscoll (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1995): V.

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he saw their zeal against him, and following the advice of the chieftains, he responded in such a way that he refused nothing, so as to appear to appease them. It is said that he chewed horse-liver, but wrapped it in cloth so that he should not bite into it directly. Despite its origin in a work written by a Christian over two centuries after the Icelanders accepted Christianity, the above account is consistent with other references to earlier pagan practices among the Germanic-speaking peoples. Pope Gregory III and his successor Zachary opposed the eating of horsemeat, but the origin of this may be their perceived usefulness of the horse as much as its use in pagan rites. Just after his injunction against the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ ritual mutilation and sacrifice of horses, Pope Hadrian mentions “many among you eat horses, which no Christian does in the East. Give this up too”, implying that it ought to cease as a non-Christian practice.30 Nevertheless, the main reason that it became customary to refrain from eating horsemeat in much of Europe was probably the horse’s status as companion and valued servant to ‘man,’ just as dogs are not eaten in the West nowadays and the eating of horsemeat is still looked on with suspicion in many western countries.31 3.1 The Swan: from Luxury Food to Taboo Animal While the reluctance to eat horsemeat may have had a religious aspect, there is no evidence at all of a sacral element in some other taboos on eating of nonhuman animals. Disgust at some aspect of them or a perceived symbolic or ‘ornamental’ value that gave them a status above mere food might be sufficient. Some animals that were introduced to their parks as food by the elite in the Middle Ages have now become taboo as food and are kept in gardens and parks purely as ornamental animals. The rise and fall of the swan’s popularity as food for humans is an example of the influence of factors other than palate and perceived calorific value or health on human diet. Our first written evidence that ownership of swans was restricted to the aristocracy and especially the crown comes from Bracton’s De legibus et consuetidinibus Angliae in the thirteenth century, but archaeological evidence indicates that it was elite

30 “From the report of the legates to Pope Hadrian (786),” 19, in English Historical Documents Vol. 1, c. 500–1042, ed. Dorothy Whitelock (London: Routledge, 1996), 894. 31 Most importantly, the horse became the essential companion of the elite warrior: see Chapter 12 on warhorses. Any animal might be eaten by humans in times of famine, but there is evidence that horses were otherwise eaten in England during the Anglo-Saxon period: Ann Hagen, Anglo-Saxon Food and Drink (Little Downham, Ely: Anglo-Saxon Books, 2006), 183–89.

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food at least four centuries earlier.32 Swan bones dated to the eleventh and twelfth centuries are also more common at sites of religious houses than they were earlier, perhaps partly because the swan was a symbol of Christian virtue, but this was also the period when monastic diet became less frugal. The swan was also a popular emblem in heraldry. The number of sites with swan bones, often representing swanneries, increased during the period of the Black Death, especially in urban contexts, suggesting that swans, while still expensive, were now eaten by the rising bourgeoisie in a period when wages also rose. Formal registration of swan marks became a practice around this time, with permission granted by the king. In England only the monarch could claim unmarked mute swans, although he also had several of his own marks. Additional codes and ordinances were enacted as to who should own swans and cygnets in particular areas. In 1482–83, the English king Edward IV’s Act for Swans was passed in an attempt to ensure that only noble and rich people could have swan marks or own swans. The Statutes of the Realm, Statues of Edward IV, 1482–83: “Act for Swans”33 ITEM, Where as well our said Sovereign Lord the King, as other Lords, Knights, Esquires, and other noble Men of this noble Realm of England, have been heretofore greatly stored of Marks and Games of Swans in divers Parts of this Realm of England, until of late that divers Keepers of Swans have bought or made to them Marks and Games in the Fens and Marshes, and other Places and under Colour of the same; and of Surveying and Search for Swans and Cygnets for their Lords and Masters, have stolen Cygnets, and put upon them their own Mark, by which unlawful Means the Substance of Swans be in the Hands and Possession of Yeomen and Husbandmen, and other [Persons of little Reputation]: Wherefore it is ordained, established, and enacted by our said Sovereign Lord the King, with the Assent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and at the special Petition and Request of the Commons, in the said Parliament assembled, and by Authority of the said Parliament, That no Person, of what Estate, Degree, or Condition he be, other than[the Son of our sovereign lord the King] from the Feast of Saint Michael next coming, shall have or possess any such Mark or Game of his own, or any other to his Use shall have or

32 Naomi Sykes, Beastly Questions: Animal Answers to Archaeological Issues (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 165–67. 33 The Statutes of the Realm: Vol. 2: Richard II to Henry VII, ed. John Raithby (London: Dawsons, 1963): Anno 22, Edward IV AD 1482–83. Ex Lib. Scacc. Westm. XI, VI, 474.

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possess any such Mark or Game, except he have Lands and Tenements of Estate of Freehold to the yearly Value of Five Marks above all yearly Charges. And moreover, That every Person or Persons now having any such Mark or Game, shall sell or give the same betwixt this and the Feast of Saint Michael next coming, to the Use of them to whom they shall be sold or given; and if it happen any Person or Persona not having any Possession of Lands or Tenements to the said yearly Value, [or any other, to have or possess Lands to his or their Use] to have or possess any such mark or Game after the said Feast, that then it shall be lawful to any of the King’s Subjects, having Lands and Tenements to the said Value, to seise the said Swans as forfeit; whereof the King shall have one Half, and he that [shall seise] the other Half. This Act was as unsuccessful as other sumptuary laws. In the sixteenth century, as swan consumption widened, the swan lost popularity with the aristocracy, which in turn caused it to lose popularity with the middle classes, who tended to imitate aristocratic habits. Still associated with status, it was on the road to becoming a bird that was not eaten at all by European humans. 4

Meat-Eating, Lust and Gluttony

Christians were taught not to fear any particular food, but eating of meat as a general food category was restricted by two main factors, both unrelated to the welfare of animals; firstly, Christians were urged to abstain from it as a method of disciplining body and soul, and many, especially those of a religious vocation, chose to do this; secondly, as a prestige food, the supply of many types of meat, birds and fish was deliberately limited by custom, law and price to people of high status. In his criticism of Jovinian Jerome emphasized that flesh-eating and certain other practices were not good, but permissions given after the Flood, a temporary evil that will end with the second coming of Christ. His writings on the possible evil effects of eating meat were later mentioned by defenders of abstinence such as the Franciscan Bonaventure in the thirteenth century, although rarely with reference to it as a postdiluvian aberration. The attitudes of other medieval writers to meat-eating, even if they often briefly acknowledged this point of view, often resemble the argument Jovinian apparently put forward, citing the postdiluvian permissions as justification. However, the association of flesh with lust remained strong, strengthened by the late medieval understanding of carnal to mean pleasures of the flesh, derived from Latin caro (carn-), flesh.

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Jerome, Against Jovinianus (Adversus Jovinianum), Bk 1.18: Comedendarum carnium licentia (Permission to eat meat)34 He raises the objection that when God gave his second blessing, permission was granted to eat flesh, which had not in the first benediction been allowed. He should know that just as divorce according to the Saviour’s word was not permitted from the beginning, but on account of the hardness of our heart was a concession of Moses to the human race, so too the eating of flesh was unknown until the deluge. But after the deluge, like the quails given in the desert to the murmuring people, the poison of flesh-meat was offered to our teeth. The Apostle writing to the Ephesians teaches that God had purposed in the fullness of time to sum up and renew in Christ Jesus all things which are in heaven and in earth. Whence also the Saviour himself in the Revelation of John says, I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending. At the beginning of the human race we neither ate flesh, nor gave bills of divorce, nor suffered circumcision for a sign. Thus we reached the deluge. But after the deluge, together with the giving of the law which no one could fulfil, flesh was given for food, and divorce was allowed to hard-hearted men, and the knife of circumcision was applied, as though the hand of God had fashioned us with something superfluous. But once Christ has come in the end of time, and Omega passed into Alpha and turned the end into the beginning, we are no longer allowed divorce, nor are we circumcised, nor do we eat flesh, for the Apostle says: “It is good not to eat flesh or drink wine.”35 For wine as well as flesh was consecrated after the deluge. Jerome, Letter to Salvina (Letter 79)36 Never let pheasants be seen upon your table, or plump turtledoves or black cock from Ionia, or any of those birds so expensive that they fly over the largest properties. And do not therefore think that you are not eating meat if you reject the tasty flesh of hare, venison, and other four-legged creatures. For they are not judged according to the number of their feet but according to the delicacy of their flavour. We know the words of the apostle: “Every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.” But he also says, “It is good neither to drink wine nor to eat meat,” and in another place, “Do not get drunk with wine, 34 “Adversus Jovinianum libri duo,” in Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi Opera Omnia, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1883), col. 221–352: Liber I, [18]. 35 Romans 14.21. 36 Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi Epistulae, Vol. 3, ed. Isidorus Hilberg (Vienna: Tempsky, 1910–18): Epistula LXXIX.

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for that is debauchery.” “Every creature of God is good.”37 May women who are impatient to please their husbands hear this. Let those who serve the flesh eat flesh, whose seething passion erupts in sex, who are tied to husbands, and whose task is procreation and children. Let those who are pregnant stuff their wombs and bellies with meat. trans. W.H. Fremantle, G. Lewis, W.G. Martley

In his twelfth homily, John Chrysostom also cited excessive luxury as a reason to refuse meat. However, others emphasized that it was not just meat-eating that was the problem but eating of any food if it was done to excess. In various of his works Augustine stressed that the way in which food was consumed was more important than the type of food. Some medieval ascetics probably turned to vegetarianism for reasons outlined above, and some may have been imitating the desert fathers, the first Christian ascetics, on whose practices medieval monasticism was supposedly based. As Jerome had mentioned, according to Genesis, all animals, including humans, had been vegetarians before the Fall, and there was a promise of an eventual return to peace between humans and other animals, so it might seem that vegetarianism would represent an attempt to return to the ideal condition of humanity, but despite Jerome’s comments, in medieval writings there is little reference to this as a reason.38 Many exegeses, homilies and sermons fail to mention the vegetarianism of the first humans and many state that animals were made to serve humans as they did after the Fall or the Flood, as if the pre-omnivorous state of humanity had never occurred. In the later Middle Ages a literary vision of an alternative Paradise grew in popularity; not surprisingly in a society where shortages of food, violence and other hardships would have been a frequent reality for much of the population, there were fantasies of a land of peace and plenty, as indeed there had been in the ancient world.39 In English this was the Land of Cokaygne, but alternative 37 Quotations from 1 Timothy 4.4, Romans 14.21, Ephesians 5.18, 1 Corinthians 7.34. 38 The vision of a vegetarian/vegan future occurs in Isaiah 11:6–9: This vision reverses the enmity between animals that came about after the Flood (Genesis 9), but although it mentions an end to nonhuman violence against humans, it fails to mention an end to violence by humans against other animals, although that is usually taken as implied. 39 The twelfth-century (Latin) poem, Carmina Burana 222, mentions “Cucania” and an ‘abbot of Cockaygne’ (abbas Cucaniensis), and two abbeys where the norms of religious life are inverted. A thirteenth-century French poem, Le Fabliau de Cocagne (‘land of plenty’), describes houses made of food and rivers of milk and beer. There is also a letter to Abbess Lucia, composed by Henricus de Isernia, who was a notary at the court of King Ottokar II of Bohemia (1253–78). From the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we have more versions, with additional pleasures added.

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versions existed in other western European languages.40 There is an element of humour in what was obviously a wild fantasy, a land of leisure where the less work you do the greater the reward. Nonetheless, these verses represent what many (male) medieval folk would have liked to experience.41 According to the English poem, “Though paradise be merry and bright, Cokaygne is yet a fairer sight.” One way in which it seems to have been ‘fairer than paradise’ was an abundance of animal produce as food. Whereas animals annoying to humans and the unpleasant produce of animals such as dung is nowhere to be seen, meat is everywhere and the edible animals freely offer themselves up to be eaten, sometimes ready cooked. The Land of Cokaygne (Middle English text, c.1330)42 You’ll never hear a sharp retort, Or see a snake, or wolf, or fox, Horse or gelding, cow or ox, Never a sheep or goat or pig – And so, of course, no dung to dig – No stud-farm of any kind; Here there are better things to find. There’s no fly or flea or louse In clothes, in village, bed, or house; There’s no thunder, sleet, or hail, Or any nasty worm or snail, … … The house has many rooms and halls; Pies and pasties form the walls, Made with rich fillings, fish and meat, The tastiest a man could eat. Flour-cakes are the shingles all Of cloister, chamber, church, and hall. The nails are puddings, rich and fat – Kings and princes might dine on that. There you can come and eat your fill, 40 Fr. Pays de Cocagne, Dutch land van Cockaengen or Luilekkerland, German Schlaraffenlan, Spanish Jauja or País de Cucaña, Italian Bengodi or Cuccagna. 41 Women are all beautiful and men can have their will with them, and nuns disport themselves naked for monks to seize and have their way with, not only a male-dominant fantasy but a view of the behaviour of monks reminiscent of that in the Fabliaux, the Decameron, etc. 42 London, British Library, MS Harley 913, ff. 3r–6v: http://wpwt.soton.ac.uk/trans/cockaygn /coctrans.htm.

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And not be blamed for your self-will. All is common to young and old, To strong and stern, to meek and bold … … The geese when roasted on the spit Fly to the abbey (believe it or not) And cry out ‘Geese, all hot, all hot!’ With garlic in great quantity, The best-dressed geese a man could see. The larks are known to do the same – Land in your mouth, well-cooked and tame, Freshly stewed and nicely done, Sprinkled with cloves and cinnamon Dit is van dat edele land van Cockaengen (Middle Dutch text, 15th century)43 There no one suffers shortages, The walls there are made of sausages. There are the windows and the doors Made of salmon and of sturgeon. The tabletops are made from pancakes, Of beer are made the jugs. The plates that are in the house Are all of the finest gold. The bread lies next to the wine Which is as clear as the sunshine. The beams that in the house are laid Are made of butter. Hasps and spools and all such things Are baked of crispy crackel. There are the benches and stools All baked of meat pies There are the roof planks overhead Baked of finest gingerbread. The rafters are of grilled eels, The roofs are decked with sweets, All around together we see 43 P. de Keyser, “De nieuwe reis naar Luilekkerland,” in Ars folklorica Belgica. Noord- en Zuid-Nederlandse volkskunst, ed. P. de Keyser (Antwerp: De Sikkel, 1956), 33–36. See also Herman Pleij, Dreaming of Cockaigne: Medieval Fantasies of the Perfect Life, trans. Diane Webb (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).

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The hares and rabbits With deer and wild boar (incomplete line here) They let men catch them with their hand Has anyone seen a better land! Seemingly contradictory attitudes to meat-eating developed in the monastic orders and secular society. Whether monks and nuns were cenobitic or eremitic, the emphasis was placed on training the soul through bodily discipline. In this they were following the recommendation of the apostle Paul. Consumption of meat was rejected in the fasting of early Christian ascetic movements. In his Life of Antony, Athanasius wrote that meat was not even mentioned in connection with those striving for virtue. Most ascetics did not take their abstention to the extent that Antony did, and medieval ascetics generally followed their example. Meat was apparently considered too much of a luxury, but it was also thought to be a stimulant of lust, as Jerome mentioned. Restraint when the stomach craved food paralleled restraint in sexual (carnal) cravings. Meat as flesh and a product of animals, who could not know self-discipline, was thought to be a strong sexual stimulant. In terms of Galenic medicine, meat was a substance believed to generate body heat and moisture and productive of blood and semen so it could be used to cure impotence and conversely abstained from to reduce lust. As a sin gluttony received more emphasis in the Middle Ages than it had earlier. Gregory the Great, pope from 590 to 604, divided it into five types, giving a biblical reference as an example of each: eating greedily before the proper time of meals to satisfy the palate; seeking delicacies and high quality food to indulge the “vile sense of taste”; attempting to stimulate the palate with elaborately prepared food – for instance, food heavily seasoned or taken with luxurious sauces; eating or drinking more than is necessary; and lastly consuming food or drink too quickly, even if it is the proper amount and not luxurious. Gregory’s definitions were reiterated several times, for example in the thirteenth century by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae. In this work Aquinas refers to several earlier theologians. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Question 148. De Gula (On Gluttony)44 Q. 148, Article 1: Utrum Gula Sit Peccatum (Is gluttony a sin?) Ad primum … That which goes into man by way of food, by reason of its substance and nature, does not defile a man spiritually. But the Jews, 44 Aquinas, Opera Omnia. Iussu Leonis XIII, Vol. 10: Secunda Secundae Summae Theologiae a Quaestione CXXIII ad Quaestionem CLXXXIX: Quaestio CXLVIII, Articulus I, II and III.

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against whom our Lord is speaking, and the Manichees, deemed that certain foods make a man unclean, not on account of their signification but by reason of their nature. It is inordinate desire for food that defiles a man spiritually. Ad secundum … As stated above, the vice of gluttony does not relate to the substance of food, but in the desire for it not being controlled by reason. As a result, if a man consumes an excess quantity of food, not from desire for it, but through thinking it necessary to him, this does not pertain to gluttony, but to some kind of inexperience. It is a case of gluttony only when a man knowingly exceeds moderation in eating, from a desire for the pleasures of the palate. Ad tertium  … The appetite is twofold. There is the natural appetite, which belongs to the powers of the vegetative soul. On these powers virtue and vice are impossible, since they cannot be subject to reason; this is why the appetitive power is distinguished from the powers of secretion, digestion, and excretion, and to it hunger and thirst are to be referred. Besides this there is another, the sensitive appetite, and the vice of gluttony comprises the concupiscence of this appetite. Hence the first movement of gluttony denotes immoderation in the sensitive appetite, and this is not without sin. Article 2. Utrum Gula Sit Peccatum Mortale (Is gluttony a mortal sin?) Ad quartum … Gluttony is said to bring virtue to naught, not so much on its own account, as on account of the vices which arise from it. For Gregory says in Regula Patoralis: “When the belly is distended by gluttony, the virtues of the soul are destroyed by lust.”45 Article 3. Utrum Gula Sit Maximum Peccatorum (Is gluttony the greatest of sins?) Ad primum … These punishments are to be referred to the vices that resulted from gluttony, or to the root from which gluttony sprang, rather than to gluttony itself. For the first man was expelled from Paradise on account of pride, from which he went on to an act of gluttony: while the deluge and the punishment of the people of Sodom were inflicted for sins occasioned by gluttony. The fifteenth-century Speculum Vitae, attributed to William of Nassington, and its prose version A myrour to lewde men and wymmen, included gluttony among the most serious sins, and like Aquinas above and many other late

45 S. Gregorii Magni Regulæ Pastoralis Liber (Oxford: James Parker and co., 1874): Pars tertia, Cap. XIX.

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medieval works, included it as a cause of Adam and Eve’s downfall when they succumbed to the temptation to eat the forbidden fruit. Not only does the sin of gluttony lead men to hell but it reduces them to the level of beasts; gluttons are compared to unclean pigs, the biblical episode of the Gadarene (or Gerasene) swine is given an allegorical meaning related to gluttony and both the actions of the devil and humans who eat in haste are compared to those of wolves and dogs.46 A myrour to lewde men and wymmen: Gula devastat tria in hominen (Gluttony wastes three things in a man)47 Through this sin the fiend has great power over man that is encumbered with it, for it is written in the gospel that our Lord Jesus Christ gave leave to the fiends to enter into swine. And when they had entered they sorely tormented the beasts until they grew mad and drowned themselves in the sea, in token of unclean men that through gluttony lead their lives as swine. And in them that are so befouled with that and whom nothing will amend the devil has leave to reside in them and drown them at the last in the sea of hell and make them eat and drink so much that they well-nigh burst, or oftentimes drown themselves. When a champion is brought down in a fight with his enemy and is held down by the throat it is hard and causes a great pain to arise in him. Just so it is of a man that the fiend has brought down by his sin, for then the fiend tries to take him by the throat just as a wolf or a hound tries to find the throat of a sheep that he will strangle and slay, and as he did our forefather Adam and Eve in Paradise where he caught them by the throat when he made them eat of the fruit of the tree that was forbidden.48 Later in the same section the Myrour lists Pope Gregory I’s five types of gluttony and states explicitly that it reduces a ‘man’ to the level of the beasts:

46 Mark 5:1–20, Matthew 8:28–34, Luke 8:26–39. 47 A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen, ed. Venetia Nelson (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 1981): Gula devastat tria in hominin, 205–11 (205). From British Library MS Harley 45. The three things wasted are the soul, the body and a man’s worldly wealth. 48 The equivalent lines of the Speculum Vitae are 13002–13018.

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The third branch of gluttony is to eat too greedily, and that is a foul deed to a man that has use of reason to eat his meat as an hound or another unreasonable beast. Although “meat” in the above excerpt refers to food in general, as previously mentioned, flesh-meat was believed to stimulate the sexual appetite, and alongside its social status as a luxury food this meant that abstention from meat was more important for the soul than abstention from other foods. Consumption of dairy products and eggs was questioned less than eating flesh in medieval Europe, but eating of both was generally restricted to “meat-days” of the week (specified as only three days and some culinary works) and was forbidden in religious fasting periods. Here the late fourteenth-century English Augustinian canon John Mirk uses the common medieval definition of dairy food and milk products as “white meat” and includes them among foods that should be abstained from to avoid gluttony. Eggs were presumably one of the main sources of protein for the peasantry, most of whom possessed hens, and also for poorer monastic institutions. For most of the Middle Ages meals were restricted to two per day, the main one usually being the midday meal and the second supper. Eating a small amount in the morning, break-fast, became more common, and the recommendation to fast until mid-afternoon was widely ignored and impractical for those who had to do physical work in the mornings. John Mirk, Festial, De Dominica in Quadragesima, Sermo Brevis (A Short Sermon for the fourth Sunday in Lent)49 Then, for the enemy is most active for to make each man guilty in these three sins, especially these forty days, therefore you need three assistants against him: namely these: against gluttony, abstinence: against pride, meekness; against covetousness, generosity. Then against gluttony you must fast, that is, not eat before time, but abide till nones of the day.50 And when you eat your meat, you should not eat greedily, no more than at any other time, nor give in to desire any longer than another day, and 49 John Mirk’s Festial: Edited from British Library MS Cotton Claudius A.II, Vol. 1: Sermons 1–49, ed. Susan Powell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). “De Dominica in Quadragesima (1 Lent)” is numbered 19 in this edition. 50 Nones: the fifth of the seven canonical hours, or the service for it, originally set for the ninth hour of the day, that is, 3 ‘o’ clock in the afternoon.

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it is well that you fast, both day and night, as Christ did. There are many that fast during the day with one meal, but they will sit much of the night and drink and so fill the stomach with drink as well as with meat; and they that do so, practise gluttony. And also you must fast from all manner of flesh meat and white meat; for as Jerome says: “Eggs and cheese are molten flesh and milk is like blood.” Given the ambivalences surrounding what constituted excess in eating and what should be defined as meat, it is not surprising that monastic communities received somewhat mixed messages in the Middle Ages. The sixth-century Rule of the Master, which provided the main basis for St Benedict’s Rule, permitted monks to eat meat during the periods between Easter and Pentecost and between Christmas and Epiphany, but they had to sit together and apart from the others so that the latter would not be contaminated by the meat-eaters.51 Here meat is defined as the flesh of fowl and quadrupeds and fowl as both flying animals and feathered earth-bound animals (respectively volucres and pinnae terrenae). Discussion continued about whether birds were included in ‘flesh’: after all, God had created them on the sixth day along with fish rather than alongside quadrupeds. Should all flesh (carnes) be prohibited or just quadruped flesh? Should flesh should be allowed to the sick even if not to other community members? Different answers were given. The Rule of Columbanus (d. 615) denied meat to all, whereas the Rule of Benedict (516), which came to dominate monasticism in the West, permitted quadruped meat for the sick but not for others. In the ninth century Rabanus Maurus, abbot of Fulda, interpreted Benedict’s rules, which did not mention bipedal animals, as excluding birds from prohibition, whereas Paul Warnefrid had earlier ruled them out as too tasty and delicate. In the twelfth century Hildegard of Bingen included both birds and quadrupeds under ‘flesh’ but allowed consumption of both by the sick. Rule of St Benedict, Ch. 39: Concerning the quantity of food52 We believe that for daily sustenance in all the months of the year, whether it be at the sixth hour of the day or at the ninth, two cooked dishes will suffice, making allowance for the infirmities of different individuals, so that he who for some reason cannot eat one may be sufficiently provided 51 The Rule of the Master, trans. Luke Eberle (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, 1977). Benedict’s Rule is one third the length. 52 For the Latin, see The Rule of St. Benedict in English and Latin, ed. and trans. Justin McCann (London: Burns Oates, 1952): Cap. XXXIX.

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with food by the other. So, for all the brethren let two cooked dishes suffice; and if there be fruit in addition or fresh vegetables, let a third dish be added. Let one pound of bread by weight suffice, whether there be one meal or both dinner and supper, but if they are going to have supper, let a third part from that pound be kept back by the cellarer and served at supper. But if it should occur that any harder work was done, it shall be within the discretion and power of the abbot to add something to the diet, should it be expedient, as long as all excessive indulgence be avoided and he take care that the monks are not overcome by indigestion; for nothing is so adverse to a Christian as excessive consumption, as our Lord says: “Take heed to yourselves not to let your hearts be overburdened with excess drinking and feasting.”[footnote]53 And take care that young boys are not served the same quantity of food as their elders, but less, and that moderation be observed in all circumstances. And let all abstain entirely from eating of the flesh of quadrupeds, other than the sick and the weak who are excepted from this rule. … Rule of Columbanus, Ch. 3. Food and Drink54 Let the food of the monks be plain, and taken in the evening. Their food should [help them] avoid gluttony and their drink inebriation; it should sustain and not harm them. They should eat vegetables, beans, and flour cooked in water accompanied by a small loaf of bread. Thus the stomach will not be overloaded nor the spirit stifled. Those who desire an eternal reward should consider only how such things are useful and compatible with their lifestyle. Therefore, their lifestyle ought to be moderate, and so should their manner of working. True moderation consists in maintaining the possibility of spiritual progress along with an abstinence that mortifies the body, for if abstinence goes too far, it is a vice and not a virtue. Virtue sustains and contains many good things. Therefore we should fast every day, just as we should eat every day. Since we must eat daily, we should feed the body because we must go forward daily, pray daily, toil daily, and read daily. To the modern mind some of the food allowed during medieval fasting days would certainly be classed as animal meat: it included rabbit foetuses, on 53 Luke 21:34. 54 Columbanus, “Regula monachorum,” in Sancti Columbani Opera, ed. G.S.M. Walker (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1970), 124–142: Cap. III. The title “Regula Mona­ chorum” appears only in some mss. For the derivation of these rules, see Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi Epistulae, lviii.6 and xxii.7.

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the basis that they existed in a liquid environment, beavers, whose tails were ‘fish-like,’ and, more controversially, barnacle geese because they were believed to generate from barnacles underwater. In addition, “fish” in the Middle Ages included marine mammals like whales and dolphins and even quadrupeds that spent much of their time in water. In general observance of the monastic rules about eating was relaxed as the Middle Ages progressed, so that monks were periodically invited to the abbot’s table, in the Rule reserved for guests, the ‘marginally sick’, the old and children were allowed meat, and periods were set aside when any monks could eat meat. The Cluniac reform of the tenth century, which was intended to allow monasteries independence from secular and even ecclesiastical authorities, had the unintended effect that monks in many of them successfully pressured their abbots into allowing a greater variety of foods. By the twelfth century most monks were allowed pittances, dishes or drinks given out of charity, which included food made from offal, though not flesh tissue. Some monks joined those in the infirmary when they ate meat. The eating habits of monks were drawing criticism from within the movement – among them Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny – and their generally luxurious lifestyles led to the creation of new orders in the High Middle Ages. In the twelfth century Bernard of Clairvaux, who inspired the reformed order that became known as the Cistercians, was one of those who denounced the quantity, variety and richness of the food consumed by the monks of his day. Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistles 2.1055 Indeed it is wisdom of God himself who says, “They that eat me shall yet hunger; and they that drink me shall thirst again.”56 But how can anyone who is filled with the pods of pigs hunger or thirst for Christ?57 You cannot drink from both the cup of Christ and the cup of devils. The cup of devils is pride; the cup of devils is slander and envy; the cup of devils is debauchery and drunkenness; and if these fill up the mind and belly there is no room for Christ … You ask why? I answer because the house of your uncle is a house of delicate living and just as water cannot mix with fire, so the delights of the flesh and the joys of the spirit cannot go together. Christ does not deign to pour out his wine, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb, for one whom Christ discovers among cups belching 55 Sancti Bernardi Opera, Vol. 8: Epistolae. II, Corpus epistolarum 181–310 and II, Epistolarum extra corpus 311–547, ed. Jean Leclercq, C.H. Talbot and Henri Rochais (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957–1977): 10. 56 Ecclesiastes 24.29. 57 The “pods of pigs” is a reference to the parable of the Prodigal Son, Luke 15:11–32.

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and hung over. The bread of heaven is not tasted amid a delicate variety of foods and napery of every colour, so that both eyes and belly are filled. In 1336 Pope Benedict XII issued his bull Summi Magistri, an attempt to reform the Black Monks (Benedictines). During the previous century some monasteries had constructed a second dining room in addition to the refectory where St Benedict’s rule was enforced. The room was known as a misericord or oriole, where meat could be served to those who had special permission. Summi Magistri accepted the dispensation to eat meat, with the restrictions that it be eaten in an agreed place other than the refectory and that at least half the monks in any institution ate regular monastic food in the refectory on the same occasion. Since guests might bring all sorts of food as gifts when invited by abbots or prelates, Benedict also warns about the dangers inherent in this. Pope Benedict XII, Ordinationes et reformationes pro bono regimine monacorum Nigrorum ordinis S. Benedict, XXVI. De esu carnium et abstinentia (Arrangements and reforms for good guidance of the Black Monks of the Order of St Benedict, 16. On the eating of flesh and abstinence). Year 133658 Truly, since it is directed towards the progress of salvation, if sobriety and modesty are respected, wishing to keep on a regular footing the abstinence from eating of flesh, and that the statutes of our predecessor, Pope Innocent III, should be firmly observed in solemn assembly, we decree and order that throughout the year, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and from the first Sunday of Advent until Christmas Day and from Septuagesima Sunday to Easter, all nations, regulars of the same order or religion, abstain from eating flesh everywhere, except from necessity of non-contrived sickness, by an abbot or other qualified prelate, who may advise allowing someone dispensation. On the days when monks will eat the meat in the infirmary, care is to be taken that there remains at least half of the monks’ chapter or convent in the refectory; and let the same be done where the abbot or other principal prelate will call some to his house or to his chamber to provide him with better and more filling fare. As often as they shall eat more flesh together in the infirmary, verses and prayers are recited at the beginning of the meal, and after the meal hymns and verses, and continuous silence is observed at the table. And there is read, as in the refectory, something that continually edifies the 58 Bullarum Diplomatum Et Privilegiorum Sanctorum Romanorum Pontificum, Vol. 4: A Gregorio X ad Martini V (Turin: Seb. Franco, 1859): Benedictus XII, Ordinationes et reformationes pro bono regimine monacorum Nigrorum ordinis S. Benedict, XXVI.

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listeners; no secular person is to be invited to eat there. However, let the abbots and other prelates of other places of the same order or religion beware, if they should summon secular persons to their tables, that on the occasion they may end up denigrating or besmirching such an order or religion. At first sight the bull appears to be a major concession, and this accusation was sometimes levied at Benedict, for instance in the Council of Basel in the fifteenth century, but Benedict was probably accepting a situation that had already arisen and attempting to prevent further excesses. His bull was successful in that it is still recognized as valid in the Catholic Church, but late medieval monasteries largely ignored those restrictions that did not suit their purposes.59 The Carthusian Order, founded by Bruno of Cologne in 1084, prohibited meat-eating for its members altogether. This standpoint was also adopted by the mendicant orders of the thirteenth century. Bonaventure defended the Franciscan position on abstinence as on other matters in his Apologia pauperum.60 However, the Carthusians especially were often criticized for an extreme interpretation of earlier Christian writings. A basis for the criticism could be found in Gratian’s Decretum, which recommended a moderate standpoint, allowing meat for the sick, and indeed, in 1206 Guiot de Provins wrote in a satire that even St Benedict had not intended to kill the sick.61 The first vigorous defence of their abstinence was made in the fourteenth century by Arnald of Villanova, from both a medical and a spiritual standpoint. Among other things he suggested that lack of judgement due to a blinding love of meat might be one motive for the criticism and that while meat would aid the sick, there were better alternatives (including eggs). Otherwise it seems that the richness or poverty of the diet in late medieval monastic institutions was dependent as much on their wealth as anything else. In many of them communal life broke down and their kitchens, food and mealtime practices came to resemble those of the secular upper class. Nevertheless, there were still individual monks and nuns even in the mainstream Orders who chose to be vegetarians, such as two sisters at God’s House Hospital of St Julian, Southampton – Elena, who “ate

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That is, the bull is still cited in the first of the General norms of the Constitutions of the Congregation. 60 Bonaventure, Apologia pauperum contra calumniatorem, 5; In English: Defence of the Mendicants, trans. Jose de Vinck (Franciscan Institute Publications, Saint Bonaventure University, 2010). 61 Les oeuvres de Guiot de Provins, 2, ed. John Orr (Manchester: Imprimerie de L’université, 1915): lines 1388–1401, p. 53.

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nothing that had suffered death” and Joan “who does not eat flesh throughout the year.”62 5

Meat for the Starving

In times when people were severely short of food desperation drove people to ignore religious sanctions and taboos about what should or should not be eaten. Throughout the period 400 to 1500 crop failures due to unfavourable weather were common. Domestic animals were killed or taken and crops and food stores were destroyed or consumed by armies (both enemy and ‘friendly’). Besieged town populations might starve, and so too might armies as their logistical arrangements were often rudimentary or broke down. When logistics failed and armies began to starve, even warhorses, the animals most valued by the elite of human society, might be eaten.63 In towns or fortresses that were besieged in war, if the besiegers were able to prevent supplies from getting in and were not forced to abandon the blockade, a shortage of food would inevitably occur; how quickly this occurred depended on the quantity of provisions stockpiled beforehand and the number of mouths to feed. Once inhabitants ran short of food any animals might be eaten. If chroniclers did show sympathy for suffering in beleaguered towns or cities, it was for the starving townsfolk who were forced to eat animals that were normally taboo as food, not for the animals. That these animals were consumed, especially rats, symbolized their desperation. During his invasion of France in the Hundred Years War, Henry V besieged Rouen for seven months. He had the town encircled by a ditch and palisade and numerous traps and pitfalls, so that no supplies could enter. John Page was with Henry’s army and wrote a verse description of the situation of the animals and people of Rouen in October 1418, the fourth month of siege: John Page, “The Siege of Rouen”64 By that time their victuals waxed quite scarce. Meat and drink and other victual In that city began to fail. Save clean water, in plenty too, And vinegar to put thereto, 62

Rotha Mary Clay, The Mediaeval Hospitals of England (London: Methuen, 1909), 168–69, quoting from the account rolls of the House. 63 See Chapter 12 on the eating of warhorses and the drinking of their blood. 64 “The Siege of Rouen,” in The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century, ed. James (London: The Camden Society 1876), 1–46.

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Their bread was very nearly gone, And flesh save horsemeat had they none. They ate up dogs, they ate up cats; They ate up mice, horses and rats. For a horse’s quarter, lean or fat, One hundred shillings it was at, A horse’s head for half a pound, A dog for the same money round. For 30 pennies went a rat For two nobles went a cat. For sixpence went a mouse They left but few in any house. … … Then to die they did begin All that rich city within. They died so fast on every day That men could not every one in the earth lay. trans. J. Gairdner

The poorest were driven from the city, but Henry refused to allow them to pass through his lines and many died of cold and starvation in the ditch. No relieving army came, and the city surrendered to him in January 1419. By that time, however accurate or inaccurate Page’s October prices for taboo meat were, the animal population of Rouen must have been considerably reduced alongside the human. Often it was not only the besieged who suffered in a siege, but the besiegers. The situation of the crusaders during their eight-month siege of Antioch in the First Crusade became desperate in the winter of 1097–98 as they were themselves almost cut off from aid by enemy forces in the vicinity that made foraging extremely difficult, and by that time they had lost most of their warhorses to attrition and Turkish arrows. Raymond of Aguilers, Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem (The History of the Franks who captured Jerusalem), Ch. 865 During this time food became so scarce that a tongueless head of a horse sold for two or three solidi, a goat’s intestines for five solidi, and a hen 65 “Raimundi De Aguilers, Canonici Podiensis, “Historia Francorum Qui Ceperunt Iherusalem,” in Recueil des historiens des croisades, Historiens Occidentaux vol. 3 (Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1866), 235–309: Cap VIII.

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for eight or nine solidi. What can I report on bread prices when hunger remained after eating five solidi’s worth? To those rich in gold, silver, and clothes it was neither unusual, nor burdensome to pay exorbitant costs. So prices were high because the sinful consciences of the knights lacked Christian courage. They gathered, cooked, and sold green figs, and also slowly boiled hides of cattle and horses as well as neglected edibles and sold them at such a high price that anyone could eat an amount costing two solidi. The majority of the knights, expecting God’s compassion, refused to slaughter their horses, but did sustain themselves with their blood. trans. John Hugh Hill and Laurita L. Hill

6

Human Meat, Animal Meat

If humans in medieval Europe were worried about eating nonhuman animals who had eaten other animals or carrion, they were especially disturbed if those animals were known or suspected to have eaten human flesh. The problem was again related to the degree to which flesh was believed to be transformed when eaten. If an animal ate part of a human and another human ate part of that animal, wasn’t the second human eating the first? When humans ate parts of nonhuman animals (which they did regularly) and when nonhuman animals ate human flesh (which they did rarely), much of the matter consumed was absorbed by the body and transformed into part of it, which had disturbing implications for many medieval Christian thinkers. As we have seen, contamination from eating animal meat also presented another problem. Since late antiquity it had been generally believed that the human soul lived after the death of the body but also that the body would be resurrected, whereas no part of the nonhuman animal would survive once its life on Earth was over. If the animal meat eaten by humans was transformed into human meat, was animal flesh being resurrected? If human meat was eaten by an animal and thereby became animal flesh, did part of the animal resurrect when the human came to be resurrected? Peter of Poitiers and Gilbert of Poitiers, both twelfth-century theologians, said that the answer would be yes, if it was truly the case that human flesh became animal flesh. One answer was therefore to argue that the eaten animal flesh did not really transform into human flesh at all, or if it does, it does not transform into what Peter Lombard (c.1096–1160) called the substantia (substance, essence) of the

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human.66 Peter’s Sentences was one of the most important and commented on theological works of the Middle Ages. In his Elucidarium, written in the form of questions from a student and answers from a magister and in a form understandable to literate laity, their contemporary Honorius Augustodunensis (c.1080–1154, author’s real name unknown) pondered the resurrection of a human who has been eaten by animals: Honorius Augustodunensis, Lucidarius (Elucidarium), Bk 3: Von der Auferstehung am jüngsten Tagt (Of the resurrection on the last day)67 Student. Sometimes a wolf devours a man and turns that man’s flesh into his own flesh: and the wolf is devoured by a bear and the bear by a lion: how will the man be raised from this? Master. What was the flesh of the man will rise again, whereas the beast flesh will remain. He knows how to separate these who knows how to make all things from nothing, So, even if someone is devoured limb from limb by wild beasts or by fish or devoured by birds, all of him will be resurrected and not even a single hair of his will perish. Six hundred years earlier, in his Homilies on the Book of Ezekiel Pope Gregory the Great (c.540–604) had made the same claim.68 Few pondered the human

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Peter Lombard, Sententiarum libri IV: Liber IV, “De Doctrina Signorum Distinctio”, 44.252 (44.2): 67 Lucidarius aus der Berliner Handschrift, ed. Felix Heidlauf (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1915): III. This version was in Middle High German. The various medieval versions of this work differ in the placing of some passages, and some include passages missing from others; the book/chapter numbers therefore vary. On the German reception, see Das “Elucidarium” des Honorius Augustodunensis, ed. Dagmar Gottschall (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1993), and on the French and Middle English manuscripts, Yves Lefèvre, L’Elucidarium et les Lucidaires. Contribution, par l’histoire d’un texte, à l’histoire des croyances religieuses en France au Moyen Âge (Paris: de Baccord, 1954); Valeri I.J. Flint, “The Original text of the Elucidarium of Honorius Augustodunensis from the Twelfth-Century English Manuscripts,” Scriptorium no. 18.1 (1964), 91–94, There were numerous medieval versions and in almost every vernacular language, as the work was very popular. For our purposes, even if a text quoted does not entirely accurately represent Honorius’ original words, if it is of proven medieval origin, it still serves as an example of medieval attitudes. 68 Sancti Gregorii Magni Romani Pontificis Homiliarum in Ezechielem Prophetam Libri Duo, PL, Vol. LXXVI, cols. 785A–1072 (1032). In English, Saint Gregory the Great, Homilies on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, trans. Theodosia Tomkinson, 2nd edn (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2008): Bk 2, Homily 8, pp. 395–414.

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eating of vegetables or fruits, their transformation into human flesh and whether plant matter would be resurrected. The combining of plant matter and human matter into one substance, it seems, was not a threat to the integrity of the human, as plants were so obviously dissimilar, but humans were animals and they had to be distinguished from nonhuman animals. The most obvious taboo, which all three religions of the book and early medieval pagan societies shared, was anthropophagy. The fear of eating human flesh lies behind rule 8 of the Paenitentiale Umbrense 26 (above), which prohibits the eating of the flesh of any animal that has eaten human flesh for a year afterwards: in other words, until the human flesh was believed to have been fully expelled from the animal. In medieval Christian Europe the accusation of anthropophagy was regularly levelled at Jews, but occasionally at Saracens and other ‘out-groups.’ After the discovery of the Americas, the native inhabitants were frequently cited as “cannibals”, a new word that entered the European languages having been adapted from a word of the Carib people of the Lesser Antilles.69 In all these groups the alleged anthropophagy was an aspect of their ‘beast-like’ nature. However, human eating of human flesh probably did occur occasionally among Christians when starvation threatened, just as it has in modern times. Ralph of Caen and Fulcher of Chartres, both participants in the First Crusade, claimed that starving crusaders ate the bodies of Moslems after capturing the town of Ma’arra in 1098, but even this has been disputed and no Moslem chronicler mentions it.70 Ralph of Caen, Gesta Tancredi in Expeditione Hierosolymitana (The Deeds of Tancred on the Expedition to Jerusalem) 97: Fames horribilis in castris fidelium (Horrible famine in the camp of the faithful)71 This excessive inundation engendered famine; when all the grain in the camp was rotting, victory was slow in coming and no more was brought from anywhere. The bread had gone, the famine grew stronger. I am embarrassed to report what I have heard and what I have learned from the very authors of modesty. For I have heard some who say that 69 ‘Cannibalism’ is now the term for the act of consuming another individual of the same species, whereas ‘anthropophagy’ refers specifically to human eating of humans. 70 Fulcheri Carnotensis, Historia Hierosolymitana, ed. Heinrich Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg: Carl Winters, 1913), I.25.2: https://archive.org/stream/historiahierosol00foucuoft#page /268/mode/2up. 71 “Gesta Tancredi in Expeditione Hierosolymitana, Auctore Radulfo Cadomensi Ejus Familiari.” In Recueil des historiens des croisades, Historiens Occidentaux vol. 3 (Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1866), 603–716: Cap. XCVII.

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compelled by want of food, they had turned to eating human flesh, had immersed in the pot grown heathen men, had stuck children on spits to be cooked, and had devoured them. This very fate they were threatening to their own people, when they were wanting for others, unless either the capture of the city, or the intervention of a fresh supply of grain should soothe the hunger. Reports of anthropophagy also circulated in many regions of Europe during the famine years of the early fourteenth century. In Scotland this was aggravated by English invasion, and according to a chronicle of the 1420s, a robber and cannibal had lived near Perth some 85 years earlier. While it is often difficult to assess the reliability of such reports, in the Middle Ages people obviously believed that anthropophagy occurred. Andrew of Wyntoun, Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland 72 Around Perth was the country So wasted that it was a wonder to see For within a widespread area There was neither house nor vegetable plot But there was then such profusion of deer That they would come close to the town There was such scarcity around that place That many had died of hunger They said there was a churl nearby Who would set traps frequently So as to slay children and women And country youths that he could subdue And all that he could get he ate He was called Chwsten Cleek by name That sorry life continued he, While the country was empty of all but folk The danger of anthropophagy was always present, it seems, because although the eating of human flesh was considered abhorrent, it was among the best of meats or even better than that of other animals. As a reason for not eating quadruped meat during Lent, Thomas Aquinas gives the similarity of their 72 Andrew of Wyntoun, The Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, Vol. 3, ed. David Laing (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1872), 262. The tale (of ‘Tristicloke’) appeared again in Holinshed’s Chronicle (1577) and was elaborated as it was repeated after this. It may have contributed to the later (dubious) legend of Sawny Bean and his family of cannibals.

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bodies to those of humans, which, he asserts, makes the consumption of the animal flesh more enjoyable and nourishing, providing a surplus of seminal matter in the human and thus encouraging lust. Human and nonhuman animal flesh have similar qualities and would be similarly tasty. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 2a, 2ae, q. 147, a. 873 As stated above (Article 6), fasting was instituted by the Church to restrain the concupiscences of the flesh, which concern pleasures of touch in connection with food and sex. For this reason the Church forbade those who fast to partake of those foods which both afford most pleasure to the palate and are a very great incentive to lust. Such are the flesh of animals that take their rest on the earth and of those that breathe the air, and their products, such as milk from those that walk on the earth, and eggs from birds. For, since such like animals are more like man in body, they afford greater pleasure as food and greater nourishment to the human body, so that from their consumption there results a greater surplus available for seminal matter, which when abundant becomes a great incentive to lust. Hence the Church has bidden those who fast to abstain especially from these foods. trans. FATHERS OF THE DOMINICAN PROVINCE

Many writers went further, asserting that human meat was tastier than any other animal meat. The origin of the belief that human flesh would be better food than other animal flesh is uncertain, but it may simply be that, created so that ‘man’ could make use of the reason possessed by no other animal, the flesh that comprised much of it must also be superior to that of other animals. Thus human superiority was asserted through human flesh in two ways: as food it was superior to that of other animals, yet the exalted status of the human meant that unlike the flesh of nonhuman animals, it’s flesh should not be eaten.74 To be food for humans was a sign of subservience; if human flesh were to be eaten, the human would be reduced to the status of these other animals. Yet time and again discussions that attempted to distinguish the human 73 Aquinas, Opera Omnia. Iussu Leonis XIII, Vol. 10: Secunda Secundae ST: Quaestio CXLVII, Articulus VIII. 74 Belief in the superiority of the human body was not confined to Christianity. It had been an aspect of earlier pagan philosophical schools such as Stoicism, and it is implied in both literary and non-literary societies in which nonhuman animals commonly substituted for humans as sacrifices to supernatural powers. The reasons for the killing of the Iron Age people who became ‘bog bodies’ (most probably some form of sacrifice) is uncertain and we have little knowledge of concepts of mind/soul and body or whether they were perceived as separate entities in prehistoric pagan societies.

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from other animals came back to the similarity between them, and it was difficult to evade the animal and edible nature of human flesh. There were many tales with variations on the theme of a man who eats human meat in place of nonhuman animal meat, either through error or trickery. Here Geoffrey of Monmouth relates how Brian feeds a slice of his own leg to his uncle King Cadwallo when he has failed to obtain deer meat in the hunt. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Rerum Britanniae (or De gestis Britonum, Eng. History of the Kings of Britain), Bk 1275 Whereupon Brian took his bow and quiver and travelled throughout the island, hoping that if he should come across any wild beast, he might take it as booty. And when he had walked over the whole island without finding that which he sought, he was extremely worried that he would not be able to satisfy his master’s desire, and afraid that his sickness would prove fatal if his longing were not satisfied. So he hit upon a new device and cut a piece of flesh from his own thigh, which he roasted on a spit and took to the king as venison. The king, thinking it to be genuine venison, began to consume it and was greatly refreshed, admiring its sweetness, which he thought exceeded any flesh he had ever tasted before. The Master of Game (written between 1406 and 1413), like some works before it, claims that once they have tasted man’s flesh wolves give up eating other animal meat. It is highly unlikely that Edward had tasted human meat, so perhaps we should take the wolf’s supposed preference for it as proof of its excellence, with the implication that the palate of wolves (and many other animals) enables them to recognize human flesh as superior, which humans assumed it to be. Through its (unacknowledged) similarity to them, the wolf serves to enable humans to sustain their belief in their own superiority. Edward of York, Master of Game, Ch. 7: Of the Wolf and of His Nature76 The other reason is that when they have been acharned (blooded) in a country of war, where there have been battles, they eat dead men. Or if men have been hanged or have been hanged so low that they may reach them, or when they fall from the gallows. And man’s flesh is so savoury and 75

Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britannie or Gesta Regum Britannie, ed. and trans. Neil Wright (Cambridge, D.S. Brewer, 1991): Liber XII. 76 Edward, Second Duke of York, The Master of Game: The Oldest English Book on Hunting, ed. William A. Baillie-Grohman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1904): Cap. VII.

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so pleasant that when they have taken to man’s flesh they will never eat the flesh of other beasts, though they should die of hunger. For many men have seen them leave the sheep they have taken and eat the shepherd. According to Aquinas, as one of his arguments that plants and animals will no longer exist once the universe is renewed, there would be no need in Paradise for animals; their purpose was to feed and serve humans in their physical form, and all human bodies that rise in the renewal will be spiritual. Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones Disputatae de Potentia Dei (Disputed Ques­ tions on the Power of God), Q.5, A.977 Again, animals and plants are ordained for man’s animal life: hence it is written: “Even as the green herbs have I delivered all things for your meat.”78 But man’s animal life will come to an end. Therefore animals and plants will also cease to exist. I answer that in that renewal of the world no mixed body will remain except the human body. In support of this view we shall proceed in the order prescribed by the Philosopher namely by considering first the final cause, then the material and formal principles and lastly the moving causes.79 The end of minerals, plants and animals is twofold. One is the completion of the universe, to which end all the parts of the universe are ordained: yet the aforesaid things are not ordained to this end as though by their very nature and essentially they were required for the universe’s perfection, since they contain nothing that is not to be found in the principal parts of the world (namely the heavenly bodies and the elements) as their active and material principles. Consequently the things in question are particular effects of those universal causes which are essential parts of the universe, so that they belong to the perfection of the universe only in the point of their production by their causes, and this is by movement. Hence they belong to the perfection of the universe not absolutely speaking but only as long as the latter is in motion. Wherefore as soon as movement in the universe ceases these things must cease to exist. – The other end is man, because as the Philosopher says things that are imperfect in nature are ordained to those that are perfect,80 as their end, 77 Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae De potentia, St. Isidore e-book library/forum, https://isi dore.co/aquinas/QDdePotentia.htm: Quaestio V, Articulus IX. 78 Genesis 9. 9.31. 79 Aristotle, Physics 2. 80 Aristotle, Politics, trans. C.D.C. Reeve (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2017): 1.5.

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with the result that as he says, since an animal’s life is imperfect as compared with a man’s which is perfect simply, and a plant’s life as compared with an animal’s: it follows that plants are for animals being prepared by nature to be the latter’s food; and animals are for man, to whom they are necessary as food and for other purposes. Now this necessity lasts as long as man’s animal life endures. But this life will cease in that final renewal of the universe, because the body will rise not natural but spiritual:81 hence animals and plants will also cease to exist then. trans. FATHERS OF THE DOMINICAN PROVINCE

The criticism levelled at the Carthusians was one aspect of a general disapproval of abstinence from meat-eating. Christians came to see their freedom from legalistic dietary rules as distinguishing them from Jews, who still considered the source and type of food and the method of animal slaughter important. As stated in the conciliar decree above, by the later Middle Ages the rules of the Old Testament, which had served their purpose in their day, were no longer considered relevant. Abstinence from meat also became associated with heretical movements. In Alan of Lille’s twelfth-century Treatise on the Catholic Faith against the Heretics, Waldenses, Jews and Pagans, refusal to eat meat appears alongside refusal to accept that Christ could appear in human form, refusal to accept assorted sacraments and denigration of the priesthood. In Book 1, chapter 75, having explained that Jesus ate the paschal lamb, Alan ends by declaring that “… the saints abstained from meats, not because it was wrong to eat them, but so that they should not provide them with fuel for concupiscence.”82 In the eleventh century Anselm of Liege had received a letter informing him that a band of heretics near Châlons had an erroneous understanding of the sixth commandment as referring to animals – that is, as “Thou shalt not kill (any animal)” rather than “Thou shalt not murder (humans)” – which had caused them to reject meat as food. His response equates animals with edible plant material as destined for the use of humans:

81 1 Corinthians 15.44. 82 Alan de Lille, Contra Haereticos, Valdenses, Iudaeos et Paganos. In the PL (Patrologiae Cursus Completus) edition of 1833: Alani de Insulis, De Fide Catholica Contra Haereticos sui Temporis, Praesertim Albigenses Liber Quator, ed. by J.-L. Migne: PL 210, 306–430: Liber Primus, cap. LXXV, cols. 376–77. The texts of many manuscripts still require editing; see Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny, Alain de Lille: Textes inédits, avec une introduction sur sa vie et ses œuvres (Paris: J. Vrin, 1965), 156–162.

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Anselm of Liège, Gesta episcoporum Leodiensium (Deeds of the Bishops of Liège). Bk 2, 63. Responsio eius quae sibi super hoc sedeat sententia83 In these writings there is indeed a manifest error, [the question] having been aired by the holy fathers in antiquity and refuted by their most brilliant opinions. As for the most insane blasphemies which falsely speak against the Holy Spirit, let your love take care of itself, however many unseemly circumstances they may endeavour to entangle themselves in, misinterpreting the precept of the Lord, which says in the Old Law: “You shall not kill.”84 In which, if they do not perceive that the killing of a man alone was prohibited, in a similar manner let them consider the use to themselves of those things they regard as lawful to eat, such as corn, vegetables, and wine, let them see that they are forbidden: as they were, we suppose, from the seeds of the earth, they have begun to take life by their appearance, and unless the life of their greenness should be taken, they could not serve human purposes. Aside from the secular writings, the psalmist is witness to this, saying: “He destroyed their vines with hail.”85 Likewise the Apostle says: “You foolish man, what you sow does not come to life unless it dies.”86 The Truth itself also says: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone.”87 Augustine had characterized the rules of the Manichaeans of late Antiquity, who regarded plants as containing entrapped light that could be eaten and released in the breath of the Elect, whereas animals merely consumed and trapped light, as signalling the falseness of their doctrines. The ‘rules’ of the heretical movements of the High Middle Ages are almost entirely known to us through the writings of representatives of the Roman Church. Anselm and his correspondent refer to the heretics as followers of Mani. The Cathars of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries were often called “Manichaeans”, although any link between the two movements was tenuous, but besides their dualism they had in common that both benefitted animals, albeit not because of any 83

84 85 86 87

Anselm of Liège, “Gesta episcoporum Leodiensium,” ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, in MGH SS 7 (Hanover: Hahn, 1866), 161–234: Liber secundus gestorum pontif Tungrensis, Traiectensisi sive Leodicensis Aecclesiae, 63. The “Responsio eius …” sentence is meaningless without its context, but its meaning become clear in the following passage, “this sentence”, that is, “You shall not kill,” having (according to Anselm) been misinterpreted by certain people. The first book of the Gesta was written by Heriger. Exodus 20:13, Deuteronomy 5:17. Psalm 78.47. 1 Corinthians 15.36. John 12.24.

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value ascribed to them or concern about suffering caused to them. Eckbert of Schönau preached thirteen sermons against the Cathars in the 1160s. In his first sermon he cited ten heresies, among them two concerning meat: Eckbert of Schönau, Sermones contra catharos (Sermons against the cathars), Sermon 1: De heresibus adversus quas disceptatio assumitur (Against what heresies the discourse is directed)88 The second heresy: avoiding meat: Those who have become full members of their sect avoid all meat. This is not for the same reason as monks and other followers of the spiritual life abstain from it: they say that meat must be avoided because all flesh is born of coition, and therefore they think it unclean. The third heresy: the creation of flesh. That is the reason they give in public. Privately they have an even worse one, that all flesh is made by the devil, and must not therefore be eaten even in the direct necessity. trans. R.I. Moore

They refused to eat meat or animal products because they are the products of sexual intercourse and flesh is part of the evil material world that was considered the creation of an evil god, while the spiritual world, that of the New Testament, was the realm of the good God. However, fish could be eaten because they were believed to be generated spontaneously. In addition, animals were thought to be carriers of reincarnated souls, even of angels that re-emerged as Cathar perfects (‘priests’). The other widespread movement condemned as a heresy in the early thirteenth century, the Waldensians, was less favourable to animals, if equally objectionable to the Roman Church. Others were accused of unrestrained meat-eating; Peter the Venerable even claimed that Peter of Bruys, leader of a short-lived early twelfth-century heretical movement, roasted meat over burning broken-up crucifixes on Good Friday. The thirteenth-century Dominican inquisitor Moneta of Cremona (Summa adversus Catharos et Valdenses) made an explicit comparison between Jews and Cathars on the basis of their dietary rules. The Cathars, he says, cited Peter’s hesitation to eat the animals offered to him in his vision in Acts 10, and he accuses them of judaizing.89 He understands Paul as accusing Peter of the same in his epistle to the Galatians.90 In the following century another 88 Eckbertus Schonaugiensis, Sermones contra Catharos, ed. J.-P. Migne: PL 195, 12–102: Sermo Primus, 13–16. 89 Moneta of Cremona, De fide catholica contra haereticos sui temporis 1.74–76 (PL 210: 305–430). 90 Galatians 2:11–14.

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Dominican inquisitor, Bernard Gui, made abstinence from meat, cheese or eggs a valid criterion for identification of “Manichees.” He continues: Bernard Gui, Practica inquisitionis heretice pravitatis (The Practice of the Inquisition of Heretical Depravity), Part 5, 1: De Manicheis moderni temporis (On the Manichaeans of modern times), 1.2: De modo et ritu vivendi ipsorum Manicheorum (On the manner and way of life of the Manichaeans)91 Likewise, they never eat the flesh, nor even touch it, nor the cheese, nor the eggs, nor anything that comes from the flesh by way of generation or coitus. In no circumstances will they kill any animal or winged creature, for they say and believe that in brute animals and even in birds there are spirits that depart from the bodies of men, when they have not been received into the sect and order by the laying on of hands according to their rite, and that these spirits transfer from one body to another. Testing for Catharism in Provence by telling people to kill animals or persistence of Jewish habits amongst Jews who had professed to convert by telling them to eat pork was mentioned by several authors, a practice that echoes those employed to test Jews by the Visigothic kings of Spain. 7

Animals in the Human Diet

Much of our evidence for how animals were used as food in the early Middle Ages is archaeological, coming from food preparation waste and faecal remains, or pictorial. Manuscripts of the earliest known medieval guide to cooking, De Re Coquinaria (On the Subject of Cooking), attributed to the first century Apicius but probably written in the fourth or fifth century, were copied in the Carolingian era at Fulda Monastery and again in the twelfth century. Its principals and methods are echoed and expanded upon in later recipe collections. One of the earliest of these was the Italian Liber de Coquina of c.1300 (in Latin), which includes over 250 recipes, but from shortly before there is also a much shorter Libellus de arte coquinaria from Denmark, which shows that this cooking culture had penetrated Scandinavia by 1300.92 Most culinary literature 91 Practica inquisitionis heretice pravitatis, Auctore Bernardo Guidonis Ordinis Fratrum Predicatorum, ed. Célestin Douais (Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1886): Quinta pars, 1.2. 92 The Liber de Coquina has no actual title, and all mss consist of two separate recipe collections clearly by different authors. The shorter first one is headed “Tractatus” and is by a someone familiar with French tradition, the second, now known by the main title, by

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belongs to the later Middle Ages, especially the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which means there is an inevitable bias to that period here.93 Cleanliness of food may not have been up to our modern standards, nor was modern hygiene possible in the Middle Ages, but medieval people, or at least the aristocracy whose diets are better known to us, were concerned that what they ate was clean animally as well as spiritually, presumably not only because they did not want to become ill but because contaminated or dirty food might taste unpleasant. The concern, which was probably typical of aristocratic households throughout the Middle Ages, is expressed in the Carolingian Capitulare de Villis: Capitulare de villis, 3494 They (stewards and their servants) are to take particular care that anything which they do or make with their hands  – that is, lard, smoked meat, sausage, newly-salted meat, wine, vinegar, mulberry wine, boiled wine, garum, mustard, cheese, butter, malt, beer, mead, honey, wax and flour – that all these are made or prepared with the utmost attention to cleanliness. In a negative way, this concern is also expressed in the Canterbury Tales host’s comments about Hogge of Ware’s ‘fast food’ (below). In the late medieval culinary works European Christians gave much consideration to physical health in their food preparation and dietary advice, usually founded on the contemporary (pseudo-)scientific understanding of how foods affected health. The most important late medieval work indicating that medical and culinary practice were intertwined is from the early fourteenth century, the Regimen Sanitatis of Maino De Maineri (Magninus Mediolanensis), which lists the health-affecting qualities of foodstuffs. It was certainly not as popular as the much shorter and more easily read poetic work, the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum, but is more likely to have been consulted by the head cooks and physicians of the wealthy.

someone with more Italian connections. See Liber de Coquina: The Book of Good Cooking, ed. and trans. Robert Maier (Self-published, 2023). For the Danish collection, see Libellus de Arte Coquinaria: An Early Northern Cookery Book, ed. Rudolph Grewe and Constance B. Hieatt (Phoenix: Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies, 2001). 93 For the food of the early Middle Ages and the meals people probably ate, see, for instance, Ann Hagen, Anglo-Saxon Food and Drink (Anglo-Saxon Books); Daniel Serra and Hanna Tunberg, An Early Meal: A Viking Age Cookbook and Culinary Odyssey (Furulund: ChronoCopia AB, 2013). 94 Die Landgüterordnung Kaiser Karls des Grossen, ed. Gareis: 34.

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Which food was appropriate for whom, in which circumstances and how foods should be combined for healthiness was determined largely according to humoural theory. Humans were generally regarded as microcosms of the cosmos and variable in their makeup, whereas other animal species were more consistent in character. In classical thought, especially the work of the Greek physician Galen, all things were composed of a combination of two pairs of elements, warm and cold, dry and moist. The four in combination determined the temperament (character) of each living species. The temperament of an animal species was determined largely by its environment: each humour was associated with one of the four seasons, and each was considered to have characteristic qualities of hotness, coldness, dryness, and wetness. Their nature as live beasts determined their nature as food after death. However, the primary concern of humoural theory was the wellbeing of humans. Each human individual’s humoural balance was holistically connected with phenomena such as climate, geographic location, planetary alignment, sex, age, social class, occupation, and diet. In a human, blood, choler, phlegm and melancholy were the temperamental (humoural) agents, each of which combined two of the above elements as the essence of one of the four elements of air, earth, fire and water. Regimens, that is, humoural treatments, were designed to maintain or restore the proper humoural balance and included diet and lifestyle adjustments appropriate for the person’s humoural disposition and his or her environment. To identify and treat disease medieval physicians used the principle of humours and tried to modify temperaments so that they remained stable: imbalance produced ill-health. In the Middle Ages there was a close relationship between food and medicine, often reflected in the appearance of recipes and medical treatises in the same manuscript. Medieval physicians or culinary experts (often the same person) expanded on classical humoural theory to produce regimens for health. Animals and their parts, like other foodstuffs, if ingested would increase the proportion of whatever their temperament was in the eater. The Secretum Secretorum (Secret of Secrets) was a translation of an Arabic work that purported to be advice given by Aristotle to Alexander the Great, which appears to have been accepted as such by most medieval Europeans. In Arabic the Book of the Secret of Secrets was a subtitle, the main title being The Book of the Science of Governance, on the Good Ordering of Statecraft. This work was attributed to a ninth-century Arabic scholar and translator, but in its various subsequent forms it also included material from elsewhere and became transformed from a mirror of princes to an encyclopaedia of science (or pseudo-science) and a regimen, which among other things provided medical ‘lifestyle’ advice. It was partially translated from Arabic into Latin in the early twelfth century and completely in about 1230, subsequently being commented on by several philosophers and widely disseminated in vernacular

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languages. There are about 500 extant manuscripts dating from the twelfth century onwards. The excerpt below is from a mid-fifteenth-century English manuscript, the ‘Ashmole’ version. The Secrete of Secretes. Of knowing of meats95 Of meats some are subtle, some gross [of thick humour], and some mean [in a middle state]. Subtle meats engender clear and good blood, and they are white, chickens and eggs of well-nourished and fat hens. Indeed, gross meats are good for hot men and labourers, and for those diners that sleep after noon. Mean meats such as lamb, kid, castrated wethers and all flesh that is hot and moist engender no inflammation nor superfluity. Nonetheless it seems that moisture is lost from their flesh when they have been roasted and turn hard, and thus hot and dry. Therefore, if such flesh is roasted, eat it hot and soon, and especially when some spices are roasted with it, for then it is best. Meats that create melancholy are bugles [ox or buffalo], beef, kyne [cattle] and other such gross flesh. Nevertheless beasts of that nature, well fed and young, brought up in watery and moist shadowed pasture, are best, sweetest and most wholesome. The same may we say of fishes. And understand well that fishes of small substance and tender skin and easily chewed, which have been brought up in running salt water, are lightest and best. However, the fishes that are engendered in the sea and brought out of it are most wholesome. We must beware of those fishes that are of great size and have hard skin, for such fishes are commonly venomous. And at this time this is sufficient about fishes, for in the book that Y made of potages and medicines, you shall find this matter sufficiently determined. Still more popular than the Secretum Secretorum was the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum, a poetic guide to food and health that appeared in the twelfth or possibly thirteenth century. Whether, as claimed, it actually originated from Salerno, the leading medical school of the era, or was written for an unnamed English king, is uncertain. Various versions of the Regimen circulated throughout Europe and it was translated into several languages during the centuries after it first appeared; long after the Middle Ages it was treated, even by many physicians, as a scholarly medical work. The excerpts concerning animal products appear below. 95 Secretum secretorum: Nine English versions, ed. Mahmoud Manzalaoui (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). The text of this version is based on Bodleian Library ms Ashmole 396 with amendments and additions from ms Lyell 36 (62–63).

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Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum96 Peaches, apples, pears, milk, cheese, salted meats, deermeat, rabbit, goat, and beef are melancholic and harmful to the sick … Wheat, milk, and fresh cheese are nourishing and fattening, as are testicles, pork meat, ebrain, marrow, sweet wines, good tasting foods, raw Eggs, ripe figs, and fresh grapes … If you eat pork without wine, it is worse than mutton. If you add wine to pork, then it is food and medicine … The intestines of pigs are good; those of other animals are bad … If fish are soft, they should be eaten when they are large in size; if fish are hard, they are more nutritive when small in size … Pike, perch, sole, whiting, tench, shrimp, plaice, carp, gurnard, and trout are all edible fish. Eating eels is bad for the voice as those who know anything about medicine will attest, and cheese and eel are harmful when eaten together in great quantity, unless you drink wine often … During the meal take small drinks often. If you eat an egg, make it soft and fresh … Goat’s milk is healthy for consumptives, and next after that camel’s milk, but most nutritious of all is ass’s milk; cow’s milk is also nutritious and likewise sheep’s milk. If your head is feverish or aches, milk is not very healthy … Butter softens, is moist and acts as a laxative when there is no fever … Cheese, is cold, constipating, crude, and hard, cheese and bread are good food for a man who is healthy; if a man is not healthy, then cheese without bread is good … “Ignorant doctors say that I (cheese) am harmful, nevertheless they do not know why I should do harm.” Cheese brings help to a weak stomach. Taken after your other food, it properly ends the meal. Those who are not ignorant of medicine will attest to these things. The heart of all animals is slow to digest and hard to excrete. Similarly, the stomach is harder to digest and egest than its extremities (organs on either end of the stomach). Tongue gives good medicinal nourishment. The lung is easily digested and is quickly expelled. The brain of chickens is better than any other animal’s.

96 Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum: a Poem on the Preservation of Health in Rhyming Latin Verse. Addressed by the School of Salerno to Robert of Normandy, Son of William the Conqueror, with an Ancient Translation, ed. Alexander Croke (Oxford: D.A. Talboys, 1830).

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The influence of humoural theory is apparent in a twelfth-century work in which the abbess and visionary Hildegard of Bingen explained the properties and uses of animals and plants for treating sickness. Though the theory was expanded and elaborated throughout the Middle Ages, many of the basic beliefs about animal species as food were constant, in this case the preference for wild animals over domestic animals.97 Hildegard of Bingen, Physica: Bk 7, Ch. 17: De porco (Of the pig)98 The pig (porcus) is hot and has an ardent nature. It is full of mucus, since no coldness purges it. It is also a bit pussy. The pig is always an avid eater, not caring what it eats, so sometimes it eats unclean things. In its avidity it has wolflike habits, since it tears other animals apart: it also has canine habits, since it willingly lives with humans, just as a dog does. But it is an unclean animal. so its flesh is neither healthy nor good for either a healthy or a sick person to eat. It does not diminish phlegm or other infirmities in a person, but augments them. Its heat joins with a person’s heat, and stirs up in him tempests which are bad in their ways and workings. But, a person who is very sick, so that he is failing and dry in his entire body, should eat young piglets in moderation while he is sick. He will receive heat from them. After he has gotten better, he should not eat them anymore, for to do so would bring back his illness. A person whose body is nearly failing should often eat the cooked liver of a pig. It will nourish and strengthen him. Wild pig has the same nature, except it is cleaner than the domestic pig. Other parts of the pig do not have much use as medicine. trans. Priscilla Throop

High status, high price and availability of animal flesh as food limited its consumption by some sectors of human society and increased it with others. The household regulations for two of the English earl of Northumberland’s castles, although from the end of our period, give a good idea of the diversity of animals, especially birds, that the medieval nobility and their most important officers consumed. Restriction of a high proportion to them to the lord’s table meant that eating habits distinguished the nobility from other folk, just as did attempted restriction of hunting of certain animals to them. As the earl’s descendant and editor of the work notes, “In the list of birds here served up 97 Many of the supposed wild animals were in fact semi-domesticated in parks or forests: see Chapter 4. 98 S. Hildegardis Abbatissae Physica: Liber Subtilitatum Diversarum Naturarum Creaturarum, ed. J.-P. Migne, PL 197 (Paris: excudebat Migne, 1855): Liber VII, Cap. XVII.

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to table are many fowls, which are now discarded as little better than rank carrion,” a comment that applies as much nowadays as it did in the eighteenth century. The suspicion arises that many were eaten as much because of their limited availability, and hence inaccessibility to most people, as taste. This booke of all Manner of Direccyones and Orders for Keapinge of my Lordes Hous As the Names of the said Orders And what Ordurs they be Ande in what place And where ye shall fynde every of the said Orders one after an outher (The regulations and establishment of the household of Henry Algernon Percy, the fifth Earl of Northumberland, at his castles of Wresill and Leconfield in Yorkshire99) 19100 These are the directions taken by my Lord and his council at Wrefill on Sunday the 28th day of September, which was Michaelmas Day in the 3rd year of the reign of our sovereign lord King Henry VIII concerning the provision of the cator parcels as well as of flesh and fish which shall be provided for throughout the year and at what times of the year and what cator parcels shall be provided and ordained to be served in my said lord’s house at the meals for the clerks of the kitchen to be executed hereafter follows in this book.101 Weekly – First it is devised that from henceforth no capons are to be bought except for my lord’s own mess and that the said capons shall be bought for 2d a piece lean and fed in the pultry and that master chamberlain and the stewards be served with capons if there are strangers sitting with them;102 that chickens be bought for my lord’s mess only and master chamberlain and the stewards’ mess so that they are at one ob. a piece; that hens be bought from Christmas to Shrovetide at 2d. a piece, and my lord master chamberlain and the stewards’ mess to be served with them and no other; to buy pigeons for my lord’s own mess [and] master chamberlain and the steward’s mess if they are bought after 3 for 1d.; that conies be bought for my lord and master chamberlain and the stewards’

99

Here the ‘translation’ is given as the title chosen for the edition of 1770, edited by the earl’s descendant Thomas Percy. The 1905 edition was named Northumberland Household Book. 100 The Earl of Northumberland’s Household Book: The Regulations and Establishment of the Household of Henry Algernon Percy, the Fifth Earl of Northumberland, at his castles of Wresill and Lekinfield in Yorkshire, begun Anno Domini M. D. XII, ed. Thomas Percy (London: William Pickering, 1827): XIX. 101 These lists have been shortened by removing “Item” before each, the phrase “It is thought good that …” before the animal, and repeated phrases such as “if they be good.” 102 The “pultry” was a part of a noble estate dedicated to managing poultry.

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mess if there are strangers sitting with them if they are bought after 2d. a piece.103 Monthly – That pigs be bought and at 3d or 4d a piece, for a pig may be made to serve 4 meals; to buy geese and for 3d or 4d at the most, seeing that 3 or 4 meals may be served thereof; that no plovers be bought at any season except Christmas and principal feasts and my lord to be served therewith and at his boordend and no other, and to be bought for 1d. a piece or 1d. ob. at most;104 that no teals be bought unless other wildfowl cannot be gotten and to be at 1d. a piece; [the following specified as “for my lord’s own mess” only] that mallards be bought for 2d. a piece; woodcocks at 1d. a piece or 1d. ob. at the most; wypes [lapwings] at 1d. a piece; seagulls if in season and at 1d. a piece or 1d ob. at the most; stints [little stints] if they are after 6 a 1d.; quails likewise at principal feasts and at 2d. a piece at most; snipes at principal feasts and after 3 a j d.; partridges at 2d. a piece; that all manner of wildfowl be bought at the first hand where they be gotten and a cator to be appointed for the same, for it is thought that the pulters of Hemmingburgh and Cliff have great advantage of my lord yearly from selling of conies and wildfowl; great birds after 4 a j d. to serve for my lord’s mess and master chamberlain and the stewards’ mess; small birds after 12 at 1d.; larks after 12 for 2d.; bacon slices for my lord’s own mess, master chamberlain and the stewards’ mess between Candlemass and Shrovetide, otherwise none unless my lord’s commandment is to the contrary. Quarterly  – That a direction be taken with my lord’s tenants of Hergham that they shall serve my lord’s house throughout the year with all manner of freshwater fish. Yearly  – That my lord’s swans are taken and fed to serve my lord’s house and to be paid for as they may be bought in the country seeing that my lord has swans anew of his own; that a direction be taken at Leconfield with the cator of the See what he shall have for every seam of fish throughout the year to serve my lord’s house; that there be a count made with the cator for eggs and milk for the whole year if it can be determined what [it costs] for a gallon of milk and how many eggs for 1d.; that from henceforth that there be no herbs bought seeing that the cooks may have herbs anew in my lord’s gardens; a warrant to be sewed out yearly at 103 d., denarius, is a penny; ob. or obol. means obolus, a halfpenny; qu. or quad. is quadrans, denoting a farthing. 104 The “lord’s boordend” was the upper end of the first table in the Great Hall, where the lord and his principal guests sat to eat. Household officers and lesser guests sat at long tables below.

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Michaelmas for 20 swans for the expenses of my lord’s house as to say, for Christmas Day 5 – Saint Stephen’s Day 2 – Saint John’s Day 2 – Childermas Day (28 Dec) 2 – Saint Thomas Day 2 – New Year’s Day 3 – and for the 12th Day of Christmas 4 swans. At principal feasts [all specified as “for my lord’s own mess”] – cranes if they be bought at 16d. a piece; likewise that heron sews be bought if they be at 12d. a piece; redshanks to be bought after 1d. ob. the piece; bitterns to be at 12d. a piece; pheasants to be at 12d. a piece; reys [ruffs] at 2d. a piece; sholardes [shovelers] to be at 6d. a piece; curlews to be at 12d. a piece; peacocks at 12d. a piece and no peahens to be bought; dotterels to be bought for my lord when they are in season and to be at 1d. a piece; At principal feasts and no other time – see-pyes [oystercatchers] for my lord; widgeons for my lord and at 1d. ob. the piece unless my lord’s commandment is otherwise; knots for my lord and at 1d. a piece unless my lord’s commandment is otherwise; bustards for my lord’s own mess unless my lord’s commandment be otherwise; terns for my lord’s mess only after 4d. unless my lord’s commandment be otherwise. The use of spices and variety of courses necessarily differentiated elite and peasant food in the Middle Ages, but there was a growing ‘intermediate class’, especially in the towns, and there was even a trend for imitating peasant food among the nobility in the later Middle Ages. Lower class food was more heavily based on grains and especially bread was a staple. The diet of the poor woman at the centre of Chaucer’s Nun Priest’s Tale, is probably representative of many peasant diets, even though the tale is satirical and there is a suggestion that her diet may be healthier than richer ones.105 Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: The Nonne Preestes Tale of the Cok and Hen, Chauntecleer and Pertelote106 A poor widow, somewhat bent with age, Was once dwelling in a small cottage, Beside a grove, standing in a dale, … This widow, of whom I tell you my tale, Since that day that she was last a wife, In patience led a wholly simple life, For her property and her rent were small, By such husbandry as God sent to her, 105 The tale is loosely based on one of the Reynard the Fox tales. 106 Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Canterbury Tales, ed. F.N. Robinson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957).

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She kept herself, and so her two daughters, Three large sows had she, and no more, Three cows and also a sheep called Malle. Very sooty was her bower, and so her hall In which she ate full many a meagre meal, Of spicy sauce she never had much need, No dainty morsel passed down her throat, Her fare was according to her wealth No excess eating ever made her sick, Observing proper diet was all her physic, And exercise, and heart’s sufficiency, The gout never prevented her from dancing No excess drinking harmed her head No wine drank she, neither white nor red, Her table was served most with white and black Milk and brown bread, of which she had no lack A side of bacon, and sometimes an egg or two. For she was as it were a kind of poultry-maid. The poem Piers Ploughman, a mixture of social satire and theological allegory which tells of the narrator’s (dreamer’s) quest for a true Christian life, gives another example of English peasant food, this time mentioning more vegetables. William Langland, Piers Plowman (B version), Passus 6, lines 282–293107 “I have no money,” said Piers “pullets for to buy, neither geese nor pigs, only two fresh cheeses, a few curds and cream and an oaten cake, and two loaves of beans and bran baked for my infants. And further I say, by my soul, I have no salt bacon, nor big eggs, by Christ, egg and bacon for to make. But I have parsley and leeks and many cabbages, and also a cow and a calf and a cart-mare to draw to field my dung the while the drought lasts. And on this fare I must sustain myself till Lammas time when I hope to harvest in my barn and then I can have the kind of meal I like”

107 William Langland, Piers Plowman: A Parallel-Text Edition of the A, B, C, and Z Versions, ed. A.V.C. Schmidt (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 2011): Passus VI.

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Price and status both played a part in increasing meat consumption during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as the fall in population due to the ravages of the Black Death raised the wages of those who remained, and they, especially the rising merchant class, sought to emulate the habits of the aristocracy. On a much greater scale, the same phenomenon of increasing meat consumption occurred as wealth increased generally in the twentieth century. In the Middle Ages the Church demanded of all people that flesh and some other products of quadrupeds be avoided for much of the year, but this merely transferred consumption from the products of these animals to those of others. Cooks for the wealthy showed great ingenuity in inventing replacement recipes and even making them look or taste similar. For quadruped meat the flesh of other animals substituted, especially fish but also birds. Medieval taste in food and eating habits seem in some ways familiar to us and in others strange. As we saw above, alongside religion, an important factor determining diet in the Middle Ages, at least for those who could afford to select what they ate, was the achievement of a balanced diet as defined according to the medical knowledge of the day. For instance, a food substance that was cold and dry ought to be balanced in the same dish, or at least the same meal course, by one that was warm and moist, to avoid imbalance in the bodies of those eating the food. Fire was the main determining factor that might modify the temperament of foodstuffs. The use of different methods of cooking such as boiling or roasting was also determined by which was appropriate for the meat or vegetable in question. Sauces and spices, regarded almost as medicines, were used to balance the supposed effects of the main ingredients of a recipe: for instance, must and verjuice (both varieties of grape juice) had different properties, the former being warm and moist in the second degree and the latter cold in the third degree and dry in the second. Special care had to be taken with certain animal foods such as eels, considered dangerously moist. In his Registrum Coquine, the fifteenth-century German cleric Johannes Bockenheim, who became Pope Martin V’s cook, suggested different social classes, professions, nationalities, and in one case a gender (women), for whom each recipe was particularly suitable. Although the suggestions for groups of consumers cannot be taken entirely seriously, some of them have a basis in dietary recommendations related to humoural complexion as affected by geographical or social environment, or occupation.108 It is difficult to assess how much indication the recipes said to be good for peasants give of what they actually ate, but the recipes for richer folk are often more complex and include certain meats not included in recipes for poorer, such as capons and pheasants. 108 For example, some of the named ‘nationalities,’ such as Marcomanni, were derived from ancient sources.

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As in other medieval cookbooks, and commonly nowadays, animal flesh, that is meat, or fish on fast days, was clearly the most significant of ingredients in Bockenheim’s cookbook. Johannes Bockenheim, Registrum Coquine: 26. Pork torta for the Noble Alemanni (“Ad faciendam tortam pro nobilibuis”)109 To make a torta for the nobles. Pound cooked pork with a knife, adding fresh cheese, ginger cloves, saffron and other spices. Pound all the ingredients well. Then take raisins quite dry and place them in the pan well-greased with lard to prevent them from burning. Arrange the mixture in sheets of pasta. On top, add whole almonds or pine nuts. Once it is cooked, place upon gold and silver [leaves], arranged well. It will be good for the Alemanni. Often foods, including meats, were sieved, strained, pulverised in a mortar or grated, so they could easily be mixed. This method of preparing food did not so much influence the quantity of animal products eaten as the way in which it was prepared for eating, but it did contribute to the prevalence of certain mixing ingredients, such as egg yolks and whites. Cookery Book II Harleian ms. 4016: Tartus of fflesh (sic.)110 Take fresh pork, cut it up small, grind it in a mortar, and take it up into a pot; and take yolks and white of eggs, strain them through a strainer, and mix in the pork with them; then take pine nuts (? pynys), currants, and fry them in fresh grease, and add powder of pepper, gingers, cinnamon, sugar, saffron and salt, and do it in a container, and set prunes and cut dates at the top of the container, and grate raisins and small birds and or as an alternative hard yolks of eggs, and if you take birds, fry them a little in fresh grease, and if you put them into the container, then cover it with a glaze made from yolks of eggs and with saffron and let it bake until it is ready, then serve. trans. Thomas Austin

The “grease” referred to above was animal fat rendered into oil or grease, usually pork fat. It was a staple of medieval cooking that involved frying, alongside 109 Johannes Bockenheim, Registrum Coquine, ed. and trans. Marco Gavio de Rubeis (I Doni Delle Muse, 2021), 26. 110 “Cookery Book II. Harleian Ms. 4016, ab. 1450 AD,” in Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books: Harleian Ms. 279 (Ab. 1430), & Harl. Ms. 4016 (Ab. 1450), with extracts from Ashmole Ms. 1439, Laud Ms. 553, & Douce Ms. 55, ed. Thomas Austin (London: Early English Texts Society, 1888), 67–107: pp. 74–75, headed “Custards and Meat Tarts.”

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butter, though vegetable oils were used as well, especially in southern Europe. Like the fat, little from the animals consumed went to waste: there is some evidence of a preference for the tender meat of young animals over the meat of older, but not to the near-exclusion of the latter as has happened in recent times, and offal or giblets were consumed. Fishbones and even crustacean shells might be ground into food mixtures along with the rest of the animals. We might find in recipes whole heads of animals or their muzzles, brains, tongue, gizzard, sweetbreads, lungs, stomach, liver, kidneys, bladder, testicles, intestines, marrow, udder, tails and feet.111 Das Buoch von guoter Spize (The Book of Good Food): Ein Kluge Spise (An Excellent Dish)112 Take brains and flour and apples and eggs and mix that together with spices and put it on a spit and grill it evenly and serve it. This is called Grilled Brains (Hirne Gebraten). You can do the same with lung, which you boil first. Der ain rech hawp machen will (If you want to prepare roe’s head) Singe it first and (boil it) until the meat comes off so that you can cut it and remove the bones. Chop the meat and the skin finely, and prepare it with eggs, herbs and wine. Then take the four bones and fill the top two with the brain, and chop the brain with hard grains, grapes and herbs to taste. And make four good egg-crêpes for the four bones, make a good stuffing of meat, and put it on the crêpes. Wrap the crêpes around the bones so that the bones are stuffed with the hash. Then it is ready. trans. Melitta Weiss Adamson

Perhaps the first thing that strikes a modern observer is the variety of animal species often eaten in one meal, often in one dish. Some animal meats were more valued and less easily obtainable than others. It was not possible to hinder peasants from catching and eating sparrows or other small animals if they wanted to, and in certain areas some seabirds such as puffins were presumably 111 This shift in taste is one that has occurred relatively recently in the West and more in some regions than others: even forty years ago tripe, faggots and pigs’ heads were common in English butcher shop windows, but already largely as food for poorer folk: increased affluence has led to a dramatic decline in their popularity among all people bar a few gastronomes who wish to show that offal can be tasty. However, for many the change in diet is more apparent than real: although many animal parts are not popular when seen to be offal, they are still eaten in a disguised form in sausages, burgers and many processed foods. 112 Melitta Weiss Adamson, “Medieval Germany,” in Regional Cuisines of the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays, ed. Melitta Weiss Adamson (New York: Routledge, 2002), 177.

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caught and eaten by coastal communities just as they were in more recent times. Neither species is eaten by humans nowadays. As can be seen in the specimen menus below, numerous animal species were eaten in the Middle Ages that would rarely, if ever, appear on the menu nowadays; most modern European people eat far fewer species but those they do eat are consumed in vast numbers, while the more unusual animal meats usually make only an occasional appearance in expensive restaurants and as gimmicks. The first menu is for a day on which meat and dairy products were allowable, the second is a fish menu that could be eaten on non-meat days. In the medieval meals of most countries a whole course of several dishes was brought to the table at once, but in some countries such as Germany, each course comprised one dish. In the later Middle Ages there was entertainment between courses; called sotelties (“subleties”) in late medieval England: they often involved animals too, of which more below. A specimen menu from the mid- to late fifteenth century, for a meat day in an elite household113 First course: Mustard with brawn of boar; vegetable pottage; beef; mutton; stewed pheasant; swan chaudon;114 capon; pork: baked venison; leche lombard;115 friture viant.116 A subtlety: the Annunciation of the Virgin The second course: Two pottages, a blanc manger,117 and a jelly; roast venison or roast rabbit; bustard, stork, crane, peacock dressed in its feathers; young herons, bittern, with bread; partridge, woodcock, plover, egret, young rabbits; other larger birds; larks; sea bream; doucet,118 pain puff (a filled pastry), with a jelly: a fritter. A subtlety: an angel singing to three shepherds on a hill The third course: Cream of almonds and malmeny;119 Roast curlew, snipe, quail, sparrows; Perch in jelly, crayfish, another fish dish; Baked quince; Sage fritter A subtlety: the visit of the Three Kings to the Virgin 113 The Babees Book: Manners and Meals in Olden Time, ed. F.J. Furnivall (London: Forgotten Books, 2012), 164–66. 114 A sauce made with giblets. 115 A sliced pudding of pork, dried fruit and egg, with a sauce of wine and almond milk. 116 A meat fritter. 117 A “white dish” made with ground almonds and almond milk, rice and rice flour, boiled chicken sugar and spices. 118 A set dish of egg, sugar and cream. 119 Malmeny is minced poultry.

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Fruit: blaunderels or pippins, with a caraway comfit; wafers and hippocras.120 trans. F.J. Furnivall

Le Ménagier de Paris, 48. Another fish dinner121 First course: Pea coulis;122 vegetable broth; oyster stew, white sauce of perch and pike, a cress porée;123 herrings, salted whale meat, salted eels, poached loach. Second course: Fresh and saltwater fish, turbot à la soucie,124 taillis,125 bécuit,126 eels in galantine.127 Third course: The most beautiful and best roast fish that one can buy, white pasties, larras,128 loach with waymel, crayfish, perch with parsley and vinegar, tench with sops,129 aspic. trans. Gina L. Greco and Christian M. Rose

8

Entertaining Meals

Almost all our detailed accounts of banquets are from the later Middle Ages, but entertainment at the meals of the wealthy (and perhaps the less wealthy) was not new: we know that musicians and players performed at them in the Early Middle Ages. Entremets, which were smaller but often more lavishly decorated dishes between main courses at meals, appear in the first extant books of recipes that belong to the late twelfth century. Musical entertainment and a combination of re-enactment and religious instruction like the subtleties included above likely accompanied them, one of the probable influences for the religious elements being the readings at monastic meals. However, from the 120 A drink made from wine mixed with sugar and spices, often drunk hot. 121 The Good Wife’s Guide: Le Ménagier de Paris: A Medieval Household Book, trans. Gina L. Greco and Christine M. Rose (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009): “Menus” 48, p. 262. 122 Coulis was a purée of strained or mashed vegetables, especially peas or beans, but it might include meat for the sick. 123 Like coulis or purée, or leafy greens such as salad. 124 À la soucie: a sauce, usually green. 125 Taillis was savoury or sweet chapped and prepared fish. 126 Bécuit or bescuit: a fish preparation, possibly a red sauce made from fish juices. 127 Galantine was a sauce used with fish. 128 Larras was a dish used on fast days, which may have been prepared from fish. 129 Sops: a piece of bread or toast drenched in liquid, served with broth, soup, or wine and then broken apart into smaller pieces to soak in the liquid.

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end of the fourteenth century, increasingly the entremets included non-edible components or structures, and even though many retained a religious theme, especially in elite households their main purpose became entertainment of guests and demonstration of the host’s ability to put on a show. Live animals not only provided entertainment between courses or by their presence in the background while the food was eaten, but as part of the meal. The food itself might ‘entertain’, surprising or even shocking the guests. Among the frequent tricks were disguising of one cooked animal as another, concealing live birds in previously made pies so they would fly out when the crust was cut, and others of which examples appear below. The fifteenth-century Vivendier recipe collection includes a method (unique among the extant medieval recipe collections) for making cooked animals squawk or squeal.130 One of the most important surviving medieval recipe collections is the fourteenth-century Viandier, which carries the name of Taillevent, an alias for Guillaume Tirel. Taillevent was the chief cook of King Charles V of France (r. 1364–1380). As in all the surviving medieval recipe collections, many of his recipes were likely learnt from other cooks and the Viandier itself was subsequently modified to varying degrees in the four surviving manuscripts, which date from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Whereas nowadays most consumers prefer not to think about the animal their meat comes from or its death, in the Middle Ages it was not necessary to disguise this; sometimes quite the reverse, when cooked animals were made to look as if they were alive. There are entremets in which the cooked bird is put back inside its skin with all the feathers as well as the head and feet. As shown here, an important element in the presentation of late medieval meals for the wealthy was colour: not only were preparations coloured in ways that would seem odd to us, but they were sometimes covered in gold, silver or tin leaf, like the helmeted cock below. Taillevent, Viandier: 66. Poullaille farcie (Stuffed poultry)131 Take your hens, cut their neck, scald and pluck them, and be careful that the skin remains undamaged and whole, and do not plump the birds; then take some sort of straw and push it between the skin and the flesh, and blow; then cut the skin between the shoulders, not making too large a hole, and leave the legs, with the feet, wings, and neck with the head still attached to the skin.

130 The Vivendier, 59, p. 83. 131 The Viandier of Taillevent, ed. and trans. Terence Scully (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1988): [66].

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To make the stuffing, take mutton, veal, pork and the cooked dark meat of chickens, and chop up all of this raw, and grind it in a mortar, together with a great quantity of raw eggs, cooked chestnuts, a good rich cheese, good spice powder and a little saffron, and salt to taste. Then stuff tour chickens and sew up the hole again. With any leftover stuffing make hard balls, using a great deal of saffron, the size of packets of woad, and cook them in beef broth and boiling water gently, so they do not fall apart. Then mount your chickens and the balls on very slender iron spits. To glaze them or cover them with green or yellow: for the yellow, take a great quantity of egg yolks, beat them well with a little saffron, and set this glazing in a dish of some sort; and should you want a green glazing, grind the greenery with the eggs without saffron, and put this through the strainer and apply it: after your poultry and your balls of stuffing are cooked, place your spit in the dish with the glazing mixture two or three times and cast your glazing the full length of the spit, then put it back on the fire so that your glazing will take; and watch that your glazing does not have too hot a fire that it burns. trans. Terence Scully

The three examples of entremets below involve animals, but the second requires nothing edible, unless the course bread was considered such. Similar methods of constructing the animal’s mouth so that it would breathe fire were also used to make cooked whole animal heads belch fire when served. The second example, from the late fourteenth-century English Forme of Cury, was a representation of a mythical half-bird, half-quadruped from around the time when the cockatrice became widely known by that name.132 The third, from the Vivandier, disguises a live animal as dead and cooked so that it suddenly ‘comes to life’ on the table. It might just as easily be classed among cruel animal entertainments as recipes. Taillevent, Viandier: 196, Coqz heaumez; 219. Entremetz plus legiers133 Coqz heaumez (Helmeted cocks). Roast piglets and such poultry as cocks and old hens; when both the piglet and the poultry are roasted, the poultry should be stuffed – without skinning it, if you wish; it should be [glazed] with an egg batter. And when it is glazed it should be seated astride the piglet; and it needs a helmet of glued paper and a lance couched at the

132 Laurence A. Breiner, “The Career of the Cockatrice”, Isis 70:1 (1979), 30–47. 133 The Viandier of Taillevent: [196] and [219].

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breast of the bird, and these should be covered with gold- or silver-leaf for lords, or with white, red or green tin-leaf. Entremetz plus legiers (Easier Entremets). You could make platforms of coarse bread, and represent a damsel sitting on the platform, which platform should be covered with tin-leaf painted to look green and grassy; and you need a lion that will have its two front paws and its head in the lap of the damsel. And you can make it with a brass-lined mouth and a thin brass tongue, and with paper teeth glued in the mouth; and put camphor and a little cotton in the mouth and, when it is about to be served before the lords, set fire to this. If you wish to represent a wolf, a bear, a zebra, a serpent or any other animal, whether domestic or wild, they can be done in the same way as the lion, each in its own fashion. trans. Terence Scully

The Forme of Cury: 175. Cotagres. cc.viii. cv134 Take and make the same forcemeat, but add pine-nuts and sugar.135 Take a whole roasted cockerel, pull his guts and skin him all in one piece save for the legs. Take a piglet and skin him from the middle downwards, fill him full of the forcemeat and sew them together. Cook him in a pan and seethe him well, and when that is done, cook them on a spit, roasted well. Colour it with yolks of eggs and saffron, lay thereon foils of gold and of silver, and serve it forth. trans. Glyn Hughes

The Vivendier, 58: A faire .i. poullet aler rosti sur le table (To make a chicken appear roasted on the table)136 Get a chicken or any other bird you want and pluck it alive cleanly in hot water. Then get the yolks of ii or iii eggs; they should be beaten with powdered saffron and wheat flour, and distempered with fat broth or with the grease that drips under a roast into the dripping pan. By means of a feather, glaze and paint your pullet carefully with this mixture so that its colour looks like roast meat. With this done, and when it is about to 134 The Forme of Cury: From the Master Cooks of King Richard II, the oldest English cookery book, trans. Glyn Hughes (Winster, Derbyshire: Foods of England, 2016): [175]. 135 Forcemeat (cf. Fr. farcir, “to stuff”) is a combination of meat and fat with seasonings and other ingredients ground or sieved to form a uniform mixture, used as stuffing in sausages, galantines, pâtés and terrines. “The same” here refers to the forcemeat used in the previous (pork meatball) recipe. 136 The Vivendier: A Fifteenth-Century French Cookery Manuscript, ed. and trans. Terence Scully (Totnes, Devon: Prospect Books, 1997): [58].

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be served to the table, put the chicken’s head under its wing, and turn it in your hands, rotating it until it is fast asleep. Then set it down on your platter with the other roast meat. When it is about to be carved it will wake up and make off down the table upsetting jugs, goblets and whatnot. trans. Terence Scully

The above examples are relatively modest: in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries entremets became more and more lavish at very important events, involving huge edifices constructed for the purpose and the appearance of large ‘wild’ animals. One of the most famous feasts of the period, later to be known as the “Banquet of the Oath of the Pheasant” (usually “Feast of the Pheasant” in English), was held on 17 February 1454. Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, organised it in Lille to proclaim a crusade and rouse the duke’s knights to take crusading vows in the aftermath of the fall of Constantinople to the Turks.137 The vows were taken in front of a pheasant. The tradition of taking oaths in front of a cooked and dressed ‘regal’ bird had begun with Edward I of England’s Feast of the Swans in 1306 and was subsequently popularized in literature, especially in the chanson de geste, Les Voeux du paon (“The Vows of the Peacock”) of 1312. The quantity of animal food listed in various sources as eaten at Philip’s feast is extraordinary: 800 chicken pies, 1600 roast hogs, 1600 pieces of roast veal, 1600 legs of mutton, 400 pieces of wildfowl, 600 partridges, 1400 rabbits, 400 herons and 36 peacocks.138 A letter from a minor official attached to the duke’s court and sent to an unknown recipient describes the event: J. de Pleine, Letter of 22 February 1454139 Last Sunday my lord the duke gave a banquet in the hôtel de la Salle in this town. … The dishes were such that they had to be served with trolleys and seemed infinite in number. There were so many side-dishes, and they were so curious, that it’s difficult to describe them. There was even a chapel on the table, with a choir in it, a pastry full of flute-players, and a turret from which came the sound of an organ and other music. The figure of a girl, quite naked, stood against a pillar. Hippocras sprayed 137 In French, Banquet du Vœu du faisan (lit. trans. Banquet of the Oath of the Pheasant). 138 Richard Vaughan, Philip the Good (London: Longman, 1970), 143–44; Melitta Weiss Adamson, Food in Medieval Times (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), 166. In addition, 9000 loaves of white bread, 4800 gourmet breads, 6 horse-loads of confectionaries and 32 barrels of wine were consumed. 139 Quoted in Vaughan, Philip the Good, 144–45.

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from her right breast and she was guarded by a live lion who sat near her on a round table in front of my lord the duke. The story of Jason was represented on a raised stage by actors who did not speak. My lord the duke was served at table by a two-headed horse ridden by two men sitting back to back, each holding a trumpet and sounding it as loud as he could, and then by a monster consisting of a man riding on an elephant, with another man, whose feet were hidden, riding on his shoulders. Next came a white stag ridden by a young boy who sang marvellously, while the stag accompanied him with the tenor part. Next came an elephant … carrying a castle in which sat Holy Church, who made piteous complaint on behalf of the Christians persecuted by the Turks, and begged for help. trans. Richard Vaughan

The accompanying events in Philip’s feast included much entertainment that had no relation to the theme, such as the twenty-four musicians in the huge pie, and numerous subtleties, many of which displayed robotic animals. Colard le Voleur travelled from Hesdin, where he had supervised the construction of similar “engines,” alongside artists, joiners, a plumber, a sculptor and locksmith. The whole event was recorded in great detail by Olivier de la Marche and Mathieu d’Escouchy; although they praise the food as lavish and of high quality, they are more interested in the entertainment and the resplendent pageantry and accoutrements of the nobles present than the fare. Nonhuman animals attracted most human attention when presented as wonders. Olivier de la Marche, Memoires, Bk 1. Ch. 29: Des entremectz qui furent trouvez au bancquet (The entremets that were provided at the banquet)140 The entremets of the second table: … The fifth was a desert, like an uninhabited land, which had a wonderfully [and] vividly made tiger, which fought against a large snake. The sixth was a wild man mounted on a camel, who had the appearance and acted as if he was travelling the length of the country. The seventh was the representation of a man, who with a parchment beat a thicket full of little birds, and near them, in an orchard surrounded with rosebushes, made very delicately, was a knight and a lady seated at table, who ate the fledglings which the one beat from the bush, and the said lady showed with her index finger that he was working to no purpose and foolishly wasting his time. The eighth 140 Olivier de La Marche, Memoires D’Olivier de La Marche, Maitre d’Hotel et Capitaine des Gardes de Charles le Téméraire, Vol. 2, ed. Henri Beaune and J. D’Arbaumont (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1883): Livre Premier, Ch. XXIX.

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was a knave that was riding a bear, and [he] was between several odd piles of different rocks, laden with crushed ice and glasses balanced in a clever manner. … The third table, which was the lesser of the two, had a marvellous forest, as if it were a forest of India, and in this forest were several strange beasts of unusual nature, which moved of their own accord, as if they were alive. The second entremet of this table was a moving lion attached to a tree in the middle of a meadow, and there was the figure of a man beating the dog in front of the lion. Earlier in the fifteenth century, in 1434, Philip the Good had been a guest at the festivities arranged by the duke of Savoy for the wedding of his son, which also included an extraordinary series of feasts and associated events, and Olivier de la Marche gives a long account of the feasts at the marriage of Philip’s son Duke Charles to Margaret of York in 1468. These feasts may have been exceptionally lavish, but the quantities of food were not quite as exceptional as we might suppose. Even if huge feasts with bizarre entertainment were not everyday events at noble courts, guests were frequent. Two years after the Feast of the Pheasant, Philip invited some chaplains and canons of St Peter’s Church, Lille to attend a meal at Lent. a time of fast. Denied most delicacies and meats, instead they consumed a large pike and thirty smaller ones, eighty carps, sixteen eels, two breams, a salmon, 1200 salted herrings and some other fresh fish, washed down with wine, hippocras and beer.141 9

Food Waste Management

Medieval people were less wasteful of food derived from animals than modern people. As mentioned, even the nobility might eat any animal parts that could be rendered palatable, but as we might suspect, not all the food provided for feasts was eaten up by the hosts and their guests. In the Middle Ages uneaten food might be donated to the poor or to animals, or be put back into the soil as fertilizer, but there were dos and don’ts regarding its disposal, dependent on its provenance. Rather than going to waste, at the meals of the rich leftovers and some donations were usually deposited in vessels, known as voyders in England, and at the end of the meal all these remains were supposed to be handed over to the almoner, usually a cleric, who distributed them as alms 141 Vaughan, Philip the Good, 142.

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to the poor. The recipients might reside in almshouses, hospitals, monastic institutions or even at the wealthy households. In the Middle Ages it was a Christian duty of those who had wealth to distribute alms to those who had not, and there is plenty of evidence that many wealthy folk routinely did so.142 In c.1250 Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, included management of almsgiving among his twenty-eight rules for household administration. Robert Grosseteste, Les Reules Seynt Roberd (The Rules of St Robert)143 The (fourteenth) rule teaches you how your alms, by your order, ought to be faithfully guarded and collected and wisely spent among the poor. Order that your alms be faithfully guarded and collected and not sent from the table to the men servants, nor carried out of the dining hall, nor wasted in suppers or dinners for the menservants but freely, wisely and moderately, without dispute and strife, distributed among the poor, sick, and beggars. trans. Dorothea Oschinsky

But some meal leftovers went to the dogs of the medieval household rather than the poor, as the animals that served the wealthy were closer companions to them than human beggars and peasants. This was a practice condemned by many in the Church, such as the early fourteenth-century Dominican friar John Bromyard. John Bromyard, Summa Praedicanteum. Ch. 8, Servire144 The rich provide more willingly for their dogs than for the poor, more lavishly and more delicately too, so that whereas the poor are so famished that they would voraciously consume bran-bread, dogs turn up their noses at the sight of wafer-bread and reject the food offered to them, trampling it under their feet. They must be offered the finest meat, the first and best quality portion from every dish. If they are sated, they refuse it. Then there is wailing over them as if they were ill. 142 See, for instance, C.M. Woolgar, The Culture of Food in Medieval England, 1100–1500 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 218–21. 143 “Rules,” in Walter of Henley and other Treatises on Estate Management and Accounting, ed. Dorothea Oschinsky (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1971), 387–407. Elizabeth Lamond’s title, “Les Reules Seynt Roberd,” was given to them after Robert’s death. Oschinsky accepted that the text originated with Robert Grosseteste, but thought it unlikely that they were written for Maud de Lacy, countess of Lincoln, “to guard and govern her lands and hostel” and therefore considered this it to be a later addition to the ms (p. 192). 144 John Bromyard, Summa Praedicanteum, Part 2 (Venice: Johan Georg Werderstein, 1586): Cap. VIII, Servire.

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Food was normally blessed in all households before being served to people, and thereafter should have been treated with reverence, which meant it should not be given to dumb creatures. If many laypeople shared the official attitude of the Church, others evidently ignored it; there are numerous medieval depictions of animals, especially dogs, in the dining areas and even on the table, many of them evidently well-fed. In the fourteenth century, as part of his advice to his daughters on how to behave at court, the ‘knight of the tower’ told an exemplary tale to teach them to get their feeding priorities right. Geoffroy de La Tour Landry, Livre pour l’enseignement de ses filles du Chevalier de La Tour Landry (The Book for the Education of the daughters of the Knight of the Tower Landry): On the woman that gave meat to her hounds145 I shall give you an example of a lady who gave flesh and good morsels to her little dogs. There was a lady who had two small hounds, whom she loved greatly and so dearly that she took great pleasure in feeding them. She made for them daily dishes of milk sops and then gave them meat and other delicacies. And once there was a mendicant friar who said to her that it was evilly done to give such good food to the hounds so that they became big and fat while there were many poor people who were thin and famished. Thus he preached to the lady, but she would not change her behaviour. Then shortly afterwards this lady became mortally ill and an amazing thing happened which was seen clearly by all, for two small black dogs appeared on her bed, and when she was dying they licked her lips and as they did so her mouth became as black as coal. This I have heard from a damsel who said she had seen all this and she named the lady. This is a good example to every good lady and woman of how they ought not to take great pleasure in such things, nor to give flesh or luxurious foods to the hounds, for lack of which the poor people of God die from hunger, they being the creatures of God made in his form and likeness, and who are his servants. Such women do not understand the word of God in the gospel, where, as God says, “He who is kind to the poor does me service.”146 These women bear no resemblance to good Queen Blanche, who was the mother of Saint Louis, who gave food to the most needy and famished.147

145 Geoffroy de la Tour Landry, Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry, ed. Thomas Wright (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1906). 146 Proverbs 19:17. 147 St Louis was King Louis IX of France, whose Christian virtue was chiefly shown by leading two disastrous crusades against the Moslems. He was canonized in 1297.

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Nor, it seems, were those of a religious vocation exempt from favouring animals over the poor. Chaucer gives us an ironic portrayal of a prioress, Madame Eglentyne (a flower that symbolized the Virgin Mary), who wears expensive clothes, shows off her French (which is in fact ‘schoolboy French’), and has exquisite table manners. She swears by Saint Loy, otherwise named Eligius, protector of horses and those who looked after them.148 In other words, she is more concerned with putting on aristocratic airs than being religious. This affectation extends to her treatment of animals: Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Prologue: lines 146–49149 She had small hounds that she fed With roasted flesh, or milk and fine white bread But sorely she wept if one of them were dead, Or if someone struck it smartly with a stick Nevertheless, it was difficult for the wealthy of the Middle Ages to disregard entirely those who had less food than they. Alongside the religious incentive, a further impetus to avoid waste was simply an awareness that most people around them lived near subsistence level. Bad weather leading to crop failures, diseases of domestic animals and destruction of resources during wars led to intermittent famines. The wealthy may have gone short of food only rarely, but they could not avoid knowledge of these calamities. Nowadays the awareness of almost all people in the modern West that some humans are short of food is usually limited to the occasional viewing of a few minutes of film on a television screen, food can always be obtained and the seemingly endless supply of it is taken for granted so that huge quantities of it are discarded as rubbish with hardly a thought. 10

Animal Fast Food

Fast food is often thought of as a phenomenon of modern times, when both adult partners in a family often work, there are many one-parent families, and 148 Eligius was a counsellor of King Dagobert and bishop of Noyon in seventh-century Frankia. Besides showing common saintly attributes, he supposedly reshoed the foreleg of a reluctant horse by cutting off the leg and then miraculously re-attaching it after the shoeing. St Loy is mentioned again in the Canterbury Tales, the Friar’s Tale, in an incident concerning a carthorse. 149 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, ed. F.N. Robinson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957).

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others work long hours and/or travel long distances to and from work. The development of the fast-food industry has been aided by modern technology, especially refrigeration. However, it is not a new trend, and may more accurately be described for most of its history as a phenomenon of urban civilization. In medieval towns, as also in Roman towns, many people did not have kitchens or the money to acquire the cooking utensils and fuel needed to cook at home.150 Many poor folk or adults lived in one room. They went to cookshops or bought other street foods from shops that sold meat pies, pancakes, bread, and sweets at all times of the day and night. Travelling customers also bought hot, prepared food as they were passing by, although it seems that the wealthier avoided such places. In addition, people took their own meat to shops to be cooked as pies or pasties in dough. Evidently, despite the risks enumerated below, animal flesh was considered desirable, perhaps essential, for all who could get hold of it or afford it. The saying, “God sends the meat, but the devil sends cooks,” was apparently well known by the sixteenth century.151 It will be no surprise that not all food-sellers were honest. Thus we have abundant evidence of dubious practices like reheating old pies, selling contaminated or old and spoiled meat in pies or pasties, and disguising the meat of one animal as another’s. The careless or hurried cook might not cook his meat properly. The animal meat sources for the unscrupulous fast-food vendor were as great as for the wealthy man’s cook, for while some meats were available only to the wealthy, he or she could use meat of animals that was normally taboo, such as cat meat, as well as contaminated meat. According to the host in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Hogge of Ware (in London) was one of these vendors: Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales: The Prologe of the Cokes Tale, lines 4345–52152 Now tell on, Roger; see that it is good, For from many a pasty have you drawn out the gravy, And many a Jack of Dover have you sold153 That has been twice hot and twice cold. 150 Studies of the city of Colchester, England, in the early 14th century show that only 3% of households that paid taxes (11 of 389) had a kitchen. 151 John Simpson, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs (Oxford: Oxford University Pres, 1982), 94. Martha Carlin, “Fast Food and Urban Living Standards in Medieval England,” in Food and Eating in Medieval Europe, ed. Martha Carlin and Joel T. Rosenthal, 27–52 (London, Rio Grande, Ohio: Hambledon Press, 1998), 27–28. 152 Chaucer, Canterbury Tales. 153 A kind of pie.

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From many a pilgrim have you Christ’s curse, For from your parsley still they fare the worse, Which they have eaten with your stubble-fed goose, For in your shop is many a fly loose. A century and a half earlier, the bishop and renowned sermoniser Jacques de Vitry had also turned to tales of suspect meat vendors and cooks, likely common subjects of criticism, when requiring illustrations of dishonest practice. Jacques de Vitry, Exempla ex sermonibus vulgaribus (Exempla from the sermons for the common folk), 162 and 163154 162. I heard of a certain butcher who was in the habit of selling cooked meats, when someone, in order to obtain a fair price, said to him: “I have now been buying meat from you for seven years.” He answered with great admiration: “You have done that all this time and you are still alive?” 163. I understood, moreover, when I was in parts overseas, that a certain Christian, who used to sell cooked meats and contaminated potage in the city of Acre, was captured by the Saracens, and asked to be taken to the sultan, to whom he said: “Lord, I am in your power, and if you wish you can kill me or imprison me, but know that you would incur a great loss.” And when the sultan inquired as to why he should suffer loss, he answered: “There is not a year in which I do not kill more than a hundred of your foreign enemies, to whom I sell old and stinking cooked meat and rotten fish.” Hearing this, the sultan began to laugh and allowed him to go. If regulation of food-production and distribution practices is not easy nowadays, it was far more difficult in the Middle Ages, but attempts were made. The ordinances of various towns from the Late Middle Ages rules provide evidence of practices concerning food distribution, selling and disposal. The town councils were not only concerned about malpractice that affected health and caused the streets to stink, but the danger of cookshop owners cornering the market in fresh meat so that individual households could not get hold of it.

154 The Exempla: Illustrative Stories from the Sermones Vulgares of Jacques de Vitry, ed. by Thomas Frederick Crane (London: David Nutt for the Folklore Society, 1890): exempla CLXII, CLXIII.

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The Coventry Leet Book or Mayor’s Register, AD 1420–1555: John Leader’s Proclamation, 1421155 Also we command that no food-seller, fishmonger, or any other person, pass out of the city of Coventry to buy fish, nor any other victual coming towards the city, nor buy any in the city, until it is 9 ‘o’ clock, until the mayor has seen that it is fit for human consumption with the oversight of those that the mayor has ordered to oversee such manner of victuals, on pain of up to 40 pence at every default. Also we command that no butcher sell any murrain-infected beasts, nor any rotten sheep, or tainted flesh in any way that he wants, and that no man allow him, on pain of fine of 40 shillings, and imprisonment for forty days. Also it is lawful for every butcher within this city to slay every kind of flesh seasonable for human fare, as much as he likes and as often, as long as no ordinance be made among them to the contrary, on pain of under 100 shillings and up to 20 shillings for every butcher that is subject to such an ordinance, and he will be sent to prison as often as he is found to lack this ordnance. Also we command that no cook buys any food supplies except in the common market, as it is ordained, by way of retail selling, that is to keep him at the town’s end or in the way, on pain of up to 6s 8d at every default. Also that no cook sell any manner of reheated meat up to the aforesaid pain at every trespass. Also that no cook cast any manner of filth under his tables or in the high street, nor allow it to lie, that is, feathers, hair, entrails of pigs or of other beasts, up to the pain of 4d, and no deer up to the same pain. Also that they buy any manner of dead pikes or eels to bake them as meat for human consumption, up to the same pain. 155 The Coventry Leet Book or Mayor’s Register, Containing the Records of the City, Court Leet or View of Frankpledge, AD 1420–1555, with diverse other matters. (London: Forgotten Books, 2016).

Chapter 9

Animals, Disease and Medicine The part that animals played in human medicinal practice of the Middle Ages has already been touched on in Chapter 8, as they or their produce were an important part of the medieval human diet, which, at least in the case of the social elite, was partly determined by medical considerations; as food, animal products might affect the humoural balance or complexion of the human who consumed them, either negatively or positively. In this chapter we are concerned with non-food related human usage of other animals for medicinal purposes and how disease affected both. Animals or their parts also had more direct applications for healing humans and nonhuman animals were dissected for purposes of medical research. In addition, nonhuman animals functioned as medical metaphors related to their perceived character, so that the illnesses or health-affecting substances associated with them in turn reinforced human conceptions of these animals. Finally, animals who were valued by humans were themselves subject to medical procedures prescribed by them. All these usages, and especially the late medieval onset of deadly epidemics that simultaneously struck both human and nonhuman populations, brought into question the extent to which nonhuman animals might be subject to the same diseases as humans, and whether humans could be infected by other animals; a further aspect of the ongoing debate about the extent to which humans resembled or differed from other animals. 1

Animals as Sources of Medicinal Cures or Causes of Injury and Disease

The collapse of the Roman infrastructure hampered the practice of scientific medicine in Europe beyond the eastern empire’s frontiers in the early Middle Ages, but medical writing was less affected than other learning and literature. The region lacked professional medical practitioners and methodical study of medicine, so that it was mostly learnt by informal means and practised by people without formal training. The new religious worldview of Christianity incorporated an ethical obligation to care for the sick, which meant that there was a surviving interest in practical medicine, but it also introduced a new ideological element into healing and a new conception of the spiritual meaning and destiny of the body. The saints, both before and after their life on Earth

© Koninklijke Brill BV, Leiden, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004721708_011

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had ended, were mediums through which God could provide therapy for medieval folk. A serious loss to western European medicine was the many Greek-language works from Antiquity, although some of the works of the Alexandria school were translated into Latin and commented on in the sixth century. Among the available works that transmitted antique knowledge were Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies, Book IV,1 which provided an overview, the first of Galen’s texts, On sects for Beginners, and the basic text of the Hippocratic canon, the Aphorisms. On the other hand, new practical medicinal works appeared in Latin, and in England in the vernacular. Much material on medical practice was produced for local use. The medical manuscripts that survived from the classical era, as well as new ones, were copied and preserved in monasteries. Probably the most comprehensive medical work that was produced in the early Middle Ages, by the physician Alexander of Tralles (c.525–c.605), was known in western Europe and became especially influential in the High Middle Ages. He was born a Greek but worked in various Mediterranean lands. Of the classical texts that survived in medieval Europe, Galen’s had the greatest influence. Medieval copies or summaries of hundreds of medieval texts written by him, or supposedly written by him, are still extant from both the Islamic world and Europe, testimony to his importance, although much of this work was not available in Latin Europe in the early Middle Ages. Galen’s medical theory was based upon the relationship among the four elements of nature  – earth, air, fire, and water  – and the body’s four humours or bodily fluids – blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. This system had a philosophical basis but no empirical scientific foundation in medicine, yet it was accepted almost without question throughout the Middle Ages and well into the modern period. According to the theory, illness arose from an imbalance of the humours and the elements in the body, and restoration of balance was necessary to effect a cure. The emphasis was on restoring the health of each individual person rather than tackling disease as a general affliction among groups of people. Nevertheless, within these parameters Galen’s approach to medicine had been reasoned and practical, based upon direct observation of the patient, so that the physician was an attendant of the patient rather than an intermediary who sought healing from spiritual intervention. Galen used bloodletting (phlebotomy) to restore the balance of fluids in the body and described over 300 pharmaceutical remedies.

1 The material on anatomy, however, is in Book 11.

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The Galenic system applied as much to nonhuman animals as to humans. Like the natural philosophers, medical practitioners were aware that humans were animals and that there was a strong resemblance between the anatomy of quadrupeds, if not others, and humans. This is made clear in the introductory part of the Second Salernitan Demonstration of the twelfth century. These Demonstrations were a series of texts that guided a dissector through the anatomy of a pig, which appeared from the eleventh century onwards. On the basis of its content, which includes references made only in his work, its most likely author was Bartholomeus of Salerno, but this cannot be certain. Second Salernitan Demonstration (Demonstratio Anatomica)2 In frame and fabric the animal body is composed of members various and diverse; for in nature, the first and foreknowing cause, greatly to be revered in all her works, constructed the animal body of many members differing in quantity and quality, in order that the animal kingdom might be the culmination of all created things. Therefore each kind of animal has bodily members appropriate to serve its spirit and nature. The lion, for example, since he is of bold and angry spirit, has a body perfected to these qualities and is provided with suitable weapons in the shape of claws upon his feet and very sharp teeth in his mouth. The hare, on the other hand, being the most timid of beasts, possesses members which by their lightness are adapted to swift retreat, and its forelegs are shorter than its hind legs, that it may easily run uphill. Because of these diversities in the endowment of nature and spirit, the great Creator and Father of all things formed organs adapted to various functions, such as the human hand, in which the fingers are several and distinct, in order to grasp objects both large and small. He suffused the liver with redness to promote the formation of blood and with foreseeing discretion endowed the breasts and testicles with whiteness for the making of milk and sperm. There are also three general operations, with three corresponding instrumental members, namely, animal, spiritual, and natural. The animal members are created for sensation and voluntary motion in all animals, also in some animals for imagination and memory. The spiritual members [heart and lungs] are for protecting the channels of breath and natural heat. The natural members are nutritive and generative. The nutritive are for the reintegration of bodily loss and waste and for the alteration of materials permuted from evil to good. The generative organs 2 Anatomical texts of the earlier Middle Ages, with translations of four texts, ed. and trans. G.W. Corner (Washington D.C.: Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1927): Twelfth-Century texts. p. 23.

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are made for the specializing of general substance and for the individualizing of special substance. In each of these systems there is one principal organ with others protective, expurgative, and adjuvant or accessory. Among the animal organs the brain is principal, because the animal force is principally located in it, and from it arise the other structures such as the nerves; and it is provided with others protective, expurgative, and adjuvant or accessory. trans. George W. Corner

The above excerpt emphasizes the natural wonder of the animal body, both human and nonhuman. Below Peter Damian, in a letter to the abbot and monks of Monte Cassino Monastery, recites an assortment of supposed remedies that animals use or that can be acquired from animals or their produce and used by other animals, not least humans; most of his examples come from Jerome’s Adversus Jovinianum, others from Pliny and Isidore of Seville. As already touched upon in some of quoted comments concerning the asymmetrical relationship between human and nonhuman animals at the Creation, the former had the wherewithal to make use of the latter to maintain human health. Whether or to what extent this use is ethical is now open to question, but few questioned it in the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, that it was discussed at all and that some felt the need to justify or even encourage it might indicate a certain underlying unease. Peter Damian’s attitude, that all creation was made for human use and that humans should concentrate on their own spiritual advancement rather than concern themselves with created things, including other animals, was general. Peter Damian, Epistolae (Letters), 86: To Abbot Desiderius and the monastic community of Monte Cassino (year 1061)3 When the fox is sick and senses that death is at hand, it treats itself with resin secreted by the pine tree, and by this remedy its life is prolonged. Indeed, animals that use medicines obtained from sources external to themselves show that also within their bodies they have the means to recover health. For from the flesh of the serpent, which is called the tyrus, we can produce not only theriac, but also various medical remedies. Pieces of ivory are used in various cures. The bile of hyenas restores sight to the eyes, and its dung is likewise known to cure the wounds of dogs. Moreover, every sick animal in the wild that drinks the blood of a dog is restored to good health. Galen also describes the many uses of human 3 Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, Teil 2, ed. Kurt Reindel (Munich: MGH, 1988) 459–504; nr. 86, pp. 494–95.

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excrement in preparing medicines. How the ostrich, how frogs, chameleons, cranes and storks, the bile of an eagle, the blood of a hawk and the dung and flesh of a swallow provide medicine for certain diseases, this is for him who would discuss bodily cures to explain. Naturalists tell us that if the skin of a snake, which it has just discarded, is cooked in boiling oil, it works wonders in treating earache. To those who are unaware, bugs seem to be useless. But if a leech takes one in its mouth, when it gets a whiff of its fumes, the bug is spat out at once. Likewise, difficulty in urinating is eased by the application of the bug. Moreover, physicians are not unaware of the medicinal properties included in the fat of pigs, geese, chickens and pheasants. The dung of the peacock is known to lessen the inflammation of gout. And if a sick lion devours a monkey, it at once recovers. If a leopard tastes the blood of a wild goat, it avoids contracting illness. A sick bear eats ants, while a sick deer hunts for tender olive branches. But why did the almighty creator of all things endow animals with these qualities, if not to provide human life with an assortment of benefits? He did this so that, as creatures who are subject to man support one another, all things might be found useful to man who is superior to all animals. And while man marvels at the goodness of his maker in all his undertakings, he should not be attached to created things, but yearn for the sight of his creator. If one makes the effort and is expert in investigating all these qualities in animals, he will find it useful to apply them as examples for human behaviour. Thus even he who is unlettered might learn from the nature of animals how man should live. For as the apostle says, “Are not oxen God’s concern?”4 But when man observes something significant in dumb animals, no matter what it might be, he is well advised to apply it to his own use. Because of the lack of formal medical training, medical care in the early Middle Ages was also founded partly on folk medicine, more or less ancient beliefs about the properties of plants and animals, and little regard was paid to scientific methods. Religious beliefs had a strong influence on the nature of remedies. In western Europe monks became responsible for taking care of the sick as well as preserving medical literature. Both Benedict and Cassiodorus stressed the need for infirmaries in monasteries and for the monks to administer care. An early extant western European book of remedies, therapeutic recipes, dietary treatment and advice on caring for the sick, which survived 4 1 Corinthians 9.9.

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on one manuscript from the end of the eighth century, originates from Lorsch Monastery in Hesse.5 The Lorsch Pharmacopoeia6 Book 2, 28. The shell of a squid, burned to ashes and distributed in the mouth, heals the ailments. Likewise: An obolus of mustard or radish seeds cooked in wine helps.7 Book 2, 106. Against wetting. Sprinkle the ashes of wild or domestic pig hooves into a drink. Similarly, one drinks rabbit’s brain in wine and eats the cooked six eggs. Take three fried goose tongues in the food. Likewise: You eat fried goat’s bladder. – Others give them in powder form in wine to drink, in case of fever with warm water. Likewise: You grate caraway, as much as you can take with three fingers, add two bowls of wine and the same amount of water and drink it on an empty stomach. Book 2. 146. For incipient gicht. Fatten a donkey amply with bran for two weeks and slaughter it. Immediately open its belly, and the one who is in pain should put his feet in it, for as long as he still feels the [animal’s] warmth. Of course, you should wrap the belly in blankets and put it [the donkey] in a basket of straw. Similarly, this combats the incipient gout wonderfully: the very finely ground ashes of a burnt beet are mixed with bovine blood and placed on top. Similarly for gout pain: Crush two teaspoons of ground fenugreek with two teaspoons of vinegar, spread it very carefully on a linen cloth and place it on. A poultice for foot pain: Soak breadcrumbs in water, add oil and cook them, put them on a fine linen cloth and apply it. Similarly, cook fine bean ointment, spread it with pork fat on a linen cloth and place it on. Again: The roots of mallow, cooked, crushed and placed on top of each other achieve the same thing. Book 3. 54. Against a chronic cough. One ounce each of turpentine resin, butter, honey and oil. All this is mixed to become a uniform mass. First you should take two spoons, then three, until you recover. 5 Codex Bambergensis Medicinalis 1. 6 Das ‘Lorscher Arzneibuch’: Ein Medizinisches Kompendium Das 8. Jahrhunderts, ed. and trans. Ulrich Stoll (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1992): Liber II, [28]. [106], [146], Liber III [52], [54]. 7 Obolus (Latin): a small coin, whose size or weight must be intended.

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Book 3. 52. A poultice against nausea. 1 ounce mastic, 2 ounces nard, 2 ounces goose or chicken lard, 2 ounces melted red wax or other pure binder, 1 ounce of saffron. You cook it in a vessel made of lead, put it in the mortar in which the saffron was grated, mix it and place it on the stomach.8 As in later compendia of this type, most remedies comprised mixtures of herbs, but some involved use of other naturally occurring substances as well as spiritual or quasi-magical intervention. Animal products, in the Lorsch Pharmacopoeia especially honey, were more commonly used than parts of the animals themselves. Some years later, we know that Northumbrian monks, including Bede, produced what was probably a similar book of medicine in Old English. The Old English word for a healer (Latin physicus) was laece, a term that became transformed into ‘leech.’ Bede himself may have been right that certain insects and snakes could cause harm, if not necessarily disease in the way that he describes, but he also ascribes infections to the intervention of dragons and elves who shot arrows. In c.950 King Alfred of Wessex commissioned a manual of medical treatments. A verse at the end of the second book tells us that “Bald is the owner [compiler] of this book, which he ordered Gild to write [put onto parchment].” Its recipes are drawn from Greek and Roman authors, early medieval authors such as Alexander of Tralles and otherwise unknown ‘Anglo-Saxon’ physicians. Its remedies were written in Latin and replaced some Mediterranean herbs with English ones. Treatment included charms, prayers and walks on a moonlit night, as well as the following that used animals or parts of them. The Leechbook of Bald9 In case a poisonous spider – that is the stronger one – should bite a man, cut three incisions close to and running away from it; let the blood run into a green hazel-wood spoon, then throw it away over the road so there will be no injury. Again; cut one incision on the wound, pound a plantain, lay it on; no harm will come to him. For the bite of a weaving-spider, take the lower part of æferthe and lichen from a blackthorn; dry it to powder,

8 Mastic is the aromatic resin of the mastic tree; nard is the fragrant oil of the spikenard plant. 9 I Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, ed. and trans. Thomas Oswald yne (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1865): Læce bok [I], LXVIII, XVIIII, IIII, XLV; Læce bok [III], XL.

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moisten with honey; treat the wound with that.10 For the bite of a poisonous spider: black snails fried in a hot pan and ground to powder, and pepper and betony; one is to eat that powder, and drink it and apply it. For the bite of a poisonous spider: take the lower part of mallow; apply it to the wound. again: cut five incisions, one on the bite and four around about; in silence, cast the blood with a spoon over the wagon-road. For the bite of a mad dog: mix agrimony and plantain with honey and the white of an egg; treat the wound with that. For a wound from a dog: boil burdock and groundsel in butter; anoint with that again: bruise betony; apply it to the bite. Again: beat plantain; apply it. Again: seethe two or three onions; roast them on ashes; mix with fat and honey, apply it. Again: burn a pig’s jaw to ashes; sprinkle on. Again: taken plantain root; pound it with fat; apply it to the wound so it casts out the poison. Treatment for struma (“neck ratten” or purulence in the neck): When the neck ratten first appears, smear it with gall of a beaver, or best of an ox; it is a tried remedy; in a few nights he [the sufferer] will be whole. If you would know whether it is neck purulence, take a whole earthworm, lay it on the place where the annoyance is, and wrap up fast on top with leaves – if it is neck ratten the worm turns to earth, if it is not, he [the patient] will be cured. Again; for neck ratten, take coriander and beans soaked together, and lay the mixture on; soon it removes the disease. If an adder strikes a man, wash a black snail [slug] in holy water, and give [the water] to the sick to drink. In the event that a man is a lunatic, take skin of a mere swine, or porpoise, work it into a whip, scourge the man with it, soon he will be well. Amen. A likely result of the decline in the number of trained physicians (physica) in the West after the collapse of Rome was that the role of women in everyday healthcare expanded. Most probably possessed a rudimentary knowledge of herbal remedies and first aid to respond to the needs of their households, and those with greater knowledge presumably became village healers. A few women wrote medical texts. Like monks, nuns looked after the sick. Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) practised medicine as a nun and prioress at Disibodenberg Monastery and later as abbess of Rupertsberg. Her experience helping in the monastery herbal gardens and infirmaries, and knowledge of both folk medicine and theoretical information she likely acquired from the monastery libraries 10 Æferthe cannot be identified as any substance known today.

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were combined in her nine-book compendium, which she called Subleties of the Diverse Qualities of Created Things but which has been known as Physica since it was given that name in the early sixteenth century. It included a combination of traditional medicine, folk medicine, religion and superstition, in many ways not unlike the Pharmacopoeia and Leechbook above. Just as their compilers were, Hildegard was familiar with humoural theory, but her four humours were dry, damp, foamy and cool or cold, a classification closer to that of eastern medicine than Greek. Her general principle was to identify what she believed to be the natural cause of an ailment and recommend treatment with something or things that had the opposite nature. To Hildegard, nature’s power of “greening” enabled it to heal itself. Herbs, which she regarded as a gift from God, were the most important class of ingredients in her recipes, but other plants, all classes of animals and stones and metals had their uses too. Nature provided many things, nonhuman animals among them, that could be used for the benefit of humans. Below are two examples of how birds might be used. Hildegard of Bingen, Physica, 6. Birds11 36. The Great Horned Owl. The great horned owl (huwo) is hot and has almost the same nature as the screech owl, except that this owl is stronger and more robust in its villainy; it has the habits of a thief. It knows the day, but flees it and prefers the night. It hates birds that fly in the daytime. Its flesh is injurious to a person’s eyesight. If a person who has scrofula, whether whole or ruptured, anoints himself with the fat of this bird, heated in a small dish, it will dry up.12 Other parts of this bird are not useful for medicine. 40. Woodpecker. The woodpecker (specht) is hot. It is from clear air and flies in the middle of the air. It is speedy, and it loves heat and summertime. Its food is not poisonous. But the green woodpecker is better and more robust than the other kind. The other kind is strong enough, but not as strong as the one that is green. A person who is leprous should roast the green woodpecker on the fire and eat it often; it will destroy the leprosy. Also, take the green woodpecker, throw away its head and intestines, and remove the feathers. Roast the rest of the body, then remove and save 11 S. Hildegardis Abbatissae Physica. Liber Subtilitatum Diversarum Naturarum Creaturarum, ed. J.-P. Migne. PL 197 (Paris: excudebat Migne, 1855): Liber VI, XXXVI. Huwo; XL. Specht. 12 Scrofula referred to open sores, abscesses, swellings and lesions on the neck. Most are now known to be inflamed and irritated lymph nodes caused by the bacteria that causes tuberculosis. In the later Middle Ages and long afterwards one cure was believed to be the royal touch.

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the outside skin which has been burned in the fire. Pound the rest of the body in a mortar and cook it vigorously in water, so it is in small bits. Then, remove it from the water, separate the bones from the flesh, and throw out the entrails. Pulverize the meat on a hot tile. Put this with the outside skin and some rue in the water in which the woodpecker was cooked. Add some vulture fat and a little deer tallow, and cook these together vigorously. Throwing the rest out, make an unguent from that which floats on top. Use this frequently to anoint the person’s leprosy and, no matter how strong the leprosy is, he will be healed, unless the judgement of God does not allow it, or unless his death is in the leprosy. Also, dry the woodpecker’s heart. Set it in gold and silver, as if it were a ring. When you carry it with you, gicht will go from you.13 This bird’s nature is clean, its heart simple and without any evil art. The power of its heart in pure metal sedates the diverse humours which bring forth the drops of paralysis. Other parts of the woodpecker are not useful for medicine. trans. Priscilla Throop

How many of Hildegard’s or comparable recipes were used, and if they were how frequently, is impossible to say. There are records of herbs in medical procedures and being used as supposed preventative medicines or health-giving food, and of opiates and other plant derivatives being used as sedatives, but green woodpeckers probably escaped wholesale slaughter in the twelfth century. Despite the increasing professionalisation of medicine in the High Middle Ages, recipes like those in the early medieval leechbooks were still detailed by scholars and physicians, as many of them had been by Galen and other ancient authorities. Albert the Great, however, does make it clear that many of these beliefs concerning the dog and its uses are not necessarily accepted by him (Dicitur … – “They say …”; … ut dicunt – “… so it is said”, etc.). On the other hand, if he has doubts about the listed uses of the weasel (mustela), which may have included the stoat, ferret and polecat as well as the species we call weasel, he does not tell us. Albert the Great, De Animalibus (On Animals), Bk 22, Tract. 2, Ch. 114 16: Canis (The dog) … It is said in the sixtieth book of On Animals that the flesh of the dog is warm and dry. However, the teeth of a dog hung over a person 13 Gicht referred to ailments that included those now called gout, rheumatism, arthritis, lumbago and sciatica. 14 Albertus Magnus, DA: Liber XXII, Tract. II, Cap. 1.

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with jaundice help somewhat, and it is said that those who have their teeth hung on them are not barked at by dogs. Costa ben Luca says that if someone has a dog’s heart with him he will not suffer a dog bite, and dogs that come up to him and sniff him will immediately flee from him.1515 Some also say that if the tooth of a black dog is held in the palm, dogs will not bark at the person who holds it, and this is why thieves in the night carry such a tooth with them. A woman in labour with stillborn child in the womb will be relieved of the child if she takes some dog’s milk with a little honey. The faeces of a dog also binds the stomach, especially if it is from a dog that eats bones and it was dried for twenty days in the month of July and taken before sunrise, in the quantity of an aureus, together with broth made from a decrepit cock. This treatment is also the best against quinsy and abscesses in the tonsils, because it quickly closes them, and when ground with coriander seed and smeared over the inflamed abscesses, it also cures them. 79: Mustela (The weasel) …A weasel placed over a scorpion’s bite is very beneficial. If it is salted a weasel is effective against epilepsy. Its ashes open pores and are therefore good against gout if rubbed in with vinegar. If weasel flesh is dried and drunk with rue, it is effective against the bite of all animals. If the skins of a male are treated, then written upon, and they are hung on demoniacs or people under spell or curse (incantatos), it helps somewhat. If its heel is taken from it while it is still alive and hung on a woman, she will not become pregnant as long as it is there. The use of dog faeces is mentioned by Galen, who also says it is most effective as a medicinal cleanser if the dog eats bones. Faeces of other animals was also included in concoctions that supposedly alleviated ailments. Some of them appear in Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum Maior, in which he accepted them without any indication of doubt. A more scholarly approach to medicine, anatomy (though not yet a discipline in its own right) and surgery began in the eleventh century, with Constantine the African’s translation and adaptation of Arabic medical texts previously unknown in the West.16 These Islamic scholars were heavily influenced by 15

A Christian philosopher who translated works from Greek to Arabic at the beginning of the tenth century, also known as Qustā ibn Luqā. 16 The Pantegni was a rendition of the Arabic Kitāb Kāmil aṣ-Ṣināʿa aṭ-Ṭibbiyya, “The Complete Book of the Medical Art.” Its author, Alī ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Majūsī, was known as Haly Abbas in Latin. It was largely based on Galen’s writings.

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Galen, summarizing, simplifying and collecting many of his works into medical encyclopaedias. Also from the twelfth century and seemingly unconnected with developments in Italy, from a German monastery we have a short treatise accompanied by the earliest known anatomical images in the West, representing the veins, arteries, bones, nerves, and muscles of the body according to Galen.17 Both sources reveal a new interest in anatomy. Medical knowledge thus developed in the same way and on a parallel course with natural philosophy. Having fled from Africa for uncertain reasons, Constantine taught at Salerno, which became the centre of medical knowledge, encouraged by the Sicilian court. In 1140 King Roger II established a state examination for the proficiency of those training to become physicians, and in 1240 Emperor Frederick II prescribed five years of study and a year of practical experience for a physician. The new qualified physicians charged for their services, a development which was not to everyone’s liking. Many in the Church referred to healing and medicine as “God’s gift that cannot be sold” and tales and satires complained about doctors’ exorbitant fees, but there was no going back. A form of scala medici developed in the later Middle Ages, from top to bottom (with some overlap): qualified physicians, master surgeons, craft-trained surgeons, barber-surgeons, itinerant specialists such as dentists and oculists, amateur practitioners, midwives, clergy who gave help and advice, and, finally, kin and neighbours. Only physicians had a university education, and this requirement for a medical degree meant that there were very few qualified physicians in some parts of Europe. In theory only these educated physicians could pronounce a diagnosis and prescribe treatment, because they alone understood the hidden causes of disease. Church councils issued decrees to that effect and the law courts tended to support the professionals when they took informally trained doctors to court, but rich and poor alike continued to look to a variety of sources for treatment. Barber-surgeons did most of the surgery, but usually specialized in certain simpler procedures such as bloodletting or amputation, although they were not necessarily less skilled at these than the master-surgeons. Physicians thought surgery below them, but they might supervise barber-surgeons at work. Barber-surgeons are less likely to have done research dissection of animals than master surgeons, though we know that some did, but many carried out regularly required operations on animals, such as gelding pigs. However, medieval people continued to make use of traditional healers and especially 17 The Five-Figure Series, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 13002, ff. 2v–3r. 1165, Prüfening, Germany. The manuscript is digitized in full: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/0010/bsb00104093/images/index.html?fip=193.174.98.30&seite=1&pdfseitex.

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spiritual intervention, as the canonization inquiries for prospective saints that the Church introduced in the thirteenth century reveal.18 While the medicine of the later Middle Ages was a notable advance on what had gone before in medieval Europe, there were new treatments and experiments in which animals were sacrificed for the supposed good of human patients. However, the examples below are chosen because they concern animals, not because they are typical treatments: plant-based substances still constituted by far the majority of ingredients used in lotions, ointments, and poultices, while other non-plant-based constituents included wine, water and assorted minerals. The active study of anatomia in the Middle Ages implied dissection. Galen had believed one could not adequately practice medicine without a good knowledge of anatomy, but in the second century CE, when he worked, dissection of human bodies was no longer practised (at least in public), having fallen out of use in the Hellenistic world four centuries previously. Dissection of human corpses may have occurred occasionally in various parts of Europe in the early Middle Ages, but it was not approved by either western or eastern Christian Churches, or in law. It is documented from the universities of southern Europe from the fourteenth century onwards, when it was permitted if the bodies had belonged to criminals and were buried in the appropriate way afterwards. This still meant that human bodies were not widely available. Galen had based many of his studies mainly on public dissections of the Barbary ape, the rhesus monkey and the pig, because their internal organs were thought to show a close similarity to those of humans. Pigs were readily available both in the Roman Empire and in medieval Europe. We have evidence of regular medieval pig dissections from the twelfth century onwards, notably the so-called “Salernitan Demonstrations” referred to above, in which the influence of Constantine’s Pantegni is visible. The text thought to give the earliest account of such a dissection was attributed (without any clear evidence) for many centuries to Master Copho (fl. ca. 1080–1115), the author of De mode medemdi and other works. Anatomia porci (The Dissection of the Pig)19 Since the composition of the internal members of the human body was completely unknown, it pleased the ancient doctors, especially Galen, 18 In the thirteenth century the Church began to exercise control over who became a saint by instituting enquiries into the evidence for miracles, many of which were cures of illnesses or disabilities, brought about by the candidate (often post-mortem) at the request of supplicants. 19 Johann Dryander, “Anatomia porci ex Cophonis Libro,” in Anatomiae, hoc est, corporis humani dissectionis pars prior … etc., (Cologne or Marburg: Eucharius Cervicornus, 1537). Dryander attributes the work to Copho.

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that the parts of the internal members of brute animals should be made clear through the dissection (anatomia) of brute animals. And while some brute animals, such as apes, are found to be similar to us in their external parts, none of their internal parts are found to be so similar as pigs, and therefore we have determined that dissection should be made in them. Dissection, however, is a correct division, which takes place in this way; you must place the pig upside down, which you cut through the middle of the throat, and then first you will come across the larynx,20 which is tied to the right and left by certain nerves, which are called motivi. There also come to the larynx from below certain nerves called reversivi, because after they come from the brain to the lungs, they return to the larynx, through which it is moved to produce the voice. Close to that are the glandular organs which are called the pharynges, and their swelling up is similarly called, there are also the largest glands in which the humours gather to cause tumours of the throat. At the root of the tongue arise two passages, namely, the tracheal artery, through which air passes to the lungs, and the oesophagus, through which food is sent to the stomach, and the tracheal artery is in front of the oesophagus, over which there is a certain cartilage, called the epiglottis, which is sometimes closed so as to prevent food and drink from going down through it, and at other times it is opened for air to enter and leave. The dissection proceeds ‘head to toe’, which became standard in medieval medical treatises following Constantine’s descriptions. The most basic version of the Anatomia porci, as it is now known, concerned only the neck, chest, and abdomen, but brief sections on the uterus and brain seem to have been added later, possibly by Stephen of Antioch, who stated that he was a pupil of Copho. Just from the beginning, quoted above, it can be seen that the author identified many organs of the body. The Anatomia may have been influenced by Celsus and Aristotle, but although the author must have known of Galen’s work, there are differences in conceptions of how the blood was distributed to the arteries from the heart. Unless by accident, however, Galen’s anatomy went largely unquestioned until the sixteenth century, when Andreas Vesalius (1516–64) noted that he had dissected only nonhuman animals and exposed some of his errors regarding human anatomy.

20 The Latin word for this, lingus, usually means tongue, but here must mean the vocal organ.

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Although medieval dissectors did not go to the lengths of claiming that animals were merely machines as many seventeenth-century anatomists did, their descriptions show no signs that they had any qualms about vivisection. The behaviour of a live animal during the process is hardly ever noted. Albert the Great’s research was not strictly medical, as he was motivated more by a general interest in how nature (Creation) functioned. However, he does record the reaction of a living mole when he cut into it, but only to emphasize that the tissue of the animal he experimented on could not have decayed in any way. Albert the Great, De Animalibus (On Animals), Bk 1. Tract. 2, Ch. 3.21 However, all viviparous animals have eyes, except the mole, which in Greek is called cholty. This animal, it seems, is deprived of eyes; for it sees nothing at all, and simply wanders around when it comes out of the earth. By my own experiment I have proved that the skin of its head where the eyes should be is smooth, thin and white, and entirely closed so that there is no sign of a division.22 When I carefully cut into it, I found nothing at all of the dark or the matter of eyes, but I found that the flesh there was moister than it was elsewhere. And yet the mole was so freshly caught that it was still squirming. This is one of the few occasions when Albert disputes Aristotle’s findings, as the latter had believed he had observed a flaw where the eyes had been destroyed at birth, but Albert merely substitutes one error for another, as neither of them is right: the mole does have eyes, although its eyesight is very poor.23 On the basis of his conclusion Albert relegated moles to the status of “imperfect animals”, that is, those that lack one or more of the senses or capacities possessed by the animals highest in the scala bestiae. In many treatments animals were sacrificed for the supposed good of the human patient. The English medical writer Gilbertus Anglicus had studied at Salerno and his comprehensive seven-book encyclopaedia of medical and surgical knowledge was well-known in his day. It remained so for centuries after his death. He acknowledged his debt to Roger Frugard, not to mention Hippocrates, Galen, Averroes, Avicenna and other earlier writers. Cutting open animals and placing them over a wound in a human patient is mentioned in several treatises. The conception appears to be that contact with the animal’s 21 Albertus Magnus, DA, ed. Stadler: Liber I, Tract. II, Cap. III. 22 As noted by Kitchell and Resnick in their translation (p. 98), in this sentence “I have proved” could be “I have tested”, as experimento probavi could mean either. 23 Aristotle, Historia Animalium, 491b29f.

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body warmth and living organs will help to revive the human’s; alongside the acknowledged anatomical similarities this was an admission of closeness, but not one that threatened the human position at the top of the earthly scala naturae. Gilbertus Anglicus, Compendium Medicinae (Compendium of Medicine), f. 234c24 If some portion of the intestine has escaped from a wound of the abdomen and is cut either longitudinally or transversely, while the major portion remains uninjured; if the wound has existed for some time and the exposed intestine is cold, some living animal, like a puppy (catulus), is to be killed, split longitudinally and placed over the intestine, until the latter is warmed, revived and softened by the natural heat. John of Gaddesden (c.1280–1361) was a theologian and medical scholar who wrote a work on therapeutics, Rosa medicinae. The book is full of quotations from all sorts of classical, Arabic and Jewish authors, as well as European medical writers. Despite John’s high opinion of himself and his achievements, there is not much original material in the work and some of that is not medicinal. The number of extant manuscripts, many printed, throughout Europe tells us that it was widely read. John’s treatment for variole, probably meaning smallpox by this date, involved use of animal blood, but they had to be animals with an appropriate humoural nature. John of Gaddesden, Rosa medicinae (The Rose of Medicine): Variole25 Likewise the limbs of the patient should be bound, or he should wear gloves all the time, lest he scratch himself; and he should not touch himself, because that will make an ugly pit in the skin. Then take juice of fennel and of parsley, and when this is lukewarm, soak linen cloths in it and wrap up the whole body. For this will draw the [morbific] matter to the surface and partially consume it. Or make a decoction of senna or parsley in water with lentils and dried figs, and then soak a linen sheet in it, and squeeze out the juice, and wrap up the patient. After this – but not at the beginning [of the disease] – anoint [the patient], not with oil, but with the blood of an animal which is of a warm nature, such as a chicken, 24 Gilbertus Anglicus, Compendium Medicinae (Lyons: Jacques Sacon and Vincent Portonariis, 1510). 25 John of Gaddesden, Rosa medicinae: Cap. Liber III, Varioli. The work was also known as Rosa Anglica.

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pigeon, or sheep, and afterwards let him be wrapped up in the aforementioned sheet. Do this often, but take care lest the dressings be roughly pulled off, particularly with children. Below we have an excerpt from a rare third-person account of treatments written by a German postgraduate scholar who accompanied two eminent Parisian physicians in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, Guillaume Boucher (d. 1410) and Pierre D’Ausson (d. 1409). It is a matter-of-fact record of what occurred and the results of the treatments, whether they were positive or negative. Here Boucher attends a lady with breast cancer. In the Middle Ages “cancer” was any chronic and necrotic ulcer, usually crusted over, the result of ischemia, infection or neoplasm and hence often hard, dark and evil-smelling.26 Boucher begins by telling the lady that she should put her trust in the sacraments and receive them before death: in other words, his regimen is merely to alleviate her suffering before death, as she is beyond a cure. Even for this purpose, animals may be sacrificed. Most of the treatment is herbal, but it includes the following: Secreta et consilia Carnificis et Danszon (The Secrets and Consultations of Boucher and D’Ausson)27 Then twice or three times daily, apply a chicken or hen, or the lung of a freshly killed pig or sheep. And the chicken or hen should be cut open straight along the back, and it should be fresh with its blood fresh, and with its intestines. It should be applied gently to the spot, so that she does not feel pain. And under the body of the chicken or hen, thus applied, place the following chopped green herbs, and the whole should remain in place for one hour. Testing of supposed poisonous or contaminated substances on various nonhuman animals was recommended in a number of plague tractates, including on animals who sometimes inspired affection such as dogs. Possibly the cruellest use and most wasteful of animal life was a supposed remedy for pestilence, ironically considered a cure that was gentle on the patient, as it was intended for the weaker ones:

26 Leonard Rosenman, M.D.: The Chirurgia of Roger Frugard (Xlibris, 2002), 85. 27 In Ernest Wickenheimer, “Les secrets et les conseils de maître Guilaume Boucher et de ses confrères. Contribution à l’histoire de la médicine à Paris vers 1400,” Bulletin de la societé française d’histoire de la médicine 8 (1909), 89–91.

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Theobald Loneti, Tractatus pestilentialis (Treatise on Pestilence), 328 But sometimes there will be a person of weak complexion or feeble years, as there are children, young people or a person too delicate that they could not suffer leeches or phlebotomy, then I would search out the painful place and take hens’ chicks and pluck their anus and on the anus itself I put a little well-ground salt, so that, because of the corrosion of the salt, it would attract to itself better. Then I applied the chicken’s anus to the painful place and the chicken sucked up the poison of the pestilence contained in the gland and immediately the chicken died, before one could say pater noster, and then I applied to it another chicken which died similarly, or two, or more, and shortly I applied so many that one remained alive, and then such a one was freed and [the patient] needed a regime of diet and plasters like a man coming out of a great infirmity, and in these treatments I applied to the afflicted place sometimes four chicks, sometimes six, and within a short period so many, until one or more remained alive, and then it was set free. But if all the chickens died, then he died in the same way, as in one case of thirteen who all died, and he had died similarly because it was at night and there were no more [chickens], therefore he died together with the chickens. Theobald appears to have been an experienced doctor. He wrote in the early fifteenth century, but this treatment seems to have originated in the previous century. Had the chickens absorbed the pestilence, as many physicians clearly believed they could, this would have implied some commonality between them and humans, in that they could be infected by the same disease. In the Arabic treatises on anatomy western medical practitioners discovered treatments for pathological diseases thought to result from humoural imbalance. Though they might reveal themselves externally, these diseases might also be discoverable only in an internal bodily cavity, which meant they could be treated by surgery. However, surgeons were aware of the dangers of invasive surgery, so they often recommended attempting non-surgical cures first, many of which were traditional. Teodorico Bordognoni (1205–98) joined the Dominican Order and became a bishop but continued to practise surgery and write on it. His work included some original ideas. The excerpt below concerns kidney and bladder stones and is from the third and last recension of his treatise on surgery, which appeared in c.1269. Not only was surgery risky, but 28

Theobald Loneti, “Tractatus pestilentialis,” in Pestschriften aus den ersten 150 Jahren nach Epidemie des “schwarzen Todes” 1348, 18: Pestschriften aus Frankreich, Spanien und England, ed. Karl Sudhoff, Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 17, no. 1/3 (May 1925): 53–65.

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kidney stones could not be surgically dealt with at all until they had descended to the bladder. Teodorico Bordognoni, Chirurgia (The Surgery of Theodoric), Bk 3, Ch. 44: Stones in the bladder and kidneys29 An excellent powder for breaking up the [kidney] stone: take the head, feet and whole skin of a hare, and burn them together in an earthenware pot, and pulverize them: afterwards add some salvia and millefolium, and give it to the patient with his food, or with hot wine in which saxifrage has been cooked; and put it with the aforementioned powder to strengthen the kidneys and bladder, so that they will not be injured by the great strength of the powder. … … If the pain persists and the [kidney] stones cannot be broken up, stronger medicines must be summoned up. Take therefore the blood of a he-goat, mix it in a mortar with fermented meal, and after grinding them make a poultice and apply it. The aforesaid poultice acts upon the pores and stone in the kidneys and bladder in marvellous fashion. trans. Eldridge Campbell and James Coulton

Whereas Teodorico appears to have been happy to recommend such remedies, his contemporary Gilbert the Englishman, who may not have been an operative surgeon although he had studied at Salerno, was worried that mentioning emperica (“empirical remedies”) might “demean him,” but he mentions them nonetheless. Three of the remedies in question below, for gout, involve animal parts. Gilbertus Anglicus, Compendium Medicinae (Compendium of Medicine), De arthretica passione et ejus speciebus (On the illness of gout and its types)30 Although I perhaps demean myself somewhat in making any reference to empirical remedies, yet it is well to write them in a new book, that the work may not be lacking in what the ancients have said on the subject. Accordingly, I quote the words of Torror. If you cut off the foot of a green frog and bind it upon the foot of a gouty patient for three days, he will be cured, provided you place the right foot of the frog upon the right foot 29 30

Teodorico Borgognini, The Surgery of Theodoric ca. AD 1267, Vol. 2: Books III and IV, trans. Eldridge Campbell and James Coulton (New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1960): Book III, Cap. 44. Gilbertus Anglicus, Compendium Medicinae.

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of the patient, and vice versa. Funcius, also, who wrote a book on stones, said that if a magnet was bound upon the foot of a gouty patient, he is cured. Another philosopher also declared that if you take the heel-bone of an ass and bind it upon the foot of the patient, he is cured, provided that you take the right bone for the right foot, and conversely, and he swore this was true. Torror also said that if the right foot of a turtle is placed upon the right foot of a patient suffering from the gout, and conversely, he will be cured. A century later, an English master surgeon, John Arderne, had no problem making use of remedies known to ‘non-learned’ practitioners, but the master surgeons of his era nevertheless rejected many of them. Henri de Mondeville (c.1260–1320) was no enthusiast for itinerant physicians or faith-healing: for instance, in his chapter on fistulas, he was scathing about “ignorant bucolic physicians” and people who “eschew surgical undertakings lest they affront St Eloi,” believed to be the saint who had a special power to cure fistulas.31 Arderne’s contemporary Guy de Chauliac, who wrote a Chirurgia in 1363 that remained influential for four centuries, condemned Rosa medicinae as “a faded rose that had been sent to me and which I scanned; where I had hoped to find a delicate aroma, instead I found fables from Spain, from Gilbert and from Theodoric.” Following the lead of Galen’s Book of Sects, Guy was scathing about some of those who treated injuries and illnesses, such as “warriors … who treat all wounds with magic potions, with oil, wool-fleece, and cabbage leaves” and “women and the idiots who relegated all sick persons to saints.”32 However, this is an appeal to study, to use reason and to follow authors who truly know about medicine, not a wholesale rejection of herbal, animal or mineral cures. Guy de Chauliac, Chirurgia Magna (The Major Surgery), Treatise 2, The Aposthems: Doctrine 1, Chapter 4. Edema and Other Phlegmatic Aposthems33 The fourth group of treatments attack complications, such as residual pain. Try such simple things as lanolin, wine, malva, branca ursine, oil of camomille, aloine, spica and wax. For residual induration, apply bone-marrow from cows, deer and others. 31 Rosenman, ed., The Surgery of Henri de Mondeville, Vol. 2, Ch. 3. Treatment of Fistulas, III.E. 32 Guy de Chauliac, Chirurgia Magna, A Singular Chapter: The Sects. 33 The Major Surgery of Guy de Chauliac, trans. E. Nicaise, into English Leonard D. Rosenman (Self-published, Xlibris, 2007): Tract. II, Doct. I, Ch. I4.

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Treatise 3, On Wounds: Doctrine 2, Chapter 2. Treatments for Wounds on the Face: The Eyes. … When hypopyon is cause by a blow or a nearby wound, Jesus used the mother’s milk with egg-whites and added blood taken from the undersurface of a dove’s wing.34 Also, he favoured a plaster of soft bread and wine. When more was needed he instilled an oil of ammi and rock salt, diluted with barley broth and hyssop. If more was called for, he soaked powdered arsenic in water, and used the water as an irrigant. Other medications for hypopyon; A collyrium pf blood-stone, burnt bronze, coral, pearls, gum Arabic, tragacanth, pepper, ceruse, red arsenic, sangdragon, yellow amber: all in a liquid of grouse’s blood and mother’s milk. In the recommending of remedies the work of physicians and master surgeons overlapped and both claimed to have superior knowledge to other medical practitioners. 2

Care of Domesticated Animals

Medieval veterinary practice was concerned with domestic animals, especially with animals that assisted in hunting and war. Medieval works on hunting and hawking included advice on care of hawks, horses and hounds who were out of sorts and how to cure their ailments. With the exception of a short section of Adelard of Bath’s treatise on hawking, early medieval writing concerned only injuries to the animals, but from the thirteenth century onwards more general care became a subject. A priority was the welfare of the horse, companion of nobles and essential for transport and in human warfare. There are long sections on horse and hawk care and medicinal treatment in Albert’s De Animalibus. Studies of equine physiology and health often mirrored those about humans, and the literature about each was closely linked. Many discoveries such as the circulation of the blood and new treatments developed in tandem. As with physicians, phlebotomy, ancient texts and lore, and sciences such as astrology were used by veterinarians to heal their patients, and in some cases parts or produce from one animal were used in treatment of another. The similarities in treatment of humans and horses can be seen from the excerpts below, but aside from differences due to the different characteristics (or perceived characteristics) or usages of the two species, certain treatments would not be given to any animal: then as 34 Here “Jesus” is Jesu Ali (Issa ben Ali), a Persian oculist of the tenth and eleventh centuries.

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now, if an animal was seriously ill and thought to be beyond cure, it was not given palliative treatment, and a horse would be put down. Care of animals was more than veterinary care. Most medieval people who were tasked by the nobility with training animals to respond to human requirements in different ways, as they had to in the hunt, in war and to some extent in other duties like guarding property, must have known that they would not achieve the best results by brutality and instilling fear. In the case of the riding horse and especially the warhorse, as noted in Chapter 12, the rider required a relationship of trust. Much knowledge of how to handle animals must have been passed down orally, but early medieval veterinarians also relied on a set of Classical and Byzantine Greek texts which are collectively known as the Hippiatrica, and especially that by Absyrtos, a military veterinarian in the service of Constantine I. Early medieval authors recognized the importance of the horse and their reference to its nobility hinted at a mutual respect, but they did not leave any evidence of an understanding of ‘horse language’, although it is highly likely that many of the marshals and the horsemen who had everyday contact with horses did have an awareness of it. However, the handling of animals, including horses, by people who simply wanted work out of them must have varied considerably, and as indicated by some of the learned trainers, may have been quite brutal. Shortly after Emperor Frederick II’s death (1250), Jordanes Rufus, who served the emperor and his son Konrad as miles in marestalla (an official of the second rank in the imperial stud farm), produced an outstanding work on horse breeding and veterinary treatment of horses, De medicina equorum, in which his training method, observation of symptoms, identification of cause and finding of the cure shows a strikingly modern approach. The work was translated into six vernacular languages and inspired many similar treatises.35 Jordanes Rufus, Marechaucie (Marshalcy)36 No man should get angry with a young horse, especially at the beginning, because the horse could take from this bad vices or qualities that are not 35

No manuscripts in the original language have survived, but there is a near-contemporary French translation, La marechaucie des chevaux, and many other subsequent ones. On this work and its cultural context, see Johannes Zahlten, “Die ‘Hippiatria’ des Jordanus Ruffus: Ein Beitrag zur Naturwissenschaft am Hof Kaiser Friedrichs II”, in Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 53/1 (2013), 20–52, and on Rufus’ understanding of horses, Elizabeth S. Leet, “On Equine Language: Jordanes Rufus and Thirteenth-Century Communicative Horsemanship”, in Alison Langdon, ed., Animal Languages in the Middle Ages: Representations of Interspecies Communication (Berlin: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 175–95. 36 Jordani Ruffi Calabriensis Hippiatria, ed. Girolamo Padua (Typis Seminarii Patavini, 1818): II.

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suitable. And one should also be accustomed to touching him simply on his body and legs, until he is steady, submissive, and tamed in such a manner that one can touch his body easily all over, especially the hooves in the manner of a farrier. In training Rufus emphasized persuasion (largely by touch) rather than punishment, which he noted that many humans turned to all too easily as a method of training animals. The rider has to ‘read’ the horse’s response and the horse has to understand the rider’s touch: in other words, they learn to communicate. This approach required an understanding that horses have their own ways, and the reward was cooperation that ensured the horse’s loyalty to its rider. Jordanes advised that things which a riding horse did not accept naturally should be introduced slowly and carefully: he recommended the sweetening of the bit with honey, for instance, when it was first placed in the mouth. Some bits used for control of horses on the Middle Ages would have caused the horse considerable pain and possibly injury: having listed and described four types, the author refused even to describe these: Jordanes Rufus, Marechaucie (Marshalcy)37 The first type of bit is called barred for it is made of two bars, one along the bit and the other across. It is thus designed to be lighter and more suitable than others … there is another type of bit called a caralde, and its mouthpiece has many parts; this bit is stronger and harsher than those discussed so far. Again, there are some other types of bits, which some country people use, which are horrible and rough beyond reason, for which reason I will refrain from any discussion of their sharpness and cruelty. There is no evidence that Rufus’ treatise was used much in England, but the fourteenth-century English Boke of Marshalsi also discouraged use of violence in training. Its author attributed many of the horse’s ills to its enforced service to humans, and mentioned that horses themselves knew how to manage some of the ills that might afflict them. As reinforcement to its thesis, the Boke retells 37 Le science de cheval au moyen age: Le traité d’hippiatrie de Jordanes Rufus, ed. Brigitte Prévot (Paris: Editions Klincksieck, 1992), 38–39. Prévot’s edition uses the French ms R, from the fourteenth century, expanded from the original. Rufus recommended the avoidance of painful bits, but this passage may be an addition. In most mss of Rufus’ treatise bits are discussed in (3) “On the instruction of the horse” (“De doctrina equi”).

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the tale of St Hippolyte, who supposedly lived among a herd of wild horses to escape the wrath of King Herod, the latter a suitable figure to represent ‘what not to do with horses’ as he subsequently tries to tame four of the horses by violence. The condition of the horse’s hooves was obviously of major concern in all the treatises that handled horse health, as the passage below shows. Boke of Marshalsi (The Book of Marshalcy): Different kinds of lameness in horses and various remedies for them38 How men should make a poultice for a horse’s foot. Take a libra of resin and a libra of hard pesyn, and half a libra of frankincense, and half a libra of virgin wax, and half a libra of sheep’s tallow, and a libra and a quarter of old grease [animal fat], the older the better it is. And soak the gums [the (unspecified) resin and the frankincense] and the wax in vinegar or in wine and add the tallow and the animal fat (smere), and tamp them all together. And then strain it through a cloth of thick canvas. And then lay the poultice on the horse’s foot as previously said. Lorenzo Rusio’s Hippiatria sive Marescalia was another influential fourteenthcentury treatise on horse training and medicine. It contains much the same useful information as Rufus’ treatise and a number of additions of dubious value, in this case including more on astrology, physiognomy and a supposed closeness of horses to humans. The conception of temperamental and natural closeness derived more from close association with humans as companion, especially as warhorse and riding animal, than observed anatomical or medical similarity. Lorenzo Rusio, Hippiatria sive Marescalia, 76. De dorfo quando leditur a sella (On the back when it is injured by the saddle)39 If the horse’s back swells from being pressed under the saddle, or from the bridle, or from excessive weight, because that fluid collects to heal it, it should be tamped until it begins to soften; then, under the wound, it should be pierced from below, so that the fluid may come out freely; or there should be made an opening under the said swelling or tumour: or it 38

There is no modern edition of the Boke, but see Bengt Odenstedt, ed. The Boke of Marshalsi; A 15th Century Treatise on Horsebreeding and Veterinary Medicine. (PhD thesis, Stockholm University, 1973 9). This covers about 40% of MS Harley 6398, ff. ir~58r (ca. 1450). 39 Lorenzo Rusio, Hippiatria sive Marescalia (Paris: Christianum Wechelum, 1532): Cap. LXXVI.

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may be cauterized with a red-hot iron, so that the fluids from the pressure of the saddle, the barding, or the burden of these together, dissolve. If, however, the swelling or tumour does not recede from these at the very beginning, the place is well shaved, and the aforesaid plasters are applied on it washed with soap. A letter sent in 1150 by Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny Monastery, gives evidence of the prevalence of bloodletting as a remedy, practised not only on humans but on animals. Peter had been compelled to cease the regular bloodletting he practised because of fear that it was dangerous to anyone with his illness, presumably bronchitis or laryngitis. If the information given to Peter was correct, either folk who knew nothing of medicine or local healers deemed ignorant by Peter’s associates turned to bloodletting of their animals as a remedy for certain health problems, often with dire results. Peter the Venerable, Letter to Bartholomeus of Salerno appealing for help with an infection of the throat40 I had learned from some people that bloodletting during catarrh would cause me to lose my voice entirely or to a very great extent, either permanently or for a long time. They added that if it were done, in some cases a close brush with death would not be out of the question. They also invoked the example of pack-animals who, when they suffer from a similar disease and are bled by ignorant folk, can never or only rarely escape death. Peter’s comments and Rufus’ on horse bits almost certainly do reflect reality rather than mere contempt for the common folk. Jordanes Rufus and others like him served at the courts of royalty and nobility and people of their expertise and education were not available to small landowners or peasantry. There are few medieval records of those who ‘looked after’ their animals, but this situation had not changed significantly by the eighteenth century when there was increasing condemnation of the cow-leeches who were accused of achieving nothing other than increasing the suffering of animals before they died. As in the case of medicinal material for humans, the efficacy of some of the “cures” recommended for other animals may be doubtful and the side effects 40 The Letters of Peter the Venerable. Vol. 1: Text of the Letter Collection, ed. Giles Constable (Cambridge, MS: Harvard University Press, 1967): 158a. Ad Bartholomeum medicum.

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of some of the substances used may have been detrimental to the animal’s health, but there is no doubting the concern of those who trained and made use of these animals to keep them healthy. Most later medieval hunting treatises included advice on cures for sick dogs. Edward of York, The Master of Game, 13. Of sickness of the hounds and of their corruptions41 Sometimes the hounds have a great sickness so that they are unable to piss and are lost because of it, and also when they may not scombre (excrete). Then you should take the root of a cabbage and put it in olive oil, and put it in his fundament so that you leave some of the end sticking out, so much that it may be drawn out when there is need to. And if he does not recover by this means make him an enema as men do for a man, of mallows, of beets, and of mercury, a handful of each, and of rue and of incense, and boil all these things in water and mix in bran, and pass all that water through a strainer, and then put in two drachms of agarite and of honey and of olive oil, and insert all this together into his anus and he shall scombre. Frederick II intended to include a section on diseases and how to cure hawks in his treatise, but either it is lost or he died before it was written. With the exception of Adelard of Bath’s, previous treatises on hawks had concentrated almost entirely on this aspect of them, and hawk health care continued to form a major part of subsequent treatises. Juliana Berners, The Boke of St Albans: A medicine for the podagre42 When your hawk’s feet are swollen she has the podagra: then take fresh butter and as much of olive oil and alyn and mix it together well over the fire and make from it an ointment and anoint the feet for four days and set him in the sun, and give him flesh of a rat, and if that doesn’t work set the cutting of a vine and wrap it about the swelling and let him sit upon a cold stone and anoint him with butter or fresh grease and she shall be better.

41 Edward of York, Master of Game, ed. Baillie-Grohman: XIII. 42 Juliana Berners, The Boke of St Albans, ed. Blades: First section, “The maner to speke of hawkis …”’

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Pietro de Crescenzi’s Liber ruralia commodorum included a considerable amount of veterinary advice, mostly for treatment of horses, but some, like the example below, which could be used for other animals as well. Pietro di Crescenzi, Liber ruralia commodorum (The book of rural benefits), Bk 9, 42. De lesione spine uel ligni et cura euis (Of injury caused by thorns or wood splinters, and their care)43 If it happens that at any time a thorn, or splinter of wood enters the joints of the feet, or the knees, or any part of the legs, and remains under the flesh: because something inflates the wound, or the whole leg, and especially if it touches the nerve, it causes the animal to limp. It can be cured in this way. Let the wound be shaved around it, and above it, and three heads of lizards, beaten a little, are placed on it, and bandaged with cloth. The same thing is done with the beards [feathery clusters] of the reed, and those of the plague dittany [rue], and placed on top of it: and this same thing is done with the snail, beaten with biturro (butter?) and cooked, and then placed on the spot. Which medicines, often changed, admirably draw out the wood or the thorn stuck in the flesh. And note that for each soft swelling, freshly caused, which does not happen by nature but by some blow, in the knees, or in the joints, or in any other part of the legs, the following decoction of this mixture is very valuable. Take equal parts of brancorsina wormwood, that is, the tender parts of their leaves, and pound them well with pork lard so that they are well mixed, and then bring them to the boil in some vessel, stirring constantly, and then place them on the swollen place, bind them with a cloth, and change it often. Master (Anthony) Fitzherbert wrote his Book of Husbandry right at the end of our period (1523), but operations on animals such as the trepanning described below had probably been performed earlier, although there is no telling precisely when this was first attempted. Similar cutting into human skulls is known to have been successfully performed as early as the Neolithic Era. The “little loss” Fitzherbert refers at the end does not mean there was no loss, of course, as he would have regarded the death of an animal before the time when it would normally be killed as an economic loss to the human owner, but he means the animal would die in any case without the operation and the meat on it has value.

43 Petrus de Crescentiis, Liber ruralium commodorum (Strassburg: Georg Husner, 1486): Liber nonus, [42]. De lesione …

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Anthony Fitzherbert, The Boke of Husbandry, 62. The turne, and remedy therefore44 There are beasts that will turn around when they eat their meat,45 and will not feed, and are in great jeopardy of falling into pits, ditches, or water: and it is because there is a bladder in the forehead between the brain-pan and the brains, which must be taken out, or else he shall never mend, but die at length, and this is the remedy and the greatest cure that can be made on a beast. Take that beast, and cast him down, and bind his four feet together, and with your thumb, poke the beast in the forehead, and where you find the softest place, there take a knife, and cut the skin, three or four inches on both sides between the horns and as much beneath toward the nose, and flay it [the skin], and turn it up, and pin it fast with a pin, and with a knife cut the brain-pan two inches broad and three inches long, but see the knife goes no deeper than the thickness of the bone to destroy the brain, and take away the bone, and then shall you see a bladder full of water two inches long or more; take that out, and do not damage the brain, and then let down the skin and sow it fast there as it was before, and bind a cloth two- or threefold upon his forehead, to keep it from cold and wet, for ten or twelve days. And thus have I seen many mended. But if the beast is fat, and has any reasonable [amount of] meat upon him, it is best to kill him, for then there is but little loss. And if the bladder is under the horn, it is past cure. A sheep will have the turn as well as a beast, but I have seen none mended. The operations on domestic animals described so far, albeit ultimately so that humans could make better use of them, were intended to remove discomfort or pain, but other operations, intended to make these animals more useful for their purpose as designated by humans, inflicted pain and gave no advantage to the animal. Albert the Great, De Animalibus (On Animals), Bk 8, Tract. 5, Ch. 3: On changes of habit and shape due to castration of animals46 Calves are castrated after one year, and then they increase in size and become large. If they are not castrated then but after they are full grown, they do not grow because of the castration. And the calves are castrated 44 Anthony Fitzherbert, The Book of Husbandry, ed. Walter W. Skeat (London: Tübner, 1882): 62. 45 Here “meat” means “fodder.” 46 Albertus Magnus, DA: Liber VIII, Tract. V, Cap. III.

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in this way. The calf is spreadeagled on the ground, the skin of the scrotum is cut open, and the testicles are squeezed out. The nerves of the testicles are tightly tied off, and then the testicles are removed. The roots of the nerves are raised and ashes inserted into the wound. It is better that the nerves are cauterized to stop the flow of blood. If, however, an abscess appears in that place, a testicle, ground to powder and placed in the spot is the proper cure. Now it happens that neither a castrated bull nor any other animal reproduces after it has been castrated, except the goat in the way mentioned earlier. Often, however, that which they call the carfarı is also cut from sows:47 it is the part of the womb to which the testicles are attached, and afterwards they do not conceive. But this is also sometimes performed in women and chickens. Afterwards they neither need intercourse nor give birth, and they soon become fat, as has been proved in our times in many cases. But when this must be done, they [the sows] are forbidden to eat for two days, and then they are suspended by their hind legs so that the intestines may move away from the womb. Then they cut away the thing called the anteron, which is where the male testicles are.48 There, adhering to the lower part of the womb, are the testicles of the sow and also those of almost all other animals, near the inner opening of the vulva. 3

Animal Self-Help

Jordanes Rufus emphasized that horses were capable of self-help, in other words, they had an innate knowledge of what to do in many cases when they suffered illness or injury. He based this observation on experience, but medieval scholars and bestiary compilers attributed this ability to an assortment of other animals too, including many who had very little to do with humans. Many of the examples of self-medication were fanciful, inherited from ancient authors. Peter Damian’s letter quoted above begins with an example of supposed self-help by the fox and mentions several others. Thomas of Cantimpré mentioned many more cases, and, unusually for a medieval author, gave the sources of his information.49

47 Probably the sow’s ovaries, kapria: Aristotle, Historia Animalium, 632a22. 48 Ëtron, the lower stomach: Aristotle, HA, 632a24. 49 This information was repeated by Albert the Great in his De Animalibus, Book 22, but without the sources.

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Thomas of Cantimpré, De Natura rerum (On Nature), Bk 4. De quadrupedibus (On quadrupeds)50 22. On the deer. … As Ambrose says, they seek out the herb dittany. For when they have been wounded by weapons, they eat this dittany, so that by its power they may expel the arrows. Ambrose says the same thing about goats and other beasts. In addition, when bitten by a phalangius, which belongs to the genus of spiders, they heal themselves by eating crabs. … 77. On the weasel (mustela) … When he wants to fight with a snake, he protects himself with wild rue. Hence they are said to be expert in all of the art of medicine, so that, if they find their offspring dead, they revive them naturally by means of an herb. They chase after rats and snakes. … 105. On the bear … The bear indiscriminately eats the meat and fruits of the earth or of trees because of the humidity of its body. And he climbs trees for food. But he breaks olive trees and eats their fruit, and consumes crabs or ants as medicine. However, he eats meat because it is the food of great strength. Many of the examples that scholars accepted occur in bestiaries. The second example below was cited as having been observed by no less an authority than Aristotle.51 Bestiary (Cambridge II.4.26)52 Further facts about reptiles are: By diet of fennel, snakes can cure themselves of prolonged blindness, and thus, when they feel that eyes are getting overcast, they search for the well-known remedies, nor are they disappointed in the result. The tortoise, which is nourished through entrails similar to those of a serpent, protects itself by eating marjoram when it sees a venomous creatures sneaking up to it. 4

Animals as Medical Metaphors

In medical literature, and to an extent even now, verbs of gnawing, biting or devouring were often used to describe the destructive nature of a disease. For 50 Thomas Cantimpratensis, Liber de natura rerum, 1: Text (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973): Liber IIII, De animalibus quadrupedibus, XXII. De cervis; LXXVII De mustela; CV. De urso. 51 Aristotle, HA, 9. 612a. 52 The Book of Beasts, ed. White, 188–89.

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example, both generally and in the medical treatises, the Latin verb corrodere (to gnaw) might describe the steady destruction, or, to use a similar modern analogy, the eating away, of tissue by ulcers or humours, or the sometimes positive corrosive effects of caustics or medicines. Furthermore, a number of afflictions were named after animals, and therefore associated with them. It is no surprise to find among voracious diseases one known as the wolf. Peter of Blois, Epistola XCIV (Epistle 94), to Archdeacon Joannitus53 But the Lord Chancellor, as the Hierosolyrnites also report, yielded to fate: for when the herpes of Estiomenus, which is commonly called the wolf, had seized his thigh terribly, all the instruments of the physicians were frustrated by it, and at last he was in the holy city of God in the arms of the king and in the company of the surrounding princes. Our earliest reference to a disease called ‘the wolf,’ possibly the same as that of Peter’s letter, appears in a document of Eraclius, bishop of Liège from 959 to 971, who claims that he was healed of it at the shrine of St Martin of Tours. Peter, a twelfth-century theologian, explains that the disease people called “the wolf” was herpes estiomenus, a classical term for a corrosive skin disease. The terms “herpes” and “estiomenus” came from the Greek to ‘slither like a serpent’, as the affliction seemed to creep over the skin, and ‘eating’ respectively. In his Compendium Gilbertus Anglicus also stated that “the wolf” was herpes estiomenus, but subsequently the term herpes gradually displaced lupus and the snake analogy superseded that of the wolf.54 The diseases associated with animals included three of the four forms of leprosy. In medieval Europe “leprosy” included ulcerated pruritic dermatoses, alopecia areata, lymphedema, and baldness. Leonard Rosenman, a surgeon himself, suggests that the faces of leontiasis were the only manifestations of what we call leprosy. Constantine the African’s late eleventh-century Pantegni and Viaticum established the basic scheme of four types of leprosy with their animal metaphors in Europe,55 but the term “elephantia” and its medical 53 Petri Blesensis Bathoniensis Archidiaconi Opera Omnia, Vol. 1: Epistolae, ed. I.A. Giles (Oxford: I.H. Parker, 1847): Epistola XCIV. Ad I. Archidiaconum. 54 Luke E. Demaitre, Medieval Medicine: The Art of Healing, from Head to Toe (New York: Praeger, 2013), 92–94. 55 Luke E. Demaitre, Leprosy in Premodern Medicine: A Malady of the Whole Body (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2007), 86–89. The Pantegni was Constantine’s adaptation of the tenth-century medical encyclopaedia of ʿAlī ibn al-ʾAbbās al-Majūsī, known as Haly Abbas in Latin. The Viaticum was an adaptation of Ibn al-Jazzar’s Kitab Zād al-musāfir wa-qūt al-ḥāḍir.

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meaning was certainly known in Europe before his time; for example, the late tenth-century historian Richer of Saint-Rémi wrote of the death of King Louis IV (d’Outremer) of West Frankia in 954: “After a long period of illness, his internal organs became corrupted by an excess of humours, and elephantiasis spread painfully throughout the whole of his body.”56 In his Canon of Medicine the Persian polymath Avicenna (d. 1037) said elephantia was a leg affliction and one of the signs that leprosy was developing. The name went back to Ancient Greece and had long been used both as a synonym for leprosy or to refer to another disease that caused extremities to swell.57 Roger Frugard, Practica Chirurgiae (The Practice of Surgery) 16. The varieties of leprosy and their treatments58 The excesses of four humours cause all four types of leprosy: alopecia, elephantiasis, leontiasis and psoriatiasis. Alopecia derives from phlegm and has reference to foxes. Elephantiasis is caused by sanguinous humours and has a name which refers to enlargement, indirectly relating it to the largest animal as well as to the most profuse humour, which is blood. Leontiasis derives from natural bile. The name indicates its lion-like qualities: heat refers to the hottest of the animals, the lion, and to the lion’s various colours seen in this kind of leprosy. The psoriatic leprosy comes from black bile and the name refers to the suffering caused by the intense itching which makes the victim rub and tear at his clothing as he interminably seeks relief. Medieval writers sometimes referred to the facial effects of leontiasis as ‘lionlike,’ although Roger makes no comment on these facial disfigurements.59 A link between alopecia and the fox was the Greek word for the animal, alwphx; foxes’ shedding of their winter fur in clumps was thought to be a similar phenomenon to alopecia areata, human loss of patches of hair. Roger’s explanation for the reason why one form of leprosy was called elephantia is at odds with several others: he attributes elephantia to melancholic blood, but it was usually said to be caused by an excess of black bile. The name scrofula, swelling of the glands of the neck, is derived from medieval Latin scrofulæ, “little pigs”, from scrofa, “breeding sow”, perhaps because 56 57 58

Richer of Saint-Rémi, Historia, 2.103. Richer miscalculates the length of Louis’ reign. It is still called elephantiasis nowadays. Roger Frugard, The Chirurgia of Roger Frugard, trans. Luigi Stroppiana and Dario Spallone, into English Leonard Rosenman (Self-published, Xlibris, 2002): 16. 59 The Chirurgia of Roger Frugard, 144.

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pigs were thought to be susceptible to it, or because the glands associated with the disease resembled the sow’s body or part of it. Gilbert gives a slightly different explanation. Gilbertus Anglicus, Compendium medicinae (Compendium of Medicine), “De scrophulis et glandulis. …60 Scrophulae and glandulae are hard swellings developing in the soft parts, as in the emunctory localities of the veins and arteries, particularly in the neck, armpits and groins, and sometimes in other places. They spring from the superfluities of the principal organs, which nature expels, as it were, to the emunctories and localities designed to receive this flux. Hence they are often found the cause of scabies, tinea, malum mortuum, cancer, fistula, etc., and are called glandes. Sometimes, however, a dryer matter is finely divided and falls into several minute portions, from which arise many hard and globular swellings, called scrofulae from the multiplicity of their progeny, like that of the sow (scrofa). The disease is also called morbus regius because it is cured by kings.61 The Roman physician Celsus applied the Latin word for crab, cancer, to the disease as a translation of the Hippocratic term karkinos, which also had both meanings in Greek. Thereafter cancer retained its association with the crab. In addition, by the late Middle Ages the analogy of cancer as a hungry beast was well established. Roland of Parma (fl. early-thirteenth century), author of a commentary on Roger’s work, stated that the cancer, like a crab itself, would “crawl backwards while eating the flesh.”62 Guy de Chauliac, Chirurgia Magna (The Major Surgery), Treatise 4: On ulcers, Doctrine 1. Six chapters on ulcers in simple tissues, Ch. 6: Cancerous ulcers63 Avicenna said that the name cancer has two sources: it digs in and fastens itself like a crab, and its contours and outstretched congested veins resemble a crab with its many legs. Henri [de Mondeville] added that it eats away like a crab devouring a dead fish. … 60 61

Gilbertus Anglicus, Compendium medicinae, fols 339–40. The disease was believed to be cured by thaumaturgic touch of a royal personage, most commonly the monarchs of France and England. It is not usually a fatal affliction and often goes into remission on its own. 62 Luke E. Demaitre, “Medieval Notions of Cancer: Malignancy and Metaphor”, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 72/4 (1998), 609–637 (621–24). 63 Guy de Chauliac, Chirurgia Magna: Tract. IV, Doct. I, Ch. 6.

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… Some people appease its treachery and wolfish fury with a piece of scarlet cloth, or with hen’s flesh. And for that reason, the people say that it is called ‘wolf’ because it eats a chicken every day, and if it did not get it, it would eat the person. By the end of the Middle Ages, four animals were linked with each one of the four humours. This appears to have originated in the fourteenth-century Gesta Romanorum (Deeds of the Romans) which recounts that after the Flood, in an attempt to cultivate the wild grapevine, Noah takes the blood of four animals (a lion, a lamb, a pig, and an ape) and pours it on the roots of the plant. The resulting wine, which makes Noah drunk, is sweetened by the blood of the animals. The origins of the story are very nebulous. A similar tale appears in the Midrash Tanhuma, a Late Antique collection of rabbinical material with the same animals, although the source that the Gesta Romanorum used is unclear. The Libellus de imaginibus deorum (Little Book on the Images of the Gods, c.1400) notes that the god Bacchus was depicted by the Ancients with a pig, lion and an ape at the foot of a vine, stressing the connection of these animals to drunkenness. The Compost et Calendrier des Bergers (published by Guyot Marchand in 1493 and, ten years later, translated (and adapted) into English as the Kalender of Shepeherdes, connects a humoural complexion to a type of drunkenness associated with each animal. The Kalender of the Shepeherdes64 Here follow the four complexions: The choleric is of the nature of the fire, hot and dry, naturally his eyes are small, he is covetous, full of ire, hasty and capable of brainless folly, also malicious, deceiving and subtle, and behaves as the lion that fights when he has drunk a lot, and of all colours they love grey. The sanguine has the nature of the air, hot and moist. He is large and generous, loving sports and also to be merry with laughing and singing in a frightful way and grievous as ape wine, that is to say the more he drinks the more merry he becomes and he chases after women and prefers gowns of bright colour. The phlegmatic man has nature of the water, that is cold and moist. He is thoughtful, heavy and sleepy, and full of phlegm and hasty when he is moved, and is fat in the face and is as the romney sheep: that is to say 64 The Kalendar of Shepherds: Being Devices for the Twelve Months (Compost et kalendrier des bergiers). (Wentworth Press, 2016).

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when he has drunk a lot he is most wise and understands more naturally, and he loves green colour. The melancholy is of the nature of the earth, that is dry and cold: he is false, heavy, covetous and a niggard, suspicious, malicious and a swearer and like sow wine; that is to say, when he has drunk a lot he naturally seeks nothing but sleep, and he loves gowns of black colour. The Kalender became the archetype of what we think of as an almanac, but its main purpose was to assist the reader in obtaining salvation. For this reason it included material on the seven deadly sins, and the ten commandments, with the astrological charts and regimens as secondary information. In a late-fifteenth-century manuscript now in the Bodleian Library (and in early printed Books of Hours from Paris in the 1490s), there is a depiction of Planet Man with personifications of the four humours in each corner. The humours’ respective animals follow the same scheme as that laid out in Marchand’s text; however, these books predate his work by a few years, so he cannot be their source. Notably, drunkenness is not mentioned at all. The relevant labels for each complexion and their corresponding animal in this iconographic scheme are the following (there are also labels that connect the zodiac signs and elements to each complexion, and each of the planets to an inner organ): The choleric has fire and the lion, he has a perilous bad complexion; The sanguine has the monkey and the air, he is frank and joyful; The phlegmatic has water and the sheep, he is simple and sweet with a strong tendency for the practical. 5

Epidemics among Domestic Animals and the Human Perception of Them

The medical treatises referred to above mention poisoning, infection or injury to individual humans caused by animal attacks, but probably the greatest threat posed to humans by other animals was zoonotic infection. The same applied in reverse, of course: humans could infect other animals. Medieval people noted when both were affected by pestilence simultaneously. Many medieval annals and other works refer to diseases that devastated herds and flocks of domestic animals. In addition, it has been argued that nonkilling pathogens may have inhibited demographic and economic growth in the long term much more than most epidemics, besides making a significant impact by aggravating mortality during periods of famine and epidemic. In medieval Europe people were heavily dependent on cattle for traction and fertilizer, and to a lesser extent for

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meat and dairy food. In many peasant houses cattle were stalled in a section of the same room, but they were increasingly separated from people as the period progressed. In colder regions such as Scandinavia it was certainly the later practice to stall them on a lower floor of the same structure during winter, both to protect them from the cold and to warm the floor above. In the early Middle Ages most references to virulent diseases that affected wide regions of Europe concern cattle, while fewer mention sheep or horses and only locally occurring diseases seem to have affected pigs. Whether this was because cattle were more important to people in more regions or whether they were actually more vulnerable is difficult to know. Since few pathogens are known to cause wide outbreaks of acute disease in multiple domesticated species it is probable that the mentioned cattle diseases are just that, rather than implying that they affected other species as well. Bishop Marius of Avenches, Chronica65 Anno 570. Virulent disease greatly afflicted Italy and France with a flow of the bowels and variola, and beef animals died especially through the aforementioned places. This is a very terse entry but it tells us that the disease was very widespread and appears to say that a similar illness afflicted both animals and humans, although this cannot be certain. It is likely the same outbreak that is mentioned again in a much later work of the late 830s by Agnellus of Ravenna, Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis as “a pestilence of oxen,” to which is added “and destruction everywhere.” In this era variola, the Latin word used by Marius, did not necessarily mean smallpox, as it is normally interpreted to mean in the late medieval treatises on surgery. There are a series of entries in chronicles and annals of the British Isles referring to a plague that afflicted both cattle and humans in 986–87. The first is Welsh, the second and third English, and the remainder Irish. Brut y Tywysogion (Chronicle of the Princes), year 98666 And then, a mortality took place among all the cattle over the whole island of Britain. 65

Marius of Avranches, “Marii Episcopi Aventicensis, Chronica CCCCLV–DLXXXI.” In MGH AA 11, Chronicorum Minorum 2, Saec. IV,V,VI,VII, ed. Theodore Mommsen, 227–39 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1894): Anno. 570. 66 Brut y Tywysogion / The Chronicle of the Princes of Wales, trans. John Williams ab Ithel (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1850): CMLXXXVI.

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Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Peterborough ms E), year 98667 and here the great pestilence among cattle first came to England. Florence of Worcester, Chronicon ex Chronicas, [AD 987]68 In this year two plagues unknown to English people in past generations, namely, a fever of humans and a pestilence of animals, which in English is called ‘shit’ (scitta) but in Latin can be called the ‘flux of the bowels,’ have systematically afflicted the whole of England, affecting people with great destruction and widely consuming the animals, raging indescribably in all parts of England. Annals of Ulster, year 98769 A great outbreak of St Vitus’ Dance, and it caused death to a large number of people and cattle among the Saxons and Welsh and Irish. Annals of Tigernach, year 98770 A (manifest) colic in the east of Ireland caused by demons, which inflicted a slaughter on people, and they were clearly before men’s eyes. T987.2 The beginning of a great murrain, to wit, the unknown maelgarb, came for the first. time. Chronicon Scotorum, an. 98771 A sickness caused by sorcery inflicted by demons in the east of Ireland, which caused death among the people, and they used to be plainly to be seen in people’s eyes. … The beginning of the cattle-plague i.e. the maelgarb, such as had not occurred before.

67 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Vol 1: Original Texts, ed. Thorpe: anno CMLXXXVI. 68 [John of Worcester], Florentii Wigorniensis monachi chronicon ex chronicis. Vol. 1, ed. Benjamin Thorpe (London: Sumptibus Societatis, 1848–9): [AD 987]. 69 Annals of Ulster (to A.D. 1131), ed. and trans. Seán Mac Airt and Gearóid Mac Niocaill (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1983): anno CMLXXXVII. 70 “Annals of Tigernach,” ed. and trans. Whitley Stokes, Revue Celtique 16 (1895), 374–419: K. vii. [Annal 987.1]. 71 Chronicon Scotorum: A Chronicle of Irish Affairs, from the earliest times to A.D. 1135, with a supplement containing the events from 1141 to 1150, ed. and trans. William M. Hennessy (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1866): Kal. [987].

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The speed and breadth of the spread suggests that the pathogen was transmitted between vulnerable species rather than mainly soil-borne or arthropod. If it “came to England” as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports, and spread westwards, the implication is that it was also in north-western Europe. However, we have records of concurrent cattle and human mortalities on the mainland, for north Germany, only two years later. Sheep grew in economic importance and consequently in numbers during the High Middle Ages, and they are often mentioned as suffering alongside cattle. Herds and flocks seem to have grown in size. English chronicles mention nine murrains between the mid-eleventh century and the beginning of the fourteenth, four general and five affecting specifically sheep, but they seem to have had no lasting effect on the economy or animal populations. However, the onset of what we now call the Little Ice Age in the early fourteenth century heralded a series of calamities for both human and nonhuman animals, culminating, for humans, in the Black Death that first arrived in Europe in 1347 and killed millions of people within the next four years.72 Prior to that bad weather had resulted in the Great Famine of 1316–1321. In the 1320s there were years of excessive rain and years of drought. In 1319–1321 there were major sheep and cattle murrains that devastated flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, which inflicted as great or a greater proportion of losses amongst their species as the Black Death did among humans. The word murrain, much like the word pestilence, did not refer to a specific disease but rather was an umbrella term for what are now recognized as a number of different diseases with high morbidity and mortality, such as rinderpest, erysipelas, foot-and-mouth disease, anthrax, and streptococcus infections. Some of these livestock diseases could also affect humans. All these events weakened the population of Europe before the arrival of the Black Death. This catastrophe produced an explosion of plague treatises debating its causes and recommending treatments. Among the matters discussed were whether human and nonhuman animals were susceptible to the same diseases and whether they could infect one another. As the plague swept through Europe, there was a re-occurrence of widespread disease amongst domestic animals. This led to discussion of why sometimes human and nonhuman animal diseases occurred simultaneously and sometimes not. Some observers certainly believed that the same disease affected both humans and other species, even if their evidence is suspect: 72

This plague came in three forms: the bubonic form, the pneumonic form, and the septicaemic form, which had different symptoms but all resulted in death.

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Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, Giornata prima (The first day): Introduction73 I have to report an extraordinary thing – if it had not been seen by many men’s eyes including my own, I would scarcely have dared to believe it, much less set it down in writing, even if I had heard it from a credible witness. I say, then, that so effective was the nature of this pestilence in spreading from one person to another, that not only did it pass from man to man, but it often visibly did much more: if an object had belonged to a man who had been sick with the plague or who had died from it, and if an animal quite outside the human species touched that object, not only was this animal affected with the plague, but in a very brief space of time the sickness killed it. My own eyes (as already mentioned) witnessed this horror one day, among others. The rags of a poor man, who had died of the plague, were cast out into the public street. Two hogs came up to them and having first, in their usual way, rooted among the rags with their snouts, they took them in their mouths and tossed them about their jaws. After a few moments, twisting around and around, as if they had taken poison, they both fell down dead on the rags with which they had so disastrously meddled. trans. John Payne, adapted for modern readers by Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin

Shortly before this Boccaccio mentioned that “the death-dealing pestilence” had perhaps arrived “through the operation of the heavenly bodies or through our own iniquitous dealings.” During the plague era there was a widespread view that the origin of the diseases was astrological and that the element of air might be corrupted by conjunctions of celestial bodies and affected by the “forms” or images in the heavens: the corruption subsequently would pass into the earth or water. Abnormal events in nature had long been seen as signs of impending disaster, and the ultimate reason as God’s displeasure. But even if the origins were celestial, increasingly in the later Middle Ages many scholars attempted to identify causes or catalysts of disease closer to home as well. One of the earliest plague tractates was written by the Catalan Jacme d’Agramont during 1348.74 Following Avicenna, as almost all European plague-tract writers would in this respect, Jacme identifies the main cause of plague as 73 Il Decameron di Giovanni Boccaccio, Vol. 1, ed. M. Colombo and P. Dal Rio (Florence: David Passigli, 1841–44): Giornata prima. 74 Regiment de preservació de pestilència (1348), ed. Joan Veny (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 2015), and her earlier Regiment de preservació de pestilència de Jacme

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corruption of the air, citing Albert of Cologne on the catastrophic consequences of a conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn. As a source of the Black Death this conception of astrological causation would be elaborated and repeated in numerous tractates, according to which a conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars in the sign of Aquarius on March 20, 1345 was the root of the disaster. In his first “Article” Jacme defines “pestilence” as “an unnatural change of air in its qualities or in its substance,” and says times of maladies that cause great mortality may be called “epidemia” or “pestilence.” He argues that it is spread by three methods: spread through the air (continguity), transport of foodstuffs from one region to another, and wind carrying corrupted air to new districts.75 Animals believed to be generated from putrefaction are associated with change in the atmosphere liable to cause illness in humans, “as we see when in summer, with rain, there is a shower of frogs and toads and other living things from the air.” Jacme claims that in some islands of Ireland no poisonous beast can live, no people can die of venom or poison, and corpses do not decay because the air is so pure. In his opinion, humans were especially vulnerable to disease because of their consumption of other possibly diseased animals: in other words, because of their superior position at the summit of the food chain. At the same time, this transmission implied a close similarity between humans and other animals. Where Jacme comes closest to modern conceptions of disease is in his emphasis on decomposition of organic rubbish as dangerous, especially in humid conditions.76 Jacme d’Agramont, Regiment de preservació a epidèmia o pestilència e mortaldats (Regimen for Protection from the Plague), Ch. 577 To prevent pestilence in a town one must take vigorous measures to avoid the disposal of entrails and refuse of beasts, or dead beasts, near the town. Nor should manure heaps be positioned inside the town. Nor must it be permitted that any excrement be dumped or thrown out in the d’Agramont (s. XIV). Introducció, transcripció i estudi lingüístic (Tarragona: Publicaciones de la Diputación Provincial, 1971). 75 See also the “Epistola de Maestre Jacme d. Agramont als honrats e discrets seynnors pahers e Conseyll de la ciutat de Leyda” 24 Abril 1348” (Letter to the gentlemen of the council of Lleida) in Karl Sudhoff’s Pestschriften 17/1 (1925), p. 120. 76 These factors were given even more attention by a contemporary from Moslem Granada, Ibn Khatimah (1313–1374), who elaborates upon them even more fully than Jacme and approached the modern conception of contagion while playing down the idea of the ‘wrath of God.’ 77 Regiment de preservació de pestilència (1348) [de] Jacme d’Agramont, ed. Joan Veny: Cap. V.

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streets within the town, either in daytime or night-time, nor must skins to be soaked for tanning be kept inside the town, or cattle or other beasts be killed or butchered, as has happened. From all such actions great infection of the air occurs, in Paris, in Avignon and in Lerida.78 Though animal waste or contaminated animal food might be thought a cause of pestilence, only on rare occasions were nonhuman animals blamed for carrying disease from one house to another. If both humans and other species suffered simultaneously, it was from the same cause, such as corrupted earth or air. There was a lack of knowledge about bacteria and viruses and the medical solutions recommended in the tractates were for cure of the individual. Lepers and Jews were accused by many of spreading disease deliberately and thousands were slaughtered in certain regions, but such deliberative action was no doubt considered beyond the powers of “dumb animals”; they were more often mentioned as fellow victims of pestilence alongside humans than (accidental) spreaders of it, despite complaints of filth and stench in urban areas. The black rat was not held largely responsible for the spread of the Black Death until modern times, but some now think that transmission of fleas and body lice from human to human played a much bigger part in the spread of the disease than previously thought.79 On the other hand, suspicion has recently fallen on rodents as agents for spreading the often deadly sweating disease, which the sixteenth-century chronicler Richard Grafton called “this strange and unknown disease, the which at that time [1485] vexed and grieved only the realm of England in every town and village as it did diverse times after” and 78 79

Lleida was Jacme’s town of origin. He himself died of the plague in 1350. The flea was likely the main vector of the yersinia pestis pathogen, although there were possibly other vectors such as body lice, but there is controversy over whether the black rat was primary transmitter of the bubonic form of the Black Death via (rat) fleas that transfer to humans once the rats die off. In the latest overall study of the late medieval plague, John Aberth argues strongly that it was: see his The Black Death (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 20–27 and for his arguments against ‘myths’ on the nature and spread of the Black Death, 237–49. Nevertheless, there are recent studies that attribute the spread of the disease mainly to contact between humans: e.g. Katharine R. Dean, et al., “Human ectoparasites and the spread of plague in Europe during the Second Pandemic”, PNAS 115/6 (2018), 1304–1309; Nils Christian Stenseth, et al., “No evidence for persistent natural plague reservoirs in historical and modern Europe”, PNAS (June 8, 2022). On the earlier medieval European pandemic of the sixth century, over which the main controversy in recent years has been on whether it had serious long-term consequences or not, see, e.g. Merle Eisenberg and Lee Mordechai, “The Justinianic Plague: an interdisciplinary review,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 43, no.2 (2019), 156–180. There are many other recent articles on both plagues.

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then spread to Flanders and Germany, but no suspicion was cast on animals when the disease first occurred.80 The following anonymous treatise, which Karl Sudhoff believed originated from Bohemia or southern Germany, explores the causes of pestilence, during which discussion it adopts the common thesis that other animals are affected by pestilence just as humans are: they do not infect humans, but both are infected by the corrupted earth. It also includes the assertion that some animals are better able to identify the presence of putrefaction that causes plague than human physicians. In several plague treatises it was argued that humans could learn of the dangers and possible solutions, especially flight from diseased populations or districts, from other animals. ‘Collectorium minus’, (c.1406)81 The fourth question is why, at the time of the epidemic, sometimes some birds, accustomed to fly in the mountains and on high ground, come to the plain and fly close to the ground, and sometimes vice versa, which some snakes also do. To this the answer is that when the air putrefies before the earth, from the forms of the sky or images which necessarily produce that, the result of which is unknown to the physician as far as he is concerned, the birds, wishing to escape the putrefaction, accustomed to dwell in the mountains and even to fly over high ground, come to the plain and fly close to the ground. But when putrefaction is caused in the earth rather than in the air, then the birds and snakes which are wont to congregate on the plains, fleeing from the rotting of the earth, come to the mountains, so that they live there and fly to the mountains and as high as they can. And sometimes we see that birds first flee the mountains and go to the plains, and after a lapse of time return to the mountains, the reason being that sometimes putrefaction ascends to the air by occurring first and for a long time in the bowels of the earth, because air is of a finer substance and is more easily altered than the earth, and 80

Richard Grafton, A Chronicle at Large and meere History of the Affayres of Englande and Kinges of the Same, 2 vols. (London: Johnson, 1809 [1569]), 2, 160–61. On one possible identity of the Sweating Sickness, see Paul Heyman, Leopold Simons and Christel Cochez, “Were the English Sweating Sickness and the Picardy Sweat Caused by Hantaviruses?”, Viruses 6, no. 1 (2014), 151–171. Anthrax is another suspect; E. McSweegan, “Anthrax and the etiology of the English sweating sickness”, Medical Hypotheses 62 (2004), 155–157. 81 “Collectorium minus,” in Pestschriften aus den ersten 150 Jahren nach Epidemie des “schwarzen Todes” 1348, 10: Pesttraktate aus Böhmen, Schlesien und Nachbarbezirken bis zur Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts, ed. Karl Sudhoff, Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 11, no. 3 (Feb 1916), 119–38.

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afterwards, through the continuation of the alteration, decay also takes place in the earth. And therefore the epidemic begins earlier in the finer air and invades more violently than in the coarser [air], but in the coarser it lasts for a longer time.82 The idea of European writers that animals emerged from under the earth’s surface fleeing its corruption or flew from their nests signifying the onset of pestilence probably originated from Avicenna, who explained it in Book 4 of his Canon, but the reverse evacuation of birds from the mountains to the plains seems to have been a Latin invention. However, some Europeans, such as the late fifteenth-century humanist philosopher and physician Marsilio Ficino, rejected the notion altogether. His Consiglio contro la pestilenza (Advice against the Plague) of 1481 is more concerned about preventing the spread of the contagion than exploring its causes, and argued that the risk of infection from another increased the more closely one resembled them in blood, complexion or constellation, “because qualities move easily between subjects that are similar one to another, as from fire to air, air to water, water to earth, and as when two zithers or two strings are tuned to the same pitch, the movement and sound of the one finds response in the other.”83 Another late fifteenth-century treatise writer, Peter of Kottbus, insisted that there was no cross-infection between humans and “brute beasts,” citing Arnald of Villanova (c.1235–1311): Peter of Kottbus, Tractatus de Pestilencia (Tract on Pestilence)84 It sometimes comes inseparably from a higher origin, that is, from heavenly influence, so that it does not appear to us to be changed separable in the air, and of these Avicenna speaks, and the origin of these is perhaps from the forms [of the heavens] in such a way that they make nature to be that whose content is unknown, that is, to the physician, and he [Avicenna] adds later, you should know that the first distant cause of it [the pestilence] is the celestial and the nearer cause the earthly

82 From Codex III, Q.4, Breslau University Library. The codex also includes a ‘Collectorium Maius’ on the same subject. 83 Marsilio Ficino, Consiglio contro la pestilenza (Florence: Sanctum Jacopo a Ripoli, 1481), 47v. 84 Peter of Kottbus. “Tractatus de Pestilencia”, In Pestschriften aus den ersten 150 Jahren nach Epidemie des “schwarzen Todes” 1348, 12: Ausarbeitungen über die Pest vor der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts, entstanden im niederen Deutsch, ed. Karl Sudhoff. Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 11, 3, no. 4 (May 1919), 121–32.

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conditions, and about this same origin Avenazar85 says in his manual that the cause of pestilence is the will of God concerning these things, and it is said by Arnoldus in his book about the retardation of old age, that the pestilence of brutes does not pass to the rational [that is, human animals] and vice versa.86 And we see that sometimes men die and animals do not, and sometimes oxen [die] and others do not, and sometimes sheep or pigs [die] and others do not. Whereas some observed that humans might suffer more than nonhuman animals at one time and they more than humans at another, some merely commented that plagues affected humans more. They therefore sought an explanation for human vulnerability founded on a supposed difference between humans and all other animals. Primus of Görlitz, Regimen pestilenciale87 I proceed, therefore, to the subject of the treatise, because of the aforesaid documents, and because of the questions which are usually made at that time of pestilence, from the wonder at the great effects which occur at such a time; specifically let us inquire into some curious problems, first, why in such an epidemic or pestilence do men die more and less than even animals of any other species. The answer is, because the pestilential air must necessarily corrupt the humours and spirits of men, whereas the humours and spirits of other brute animals are finer and clearer, for which reason they [men] are more prone to take in the aforesaid infection of the air. The humours and spirits of brutes are more resistant for the opposite reason, and if the brutes die from such a pestilence it is therefore stronger and more virulent, and men, for the aforesaid cause, will thus die in greater number. It can be answered in another way, because something can be poisonous to individuals of one species and not to others, just as it is said that monkshood is poisonous to humans and is food for thrushes, and so it can be said in 85 Avenzoar (Ibn Zuhr), c.1090–1162, born and died in Seville. Full name Abū Marwān ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Abī al-ʿAlāʾ Zuhr, also called Abumeron. He was the foremost Islamic medical clinician of the western caliphate, author of Taysīr fī al-mudāwāt wa al-tadbīr (Practical Manual of Treatments and Diet). He was no enthusiast for Avicenna’s “speculative method”, but Peter cites both Arabic authors. 86 Arnold lived before the plague era. 87 Primus of Görlitz, “Brevis tractatus contra pestem,” Pestschriften aus den ersten 150 Jahren nach Epidemie des “schwarzen Todes” 1348: 18: Pestschriften aus Frankreich, Spanien und England, ed. Karl Sudhoff, Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 17, no. 1/3 (May 1925), 77–92.

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this sense that such contaminated air is poisonous to humans and not to other animals, as we say wherefore a fish cannot live in the air, because the fineness of the air is contrary to it, and is not proportionate to its life or complexion, but its body is proportionate to itself in order to live. The opposite is true of us, because we can live in air, but not in water. The Italian physician Saladino Ferro d’Asculi (fl. 1441–1463) gave various explanations for the supposed greater human vulnerability, saying, in effect, that the very things which made humans superior also made them more prone to disease. Nevertheless, he concurred with many others that the diverse proportions of corruption in the air, which resulted from the form of the heavens, could result in different diseases in different animal species.88 Many tractates suggested that whether humans and other animals were affected by the same disease depended on their complexions and which organs of the bodies were affected. If an animal was recognized as suffering from a disease that might infect others, such as a type of murrain, it would most likely be kept away from both other livestock and humans. This requirement was emphasized by the Roman author Columella and repeated by Vegetius, both of whose works were known in the Middle Ages. In his Book of Husbandry Master Fitzherbert recommended burial. Anthony Fitzherbert, The Book of Husbandry, 58. Diverse sicknesses of cattle, and remedies therefore, and first of murrain89 And if it fortune to fall murrain among your beasts, as God forbid, there be men enough can help them. And it comes of a rankness of blood, and appears most commonly first in the head; for his head will swell, and his eyes wax great and run with water and froth at the mouth, and then he is past remedy, and will die shortly, and will never eat after he becomes sick. Then flay him, and make a deep pit close by where he dies and cast him in, and cover him with earth, so that no dogs may come to the carrion. For as many beasts as sense the smell of that carrion are likely to be infected; and take the skin, and take it to the tanners to sell, and bring it not home, for peril that may befall. And it is common usage, and comes of great charity, to take the bare head of the same beast and put it upon a long pole, and set it in a hedge, bound fast to a stake, by the highway side,

88 Saladino Ferro, Compendium aromatariorum (Bologna: Benedictus Hectoris, 1488). 89 Fitzherbert, Book of Husbandry, ed. Skeat: 62.

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so that every man that rides or goes that way may see and know by that sign that there is sickness of cattle in the town. Nevertheless, some records from throughout the Middle Ages mention animals that had died of disease being left unburied. Whatever the disease mentioned below was, possibly the dogs suffered from the fate Fitzherbert warned of. Annales Fuldenses (Annals of Fulda), year 87890 There was terrible cattle plague in Germany, especially around the Rhine, and this was followed by many deaths. There is a certain villa in the country of Worms, not far from the palace of Ingelheim, called Walahesheim, where a remarkable thing happened. The dead animals were dragged daily from their stalls to the fields, where the village dogs, as is their wont, tore up and devoured them. One day almost all the dogs gathered together in one place and went off, so that none of them could be found afterwards either alive or dead. trans. Timothy Reuter

90 Annales Fuldenses sive Annales Regni Francorum Orientalis, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz and Friedrich Kurze (Hanover: Hahn, 1891): anno DCCCLXXVIII.

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Animals and Saints Hagiography was an important literary genre in the early Christian Church, providing both the Churches’ view of the religion’s development and inspirational legends for the whole populace. Some of the earliest hagiographical tales were of martyrs who died in the persecutions that were instituted by various Roman emperors. They might feature animals as instruments of killing, who functioned in the martyrologies largely as instruments of the devil, or occasionally God if they refused to attack. These martyr tales and their saintly victims were still important in the Middle Ages, but more important as prototypes of medieval saints’ lives were the lives of specific ecclesiastical leaders or saints who provided inspiration for other Christians. In the fourth century CE hermits chose to live in the wilderness because they believed that abandonment of worldly goods and temptations would bring them closer to God, and some eventually formed communities. These were the prototype hermits and monasteries for medieval Europe, and the hagiographic accounts of the lives and miracles of hermits, the “desert fathers,” were the main prototypes for medieval saints’ vitae (written lives). Living in the wilderness inevitably brought contact with nonhuman animals, which feature in some of the lives.1 Many of the late Antique topoi of encounters between holy men and animals continued into the Middle Ages, but some disappeared, such as the talking animals that featured especially in the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles.2 Although there were women saints from late antiquity onwards, with the exception of the Irish St Brigid they were very rarely recorded as performers of miracles and controllers of nature until the High Middle Ages, and it seems that it was generally acceptable to attribute such power only to men. 1 The “desert” here means a region that is largely unpopulated (cf. Lat. desertus), a wilderness, not a parched and largely lifeless region such as most of the Sahara. Even ‘life in the wilderness’ gives an exaggerated impression of the actual degree of isolation: see, for instance, Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom, Desert Ascetics of Egypt (Leeds: ARC Humanities Press, 2023). 2 One inspiration was the tale of Balaam’s ass (Numbers 22:21–34), apart from the serpent who misled Eve and Adam the only nonhuman animal of the Bible to talk like a human. Some of the animals appear in a positive light, some negative, especially serpents, and some adopt other human characteristics. Some are baptized. It is usually not clear whether they are allegorical or not. See Ingvild Sælid Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans: Changing attitudes to animals in Greek, Roman and early Christian ideas (London: Routledge, 2006), 250–61, and on the medieval and early modern treatment of Balaam’s ass, Bernd Roling, Physica sacra: Wunder, Naturwissenschaft und historischer Schiftsinn zwischen Mittelalter and Früher Neuzeit (Boston: Brill, 2013), 9–64. © Koninklijke Brill BV, Leiden, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004721708_012

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St Jerome named Paul of Concordia as the first of the desert fathers, but it was Anthony who inspired numerous Christians to follow in their footsteps and become hermits or form communities of monks. The first episode from Athanasius’ Life of St Anthony below occurs while Anthony resides in the tombs. The demons that often harass the saint take several threatening forms, including those of wild beasts, perhaps reminiscent of those who, as the devil’s agents (in reality with human encouragement), had mauled the martyrs.3 The demons may also represent the worldly desires that worked on the imagination, targeting the ascetic’s senses to weaken his determination to contemplate God.4 In addition visions, often menacing, may result from altered states of consciousness brought about by deprivation, and their forms and reality as perceived by the subject are culturally conditioned.5 Later in his life, having settled at the “inner mountain,” Anthony decides to grow his own food to avoid being a burden to those poor folk who bring him bread, and there he (or Athanasius) perceives the animals who hinder his cultivation simply as animals, and both his handling of them and his ability to control nature foreshadow that of many later saints. Athanasius, Βίος καὶ Πολιτεία Πατρὸς Ἀντωνίου (Vita Antonii, Life of St Anthony), 9(8) and 506 9 … But the enemy, who hates good, marvelling that after the blows he dared to return, called together his hounds and burst forth, “You see,” said he, “that neither by the spirit of lust nor by blows did we stay the man, but that he braves us, let us attack him in another fashion.” But changes 3 The Romans rarely identified the animals of the arena they used as executioners as “wild animals”, but frequently referred to them as “bestiae dentata” (“tusked or toothed animals”). Often animals had to be driven to attack the victims by use of sticks, burning brands or other painful methods. 4 This contemporary concept was based on a psychological theory that imagination is an aspect of the soul associated with the senses rather than the mind (the source of self-control), deriving from Aristotle and the Stoics. A contemporary ascetic who emphasized this strongly was Evagrius (345–99); see, e.g., Augustine M. Casiday, Evagrius Ponticus (London: Routledge, 2006). 5 See, for instance, William Wedenoja “Ritual trance and Catharsis: a pyschobiological and evolutionary perspective”, in David K. Jordan and Marc J. Schwartz, eds., Personality and the Cultural Construction of Society: Papers in Honour of Melford E. Spiro (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990), 275–307; for a general overview and guide to further works, Carol R. Ember and Christina Carolus, Altered States of Consciousness, HRAF, Explaining Human Culture (2017): https://hraf.yale.edu/ehc/assets/summaries/pdfs/altere (d-states-of-consciousness.pdf. 6 Athanasius. “Life of Anthony,” trans. H. Ellershaw, in A Select Library of the Nicene and PostNicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, vol. 4: Select Writings and Letters of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, ed. Archibald Robertson (Oxford: Christian Literature Co., 1892), 188–221: 9, 50.

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of form for evil are easy for the devil, so in the night they made such a din that the whole of that place seemed to be shaken by an earthquake, and the demons as if breaking the four walls of the dwelling seemed to enter through them, coming in the form of beasts and creeping things. And the place was on a sudden filled with the forms of lions, bears, leopards, bulls, serpents, asps, scorpions, and wolves, and each of them was moving according to his nature. The lion was roaring, wishing to attack, the bull seeming to toss with its horns, the serpent writhing but unable to approach, and the wolf as it rushed on was restrained; altogether the noises of the apparitions, with their angry ragings, were dreadful. … 50 … But after this, seeing again that people came, he cultivated a few pot-herbs, that he who came to him might have some slight solace after the labour of that hard journey. At first, however, the wild beasts in the desert, coming because of the water, often injured his seeds and husbandry. But he, gently laying hold of one of them, said to them all, “Why do you hurt me, when I hurt none of you? Depart, and in the name of the Lord come not near this spot.” And from that time forward, as though fearful of his command, they no more came near the place. trans. H. Ellershaw

St Jerome wrote his vita of Paul of Concordia in 374/5. After Paul’s death and without any solicitation from Anthony, normally wild and dangerous animals come to his aid. Presumably they are moved by God, but perhaps they are somehow aware of and influenced by the holiness of the saint in the same way as the bear of Gregory’s Dialogues and the wolves of one of the St Brigid tale related below, a tale which states this clearly. Like Bede in his exegesis of Genesis, many saw the holiness of saints as enabling a return to the prelapsarian peaceful relationship between humans and other animals in the vicinity of their abode, “because truly the return to the heavenly fatherland, from which we departed through the foolishness of transgression and the appetite for carnal pleasures, lies open to us through the discipline of heavenly knowledge and the labour of temporal afflictions.””7 Jerome, Vita Sancti Pauli primae eremitae (The Life of Paul the First Hermit)8 16. Then having wrapped up the body and carried it forth, all the while chanting hymns and psalms according to the Christian tradition, Antony 7 Bede, On Genesis, trans. Calvin Kendall), Bk 1.3.24. See also the excerpt from the same work, 1.28, in Chapter 1. 8 Hieronymus, Vita Sancti Pauli primae eremitae. PL, MPL 23, 0017–0028C: XVI.

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began to lament that he had no implement for digging the ground.  … While he turned these things over in his mind, behold, two lions from the recesses of the desert with manes flying on their necks came rushing along. At first he was horrified at the sight, but again turning his thoughts to God, he waited without alarm, as though they were doves that he saw. They came straight to the corpse of the blessed old man and there stopped, fawned upon it and lay down at its feet, roaring aloud as if to make it known that they were mourning in the only way possible to them. Then they began to paw the ground close by, and vie with one another in excavating the sand, until they dug out a place just large enough to hold a man. And immediately, as if demanding a reward for their work, pricking up their ears while they lowered their heads, they came to Antony and began to lick his hands and feet. He perceived that they were begging a blessing from him, and at once with an outburst of praise to Christ that even dumb animals felt His divinity, he said, “Lord, without whose command not a leaf drops from the tree, not a sparrow falls to the ground, grant them what you know to be best.” Then he waved his hand and bade them depart. trans. W.H. Fremantle, G. Lewis, W.G. Martley

The Dialogues of the sixth-century pope Gregory the Great, which largely concern miraculous events and works in the lives of monastic figures, had a huge influence on subsequent hagiography as he adapted the themes of the lives of the desert fathers to suit the Church and its monasteries in his own period. The dialogues are between Gregory and a deacon Peter. In this account a bear, already tame in preparation for service to the holy man when he meets it, acts as Florentius’ shepherd. There follows an act of violence born of jealousy by the other monks, and their deaths after being cursed by Florentius. It is this deed that Gregory and Peter discuss after the tale and the main point of it seems to be a warning against malediction and disobedience to the monastery. However, Florentius’ action in cursing the monks does not tally very well with the statement that he wept more for their malice than for the loss of a bear whom he called brother, and the original tale may have placed more emphasis on the power of a hermit who preferred the company of animals to that of humans, a common topos in the desert fathers’ vitae.9 Moreover, in several early medieval saints’ lives the protagonists, for instance, St Patrick, regularly curse people, even if the effects are often reversed later.

9 As suggested by Dominic Alexander, Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008), 43–46.

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Gregory the Great, Dialogi (Dialogues), Bk 3, Ch. 1510 One day, this saintly man cast himself prostrate on the floor of the chapel, begging almighty God to send him some consolation in his solitude. After finishing his prayer, he went out and found a bear standing in front of the door. The animal bowed its head to the ground and by its unusually mild and gentle actions let Florentius know that it had come to serve him. The man of God was quick to grasp its meaning. A little flock of four or five sheep had been left there and was without shepherd or watchman. So he entrusted it to the bear, saying, “Go, drive this flock to pasture and return again at noon.” The bear listened to his instructions and faithfully carried out the role of shepherd entrusted to him. This animal, by nature a devourer of sheep, curbed its native appetite and pastured them instead. On days when the man of God wished to fast, he ordered the bear to return with the sheep at mid-afternoon, otherwise at noon. All these commands the bear carried out faithfully without ever confusing the hours by returning at mid-aftemoon instead of noon or vice versa. After this marvel had been going for some time, the report of it spread throughout the entire region. But, in his envy, the ancient Enemy invariably drags evil men to their shame through the very deeds that make good men shine with glory. The monks of the monastery became envious of Florentius because he was becoming renowned through this great miracle, whereas they could boast of no miracle for their master Eutychius. So, one day, four of their number waylaid the bear and killed it. When the bear did not return at the usual hour, Florentius became suspicious. He waited till sunset, and still there was no sign of the bear. What a misfortune! In his great simplicity he called him “brother bear.” The next day, going out to see what had happened to his sheep and shepherd, he found the bear dead. A careful inquiry soon brought to light the perpetrators of the wrong. Weeping more because of the malice of the monks than over the death of the animal, he was brought to Eutychius, who tried to console him. But Florentius, distracted with grief, pronounced a curse on the monks then and there in the presence of Eutychius. “I hope to God,” he exclaimed, “that before they die they will be punished in the sight of all for killing my bear who never did them any harm.” Divine retribution followed quickly. The four monks who had killed the bear were struck with leprosy and died a horrible death. Overwhelmed 10

Gregory the Great, Dialogues, Vol. 1, ed. Adalbert de Vogüé (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1978): Liber III, Cap. 15.

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with terror at having cursed these brethren, Florentius wept for the rest of his life over the terrible fulfilment of his imprecations. He accused himself of cruelty. “In their death,” he kept repeating, “I have become a murderer.” It may be that almighty God brought this about in order to prevent Florentius from ever again presuming to hurl the weapons of malediction in a state of anger. trans. Odo John Zimmerman

The incidents related below, from Jonas’ life of the Irish monk Columbanus, who founded more than one monastery in Frankia, are tales of animal obedience that function both to emphasize the saint’s power over nature and to set an example of obedience that monks owe to their abbots, hence the reference to injuries caused by men and their consequences. The obedience of wild animals to saints has now become a hagiographical topos. There is little hint of saint-animal companionship in this vita; not only is the bear driven from her home, but later, when Columbanus and his monks are threatened by starvation, a flock of birds obligingly arrives and sits waiting to be killed and eaten as food. Jonas of Susa, Vita Columbani (The Life of St Columbán), Bk 1, 811 While the holy man was wandering through the dark woods and was carrying on his shoulder a book of the Holy Scripture, he happened to be meditating. And suddenly the thought came into his mind, to which he would prefer, to suffer injuries from men or to be exposed the rage of wild beasts. While he thought earnestly, frequently signing his forehead with the sign of the cross and praying, he decided that it was better to suffer from the ferocity of wild beasts, without any sin on their part, than from the madness of men who would lose their souls. And while he was turning this over in his mind he perceived twelve wolves approaching and standing on the right and on the left, while he was in the middle. He stood still and said: “Oh, God, come to my aid. Oh, Lord, hasten to aid me!” They came nearer and seized his clothing. As he stood firm they left him unterrified and wandered off into the woods. … At another time he withdrew from his cell and entering the wilderness by a longer road he found an immense cliff with precipitous rocky sides. There he perceived a cave in a secluded place and rocky paths difficult for men. Entering to explore its hidden recesses he found in the interior of the cave the home of a bear, and the bear itself. He ordered the beast to 11

Jonas of Susa, “Vita Columbani” In Ionae Vitae Sanctorum: Columbani, Vedastis, Iohannis, ed. Bruno Krusch (Hanover: Hahn, 1905), 1–294: Liber I, [8].

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depart and not to return to that place again. The beast mercifully went, nor did she dare to return again. The place was more or less seven miles distant from Annegray [La Voivre]. trans. George Metlake

With the exception of the Irish saints’ lives, encounters between men of God and animals almost all involve wild beasts, and of those many demonstrate control over them. By tradition St Gall (c.550–c.646) was one of the companions of St Columbanus who left Ireland for the continent. Like Columbanus, he came across a bear. The bear-saint meetings occur in mountainous areas mainly inhabited by Germanic-speaking people; as well as demonstrating the ability of saints to restore prelapsarian harmony between human and beast (usually involving subservience of beasts to men), Michel Pastoureau suggests that these tales might have been intended to undermine pagan bear cults or at least respect for the wild animal.12 St Gall’s encounter supposedly occurred when he was travelling with a deacon near Lake Constance, in the region where he became a hermit and where the monastery named after him would later be founded. Here the tale is told in a ninth-century version of the saint’s life embellished by Walafrid Strabo. St Gall has been associated with the bear ever since this period, and some tales have the bear follow him around after the incident. Walafrid Strabo, Vita sancti Galli (Life of St Gall): Liber 1, Ch. 1113 After the prayer was ended, as the sun was going down the day came to an end, and finally, with thanksgiving, they took food; and again giving thanks to God, they lay down on the ground to rest a little. When the holy man thought that his companion was kept in a deep sleep, he got up and prostrated in front of the cross and satchel [of relics] and poured out devout prayers to the Lord. In the meantime, a bear had come down from the mountain: crumbs and pieces of food had fallen from the meal, and he was eyeing them warily. When the man of God saw this, he said to the wild animal: “I command you, beast, in the name of the Lord, take a log and cast it into the fire.” At whose command the monster turned around and brought a large log and cast it into the fire. But the most generous man, coming to his bag, offered a whole loaf of bread from the small store to the servant and ordered the receiver: “In the name of my Lord Jesus 12 Michel Pastoureau, L’Ours: Histoire D’un Roi Déchu (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2007), 135–36. 13 Walafrid Strabo, Vita sancti Galli / Das Leben des heiligen Gallus, trans. F. Schnoor (Stuttgart: Reclam Philipp, 2012): Liber I, Ch. XI.

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Christ, depart from this valley, you are free to roam the mountains and hills as you wish as long as you injure no man or cattle here.” The deacon who had been asleep while these things were going on observed what the man beloved of God did with the beast, and rising up, he prostrated himself at his feet, and said: “Now I know indeed that the Lord is with you, because the beasts of the wilderness obey you,” but he said to him. “Take heed that you do not say this to anyone until you see the glory of God.” In several vitae a large hunted animal is protected by a holy hermit from hunters who are important noblemen or kings. Excerpts from two closely comparable examples are given below. The animal acts as a medium through which the hunter is confronted by the hermit and caused to amend his arrogant and oppressive behaviour, and, perhaps more importantly for the monastic writer, recognises land which the holy man occupies as belonging to the Church. In most of these tales the animals become docile once they meet the saint and obey him or her, sometimes acting as assistants thereafter. Some of the animals appear to have magical qualities, which suggests folkloric influence or origin, and a few seem to be otherworldly creatures, including, perhaps, the bull (bison?) protected by Carilef. Like Farne Island when St Cuthbert went there and the valley St Godric of Finchale chose to inhabit (below), the land on which Carilef and his companion settled is inhospitable before their arrival, and the ruin they inhabit overgrown with brambles and thorns and infested with snakes. By comparison, Illtud’s chosen place in the wilderness is idyllic. Siviard, Vita Carileffi abbatis Anisolensis (Life of Carilef, abbot of Anisole), 6–714 For in the same wilderness there was a bull of wondrous size and ferocity who was called woody, which they commonly call buffalo to distinguish it from the ox. He was accustomed to come to the holy man of God Carilef every day, setting aside his ferocity, and came to him with his head bowed, as if requesting a blessing, standing motionless until he felt his hands. The servant of God stroked his head and neck, and obtained a sense of foreboding, saying to his brothers: This bull presages that a powerful man will come to us with great indignation, but compelled by the dispensation of God, he will depart with all meekness. And later so it proved.

14 Siviard, “Vita Carileffi abbatis Anisolensis,” in Passiones Vitaeque Sanctorum Aevi Merovingici, ed. Bruno Krusch (Hanover: Hahn, 1896), 386–94: [6]–[7].

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At the same time, the king of the Franks named Childebert, who had the strongest body of most impressive form, arrived in the city in the lands of Maine, spending some time there. He was told about the size and ferocity of the aforesaid buffalo, who not only could not be taken, but flew from the eyes of any who beheld it as if a bird in flight. This very cunning king, on hearing this, entered the wilderness with all his hunting equipment, skilfully inquiring where the buffalo was hiding. At the noise of which, that is, the sound of the trumpet, the barking of dogs and the shouts of men, the beast was startled, fleeing to the holy man of God Carilef, as it were to a haven of refuge, trembling and panting, his eyes glancing hither and thither. The hunters, pursuing him, quickly found him standing quivering behind the servant of Christ. They, being struck with fear, did not dare to come near but immediately returned to the king as fast as they could. They told him with great alarm what they had seen. The king, upon hearing this, in a fury ordered those who had seen him that he should be taken there. When they arrived there and showed him the servant of the Lord and the buffalo standing behind him, the king, being angry, said to him: “Who are you men, and from where did you come here, or by whose authority do you dwell here and presume to disrupt the royal hunt?” Then Carilef, the priest of the Lord, not forgetting the precepts of the Lord, who said: “By your endurance you will gain your souls,”15 with all humility, hastening to the king, said to him: “We, oh lord king, have come from Aquitania to sojourn in these parts so that we may deserve to be made worthy of the heavenly country, renouncing the riches of everyday life so that we may be able to attain to the glory of eternal life.” In the tales of both Carilef and Illtud, the kings, Meirchon and (dubiously) Childebert, are bad-tempered and overbearing, but are offered water that miraculously turns into wine,16 a catalyst for their recognition of the saint’s holiness and the granting of the land around the hermitage. Both are thus foundation stories for the monasteries of the hermits. However, as we see below, especially Illtud’s vita emphasizes the aspect of ‘taming the wild,’ the deer he protects becoming a draught animal and the angel suggesting that the

15 16

Luke 21.19. Recalling the miracle of John 2:1–11. In Vita Sancti IItuti a miraculous number of fish is also caught for the king and his retinue, recalling Luke 5.1–11 and John 21.1–14.

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land should be cultivated rather than an abode for animals that contribute nothing (that is, are useless to humans) other than as quarry in hunts. Vita Sancti Iltuti (The life of St Illtud), 8–917 When King Meirchion, named the Wild, was hunting one day, he set his hounds on a stag. Roused, it ran onwards in flight until it entered the cell of Saint Illtud, as if seeking sanctuary with him in the way that men do. After going in, it lay down tamed at the feet of the astonished man, wearied because of the dogs and full of fear. The barking dogs, however, were waiting outside for it to come out, but then ceased from their barking. The king, having heard the last bark, followed their trail, greatly wondering at the sudden end to the barking. Catching up with them, when he arrived at the hermitage, he saw the hounds quietened and the stag, and, what was more marvellous, that having been a wild animal it had become tame and domestic. He was very angry with the resident, because he had occupied the waste without his permission, which in his opinion was more suited for hunting. He began to demand the stag, but that which was demanded St Illtud was not prepared to give up, although he allowed him to enter if he would agree to it. He (the king), full of respect on observing the very great piety of the most blessed man and such great wonders performed before him in person, though angry, did not go in, but instead granted him the gift already presented by heaven, which he gratefully accepted. The same stag, tamed by Saint Illtud, pulled carts, and in the vehicles wood for building. … After the wonderful drinking the aforesaid king slept in sleep; as he was sleeping an angel came from heaven, reprimanding and rebuking. The angel admonished him, saying, ‘Until now you have been a mad and very wicked king, and you are still. So I advise you: reform your ways, and do not delay your correction. You would prefer that useless beasts should dwell here than worshippers of God, who ought to occupy it. Do not forbid them, but permit them to remain to cultivate this destined and donated place. In the mid-eighth century an East Anglian monk, Felix, wrote a life of the Mercian saint Guthlac (674–715 CE), who had lived as hermit on an island in the marshes around Crowland in Lincolnshire. Guthlac’s cult was very popular 17 “Vita sancti Iltuti,” in Lives of the Cambro British Saints, ed. W.J. Rees (London: Longman, 1853), 158–82: [8]–[9].

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and survived the Norman Conquest of England. According to Felix, Guthlac had been a fierce warrior in the borderlands between Mercia and the British (Welsh) before he became a holy man. Having taken up residence in the marshes, he was attacked by apparitions of beasts, an episode similar to the one in the Life of St Anthony, undoubtedly familiar to Felix. Having told us how Guthlac resisted demons and dismissed apparitions, Felix relates several episodes involving real animals, this time reminiscent of incidents in Bede’s vita of St Cuthbert, which Felix certainly knew as some of his sentences are taken directly from it. In the example below Felix emphasizes that the swallows obey the saint, but they understand his wishes and they act to mutual benefit. The barrier that the Fall had caused between human and nature, God’s creation, is removed and human dominion over it is restored through the saint’s piety and purity. Guthlac’s tie with God and nature enables him to persuade the birds to become members of the Christian community without coercion or teaching. The animals, as nature’s representatives, seem to have an innate knowledge of correct behaviour within them, but one that only someone of Guthlac’s holiness can bring out. Felix, Vita Sancti Guthlaci (Life of St Guthlac), 39. Qualiter hirundines imperiis obtemperabant (How the swallows obeyed his commands)18 For it happened that on a certain day, while a venerable man named Wilfrid, who had long been bound by the bonds of spiritual friendship to Guthlac the man of God, was talking with him as was his custom, by chance two swallows suddenly entered his house: showing every sign of great joy, they opened their beaks and sang a song from their supple throats, as though they had arrived at their accustomed abode; without any hesitation they settled on the shoulders of the man of God Guthlac, and then chirping their little songs they settled on his arms, his knees, and his breast. Wilfrid was indeed amazed and, begging permission to speak, he began to ask how birds from the wild solitudes, unused to the approach of human beings, had the confidence to come near him. St Guthlac answered him and said: “Have you not read how if a man is joined to God in purity of spirit, all things are united to him in God? and he who refuses to be acknowledged by men seeks the recognition of wild beasts and the visitations of angels; for he who is often visited by men cannot often be visited by angels.” Then, taking a certain basket he placed one straw in it; and when the birds perceived this, as though they had been instructed by a familiar sign, they began to build a nest in it. And after about an hour had passed, when they had gathered together odds and 18 Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956): XXXIX.

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ends and established a nest, St Guthlac then placed the basket under the eaves of the dwelling in which he was sitting; and there the birds began to settle, having, as it were, acquired their own place of residence; but they did not presume to choose a nesting-place without the permission of the man of God; and each year they came and sought from the man of God a sign to tell them where they were to dwell. trans. Bertram Colgrave

Cuthbert’s (c.635–687) popularity as a saint, originally in Northumbria but later throughout England, survived both Viking settlement and Norman conquest. Having been prior of Melrose and then Lindisfarne monasteries, Cuthbert subsequently became a hermit on Inner Farne. He was finally prevailed upon to become bishop of Lindisfarne 11 years later but returned to the island after barely a year and died soon afterwards. His remains were transported to Durham to escape the Viking raids in 875. Bede, a fellow Northumbrian, wrote the first known life of the saint. In his account, through his miracles Cuthbert transforms the island from an abode of devils to a holy sanctuary with a spring. Animals appear frequently in the saint’s miracles, both in Bede’s version and the much later works of Reginald of Durham, and, like the island, they are tamed by the saint’s influence. Farne was and still is an abode of numerous birds, who feature in many of the miracles. As in the case of his slightly later contemporary Guthlac, Cuthbert and the animals can communicate without words and understand one another’s actions. Cuthbert’s forbearance, resolve and exceptional piety have enabled him to achieve unity with God and nature. In the excerpt below Bede uses animal repentance and obedience to the saint as a lesson to humans, who can gain redemption if they show the same respect for God and follow saintly example. Bede, Vita Sancti Cuthberti (The Life of St Cuthbert), Ch. 20. Quomodo corvi iniuriam quam viro Dei intulerant, precibus et munere purgaverint (How the ravens atoned for the injury which they had done to the man of God by their prayers and by a gift)19 I am here tempted to relate another miracle which he wrought in imitation of the aforesaid father St Benedict, in which the obedience and humility of birds are a warning to the perversity and pride of mankind. There were some crows which had long been accustomed to build in the island. One day the man of God saw them, whilst making their nests, pull out the thatch of the hut which he had made to entertain the brethren in, 19

Bede, “Life and Miracles of St. Cuthbert,” in Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, ed. and trans. J.A. Giles (London: J.M. Dent, 1910), 286–349.

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and carry it away to build with. He immediately stretched out his hand, and warned them to do no harm to the brethren. As they neglected his command, he said to them, “In the name of Jesus Christ, depart as speedily as possible, and do not presume to remain any longer in the place, to which you are doing harm.” He had scarcely uttered these words, when they flew away in sorrow. At the end of three days one of the two returned, and finding the man of God digging in the field, spread out its wings in a pitiable manner, and bending its head down before his feet, in a tone of humility asked pardon by the most expressive signs it could, and obtained from the reverend father permission to return. It then departed and fetched its companion; and when they had both arrived, they brought in their beaks a large piece of hog’s lard, which the man of God used to show to the brethren who visited him, and kept to grease their shoes with; testifying to them how earnestly they should strive after humility, when a dumb bird that had acted so insolently, hastened by prayers, lamentation, and presents, to obliterate the injury which it had done to man. Lastly, as a pattern of reformation to the human race, these birds remained for many years and built their nests in the island and did not dare to give annoyance to anyone. But let no one think it absurd to learn virtue from birds; for Solomon says, “Go to the ant, you sluggard, consider her ways, and be wise.”20 trans. J.A. Giles

While the cults of most saints centred around places where their tombs or relics were located, the places where hermits had lived sometimes acquired a sanctity of their own. Just as many saints themselves owed their sanctity to popular acclaim, so parts of their bodies and sometimes items they had touched or places where they had lived acquired quasi-magical properties in the same way. Cuthbert’s Farne Island was an example. According to Bede, others followed Cuthbert’s example and became hermits there, but we hear little of such people again until the twelfth century, although reading between the lines of the later miracle stories and vitae Inner Farne was obviously a holy place in the popular imagination. Around the turn of the twelfth century, when the cathedral priory of Durham became interested as part of its campaign to encourage veneration of Cuthbert, an anonymous writer and Reginald of Durham produced works on Cuthbert’s miracles and Geoffrey of Durham/Coldingham a work on Bartholomew (Gaufridi Vita Bartholomæi anachoretæ Farnensis), who followed Cuthbert’s example by becoming a hermit and miracle-worker on the 20 Proverbs 6.6.

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island. In Geoffrey’s vita, the island is constantly under threat from demons, nor has Cuthbert’s sanctity ensured that it was not subsequently contaminated by laymen who visited. Although it remains a place where wrongs are righted, it has to be cleansed again. Geoffrey describes the revived sanctuary as a form of purgatory.21 Reginald returns to the miracles of Cuthbert, who assists poor laymen and noblewomen to achieve salvation, protects sailors from danger and heals the sick. He depicts the eider ducks as exceptionally tame, but his description of conditions on the island when the birds are nesting appears more one of nature in this world than of Paradise before the Fall. Nevertheless, the island itself is a sanctuary where no violence may be done, protected, as it were, by the “law of Cuthbert,” as described in the second passage below. As we read in the first passage, from the previous chapter, animals were subject to its force, as were humans. Beyond the sanctuary where Cuthbert’s peace reigned, animals returned to wildness, but within it they were in the power of the saint. Reginald of Durham, Libellus de Admirandis Beati Cuthberti Virtutibus (The Admirable Virtues of the Blessed Cuthbert), Ch. 111. Quomodo nisus silvestris avem in Fame devoraverit, sed exire non potuit, quousque permissus sit (How the wild hawk devoured a bird in Farne, but could not escape until he was allowed to)22 There is a certain island, called Farne, situated in the middle of the sea; which, because of the ancient habitation of Saint Cuthbert, is overflowing with much virtue. There Bartholomew the Monk dwells these days, who protects solitary lives by conscientious discipline. Here he [Cuthbert] had a certain little bird, which had dwelt with him since he settled on that aforesaid island for the first time. The bird was so familiar to him and to his own people, and so domesticated, that he was accustomed to receive their food; and by daily custom always at the hour of lunch, sometimes longer, sometimes sitting, playing and eating at the 21 Dominic Alexander observes that in the works of these monks of Durham, it is upper class women who suffer humiliation to be rid of the sins to which they seem to be more susceptible than noblemen: see his Saints and Animals, 144–45. However, in Geoffrey’s vita Bartholomew criticizes the savagery of the rich, who are reputedly terrified of him when they visit him. 22 Reginaldi Monachi Dunelmensis Libellus de Admirandis Beati Cuthberti Virtutibus, ed. James Raine (London: J.B. Nichols, 1835): Cap. CXI. There is a variant on this tale, which appears to have developed independently, by Reginald’s contemporary Geoffrey of Coldingham, in his Life of Bartholomew, in which Bartholomew is the main protagonist, but empowered by Cuthbert: “Vita Sancti Bartholomaei, Farnensis” in Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, Vol. 1, ed. Thomas Arnold, Rolls Series 75 (London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1882), 295–325: XIX.

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table, busying itself as is the normal practice in nature. He cultivated this work at every season of the year without interruption, and to some it was a miracle, and to some it was a light entertaining spectacle. It happened that, on a certain day, so that he was left alone, Cuthbert, under urgent necessity, sailed with his followers to another island situated nearby, and that the bird, as if it were the keeper and the hostess of the house, was left behind at home. Whence a hawk, coming upon it, snatched it away, and with his beak and his claws he chewed it up. But not with impunity; that is to say, afterwards he used the whole day for nothing, while flying about and around and around the island, and he failed to escape. For since he had broken the peace of Blessed Cuthbert, he could nowhere come to a place of exit or peace and rest. At length he, being stricken by excessive perspiring, and thoroughly fatigued by the circuit, flew to the aid and support of the one whom he had injured. For he fled into the church, and into the corner at the side of the altar, with his head lowered, and his wings lowered, and with his body bedraggled, he trembled, as if aware of his guilt. At last the monk, on his return, discovered that his bird had been devoured, because he had found a great number of his bones at the entrance of the church, and entering the church, when he saw the one who had robbed him so confused and dishevelled, was moved to be merciful and compassionate. Whence, embracing him with his hands, he conveyed him to the place of departure from the island, and ordered him to depart in the name of Blessed Cuthbert. He soon after, as if he had suffered no harm, flew up from the ground, and was seen there no more. In which it is sufficiently shown how great is the power in the reverence of the name of Blessed Cuthbert, who so punished the wild bird, subdued it and acquitted it from the bond of guilt for invoking his name. … … The island [including its creatures] is not like this according to nature but to grace, attributable not to the origin of procreation, but to the piety and compassion of Blessed Cuthbert alone. In other words, during the time of his life, while he was living by himself on a cliff, he subdued the aforesaid birds and swimming creatures in such a way that their subservience corresponded to the kind of service he provided them, and he afforded them a place to nest on the island and designated for them certain limits to their coming and going. Hence they arrive, exactly at the appointed times, and flee from every storm of necessity or insistence of adversity, and rush back to the familiar protection of St Cuthbert. For what they received freely in their ancestors, their offspring possess and request in the heredity of the privilege of dignity. For Blessed Cuthbert afforded them such a repose of peace, that no men had hitherto presumed to violate it with impunity. This is also attested by many examples of miracles.

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In Reginald’s Life of St Godric of Finchale, as noted above, having already become a holy man, Godric eventually chooses to live his life of solitude in a wild and inhospitable place. Like St Anthony and Carilef, Godric comes across a place infested with venomous creatures. Godric’s vita includes numerous animal encounters of almost every type mentioned in previous saints’ lives. As in other saints’ lives, wolves feature strongly, but Godric establishes an unusual rapport and cohabits with snakes.23 Reginald of Durham, Libellus de Vita et Miraculis Sancti Godrici, Heremite de Finchale (The Book of the Life and Miracles of St Godric, Hermit of Finchale), Ch. 21. Qualiter in heremo conversatus sit, et quomodo serpentes edomvit et consodales pacatos habverit, et quando ei libvit illos de loco suo eiecerit (How he lived in a hermitage and how he tamed serpents and had them as his peaceful companions and how, when it pleased him, he threw them out of his place)24 So he was there for a great deal of time without any companion, devoutly serving the Lord and seeing the face of absolutely no man except on rare occasions. If that ever happened, he hastily rushed to withdraw from them and did not want to exchange words with those who came, but said nothing, humbling and abasing himself. There he made for himself a little house dug out of the dust of the earth which he covered simply with turf and, having stayed in it for a very long time, he became the companion and friend of snakes and venomous adders. For there was in the pest-filled area of that place such a great multitude of snakes that there could scarcely be any human life there. But the soldier of Christ stood invincible, unafraid against all sorts of adversaries, neither fleeing from venomous creeping things nor taking care to avoid or to fear their poisonous bites. They seemed so very tranquil and harmless to that man of God in that they offered no sign of ill-will toward him either by growling or hissing or by bites or venom. Moreover, they were available to be stroked and touched by him and, at a sign from him, they would move, slithering forward to wherever he ordered them. They would, on the other hand, immediately leap up and hiss and roar at other people who came to that place, and with malicious bites would discharge their hostile venom far and wide. … 23 Though he is not alone among saints in handling snakes, which had a particularly bad reputation. 24 Reginald of Durham. The Life and Miracles of Saint Godric, Hermit of Finchale, ed. and trans. Margaret Coombe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022): Cap. XXI. Copyright 2022 by Oxford University Press. Reproduced with permission of The Licensor through PLSclear.

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In among these groups, two huge snakes stood out above the rest. These two stuck to him far more closely than the others and rendered to him the gift of their companionship. They appeared to be quite extraordinary in the vast bulk of their bodies and, when stretched out to their fullest extent, they were of a very great length indeed … So, it is my opinion that those words of the scripture which we usually apply with praises to the man of God, Job, apply equally to him, “I was the brother of dragons, and companion of ostriches.”25 Since they did not for many years desist from this, their normal behaviour, but offered him, with the great grace of familiarity, the type of obedience that snakes give, he was unwilling to accept their service any longer because the disturbance they caused used to draw the thoughts in his head away from his purpose. Indeed, his whole mind was fixed on prayer or holy meditation and he judged it inappropriate to allow an opportunity for any obstacle which might stand in the way of this work. So one day, on going into his house and finding all that tribe there including those very large snakes, he turned to them and with an invocation in the holy name ordered them to leave his house as quickly as possible and never again to enter it, saying, “I do not wish you to live with me any longer lest, while I focus my attention on you, you divert the constancy of my mind from the sacred plan which it has put in place.” Immediately then that entire viperous tribe left and never again dared to cross the threshold of his house. trans. Margaret Coombe

According to Jocelyn of Furness, writing of a seventh-century saint and presumably using now lost vitae, even as a boy Kentigern was able to perform miracles. As in many narratives of resurrections by saints, the animal functions as a vehicle to demonstrate Kentigern’s holiness in a tale whose main purpose is probably to emphasize the value of monastic obedience. The bird may be a prop in the tale, but the Latin wording does suggest that through the power of God a beast could be given reason, at least to the extent that it enabled one form of action founded in rational thought, just as Balaam’s donkey recognised the wrong path Balaam was taking when he himself failed to see it. Besides two common vita themes, the persecution of the holy person and resurrection, the tale includes several other motifs associated with animals that are not specifically hagiographic, such as the didactic value of their actions and as evidence 25 Job 30.29.

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of the wonder of God’s creation. In addition, it includes an animal resurrection, which occurs in several vitae, often to restore a lost domestic animal. Jocelyn of Furness, Vita Kentigerni (The Life of Kentigern26), Ch. 527 Now a certain little bird, called a redbird by the common folk because of its reddish-coloured small body, was accustomed to obtaining its daily food from the hand of Servanus, the servant of God, by command of the heavenly Father, without whom not even one sparrow will fall to earth. And having accepted such intimacy, he displayed to him familiarity and tameness. Sometimes he even used to sit on his head, or his face, or his shoulders, or in his lap, accompanying him while he prayed or read, and by flapping of its wings or the sound of his wordless voice and by varying gestures, it would display its fondness for him. And sometimes the face of the man of God, overshadowed by the acts of the bird, was filled with cheerfulness, truly admiring in the small creature the great power of the Creator, through whom the mute speak and the irrational are known to enjoy reason. And because many times this bird approached or departed by the command and will of the man of God, it rebuked the lack of belief and the harshness of his students’ hearts and exposed their disobedience. And let this lesson not seem odd to anyone, seeing that God, by the voice of a mute animal accustomed to the yoke, reprimanded the foolishness of a prophet,28 and Solomon, the wisest of men, sent the sluggard to the ant so that by contemplating his labour and industry, he might rid himself of his torpor and sloth.29 And a certain holy and wise man called his religious to ponder the work of the bees, so that from their little bodies they might learn the beautiful discipline of ministry. But perhaps it will seem a wonder to some that a man so holy and righteous would take pleasure in the play or actions of a little bird. But those who have such thoughts should know that sometimes righteous men have to be softened from their own sternness so that those who go out to God in spirit are more moderate towards us at times. Even the bow must sometimes be released from its excessive tautness, so that it will not be weak and useless for shooting the arrow when the time of need 26 27 28 29

Also known as Mungo (cf. Brittonic Munghu). Jocelyn of Furness, The Life of Kentigern (Mungo), trans. Cynthia Whiddon Green. Masters Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Department of English University of Houston, 1998: Cap. V. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/Jocelyn-LifeofKentigern.asp. Referring to the tale of Balaam’s donkey in Numbers 22.28–31. Proverbs 6.6.

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comes. For birds seek to fly in the air with outstretched wings, and then once again with these same wings they descend to alight on the earth below. Therefore on a certain day when the old man entered his chapel to offer the incense of prayers to God, the boys, taking advantage of the absence of their teacher, had the freedom to engage in play with the aforementioned little bird, and while they grasped at it among themselves, attempting to tear the bird away from each other, it was killed by their hands, and its head torn from its body. This having been done, their play was turned to grief, and already they envisioned as imminent the blows of the rod which are customary as the most severe instrument of torment for boys. Having devised a plan together, they blamed this deed on the boy Kentigern, who had disassociated himself totally from this kind of game. And before the old man arrived, they showed him the dead bird and then threw it down beside him. The old man did indeed suffer grievously over the death of the bird and threatened severe vengeance on its killer. So the boys rejoiced, assuming that they had escaped and that they had turned the vengeance that was due to them against Kentigern, and that they had weakened the grace of friendship that Servanus had held toward him up to this time. After obtaining knowledge of this, Kentigern, the purest child, lifted the bird in his hands, and joining the head to the body, he made on it the sign of the cross. And raising his undefiled hands in prayer to the Lord, he said, “Lord Jesus Christ, in whose hand is the breath of all your creatures, rational and irrational, restore the breath of life to this little bird so that your blessed name will be praised forever.” The holy one uttered these words in prayer, and immediately the bird revived. And not only did it safely seek the breezes in free flight, but it also flew in its accustomed manner towards the old man who was returning from the church. The legend of Eustace, supposedly a general (unknown from other sources) in the Roman army in Trajan’s reign but martyred in the reign of his successor Hadrian, having previously undergone many tests of faith after his conversion, first appeared in Greek in the fifth to seventh centuries. It already had most of the elements that appear in the thirteenth-century French version of the tale, including a very similar story of the vision of the hart and the cross. In the French version animals make another brief appearance when a lion and a wolf each take one of Eustace’s two sons during a difficult river crossing, but the sons survive, unknown to Eustace. Many western medieval versions of the vita followed. In the fifteenth century the story of the appearance of the hart and cross was appropriated and added to the legend of St Hubert (c.656–727),

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a sixth-century Frankish noble said to have been obsessed with hunting who converted to become a devout Christian – that is, who was himself hunted by Christ in the form of the deer just as Eustace was. Hubert later became Bishop of Liège and eliminator of many surviving pagan practices in the forested region of the Ardennes. Although the hart in these tales is a vision, the hunted animals function as intermediaries to bring about the conversions. Both saints were very popular and became patrons of hunting, somewhat ironically when their conversions reduced their (idle?) passion for hunting and replaced it with dedication to Christ. Posthumously saints were often associated with an activity or attributed powers over something that was either peripheral or had a tenuous connection to the point of their legend/s. Eustace more commonly took the role of hunting patron in southern Germany and Austria, Hubert in northern and western Germany and France. The latter was often credited with inventing the rules of ‘ethical hunting’ and had several military orders named after him. Jacobus of Voragine, Legenda Aurea (The Golden Legend); 161. Of Saint Eustace30 Eustace, who was first named Placidus, was master of the chivalry of Trajan, the emperor, and was very active in the works of mercy, but he was a worshipper of idols. And he had a wife of the same rite, who also did deeds of mercy. By her he had two sons, which he encouraged after his estate. And because he was attentive to the works of mercy, he deserved to be enlightened to the way of truth. So one day, as he was out hunting, he found a herd of harts, among whom he saw one fairer and greater than the others, which departed from the company and sprang into the thickest part of the forest. And the other knights ran after the other harts, but Placidus pursued him with all his might in an effort to take him. And when the hart saw that he followed with all his power, it finally went up on a high rock. And Placidus, approaching close to it, pondered in his mind how he might take him. And as he beheld and considered the hart diligently, he saw between his horns the form of the holy cross shining more clearly than the sun, and the image of Christ, which through the mouth of the hart, just as Balaam once had by the ass, spoke to him, saying: “Placidus, why are you following me hither? I am appearing to you in this beast for your grace – I am Jesus Christ, whom you honour ignorantly, your arms 30 Iacopo da Varazze, Legenda Aurea, ed. Giovanni Paolo Maggioni (Florence: Sismel, Edizioni del Galluzzo, 1998): [161] De sancto Eustachio.

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are lifted up before me, and therefore I come here so that by this hart that you hunt I may hunt you.” And some others say that this image of Jesus Christ which appeared between the horns of the hart said these words. And when Placidus heard that, he had great dread, and descended from his horse to the ground. And an hour later he came to himself, and arose from the ground, and said: Repeat again this that you have said, and I shall believe you. And then our Lord said: “I am Jesus Christ that formed heaven and earth, who made the light increase, and divided it from darkness, and established time, days, and hours. Who formed men of the slime of the earth, which appeared on earth in flesh for the health of the human lineage, he who was crucified, died and buried, and arose on the third day.” And when Placidus heard this, he fell down again to the earth, and said: “I believe, Lord, that you are he that made all things, and convert those who err.” And our Lord said to him: “If you believe, go to the bishop of the city and be baptized.” … And on the next morning Eustace went to hunt as he did before, and when he came near to the place he departed from his knights as if to find venison. And shortly he saw in the place the form of the first vision, and then he fell to the ground before the figure, and said: “Lord, I pray to you to let me know how to achieve that which you have promised to me your servant.” To whom our Lord said: “Eustace, you who are blessed, who has taken the washing of grace, for now you have surmounted the devil, who had deceived you, and trodden him underfoot, now your faith shall appear.” A few interactions between saints and animals in the vitae do not involve simply animal submission and saintly domination, but appear to involve some sort of obligation on both sides. One such is the Welsh life of the fifth-century saint Tathan. The wolf has to make recompense for the damage it has done, but when a servant hits the cub (now grown) donated as a shepherd the agreement has been broken and it leaves. It might be more accurate to say the spell is broken, as the shepherd-wolf turns three times before going, a motif of undoing a spell in magical lore, nor does it return. In several other tales of wolves and saints there are elements of folk tradition in which beasts make agreements or are treated as equals and behave as if humans or otherworldly beings.31

31 For instance, St Norbert of Xanten, and St Gudwal, a Breton saint whose remains were moved to Ghent.

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Vita Sancti Tathei (Life of Saint Tathan)32 The aforesaid swineherd came on a certain day to his master, the most pious Tathan, complaining a lot about the loss of his pigs. After he came, he was asked by his master why he complained, and what had happened to him; but he answered, fearing greatly in case he should be angry because of the words that he delivered; “A most cruel she-wolf has visited my herd of pigs during this week, and has taken away the young pigs of one sow; they are gone, not one of them is alive today. I followed the tracks of the ravenous wolf to its den, but was unable to protect them; so it nourishes its cubs with the flesh of pigs. I am lamenting, now assist me in my lamentation.” These things having been said, he answered the complaining words of the swineherd, saying; “Go back, faithful servant, and do not lament any more, for God will lessen the cruelty of the wolf by my prayer so that it should not do any harm like the harm it has done hitherto;” The swineherd therefore returned to his flock pleased, and on the following morning he saw the wolf coming, and holding a cub in its mouth, and letting it go, it left it a stranger at the door; and being tamed it [the she-wolf] re-entered the wood but not as a beast. The cub having been left, through the grant of divine power, suckled the deprived sow’s teats like those of its own mother. Being well fed, it grew up as a domestic dog rather than a wolf and was a guardian to the sheep in the woods. Then for the period of three years, neither beast nor thief harmed the flock, and at the end of the third year, it visited the home of its master, Tathan, as it usually did every day, and for some reason which displeased a servant, he struck the wolf on its side, and it being offended at the blow, and turning itself three times, it returned to the wood, and through anger and indignation did not come back again to the flock. And the wolf returned the young pigs to the venerable Tathan. St Edith of Wilton (c.961–984), patron saint of Wilton Abbey, was an English nun and the only daughter of Edgar, king of England (r. 959–975), and Saint Wulfthryth, who became abbess of Wilton Abbey when Edgar rejected her.33 Goscelin of Saint-Bertain, who was a monk and a member of Bishop Herman 32 “Vita Sancti Tathei,” in Vitae sanctorum Britanniae et genealogiae, ed. and trans. A.W. Wade-Evans (Cardiff: University of Wales Press Board, 1944), 270–286. The tale is related near the end of the Vita, after one about a girl murdered (martyred) by rustlers while guarding sheep, the last tale to have a heading. 33 In the Anglo-Saxon kingdom these royal monasteries functioned as guardians and educators of royal women, several of whom subsequently became queens.

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of Sherborne’s household, wrote Edith’s vita just over a century after her death, presumably based on the oral tradition at Wilton, where he had a strong friendship with the nun Eve. Edith kept a ‘menagerie’ at the abbey, stocked with ‘wild’ animals apparently captured and donated by nobles who knew her. Whether these animals were better off being ‘cared for’ by Edith than they had been in the wild is a moot point, but there is no reason to doubt that she thought she was helping them rather than imprisoning them, or that she saw them as deserving of care as part of God’s creation. No doubt their dependence on her for food having been confined to the enclosures assisted in their ‘domestication.’ Goscelin emphasizes the animals’ wildness as a way of demonstrating Edith’s sanctity, which brings power over nature similar to that of the saints described above, although they lived in the wild themselves and confronted animals there. It is not easy to distinguish what may be fact (as reported to Goscelin) from rhetoric. On the one hand the animals see Edith as a benefactor and sense her kindness, on the other ferocious animals fear her strength in faith. The stag mentioned here may well have been among the Wilton animals, and it is true that they can sometimes be dangerous to humans, and a boar in the enclosures is also a possibility, but if the bear is not simply symbolic of fierce animals, it originated from overseas. Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, Vitae Sanctae Edithae virginis (The Life of the virgin Saint Edith), 1134 She [Edith] also gathered together an innumerable household of wild animals, loving with compassion all those works of the Creator in the spirit of his love, who is kind to all things, and whose mercies are over all his works,35 who hates none of the things which he has made,36 and preserves both men and beasts,37 and fills with blessing every living creature; who is not only wonderful on high,38 in holy places and in the stars of heaven, but also in the very worms of the earth. Their courtyard 34 “La légende de Ste Édith en prose et verse par le monie Goscelin,” ed. André Wilmart, Analecta Bollandiana, 56 (1938), 265–307: IV [62]. English translation from Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber confortatorius, ed. and trans. Stephanie Hollis and others (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004). See this edition, p.42, n.81 for a variant wording in the Rawlinson text in place of a section in this passage. The excerpt is copyright 2004 by Brepols Publishers, reproduced with permission of the Licensor through Copyright Clearance Center. 35 Psalms 144.9. 36 Wisdom of Solomon 11.25. 37 Psalms 35.7. 38 Psalms 92.4.

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was attached to the wall of the monastery on the southern side, and here in its wide embrace they had their territories and their district outside the walls. The virgin of the lord, as untouched by the evils of the world as she was innocent of them, had here enclosed her exotics and natives, the gifts of the mighty, and she, the pet lamb of Christ, looked after that wild sheepfold and untamed herd with daily provisioning; to prevent the jealousy of Judas from snarling at these little enclosures,39 she was generous to the animals after attending to the Lord’s poor. The ravens fed Elijah; Benedict, you fed ravens. Edith feeds the wild beasts outdoors, and doves indoors. Certainly whenever she was at leisure she visited these guests with the mind of a recluse, the friend of the solitude of Anthony and Macarius, striving for the part of Mary.40 The blessed one fled from the uproar of the world, and mingled with the wild animals more safely than with human beings. Christ himself taught this when he spent his forty days with beasts.41 … She kept uncontaminated those eyes which she was accustomed to lift up with a pure heart to him who dwells in heaven;42 with her outer eyes she used to look now towards the heavens, wounded with love, and now upon the beasts, having sympathy with the works of the Lord, high and low, as one who strove to raise to him the hymn of the reality of all things: “O heavens, bless the Lord; bless the Lord, all beasts and cattle; bless the Lord, all works and powers of the Lord.”43 Standing within the open doorway of the enclosures, she would call by a pet name the ferocious, branching-antlered stag, He would spring forward at the well-known voice and laying aside his ferocity would accept with a gentle mouth bread from the hand of the virgin lady. The rest of the wild animals would run together for the blessing of the lady whose kindness they sensed. And by the wonderful grace of God, those animals which strongly armed men would hesitate to confront, this lone unarmed girl – so confident is innocence – delighted to receive as they ran to her, and stroke with a gentle hand. The bear and the boar rather feared than frightened her, armed as she was only with faith. We believe that this woman, under the persecution of Nero and Decius, would have been able to smile at the attacks of the wild beasts, and to tame tigers and lions, since she knew 39 40 41 42 43

John 13.29. Luke 10.42. Mark 1.13. Psalms 122.1. Daniel 3.59, 81. 57. 61.

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how to quieten their fierce souls in time of peace. But if anyone, too strict in justice, prefers to criticize rather than to praise this concern for this kind of animal as a product of her royal nature and totally pointless both in her doing it, and in our recollection, let him consider whether this offence might not be more holy than his virtues, when exalted love and holiness of life excuses and indeed adorns everything. trans. Michael Wright and Kathleen Loncar

The Irish saints’ lives are often said to be more “nature-friendly” than others, but they certainly belonged to the same tradition of those of the rest of Europe. However, particularly the early ones, before Irish society became less insulated from foreign influence, have several distinct characteristics. One of these, the frequent appearance of domestic animals as opposed to wild animals, is related to the nature of early medieval Irish society and its proliferation of small kingdoms with an economy based on household production, in which people of high birth handled domestic animals as a matter of course, not, as in the case of the other European saints, occasionally and then as a sign of humility. In Adomnán’s Life of Columba the dying saint is even mourned by a (white) workhorse.44 Animals that have characteristics possibly derived from folklore are also often domestic: for instance the “white calf with red ears” (bó find áuderg) brought by a wolf as recompense for earlier taking a calf in the Life of St Finian, may be an otherworldly animal.45 Unlike in the tales of saints who rescue wild animals from hunters, in the first tale below Columba destroys the boar, apparently merely to show his power. The most dramatic animal tale involving Columba is his defying of a monstrous water creature in the River Ness. The main point of this episode is that Columba is impressing the pagan Picts with God’s power, but in the process he seems to break a ritual prohibition on entering the water at that spot.46 Whether a monster was actually believed to exist in the waters in the seventh century or not, its defeat symbolises Columba’s triumph over false pagan belief. 44 Adamnani Vita S. Columbae, ed. William Reeves and J.T. Fowler (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894): 3.23. Warhorses, hunting horses (destriers and coursers) and perhaps amblers might be companions of the nobility in Europe, but not workhorses. 45 Vita sancti Finiani, 32. White cattle seem to have been especially valued. The law-texts also refer to the “red-eared” cattle, and Fergus Kelly suggests that they may be a distinct type: Early Irish Farming: A Study Based on the Law-Texts of the 7th and 8th Centuries (Dublin: School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, 1997), 33. 46 Dominic Alexander, Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008), 63–64. As he says, it is possible that this tale was the origin of the (in)famous monster of the Loch: in the vita it is terrifying, if not specified as large.

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Adomnán, Vita Columbae (Life of St Columba), Ch. 26, De apro per ejus orationem interempto (Of the boar slain by his prayer); Ch. 27. De cujusdam aquatilis bestiæ virtute orationis beati viri repulsione (On the repulse of a certain water beast by the power of the blessed man’s prayer)47 On one occasion when the blessed man was staying for some days on the isle of Skye, he left the brethren and went alone a little farther than usual to pray, and having entered a dense forest he met a huge wild boar that happened to be pursued by hounds. As soon as the saint saw him at some distance, he stood looking intently at him. Then, raising his holy hand and invoking the name of God in fervent prayer, he said to it, “You shall proceed no further in this direction: perish in the spot which you have now reached.” At the sound of these words of the saint in the woods, the terrible brute was not only unable to proceed farther, but by the efficacy of his word immediately fell dead in front of him. On yet another occasion, when the blessed man was residing for some days in the province of the Picts, he was obliged to cross the River Ness, and when he reached the bank of the river he saw some of the inhabitants burying an unfortunate man, who, according to the account of those who were burying him, had been seized a short time earlier as he was swimming, and bitten most severely by a monster that lived in the water; his wretched body was, albeit too late, dragged out with a hook by those who had come to his assistance in a boat. The blessed man, on hearing this, was so far from being dismayed that he instructed one of his companions to swim across to the fishing boat that was moored on the opposite bank and row it back. And Lugne Mocumin, hearing the command of the excellent man, obeyed without the least hesitation, removing all his clothes except his tunic and jumping into the water. However, the monster, which, far from being satiated, was only roused for more prey, was lying at the bottom of the river, and when it detected the disturbance in the water above caused by the man swimming, suddenly burst out, and, giving a terrible roar, darted after him with its mouth gaping open, as the man swam in the middle of the stream. Then the blessed man, observing this, raised his holy hand, while all the others, both brethren and strangers, were struck dumb with terror, and, invoking the name of God, formed the protective sign of the cross in the air, and commanded 47 Adamnani Vita S. Columbae, ed. William Reeves and J.T. Fowler (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894): Liber II, [Cap. 26], [Cap. 27]. The English translation is from Life of Saint Columba, founder of Hy. Written by Adamnan, ed and trans. William Reeves (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1874), adjusted to remove archaisms.

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the ferocious monster, saying, “You shall go no further, nor touch the man; go back with all speed.” Then, at the voice of the saint, the monster was terrified, and fled more quickly than if it had been hauled back with ropes, although it had just got so close to Lugne as he swam that there was no more than the length of a spear-shaft between the man and the beast. Then the brethren, seeing that the monster had gone back, and that their comrade Lugne returned to them safe and sound in the boat, were struck with admiration, and gave glory to God in the blessed man. And even the barbarous heathens who were present were forced by the enormity of this miracle, which they themselves had seen, to magnify the God of the Christians. trans. WILLIAM REEVES (adapted)

As observed by several scholars, in Muirchú’s life of St Patrick miracles demonstrating Patrick’s power over nature are frequent, the main concern being Patrick’s conversion of the Irish and maintenance of natural order, which to the medieval mind included social order. In the process Patrick both blesses and curses people and both people and animals drop dead after transgressing boundaries or misusing land donated to the Church. In the narrative that precedes the episode related below, both King Dáire and his horse die and are revived through the agency of Patrick and eventually the king is compelled to accept Patrick’s religion and donate him the land he wants. Apart from once again demonstrating his power over wild animals, his treatment of the deer reveals Patrick as a bringer of peace and order in place of strife and chaos. Muirchú maccu Machtheni, Vita sancti Patricii (Life of St Patrick), Ch. 2548 And Dáire this time came in person and brought Patrick the bronze vessel and said to him: “This vessel shall be yours. For you are a steadfast man whom nothing can change. Besides, I give you now that piece of land for which you once asked so far as it is mine; dwell there.” This is the city which is now called Armagh. And they went out together, holy Patrick and Dáire, to inspect the marvellous and pleasing gift that he had offered, and they climbed to the top of that hill and found there a doe with its little fawn lying in the place where there is now the altar of the northern church at Armagh, and the companions of Patrick wanted to catch the fawn and kill it, but the holy man objected and forbade them to do so. He 48 Muirchú maccu Machtheni, “Vita sancti Patricii,” in The Patrician texts in the Book of Armagh, ed. and trans. Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1979), 62–123: [25]; I 24 = B II 6.

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even took up the fawn himself and carried it on his shoulders, and the doe followed him like a meek and loving lamb until he let the fawn go in another glen, to the north of Armagh, where, as knowledgeable men tell us, there persist to the present day signs of his miraculous power. The vitae of St Brigid, of which Cogitosus’ is the earliest extant one, include more animals than either those of St Patrick or St Columba, the other Irish saints with early vitae. In this respect Brigid fulfils her gendered role in looking after the household animals. The first Brigid tale included below is one of several that have a theme common to saints’ vitae, the subservience of a wild animal to the saint. In others Brigid often shows compassion to animals, but also aids a fisherman in killing a seal. In the case of the second tale, the wolves act unusually in that they herd the pigs for her without receiving any encouragement from Brigid or even seeing her, although they apparently know of her. The peculiarity of the ‘king’s fox’ tale is that the replacement fox brought by Brigid not only flees the king’s court after she has left but outwits the human and canine pursuers, possibly a punishment for an overbearing king who lacks the Christian virtue of compassion. However, the fox acts with proverbial cunning at the end and without any indication of direction from God or his saintly servant. This is an element from outside the hagiography tradition. Cogitosus, Vita sanctae Brigitae (The Life of St Brigid), Ch. 3349 It seems to me that this work of hers is particularly worth considering. Once a solitary wild boar which was being hunted ran out from the woods, and in its wild flight was brought suddenly into the most blessed Brigid’s herd of swine. She observed its arrival among her pigs and blessed it. Thereupon it lost its fear and settled down among the herd. See, brothers, how brute beasts and animals could withstand neither her bidding nor her wish, but served her tamely and humbly. Among the many people who offered her gifts was a man who came once from a distant territory. He said that he would give her fat pigs, but asked that she send some of her people with him back to his farm to collect the pigs. The farm was far away, situated at the space of three or four days’ journey. She sent some of her workers with him as travelling companions; but they had in fact gone barely a day’s journey, as far as the

49 Cogitosus, “Vita sanctae Brigitae,” trans. Liam de Paor, in Saint Patrick’s world: the Christian culture of Ireland’s apostolic age (Blackrock: Four Courts Press, 1993): Ch. 33, 207–224. The author’s Irish name was possibly Toimtenach.

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mountain known as Grabor,50 which forms a territorial boundary, when they saw his pigs, which thev had thought to be in distant parts, coming towards them on the road, driven by wolves which had carried them off. As soon as he realized what had happened, the man recognized them as his pigs. Truly, the wild wolves, because of their enormous reverence for the blessed Brigid, had left the great forests and the wide plains to work at herding and protecting the pigs. Now, on the arrival of the people she had sent – who were astonished to see such swineherds – the wolves, leaving the pigs there, gave up their unnatural activity. The next day, those who had been sent to collect the pigs gave an account of the marvellous event and returned to their homes. … On another day, a certain person, not knowing the circumstances, saw the king’s fox walking into the royal palace, and ignorantly thought it to be a wild animal. He did not know that it was a pet, familiar with the king’s hall, which entertained the king and his companions with various tricks it had learned – requiring both intelligence and nimbleness of body. He killed the fox in the view of a large crowd. Immediately, he was seized by the people who had seen the deed. He was accused and brought before the king. When the king heard the story he was angry. He ordered that, unless the man could produce a fox with all the tricks that his fox had had, he and his wife and sons should be executed and all his household be committed to servitude. When the venerable Brigid heard this story, she was moved to such pity and tenderness that she ordered her chariot to be yoked. Grieving in the depths of her heart for the unhappy man who had been so unjustly judged, and offering prayers to the I,ord, she travelled across the plain and took the road which led to the royal palace. And the Lord, instantly, heard her outpoured prayers. He directed one of his wild foxes to come to her. It immediately made all speed, and when it arrived at the most blessed Brigid’s chariot it sprang aboard and sat quietly beside Brigid under her mantle. As soon as she arrived in the king’s presence, she began imploring that the unfortunate man, who had not understood the situation and was held prisoner as a victim of his own ignorance, should be set free and released from his chains. But the king would not heed her prayers. He affirmed that he would not release the man unless he could produce another fox with the same tricks as his, that had been killed. In the middle of this she introduced her fox. And, in the presence of the king and of the crowd, it went through all the tricks that the other fox had performed, and amused the crowd in exactly the same way. The king was satisfied. His 50

An unidentified place, which Liam de Paor suggests may be a mistranscription. There was a Sliab Gabtiif in the plain of Life; possiblv Gabur Life.

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nobles, and the great applauding crowd wondered at the marvel that had been worked. The king ordered that the man who had been under sentence of death should be set free. Not long after St Brigid had procured that man’s release and had returned home, the same fox, bothered by the crowds, skilfully contrived a safe escape. It was pursued by a large number of riders and hounds, but made fools of them, fled through the plains and went into the waste and wooded places and so to its den. trans. Liam de Paor

The following is a twelfth-century life of an Irish saint of noble birth who lived in the second half of the sixth century and the first part of the seventh, eventually becoming bishop in Ferns. Differences in the versions of his life, especially the identity of his parents, suggest that the saint may be a conflation of more than one original person. Máedóc also had an important status as a Welsh saint and was known in England under the name Aidan. Though the content of Irish hagiography resembled more closely that of the rest of Europe by the High Middle Ages, both the eleventh- and the twelfth-century lives of Máedóc include elements peculiar to Irish saints’ lives and probably derived from Irish folklore or popular belief. The first excerpt is the second Irish-language vita’s version of two tales that occurs in both vitae, but they occur successively in the first Irish-language Life of Maedoc, which is largely an abbreviated version of the later of the two Latin Vitae. Máedóc is not the only Irish saint to have taken pity on wolves: for instance, St Ailbe protects an old she-wolf and her cubs from hunters and invites them to eat at his table in his vita, while in one tradition he is even said to have been raised by a she-wolf (the same one?). The second Máedóc excerpt is from the first Latin vita. While there are aspects of the ‘taming of nature’ motif in these tales and the first Máedóc encounter includes a form of resurrection, as Dominic Alexander observed, especially the second also includes a non-religious theme, that of reciprocal gift-giving (whether magical-miraculous or not) as an essential practice to maintain harmony in the world. In this case it ensures continued production of milk for human consumption, but the cow does not recover her lost calf. The wolf was the chief among predators in medieval Ireland. Betha Máedóc Ferna II (Life of Máedóc of Ferns51), 9/20–21, and 11/2452 ix. (20) One day as Maedoc was playing with the herdsmen on the land, and minding the sheep of his foster-mother, there came towards him 51 Máedóc is also known by the names Mogue or Aidan; Irish. Mo Aodh Óg, Áedan. 52 “Betha Máedóc Ferna (II), The life of Máedóc of Ferns.” In Bethada náem nÉrenn: Lives of Irish saints, ed. Charles Plummer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922); Vol. 1, 191–290 (Irish); Vol. 2, 184–281 (English): ix, xi.

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gently and fawningly eight wolves together, poor, weak, and starving. He looked on them and said to them: “Take,” said he, “eight wethers from the flock, and eat them.” The wolves did as Maedoc commanded them, and departed to the wood; and these wethers belonged to Maedoc’s foster-mother. The herdsmen thereupon went home promptly and told Maedoc’s foster-mother what he had done. (21) His foster-mother set off towards Maedoc in great wrath. Maedoc was much frightened when he saw her, and said: “O Almighty God, Lord Jesus Christ, help and assist me, for it was in honour of Thee that I gave food to the poor starvelings.” That very moment there appeared between Maedoc and his foster-mother eight wethers of the same colour, size, and form as the first sheep. They came gently and caressingly towards the flock like the other sheep. No one under heaven from that day to this knows whence they came on that errand. So the name of God and of Maedoc was glorified through these miracles. xi. (25) Another day Maedoc was in a retired spot reading his psalms. A harassed weary stag came to him, pursued hotly by the hounds, and stopped in front of him. Maedoc perceived that he was asking him to protect him; so he put his rosary on the stag’s horns. The hounds followed the stag, and it appeared to them as in the form of a man. And they did not follow it (any further), and it escaped uninjured after laying down the rosary. And the name of God and of Maedoc was magnified through these miracles. Vita sancti Maedoc episcopi de Ferna (Life of Saint Máedóc of Ferns), 2253 Máedóc built a church (cellam) in the place called Disert nDairbre (Oakwood Hermitage), and was there some time with his disciples. The brothers had two cows and a calf there. Máedóc was one day alone there indoors in his cell. He saw some wolves coming to him, and they went round him gently and fawningly. Máedóc understood that they were asking for food. He was moved to compassion for them; he gave the calf to them and bade them eat it. When then the woman came in the afternoon, she looked for the calf to let it in to them. Máedóc said to her: Do not look for it, for I have given it to the wolves. One of the brothers said: How can the cows be milked without their calf? Máedóc said to the brother: Bend your head towards me, that I may bless it, for when the cows see it, they 53 “Vita sancti Maedoc episcopi de Ferna,” in Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, Vol. 2, ed. Charles Plummer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1915), 141–63: xxi.

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will give their milk humbly and obediently. And so it was that whenever the cows saw the head of the brother, they would suddenly lick it, and so give their milk. trans. Charles Plummer (adapted)

St Francis is the most famous of saints who sometimes assisted animals. Some of Francis’ own writings have survived, but they do not mention interactions with animals, while some well-known incidents such as the pacifying of the very human-like wolf of Gubbio belong to relatively late tales about him.54 Thomas of Celano’s vitae of St Francis, the first version of which was written soon after the saint’s death, include a series of animal-related incidents related just after Francis’ return to Italy from Syria. They function at least partly to emphasize, or even restore in the mind of the reader, Francis as a performer of wonders after his failed missions to the Moslems. At the same time, the theme of humanity rejecting the Christian message and their unfavourable comparison with irrational animals was a topos of saints’ lives dating back to those of the desert fathers. Similarly, the wild animals that obey Francis in several instances related below once again demonstrate that through their close affinity to God holy men can exercise power over nature, but they are described more explicitly as showing affection or devotion to Francis. Francis subordinates animals and restores the peace of the Garden of Eden wherever he goes, predicting (bringing about?) the death of animals that persecute other animals and rescuing animals from everyday folk fishing and taking animals to slaughter. Socially superior and overbearing nobles who hunt animals do not feature in the vitae of St Francis. Folkloric elements are also notably lacking, as we might expect in a century when the Church was endeavouring to control the establishment of saints’ cults and their nature. The Life of St Francis of Assisi written by Bonaventure (1221–1274), Minister General of the Franciscan Order from 1265, is even more pared down than Thomas’. Other vitae followed.

54 “How St Francis Tamed the Very Fierce Wolf of Gubbio,” in The Little Flowers of St Francis of the fourteenth century. The wolf, having submitted, is forgiven for its dreadful deeds, even eating people, and regularly given food as a reward. Although reminiscent of some earlier wolf-and-saint tales, this wolf is heavily anthropomorphized and more suggestive of a rapacious nobleman than an otherworld being. See The Little Flowers of St Francis, The Considerations on the Holy Stigmata, The Life and Sayings of Brother Giles, The Life of Brother Juniper, ed. and trans. Raphael Brown (New York: Doubleday, 1958), 88–91.

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Thomas of Celano, Vita Beati Francisci (The Life of the Blessed Francis), Ch. 2155 Meanwhile, when many were gathering to join the brothers, the most blessed father Francis was travelling through the valley of Spoleto. He came to a certain place near Bevagna, where a great many birds of various sorts had congregated, including doves, crows and others commonly called daws.56 When Francis saw them, that most blessed servant of God, being a man of great fervour and very sympathetic toward the lower, irrational creatures, quickly left eight his companions on the road and ran towards them. When he approached them, he saw that they were waiting expectantly and he greeted them. Surprised that the birds had not flown away as they normally do, he was filled with joy and humbly begged them to hear the word of God. Among the things he told them, he said the following: “My brothers the birds, you should love your creator deeply and praise him always. He has given you feathers to clothe yourselves, wings to fly with, and everything else you need. He has made you noble among his creatures and given you a dwelling in the pure air of the heavens; you neither sow nor reap, yet he protects and governs you so you can live without any cares.” Francis and his companions agree in reporting that, after he had spoken thus, the birds exulted marvellously in their own fashion, stretching their necks, spreading their wings, opening their beaks, and gazing at him. Francis walked among them, touching their heads and bodies with his cloak. Finally he blessed them and, making the sign of the cross, gave them permission to fly away to some other place. Rejoicing, the blessed father left with his companions, giving thanks to God whom all creatures worship. Since he had now acquired a childlike simplicity by grace, although not simple by nature, he began to accuse himself of negligence for not having preached to the birds before, since they listened to the word of God with such reverence. And so it came about that, from that day on, he exhorted all birds, all animals, all

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Thomas of Celano, St. Francis of Assisi: First and Second Life of St. Francis with Selections from the Treatise on the Miracles of Blessed Francis, trans. Placid Hermann (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1988): Cap XXI. The name of the first vita, written soon after the canonization of Francis in 1228 and often known as the Vita Prima (First Life). The so-called Vita Secunda, a supplement called the Memoriale Desiderio Animae de Gestis et Verbis Sanctissimi Patris Nostri Francisci (The Memorial of the Desire of a Soul Concerning the Deeds and Words of Our Most Holy Father Francis) was written in the 1240s and is usually added to the Vita Prima, so the combined works are often named “The First and Second Life of St Francis.” 56 Latin monaclae: by the description possibly jackdaws or magpies.

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reptiles, and even creatures who lacked senses to praise and love the creator, for every day, when the name of the saviour was announced, he learnt from his own experience that they would show obedience. One day he came to a town called Alviano to preach the word of God. Climbing a hillock so that he could be seen by all, he asked for silence. As the people waited quietly and reverently, a flock of swallows building nests in that place shattered the silence by their chatter and chirping, and Francis could not be heard by the people above their noise. He spoke to them, “My sister swallows, it’s my turn to speak now, because you’ve already said quite enough. Listen to the word of God and stay silent until my sermon is over.” To the people’s amazement, the little birds immediately stopped chattering and did not move until Francis had finished preaching. All who witnessed this miracle were filled with wonder and said: “Truly this man is holy and a friend of the Most High.” Praising and blessing God, with deep reverence they hurried at least to touch him, or at least his clothing. And it is marvellous how even irrational creatures recognized his affection for them and sensed his love. Once, when he was staying in the hill town of Greccio, one of the brothers brought him a hare that was caught live in a trap. Seeing the hare, the blessed man was moved to pity and said, “Brother hare, come here. Why did you allow yourself to be caught in this way?” As soon as the hare was released by the brother who held the snare, he dashed over to Francis and, without being forced to do so, it sought refuge in Francis’ lap as the safest place. When he had rested there a while, the holy father, stroking him with maternal affection, let him go so that he could return to the wild. But every time the leveret was placed on the ground, he ran back to Francis’ embrace, until finally Francis asked the brothers to carry him to the nearby wood. Something similar occurred with a rabbit, by nature a very wild creature, when Francis was on an island in the lake of Perugia. Francis was moved by similar compassion toward fish. When people had caught them and he had the chance, he threw them back into the water, warning them to be careful not to get caught again. … And he whom wild creatures obey in this way, at whose will the elements change and are put to other uses, is truly a holy man. By the High Middle Ages the learned Church establishment may have had considerable success in ‘cleansing’ written hagiography of ‘folk culture’, but it was still confronted with popular saints’ cults that were not welcome. It seems that by the High Middle Ages simply being unjustly killed was often sufficient to earn the victim a popular cult. The most unusual example of these cults

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developed around a dog in the French region of Lyons. A knight and his lady, having found the cradle of their child knocked over, blood on the floor and blood around their dog’s mouth, believed the dog to have killed their child, and the knight killed the dog. But they found that the baby was safe, and nearby were the remains of a snake killed by the dog, who had in fact saved the child. The dog was buried in a well with a cairn above to remind them of him.57 In general dogs were considered valued companions of humans, whereas snakes, besides being ungovernable and sometimes poisonous, were forever associated with the serpent of the Garden of Eden. Nevertheless, in the eyes of the Dominican inquisitor Stephen of Bourbon, making a saint of a nonhuman animal was more than a step too far. Stephen of Bourbon, Tractatus de diversis materiis praedicabilibus (A Treatise on Various Preachable Subjects): De Supersticione (On Super­ stition), 37058 The sixth thing to say is about insulting superstitions, some of which are insulting to God, others to man. The superstitions which attribute divine honours to demons or any other creature insult God. Idolatry is one example, or when wretched women sorcerers seek salvation through the adoration of saddles (sambuca) to which they make offerings, through the condemnation of churches and relics of the saints, through carrying their children to anthills or other places in search of healing. This is what they did recently in the diocese of Lyons. When preaching there against sorcery and hearing confessions, I heard many women confess that they had carried their children to St Guinefort. I thought he

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The tale, but not the cult, occurs in other sources, in which the detail differs but the basic plot of the dog killing the snake to save the baby and being thought responsible for the baby’s death and killed remains constant. Blame for the killing shifts between the knight and his wife, and the dog is sometimes represented as someone unjustly wronged, sometimes merely as a loss to his master: e.g. Johannes de Alta Silva, Dolopathos, or The King and the Seven Wise Men, trans. Brady B. Gilleland, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 2 (Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1981); The Early English Versions of the Gesta Romanorum, ed. Sidney J.H. Herrtage, EETS es 33 (London: Trübner, 1879); The Seven Sages of Rome (Southern Version), ed. Karl Brunner, EETS os 191 (London: Humphrey Milford Oxford University Press, 1933). For a discussion of the tale and the cult, see Jean-Claude Schmitt, The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, Healer of Children since the Thirteenth Century, trans. Martin Thom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Stephani de Borbone, Tractatus de diversis materiis predicabilibus. Liber tertius. De eis que pertinent ad donum scientie et penitentiam, ed. Jacques Berlioz (Turnhout, Brepols, 2006): De superstitione, [370].

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was some saint. I made inquiries and at last heard that he was a certain greyhound … … The castle [of the knight and his lady] was in due course destroyed by divine will, and the land reduced to a desert abandoned by its inhabitants. The local peasants hearing of the dog’s noble deed and innocent death, began to visit the place and honour the dog as a martyr in quest of help for their sicknesses and other needs. They were seduced and often cheated by the Devil so that he might in this way lead men into error. Women especially, with sick or poorly children, carried them to the place, and went off a league to another nearby castle where an old woman could teach them a ritual for making offerings and invocations to the demons and lead them to the right spot. When they got there, they offered salt and certain other things, hung the child’s little clothes on the bramble bushes around, fixing them on the thorns. They then put the naked baby through the opening between the trunks of two trees, the mother standing on one side and throwing her child nine times to the old woman on the other side, while invoking the demons to adjure the fauns in the wood of “Rimite” to take the sick and failing child which they said belonged to them (the fauns) and return to them their own child big, plump, live and healthy. Once this was done, the killer mothers took the baby and placed it naked at the foot of the tree on the straws of a cradle, lit at both ends two candles a thumbsbreadth thick with fire they had brought with them and fastened them on the trunk above. Then, while the candles were consumed, they went far enough away that they could neither hear nor see the child. In this way the burning candles burned up and killed a number of babies, as we have heard from others in the same place. One woman told me that after she had invoked the fauns and left, she saw a wolf leaving the wood and going to the child and the wolf (or the devil in wolf’s form, so she said) would have devoured it had she not been moved by her maternal feelings and prevented it. On the other hand, if when they returned they found the child alive, they picked it up and carried it to a swiftly flowing river nearby, called the Chalaronne,59 and immersed it nine times, to the point where if it escaped dying on the spot or soon after, it must have had very tough innards. We went to the place and assembled the people and preached against the practice. We then had the dead dog dug up and the grove of trees cut down and burned along with the dog’s bones. Then we had an edict enacted by the lords of the land threatening the spoliation and fining of any people who gathered there for such a purpose in future. 59

A tributary of the Saône.

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Animals for Show and Companionship Then as now, in the Middle Ages humans kept animals in enclosures or even in their homes for non-practical purposes. Some were kept for viewing, most of the time in enclosures but sometimes, if exotic, they took part in processions or travelled with the noble who kept them. These animals were mostly captured from the wild: they were frequently large and often potentially dangerous. Other animals lived in the home as companions for humans, usually by our definition domestic animals, but also sometimes relatively small animals who normally lived in the wild. 1 Menageries Whatever changes in human attitudes to other animals the Christian world view caused, many practices changed little. Public and private displays of animals had been common in the Roman Empire and occurred in the Hellenistic kingdoms. Probably the biggest parade of animals (alongside many other wonders) ever held had taken place in Alexandria, when Pharoah Ptolemy II Philadelphus assembled a huge number, both wild and domestic species, in the 270s BCE.1 If we can judge from extant records. Emperor Constantine’s ban on public animal combat sports limited the public Roman shows, but there is no reason to think that the keeping of private menageries by emperors, kings or magnates ever ceased. The term ‘menagerie’ was first used in seventeenth-century France. It then referred to managed household or domestic stock, which would include most medieval parks, but here it is used in its later and present-day sense to refer to an aristocratic or royal collection of captive animals kept for display. Medieval parks were often divided into a great and little park, the latter invariably closer to a home of the owner and frequently containing animals kept purely for viewing. Display animals were also kept in small enclosures, cages or pits, sometimes outdoors and sometimes in castles or palaces. In some ways the menagerie was the forerunner of the modern zoo, but medieval menageries 1 Recorded by Atheneios (fl. 200 BCE), quoting Kallixeinos of Rhodes, an earlier author whose works are lost. See William Stearns Davis, Readings in Ancient History: Illustrative Extracts from the Sources, Vol. 1: Greece and the East (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1912–1913), 329–332.

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were retained largely for private viewing and displayed mostly to invited visitors. However, the animals were sometimes paraded through towns so that everyone could see and admire them. Especially impressive to medieval people would be large or exotic species from outside Europe, brought via gift exchange with foreign rulers or trade. They were considered luxury items. The rage for collecting live animals grew throughout the period 600–1500, and alongside it the number and size of menageries kept by kings, princes, dukes and prelates. Charlemagne (742–814) had three menageries at Aachen, Nijmegen and Ingelheim. His animals were impressive, species that would become more common in menageries in the High Middle Ages.2 He kept at least one elephant, alongside camels, lions, monkeys and bears. In addition, rare and exotic birds lived in one of his villa gardens. The gifts of exotic animals were noted by Notker and take their place alongside exotic products. Special attention was given to the arrival of the first elephant by several annals, and of its death in 810. It arrived by sea to Venice with a keeper named Isaac and from there made the long journey to Aachen. Annales regni Francorum (Royal Frankish Annals), year 8023 On July 20 of this same year Isaac arrived with the elephant and the other presents sent by the Persian king [Caliph Harun-al-Rashid], and he delivered them to the emperor at Aachen. The name of the elephant was Abul-Abaz Notker the Stammerer, Gesta Karoli (The Deeds of Charlemagne) Bk 2.8–94 8. … These same Persian envoys brought the emperor an elephant, monkeys, balsam, nard, unguents of various kinds, spices, scents and many kinds of drugs: in such profusion that it seemed as if the east had been left bare so the west might be filled. …5 9. There came to him also envoys from the king of the Africans, bringing a marmorean lion and a Numidian bear, with Spanish iron and Tyrian purple, and other noteworthy products of those regions. 2 On Charlemagne and nonhuman animals, see Paul Edward Dutton, “Charlemagne, King of Beasts”, in his Charlemagne’s Mustache and other Cultural Clusters of a Dark Age, (Berlin: Springer, 2008), 43–68. 3 Annales Regni Francorum (Annales Laurissenses Maiores et Einhardi), ed. G.H. Pertz (Hanover: Hahn, 1895): anno 802. 4 Notker the Stammerer. Monachus Sangallensis (Notkerus Balbulus). De Carolo Magno, ed. G. Meyer Von Knonau (St Gallen: Fehr’sche Buchhandlung, 1920): Liber II, [ch.] VIII–IX. 5 The “Persian” envoys were from the caliphate, sent by Harun al Raschid.

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Such exotic diplomatic gifts and their continued presence in the royal menageries marked the ruler as out of the ordinary, far above his subjects. Ownership of both signified Charlemagne’s status, but the animals did differ from the products in that they had to be controlled and they probably inspired awe because of the perceived threat they represented as well as their exoticism. We need have no doubt that they made an impression and were not easily forgotten; the following was written in 825. Dicuil, Liber de mensuris orbis terrae (Concerning the Geography of the World)6 But the same Julius (of Cyrenaica), in reporting about Germany and its islands, slaughters one of the elephants and speaks falsely, saying, “Never shoot an elephant, while it lies as surely as an ox,” as the common people of the kingdom of the Franks saw an elephant in the time of the emperor Charles. But perhaps this is written in false estimation of the elephant for the reason that its knees and trunk are not openly visible except when it is lying down. In the High Middle Ages we know that the rulers of Germany (often also emperor), France, England, the Italian states, Bohemia and Poland had menageries. William I of England had some sort of animal collection. Here William of Malmesbury recalls his son Henry’s menagerie. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum (Deeds of the Kings of the English), Bk 57 Paul, earl of Orkney, though a subject by hereditary right of the king of Norway, had such regard for the king’s friendship that he constantly sent him gifts. For he [Henry] took a passionate delight in the wonders of distant lands, asking foreign kings to send him animals  – lions, leopards, lynxes, camels  – which are not born in England. He had a park called Woodstock, in which he indulged his delight in creatures of this kind. And he also placed there a creature called a porcupine, sent to him by 6 Dicuili Liber de mensura orbis terrae, ed. J.J. Tierney (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1967): 7.35 in the editor’s notation referring to the manuscript. Mensura means measurement, proportions or capacity, but the work is essentially a geography. It takes Mensuratio orbis, a work composed on the order of the Roman emperor Emperor Theodosius II (r. 402–450), as its model. 7 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings, Vol. 1, ed. and trans. R.A.B. Mynorst, R.M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998): Liber Quintus, 410.

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William of Montpelier; of which animal, Pliny the Elder, in the eighth book of his Natural History, and Isidore, in Etymologies, relate: it is an animal in Africa, which the Africans say is of the hedgehog genus, covered with bristly hairs, which it naturally fires at dogs when they pursue it: moreover, these are, as I have seen, longer than a hand, sharp at each end, like the quills of a goose where the feather ceases but somewhat thicker, and speckled, as it were, with black and white. In King John’s reign (1199–1216) at least some of his animals were at the Tower of London. In the reign of his son and successor Henry III, probably in 1277, the whole collection moved to the Bulwark, which was renamed the Lion Tower, near the main western entrance of the Tower. Since lions were the heraldic animal of the Plantagenets (r. 1154–1485), they were always required in their menageries, and we know that lions were named after the sovereigns in the Tudor period. The Lion Tower was not a very suitable place to view them, but access was no doubt restricted to certain nobility in any case. Imprisoned in the Tower of London after his capture at the Battle of Poitiers (1356) and awaiting ransom, the French king Jean II was among them. He did not lack funds or freedom to indulge a noble lifestyle and duly rewarded the keeper for showing him the lions. Expense books of Jean II, Tuesday 2 June, 13608 Tuesday 2 June. The keeper of the lions of the King of England, gift given to him by the King for showing him the said lions, 3 nobles worth 20 shillings. Henry III acquired several other impressive animals. A polar bear was installed in the Tower, as it was permitted to fish in the Thames, and an African elephant was also added to the collection. Matthew Paris, who obviously knew nothing of Abul-Azaz, described its arrival in 1255: Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora (Great Chronicle), De Tempore Regis Henrici Tertii (On the Reign of Henry III) [1255]9 Around the same time, an elephant was sent to England, which the lord king of France gave to the king of England, as a present of great value. Now, we do not believe that any elephant other than this has ever been 8 Daniel Hahn, The Tower Menagerie (London: Simon and Schuster, 2003): 49. 9 Matthæi Parisiensis Monachi Sancti Albani, Chronica Majora, Vol. 5, ed. Henry Richards (London: Longman and Trübner, 1872–83): De Tempore Regis Henrici Tertii, [AD 1255].

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seen in England, or even in the Cisalpine countries. So the people flocked there in droves to see a spectacle of great novelty. This elephant was probably the same acquired shortly before by Louis IX in the Near East. It survived only two years in England. It is no surprise that many menagerie animals did not survive captivity for long. Deaths are more likely to have been due to ignorance than deliberate neglect. Many were kept in cramped conditions and were denied virtually everything that they might have experienced in the wild. They had keepers, but knowledge of their natural diet must have been poor or non-existent and suitable substitutes for the food they normally ate were often not available. Many, especially plant-eaters, were fed wholly inappropriate foods. The lions of the Lion Tower were fortunate to the extent that their diet was known to be meat. However, disaster befell them in the fourteenth century. The entry below tells us all that we know of this loss, obviously considered a matter of note. The reason for the deaths cannot have been known. The long-serving keeper was removed, but his successor had no lions to look after until 1445. The Chronicle of London ( from 1089 to 1483), Rex Henricus Sextus [1436]10 This year, the second day of January, died Queen Katherine, the which was wife of King Henry the fifth. Also this year, the 14th day of January, a tower of London bridge toward a tower with Southwark fell down, with two arches and all that stood thereupon. Also in this same year, the ninth day of July, died queen Jane wife of Henry the fourth, that before was duchess of Bretagne. Also this same year died all the lions that were in the Tower of London, the which was not seen in no mannys time before out of mind. Henry III’s son Edward I also acquired a lion and a lynx in Gascony in 1286 and sent them to London. After Louis IX, the French kings Philip III, Philip IV, Louis X, Charles IV, Philip VI and Charles V all kept exotic animals, especially bears, lions and leopards. Charles V had a “hôtel des lions” on several of his estates, including the garden of his palace at Saint-Pol, Paris. There he added rare birds and aquatic animals such as a porpoise to his menagerie, which had a pond for the purpose, as well as pens and cages. Even some large animals seem to have had relative freedom, as the treasury papers of the king record 10 A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483, ed. Nicholas Harris and Edward Tyrrell (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1827): Rex Henricus Sextus [1436].

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payment for a tapestry of the dauphin’s destroyed by a bear.11 One of Charles’ brothers, Jean de Berry, possessed several bears, a dromedary camel and an ostrich in his menagerie at Mehun-sur-Yèvren, while the other, Philip the Bold of Burgundy, had monkeys, leopards, beavers, a porcupine, a bear and a porpoise in Dijon. His successors as dukes of Burgundy kept up the tradition. Henry III’s white bear was one of several sent southwards from polar regions during the thirteenth century. Later, Philip IV of France (1268–1314) also acquired one. A white bear is also mentioned among other animals in a document from the end of the century that describes the scholarly, ecclesiastical and cultural circumstances of Alsace at the beginning of the same century, probably written by a Dominican friar of Kolmar. The exotic animals and new species of domestic animal came to the region in mid- or late century. De rebus alsaticis ineuntis saeculi XIII (The Affairs of Alsace at the beginning of the 13th Century)12 Only one kind of fluffy chicken was kept: only later were large chickens with beards and crests, without tails and with yellow legs, introduced by strangers from distant regions. There was only a flock of wood pigeons and collared doves; the Greek pigeons, which have feathers on their feet, and several other species were only later introduced into Alsace, pheasants were first brought by a cleric from overseas countries. White bears, white squirrels, white hares, sea hedgehogs,13 camels and lions, different kinds of trees, different kinds of shrubs, vegetables and vines, cucumber and cabbage, clothes and hangings, and artistic instruments for various competitions were only later introduced to Alsace. Probably the greatest European collector of exotic animals in the Middle Ages was Emperor Frederick II. He was called stupor mundi (wonder of the world) in his lifetime, but he was a controversial figure then and to an extent still is. His huge collection of animals was one of the many things that created his image as stupor and represented one of his less controversial pursuits. He took 11 Most of these animals appear in accounts: e.g. in the case of the bear, H. Meranvillé, Extraits des journaux du Trésor 1345–1419, 158, 16 April 1358 (Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 1888). 12 “De rebus alsaticis ineuntis saeculi XIII,” in Die Colmarer Dominikaner-Geschichtsschreibung im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert, ed. E. Kleinschmidt (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1972), 371–496. 13 Latin ericii marini. Sea urchin would be the modern interpretation, but this animal is out of place in the De rebus alsaticis list: it might simply mean “porcupine.”

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large numbers of them on all his important journeys and even on campaign. Flavio Biondo was a historian of the fifteenth century, but one who was careful to use first-hand sources from the periods he reported on. His history records the exotic animals, women and other impressive sights in Vittoria, the wooden “city” Frederick had built around Parma when he besieged it in 1247. Flavio Biondo, Historiarum ab Inclinatione Romanorum Imperii (The Histories from the Decline of the Roman Empire), Bk 714 The city of Vittoria even saw beasts which Italy had not seen since the theatrical games in the time of the Roman empire: elephants, dromedaries, panthers, lions, leopards, lynxes and white bears. Our theologian claims that he also saw dogs that were on the one hand horrible in size and appearance but on the other hand exhibited extreme cowardice; he also saw birds that were both wild and tame. Frederick had obtained different birds from those common in Italy, among which are falcons, kites, serpent-eagles, and white gyrfalcons, which befitted his imperial majesty: huge bearded owls were also seen. To all this Frederick added both local women and prisoner women, all most beautiful. For the use of these women, who were guarded by a flock of bodyguards, he arranged arboretums, vineyards, gardens and plots of land with villas beside the most elegant city of Vittoria. Here Frederick suffered his worst defeat by the forces allied to his enemy, Pope Innocent IV, when the defenders launched a surprise attack while he was out hunting. His treasury and all his animals were captured. In his Chronica the English chronicler Matthew Paris claimed that there were 15,000 of them; we need not accept this number, but it indicates that throughout Europe Frederick was known to possess vast numbers of exotic animals. According to Philippe de Commynes, in his last years the ailing French king Louis XI (r. 1461–1483) bought all sorts of animals, both exotic and common. The purchases of animals are also recorded in Louis’ accounts. Philippe hints that Louis wished to conceal his illness to whomever he could by assembling a menagerie seemingly for the future, and says that his unpredictable behaviour was designed to intimidate those around him, but there is also a hint that he was no longer of completely sound mind.

14 Flavio Biondo, Historiarum ab Inclinatione Romanorum Imperii (Venice: Octavianus Scotus, 1483): Liber VII. Accessed 5.1.2023. http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destina tion=Gallica&O=NUMM-60241.

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Philippe of Commynes, Mémoires, Bk 6, Ch. 715 He also sent agents to all foreign courts. In England, their business was to carry on the treaty of marriage, and pay King Edward and his ministers of state their pensions very punctually. In Spain, their instructions were to amuse that court with fair words, and to distribute presents as they found it necessary for the advancement of his affairs. In remoter countries, where he had no mind that his indisposition should be known, he caused fine horses or mules to be bought at any price whatever; but this was not done in France. He had an immense curiosity for dogs and sent into foreign countries for them; into Spain for mastiffs; into Bretagne for greyhounds and spaniels; to Valencia for little shaggy dogs; and bought them at a dearer price than the people asked. He sent into Sicily to buy a mule from an officer of that country and paid him double the value. At Naples he bought horses; and purchased strange creatures wherever they could be found, such as a sort of lions no bigger than foxes from Barbary, and which are called adits. He sent into Sweden and Denmark for two sorts of beasts those countries afforded; one of them called an elk, of the shape of a stag and the size of a buffalo, with short and thick horns; the other, called reindeers, of the shape and colour of a fallow deer, but with much larger horns; indeed I have seen reindeers with fifty-four horns; for six of each of which beasts he gave the merchants four thousand five hundred Dutch florins. Yet, when all these rarities were brought to him, he never valued them, and many times would not so much as see the persons who brought them to him. In short, he behaved himself after so strange a manner, that he was more formidable, both to his neighbours and subjects, than he had ever been before; and indeed that was his design, and the motive which induced him to act so unaccountably. trans. Andre R. Scorle (adjusted)

While possession of menageries of exotic beasts and pets was quite normal, even expected, of rulers, some were heavily criticized for being too preoccupied with their animals; these included Pope Leo X (below) and especially the sixteenth-century French king Henry III (r. 1574–1589). By the end of our period the sources and number of available exotic species had expanded as the Portuguese found the route round Africa to Asia and Europeans made landfall in the Americas. The situation was exploited by the 15 Philippe of Commynes. Mémoires de Philippe de Commynes, Vol. 2, ed. Émilie Dupont (Paris, Jules Renouard, 1840): Livre VI, Ch. VII.

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Portuguese king Manuel I (1469–1521). Like his predecessors, not only did he create a menagerie of his own, but he used exotic animals as diplomatic gifts. Possibly the animal who attracted most attention in Portugal was the rhinoceros named Ganda, donated by Sultan Muzaffar Shah II of Kambay (now in Gujarat) to Afonso de Albuquerque, the Portuguese governor in Goa, who then sent it to Portugal. The reputation of these animals in the West was based partly on fable and their “armoured” appearance, accentuated in Albrecht Dürer’s stylized woodcut of Ganda. The information accompanying the woodcut was drawn largely from Pliny. Inscription on Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut of the rhinoceros, 1515 Such a living animal was brought from India to Lisbon for the mighty King Manuel of Portugal. They call it Rhinoceros. It is shown here with all its shape. It has the colour of a speckled tortoise and is covered in thick firm shells and is about the size of an elephant. But it has smaller legs and is very belligerent. It has a sharp horn on the top of its nose which it grinds whenever it is near rocks. It is a victorious animal and the mortal enemy of the elephant. The elephant is scared to death of it, because whenever it (the rhino) sees it (the elephant) it runs with its head between the elephant’s legs and tears the elephant’s stomach open. Then it chokes the elephant, which can’t defend itself because this animal is so armoured that the elephant can’t harm it. They also say that the rhinoceros is fast, wild and cunning. However, after a year Manuel decided it could achieve more for him as a gift, as he sent it to Pope Leo X, but the ship foundered, and it drowned. Leo had his own menagerie in Rome, particularly featuring lions, associated with his papal name, but also including leopards, monkeys, civet cats and bears. Leo’s household accounts reveal that lions travelled from Florence to Rome and bears were bought from Hungary. Some of these animals were kept in purpose-built cages in a section of the Cortile del Belvedere, others, including leopards, panthers, apes and parrots, along the slope at Vatican hill next to it. Because of its rarity, a chameleon attracted considerable notice. But another gift from Manuel became Leo’s favourite, an Indian elephant delivered in 1515 and named “Annone” (“Hanno” in English). Annone became more than an exhibit exciting wonder or curiosity, as Leo spent a lot of time with it. It survived only three years as it became constipated and the concoction devised to treat it proved fatal. Leo was deeply affected by its death and arranged a special burial place with an epitaph:

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Epitaph for Hanno the Elephant16 Under this great hill I lie buried Mighty elephant which the King Manuel Having conquered the Orient Sent as captive to Pope Leo X. At which the Roman people marvelled – A beast not seen for a long time. And in my brutish breast they perceived human feelings. Fate envied me my residence in the blessed Latium And had not the patience to let me serve my master a full three years. But I wish, oh gods, that the time which Nature would have assigned to me, and Destiny stole away You will add to the life of the great Leo. He [Hanno] lived seven years He died of angina He measured twelve palms in height. Giovanni Battista Branconio dell’Aquila Privy chamberlain to the pope And provost of the custody of the elephant, Has erected this In 1516, the 8th of June. In the fourth year of the pontificate of Leo X. That which Nature has stolen away Raphael of Urtino with his art has restored. Though many admired and praised the animal, especially while Annone and Leo were alive, Leo subsequently attracted ridicule for his obsession and it was used in satires of papal corruption, fuelling the discontent that erupted as the Reformation. Among them was a document purporting to be Annone’s testament, in which he left parts of his body to all the cardinals, twenty-nine legacies in all. The testator of the document was claimed to be the unpopular Mario de Peruschi, the fiscal advisor to the council of cardinals at the time, but its real author is unknown. Three of the legacies are cited below.

16

From Francisco d’Ollanda’s sketchbook of the epitaph inscription in the Escorial Library, Madrid, 1538. The epitaph in translation is in Silvio A. Bedini, The Pope’s Elephant (London: Penguin, 2000), 145–46.

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Last will and testament of Annone the elephant17 …. my testicles you are to give to the Most Reverend Cardinal of Senegata so that he will become more fruitful in progeny, and in the more merry procreation of the Antichrist with the Reverend Julia of the nuns of [the convent] Saint Catherine of Senegaia [Senigallia]. [The cardinal is Marco Vigeri, bishop of Senigallia, known for his sensuality and addiction to pleasures of the flesh.] …. you are to give my member to the Most Reverend Cardinal di Grassi, so that he can become more active in the incarnation of bastards with the help of Madama Adriana of Bologna … [This concerns Achille Grassi, Cardinal of San Sisto, who fathered several children with Adriana de Scottis of Bologna.] …. give my jawbone to the Most Reverend Cardinal di Santi Quattro, so that he can devour all the money of the entire republic of Christ and consume licitly and illicitly ( fas aut nefas) every convent and church through the invention of new taxes. [This cardinal, Lorenzo Pucci, was accused of thefts and embezzlement. Exotic animals were rarely available to small landowners and peasants, even had they wanted to keep them. But there were exceptions: for instance, white bears are mentioned as kept on farmsteads in the Icelandic Grágás law collection, in this case perhaps captured after arriving on pack ice or even brought from Greenland.18 One animal does not constitute a menagerie, but the function of a white bear for its Icelandic keeper was probably similar to that of a menagerie animal, there for prestige and show. 2

Animals as Companions to Humans

In her book, Pets in the Middle Ages, Kathleen Walker-Maikle defines the pet as “an artificial man-made category” of animal  – no animal would be a pet without a human caretaker choosing to keep it as one.19 The term was not used until the nineteenth century. Here the category ‘pet’ includes animals kept purely for companionship or amusement, as well as animals whose function was as status symbols or fashion accessories who were often permitted to enter or live in the human owner’s living quarters. Animals are kept for all the above purposes by all classes of people nowadays, but in the Middle Ages they were 17 On the epitaph for Hanno, see Bedini, The Pope’s Elephant, 155–59. 18 See Ch. 6 for examples. 19 Kathleen Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012), 1.

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associated with the aristocracy; the ability to keep animals solely as pets is a luxury available to those with disposable wealth, although, as usual, evidence that the medieval lower classes did not keep animals purely for companionship is lacking. Neither is evidence for pets kept by the upper classes plentiful until the later Middle Ages. Unlike other domestic animals, because pets had no ‘utility’ they rarely appear as such in medieval laws, although personal correspondence and other evidence tells us that there was certainly a trade in them. In addition, animals who did have purposes other than companionship or show for humans who maintained them might also inspire their affection, but if such a relationship existed it is usually invisible to us. Though not pets in the strict sense, these companions too are included in this discussion. The earliest nonhuman animals to receive an extensive write-up as valued companions in the Middle Ages were warhorses and hunting horses, but there is no evidence of any horse being kept who was not ridden or used as beast of burden or draught animal.20 In his Ship of Fools, Sebastain Brant looked askance at the practice of taking dogs and birds into church. Published in Basel in 1494, the work proved extremely popular in Germany. It soon appeared in Low German, Latin, French, Dutch, Flemish and English translation and provided inspiration for artists such as Hieronymous Bosch. The work appeared after the invention of the printing press and was usually illustrated by woodcuts such as those of Albrecht Dürer. It satirizes bad government, including that of the pope, and the vices and weaknesses of people of the time, among them failing to show proper respect for their Creator by disrupting church services.21 In question here appear to be hunting animals, hounds and hawks, who were obviously not fulfilling their utilitarian purpose in church, so they are there for show and/or because they have become valued companions. Sebastian Brant, Daß Narrenschyff (The Ship of Fools), [44.] Gebracht i der kirché (Disturbance in church)22 Who takes both dog and fowl to church, And disturbs the others who try to pray, With fervour plays the role of fool. 20 See Chapters 12 and 5 respectively for more on these horses. 21 The earliest appearance of the ship of fools had been in Plato’s Republic, in which the ship was “in a state of mutiny and crewed by sailors who are mutineers” who regarded the true pilot as a useless stargazer: an allegory of government by inexpert people; Plato’s Republic, trans. A.D. Lindsay (London: Dent, 1969 [1935]), 6, p. 180. 22 Sebastian Brant, Das Narrenschiff, ed. Karl Geodeke (Leipzig: F.A. Brodhaus, 1872). As in this edition, this poem is often numbered 44. Many early translations were extremely poor or unfaithful to the original High German version, and most (but not the Low German

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You should not ask who they might be Who let their hounds bark noisily As people pray or sing at mass. Or whose hawks their wings do flap Whose bells are jingling merrily So men can neither sing nor pray. Over the head must be placed the hood, That causes flapping and many a squawk. Things are discussed and put to rights, While clogs click-clack upon the floor, That brings disturbance and commotion; One stares at Lady Kriemhild’s bench, To see if she will turn and gape, And make the cuckoo seem a monkey. If every man left his dog at home To keep a watch for prowling thieves While men were worshipping in church. If birds were left upon the perch. And clogs were used out in the streets To lift some filth and muck and dirt And spare the ears of other people – But the fool doesn’t think to worry about that. In fact, even in the later Middle Ages there were probably few nonhuman animals kept by humans purely as pets; remains of very small dogs are often cited as evidence because they were too small to have been anything other than lapdogs, but even some of these may have been vermin-catchers. Much of the evidence for companion animals is pictorial. For instance, in Pietro Lorenzetti’s Last Supper, a cat sits by the fire while a small dog licks a plate of meal leftovers on the floor.23 Their purpose in the painting is largely to indicate a domestic scene, but this tells us that these animals were common in households by the early fourteenth century. Small dogs also appear at the feet of ladies in effigies

23

one) were based more on the Latin version of Jacob Locher (1497), which had Brant’s approval but was intended to be more scholarly and differed considerably. The 2003 verse translation into English included in the bibliography includes copies of the original woodcuts, perhaps by Dürer. The work is a fresco of c.1320 on the vault of the south arm of the western transept in the lower Church of San Francesco, Assisi. It depicts a scene from the life of Christ. Pietro died in 1348.

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on tombs. Some of these, also regularly depicted in the Renaissance in ladies’ arms, were very small and are likely to have been pets. They are also evidence of deliberate breeding (by selection) of tiny dogs. Though many clerics clearly thought expenditure on upkeep of pets was a waste of resources and may have had doubts about human affection for nonhuman animals, the thirteenth-century Franciscan theologian Bonaventure, who became Minister General of the Order and eventually a cardinal, mentions animals kept for solace in his commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences. He makes no suggestion that this might be something out of the ordinary or incomprehensible: Bonaventure, Commentaria in Quatuor Libros Sententiarum (Commen­ taries on the Four Books of Sentences). Bk 2: Dist 15, a 2, q 124 Domestic beasts (iumenta) and cattle (pecora) are designed to relieve man’s need, with regard to food, and with regard to clothing, and with regard to sustenance, as are horses and asses, etc., and with regard to solace, there are certain birds and puppies and the like; and thus they [domestic animals] were made for man for four reasons. Nevertheless, Bonaventure thought that human affection for animals differed in quality from affection for other humans. Bonaventure, Commentaria in Quatuor Libros Sententiarum (Commen­ taries on the Four Books of Sentences). Bk 3: Dist 28, a 1, q 1 In order to understand the aforesaid [how nonhuman animals can be loved out of charity], it should be noted that when an act is said to be from some power, this can be understood in two ways: in one way as moving and commanding, in another way as eliciting and informing. In the first way it can be said that all works done from charity are meritorious, because charity commands every good work; just as out of charity I can go to St. James and out of charity pull a weed from the ground. In the second way, that act is said to be from charity, which the habit of charity regards formally and directly, as loving God and the neighbour, which the soul does not have to elicit by means of that habit rather than the habit of charity. According to this understanding, loving something out of charity can be understood in two ways: in one way, out of commanding 24 Bonaventure, Opera Omnia, Vol. 2: Commentaria in Quator Libros Sententiarum Magistrus Petri Lombardi (Florence: Quaracchi, 1883): Liber II, Dist. XV, articulus 2, quaestio I.

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charity; and thus it may be granted that irrational creatures are loved out of charity. For just as charity commands and moves us to do and say and know all that pertains to our salvation and divine praise, so it also commands us to love. Hence, because many irrational creatures have been given to us as assistants in the performance of meritorious works, they have also been ordered for the praise of God, therefore it is that charity, which is the love of God and of our neighbour, that commands us to love such creatures. In another way, something is said to be loved out of love that elicits and informs; and thus love is derived from charity when it is directed at that which is the formal and proper act of charity itself, that is, only that which is the highest good or which can be united in some way with the highest good by knowledge and love. Therefore, since irrational creatures cannot relate to God in this way, because they are not created in the image of God, it is not possible for them to desire the highest good through charity; and therefore they will not love out of charity according to its proper and formal act; and for this reason such things cannot be loved in this more profound sense. Animals might be loved with a natural affection as they had been before the Fall, he explained, the more a human was able to approach his pre-Fall state and thus cause animals to return to their pre-Fall state, in which they were at peace with humans. St Francis, the founder of his Order, was the example he naturally turned to. Later in Book 3 he explains that affection for nonhuman animals was not for the beloved as an end in itself (which was only for God) or even towards the one loved but not as an end (as for other humans), but was given to the animal for the sake of one associated with that animal. Charity, as love of God, might be given to nonhuman animals, therefore, only insomuch as it was love of God in them.25 Bonaventure thus reinforced the distinction between humans and non-human animals by arguing that ‘love for or by non-human animals’ had to be of a different type and on a different level than love of one human for God or for another human because humans were made in God’s image and had spiritual and intellectual capacities that nonhuman animals did not possess.

25

This passage is analysed at length in Ian Wei, Thinking about Animals in Thirteenth-Century Paris (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2020), 138.

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The Urbanus Magnus of the Englishman Daniel of Beccles states which nonhuman animals might be allowed to approach or enter the house, one criterion by which they might qualify as companions to humans. In this case, in the twelfth century, they are mainly hunting companions, but there is a list of permitted birds on line 2210. “Home” seems sometimes to refer to outhouses and sometimes to include the residence of the human owners. Daniel almost certainly wrote the work as a guide to courteous behaviour during the reign of Henry II, mainly for up-and-coming aristocracy. Possibly the fashion for keeping miniature pet dogs, exotic cats and other small animals was yet to become common. Daniel of Beccles, Urbanus Magnus (The Book of the Civilized Man)26 lines 2206–2212 Do not stable dumb beasts in your home; Nor should a pig or a cat be seen there But warhorses and palfreys can come in And so can harehounds and molossian puppies And birds of prey, except for falcons and merlins, And so may magpies, jackdaws, cranes, storks and nightingales, but none of your brood hens should chase caterpillars into the house, trans. Fiona Whelan, Olivia Spenser, Francesca Petrizzo

As suggested in this work, animals kept for practical purposes might also be companions, that is, animals valued more than just for their work; this relationship could develop especially through participation in joint activities with a common purpose, such as hunting or herding, or perhaps regular proximity from activities such as guarding the household. For medieval poor folk, keeping and feeding an animal purely for companionship might have been an unnecessary or unaffordable luxury and expense. According to the fourteenth-century French poet Eustache Deschamps, dogs were ubiquitous in medieval society; they could go anywhere and could get away with almost anything. Many people said that they were stupid, but he (facetiously) argues that they must know a lot.

26

Daniel of Beccles, Urbanus Magnus Danielis Becclesiensis, ed. J. Gilbart Smyly (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis & Co., 1939). The English title is not a direct translation, but the name used by the editors and translators of the 2019 translated edition, which gives the best indication of the Latin title’s intent.

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Eustache Deschamps, Une Chien doit presque tout Scavoir (A Dog must know almost Everything)27 Dogs go to churches almost every single day, and piss on the vestments of the priests, and go to funerals and wedding feasts to butchers, and orations, bedrooms; they go to the cloister and the dorm, and go to convents and kitchens, every household. Where there are feats of arms, bold deeds or fair many dogs are often gathered there. The heralds will confirm that this is so: Most of what we know a dog must know. Dogs go to eat in dining rooms, and they can hide and quarrel while they are below the table, bickering over offal; they can go into the houses of the great and find a way to sleep in those grand beds, and tear the carpets up, and go to markets where there’s cheese, and to the mill, the baker’s go to gardens, cellars, where they’re beaten, and dogs lie on all the river barges passing by: Most of what we know a dog must know. Three named dogs belonging to a commoner appear in Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest Tale, a satirical story based on the Reynard tales, and immediately join in the chase of a thieving fox who makes off with their cockerel. Humans might show affection to hunting or guard dogs, making them, in effect, companion animals as well as working servants, but we do not know what level of affection there was and the dogs presumably had duties on the farm. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Nonne Preestes Tale of the Cok and Hen, Chaun­ tecleer and Pertelote, lines 4565–7428 This worthy widow, and so her daughters two, Heard these hens cry out and making woe, 27 “Une Chien doit presque tout Scavoir,” in Œuvres complètes de Eustache Deschamps, Vol. 8, ed. Gaston Raynaud (Paris: Firmin Didot et cie, 1893), 94–95. 28 In Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, ed. F.N. Robinson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957).

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And from the doors they rushed at once, And saw the fox set off toward the grove, And carry the cock away upon his back; And they cried, ‘Out! harrow! and weylaway! Ha, ha, the fox!’ and after him they ran, And so with staves many another man; Ran Colle our dog, and Talbot, and Gerland, And Malkin, with a distaff in her hand; Dogs obviously have a practical function in Gaston de Foix’s Livre de Chasse, but his attention to them suggests something more than mere respect for their skills. They live outside the noble residence, and unlike a pet, they are expected to risk their lives; one of the reasons Gaston gives for having relays of dogs when hunting wild boar is that some may be killed or badly injured. Fictional accounts of boar hunts in romances may exaggerate the numbers killed to make the quarry seem a more dangerous foe, but dogs must have been killed or badly injured when hunting boars, bears, wolves or stags. Nevertheless, the kennel boy sleeps with them and they are looked after with considerable care, regularly given fresh water and taken out to play every day. Moreover, they get food such as bean broth, chopped meat, buttered eggs and goat’s milk when they are sick. In the illustrations to Ms 1044 (folio 43), a fifteenth-century edition of the Livre, the kennel is obviously designed to be pleasing to the (human) eye as well as providing comfort for the dogs.29 The companion status of some hunting dogs must often have approached that of the warhorse. Gaston apparently considered himself exceptional in the attention he gave to them: “I speak to my hounds as I would a man and they understand me and do as I wish better than any man of my household, but I do not think that any other man can make them do as I do …. nor, perhaps, will anyone do it more when I am dead.” Gaston Fébus, Livre de Chasse (Book of the Hunt), Ch. 23, Ch. 2630 23. Of the kennel where the dogs must stay and how it must be kept. Similarly, the kennel must be large and wide, ten toises long and five wide, if there are a large number of dogs. It must have a door in front and another behind, and behind it a beautiful meadow where the sun shines 29 Ms 1044, New York. 30 La Chasse de Gaston Phoebus, Comte de Foix, ed. Joseph Lavallée: Chapitre vingt-troisième, Chapitre vingt-sixième.

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all day long, from sunrise to sunset. This meadow must be surrounded by a palisade, a levee or a wall as long and wide as the kennel. And the back door must always be open, so that the dogs may go out to romp in the meadow whenever they please, for it does the dogs good to go in and out as they please, otherwise they become crotchety afterwards. There must be one or two gutters through which the piss and water go away, so that none remains in the kennel. This is what I want to teach the child. The kennel must be low and not on the ground, but it must have a loft above, so that it is warmer in winter and cooler in summer, and always, night and day, I want the boy to lie with the dogs in the kennel, so that they do not fight. And there must be a big chimney to warm the dogs when it is cold or when they are wet from the rain or from passing through rivers. And I want to teach him to make the dogs’ pairs and the bloodhounds’ leads, which must be of horse or mare’s tail, for they are better and more durable than if they were of rope or wool; and the pair of a dog, between one dog and the other, when they are coupled, must be a foot long, and the bloodhound’s line three and a half yards long; and as long as he is a wise bloodhound, it is enough. 26. This is the method for hue and cornering. Afterwards I want to teach him all the languages for calling the dogs, threatening them or flattering them, in short, all the ways of addressing them; I will not be able to explain them all, because there are too many languages and too many ways of speaking; that will depend on the country where one is; it also happens that one uses different terms according to the beasts one is hunting, for one does not speak to one’s dogs when they are hunting wild boar as one does when one is hunting deer, nor does one speak to one’s dogs when one is hunting roe deer, hare or other beasts, as one does when one is hunting deer or wild boar. As well as simultaneously being a working animal and a companion worthy of affection, a dog could transfer from one category to the other. In the late fifteenth century Jacques de Brézé, also author of a poetic hunting treatise, wrote a poem about the hound Souillard, which he narrates as if the dog in the first person. At the start of the poem Souillard reflects on his earlier life as one of the king’s hounds and his splendid achievements in the hunt; not only did he rarely lose game and have sufficient endurance to wear out horses in the chase, but he sired twenty-two offspring. King Louis (XI) having died, he now lives with his seneschal. Such a close bond had developed between Souillard the working animal and his masters that when he became too old to hunt he was rewarded with a luxurious retirement in the household as a pet.

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Jacques de Brézé, Les Dits du Bon Chien Souillard (The Sayings of the Good Dog Souillard)31 I am Souillard, the white and handsome hound, In my time the best and most tenacious in pursuit; Of the good dog Saint Hubert, who had the name Souillard, I was the son and heir who had such great repute, For after his demise he bequeathed me his inheritance. In the year before his death he had me ready taught. I desired strongly to be among all dogs well trained, To be with those whose noses raised the highest, My paws following incessantly, muzzle set Along the track where I belonged, baying all the day; I feared, trusted in and loved above all my master, As much as a dog can do or ever will: Many a pleasure to him, I have taken much great game, Even where he found himself in great heat and in rain … … I am now old and I am kept well at ease, For the love of the good king I do nothing to displease The master to whom I belong keeps me so dear, Who makes to cut bread and meat for my sustenance, To sleep snugly within his chamber near the fire Furnished neatly with straw and a nice litter. As the fine shield for marching the true cross at my side, I am in this state that I describe to you. God, through his holy grace, grant peace and paradise To the king, my first master, and to him who placed me In the service of he to whom I have my life assigned, To the grand seneschal where it will end. There is a notable difference in attitudes between the nobility who kept Souillard and some peasants who owned dogs; their attitude to the dog was similar to that commonly shown to oxen – once they could no longer work, they served their owner better dead. In view of the medieval habit of attributing moral qualities and moral responsibilities to animals, it is not surprising to find that dogs sometimes received some of the benefits of religion. It is recorded that one Duke of Orleans had masses said for his dogs; and there was, of course, the famous messe des chiens 31

Jacques de Brézé, “Les Dits du Bon Chien Souillard,” in Le livre de la chasse du grand seneschal de Normandye et les dits du bon chien Souillard (Paris: Auguste Aubry, 1858).

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on St Hubert’s day, a custom that still survives.32 Certain hounds of Charles VI of France which fell ill were sent on a pilgrimage to hear mass at St Mesmer in order that they might recover. As we have seen, some moralizing friars condemned feeding of dogs, especially with fine foods such as white bread, in preference to aiding poor people. Albert the Great also warned of excessive attention to dogs that would hinder their effectiveness as working animals if that was their purpose. Albert the Great, De Animalibus (On Animals), Bk 22, tr. 2.16. De Cane (On dogs)33 The most ignoble genus of dogs before the table are those appointed to guard duty who often position themselves to keep one eye on the door and the other on the generous hand of the master. Whatever Albertus and other critics might say of pampering and overfeeding dogs, there is plenty of evidence that pet-owners did this, so that the fat pet dog became a stock figure. Dogs whose priority was acquiring handouts are “ignoble” because they fail to do worthwhile tasks such as guarding the homes of humans or assisting them in the hunt, just as an aristocrat who was fixated on amassing wealth and gluttony and was not prepared to act as a someone of his station should (go to war, hunt, and so on, or in this case serve God) would be ignoble. Possibly the second most familiar pet nowadays, cats had an ambivalent status in the Middle Ages. Their usefulness was recognized, but they were often subjected to cruel persecution as well as being skinned for their fur. Many churches and cathedrals had catholes in the walls to allow them in and out, but despite their service many clerics were hostile to them, associating them with evil. In the early fifteenth-century, Edward, Duke of York, declared that “Of common wild cats I need not speak much, for every hunter in England knows them, and their falseness and malice are well known. But one thing I dare well say that if any beast has the devil’s spirit in him without doubt it is the cat, both the wild and the tame.”34 Others such as the friar John Bromyard considering keeping them as companions a waste of resources, but he also criticized feeding of dogs in preference to the poor. Though not necessarily a reliable guide, the extant medieval pictorial and written sources that mention cats

32 33 34

See Michel Besnier, La messe des chiens (Stock, 2000). Albertus Magnus, DA, Liber XXII, Tract. II, [16] De Cane. Edward of York, The Master of Game: 10, p. 39.

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suggest that they became more popular as pets in secular households as the period progressed, Edward of York’s attitude notwithstanding. Most popular, if not necessarily the catalyst for keeping cats as pets, were ‘exotic’ cats from the East, seemingly resembling the modern tabby, which were a different colour from the common ones of Europe.35 Isabella d’Este (1474–1539), marchioness of Mantua from 1490, engaged in long correspondence trying to acquire them, which was clearly not easy.36 Early medieval written mentions of cats emphasize their usefulness as rodent exterminators, such as this seventh-century riddle of Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury. Aldhelm of Malmesbury, Epistola ad Acircium, sive Liber de Septenario, et de Metris, Aenigmatibus ac Pedum Regulis (Letter to Acircius, or The Book on Sevens, and on Metres, Riddles, and the Regulation of Poetic Feet), Enigmata Octosticha (Riddles for October)37 Who am I? I am a most faithful watchwoman, ever-vigilant in guarding the halls; in the dark nights I make my rounds of the shadowy corners – my eyes’ light is not lost even in black caverns. For unseen thieves, who ravage the heaped-up grain, I silently lay snares as fatal obstacles. Though I am a roving huntress and will pry open the dens of beasts, I refuse to pursue the fleeing herds with dogs, who, yapping at me, instigate cruel battles. I take my name from a race that is hateful to me.38 In this function cats became familiar around human habitations and often inside them. Another example of early medieval literature, this time referring to a named cat, is the ninth-century poem in Irish about Pangur Bán (‘White Fuller’), presumably named for its grey-white colour, written at or near

35 In Italian the tabby cats are called soriani, ‘Syrian,’ while English ‘tabby’ comes from French tabis, from Arabic ‘attabiya, striped silk cloth originally manufactured in Baghdad. 36 Alessandro Luzio and Pietro Torelli, L’Archivio Gonzaga di Mantova, ed. Arnaldo Forni, 2 vols. (Ostiglia, 1920), vol. 1; Alessandro Luzio, La corrispondenza familiare, amministrativa e diplomatica dei Gonzaga (Verona 1922); for letters relating to Isabella, see also Alessandro Luzio and Rodolfo Renier Luzio, La Coltura e le Relazioni Letterarie di Isabella d’Este Gonzaga, Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 33 (Milan: Casa Editrice Ermanno Loescher, 2005), 45; Julia Cartwright, Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua 1474–1539 (New York: Dutton, 1926 [1903]), 135. 37 “Epistola ad Acircium,” in Aldhelmi Opera, ed. Rudolf Ehwald, MGH AA 15 (Berlin, 1919): Enigmata Octosticha, [6.] De Catta vel Muricipe vel Pilace. 38 A reference to the belief that the name musio derived from ‘mouse,’ as stated by Isidore of Seville.

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Reichenau Abbey.39 There may be some irony in the comparison between an act that demonstrates the ‘rationality’ of the human and the instinctual act of the animal, which is sometimes described in a mock-heroic tone. There is no clear indication of affection, but the monk respects the cat’s skill and industry and anthropomorphizes its behaviour, describing its actions without reference to scripture or analogy. Pangur Bán40 Pangur Bán and I at work, Adepts, equals, cat and clerk:  His whole instinct is to hunt,  Mine to free the meaning pent. More than loud acclaim, I love Books, silence, thought, my alcove.  Happy for me, Pangur Bán  Child-plays round some mouse’s den. Truth to tell, just being here, Housed alone, housed together,  Adds up to its own reward:  Concentration, stealthy art. Next thing an unwary mouse Bares his flank: Pangur pounces.  Next thing lines that held and held  Meaning back begin to yield. All the while, his round bright eye Fixes on the wall, while I  Focus my less piercing gaze  On the challenge of the page. With his unsheathed, perfect nails Pangur springs, exults and kills.  When the longed-for, difficult  Answers come, I too exult. 39 The poem is found in the Reichenauer Schulheft or Reichenau Primer (Stift St. Paul Cod. 86b/1 fol 1v) and is now in the abbey of Sankt Paul’s im Lavanttal, Carinthia. 40 “Pangur Bán,” in Old Irish Reader, ed. Rudolf Thurneysen (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1981).

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So it goes. To each his own. No vying. No vexation.  Taking pleasure, taking pains,  Kindred spirits, veterans. Day and night, soft purr, soft pad, Pangur Bán has learned his trade.  Day and night, my own hard work  Solves the cruxes, makes a mark.41 trans. Seamus Heaney

Cats fulfilled a similar role to Pangur Bán in all places where human food supplies were threatened by rodents, even on ships, where rats and mice were a serious menace to cargoes of grain and some other materials. Cats may not be water-lovers, but they are sure-footed. Cargoes were carefully stacked in ships and often surrounded by soft material (dunnage in England), perhaps straw, which provided a home for rats and mice. The date and place of origin of the set of maritime laws Consolat de Mar are disputed; they are often claimed to be Catalan and deriving from the late twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. They provided the foundation for maritime law in the Mediterranean for centuries and exerted an influence further north. With little variation throughout this period, they stipulated that a cat was needed on board. Llibre de Consolat dels fets maritims (The Book of the maritime customs of the Consulate), 67–6842 Ch. 67. If goods laden on board of a ship are devoured by rats, and the owners consequently suffer considerable damage, the master must repair the injury sustained by the owners, for he is considered in fault. But if the master kept cats on board, he is excused from that liability. Ch. 68. If some merchandise receives damage from rats because there is no cat on the ship, the employer must compensate for it. But it is not stated that he will be culpable for restitution of the aforementioned loss 41

This translation appears in Poetry (April 2006), 3. Seamus Heaney’s notes on the translation follow. There have been several translations of Pangur Bán, which differ considerably in form. Seamus Heaney attempts to retain the ‘monkish’ character. The example found most easily in searches, Robin Flower’s, rhymes more but (for me) has the feel of a pre-1950 children’s poem; “The Student and his Cat”, in The Poem-Book of the Gael: Translations from Irish Gaelic Poetry into English Prose and Verse, ed. Eleanor Hull (London: Chatto & Windus, 1912), 132–33. 42 Llibre de consolat dels fets maritims, [ed.] Consolat de mar (Valencia) (Barcelona: En casa de Sebastia de Cormelles, 1592): Cap. 67, 68. Those who regulated the rules on the coast of Iberia in the late Middle Ages were called consuls.

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in any way if the cats that the ship has in the place where it loads die after it leaves, and the rats damage some merchandise before the said captain arrives at a place where there may be a cat, and as soon as he arrives where he finds them for sale, he buys them and puts them on board, since the damage did not occur through his fault. Little is written of the relationship between ships’ cats and the human crews in the Middle Ages, but in a later age, on board the wooden sailing ships of the eighteenth century and Napoleonic era, they were popular companions as well as rodent killers, and later still there are tales of human crew risking themselves to rescue them if they went overboard. The ship’s cat is a case where the animal may have been taken on board for practical reasons, but its proximity to the crew and value as their ally might easily give rise to affection. In the thirteenth century Albert the Great recognised the cat’s semidomesticated character and reported it without reference to analogy. He describes an animal who can be both useful and a companion to humans. According to him, Thomas of Cantimpre and Vincent of Beauvais, cutting a cat’s ears made it more amenable. It is not clear whether loss of boldness (audacia), allegedly a result of cutting off a cat’s whiskers, is seen as a good or a bad thing. Albert the Great, De Animalibus (On Animals), Bk 22, Tract. 2.78: Musio43 The musio (cat) is a familiar animal which some call murilegus (mousecatcher) and others cattus because of its catching (capiendo) or its cleverness (astutia). It catches the mice it sees and which it can distinguish in their shadowy holes with its eyes that glow like coals in the night. In its mating season it seeks solitude as if showing shame, and so at that time becomes a wild creature. It delights in cleanliness and for this reason mimics face-washing by licking its front paws and then smoothing out all of its fur by licking. These animals often fight to secure the boundaries of their hunting zone. Cats also kill serpents and toads, but do not eat them as they are harmed by the poison, unless they drink some water immediately afterwards. This animal loves to be gently stroked by the hands of humans and is playful, especially when young. When it sees its image in a mirror it plays with it and if by some chance it should see itself from above in the water of a well, its desire to play causes it to fall in and drown because it suffers harm by being soaked and dies unless dried out quickly. It especially likes warm places and it can be kept at home more easily if 43

Albertus Magnus, DA, Liber XXII, Tract. II, Musio.

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its ears are clipped, since it cannot tolerate the night dew dripping into its ears. There are both wild and domesticated cats: all the wild ones are grey in colour, but the domesticated ones have varying colours. They have whiskers around their mouths and they lose their boldness if these are cut off. It was possibly around this time that cats were first acquired primarily as companions. For example, the 1265 accounts of Eleanor of Montfort, countess of Leicester, referring to her estate at Odiham, mention the purchase of a cat for her private quarters: “For one cat and milk for the dogs, for Peter of the Chamber, 2d.”44 Cats were evidently cheap. More so than small dogs, Eleanor’s cats, even if they were companions, probably functioned as rodent-catchers as well. Whereas there are several listed expenses for milk, bread and other food for dogs, there are none for cat food; they were presumably expected to fend for themselves. Another animal that attracted ambivalent attitudes was the ape. Monkeys had no value to humans as working animals, except to the travelling entertainer, and humans kept them as status symbols, as companions, or for amusement. They were popular pets but also highly suspect, partly because of their resemblance to humans, which was unnerving to people who believed that there was a fundamental difference between their species and other animals, and partly, one suspects, because their human-like abilities to grasp things and leap around, which meant they were capable of considerable mischief. In one of his letters Peter Damian imagines the monastery of Monte Cassino as an ark in a flood of sinfulness that infests the contemporary world outside. He interprets the animals that fill it allegorically and mystically, drawing heavily on the Physiologus. The letter includes a strange story of a monkey and the wife of Count William of Liguria; according to Peter (or Pope Alexander) they took companionship a little too far, defying what nature intended and eroding the human-nonhuman divide. Peter Damian, Epistolae (Letters), 86: To Abbot Desiderius and the monastic community of Monte Cassino (year 1061)45 But that which now follows is something which lord Pope Alexander [II] had told me a month before. For he says that Count William, who was 44 Manners and Household Expenses of England in the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, illustrated by original records, ed. Beriah Botfield and William Turner (London: William Nicol, 1841), 8. Expenses for food given to dogs are mentioned also on pages 15 and 29. 45 Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. Kurt Reindel, MGH, Die Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit 4. 4 vols. (Munich: MGH, 1983–93): 86, p. 502.

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lately living in the region of Liguria, had a male monkey, which is called a maimo by the common folk, with whom his wife, as she was quite impudent and mischievous, played most lasciviously. I myself also saw his two sons, whom this vile she-wolf had borne of a bishop, whose name I omit because we do not delight in marking anyone with infamy. The woman used to play with the lascivious beast, embracing him in her arms and fondling it, and when he was exhibiting certain signs of arousal and clearly trying to touch her naked flesh, her chambermaid said to her: Why not, if you please, let him do whatever he wants to do, so we can see what he intends? And what happened? She allowed it, and, shameful to say, he slept with the wild woman. Then the custom took hold, and the unheard-of crime was often repeated. One day, however, while the count was associating with his wife in conjugal fashion, the maimo, overcome by jealousy, sprang upon them both, seized the man as if he were a rival with his arms and sharp claws, and inflicted on him a bite, and lacerated him irreparably. And so the count was extinguished. Thus the innocent man, who was faithful to his wife in the chamber and who fed his animal daily at his own expense, suspected no hostility from either of them, because dutifully he had showed only kindness. But what a crime! The woman shamefully violated the rite of marriage, and the beast sank his teeth into the throat of the master. Numerous clerics condemned monkeys, but many medieval prelates evidently kept them for amusement. Among the prelates who kept monkeys was Robert of Coquina, bishop of Durham at the end of the thirteenth century. The author of this early part of the Lanercost Chronicle was likely a friar, but his identity is uncertain. The chronicle tells of affairs in northern England and Scotland between 1272 and 1346, but is full of anecdotes that are extremely useful to the social historian, if barely relevant to its main theme. We are probably safe in assuming that the behaviour of the pet monkey in the example below was more typical than that of Count William of Liguria’s monkey. Chronicon de Lanercost (The Lanercost Chronicle), The Reign of Edward I46 It occurred to me once to extract a meaning from his [the bishop’s] sport, by way of example. For instance, he kept in his court, after the custom of modern prelates, as some relief from their cares, a couple of monkeys, an old and a young one. One day at the end of dinner, desiring to be refreshed 46 Chronicon de Lanercost 1201–1346, ed. Joseph Stevenson (Edinburgh: The Edinburgh Printing Company, 1839).

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by amusement rather than by good, the bishop caused a silver spoon with whitened almonds to be placed in the younger monkey’s enclosure, the bigger one being kept away. She [the smaller monkey], seeing the coveted food and wishing to avoid being despoiled by the bigger one, made every endeavour to stuff all the contents of the spoon into her left cheek, which she managed to do. Then, just as she thought to escape with the spoil, the older monkey was released and ran to her, seized the right cheek of the loudly screaming little one, drew out all that was stuffed into the left cheek as if out of a little bag, and refreshed itself, until not a single almond was left. Everybody who saw this burst out laughing but I perceived there an image of the covetous of this world, calling to mind that proverb of Solomon in the twenty-second chapter: “He that oppresses the poor to increase his riches shall himself give to a richer man and come to want.”47 Caged birds were also popular pets in the Middle Ages, but their confinement hindered interaction with their owners. Those like Jane Scrope’s sparrow (see below) were probably let out to fly indoors or were a person’s pet only insofar as they returned frequently to them to get food, which in the case of common ‘garden birds’ would require a remarkable ability in the human to tell one from another. Both exotic and common birds were kept in cages largely as decorative items or for their song and imitation of human speech, as exotic ones still are nowadays, but if sufficiently colourful or unusual they would have been status symbols in the Middle Ages. According to John of Garlande, who listed the products and commercial activities of twelfth-century Paris in his dictionary, both “farm birds” and “wild birds” were available for sale, presumably used for multiple purposes. Jean de Garlande, Dictionarius48 In the new street before the parvis of Notre Dame birds may be obtained, namely geese, roosters, hens, ducks, partridges, pheasants, larks, sparrows, plovers, herons, cranes and swans, and peacocks and turtles and turtledoves.

47 Proverbs 22.16. 48 John of Garlande, “La première description des métiers de Paris: le Dictionarius de Jean de Garlande (vers 1220–1230),” in Espaces, acteurs et structures de la consommation en milieu urbain au Moyen Âge, ed. Frédérique Lachaud (special issue of Revue d’Histoire Urbaine), 2006.

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Animals in the Cloister

The presence of nonhuman animals in ecclesiastical institutions comes to the fore as a problem in high and late medieval sources, from the same period when their keeping by humans purely for companionship began to take hold, but keeping them at religious houses was not a new phenomenon. One of the early recorded keepers of ‘wild’ animals was the daughter of King Edgar, the nun Edith of Wilton (d. 984).49 The writer of her vita, Goscelin, claims that Edith’s motive in keeping “God’s creatures” confined in her ‘menagerie’ was her desire to care for them as part of his creation. The animals are unlikely to have been exotic and presumably not kept for show, but Edith may also have been a forerunner of the nuns who kept animals in their convents referred to below: in other words, she liked having them around and looking after them. There are no records of sizeable monastic animal collections after this, but a variety of smaller animals were kept. Many of the writings from the later Middle Ages about pets in religious institutions come in the form of criticism that people should not keep them – that it was too frivolous and a waste of food that could have gone to the poor, and that such animals tended to occupy the time of those who should be concentrating on their religious duties. Church officials could not ban the keeping of animals entirely, but they did put pressure on monks and nuns not to keep many and not to take them into church with them. Just as many laity did, ministers of the Church apparently entered their churches carrying hawks or leading hunting dogs, a topic which was brought up during the discussion on the reform of ecclesiastical morals at the Council of Vienne (the fifteenth Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church) in 1311. Ecumenical Council of Vienne, 1311–12, Decree 1450 All shall always abstain from hunting and fowling. They shall not be present at them, nor presume to have hunting-dogs or birds of prey in their keeping or in that of others, nor permit familiars living with them to keep them, unless the monastery has woods, game preserves or warrens, or has the right to hunt on property belonging to others, in which there might be rabbits or other wild animals. They are then permitted to keep such dogs and birds, as long as they do not keep the hunting-dogs in the 49

See Ch. 10 for the passage of Edith’s vita that describes her animal enclosures: Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, Vitae Sanctae Edithae virginis (The Life of the virgin Saint Edith), 11. 50 In Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol. 1; Nicaea I to Lateran V, ed. Norman P. Tanner (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990).

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monastery or the houses in which they live or within the cloister, and the monks themselves do not appear at the hunt.51 trans. Norman P. Tanner

Hunting had long been forbidden to clergy, who were prohibited from carrying arms or engaging in combat, but the injunction against keeping animals in monasteries reflected a new problem. Nuns and monks were keeping animals, much to the annoyance of some of the bishops who inspected their institutions, but senior clergy, whose lifestyle often differed little from the secular nobility, also kept them. Exceptions and repeated condemnations indicate that attempts to stamp out these practices had limited effect. Animal-keeping seems to have been a particular habit of nuns. In the Register of Archbishop Eudo of Rouen, which covers some twenty years of touring his see to inspect Church institutions in the mid-thirteenth century, there are several cases that met with his disapproval. These misdemeanours, however, were by no means the most common or serious that Eudo came across.52 Despite the archbishop’s instructions in 1250, the nuns of Ste Trinité-de-Caen were still keeping birds in cages six years later. In 1259 his order to remove a presumably noisy bird met with open insolence. Archishop Eudes of Rouen, Regestrum visitationum archiepiscopi Rothomagensis (Register of pastoral visits of the archbishop of Rouen)53 May 14, 1250. We visited the convent of nuns at St Sauveur-d’Evreux. There are sixty-one nuns residing there. The nuns occasionally drink in rooms other than the refectory and the infirmary. Item, they have small dogs, squirrels and birds; we ordered that all such things be taken away. They do not observe the Rule. … September 13, 1250. At the convent of the nuns of Ste Trinité-de-Caen, at the expense of the convent. We found sixty-five nuns at the convent, but the number of nuns there is not certain. … They occasionally keep 51 “Concilium Viennense, 1311–1312”, part of the Fourteenth decree, from Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol. 1: Nicaea I to Lateran V, ed. Norman P. Tanner, 333–401 (371–72). 52 Others were sexual activity by both monks and nuns, drunkenness, eating meat, using feather bedding, performing rites badly, accepting new nuns into the community without clearing them with higher authorities first, failure to keep accounts, allowing commoners into all parts of the convents, going out from the convents too often, idle chatter and insolence towards the prior, abbot or abbess. 53 Regestrum visitationum archiepiscopi rothomagensis: journal des visites pastorales d’Eude Rigaud, archevêque de Rouen, MCCXLVIII–MCCLXIX, ed. Théodose Bonnin (Rouen: Auguste Le Brument, 1852): anno 1250.

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larks and small birds in cages; we instructed that all such small birds to be removed. They do not know what their income is … October 23, 1256. We visited the convent of nuns at Ste Trinité-de Caen. … The Abbess was at the time in England. … We found seventy-two nuns there. … The young nuns keep larks, and at the feast of the Innocents they sing their Office with ridiculous improvisations – we forbade this. … May 16, 1268. With God’s grace we came to the priory at Villarccaux, where there were nineteen nuns. … Eustasia, a former prioress, had a certain bird which she kept to the annoyance and disapproval of some among the older nuns, so we ordered it removed. Because of this, she spoke rather imprudently and disrespectfully to us, which displeased us greatly. The deaths of nuns’ pet animals were a theme of several literary works, often ironic or humorous. At the end of the fifteenth century John Skelton, for example, wrote an elegy for Philip the sparrow, kept by the Benedictine nun Jane Scrope, then a girl, and killed by Gyb, “our cat”, presumably one belonging to the nunnery. Skelton certainly had the opening lines of Catullus’ Luctus in Morte Passeris in mind and Jane’s curses on Gyb are reminiscent of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but his mock elegy is patterned after the Office for the Dead and the Requiem Mass, beginning with the first lines from the Vespers, and satirizes other religious ritual and mystical practices. However, Jane’s distress at the death of the bird seems real enough. John Skelton, The Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe, verses 1, 2 and 954 Wherefore and why, why? For the soul of Philip Sparrow, That was lately slain at Carrow, Among the Nuns Black, For that sweet soul’s sake, And for all sparrows’ souls, Set in our bederolles, Pater noster qui, With an Ave Marie,

54 John Skelton, “Phyllyp Sparowe compyled by mayster Skelton Poete Laureate,” in John Skelton: The Complete English Poems, ed. John Scattergood, 71–106 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983).

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And with the corner of a Creed, The more shall be your mede. When I remember again How my Philip was slain, Never half the pain Was between you twain, Pyramus and Thesbe, As then befell to me: I wept and I wailed, The tears down hailed; But nothing it availed To call Philip again, Whom Gyb our cat has slain. … Sometimes he would gasp When he saw a wasp; A fly or a gnat, He would fly at that; And prettily he would pant When he saw an ant; Lord, how he would pry After the butterfly! Lord, how he would hop After the grasshopper! And when I said, “Phyp! Phyp!” Than he would leap and skip, And take me by the lip. Alas, it will hurt me, That Philip is gone from me! Gyb may not have been Jane Scrope’s favourite animal, but cats obviously were popular with other nuns. Lots of medieval manuscripts include illuminations (small images) of nuns with cats, and drawings of cats were often made in the margins of Books of Hours. The Ancrene Rule, a guide for anchoresses probably composed in the early thirteenth century, warns of the risks of keeping animals, in this case especially cows. Ancrene Wisse was a version revised to apply also to larger communities. As one of the rules concerning outer feelings, this one is considered less

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important than those concerning inner feelings. The main concern is that the anchoress will be distracted from her religious duties and contemplating God if she has to look after them. Cats are probably considered less of a risk in this regard because they look after themselves. Ancrene Riwle (Ancrene Wisse) (Guide for Anchoresses), Part 8. The Outer Rule55 My dear sisters, unless need compels you and your director advises it, you must not keep any animal except a cat. An anchoress who has animals seems more like a housewife than Martha was; she cannot easily be Mary, Martha’s sister, with peace in her heart. For then she has to think of the cow’s food, of the hire of a herdsman; to flatter the bailiff, curse him when he impounds her, and pay the damages anyway. Christ knows, it is a horrible thing, when the town complains about anchoress’s cattle. Now if someone needs to keep one, let her see to it that it does not annoy anyone or do any harm to anybody, and that her thoughts are not taken up with it. An anchoress ought not to keep anything that draws her heart outward. 4

Pets of the Secular Aristocracy

Domestic sites have revealed animal bones all over Europe, but it is usually impossible to determine an animal’s function in life archaeologically, even if buried singly, without corroborating evidence. Animals rarely kept for any other purpose, such as a barbary ape whose remains were found in a Cuckoo Lane tenement house of the burgess of Southampton, Richard of Southwick (d. 1290), are more likely to have been pets.56 Richard’s ape was probably acquired from a merchant or sailor in the port. There were also dogs and cats in his household. Besides the examples above, there is abundant written evidence for grieving over dead pets. Jane Scrope and Pope Leo X were not the only pet-owners to mourn the death of nonhuman animals. Moreover, like Leo, many awarded them marked graves and epitaphs. If we can judge by surviving written records, Isabella d’Este was one of the most ardent pet-lovers of the Renaissance. Here her secretary Calandra writes

55 The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle, ed. A.C. Baugh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956): VIII. 56 Colin Platt, Medieval Southampton: The Port and Trading Community A.D. 1000–1600 (London: Routledge, 1973), p. 104.

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to her son Federico Gonzaga, telling of the death of Isabella’s dog Aura, one of a pair of small lapdogs and a favourite among Isabella’s many pets. Calandra, Letter to Federico Gonzaga, 30 August 151157 My illustrious lord, there was a great misfortune here yesterday. When her excellency wanted to set off, Aura and Mamia started chasing each other as there was enmity between them for the love of Alfonso’s dog. Finding herself on a high outcrop of earth, about twenty-two arms-length high, poor beautiful Aura fell from that outcrop onto the forecourt and died at once. It is not possible to speak of Madama’s grief; there is so much of it. Anyone who knows the love she bore the dog can well imagine it. And much was deserved as Aura was the prettiest and most agreeable dog that ever there was. Her ladyship was seen crying that evening at dinner, and she couldn’t talk about it without sighing. Isabella cried as if her mother had died and it was not possible to console her. I cannot deny that I too have shed some tears. Madama quickly had a lead casket produced and put the dog in it. And I believe she will keep it there until she can put it in a beautiful tomb in the new Hungarian house, for which her excellency will lay the first stone with her own hand at the twentieth hour by astrological calculation. In the meantime, epitaphs will be written for the noble Aura. In the previous year Isabella’s cat Martino had died and was given a burial attended by, alongside humans, Aura and a pet dog of Federico’s. A sermon was read by the Marchese’s secretary and epitaphs were provided.58 Isabella’s father-in-law, Marchese Ludovico II Gonzaga of Mantua, had also arranged for a grave with tombstone and epitaph for his pet dog Rubino in 1462. Nor were these the only pet burials organized by this family. Numerous letters of condolence for the death of Isabella’s pets have also survived. It seems that by the late fifteenth century such burials were nothing out of the ordinary. The Church was not involved in the burial rites, and the epitaphs and condolence letters written to owners do not openly suggest that the animals had souls which survived the death of their bodies, but given the high level of anthropomorphism in the writings of aristocratic pet-owners and some of their servants we must wonder what they thought, as belief in survival of loved ones after death is one method of coping with the grief.

57 L’Archivio Gonzaga di Mantova, b.2482, 115 and 116, 30 August 1511. 58 L’Archivio Gonzaga, b.2479, 28 November 1510.

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A contemporary of Isabella, the poet Jean Lemaire (c.1473–c.1525), wrote a poem of condolence for Princess Margaret of Austria, duchess of Savoy, taking the voice of her parrot, killed by a mastiff. Here the parrot grieves for his mistress during her absence. He presented it as a self-sacrifice brought about by longing. Jean Lemaire, Épîtres de l’amant vert (Epistles of a Green Lover)59 Thus shall the shepherdess say to the people, To the pilgrims, and to many others Who would like to see my story told. And out of pity, perhaps, will pluck And sew green branches On my tombstone, and flowers and violets: Then will report in many a land, How loves have made cruel war on me: Wherefore my fame shall be so much wider, Than of the Green Count or the Green Knight. And shall be called the Green Lover noble and valiant, In as much as he died a true martyr in love.60 The favourable reception of this poem caused him to produce another in which the parrot is in the Elysian Fields. As often with humanist writers, the poem recalls several works by classical authors. Its implications are ambivalent, perhaps deliberately so; it cannot be ridicule, since it was intended to console one who grieved over the parrot, nor is it likely to represent a serious claim that parrots had a sublime life after death, but it is probably intended as light-hearted reassurance that the parrot or the memory of it remains in some way alive. Wealthy pet-owners such as Isabella d’Este bought presents, jewellery and ‘clothing’ for their animals; as recently, pets were not just objects of affection but showpieces. Among those accused of lavishing excessive expenditure on her pets and menagerie (as well as everything else) was Isabelle (Isabeau) of Bavaria, queen of the French king Charles VI from 1385 to 1422. She owned at least seven lapdogs. Buying of such items for pets by the wealthy does not 59 In Les épîtres de l’amant vert par Jean Lemaire de Belges, ed. Jean Frappier (Paris: Éditions Droz, 1947). Use of this edition for translation by permission of Librairie Droz, Geneva, Switzerland. 60 The Green Knight is a fictional magical character from the chivalric romance now known as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the “Green Count” (Il Conte Verde), was Amadeus VI of Savoy (1334–1383), a successful and admired ruler.

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seem to have been as unusual as portrayed by the hostile chroniclers; the political and military misfortunes and factionalism of her time meant that Isabeau was vilified as a philanderess and spendthrift both by her political enemies and popularly, accusations suffered by many queens in such circumstances. Among the items listed in Isabelle’s accounts are the following: Comptes de la reine Isabeau de Bavière (Accounts of Queen Isabeau of Bavaria)61 13__. Isabelle purchased two chickens to feed an owl she kept. 1387: She bought four alders of green cloth, two to cover the cage of her parrot. 1387. She ordered from the goldsmith Simonet le Bec a large collar for her favourite dog, into which went more than five ounces of silver. 1392. She bought two alders of green cloth from Rouen, to cover the cage of her parrot. A collar embroidered with pearls and fastened by a gold buckle was commissioned for her pet squirrel. 1402. She paid Jehan Clerbourt, a silversmith, for making a cage of silver for her birds. 1406: She ordered the treasurer J. Leblanc to pay sixteen sous for bright green cloth to make a special cover for her cat. 1417: A payment was made to Perrin Saoul, a butcher from Nogentsur-Marne, for meat to feed her leopard. 1420: To Bernard of Caen, demourant à Troyes, with money to him pay him for three dozen little singing birds, namely goldfinches, linnets, tarins, finches and others. The last purchase was a consequence of the Treaty of Troyes in May 1420, which surrendered the kingship of France to Henry V of England and compelled Isabeau to leave Paris, abandoning her aviary. As we have seen, many ‘wild animals’ were kept as pets, almost invariably small ones like squirrels and martens. An exception was Count Robert of Artois’ wolf, a ‘pet’ insofar as it was not kept for protection or assistance in the hunt, or for its produce, nor was it caged like most other animals potentially

61 Alfred Franklin, La Vie Privée D’autrefois: Arts et Métiers, Modes, Mœurs, Usages des Parisiens du XIIe au XVIIIe Siècle, vol. 21: Les Animaux (Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit et Cie, 1897), pp. 324–25; Archives Nationales, KK48 (Trésorerie) 1408–1414; KK49 (Menu plaisirs) 1er mars 1416–18 avril 1417.

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dangerous to livestock or humans. Unlike his uncle King Louis IX, who had chosen a life of restraint and virtue, Robert loved games, hunting, tournaments and war.62 Wolves were not exotic but were thought to be inveterate enemies of humankind and as savage and ravenous as animals could be, hence the status acquired by ‘owning’ one. It seems Robert took it with him on some of his journeys. He was no friend to wolves in general, however, as other wolves around Hesdin were hunted mercilessly. Like a rapacious menagerie animal or a living heraldic beast of prey, this ‘pet’ wolf functioned as a symbol of Robert’s power, perhaps even symbolizing his power to unleash violence on those of lower station should he see fit. The wolf was either allowed to roam his estate at Hésdin or escaped its bonds on several occasions. There are several entries in the Hesdin accounts of payments to those whose animals were killed: Archives départementales antérieures à 1790, Pas-de-Calais (Departmen­ tal archives prior to 1790, Pas-de-Calais): Expense accounts of Robert II, Count of Artois63 162 (1300): The third day of April at Estrées sur Canche for 2 sheep which the wolf had killed 7 s. A178 (1302): The 13th day of March at Saint Julien to one woman for 2 sheep which the wolf had killed 8 s. The last day of March at Legle to one man because the wolf had slaughtered a calf 8 s. The wolf cannot have been popular with the peasantry, even though they were compensated for the damage it did. It had been reared by one Guillot, who continued to serve as its keeper, but apparently neither he nor Robert prevented it from preying on the peasants’ livestock. In the spring of 1302, it killed twenty-five of their animals: eighteen sheep, two lambs, two calves and three geese. However, it vanishes from the records after Robert’s death in the same year. Mahaut, Robert’s daughter and heir to the estate, may have got rid of it. Was it less suitable for a noblewoman? It should be noted in passing that domestic animals died during other aristocratic activities such as hunting: the same A178 list above includes a payment of 7 s “for a sheep that the greyhounds (levriers) slaughtered.” 62

Louis detested war, but not if prosecuted in a holy cause, and his sainthood owed much to the crusades he led and his death from disease on the last of them. Robert died in battle in a less holy cause, leading his army to defeat against the Flemish rebels at Courtrai in 1302. His horse died with him. 63 Archives départementales antérieures à 1790, Pas-de-Calais, Série A, Série D. Accessed 6.8.2023. https://www.archivespasdecalais.fr/Chercher/Fonds-et-collections/Archives -anciennes.

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Naming Household Animals

Probably all pets were named by their human keepers, but so too were other animals, either through familiarity or simply for identification. The Old Irish legal texts known as the Senchas Már includes “Catslechta” (‘Cat-sections’), which refers to several individual cats with names: Breone (little flame  – a ginger cat?), Cruibne (little paws), Glas nenta (nettle grey), and Meone (little meow). Above we have encountered Gyb the nunnery cat. An earlier ‘cloister-cat’ obviously kept to destroy rodents is called “Mite” in a scribbled doodle in the thirteenth-century accounts of Beaulieu Abbey. Gyb was a short form of Gilbert, also used for cats. In France Tibers or Tibert was a popular name for cats, after the cat of the Reynard beast epic. We have several fifteenth-century lists of dog names. The Swiss cantons organised a regular shooting festival from the mid-fourteenth century onwards, then a training exercise to prepare for possible war.64 A list of eighty retrievers who participated in the Zürcher Freischiessens (Zürich Free Shooting) of 1504 has been preserved. The most popular name was Furst (Prince), but there were others such as Fortuna, Venus and Turgk, and a group apparently named from their owners’ professions: a locksmith’s dog was named Hemmerli (Little Hammer) and a wagoner’s Speichli (Little Spoke). Some thirty names and their variants appear in de Brézé’s Les dits du bon chien Souillard and his verse account of a hart-hunt, La Chasse. Besides Souillard himself, we find Bau(l)de, Jombart, Oyse, Rameau, Clermont, Briffault, Vollant and others. In one manuscript (Ms G) of Edward Duke of York’s hunting treatise The Master of Game, there is a section entitled Names of All Manner of Hounds, a list of 1100 names thought appropriate for hunting dogs, including names such as Birdismowthe, Creper, Clenche, Holdefaste, Kilbycke, Nosewise and Quycke, which refer to the hound’s hunting ability, although they might also be suitable for other dogs. The other names could be appropriate for any type of dog, allowing for colour, shape and gender. They include Russette, Tawne and Whiteberde (colours), Argente, Amatiste, Besaunte (minerals), Gaerlik, Trefoile and Flowre (plants), Dolfyn, Foxe, Lamprey and Pwffyne (other animals), Ducheman, German and Saresyn (human nationalities), Derby, Ryngewode and Troy (placenames), Tynker, Wodewarde, Hosewife, Bowman (human trades and occupations), Symfonye, Cantor and Symbale (musical), and some other assorted names such as Boy, Liberte, Rude-ynowght and Conquerour. A considerable number are combinations of more than one word. 64

The festival still continues, now known as Das Eidgenössische Schützenfest (The Federation Shooting Festival).

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As Scott Macnab suggests in his article on the Names of All Manner of Hounds, it was likely the dog-keepers who knew all the hounds of a pack by name, and probably they who named many of them.65 It seems that nonhuman animals were rarely given human personal names, but there were some, among them names of mythological and famous people. The fourteenth-century French knight Jehan de Seure had a hound named Parceval, and the chronicler Froissart gave Gaston de Foix four hounds named Burn, Hector, Tristan and Roland. Among the secular classes, the dog and the lion are the most common foot supporters on later medieval tombs. The dog represented fidelity and loyalty and hence perhaps faith, but a few of the dogs are named and must represent actual dogs, presumably companions. An example is the “Terri” that lies at the lady’s feet in the brass effigy for Sir John Cassey and his wife in St Mary’s Church, Deerhurst, (Gloucestershire), although it seems quite large compared to many other ladies’ pet dogs in depictions.66 Those at the feet of ladies were often small lapdogs, whereas larger hunting dogs often accompanied the men. On the lower legs of one of the figures in the medieval Basilica of Saint Denis in northern Paris there is a carving of a ferret or weasel, which may symbolize the hunter and virtue, but these and similar animals were also kept as pets and there are several depictions of them, notably ‘Lady with an Ermine,’ (Cecilia Gallerani, mistress of Duke Ludovico Sforza of Milan), c.1490, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. The ermine almost certainly symbolized Ludovico, who was called “the White Ermine” because he had been made a member of the Order of the Ermine by King Ferrante (Ferdinand I) of Naples, and it may have been a reality. 6

Animals Punished as Surrogates for Human Owners

The bond between certain nonhuman animals and their owners was such that the animal might function as a surrogate victim if someone wished to do injury to an aristocratic owner. The practice was in line with Augustine’s and Aquinas’ contentions that nonhuman animals did not merit moral consideration, so that the consequences of the mutilation were perceived as visited upon to their owners. For the knight, or aristocrat of equivalent status, the riding horse was an essential complement to his masculinity and martial vigour, so much so that mutilation of his horse was a grave insult to the owner. Cutting off tails is most commonly mentioned, but other forms of mutilation were also practised. An animal whose tail had been cut off was “defamed” (Fr. diffamé), that is, it 65 David Scott-MacNab, “The Names of All Manner Of Hounds: A Unique Inventory in a Fifteenth-Century Manuscript,” Viator 44, no. 3 (2013), 339–368. 66 There is a photograph of the effigy online in the photo gallery of St. Mary’s Church: http://www.sacred-destinations.com/england/deerhurst-church-photos/.

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was no longer a contributor to the owner’s reputation. Below, the suggestion of emasculation in the punishment for rape listed by Henry of Bracton is clear. Henry of Bracton, De Legibus Et Consuetudinibus Angliæ (On the Laws and Customs of England), De placitis coronae (Of pleas of the crown), Addition67 Man-made as well as divine law forbid the rape of women. In ancient times the practice was as follows: if a man meets a woman or comes across her somewhere, whether she is alone or has companions, he is to let her go in peace; if he touches her indecorously he breaks the king’s ordinance and shall give compensation in accordance with the judgement of the county court; if he throws her upon the ground against her will, he forfeits the king’s grace; if he shamelessly disrobes her and places himself upon her, he incurs the loss of all his possessions; and if he lies with her, he incurs the loss of his life and members. By the law of the Romans, the Franks and the English, even his horse shall to his ignominy be put to shame upon its scrotum and its tail, which shall be cut off as close as possible to the buttocks. If he has a dog with him, a greyhound or some other, it shall be put to shame in the same way; if a hawk, let it lose its beak, its claws and its tail. The land and money which the ravisher lost through his amercement shall be given to the woman, the king warranting the whole to her. trans. S.E. Thorne

As the following excerpt shows, it was not only animals with whom nobility had an emotive link who were mutilated as insults to their owners, but other animals symbolic of nobility, such as menagerie animals or even park animals. Writ to the sheriff of Suffolk: Westminster, 1 December 20, Edward I (1291)68 Inquisition Becles. Monday after St. Peter’s Chair 21 Edward I. (1293.) John de Wellyngton and others unknown in his fellowship took the swans of John le Bygod, knight, swimming from the river near Becles to the pond ( foveam) of Roger de Wellyngton, and amputated their beaks, and afterwards threw them into the pond and let them go. Senior clergy as well as secular nobility had their animals subjected to this treatment. In December 1170 Robert de Broc or John, his nephew, docked the tail of 67

Henry de Bracton, De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliæ, Vol. 2, De Placitis Coronae, F. 148, Additio. 68 Calendar of Inquisitions, Miscellaneous (Chancery), Vol. 1 (London: H.M. Stationary Office, 1916): no. 1617.

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a horse transporting provisions to Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, as well as raiding his park and stealing dogs. Having seen the docked horse, Thomas gave Robert a choice between excommunication or making amends, which Robert refused to do.69 Shortly after this, Robert participated in the infamous events that led to the murder of the archbishop in the cathedral, and afterwards threatened the monks that he would have the body tied to a horse’s tail and dragged if they did not bury it. In Castile the importance of the horse’s appearance and especially its tail is highlighted in the penalties inflicted. The provision of the Code of Cuenca below does not specify the animal, but the fine is relatively heavy. The reason is probably that an animal who might be ridden is in question, as in the second case cited below. Forum Conche de Cuenca (Code of Cuenca), Ch. 32. The Code of Pledging and of Sales70 19. He who pulls out the hair from the tail of another’s animal. He who pulls out the hair form the tail of another’s animal should pay five solidi for as many hairs as he pulled out, if it can be proved of him with witnesses; but if not, he should clear himself, swearing alone, and should be believed. 21. He who mounts another’s animal. He who mounts another’s animal against the will of its owner should pay ten solidi, if it is proved of him with witnesses; but if not, he should swear alone and be believed. trans. James F. Powers

In the Coria Cima-Coa charters of Castile, which compare with other rules in Iberia in this respect, commoners of whom military service was required and who committed certain offences such as failing to attend a muster suffered removal of their hair, which involved something like uprooting or scalping (Latin depilare, Romance mesar or pilar), a disfiguring form of emasculation, whereas a knight was punished by a comparable disfiguration of his horse, usually docking.71 As in the cases above, the wounding of the ‘noble animal’ thus enabled the avoidance of physical injury to his owner, which amounted to a privilege of nobility, even if ownership of a mutilated horse was still humiliating. 69 Frank Barlow, Thomas Becket (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986), p. 232. 70 The Code of Cuenca: Municipal Law on the Twelfth-Century Castilian Frontier, ed. and trans. James F. Power (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000). 71 James F. Powers, A Society Organized for War: The Iberian Municipal Militias in the Central Middle Ages, 1000–1284 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 198–99.

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Animals for Entertainment

It may seem strange to include the considerable number of animals abused for popular entertainment during the Middle Ages in the same chapter as ‘pets.’ Almost all performing animals suffered trauma and many endured serious injuries, but they were companions to the humans they served and a few must have elicited a form of affection. Medieval written records of these animals and their lives are not plentiful, although we have enough evidence that there were many of them. Most written sources are terse entries of payments to the joculatores or minstrels who managed them, who seem usually to have been individuals who travelled the land to give their show. Some animals were simply exhibited, but many were trained to imitate human behaviour, a form of entertainment that is still popular with humans today. The animal acts were often just one part of the entertainers’ show, as mentioned briefly in Magister Justin’s poetic life of Bernhard I of Lippe, abbot of Dünamünde und Bishop of Selonien (d. 1224). Justin of Lippstadt, Lippiflorium, lines 65–7072 Here he utters various magic tricks, as if by art, and deceives the eyes with the mobility of his hands. Here he gives spectacles to the people with a cub or a horse, which he commands to make human gesticulations. He throws the disk into the air with a strong whirl, which he catches as it falls and sends it back again. Until very recent times in the West, training might be very brutal, and performing bears suffered most. Bartholomew the Englishman, De proprietatibus rerum, 18. De animalibus primo in generali (First, on animals): 110. De Urso (The Bear)73 When he is taken he is blinded with a bright basin, and bound with chains, and compelled to play, and tamed with beating; and he is an unsteadfast beast, and unstable and uneasy, and goes therefore all day about the stake, to the which he is securely tied.74 72

Justin of Lippstadt, Das Lippiflorium: Ein westfälisches Heldengedicht aus dem dreizehnten Jahrhundert, ed. Hermann Althoff (Leipzig: Dietericb’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1900). 73 Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus Rerum (Nuremburg: A. Koberger, 1492): Liber decimusoctavus de animalibus primo in generali, cx. De Urso. “De Urso” is number (cxii) in most editions of John Trevisa’s translation because the title is numbered (i) and there is an addition at (xlv). 74 The ‘basin’ (Lat. pelvis) here must refer to a bright metal dish, perhaps heated, used to blind the bear.

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In his life of St Poppo (977–1048), a knight of noble stock who turned to a monastic life after experiencing a spiritual conversion and became abbot of Stavelot and Malmedy, the monk Onulf of Speyer described a performance with a bear that was apparently amusing to Henry II of Germany and his courtiers but not to the abbot or to the man he saved from possible emasculation. Onulf of Speyer, Vita Sancti Popponis Abbatis Stabulensis (The Life of St Poppo, Abbot of Stavelot), [12]75 It also happened that the imperial gates were then occupied by the games of the players, and that the king and his people were amused by that kind of spectacle. A certain naked man is also presented to a bear with his genitals smeared with honey, from which he is also very much afraid of the danger he is in, lest by chance the same bear should bite to the bone after consuming the honey. So then the king’s eyes are held so captivated by love of the same spectacle and he fears little, ill-prepared for the danger the man is in. Wherefore, upon so unjust an illusion, the blessed Poppo rebuked the king as a Christian, and soon restrained him with his nobles from this spectacle; arguing and beseeching him, he declared his opinion that this should not happen again. But Henry the emperor responded humbly both to his entreaty and to his rebuke, and he whom he received with honour as he came to him, he also dismissed with honour as he left. Animal performances that posed a serious risk to humans were probably not very common. More frequently, if we can judge by the extant evidence, horses, asses and bears were trained to imitate human actions such as dancing or even forming ‘words.’ Since bears could stand on their hind legs, they were probably considered especially suitable for dancing. People presumably greeted these shows with a mixture of wonderment and amusement. Apes were sufficiently human-like to be used in imitation of a variety of human actions in such a way that they would appear ridiculous. Alexander Neckham, De Naturis Rerum (On the Nature of Things), Bk 2, Ch. 129. Item de simia (More about the monkey)76 Furthermore, the ape’s nature is so ready to represent the things it has seen with ridiculous gesticulations, yet curious at the vanity of the commoners who find solace in common spectacles, that it dares to imitate 75 Onulfus Altimontensis Vita Sancti Popponis Abbatis Stabulensis (Self-published, Create Space, 2014): [12]. 76 Alexander Neckam, De Natura Rerum, ed. Thomas Wright: Liber secundus, Cap. CXXIX.

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a military conflict. Therefore, in his diligence the jester usually led two monkeys to military exercises, which are commonly called tournaments, in order to lessen the frequent oversight of the teacher’s work. Afterwards he readied two dogs, on which the apes were mounted, armed with weapons suitable for them. Nor did they lack the shoes with which they pressed the dogs fiercely. When the lances were broken they drew their swords, with which they landed many blows on their helmets. Who could stop laughing at this sight? Bernardus [Silvestris], therefore, summarizing the monkey concisely and precisely, said, The ugly object of men’s laughter appeared The monkey, a man of degenerative nature. Animal-baiting was a popular blood-sport, and virtually every animal available who would put up a fight was baited, including bulls, boars and equines, but bearbaiting was especially popular. We know it was one of the most watched baiting shows in sixteenth-century London, when it was highly organized. Each show would have ended when too many dogs were put out of action or the bear was injured and exhausted to the point where it ceased to defend itself. In bearbaiting shows the bears must have suffered many injuries and occasionally (eventually) died, but they were valuable as imports to many countries and not easy for entertainers to get hold of even in lands where they did live. As Bartholomew mentioned, bears were frequently blinded and often had their teeth and claws removed and they were usually chained or tied to a stake to restrict their reach, but even in these circumstances they were dangerous to the animals they faced. Many of the dogs set on them probably were killed or so badly injured that they had to be put down. We know the bears of the sixteenth century survived many fights, as they were celebrities of sorts and were named, like Sackerson and Harry Hunks mentioned by Sir John Davies – the former also appears in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor – and Ned Whiting and George Stone mentioned by Ben Johnson in The Silent Woman, perhaps named after their bearwards. Some, “for the queen’s entertainment,” lived in sheds at Paris Garden, Bankside, Southwark and others were led around the country on a chain, often accompanied by dogs and a monkey. Much of the evidence of medieval bears used for baiting is pictorial, and it seems that practices had not changed much from the tenth to the sixteenth century. Celebrity did not, of course, imply affective empathy – Slen in The Merry Wives describes bears as “very ill-favoured rough things.” Perhaps because of their size and supposed ferocity bears represented the antithesis of domesticity, a brutal nature that had to be tamed; according to Bartholomeus Anglicus, “no beast has such great deceitfulness to do evil deeds as the bear.” The fourteenth-century Franciscan

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preacher’s handbook Fasciculus Morum uses the example of a tormented bear as a metaphor for envy, but it obviously draws on reality. Fasciculus Morum (A Bundle of Morals), Part 3. De Invidia (On Envy), 2. Quibus Envidia Comparatur (Things to which envy can be compared)77 Third, envy can easily be compared to a bear that has been blinded with a basin. Thus is an envious person mentally blinded by his neighbour’s good. Whence Ecclesiastes 25 states, “He has blinded his face like a bear.” We see that on feast days a bear is more violently dragged through the villages, tormented with beatings and torn by the dogs. Thus is the envious person tormented when he witnesses his neighbour’s honour, which I understand by the feast day. trans. Siegfried Wenzel

Fights between animals who were not restrained were also popular. As had been the case in the Roman arena, fights between different species had a special appeal. To test the tale that the rhinoceros was a deadly enemy to the elephant, Manuel I of Portugal pitted them against each other, but the event became a non-event when the elephant turned tail. Fights between animals of the same species were often more rewarding for the spectators, and cockfighting was especially popular, as it still is many parts of the world nowadays. It seems to have been widespread in Europe since at least the Iron Age. Because it still continues in many regions of the world it has been subject to anthropological research. Roosters have a social and spiritual as well as financial importance to their owners, and it has been found that men who keep roosters often have an almost obsessive concern with them and their wellbeing (when not fighting). The brutal combats are in some way a reflection of the owner’s own machismo. Notably, in the Avar-period cemetery of Wien-Csokorgasse in Austria, burials of fowls were gender-based, with roosters associated with males and hens with females, and roosters with longer cock-spurs were buried with higher status individuals.78 Alexander Neckham gives a description of a cockfight of his own era, albeit in mock-heroic terms.

77 Fasciculus Morum; A Fourteenth-Century Preacher’s Handbook, ed. and trans. Siegfried Wenzel (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1989): Pars III: De envidia, ii. Quibus Envidia Comparatur. 78 Helmut Kroll, “Ihrer Hühner waren drei und ein stolzer Hahn dabei  – Uberlegungen zur Beigabe von Hühnern im awarischen Gräberfeld an der Wiener Csorkorgassemore,” Offa 69/70 (2013), 201–16.

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Alexander Neckham, De laudibus sapientiae divinae (In Praise of Divine Wisdom), lines 819–85479 Fury inflames the spirits, the struggle begins, the battles are quickly established on the new Mars. They rise up, and the leap of Jevi runs, They are struck by blows, their strength is often aided by skill. They crouch, their strength is often assisted by skill. They give wounds with blows to the chest, they tear their foreheads, they soak their feathered limbs with blood. He often feigns flight, fatigued, he resumes his strength by fleeing, and brings to mind the Parthian wars.80 The wing shields the enemy’s head with a weary hedge, They are often wont to lay snares with frauds. Finally, after various attempts, after repeated battles, after showers of blood, The other goes away, or perhaps dies, and the victor proudly shows that he has earned the palm. In medieval Iceland horse-fights were organized. The most well-known account of one occurs in Njáls Saga, in which it is a contributory cause of a destructive feud. Though this saga was written over 200 years after the events it supposedly describes and the fight or its details may be fictional, the way in which it is conducted are presumably based on reality. It begins when Starkaðr of Þrihyrning, egged on by his daughter, agrees that his horse may be pitted against Gunnarr of Hliðarend’s and the challenge is accepted. Goading was obviously a requirement to ensure that the horses fought, and conceivably putting weight behind the stallions as encouragement to them was acceptable, but attacking the opponent’s horse as Þorgeir does was not. Despite the loss of Gunnarr’s horse and the threat of further violence from Þorgeir after he comes round, the two sides are kept apart, but the seeds of future conflict have been sown. When Gunnarr orders that the one-eyed horse be killed, it is not clear whether he thinks he thinks he is doing the stallion a favour, or it simply no longer has any value to him, or he has no wish to be known as the owner of a disfigured horse. 79 80

Alexander Neckam, “De Laudibus Divinae Sapientae,” in De Natura Rerum et, ed. Thomas Wright (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green, 1863): pp. 357–503, lines 819–854. A reference to the Parthian method of fighting, in which horse archers turned from their enemy in apparent flight but returned when the situation was favourable, as recorded in Roman histories.

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Njáls saga, Ch. 5981 Now men rode to the horse-fight with many followers. Gunnarr was there with his brothers and the Sigfussons, so were Njáll and all his sons. Starkaðr and his sons came there with Egill and his sons. They said to Gunnarr that they should lead the horses to face each other, and Gunnarr agreed. Skarphéðinn asked, “Do you want me to take charge of your stallion, kinsman Gunnarr?” Gunnarr said that he did not. “But it would be better if I handled him,” said Skarphéðinn, “as I can be as violent as they can.” “You would not have to say or do much before there was trouble,” said Gunnarr. “With me, the process would be slower, though the outcome might be the same.” Then the horses were brought together. Gunnarr equipped himself for goading as Skarphéðinn led the horse forward. Gunnarr wore a red tunic with a broad silver belt and carried a stout horse goad in his hand. The horses began to fight and bit at each other for a long time without need for goading, and it was excellent sport. Then Þorgeir and Kol decided that they should push their horse when the horses next rushed at each other, to see if Gunnarr would be knocked down. The horses collided again, and Þorgeir and Kol threw their weight behind their horse’s rump. Gunnarr pushed his horse against theirs, and all of a sudden Þorgeir and Kol fell on their backs and their horse on top of them. They sprang up quickly and rushed at Gunnarr. He dodged to the side and took hold of Kol, and threw him down so hard that he was knocked unconscious. Þorgeir Starkaðarson struck Gunnarr’s horse and one of its eyes came out; Gunnarr struck Þorgeir with the horse-goad and Þorgeir fell senseless. Gunnarr went over to his stallion and spoke with Kolskegg: “Kill the horse: he shall not live with a disfigurement.” Kolskegg cut the head off the horse. 81 Brennu-Njáls saga, ed. Einar Ólafur Sveinsson (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1954): 59 kafli.

Chapter 12

Animals at War 1

Warlike Animals?

Medieval thinkers did not fully address the question of whether nonhuman animals made war on each other or not, although it has recurred from time to time over the millennia. Since no-one has claimed that they do not fight, the modern argument that they do not make war is dependent on a definition of war as organizing into large groups to fight other organized groups of their own species. If they do not do this, there might be grounds for arguing that in this way nonhuman animal behaviour is superior to human behaviour or even more moral than it, but the theriophily advanced by some classical philosophers did not return to European thought until the late sixteenth century, when Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) adopted it under their influence. As in Adelard of Bath’s response to a question he poses as if raised by his nephew, many medieval works in which wild animals were discussed made little distinction between “making war” and predation or conflict over territory, food or females, which involved violence between small groups of animals or individual animals. Hence animals with claws, horns, tusks or teeth that could pierce or tear flesh were frequently described as “armed for war.” In the Middle Ages the Latin word bellum referred to conflict between living beings, usually humans, but not necessarily between two polities. Adelard of Bath, Questiones Naturales (Questions on Natural Science), 151 Adelard: Since you do not accept irrational arguments in place of reason, take what seems to me most probable about this. Man is a rational animal, and hence a sociable animal, well-fitted for two modes of operation – action and deliberation, which others like to call war and peace. Everyday experience teaches that the use of weapons is needed in the business of war. But in the quietness of peace truth requires the same weapons to be laid aside and be removed far from the intimacy of deliberation. For while anger motivates the one course, reason soothes the other. If the man had weapons innate in him, when he came to make peace treaties, he would not be able to lay them down. Similarly, if he had been armed 1 Adelard of Bath, Questiones Naturales, ed. and trans. Burnett: xv.

© Koninklijke Brill BV, Leiden, 2025 | doi:10.1163/9789004721708_014

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with the lightness of flight he would both lose constancy in flightiness, and be found weak in the face of battle, because of the slender ineptitude of his limbs. But now he both takes up arms when it is necessary, and lays them down when peace demands it, and when he needs to be swift, he can work out a way to do this, and when the need is no longer there, he is equally able to return to firmness. But man can choose whether or not to take up arms and find a way to be swift should he wish to be. trans. Charles Burnett

The implication is that ‘armed’ animals are in a state of perpetual armed conflict, and without reason incapable of being otherwise. In such animals, wildness is equated with aggression and violence more than any other activities they may undertake. This is perhaps unsurprising given that when humans made contact with them they were either being hunted and defending themselves or being prevented from preying on domestic animals or ‘stealing’ foodstuffs. Albert the Great understood the battle over a limited food supply as the prime cause of ‘war’ between animals, while his use of “battle lines” (acies) implies a similarity to human conduct of war: Albert the Great, De Animalibus (On Animals), Bk 8, Tractatus 1, Ch. 2: De pugna animalium pro cibo et domo et pullis (On the fights animals have over food, home, and young)2 But those animals who live frequently or always in one place fight with each other, whether they are of the same or of different species. They have a strong reason for continuous fighting, if there is little food, which does not suffice for all, in the place where they live. But an additional reason for war is their nest or resting place or even sometimes fear and threat to their young. But the persistent cause of war is nothing but a want of food. … Animals that eat raw flesh fight with almost all animals because almost all animals are their food, albeit not those of the same species as them. … However, this is the reason that animals sometimes divide themselves into battle lines, and some are attacking others to devour them while others are grouped together to provide mutual assistance and defend themselves from those who attack. We know that certain nonhuman animal species engage in bigger conflicts than those listed in the first paragraph above. The example that most often 2 Albertus Magnus, DA: Liber VIII, Tract. II, Cap. II.

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comes to (the human) mind nowadays is ants, who, like humans, “make war” on a large scale and in an organized fashion on other ant colonies, but those who do so do not live in Europe. Albert the Great and other natural philosophers recognized primates as closer to humans than other animals, and some primate species are now known to use group violence against other groups of the same species in which the opposing males are killed and the females taken into their own group.3 Monkeys were perceived by the Spaniards as operating in large groups to “attack” them when they came into conflict in the Americas in the sixteenth century, throwing from the trees sticks, stones and other material including arrows and bolts that had been fired at them.4 However, few monkeys lived in medieval Europe unless as captives removed from their social groups and they were different species than those of the Americas. Though some of the medieval natural philosophers, encyclopedists and bestiary writers were keen to point out (in their opinion as examples for humanity) that many animals did have forms of social organisation, they were less aware that some of these animal species used this organisation to make large scale attacks on other social groups or species. One of the few accounts of animals engaging in large-scale violent conflict without the involvement of humans was inherited from Greek mythology and recounted in several medieval encyclopaedias and world histories, the conflict of the pygmies and the cranes.5 This conflict is described as warfare in the brief reference in Hartmann Schedel’s Nuremburg Chronicle of 1493 (Latin Liber Chronicarum) – “They conduct an unusual warfare against the cranes.” Otherwise in medieval sources the equivalent word for war or related parts of speech are not used for this conflict, nor do they mention the causes for its outbreak as related in ancient sources, which would be plausible reasons for war to break out between human polities, but the pygmies and cranes are described as fighting whenever they meet. Nevertheless, some of the medieval depictions of this conflict, such as the woodcuts in the Nuremburg Chronicle, show the pygmies and cranes facing each other in battle lines.6 3 See, for instance, Michael L. Wilson, Christophe Boesch, Barbara Fruth, et al., “Lethal aggression in Pan is better explained by adaptive strategies than human impacts.” Nature 513 (2014), 414–417, and its bibliography. 4 Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Historia Natural, mentioned in Steven Wagschal, Minding Animals in the Old and New Worlds (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), p. 128. Ovieda nevertheless considered these monkeys to be relatively harmless. 5 The tale was mentioned by Homer, Ovid and Pliny: Pliny the Elder, Natural History, ed. Rackham, Bk 7, Ch. 23–30. Whether pygmies were humans or the highest of the bestia in the scala naturae was debated in the Middle Ages. 6 Hartmann Schedel, Liber Chronicarum / Weltchronik / Nuremburg Chronicle (Nuremburg: Antonius Koberger, 1493): fol. XII. The printed editions in Latin and German appeared at the same time.

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Thomas of Cantimpre, Liber de Natura Rerum (Book of Natural Things). 5. De Avibus: 55. De gruibus (On cranes)7 The Pygmy race is said to fight with these [cranes] and they have a truce when the cranes retire. … Aristotle in his book on the natures of animals makes this reference to the Pygmies: The cranes arrive in the northern quarter beyond Egypt, where the Nile runs, in the winter season; they meet the Pygmies, people a cubit in height, and fight with them. Ezekiel also mentions that place in passing: “The Pygmy race in your towers” means that such a race is in the eastern parts.8 But Aristotle himself says that it is certainly no fable, for there is in reality a certain race of small men and correspondingly small horses that remain in mountainous places.9 … The grip of the cranes is so strong and tenacious that it may be taken for the hand of man. As in the case of mythological animals, it is difficult to know whether the audience took the pygmy-crane conflict seriously or not; if it was believed, none of the chronicles in question explored the implications of this tale for possible animal social organisation beyond noting evidence from their other behaviour that cranes had some. If we define war as violent conflict between human polities, when nonhuman animals have gone to war, it has been in the service of humans.10 As humans have increased in number and developed more complex social organisation, they have “surplus labour” to employ against other groups, just as ants do. If war as we know it is defined as a state of armed conflict between different polities or different groups within a polity, this presupposes two socio-political units that are organized to fight, but human warfare has developed other characteristics unknown in the rest of the animal world, notably the widespread use of manufactured weaponry and employment of other animal species as 7 8 9

Thomas of Cantimpre, Liber de Natura Rerum: Bk V, LV. Ezekiel 27.11. Aristotle, Historia Animalium 8.12, 892a12. A rubric in the Catalan Atlas of 1375 places the pygmies who fight the cranes on the western frontier of Cathay (China) and mentions their valiant defence against the cranes. In earlier sources they were sometimes located in approximately the same region (north of Scythia), but also in other peripheral regions. 10 Here the term “polity” refers to an organized human society, the highest order autonomous socio-political unit of any given region, irrespective of complexity or scale of organization. The polity could therefore be a kin-group, chiefdom, state or empire. Its members recognize themselves as belonging to a distinct socio-political unit, whether they define it by kinship, loyalty to a ruler or ruling group, ethnicity, nationality or religiosity (or any combination of them).

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assistants. Some are employed to transport warriors and equipment, but others have been “trained” or forced, or nowadays even drugged, to carry humans into battle, to fight, or to sacrifice themselves while killing human protagonists or disrupting their organisation. This use has affected the development of animal species and entailed huge loss of animal life. But unlike the weapons manufactured and used by humans, animals have their own agency and do not necessarily act in a predictable way, something that humans had to consider when employing them.11 Use of elephants in battle, for instance, had largely been abandoned by the Middle Ages except in Sassanian Persia, India and South-east Asia because they were prone to ‘panic’ when struck by missiles or otherwise injured and trample the soldiers of the army that employed them. As in the case of animals controlled to be food for humans, employed to assist in growing food for humans, or trained to hunt other animals with humans, their use in war was not questioned by people in the Middle Ages. 2

The Warhorse

It is probable that humans employed animals for fighting almost as soon as those that could be used in this way were domesticated: the first was likely the dog, but the horse was the one animal that humans regularly employed in battle in Europe during the Middle Ages. To be an effective instrument in war, however, it had to be of a specific type and required training. The motivation for the effort that was put into breeding of horses, with a resultant increase in size and strength unparalleled in other domesticated animals during the Middle Ages, was the production of bigger and stronger warhorses, which became a major industry in Europe. Close interaction between horse and human had a long history: there is evidence that horses were domesticated on the Eurasian steppes in 4000–3500 BCE and they were deposited in chariot burials before 2000 BCE. Once horses began to play a significant part in warfare after the two-wheeled light chariot was devised their value became considerably higher. Selective breeding for whatever use they were intended must have started very early, but breeding requires selection of the right foals, segregation of mares from all but select stallions, among other manipulations, so ‘improvement’ 11

A subject to be considered elsewhere, but in the pre-Christian period weapons, especially swords, may have been understood as having their own agency and/or being imbued by some sort of magic. They were frequently named and sometimes described as if acting themselves.

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has not occurred in a continuous line from ancient times to the present. The Romans had developed a sophisticated horse breeding industry, but we do not know how much of it survived the collapse of central authority in the west during the fifth century. Periods of political and social instability such as that which occurred in many regions during the following two centuries, though not necessarily everywhere at the same time, could disrupt the management of herds. The Islamic conquest of Iberia introduced Arab breeding methods a small number of ‘Arabian’ horses and many North African “Barbs” which may have been interbred with good horses surviving from Roman times.12 It is difficult to know when horsemen were first used in battle in large numbers in medieval central and western Europe, but the number of benefices granted to warriors to give them the resources to equip themselves with a horse and other war gear seems to have increased in the early Carolingian period (c.730–800). Charlemagne’s Capitulare de Villis and Brevium Exempla of c.801 laid down regulations about segregation of mares and care of the stallions on the royal estates (vills), indicating that the Franks were practicing effective breeding methods by the end of the eighth century. Once they were old enough, the colts bred for the purpose went to the households where they were trained as warhorses, when some would prove unsuitable and be relegated to other tasks. Capitulare de Villis (Capitulary for the Administration of the Estates), 13–1413 13. That they [the stewards] shall take good care of the stallions, that is, the warhorses, and on no account allow them to stay for a long time in the same pasture, lest it should be spoiled for this reason. And if any of one is such that he is unhealthy, or too old, or is likely to die, the stewards are to let us know at the proper time, before the season comes to send them among the mares. 14. That they shall look after our mares well, and segregate the colts at the proper time. And if the fillies multiply in number, let them be separated so that they can then form a new herd by themselves. The royal estates were not specialized stud farms like those of today, but a large part of their resources was used for provisioning the army. Alongside arms and female slaves, stallions were specified as items that should not be sold outside 12 See e.g. R.H.C. Davis, The Medieval Warhorse (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989), pp. 31–51. 13 Die Landgüterordnung Kaiser Karls des Grossen, ed. Gareis: 13–14.

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the kingdom in the Capitulary of Mantua (781), and almost a hundred years later, Charles the Bald threatened any who sold arms and horses to the Vikings with death in his Edict of Pitres (864). In West Francia-France the Carolingian horse-breeding centres survived the end of the dynasty. We also know that specialized horse-breeding was practised in other parts of Europe, including Anglo-Saxon England. There has long been a misconception that medieval warhorses were huge, partly based on another misconception that the late medieval knight’s armour was very heavy. Some medieval sources might seem to back this up; in his Carmina in honorem Hludovici, Ermold the Black, a ninth-century poet who lived at the court of Pippin of Aquitaine, son of the Frankish Emperor Louis I, described gifts given by the Carolingians, among them “… a team of horses carrying various valuables, whose backs they could scarcely climb.”14 This is hyperbole which conflicts with the impression given by depictions in the late ninth-century Gellone Sacramentary, the St Gall Book of Maccabees and tenth-century art, nor do the Bayeux Tapestry horses appear much larger.15 Geoffrey Luttrel’s warhorse in the fourteenth-century Luttrel Psalter appears to be very large, but the depiction is an exception.16 If we jump to the beginning of the sixteenth century, the horse of Albrecht Dürer’s Knight, Death and the Devil, depicting a knight in Gothic armour on an unarmoured horse, is somewhat larger.17 Warhorses of the Middle Ages were smaller than large modern horse breeds, but when carrying an armed man horses were sufficiently large to intimidate men on foot. Most of the characteristics that medieval knights or their followers required of warhorses in west-central Europe would also apply for warhorses in the modern era, but generally stallions were preferred to mares in the Middle Ages. 14

Ermoldi Nigelli, “Carmen Elegiacum de Rebus Gestis Ludovici Pii, ab anno 781 usque ad annum 826,” Edited by J.-P. Migne, in Patrologiae cursus completus: sive Bibliotheca universalis, Vol. 105, 1831. col. 551–640: Liber II. 15 Gellone Sacramentary (8th-century illuminated manuscript), in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France manuscript dept, Latin 12048; St Gall Book of Maccabees (9th-century illuminate manuscript), in the St. Gallen Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 47, ms. Maccabæorum lib. I–II; The Bayeux Tapestry (embroidery) is in Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux, 13 bis rue de Nesmond, 14400 Bayeux, France. 16 Commissioned by Sir Geoffrey Luttrell (1276–1345), depicted on Folio 202v, on horseback and attended by his wife and daughter-in-law. The Psalter is in the British Library. 17 “Knight, Death, and the Devil” is one of three prints of 1513–14 by Dürer known as his Meisterstiche (master engravings). It was possibly based on the depiction of the Christian knight on an address from Erasmus’s Enchiridion militis Christiani (Instructions for the Christian Soldier), published in 1504.

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They are often clearly depicted, for instance, in the Bayeux Tapestry. The aristocratic warrior wanted his horse to be aggressive and ‘feisty,’ and the prejudice against mares may have developed from an assumption that horse gender differences reflected those of humans. There were exceptions to the stallion rule: the Teutonic Order seems to have used geldings by preference.18 However, even in western and central European armies there were lightly equipped horsemen who used smaller horses, for instance, the ginetes of Spain and the hobilars of England and Scotland. The number of lighter cavalry in armies was considerably larger in the mid- to late medieval armies of Hungary, Poland, Lithuania and Rus, while many steppe peoples used a majority of bow-armed light horsemen. Mares appear to have been used by many of these, as speed and endurance was more important than size, whereas size, strength and manoeuvrability were required in equal measure by the western knight.19 His horse had to be strong enough to carry an armed man at some pace, steady enough not to panic when faced with the noise of battle or a line of armed enemies, and brave enough to endure wounds. When the male aristocracy of High Medieval Europe thought about horses, it was probably the warhorse that first came to mind. This was certainly the case for Bartholomeus Anglicus, writing about horses in the mid-thirteenth century. For him, as for many who fought on horseback, the horse had human-like characteristics and an attitude to war comparable to that of the mounted warrior. Bartholomew the Englishman, De Proprietatibus Rerum (On the Nature of Things), Bk 18. De Animalibus (On Animals), 38. De Equo (On the horse)20 Horses are joyful in fields, and smell battles, and they are comforted by the sound of trumpets for battle and fighting; and they are excited to run with noise that they know, sorry when they are overcome, and glad when they have the mastery. And so they sense and know their enemies in battle to the extent that they attack their enemies with biting and striking, and also some know their own lords, and forget mildness, if their lords are overcome: and some horses allow no man to ride on their backs except 18

Sven Ekdahl, “Horses and Crossbows: Two Important Warfare Advantages of the Teutonic Order in Prussia”, in Helen Nicholson, ed., The Military Orders. Vol. 2 Welfare and Warfare (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 1998). 19 The horses used by western knights or the equivalent would not have been as manoeuvrable as the smaller horses used by light horsemen and in large numbers by steppe armies, however. See, for instance, Ann Hyland, The Medieval Warhorse from Byzantium to the Crusades (London: Grange Books, 1994), 113–17. 20 Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus Rerum: Liber XVIII, Cap. xxxviii. Here the translation is a modernized version of John Trevisa’s (accurate) Middle English translation (Liber XVIII, XXXIX).

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only their own lords. And many horses weep when their lords are dead. And it is said that horses weep for sorrow, just as a man does, and so the kind of horse and of man is mixed in a type of beast, the centaur. Also, often men that shall fight take evidence and divine and guess what shall befall by the sorrow or the joy of the horse. trans. John Trevisa (modernized)

The Gestae and Chansons of the First Crusade combine history and the heroic epic, and the horses of their noble heroes often share in the killing. In the Gesta Tancredi, for instance, Tancred and the horses both do their bit in slaughtering their enemies.21 The work was written in prose and verse by Ralf of Caen and concentrates especially on the activities of his former patrons, the Italian Normans Bohemond and Tancred de Hauteville, during the First Crusade and its aftermath. Ralph of Caen, Gesta Tancredi in Expeditione Hierosolymitana (The Deeds of Tancred in the Crusade to Jerusalem), Ch. 9122 He [Tancred] urged on his horse with his spurs and his reins. He gave encouragement to his men with terrifying shouts and every type of effort. His rapidly moving battle line crashed into the armed foe. To avoid death, Turks goaded and lacerated the necks and useless rumps of their heavily burdened mounts. Nor did it take long for them to be thrown from their horses. They cast aside their bows and quivers and fled. Tancred soaked the green earth with their blood. Tancred filled ditches with heaps of dying. Many died from wounds and many without wounds. Fearing wounds, the crowd avoided them. Some of the enemy rushed off willingly after abandoning their reins and saddles. They clambered under thornbushes hoping to hide there. Horses disembowelled some of them with their hooves. Meanwhile, death overtook others who had fled on foot. The legs gave way under some when their courage or their spirit failed. The greatest number thought to save themselves in the river. But having entered the river they perished in the waves that they thought would aid them. A living rider and horse appeared on a small mound that could be seen above the water. As they approached the bank, the mud sucked both it and him down. So those equipped with quivers, hauberks and harness went down to hell while the others trembled.

21 The full title of the work is Gesta Tancredi Siciliae Regis in expeditione Hierosolymitana, but it is usually known simply as Gesta Tancredi. 22 “Gesta Tancredi,” In Recueil des historiens des croisades: Cap. XCI.

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At its most extreme, the image of the belligerent warhorse given in these two passages appears in the Rochester Bestiary’s depiction of two dismounted knights in combat, while their horses stand on their hind legs and grapple each other in a separate combat.23 This is presumably the attitude the knight wished his horse to have. The picture echoes an equally unlikely tale of the Syrian faris (horseman, knight) and poet Usāmah ibn-Munqidh (1095–1188), who relates how a Frankish and a Kurdish horseman “met at the top of the hill and each one charged the other. Each dealt a lance blow to the other and both fell dead. While the two cavaliers lay dead their horses went on attacking each other at the top of the hill.”24 Evidently the elite mounted warriors who fought against the crusaders shared many of their views of the warhorse, but while horses may well have collided with enemy footsoldiers or other horses and injured people on the ground with their hooves, they are unlikely to have been as aggressive as often portrayed, not least because a bucking and kicking horse would have hindered the rider from fighting effectively. In the Latin epic Waltharius the horses suffer considerable injury during the clash of opposing mounted knights, although it is difficult to know how far the description of horses colliding reflects reality. Dennis M. Kratz argued that the poem satirized heroic epic, not least through extensive use of classical material.25 The author, Ekkehard, was a monk at St Gall Monastery who may have taken a dim view of warriorhood, but the authors of most other heroic epics were probably also monks. The poem as we have it is a late ninth-  or early tenth-century Latin version of a much older Germanic tale originating in the fifth century, when the Visigoths were in Aquitaine and the Huns dominated much of Europe. The method of attack, hurling spears and then closing to engage in melee, seems likely for the period before the development of the mounted attack with couched lance at the end of the eleventh century.26 The Old English fragments of Waldere and the version of the Old Norse Þiðrekssaga (ch. 241–244) tell us that Ekkehard’s version was adjusted considerably, probably mainly by Ekkehard himself, while Saxo Grammaticus’ twelfth-century retelling of elements of the tale differs significantly.27 23 Rochester bestiary, BL MS Royal 12.F.XIII, f. 42v, in the British Library. 24 An Arab-Syrian Gentleman and Warrior in the Period of the Crusades: Memoirs of Usāmah ibn-Munqidh, trans. Philip K. Hitti, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 126. 25 Dennis M. Kratz, Mocking Epic: Waltharius, Alexandreis and the Problem of Christian Heroism (Madrid: José Porrúa Turanzas, 1980). 26 The use of the couched lance probably developed around the time of the First Crusade. The method of attack as described in Waltharius was probably common for both infantry and cavalry in the Early Middle Ages. 27 See Jonathan B. Himes, The Old English Epic of Waldere (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009); Þiðreks saga af Bern, ed. Guðni Jónsson (Reykjavík:

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Ekkehard I, Waltharius, lines 186–19528 Now ash and cornel-wood joined in a single game. The lance, once hurled, would flash just like a lightning bolt. Just as the snow swirls thickly in the winter time, Not otherwise the warriors cast their savage weapons. At last, when every javelin from both the lines Was thrown, then every hand is reaching for a sword. They draw their flashing blades and swing their shields around; At length, the battle lines converge, renew the fray. Some of the horses charge and shatter breast to breast; Some of the riders are unhorsed by a hard shield. trans. DENNIS M. KRATZ

Human social differences also influenced perceptions of horse breeds. In the Chanson d’Antioche, Godfrey of Bouillon rides a Gascon warhorse, Robert of Normandy rides a Syrian mule, and Peter the Hermit, presumably a commoner, rides a Hungarian donkey; the hierarchy of the riders is reflected in the hierarchy of their mounts.29 In Ramón Llull’s work on chivalry, which was written in the late thirteenth century and subsequently became the most widely-read treatise on knighthood, the knights are chosen, one man from a thousand, to restore order and justice in a world in which neither exists, but they cannot do this without the assistance of horses similarly chosen for their nobility. Ramón Llull, El Libre del ordre de cavalleria (The book of the order of chivalry), Ch. 1. En la qual es tracta del principi de cavalleria (In which is explained the principle of chivalry), 3–430 3. The most beautiful, the most agile and the most able to sustain work with nobility was also sought among all the beasts, for it must be the most suitable for service to man. And because the horse (cavall) is the noblest and most suitable beast for service to man, the horse was chosen among all the beasts and was given to the chosen man among a thousand. And Íslendingasagnaútgáfan, 1951); On all the appearances of Waldere: Shami Ghosh, Writing the Barbarian Past: Studies in Early Medieval Historical Narrative, Early Middle Ages Series 24 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 153–183 (Ch. 5, “A ‘Germanic’ Hero in Latin and the Vernacular: Waltharius and Waldere”). Ghosh sees the tale as primarily light entertainment. 28 Ekkehard I, Waltharius, lateinisches Gedicht des zehnten Jahrhunderts; nach der handschriftlichen Ueberlieferung berichtigt, ed. and trans. Joseph Viktor von Scheffel and Alfred Holder (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 1874). 29 Chanson d’Antioche, CCC-I.7473–500, pp. 373–74. 30 Ramon Llull. The Book of the Order of Chivalry / Llibre de l’Ordre de Cavalleria / Libro de la Orden de Caballería, ed. and trans. Antonio Cortijo Ocaña (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2015): Cap. I, [3]–[4].

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for this reason, this chosen man is called a knight (cavaller).31 4. When the noblest beast had been delivered to the noblest man, it was also convenient that the noblest and most effective weapons be chosen to be effective in combat and to defend man from injury and death. Ideally the knight’s horse should be a destrier, although a courser, a horse considered more suited to the hunt, would suffice. As noted in Ch. 11, the horse became so important to the elite warrior’s status that mutilating it, especially by cutting off its tail, was taken as an insult to the knight himself, approximating to an emasculation.32 In the German romance Parzival (early thirteenth century) the hero first becomes fit to be a knight when he acquires the warhorse and equipment of a knight he kills with a javelin. Later in the same work, Gawan is tricked into having his warhorse stolen and is left with a far inferior creature, becoming the butt of jibes from the lady Orgeluse suggesting that he may no longer be taken for a knight. Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, Bk 1033 Still standing by the lady’s side, he took a look at his warhorse. For a speedy joust it would fetch a pretty feeble price, its stirrup-leathers being of bast. That noble, worthy stranger had in time past been better saddled. He avoided mounting it, as he feared he might trample the saddle-gear to bits. The palfrey’s back was crooked. If his leap had landed upon it, its back would have been quite shattered. Another time, this might have overwhelmed him. He led the palfrey after him, carrying the shield and a lance. At his severe difficulties the lady laughed a lot – she who was causing him so much distress. He tied his shield upon the palfrey. She said: “Are you carrying pedlar’s wares to sell in my land? Who has bestowed upon me a doctor and a pedlar’s stall? Watch out for tolls on the road. One or other of my tollkeepers will deprive you of joy!”34 trans. Cyril Edwards

31

In Catalan, Llull’s native tongue, this sentence makes more sense, as the word for horse, cavall, corresponds more closely to the word for knight, cavaller. The same correspondence applies in Spanish and French. 32 Andrew G. Miller, “‘Tails’ of Masculinity: Knights, Clerics, and the Mutilation of Horses in Medieval England,” Speculum, 88:4 (2013), 958–995. This form of mutilation was also commonly practised on clerics’ horses. 33 Wolfram von Eschenbach. Parzifal: Text und Übersetzung (Mittelhochdeutscher Text nach der sechsten Ausgabe von Karl Lachmann), trans. Peter Knecht (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2003): Zehntel Buch. 34 Knights were exempted from tolls. In many lands ownership of a warhorse exempted the warrior from taxes.

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In many chivalric romances the horse is a counterpart to the knight rather than a servant, each having his own agency. The horse “understands” the knight’s requirements. In a Middle English version of the medieval romance Bevis of Hampton (c.1325) the mutual understanding goes beyond simply responding to certain commands, or to the reins and bit and pressure of the knight’s legs or spurs.35 Boeve de Haumtone, lines 3528–3636 He struck Arondel with his spurs and shook the reins hard: halfway along the course he overtook the leaders. Then Bevis said, “Arondel, for the love of me go faster, and I shall act fairly and well: for the love of you I will build a castle!” When Arondel heard what he said, he surged ahead of the two [leading] knights. When, earlier in the tale, Bevis returns to his horse and his wife Josian, Arondel recognises him even before she does. The portrayal of Arondel in Bevis seems to belie the treatises that emphasize nonhuman animal inferiority and subservience to humans and their inability to make decisions that are not merely natural impulse. The latter “scholastic view” of the brute animal is recalled in the last words of Bevis, when he, his lady and his horse have been buried, as if the author hopes that the horse has a life after the death of the body, or even thinks that he deserves one, but hedges his bets against an accusation of professing a subversive doctrine. Boeve de Haumtone, lines 4613–18 The king founded a house of religion to sing (prayers) for Sir Bevis and moreover for noble Josian – may God have pity on their souls! – and also for Arondel, if men may pray on behalf of a horse. At one point in the tale, Bevis surrenders all his lands and possessions in return for the life of Arondel, who has kicked the king’s son to death after he foolishly tried to handle him (all having been warned not to do this by Bevis). Here we are surely in the realms of fantasy, but there is an echo of this attitude in the 35 The oldest version is Anglo-Norman, Boeve de Haumtone, but it was recorded in many languages: in Dutch, French, English and Italian as a metrical chivalric romance, and in Romanian, Russian, Dutch, Irish, Welsh, Old Norse and Yiddish as a prose translation. 36 “Boeve de Haumtone,” in “Boeve de Haumtone” and “Gui de Warewic”: Two Anglo-Norman Romances, trans. Judith Weiss (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2008), 25–96.

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statement of Lodewijk van Welthem’s rhyme chronicle that when the commander of the French army at the Battle of Courtrai, Count Robert of Artois, was surrounded by enemies and about to be clubbed, hacked and stabbed to death, he appealed to the Flemish footsoldiers to spare his horse. But they were not knights and his horse died with him.37 The riding horse was a possession of status throughout the Middle Ages, as horses were often buried with their noble owners in pagan Anglo-Saxon England, Scandinavia and the Baltic. However, accounts of battles of the early Middle Ages in these regions rarely tell us whether the owners fought mounted or perhaps used their horses only for transport to and from battle, and for pursuit or escape. There is not enough evidence for use or loss of horses in battle before the eleventh century to draw firm conclusions. Oft-repeated assumptions about whether certain peoples habitually fought mounted or on foot have little foundation: contrary to these, for instance, the nobility of Anglo-Saxon armies may have fought mounted in battle on occasion, and Carolingian nobility may have fought dismounted.38 In the High Middle Ages, possession of at least one good warhorse was essential for a warrior noble, but most will have had up to four horses. Being without a horse meant loss of status. During the First Crusade the long journey to Antioch took a heavy toll of warhorses as well as transport animals, and the knights took the loss of the warhorses hard. Here Guilbert de Nogent, who was not present on the Crusade but had many associates who were, describes the reaction of some of Bohemond’s knights to the loss of their horses in eastern Cilicia. Guibert de Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos (The Deeds of God through the Franks), Bk 4, Ch. 139 The rest of the army left Coxon, the town we mentioned, and marched through high mountains along incredibly rocky paths, so narrow that no-one could pass the man in front of him, but each man had to proceed one step at a time, treading carefully, in single file. A deep gulley lay beneath the narrow, rough path, so that if a horse happened to push up against another horse, he would fall to instant death. There you would 37

Lodewijk van Welthem, Voortzetting van der Spiegel historiael (1248–1316), ed. H. Vander Linden et al., 3 vols, CRH (Brussels: 1906–38), Vol. 2.1.4, 324, mentioned in J.F. Verbruggen, The Battle of the Golden Spurs: Courtrai, 11 July 1302 (Woodbridge, Boydell, 2002), 238. 38 Guy Halsall, Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West, 450–900 (London: Routledge, 2003), 180–81; Philip Line, The Vikings and their Enemies: Warfare in Northern Europe 750–1100 (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2014), 106–10. 39 Guibert de Nogent, “Gesta Dei per Francos,” in Venerabilis Guiberti abbatis B. Mariæ de Novigento opera omnia (Paris: Lutetiæ Parisiorum, 1651), 367–455: Liber IV, Cap. II.

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have seen armed men, who, having just been converted by the hardship and starvation of the journey from knights into foot-soldiers, were suffering dreadfully, smashing their fists, tearing their hair, begging for the relief of death, selling their shields, helmets, and all their arms, regardless of their true value, for three or four, perhaps five cents. When they could find no buyer, they threw their shields and other fine equipment into the gulley, to lighten the load on their weakened, imperilled bodies. From the late eleventh century onwards we have records of tournaments, first in Frankia and then wherever western or central European knights went. Tournaments were more or less arranged melees between groups of knights and their followers. They were fought over large areas of land, including fields and villages (to which they might do considerable damage), when different lords and their troops were in the same vicinity, as a form of practice and, it seems, enjoyment. Rules were rudimentary, although fenced off parts did give refuge for knights and their horses to recover strength, but there was booty to be won and defeated opponents might be taken and ransomed. It was not the custom to deliberately seek the death of opposing knights (although some were killed), and since a winner took the equipment of those he defeated, a warhorse was a valuable prize, so there was an incentive not to injure them. Contrary to the impression given in romances, more were probably fought for profit or other ‘base motives’ than a desire to demonstrate chivalry and impress ladies. William Marshall (1146/7–1219) is a case in point. A penniless youngest son, though a household knight, having shortly before been reduced to riding a palfrey, he achieved success in his first tournament: Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal (The History of William the Marshal), lines 1324–1350, 1367–136240 But to come straight to the point: Sir Philip de Valognes was so elegantly, superbly armed – a more handsome figure than anyone, sleeker than a bird – that many a knight set his sights on him. The Marshal certainly did, and broke swiftly forward, spurring Blancart, and charged into the opposing lines and seized Philip by the reins; Philip did all he could to fight him off, but in vain: the Marshal overpowered him and pulled him from the fray; he pledged himself his prisoner, and the Marshal took him at his word and let him go. Once he’d gone, the Marshal charged back into the melee and instantly felled a knight with a lance he’d salvaged, and 40 Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, comte de Striguil et de Pembroke, régent d’Angleterre, ed. Paul Meyer (Paris: Société de l’histoire de France, 1891–1901).

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threatened him so with the broken stump that he yielded as his captive. Now he had two valuable prisoners, won fair and square. He set about taking a third, and in no time forced him to submit. … … That morning the Marshal had been poor both in money and in horses; now – thanks be to God – he’d won four destriers (and a half-share in another), and fine and handsome they were, along with rounceys, palfreys, a string of pack-horses and a fine array of gear. trans. Nigel Bryant

In ten months between Pentecost and Lent in 1167, allied with another household knight, William captured 103 knights along with their horses and equipment. It was an ‘honourable’ way to amass wealth and for William the beginning of the road to becoming earl of Pembroke and briefly regent of England. Though a romance, Hugh de Rotelande’s late twelfth-century tale Ipomedon may give some impression of the tournament field. As Susan Crane points out, the knight, his mount and his equipment form a “technological unit”, and in the romances the knight’s equipment and then the knight himself are systematically deconstructed during combat; however, as here, that typically includes the horse furniture but not the horse. Hugh of Rhuddlan, Ipomedon41 Many were wounded in the back and many struck in the chest; many horses ran about in the conflict with stirrups empty of their lords, and many lances were shattered, many saddles emptied, many saddle cloths torn and covered in blood, many good shields penetrated, many helmets bent and pierced and many good hauberks unlinked and many bright swords smashed, many breast straps and bridles broken and many girths and straps, and many saddlebows and saddles split; many men fell there and many staggered. trans. Susan Crane

In reality, these violent affairs might be more than a one-off event with the sole purpose of developing martial skills, making a profit, and, as the chansonsde-geste and romances would have it, gaining honour and displaying chivalric prowess; some participants used them to settle grudges and a tournament 41

Hugh of Rhuddlan. Ipomedon in drei englischen Bearbeitungen herausgegeben. Edited by Eugen Kölbing. Breslau: Wilhelm Koebner, 1889 [Middle English versions]. The excerpt here is as quoted by Susan Crane, Animal Encounters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 145–46.

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might initiate a feud, and some were used as cover for initiating attacks that had military-political objectives.42 Tournaments were condemned by the Church, without much effect, but they were slowly superseded by the more controlled jousting events from the late thirteenth century onwards. Unlike the late medieval tournament single combat, which was dangerous but unlikely to result in death, and in which combatants tried to avoid hitting the horse, a judicial duel would commonly result in death for one of the combatants and there were no rules. The following duel occurred after the murder of Charles the Good of Flanders in 1127: Galbert of Bruges, De Multro, Traditione et Occisione Gloriosi Karoli Comitus Flandriarum (Of the Abuse, Betrayal, and Slaughter of the Glorious Charles, Count of Flanders), 5843 As soon as the provost was dead, everyone present went out to the manor where the combat between Herman the Iron and Guy [of Steenvorde] had been called and where both sides fought bitterly. Guy had unhorsed his adversary and kept him down with his lance just as he liked whenever Herman tried to get up. Then his adversary, coming closer, disembowelled Guy’s horse, running him through with his sword. trans. James Bruce Ross

The end result was that Guy lost and was hanged. The mutual understanding between the chivalry of Europe, which resulted in the custom of capture and ransom of fellow nobles in preference to killing them in ‘real’ warfare as well as in high medieval tournaments, may have meant that losses of horses in battle were relatively low in the areas of western and central Europe where clashes between mounted forces of knights and their attendants often determined battles. However, if this were the case the Battle of Benevento in 1266 was an exception: Giovanni Vilanni, Cronica, Bk 7.9: Come la battaglia dal re Carlo al re Manfredi fu, e come il re Manfredi fu sconfitto e morto (How there was a battle between King Charles and King Manfred, and how King Manfred was defeated and died)44 584 42 Richard Barber and Juliet Barker, Tournaments (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989), 13–27. 43 Galbertus notarius Brugensis, De multro, traditione et occisione gloriosi Karoli comitus Flandriarum, ed. J. Rider (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994): [58]. 44 Giovanni Vilanni, Nuova Cronica, Vol. 3, ed. Giovanni Porta. 3 vols. (Parma: Fondazione Pietro Bembo, 1991): Libro settimo, IX.

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The good King Charles, seeing his followers being so badly beaten, did not keep to the order of the battle and defend himself with the second battle, considering that if the first French battle, in which he had full confidence, were routed, there was little hope that the others would save the day; but immediately with his battle he went to assist the French battle against that of the Germans, and when the Florentine refugees and their battle saw King Charles enter the fray, they followed boldly and performed marvellous feats of arms that day, always following the person of King Charles; and good Giles le Brun, constable of France, did the same with Robert of Flanders and his troop; and on the other side Count Giordano fought with his troop, so that the battle was fierce and hard and lasted for a long time, with no-one knowing who was getting the advantage, because the Germans by their valour and strength, striking with their swords, did great damage to the French. But suddenly a great shout arose among the French troops, whoever initiated it, saying: “To your daggers! To your daggers! Strike at the horses!” And this was done, by which means in a short time the Germans were badly mauled and severely beaten down, and on the edge of flight. The initial success of the German cavalry of King Manfred caused Charles of Anjou to throw in his own cavalry division, which began to make headway when they attacked the Germans’ horses as well as the men. One reason was undoubtedly that many of the horses had less armour or none. This account suggests that mounted warriors preferred not to attack other knights’ horses, at the same time telling us that they did do so when the situation demanded, in ‘real war’ as opposed to tournaments. Because of the increasingly effective armour worn by knights, by the fifteenth century some treatises on martial technique were advising attacks on the horse in battle. By then many horses had plate armour, but not all, and if they had armour it was rarely as complete as the knight’s.45 The example below, again involving William Marshall and from the biography commissioned by his son, is another in which the horse was deliberately targeted, when William and a few others acted as rearguard during Henry II’s brief war with his son Count Richard of Anjou (later Richard I “Coeur de lion”) in 1189. William did not wish to go so far as to kill the prince, but by killing his horse inflicted a moral injury and made the point that he could have. 45

Some horses had chainmail or padded barding from the thirteenth century onwards, and by the fifteenth century many had plate armour. This would have been very good protection against thrown missiles or those from bows and crossbows, but the legs were still vulnerable to infantry in close combat.

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Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal (The History of William the Marshal), lines 8832–886446 The Marshal was less than pleased to see the pursuers gaining on them; alert and ready as ever, he promptly took his lance and shield and spurred straight towards the approaching Count Richard. Seeing him coming, the count roared: “God’s legs, Marshal, don’t kill me! It wouldn’t be right  – I am quite unarmed!” “No,” replied the Marshal, “I won’t kill you – I’ll leave that to the Devil!” And he drove his lance clean through Richard’s horse, killing it on the spot: it didn’t move another step – it fell dead and the count fell with it. It was a fine blow indeed, and proved the saving of the party in retreat – without it they’d have been slain or captured: their pursuers had been bent on nothing less, and would have achieved it but for the Marshal’s feat. Knights and soldiers were swarming forward, but Count Richard leapt up and cried: “Go no further! You’re mad, you’re crazy – you’ll be undone!” And the moment he said that they stopped in their tracks. trans. Nigel Bryant

While it may have been the usual practice for mounted knights and their followers to spare horses in battle, commoners, who usually fought on foot, behaved differently. It made sense for footmen to bring down the horses, which were either unarmoured or less well armoured than their riders, so that the latter would be thrown to the ground and become more vulnerable. Especially after 1300, the mounted chivalry of Europe suffered some severe defeats at the hands of solid formations of infantry. Most of these forces were armed with long spears, polearms and pikes, but a high proportion of English armies after 1330 were archers.47 The warhorses were not spared in these encounters. Most casualties in a defeated army occurred as it broke in flight, and at Courtrai in 1302 it seems that the horses were massacred as well as the men. This may have been ordered, but in all probability the common footsoldiers of Flanders, like the knights themselves, saw the knight and his horse as a single “technological unit,” in their eyes intent on their destruction, and they took their revenge on both. 46 Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, ed. Meyer. 47 Polearms include two handed weapons between one and three metres in length such as halberds, poleaxes, and bills, which usually had a point to thrust, an axe-like blade and often hooks for pulling men out of the saddle. Two-handed warhammers, morning stars (morgensterns) and spike-ended clubs such as the Flemish goedendag might be similarly effective.

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Annales Gandenses (Annals of Ghent), year 130248 And so, by the disposition of God, who arranges and orders everything, the art of war failed, the flower of knighthood with the strength of the choicest horses and destriers, and the beauty and power of a mighty army was turned into manure-heaps, and there the glory of the French became dung and worms before the weavers, the fullers, and the common Flemings and footmen, admittedly strong and virile, well-armed and courageous, and having experienced leaders. For the Flemings, enraged by the cruelty which the French had shown between Lille and Courtrai, slaughtered them, and did not spare their horses, in fact they killed them all cruelly, until they were entirely assured of victory; because in their army, before the commencement of the war, it was commanded and proclaimed on the part of their princes, that whosoever in the war should steal anything of value, or capture anyone, however noble, should immediately be slain by his own men.  … More than a thousand simple knights, many noble squires, and numbers of foot fell there, and more than three thousand splendid chargers and valuable horses were stabbed during the battle.49 At Loudon Hill five years later the same happened to the English mounted knights attacking Scottish spearmen on a front narrowed by trenches dug on either side. The poem The Bruce tells the tale of Robert Bruce’s victory. In such circumstances there was a limit to what the horses would do for their riders before they tried to save themselves. If large animals were no longer under the control of their riders or minders, they became a danger to their own side. The same was to happen on a larger scale at Bannockburn in 1314. John Barbour, The Bruce, Bk 8, lines 319–32450 The king’s men, who worthy were With their spears that pierced sharply 48 Annales Gandenses / Annals of Ghent, ed. and trans. Hilda Johnstone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985): 1302, pp. 30–31. 49 Just before this sentence the chronicle lists 86 higher nobles, the most important by name or title. The numbers of others given are not necessarily reliable, but do tell us that losses in horses were high. It should be borne in mind that almost all medieval accounts of battle give no clear overall picture of what occurred on the battlefield, even if they were near-contemporary to the events described and written by an observer or someone who knew people who were present. The purposes and interests of the writers were rarely those that would be priorities for modern military historians. On Courtrai, see especially J.F. Verbruggen, The Battle of the Golden Spurs: Courtrai, 11 July 1302 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002 [1952]). 50 John Barbour, The Bruce, ed. A.A.M. Duncan (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1997): Book VIII. The poem was written in 1376, but is usually thought to be based on fairly reliable accounts. Either way, for our purposes it reflects a medieval view of battle.

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Stabbed men and horses both Until red blood ran freely from the wounds The wounded horses tried to flee And charged their own men in their flight. Accounts of the massacre of Austrian cavalry in a mountain pass at Morgarten (1311) tell us that the attitude of the Swiss commoners was no different. After Courtrai, the French avoided battle with the Flemings when they were formed up in a dense line ready to face them. In the mid-fourteenth century, at Crecy, the French warhorses had to face a different danger, this time the massed archery of the English bowmen. Obviously showers of arrows did not discriminate between horse and rider. The anthropomorphised goose in John Lydgate’s rhymed debate between horse, goose and sheep about who is the more useful to humans explains that horses fell to arrows with goose feathers, in the process suggesting that both horse and knight were brought low by archery. John Lydgate, The Horse, the Goose and the Sheep, v. 31–34, lines 211–23851 Through all the land of Brutus Albion, For feathered arrows – as I rehearse can – Goose is the best, as in comparison, Except the feathers of peacock or of swan. By bows and arrows, since the war began, Brave English men – as it is read in history – Over her enemies had many a great victory. Horses in the field mow muster with great pride, When they of trumpets hear the bloody sound; But, when the arrow has pierced through his side, To ground he goes and casts his master down; Entering the field he plays the fierce lion – What follows after? His carcass stinks sore, Save skin and shoes there remains of him no more. These mighty captains and knights in the field Make their disposition and their ordinance: First men of arms, with poll-axe, spear and shield, Set in due order to have the governance Which at Poitier took the king of France? 51

John Lydgate, “The Debate of the Horse, Goose, and Sheep,” in The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, Part II: Secular poems, ed. Merriam Sherwood (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), 539–65: verses 31–34.

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Thanks to the goose must be given of right, Which on this field so proudly took her flight.52 Slough of my flight: for hasty negligence, Of presumption, the goose was left behind When the famous worthy duke of Clarence Rode on Bayard, with his eyes blind: Flight of my feathers was put out of mind, And, for he set of me that day no force, Full little or nought availed him his horse.53 In almost all cavalry attacks faced by undiscriminating missile fire horses are likely to have suffered disproportionately. The reliable figures we have for the suicidal attack of the British Light Cavalry Brigade on the Russian guns at Balaclava in 1854 probably give a good idea of the relative number of “hits” on horses and riders in such a situation: of the 673 cavalry, 247 men were killed and wounded, whereas 475 horses were killed and 42 wounded. The casualties from arrows among horses at Crecy would have been proportionately higher as many were unarmoured at that date, unlike their riders. After Crecy, as the English themselves had done when faced with the Scottish armies of spearmen, the French knights often resorted to fighting on foot against English armies. This did not mean that the importance of horses to the status of the knights diminished, merely that the knights had learnt by bitter experience that it was better not to ride such valuable assets into battle in certain unfavourable situations. For those who could afford it, armour for the horse became more common and more complete in the last century of the Middle Ages. Horses with plate armour may have been well-protected against arrows, but during the fifteenth century the lowly soldiers who used increasingly powerful bows and crossbows were augmented by those with firearms that would eventually penetrate any armour. These developments signified a reduction in the value and status 52 53

In fact the French knights fought dismounted at Poitiers: the bowmen played some part in the victory, but much more in the victories at Crecy (1346), Agincourt (1415) and Verneuil (1424). However, as noted here, the French king Jean was captured at Poitiers. Thomas of Lancaster, Duke of Clarence, was Henry V’s brother. The poem refers to him rashly launching a mounted attack without his archers in support at the Battle of Baugé in 1421, which resulted in his defeat and death.

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of the warhorse, which the knight could only perceive as a loss of his own status, and perhaps portended the demise of knighthood itself. For this reason, in his work of 1516, Ludovico Ariosto’s protagonist Orlando curses arquebus and cannon as the devil’s weapons: rather than keep such a weapon as part of his booty from victory, the knight must dispose of it altogether: Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, Canto 9, 88–8954 But he to nothing else his hand extends 88 Of all the many, many prized made, Save to that engine, found amid the plunder, Which in all points I said resembled thunder. Not with intent, in his defence to bear What he had taken, of the prize possessed; For he still held it an ungenerous care To go with vantage on whatever quest: But with design to cast the weapon where It never more should living wight molest; And, what was appertaining to it, all Bore off as well, the powder and the ball.

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Weapons and missiles held or propelled by enemies were not the only dangerous hazards faced by horses in battle. In many, of not most, cases when armies on foot faced horsemen in prepared positions, in front of them the enemy dug ditches or potholes designed to make horses fall, scattered specially designed spikes such as caltrops to injure their feet, or placed sharpened stakes angled towards the oncoming horses in the ground.55 In 992 Fulk III Nerra, Count of Anjou, faced Conan I, Duke of Brittany, at the Battle of Conquereuil. The monk Ralph Glaber, who was a partisan of Fulk, obviously considered Conan’s tactic of digging and concealing a ditch or ditches in front of his army an underhand way of tackling mounted men. According to him and unfortunately for Conan, it only destroyed part of Fulk’s army. Richer of Saint-Rémi, who was hostile to 54 Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (Paris: Cazin, 1786): Canto IX. 55 Vegetius: “A caltrop is a device composed of four spikes or points arranged so that in whatever manner it is thrown on the ground, it rests on three and presents the fourth upright.” The English word is derived from the Old English calcatrippe (heel-trap). The Latin word was tribulus.

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Fulk, gives a different version, saying that the part of Fulk’s army that did not fall into the ditches fled, but Conan was killed after the main battle by an isolated enemy.56 In this encounter the main part of the Breton army appears to have been mounted, but in front of formations on foot such defences against mounted men would often work well in the future. Ralph Glaber, Historiarum sui Temporis Libri Quinque (The History of our Times in Five Books), Bk 2, Ch. 2. De cetu maris, et occidentalium bellis (On the Sea Monster, and the Wars in the West)57 But the army of the Bretons, having devised a scheme to deceive, overthrew a part of Fulk’s army. At the aforesaid place, namely, where the battle was to be commenced, the Bretons secretly moved forward, and there very cunningly dug a deep and long ditch, and having closely intertwined branches of trees above it they retreated, keeping watch for the enemy. On the appointed day, when each man had arrived there with his army, and both armies were seen already to be in readiness, the Bretons, led on by their own cunning and deceit, pretended that they wished to take flight, that is to say, that they might more quickly lure the enemy into a hidden trap. Seeing that, a considerable part Fulk’s army, desiring to get to grips with them rapidly, fell into the trench, that is to say, that which had been made by the Bretons. And immediately the Bretons, who had feigned flight, turned back, and dashing upon the army of Fulk, overthrew as many of them as they could and threw Fulk himself from his horse to the ground. He, rising up, inflamed with fury, and by his words reviving and sharpening the spirits of his men and driving them like a most violent storm through the thick arrows, cruelly slaughtered the entire Breton army. 3

Other Animals in Battle

As noted above, dogs were probably persuaded to attack humans on behalf of other humans almost from the time wolves were first domesticated. They may even do so without urging in defence of their ‘owners’ once a bond has 56

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Richer of Saint-Rémi, Historia: Bk IV, 83–86. A plausible scenario is that not all of Fulk’s horsemen took part in the first attack, perhaps because he had two lines, and he was able to avoid the trench or ditches with a second assault against the disordered Bretons. However, neither of the accounts we have are impossible as they stand. Rodulfus Glaber Cluniacensis, Historiarum sui Temporis Libri Quinque, ed. J.P. Migne, PL, MPL 142, 611–98: Liber II, Cap. II.

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developed between them. Some armies have employed packs of war dogs to attack their foes, but this does not appear to have been common in Europe in our period, although dogs often accompanied their masters on campaign. Around the turn of the sixteenth century, however, the Spaniards learned that certain types of hunting dogs were particularly useful to them in the Caribbean, where the natives had no armour and had previously encountered neither powerful and ferocious dogs nor horses. The first use of dogs in battle was in 1495, when Christopher Columbus attacked natives who were attempting to throw off Spanish authority at Vega Real, Hispaniola, as described here by his son, who had access to his father’s records, some seventy years later: Ferdinand Columbus, Historie del S. D. Fernando Colombo; nelle quali s’ha particolare & vera relatione della via, & de fatti dell’Ammiraglio D. Christoforo Colombo, suo padre. (The History by Fernando 592nColumbus of the Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus, his father), Ch. 61: How the admiral completed the conquest of Espanola, and what he did to make it yield revenue58 On March 24, 1495, therefore he marched forth from Isabela in warlike array together with his [native] ally and comrade Guacanagarí, who was most eager to rout his enemies. This promised to be a difficult feat, for the rebel caciques had assembled more than one hundred thousand Indians, while the Admiral had only two hundred Christians, twenty horses, and as many hounds. But the Admiral, who understood the Indian character and habits, after a ten days’ march from Isabela divided his army into two groups, one under himself and the other under his brother the Adelantado [Bartholomew Columbus] … First the infantry squadrons of the two divisions attacked the Indian host and began to rout them with crossbow and harquebus shots; then the cavalry and hounds fell upon them impetuously to prevent their rallying. As a result those cowardly Indians fled in all directions. trans. BENJAMIN KEEN

One of Columbus’ commanders, Antonio de Torres, evidently had experience of using dogs in the conquest of Granada shortly before Columbus’ first voyage to the Caribbean, and they had already intimidated natives during Columbus’ expeditions. Thereafter hunting dogs, especially mastiffs, were taken to the Americas in their hundreds and trained to terrorize the natives.

58 Ferdinand Columbus, The Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus, ed. and trans. Benjamin Keen (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992): Ch. 61.

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On occasion draught animals might find themselves in the line of fire. Herds of cattle were not stampeded towards the enemy in field battles in medieval Europe, as they were occasionally in Africa and elsewhere, but oxen had to move heavy siege engines or towers during sieges. In his Historia, Book 3, Richer of Saint-Rémi described in detail the construction of a siege tower in 985 during the French king Lothar’s siege of Verdun, and then how the besiegers devised “an ingenious method to propel the tower toward the enemy.”59 Richer of Saint-Rémi, Historia (Histories), Bk 3, 106: Deductio ad hostes superioris machinae (The siege tower is moved toward the enemy)60 They gave instructions for four stout logs to be planted firmly in the earth, ten feet deep in the ground with eight feet sticking up. On all four sides the logs were to be reinforced horizontally with solid bars, and ropes would be passed around the bars. Both ends of the ropes would lead away from the enemy: the upper ends would be attached to the siege tower, and the lower ends would be attached to a team of oxen. The lower ropes would extend over a much greater distance than the upper ropes, which would be tied round the siege tower so that it would stand between the enemy and the oxen. In this way, however far the oxen pulled away from the enemy, the siege tower would be drawn that same distance towards the walls. Through this contrivance the tower, which was put on top of rollers so that it could move more easily, was propelled towards the enemy without any casualties. trans. Justin Lake

This was a better method of moving a tower than pushing, for which we have references in earlier sieges. “Without casualties” refers to the men, but it was obviously in the interest of Lothar to prevent casualties to the oxen as well, and we may guess that they were in some danger from defenders’ fire despite the intervening tower and even though moving away at some distance from the walls. They were probably protected by men with mantlets. The number of oxen is not specified. Oxen also ended up in the thick of battle when they pulled carroccios. The carroccio was a large four-wheeled wagon carrying the standard, religious artefacts and city emblems that served as a rallying point for an Italian communal militia, accompanied by a priest, defended by picked troops and around which the army assembled in battles. They were in use from the eleventh to 59 Richer, Historia, Vol. 2, ed. and trans. Lake: Liber Bk III, [105]. 60 Richer, Historia, Vol. 2, ed. and trans. Lake: Liber III, [106].

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the thirteenth centuries. Bonvesin de la Riva, a teacher and writer in Milan, had observed one himself. Bonvesin de la Riva, De magnalibus Mediolani (On the Marvels of Milan): De commendatione Mediolani ratione fortitudinis (The pre-eminence of Milan due to its strength), Ch. 5.24: De carrocero comunis Mediolani et his que spectant ad ipsum (The carroccio of the Milan municipality and its endowment)61 When a communal army will be assembled, the wagon, which is commonly called carroccio, will be brought out and present a wonderful spectacle to human eyes, covered all round with scarlet and fittingly decorated; it is drawn by three oxen of wonderful size and strength, decently dressed in pairs of white cloths marked with a rose-coloured cross. Above the carroccio in the middle is erected a most beautiful pole of wonderful height and uprightness, weighing the same as four men, on the top of which is a wonderfully gilded cross. On the pole itself hangs a trellis of surprising size and whiteness, with a pink cross flag ending its four edges most impressively; this pole is held erect by a crowd of men with ropes on all sides. The natural defensive behaviour of other animals when threatened or agitated, especially stinging insects, was also exploited by defenders in sieges, although there are not many records of this in medieval sources. Red hot sand, boiling liquids or heavy objects were more usually dropped on besiegers. The excerpt below is from the Irish Fragmentary Annals and tells of a failed assault by Norwegians and Danes on the city of Chester in the reign of Aethelflaed, Queen of Mercia, probably in 907. Beehives were presumably not the first weapon of choice, as the bees provided valuable honey and wax, but the loss of these products was preferable to massacre, rape, slavery and loss of all property. The beehives were used because hides that protected those attacking the wall from liquids would not prevent bees from stinging them. The hides, of course, were an animal contribution to the besiegers’ effort. Fragmentary Annals of Ireland, 42962 However, the other army, the Norwegians, was under the hurdles, making a hole in the wall. What the Saxons and the Irish who were among them 61 Bonvesin de la Riva, Le Meraviglie di Milano (De Magnalibus Mediolani), ed. and trans. Paolo Chiesa (Rome: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 2009): Quintus caput, XXIIII. 62 The Fragmentary Annals of Ireland, ed. and trans. Joan Newlon Radner (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1978).

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did was to hurl down huge boulders, so that they crushed the hurdles on their heads. What they did to prevent that was to put great columns under the hurdles. What the Saxons did was to put the ale and water they found in the town into the town’s cauldrons, and to boil it and throw it over the people who were under the hurdles, so that their skin peeled off them. The Norwegians response to that was to spread hides on top of the hurdles. The Saxons then scattered all the beehives there were in the town on top of the besiegers, which prevented them from moving their feet and hands because of the number of bees stinging them. trans. Joan Newlon Radner

All the above accounts are plausible, but there are other more dubious tales of animals used in sieges or battle. One such occurs in Heimskringla. Both the importance of Harald Hardrada’s role in Sicily and the magnitude of his deeds are exaggerated in the saga. He was indeed in Sicily, but not with “his army,” as he was captain of the Varangian Guard with the Byzantine army in the service of the general George Maniakes (ON Gyrgir) from 1038 to 1042. The value of the story here is the attitude shown to the animals; as wild birds, they were all expendable for the furtherance of military aims. Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla: Haralds saga Sigurðarsonar (Saga of Harald Sigurdson), 6: Haraldr vann borg í Sikiley (Harald takes a town in Sicily)63 And when Harald came to Sicily he harried there and with his army laid siege to a great and populous fortified city. He surrounded the place, because it had strong walls, so that it seemed to him unlikely that he could breach them. The townspeople had plentiful supplies and other necessary things to withstand a siege. Then Harald devised this stratagem, that his fowlers catch small birds who nested in the city and flew to the forest in the daytime to obtain food. Harald tied wood shavings of resinous pine soaked with molten wax and sulphur to their backs and set fire to them. When set free all the birds immediately flew into the city to find their young and the nests under house roofs that were made of reed or straw thatch, and then the fire spread from the birds to the roof-thatches. And though each carried only a little fire, it soon became a conflagration, since many birds carried it all around the city to the roofs; and soon one house after the other caught fire till the whole city was burning. Then all the people came out of the city and begged for mercy, the very same 63 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla eða Sögur Noregs konunga Snorra Sturlusonar, Vol. 3, ed. N. Linder and H. Haggson (Uppsala: W. Schultz, 1869–72).

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who had spoken arrogantly and scornfully for many days about the Greek army and its generals. Harald gave quarter to all those who asked for it and took control of their city. The account is a ‘wandering tale’, which obviously appealed to the audience of the Viking Period and was probably carried by Norsemen, as another variation on it occurs in the legendary account of Princess Olga’s capture of the Derevlian ‘city’ Iskorosten, dated to 946, in the Russian Primary Chronicle.64 A strange echo of it appears in the Essex Hundred Rolls, in 1267, when disaffected barons and the folk of London threatened to hold the city against the king; among the supplies gathered for a possible siege by Richard of Sutcherche, sheriff of Essex, were “forty roosters to carry fire to burn the city of London.” In the event the king and the potential rebels made a settlement. This may have been fortunate for the birds, in this case apparently expendable domestic fowls, but the scheme was almost certainly a ruse: how the roosters would have been enticed to enter London is not mentioned, and according to Exchequer officials, the cockerels and other supplies were not taken towards London but to Richard’s own manor. If they were burnt, it was probably in his ovens.65 Occasionally exotic animals (to medieval folk) make an appearance in accounts of conflict. As noted above, it is very unlikely that these were employed to fight, although medieval people were aware of their use in battle in the past and produced images of elephants with “castles” full of armed men on their backs. European rulers were sometimes given elephants as diplomatic gifts and took them with them on campaign. In question are single elephants, far too valuable as ‘prestige objects’ to be placed at risk of being hit by enemy missiles or melee weapons, even if a mahout who knew how to manage one in battle had been available. They were in the camp to impress both the ruler’s own allies and the enemy, respectively as a morale booster and to inspire awe of the one who commanded them. Charlemagne took his elephant with him when he took an army to confront the Danish king Godofrid in 810, but it died on the journey. Salimbene of Parma reported that he had heard that Emperor Frederick II took his elephant into battle when he captured Monchiero in 1237, but it is more likely that it was in brought within sight of the defenders to

64 The Russian Primary Chronicle (Laurentian text), ed. and trans. Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor (Cambridge MS: Medieval Academy of America, 1953), entry for year 846, p. 80. 65 Helen Maud Cam, “The Legend of the Incendiary Birds”, The English Historical Review 31/121 (1916), 98–101.

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intimidate them than used in action.66 In the same year, after his crushing victory over the Lombard League at Cortenuova, Frederick held a triumphal procession in the streets of Cremona which was long remembered: Pietro della Vigna, Letter of 123767 The army of the emperor, in a wonderful fashion, avenged itself on the Milanese soldiers, and the loyal troops of Cremona and the allied states soaked their axes with blood, and the Saracens emptied their quivers. For never in any war were corpses piled up so high, and if night had not come quickly, which carried away the remnants of the enemy, none of them would have escaped Caesar’s hands. But it is a wonderful thing that in such a terrible conflict of war, the imperial army survived unscathed. Thus, having defeated the enemies and put them to flight, the emperor came to Cremona in triumph. Then, on the following day, at Caesar’s command, the unfortunate carroccio of Milan hastened to Cremona, with the son of the duke of Venice and other captives following, with the pole of his flag shamefully bowed down to the ground, his remaining power tied to disgrace to the great applause of the multitude of the folk around; drawn by an elephant that carried a wooden fort and posts with the flags of the empire on its back, the carroccio passed through Cremona to the praise and glory of the prince. Truly from the throne of God the sentence came forth, bringing the judgement of vengeance: for burial places for the slain do not suffice, nor can the palaces of Cremona hold the multitudes of captives. Frederick’s elephant pulling the object that embodied the spirit of the city of Milan was especially symbolic of his victory and his power. 4

Feeding the ‘Beasts of Battle’

A recurring trope in early medieval ‘heroic poetry’ was the appearance of “beasts of battle” as a motif. The term refers to those wild animals who fed on the corpses of the slain so that humans associated them with war. They are most conspicuous in Germanic heroic poetry, but in Britain their use was not confined to the speakers of Old English, as they appear in the Welsh Book 66 Salimbene of Parma, Cronica, MGH Scriptorum, Vol. 32 (Hanover: Hahn, 1905–1913), 92–94. 67 Petrus de Vinea Fredrici II. Imperatoris Epistolae. Vol. 2, ed. Johan Rudolph Iselin (Hildesheim: Weidmann, 1991).

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of Taliesin and especially the Gododdin. In this tradition the mentioned scavengers seem to include all the corvids. The Book is a collection of poems from the ninth century (or possibly earlier) to the thirteenth. Urien was a warlord king of Rheged, a British kingdom of what is now north-western England in the sixth century. The Gododdin is a poem or series of poems said to have been composed by Aneirin to commemorate one hundred named warriors who died in a battle at Catraeth in c.600 CE.68 The warriors involved in the battle were both Celtic-speaking, people from what is now southern Scotland, and Bernician (Germanic-speaking).69 The manuscript we possess was written down in Old Welsh in the thirteenth century and some adjustment had likely occurred since the seventh century, while researchers have detailed the problems with interpretation of some of the language, but the beasts of battle in this form are more likely to belong to the post-Roman period than the later Middle Ages. As in the Norse praise poems below, the beasts feeding on corpses are used to glorify the warriors, albeit, in this case, defeated warriors. Llyvyr Taliessin (The Book of Taliesin), 2. The Men of Catraeth70 I saw great heroes gather round Urien When he slaughtered his enemies at Llech Wen, Scattering foes to the birds of prey, he rejoiced. trans. Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams

Aneirin, Y Gododdin71 99 Gwawddur … Blazing ahead of the finest army. he gave horses from his winter herd. He fed ravens on the fortress wall though he was no Arthur. … 68 69

70 71

Gododdin is the modern Welsh form of the OW name Guotodin, a people of what later became southern Scotland. Kenneth H. Jackson, The Gododdin: The Oldest Scottish poem (Edinburgh: University Press, 1969). The original language of the seventh century was certainly Brittonic, which might be considered primitive Welsh according to some linguists, as Welsh is descended from P-Celtic Brittonic. The poem represents the battle as a conflict between the British Celtic-speaking Gododdin and the Angles of Deira. Catraeth features in the Taliesin poems as well, either as a residence of Urien or a place captured by him in the century before the battle of the Gododdin. It is often identified with modern Catterick in Yorkshire. The Brittonic traditions of northern England and southern Scotland were inherited in the area that survived as Brittonic-speaking, Wales. Llvyr Taliessin, ed. J. Gwenogvryn Evans (Llanbedrog: 1910): [2]. Aneirin, The Gododdin of Aneirin: text and context from Dark-Age North Britain, ed. John Thomas Koch (Cardiff: University of Wales, 1997): odes (awdlau) [99] and [100].

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100 Cibno He hand-fed the crows, I honour him, great lord, savage ravager.

trans. Gillian Clarke

In the heroic poetry of the Germanic-speaking peoples it was three of the animals who fed on carrion that figured, the raven, the eagle and the wolf. Possibly because of their lesser size, other carrion-eaters did not become associated with death and supernatural beings in the same way, while the wolf’s reputation for ferocity, which likely predates written records by centuries if not millennia, presumably contributed to its place among the three celebrated ‘beasts of battle.’ Although there are differences in how the extant Old English and Scandinavian poems use the beasts as symbols of death in war, there is probably a common origin among Germanic-speakers. In Old English poetry the beasts of battle usually appear in passages setting a scene, sometimes of what is to come. In Beowulf they symbolize the grim future of destruction for his people, the Geats, after his death from the dragon’s poison: Beowulf, lines 3018–302772 But often, repeatedly, in the path of exile they shall walk bereft, bowed under woe, now that their leader’s laugh is silenced. high spirits quenched. Many a spear dawn-cold to the touch will be taken down and waved on high; the swept harp won’t waken warriors, but the raven winging darkly over the doomed will have news, tidings for the eagle of how he hoked and ate, how he and the wolf made short work of the dead. trans. Seamus Heaney

Their function is somewhat different in the Battle of Brunanburgh (the poem’s modern title), which is a panegyric to the heroes who won the battle for a nascent England over a coalition of Scots, Strathclyde Welsh and Hiberno-Norse Vikings.

72 “Beowulf,” in The Beowulf Manuscript: Complete Texts and the Fight at Finnsburg, ed. R.D. Fulk (Cambridge, 85–191. MS: Harvard University Press, 2010).

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Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (version A): year 937, ‘Battle of Brunanburgh’, lines 57–6973 Thus the brothers both together, King and prince, sought their home, The West-Saxons land, exultant from war. They left behind to divide the corpses The dark-coated one, the black raven, The horn-beaked one, and the dusk-coated one: The white-tailed eagle, to enjoy the carrion, That greedy war-hawk, and that grey beast, The wolf of the wood. Never was there more slaughter On this island, never as many folk felled before this By the swords’ edges, as those books tell us. trans. Michael Livingston

The same three beasts appear below in Egil Skallagrimson’s skaldic verse poem in praise of Erik Bloodaxe during one of the latter’s brief periods as king of York (947–948, 952–954), as related in Egils saga. Norse skaldic poetry is praise poetry, so the beasts are used to emphasize the achievements in war of the warrior. The animals in question have a mythological connection in Old Norse poetry, which they may well have had among the pagan ‘Anglo-Saxons’, but it has been lost in the partly Christianized Old English poetry we possess. Egills saga Skallagrímssonar. 60. “Höfuðlausn” (“The head-ransom”)74 The prince reddened the blade. There was food for the ravens. Arrows took life. Bloody spears flew. The destroyer of Scots fed the horse of the giantess, This sister of Nar trod supper for the eagles. Battle-cranes flew over the rows of corpses. 73 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Vol 1, ed. Thorpe: anno CMXXXVII. 74 Egills saga Skallagrímssonar, ed. Sigurður Nordal (Reykjavík, Íslenzk fornrit, 1933): LX. The name “head-ransom” is given to the poem because Egil recited it to persuade Erik to spare his life. English translation from Judith Jesch, “Eagles, Ravens and Wolves: Beasts of Battle, Symbols of Victory and Death,” in The Scandinavians from the Vendel Period to the Tenth Century, ed. Judith Jesch (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002), 255.

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The beaks of the wound-mews did not lack blood, the wolf tore at wounds while the wave from the spearpoint splashed up to the beaks of the ravens. For the giantess’s steed hunger ended.75 Erik offered corpses to the wolf by the sea. trans. Judith Jesch

In the second of the Helgakviða Hundingsbana lays the hero Helgi’s beloved, the valkyrie Sigrún, makes several references to the beasts of battle, with whom, as a valkyrie, she is presumably associated. The first is the conventional reference to carrion-eaters after Helgi has defeated and slain Granmar and his sons in battle, among them Höðbroddr to whom she was betrothed but did not wish to marry. In the second she curses her brother for murdering Helgi and condemns him to live as if a wretched carrion-eating wolf in the wilderness, much like the outlaws mentioned in Chapter 3. The life of a wolf has negative connotations here, at least if led by a man, unlike in the wolf’s other appearances as carrion-eater in Norse poetry. In the third verse Sigrún goes to the barrow where Hegni is buried in anticipation of her final night with his ghost and compares herself with the birds who delight in carrion. Eddukvæði (The Poetic Edda, Sæmundar-Edda), Völsungakviða in forna or Helgakviða Hundingsbana II (The Second Lay of Helgi Hunding-slayer), stanzas 25, 33, 4376 Never shall Sigrún from Sefafjöll Höðbroddr king hold in your arms; Granmar’s sons have lived their lives – grey-coated wolves tear at corpses.

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horse of the giantess / giantess’s steed – wolf; sister of Nar – Hel or Death, goddess of the dead; battle-cranes – eagles; wound-mews – ravens; wave from the spearpoint – blood. 76 Eddukvæði / Sæmundar-Edda, ed. Guðni Jónsson, Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason (Reykjavík: Hið Íslenzka Fornritafélag, 2014): Helgakviða Hundingsbana II.

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Then would vengeance take you for Helgi’s death if you were a wolf out in the wilds destitute of wealth and all pleasures having no food save carrion to gorge on Now am I so glad about our meeting like Odin’s greedy hawks when they get to know of warm raw flesh or soaked with dew they see the day break The poet of Haraldskvæði or Hrafnsmál asks the audience to listen to his report of a conversation between a “beautiful, fair-haired maiden”, that is, a valkyrie, and a raven. It is attributed to the skald Thórbiorn Hornklofi of the ninth century.77 There is doubt as to whether the whole poem is from the Viking Age or some of it was composed in the era when the kings’ sagas were written (twelfth to thirteenth centuries), as it appears more distant from the reign of the praised king, Harald Fairhair, than the other praise poems involving beasts. Nevertheless, the poem still reflects a Viking-Age view, or perhaps a post-Viking era view of a Viking-Age view, of the beasts of battle. Fagrskinna, Ch. 2, Um Haralld harfagra (Of Harald Fairhair): “Haraldskvæði” (“Harald’s Poem”) or “Hrafnsmál” (“Words of the Raven”), verses 2–478 Wise seemed the shield-woman 2 no-one within hearing the war valiant Valkyrie well-practised in bird-language 77

Hornklofi means ‘raven.’ The name Thórbiorn is mentioned in Heimskringla, but not in Fagrskinna, where the poem is recorded. 78 Fagrskinna, Nóregs konunga tal, ed. Finnur Jónsson (Copenhagen: Samfund til Udgivelse af Gammel Nordisk Litteratur, 1902–03): Kap. II.

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The white-throated woman With bright arms saluted Hymir’s head-scratcher79 On the high meadow crag What concerns you, ravens? 3 Where do you come from with bloodstained beaks at the dawn of the day? Flesh clings to your talons, from your mouths the stench of carrion; you spent your night near where you knew corpses were lying The eagle’s sworn brother 4 shook his dark feathers wiped his pointed beak, pondered his answer “We have followed Harald the son of Halfdan the scion of the Ynglings Since we hatched from the egg. The poem continues with an account, part eulogy, of Harald’s rulership, his generosity, and his abilities as a warrior and seaman. As quoted in Chapter 7, it also mentions his “wolfskins” (ulfheðnar), who reappear in the second part of the poem about the Battle of Hafrsfjọrðr. The king is generous not only to his retinue, but to the beasts, here ravens and eagles, who feed on the corpses he provides. The statement that they followed a certain warrior throughout their lives is of course poetic license, but it is plausible that carrion-eaters learned to follow armies. William Tomkinson, in his memoirs of the Peninsula War (1808–14), mentions that many “eagles and vultures” followed the British and French armies as they marched in parallel columns before the Battle of Salamanca in 1812.80 Before the High Middle Ages no attempt was made to bury the corpses left on battlefields. This was still the case at Hastings in 1066: 79

Hymir was a giant and this must be a kenning for ‘raven’, but it is not known what mythological event it alludes to. 80 Lt-Col William Tomkinson, The Diary of a Cavalry Officer in the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns, 1809–1815 (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1895), 190. He says the birds were attracted by dead horses and men, but also, “They are always found to hover about an army, …”

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as if a vestige of the pagan poems, the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio (Song of the Battle of Hastings, original name Carmen Widonis) mentions that the slain on the battlefield were left lying “to be eaten by worms and wolves, birds and dogs.” Other sources for the battle mention burial of the dead, but they were written later, whereas the Carmen must have been written shortly after it. It is attributed to Guy of Amiens, a former bishop who had lost his see having fallen from favour but became chaplain for William’s queen, Matilda of Flanders, in 1068. 5

Animal Messengers

The Travels, attributed to Sir John Mandeville and written in Anglo-Norman French, appeared shortly after 1350 and circulated throughout Europe by 1400, remaining hugely popular during the fifteenth century. The author claimed to be an English knight who travelled in various parts of the known world and as far away as China. This assertion was not impossible as we know a few Europeans travelled there, but his claim to have seen many of the marvels and monsters recorded in previous encyclopedias and bestiaries and obvious dependence on earlier literature discredited him in the modern period. We can certainly conclude that he did not visit all the places he claimed to have seen, but there was no concept of plagiarism comparable to ours in the Middle Ages and most of the things he reported were accepted both before and after his time in medieval Europe. John Mandeville, Travels, Ch. 1381 But many kingdoms are comprised in this realm of Syria – Judea, Palestine, Galilee, Sem Cecil (Little Cilicia) and many others. It is the custom in that country and many of its neighbours that when two countries are at war and either party besieges a city, town or castle, they use doves instead of messengers to bear letters between the parts of the realm. They bind the letters to the necks of the doves, and then let them fly away. The doves, through habit and use, fly to the other part, and when the letters are taken from their necks they fly again to where they were reared. This account of the use of pigeon messengers in the Middle East, whatever the author’s source, reflects reality. The first known ‘pigeon post’ in the region had 81 The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. The version of the Cotton Manuscript in modern spelling (London: Macmillan, 1900): Ch. XIII.

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been established in the Abbasid Caliphate, and is clearly referenced in a campaign of 926, each pigeon having a handler.82 The Arab historian Imad ad-Din, who served Saladin, mentions the trained pigeons that exchanged coded messages between the beleaguered city of Acre and Saladin, while it was otherwise cut off by the crusaders in 1191. One was intercepted by the besiegers. At least one example of the dove as messenger was well-known in Europe, from the account of Genesis 8.11 in which it was sent out from Noah’s ark and returned with evidence that the great flood was subsiding. However, despite encountering their use during the crusades, there is no clear evidence that pigeon messengers were used in medieval Europe, although pigeonholes were built into some castles, as in a passageway under the south-east corner of the inner ward at Carreg Cennen in Wales. 6

Animal Attrition: on the March, in Camp and in Sieges

Riding horses were not the only quadrupeds to play an important role in war, as horses unsuitable to be ridden by warriors in battle, alongside mules, donkeys and oxen, played a vital role as pack or draught animals, providing support to armies in the field. The Chanson d’Antioche, a chanson de geste about the First Crusade, tells of the knight Évervin of Creel who reacted furiously to the loss of his donkey: it may not have been as dear to him as his warhorse, but it was essential to him to carry his armour and other necessaries. However, after an appeal from Pierre that includes a reminder of their holy cause, the two vavasseurs are reconciled.83 Richard le Pèlerin, Grégori Bechada, Chanson d’Antioche, Song 7.31, lines 877–91284 There was one born in Creel, of the Reynier lineage. His name was Évervin, son of Antiaume the Proud, who never had the desire to deceive his lord. The other, Pierre Postiau, was born near Montdidier. They are both vavasseurs, but worthy of praise. On the Thursday morning, Évervin 82 Hugh Kennedy, The Armies of the Caliphs: Military and Society in the Early Islamic State (London: Routledge, 2001), 106, n. 102. Strangely, the messages are said to have been written on the pigeons’ wings. 83 A vavasseur was a vassal holding land from a vassal of the crown, that is, a sub-vassal. 84 Richard le Pèlerin, Grégori Bechada, La Chanson d’Antioche,e. ed. Jan A. Nelson (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003): Chant VII, XXXI. Richard was a jongleur who must have begun the chanson in French on the First Crusade, probably during the siege of Antioch. It was translated into Occitan and completed by Grégori Bechada in c.1125.

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de Creil went to the monastery to pray to the Lord God, and Peter got up and began to dress. His squires came before him weeping: “Sire,” they said to him, “we have nothing to eat: yesterday was the seventh day that we tasted no bread. Above all we have another sorrow, for you have no meat for a penny.” “Good children,” said Pierre to them, “you must not torment yourselves – take Évervin’s donkey and have it skinned, cook it in water or roast it.” “We would not dare, sire,” say the squires, “For he would batter us, strike us, wound us.” “Is it not I who commands you, sons of whores, cowards?” The squires grab their steel knives, then they were seen to kill the donkey and cut it up, to put it in the cauldron and on the great brazier. Évervin returned, he saw the cooking. He praised the Lord and asked, “Whence came the meat that I see on this hearth?” “Sire, it is your donkey that you made a beast of burden.” He thought this was mockery and ran to the stable. When he didn’t find him in the stable, he became irritated. He runs to Pierre and starts shouting. You could have seen Evervin arguing, becoming angry, assaulting him in words and scolding rudely! “By my lord! Sire Pierre, you should not have given him to them. He carries my green hauberk and helmet. I shall feel their loss often in war. Truly you are of the lineage of Garnier, who learns to afflict the wretched and loves only those he can deceive.” The numbers of pack-animals required on campaign were enormous. Unsurprisingly, both men and animals often went short of sustenance on military expeditions. Weather conditions were unpredictable and the enemy might deliberately make conditions worse, destroying fodder and even poisoning water sources. Moreover, if there was a temptation to push working animals too hard in the fields, the temptation would frequently be much greater on campaign. On occasions armies had to make as much speed as possible, and commanders knew that in such circumstances both men and animals would fall by the wayside. Both humans and the animals who accompanied them on campaign might suffer from fatigue, lack of food or disease. Royal Frankish Annals, year 79185 Christ guided his people and led both [Frankish] armies without harm into the Avar strongholds. Continuing its march the army advanced as 85 Annales Regni Francorum (Annales Laurissenses Maiores et Einhardi), ed. G.H. Pertz (Hanover: Hahn, 1895): anno DCCXCI.

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far as the River Raab, and from there both armies returned along the two banks of the river [Danube] to their own land, praising God for such a victory. [ms R:] This campaign was accomplished without any misfortune, except that in the army under the king’s command such a pestilence broke out among the horses that of so many thousands of them hardly the tenth part is said to have survived. As noted earlier, numbers and proportions in medieval annals and chronicles are notoriously unreliable; the chronicler means that a very large number of the horses died, presumably both pack animals and transport or warhorses. In every entry referring to the war against the Avars the annals give the impression that the latter were weak and crumbled before every onslaught led by Charles or his son Pepin, but in fact the war lasted six years and an important reason for the delay in launching another major invasion (which occurred in 796) was almost certainly the loss of horses; the pestilence may have been the only misfortune in 791, but it was a great misfortune. The main breeding estates were in West Frankia, with some in Bavaria and Alsace, and the replenishment of the stock was a major undertaking that must have lasted three years. The loss of men and animals in a single day in battle, at least on the losing side, might be higher than on an average day of campaigning or siege, but battles in the open field were rare. The campaign described below was more typical. Brut y Tywysogion (The Chronicle of the Princes), year 121786 Then also Llewelyn, son of Iorwerth, prince of Gwynedd, became angry with Reynald de Bruse, and breaking their treaty, he sent his army towards Breicheiniog, and he began by attacking Aberhodni, which he intended to destroy utterly. And then the men of the town made peace with Llewelyn through young Rhys, who became the agreed arbitrator between them, by giving five of the of the town as hostages to Llewelyn and agreeing to pay 100 marks, as they could not oppose him. And from there he led his army to Gower over the Black Mountains (Mynydd Du), where many packhorses were lost, and then he camped at Llangwig.

86 Brut y Tywysogion / The Chronicle of the Princes of Wales, trans. John Williams ab Ithel (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1850): MCCXVII.

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Llewelyn’s army moved a considerable distance through Wales, but the loss of pack animals seems to have occurred in the “Black Mountains,” which probably refers to all the mountains of the Brecon Beacons (Bannau Brycheiniog), rather than just the range now called ‘black’, Mynydd Du. The highest Brecon peak is 886 metres and the distance travelled over the hills might have been anything from 70 to 120 km. The loss indicates how difficult a march over a rough terrain area could be in the Middle Ages, especially if the weather was also poor. The tenth-century Byzantine treatise De Velitatione considered twenty-four kilometres (sixteen Byzantine milia) in the Tauros Mountains a difficult and tiring march for both men and horses.87 Many regions more difficult and more extensive than the Brecon Beacons were traversed by medieval armies and pack animals (and oxen) would often have been casualties; the Brut y Tywysogion mentions them in passing, but more often these ‘low status animals’ were not mentioned at all in chronicles. However, horses, donkeys and mules were essential to transport equipment in this terrain, where carts could not pass and routes were often tracks, sometimes stepped. The loss of pack animals from any army was serious, as the loads they carried were vital to it. Besides food, they would include most of the soldiers’ armour, which could not be worn during a day’s march without causing the men exhaustion and dehydration.88 It was not because pack and draught animals had little value in warfare that they were largely ignored by writers: just as the actions of elite and noble soldiers were given more attention than actions of the common men in most medieval written sources, so the ‘noble animals’ were given more than ‘everyday animals.’ The concern for the latter was practical, not emotive. Even on relatively level ground, where oxen could be used to pull carts and wagons, the condition of medieval roads was often poor. In Book 14 of his History of the Danes Saxo gives a rhetorical description of a campaign against Sweden by the Danish king Svend Grade, in which he decided to attack through the thinly populated, marshy and forested region of Finnveden and Värend, instead of the more usual Danish invasion route through Västergötland.89 It 87 De velitatione bellica 13: “Skirmishing”, in Three Byzantine Military Treatises, ed. and trans. George T. Dennis, Dumbarton Oaks Texts 9 (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1985), 137–240 (189). 88 See, for instance, the comments on the Byzantine army’s march and trials carried out in Roman armour in Eric McGeer, Sowing the Dragon’s Teeth: Byzantine Warfare in the Tenth Century (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1995), 338–39. More Modern army manuals concur that c.12 miles per day would be an average covered. 89 Finnveden and Värend were two of the three “small lands” (Sw. Småland).

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must have occurred in the early 1150s. The positive aspects of Svend’s decision to undertake this expedition in winter were that stores laid up for the season could be plundered and river and marsh water would be frozen solid, but (according to Saxo, who was writing some fifty years after the event) the weather and terrain destroyed his army before he got anywhere near his goal, the more central regions of Östergötland and Svealand. If, as Saxo relates, soldiers began to take others’ horses, loss of animals must have been high. Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum (History of the Danes), 14.1290 So he takes advantage of winter, following the quicker routes and marching into Finnveden, plundering and burning on the way … After this he enters Värend. There the inhabitants offer him neither war nor submission, so he passes through the region with fire and sword, and the men and women disperse to the inaccessible wilderness. However, an unusually deep fall of snow had covered the whole countryside, and the cold was so severe that when children numbed by frost were held to the breast, they died even as they drank the milk, and mothers on the verge of the same fate clutched their dead offspring in their dying embraces. The Danes were also struck by the same inclement weather and failed to spend the night in camp or keep a soldierly watch; some looked after themselves by the campfire, some under roofs, dreading the cruelty of the climate, not of the war. They kept a closer watch on the skies than on the enemy. … When Svend saw that things were not turning out as he wanted, he was carried away by his taste of success and decided to overrun the whole of Sweden.91 But the excessive cold and the lack of horses, which had been caused by the bad roads and no fodder, prevented him from advancing further. Then the men who had been reduced from horsemen to foot loaded their fellow-soldiers’ horses with their baggage, and these, being overburdened, stole back home without the king’s knowledge. When at last he discovers that his troops are furtively absconding, he anticipates their clandestine desertion by giving them permission to return home, and returns directly by a short route to Skåne.

90 Saxo, Gesta Danorum, Vol. 2, ed. Friis-Jensen: Liber XIV, Cap. XII. 91 What Saxo means by this is unclear: possibly he is assuming that prior to this Svend had been hoping the Swedish king, Sverker, would come to terms because of the devastation he was causing, even though Småland was a peripheral region of the kingdom.

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Horses or mules needed at least one day in six as rest, to prevent injury to backs and feet. By comparison with men, in proportion to their carrying capacity they needed more in provisions and fodder. Ancient and medieval horses needed to get about two thirds of their nutrition needs from grazing, and four to five hours grazing was required every twenty-four hours. In addition, horses were vulnerable to regional and seasonal variations that affected grazing conditions. The same author, Saxo, makes a reference rarely made in medieval sources to the need for grazing land during his account of a Danish campaign into Pomerania (against the Slavs, probably in 1170) led by Valdemar I. The island was about fifteen square kilometres, flat and grassy and was secure from the enemy because of the presence of the Danish fleet in the Dziwna. Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum (History of the Danes), 14.4292 From there [“the river linking Wolin and Kamień” – the Dziwna south of Kamień] they came to the island of Chrzᶏszczewo.93 The king decreed that the place should not be burnt, so as to spare the necessary fodder for the horses. Next, they went along the river to the city of Kamien. When they had laid waste its province to the north with fire and sword, they joined battle on the bridge. When logistics failed and armies began to starve, even the warhorses might be eaten. In 1190, as Frederick Barbarossa’s German army marched across Anatolia towards Palestine in the Third Crusade, men were sometimes severely short of victuals, even though this expedition was well-organised by medieval standards. The mounted soldiers are recorded as having eaten horses killed in battle. The author and even the date of the Itinerarium is disputed, but he may have taken part in the crusade and was certainly well-informed about the siege of Acre (1189–91). Here he probably used an eyewitness account by a German crusader. The second excerpt below describes the considerably worse situation during the famine in beleaguered Tyre in 1188, before the arrival of the relieving armies of the Third Crusade from Europe. The regret expressed by chroniclers about warhorse-eating reflects both the desperate straits of the starving crusaders and the status of the horses they were forced to consume. As noted elsewhere, the flesh of any horse was generally taboo as food.

92 Saxo, Gesta Danorum, Vol. 2, ed. Friis-Jensen: Liber XIV, Cap. XLII. 93 German Griztow.

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Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi (Itinerary of the Crusaders and the Deeds of King Richard), Bk 1, Ch. 23 and 6794 1.23 … The enemy threatened them continually, so that for six weeks they ate under arms and they slept under arms, never removing their mailshirts. What was more, they grew very short of food and water. When horses were killed in battle they drew relief and great pleasure from eating the horses’ flesh and drinking the blood. So with the ingenuity that comes from necessity, they found a new use for their mounts. … 1.67. It is said that need drives folk to crime, and intercedes for mercy for them; and God created all things for humanity, and gave them into our hands so that they might be a help for us. So, rather than let humans die while beasts of burden were spared, they slew their precious warhorses and consumed their horseflesh with pleasure, sometimes without having even skinned the animals first. A horse’s offal was sold for ten shillings. They flocked together eagerly anywhere a horse was known to have been killed, either to buy or to steal. Starving people rushed in crowds to the corpses of dead animals like vultures to a corpse. So they devoured the bodies of their mounts. Those who used to carry them, vice versa, they now carried in their stomachs. A horse was worth more dead than alive. This part of the Gospel seems not inappropriate for them: “Wherever the carcass is, there will the vultures gather”95 – the mystic interpretation aside, we are not intending to detract from its dignity! Such was the pressure of famine that when they had slaughtered a horse none of the offal was regarded as waste; every part, no matter how vile, was greatly valued. They wolfed down the offal and head, and when they had avidly consumed  – no, devoured  – everything, the wise ones licked their fingers, so that anything left there was taken by the tongue rather than wiped away with a napkin. trans. Helen Nicholson

We must assume that other animals, including pack horses, were eaten first at Tyre, as at Raymond of Aguilers’ implies in his account of the siege of Antioch in 1097–98, quoted on pages 374–75, yet these are not mentioned. The same excerpt also emphasizes the value of the warhorses; “The majority of the 94 Ricardus, Canonicus Sanctae Trinitatis Londoniensis, Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, ed. William Stubbs (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green, 1864): Liber I, Cap. XXIII, Cap. LXVII. 95 Matthew 24.28.

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knights, expecting God’s compassion, refused to slaughter their horses, but did sustain themselves with their blood.” Most knights would not eat their most valued animal companion, which proved its worth by ‘donating’ blood to enable their survival. However, as noted earlier, the medical process of bleeding a horse was risky if the person doing it had little knowledge of the method, and even without opening a vein cutting will have had its risks.96 The crusading army besieging Antioch, to which both the Chanson d’Antioche and the Itinerarium Peregrinorum above refer, suffered from terrible deprivation but seems to have been spared the worst effects of disease. When the French king Louis IX’s crusading army in Egypt became trapped in the Nile delta in early 1250 both starvation and disease took a heavy toll. Apart from the problem of gathering enough victuals for a besieging army, sanitation in a camp was a severe problem in the Middle Ages, as it had been in the ancient world and would be long afterwards. Humans produced waste, but the animals who were invariably present produced even more. Medieval commanders were obviously aware of this problem and must have made some attempt to alleviate the danger of disease by disposing of filth outside the camps and perhaps in pits. Animals may have been kept in certain locations in camp, but collecting and disposing of their waste must have been difficult. Soldiers and the camp-followers that invariably congregated around armies must often have disregarded such rules as there were, while animals will not have known them. Some diseases were directly related to these problems. In 1270 Louis IX and many of his men died of dysentery, the “bloody flux,” when disease struck the crusader camp in Tunis, and in 1422 the English king Henry V died from the same disease, on the verge of achieving his aim and being crowned king of France. Dysentery is a severe form of gastroenteritis liable to occur when food and water are contaminated with faeces due to poor sanitation. Henry had almost certainly contracted it while besieging Meaux shortly before, as had many of his army. Throughout the Middle Ages in both eastern and western Europe disease was thought to be borne by bad or evil-smelling air, as shown in the quotation from Leo VI below: this belief may have been incorrect, but the most effective precaution against being affected by evil-smelling air was being distant from its source, which corresponds to a precaution that would be taken now given what we know about the bacterial and viral sources of disease. In Latin Europe commanders presumably learnt most of what they knew of waging war from their seniors and peers, as no contemporary author produced a comprehensive work on it. But there were other works concerning 96 See p. 436.

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logistics that were relevant, and one treatise on war that is known to have been influential in medieval Latin Europe was Epitoma rei militaris by the late fourth-century Roman author Flavius Vegetius Renatus, of which more below. An annotated version of it was also produced by the ninth-century cleric Rabanus Maurus. In the medieval East Roman/Byzantine Empire several military treatises were written in Greek between the sixth and the tenth centuries, but they were not referred to in the West. Like Vegetius, they do not give much attention to the problems of animals in camp and even less to their waste. The first of these treatises, written by the seventh-century emperor Leo VI, having previously mentioned the dangers of disease if camps are made in damp locations, is the only one to allude to the waste problem at all, if briefly, in its section on camps: Leo VI, Taktika, Constitution 11: Περι ὰπλίκτωυ (About camps)97 4. It is advantageous and healthy for the army not to remain in the same camp for a lengthy period, unless it is winter, for at that time of year the soldiers may be billeted in some sort of building. The bodily excretions deposited in the same place will give off harmful vapours and will transform the fresh air surrounding the place into disease-bearing air. trans. George T. Dennis

Even Leo writes as if the problem largely concerns humans, but virtually all that the treatise writers said of conditions in camps relating to health applied to animals too. The problem with long sieges was that they involved precisely what Leo warns of: staying in the same camp for an extended period, with subsequent risk both from and to humans and animals; as seen above, heavy loss of animals also severely weakened an army and might prevent large expeditions. Leo’s advice was echoed in some of the western and central European late medieval plague tractates. Jacme d’Agramont, Regiment de preservació a epidèmia o pestilència e mortaldats (Regimen for Protection from the Plague), 598 When in battles and long sieges a great number of people and horses have been killed and they are not buried, then the putrefaction of the dead bodies brings about great infection and corruption of the air. Also from decayed bodies arise flies and poisonous worms in great quantity. 97 The Taktika of Leo VI, ed. and trans. George T. Dennis (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2010): Constitution XI. 98 Regiment de preservació a epidèmia o pestilència e mortaldats: Epistola de Maestre Jacme d’Agramont als honrats e discrets seynnors pahers e conseyll de la civtat de Lleyda, ed. Enrich Arderiu and Joseph M. Roca (Lleyda: Estempa de Joseph A. Page, 1926).

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Vegetius introduces camps in Book 1 and then repeats some of the same advice in Book 3.8. In Book 3 he is discussing the defence of a territory against invasion, hence he proposes payment for the livestock taken from the people. In a foreign land, and not infrequently in “friendly” territory, armies would simply steal the animals. Indeed, seizing of cattle and other livestock was often one of the main aim of raids and expeditions and is frequently mentioned in sources. Deliberate destruction of animals without eating them was rarer, but was done on occasion, especially if they could not be taken home or consumed by the army. Vegetius, Epitoma rei militaris (Epitome of Military Science), Bk. 1, Bk. 399 1.22. Camps, especially when the enemy is near, should be built always in a safe place, where there are sufficient supplies of firewood, fodder and water, and if a long stay is in prospect choose a salubrious site. … Thought must be given that the site is not liable to flooding from torrents and the army to suffer harm in this event. The camp should be built according to the number of soldiers and baggage-train, lest too great a multitude be crammed in a small area, or a small force too large a space be compelled to be spread out more than is appropriate. 3.8. … Among the things particularly incumbent upon a general, whether he is quartered in a camp or a city, is to see that the animals pasturage, the transportation of grain and other provisions, and the ministration of water, firewood and fodder are rendered secure from hostile attack. The only wav to achieve this is to plant garrisons at suitable points through which our supply trains pass. These may be cities or walled towns. 3.3. The order of subjects demands that I speak next about the provisioning-system for fodder and grain. For armies are more often destroyed by starvation than battle, and hunger is more savage than the sword. Secondly, other misfortunes can in time be alleviated: fodder and grain supply have no remedy in a crisis except storage in advance. On any expedition the single most effective weapon is that food should be sufficient for you while dearth should break the enemy. Therefore, before war is commenced, careful consideration should be given to supplies and their issue in order that fodder, grain and the other army provisions customarily requisitioned from provincials may be exacted in good time, and quantities always more than sufficient be assembled at points well-placed for waging war and very well-fortified. But if the taxes in kind be insufficient, everything should be compulsorily purchased from advanced payments in gold. For there is no secure possession of wealth, unless it be maintained by defence of arms. 99 Flavi Vegeti Renati Epitoma Rei Militaris, ed. Carl Lang (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1885): Liber I, XXII; Liber III, III and VIII.

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Often an emergency is doubled and a siege becomes longer than expected, when the opposition though hungry themselves do not give up besieging those whom they expect to be overcome by hunger. Also all livestock, any sort of fruit and wine which the enemy invader can seize for his own sustenance should be collected into strong forts secured by armed garrisons, or into very safe cities, by landowners acting under the admonition of edicts or the compulsion of specially appointed escorts.’ and the provincials impelled to shut themselves and their property behind fortifications before the invasion. … Faithful stewardship of granaries and controlled issue usually provides for a sufficiency, especially if taken in hand from the outset. But economy comes too late to save (grain) when there is a deficiency. 7

Animals Stolen and Slaughtered

Domestic animals were often targetted by both armies and small raiding forces. In times of disorder some forces, mainly unemployed soldiers, such as the free companies that operated in medieval France and surrounding regions during the periods when England and France were not officially at war during the Hundred Years War, acted as heavily armed bandits, but they might also form mercenary armies for rulers such as Italian princes. On many frontiers there was an almost continuous state of low level hostility. When there was a religious divide it was incumbent on both sides to raid the other: this occurred, for example, on the frontiers between pagan polities and the Frankish or later German kingdoms or the Teutonic Order, the Christian-Moslem frontiers in Iberia, and the frontier between the Byzantine Empire and the Arabs and later Turks. However, the same pattern characterised some other frontiers between Christian states, such as the English-Scottish frontier. Though raiders might well terrorize and kill people and destroy homes, the usual purpose of raids was plunder. In early medieval Europe and on religious frontiers, this might include human slaves, but in almost every case it included livestock. The endemic nature of this form of activity on the Castilian-Almoravid frontier is demonstrated in the law code of the frontier town Cuenca, which probably originated in the late twelfth century but is extant from the mid-thirteenth.100 It specifies in some detail the organisation of raiding par100 Powers, The Code of Cuenca, 18–23.

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ties, conduct on campaign, compensation for animals lost on campaign, and the distribution of booty. Pillage was strictly forbidden. Each parish selected a quadrillarius (booty divider) on the day that the raiding force departed. Livestock were clearly vitally important to the local economy. We should bear in mind, of course, that law codes represent an ideal, and need not always have been followed. Forum Conche de Cuenca (Code of Cuenca), 30. Government of the Military Expedition101 26. The salary of animal herders on the military expedition. Each animal herder, both of sheep and of livestock, should have sheep, whichever he chooses. The guards of captives should receive [the same] as the animl herders; that is to say, a sheep for each one. And the animal herders as well as the guards of the captives should guard continually by day and night until the day of the division. 35. The division of cattle. The alcaldi together with the quadrellarii should give to all in the military expedition, to all the parishes equally, and to the Señor of Cuenca, the meat of the booty cattle. If some take cattle in other ways, their ears should be cut.102 36. What booty should be brought to partition and divided. When the day of the partition arrives, all things that have been obtained, such as sheep, cattle, animals [horse and donkeys], garments, clothing, money, gold, silver, and weapons, except the living Moslems, should be brought to the division. 37. The encampment that is suspect. The iudex and the alcaldi should investigate all the encampments, if they have suspicion of theft. And whoever they find stealing something should be left wihtout his share (of booty) and, furthermore, his hair should be shorn in the form of a cross, and his ears should be cut. trans. James F. Powers

101 Powers, The Code of Cuenca: Ch. XXX.26. 102 The alcaldus (pl. alcaldi) was an elected judge and alderman in each parish, the word derived from Arabic al-qādī. The quadrellarius (Romance cuadrillero, Latin pl. quadrellarii) was an officer elected by each parish for the duration of an expedition, responsible for the division of booty. The iudex (Romance juez) was the chief elected civil officer of the city, acting as both a mayor and a justice at the first level of appeal in court. From Powers, Code of Cuenca, 229–32.

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The so-called Kalmar Leidang of 1123 may have been billed in IcelandicNorwegian sources as a Norwegian campaign against pagans in Småland, but the same source reveals the importance of stolen cattle, although the number 1500 can be taken to mean “very many.”103 The “food-tax” (vistagjald) amounted to the same as the brannskatt (“burn-tax”), that is, payment of tribute under threat of the territory being devastated if it were not paid. Ágrip af Nóregskonungasǫgum (A synoptic Histry of the Kings of Norway), 61104 and levied a food-tax of fifteen hundred cattle on Småland; and the people accepted Christianity. King Sigurðr then returned home with much treasure and booty gathered on that expedition. It was called the Kalmarnar expedition (leiðangr) and took place the summer before the great darkness.105 Sometimes, however, if the intention was primarily to destroy resources or large numbers of domestic animals could not be taken with the attackers, they were simply slaughtered. Like the pack animal casualties, these animals usually receive only a cursory notice in chronicles, if any; they were equivalent in status to the crops and food stores that were also destroyed. Medieval records of campaigns of destruction tend to be rhetorical and employ stock descriptive phrases, so it is often difficult to assess the real level of devastation. An extreme example of this type of campaign was the “harrying of the north” carried out by William I in northern England 1069–70, a deliberate punishment and destruction of resources that might be used in future by the English rebels or the Danes who had come to their aid. Orderic wrote his account fifty years after the event, and there is some debate about the level of exaggeration in it, although no-one doubts that the devastation and suffering was very severe. However serious it was, to Orderic or any other medieval chroniclers who criticized campaigns of devastation the victims were the “Christian folk,” not the nonhuman animals.106 103 If it did involve action against pagans, they must have been “Wends” who had established bases in Möre and on Öland, as there is clear archaeological evidence that the native people had already been converted to Christianity. 104 Ágrip, ed. and trans. Driscoll: LVI. The beginning of this entry is missing from the ms. 105 A reference to an eclipse of the sun on August 11, 1124, which was total in Trøndelag, Norway. 106 The same might be said of discussions about military campaigns nowadays; nonhuman animals are rarely mentioned as casualties (or ‘collateral damage’), and if they are mentioned they are usually pets.

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Orderic Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiatica (Ecclesiastical History), Bk 4107 The king assigned officers and castellans with armed retainers to repair the castles in the city [York] and left others on the banks of the Humber to ward off the Danes. He himself continued to comb forests and remote mountainous places, stopping at nothing to hunt out the enemy hidden there. His camps were spread out over an area of a hundred miles. He cut down many in his vengeance; destroyed the lairs of others; harried the land and burned homes to ashes. Nowhere else had William shown such cruelty. Shamefully he succumbed to his vice, for he made no effort to restrain his fury and punished the innocent with the guilty. In his anger he ordered that all crops and herds, chattels and food of every kind should be brought together and burned to ashes with consuming fire, so that the whole region north of Humber might be stripped of all means of sustenance. In consequence so serious a scarcity was felt in England, and so terrible a famine fell upon the humble and defenceless populace, that more than 100,000 Christian folk of both sexes, young and old alike, perished of hunger. tr. Marjorie Chibnall

The example below is a more typical description of a campaign of devastation of the type common in medieval warfare, this time during Frederick I Barbarossa’s campaign against Milan in 1159. Rahewin was a contemporary of his and describes the campaign in a dramatic way but without any hint of criticism. The passage may serve as a reminder that nonhuman animals are invisible in many medieval descriptions of events in which they would have suffered severely, frequently as a result of human actions. Here, although livestock are not mentioned specifically, we can presume that just as the area was denuded of vegetal sustenance and depopulated, most were rounded up and taken for Frederick’s army or deliberately killed, so they would not provide food for the local people who had taken refuge in defended places. Any domestic animals who escaped this fate in such campaigns and were left without keepers or fodder were vulnerable to starvation; although some might be able to adapt and survive by foraging, many had become accustomed to dependency on humans, especially during the winter.

107 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, Vol. II: Books III and IV, ed. Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969): Bk IV (ii.195–ii.196).

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Rahewin, continuation to Otto of Freising’s Gesta Friderici Imperatoris (Deeds of the Emperor Frederick), Bk 4, Ch. 38108 Hearing this, Frederick restrained his anger for a little while longer, concealed his indignation and increased the impetus of his campaign; before the aforementioned court he held a glorious ceremony at Roncaglia, and gathered there a large number of troops. Then, with the utmost determination to bring matters to a conclusion, he intensified the hurt to his enemies and invaded Liguria with his entire army, burning the fields, laying waste the land, destroying the vines, uprooting the fig trees and ordering that all fruit-bearing trees either be felled or stripped of their bark. And he depopulated the entire area, but decided not to besiege the city [Milan] until it was overtaken by food shortages, for he thought that either then they would be compelled by want of victuals to humble themselves and ask for peace, or, if they had persisted to the end with the same obstinacy, that they would be consumed by hunger, or be forced to surrender by siege. 108 Ottonis et Rahewini Gesta Friderici I. Imperatoris, ed. Georg Waitz (Hanover and Leipzig: Hahn, 1912): Liber IV, Cap. XXXVIII.

Quoted Authors

Adam Loutfut (fl. Late 15th Century)

All we know of Adam is what he says of himself in the Deidis of Armorie, a treatise on heraldry and bestiary translated from French into Scots English around 1494. He served William Cumming of Inverallochy, who held the office of Marchmont Herald in 1494. William was knighted in 1507 and became Lyon-Depute, with duties at the court and Office of Arms. He then became Lyon King of Arms and undertook various diplomatic missions.

Adelard of Bath (d. 1142)

Adelard claims to come from Bath. By 1109 he may have gone to Tours, and he subsequently taught in Laon, thereafter travelling to southern Italy and Sicily. He also mentions having travelled throughout the “lands of the Crusades”: the Levantine, Syria, Greece, and perhaps Spain, before probably returning to Bath before he died. No-one knows how he lived. Adelard was strongly influenced by Arabic learning. His natural philosophy influenced some of the Chartrians and remained influential until it was eclipsed by Aristotle’s teaching in the 14th century, especially his Questiones Naturales (Questions on Natural Science), divided into three parts: On Plants and Brute Animals, On Man and On Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. These works take the form of a dialogue with his nephew, who is exhorted to study philosophy (the liberal arts). Adomnán (c.624–704) Adomnán was an abbot of Iona Abbey (r. 679–704), statesman, hagiographer and canon jurist who became a saint. He was the author of the Vita Columbae (Life of Columba) and the treatise De Locis Sanctis (On Holy Places), and promoted the Law of Adomnán or “Law of Innocents.” The Vita is a key source for our knowledge of the Picts and early Scotland as well as Iona monastery.

Aelfric of Eynsham (c.955–c.1010)

Ælfric was educated at Winchester under its bishop St Æthelwold, and probably participated in the teaching at the abbey. He was sent by Æthelwold’s

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successor to teach the Benedictine monks at the new abbey of Cerne in 987. There he began two series of English homilies, dedicated to Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury, from 990 to 994. In 1005 he left Cerne to become abbot at Eynsham (Oxfordshire), where he remained. He wrote numerous Old English works of hagiography, homilies, biblical commentaries, and other genres.

Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus) (c.1200–1280)

Possibly born in Bavaria and probably from a family of the ministerial class. He became a Dominican friar and scholar who acquired the cognomen “great” in his lifetime because of the breadth of his output. He devoted his entire (and long) life to study, apart from two years as bishop of Ratisbon (Regensburg) from 1260 to 1262. He produced commentaries on most of the works of Aristotle available to him. Albert and Aquinas made the study of nature purposeful and acceptable, but although it was Aquinas who argued their case most effectively, it was Albert who made a serious study of more of its phenomena, including nonhuman animals. His commentary on Aristotle’s De animalibus in twenty-six books stands out among medieval works that discuss nonhuman animals and demonstrates that he had a genuine interest in their nature and behaviour. If we can judge by the number of surviving manuscripts, over forty, Albert’s was the most popular commentary on this work in the Middle Ages.

Aldhelm of Malmesbury (OE, Ealdhelm; Lat. Aldhelmus Malmesberiensis) (c.639–709)

Aldhelm was born before the middle of the 7th century, perhaps a son of Kenten, a member of the royal house of Wessex. Aldhelm later became abbot of Malmesbury Abbey in 675 and bishop of Sherborne in 705 and founded other monasteries. He was a scholar and writer of Latin poetry, including 101 riddles. After his death he was venerated as a saint.

Alexander Neckham (1157–1219)

Born in St Albans and abbot of Cirencester Abbey from 1213. Alexander was a theologian, natural historian and grammarian. He was author of De Natura

Quoted Authors

595

Rerum (On the Nature of Things), written at the end of the twelfth century as a preface to his commentary on the Book of Ecclesiastes. Despite its ostensible moral purpose and moralizing allegories, and although bestiaries undoubtedly provided some of his source material, many of their more fantastical elements and animals are missing while the range of animals is greater than in previous works. The work is liberally embellished with literary references and anecdotes from fables and other sources, occasionally altered or given a new setting more appropriate to Neckham’s own time and culture. Alfonso XI (1311–1350) King of Castile and Leόn. Alfonso was born in Salamanca. When his father died in 1312, disputes ensued over who would hold the regency, which were resolved in 1313. Alfonso was declared an adult in 1325 and began a reign that strengthened royal power. He extended Castilian control of former Granadan territory to the Straits of Gibraltar, where he was infected by the Black Death during the 1349–1350 siege and died. He was author of the hunting treatise Libre de la Montero.

Ambrose of Milan (Aurelius Ambrosius; Saint Ambrose) (c.339–397)

Ambrose was born into a Christian family, He was serving as the Roman governor of Aemilia-Liguria in Milan when he was unexpectedly made bishop there in 374 by popular acclaim. He strongly opposed Arianism and established relations with the successive emperors, Gratian and Theodosius. He influenced Augustine of Hippo (354–430). Ambrose composed several hymns and other works. He is recognized as one of the four traditional Doctors of the Church and a saint by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church and various Protestant dominations.

Andrew of Wyntoun (c.1350–c.1425)

Andrew was a canon and prior of Loch Leven on St Serf’s Inch and, later, a canon of St Andrews. He is most well-known as a poet who wrote the Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, written at the request of his patron, Sir John of Wemyss. It surveys the history of Scotland from the mythical period to 1420.

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Aneirin (6th Century) Aneirin’ s parentage is disputed, although his mother Dwywei is mentioned in Y Gododdin. He was likely a bard or court poet in one of the Brittonic kingdoms of what is now northern England and southern Scotland, probably Gododdin. His patrons were the kings (or warlords) Urien and Owain, and he wrote Y Gododdin to remember the latter and his warriors after their defeat and death at Catraeth. One tradition holds that he was murdered. His reputation survived in Wales and was revived in the early modern period.

Anselm of Liege (1008–c.1056)

Anselm was educated at the episcopal school of Liège and became canon and dean of the cathedral. He was an enthusiastic supporter of church reform. Anselm wrote the chronicle known as the Gesta Episcoporum Tungrensium, Trajectensium, et Leodiensium as a continuation of the earlier work of Heriger, abbot of Lobbes (d. 1007) adding the lives of twenty-five more bishops to Heriger’s lives.

Apuleius (Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis) (c.124–aft. 170)

Apuleius was born in Madauros, Numidia. His father was a rich municipal magistrate who provided for his education in Carthage. He later travelled in Italy, Asia Minor and Egypt. Apuleius was a Platonist philosopher and rhetorician and an initiate in several mysteries. In the Middle Ages, as now, he was most well-known for his Latin-language novel Metamorphoses, then known as the Golden Ass.

Aristo, Ludovico (1474–1533)

Ariosto was born in Reggio nell’Emilia. His father forced him to study law, but he was more interested in literature. He was first in the service of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, then his brother Duke Alfonso of Ferrara, when he served as a diplomat and later governor of the bandit-riven province of Garfagnana. Despite having to make ends meet, he found the time to compose poetic epics, of which Orland Furioso is the most famous.

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597

Aristotle (Aristoteles) (384–322 BCE)

Aristotle was born at Stagira in north Greece, but not much more is known of his early life. He joined Plato’s academy in Athens and tutored Philip II of Macedon’s son Alexander (later ‘the Great’). He died in Chalcis, Euboea, having fled after being denounced in Athens. His writings were vast, only a third surviving, many of which were arranged after his death. They cover philosophy, the natural sciences, politics, economics, psychology, logic and the arts. He founded the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens. His well-known works include the Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, On the Soul and the Poetics, and several on animal behaviour, movement and physical make-up. His influence was huge, not least on medieval thought about animals, and his conceptions were followed for almost two thousand years.

Arrian (Flavius Arrianus Nicomediensis) (Late 80s–146/160 CE)

Born into a Greek provincial aristocratic family with Roman citizenship in Nicomedia, Bithynia. Arrian was a pupil of the philosopher Epictetus in c.108, became a friend of Emperor Hadrian in the 120s, and so was appointed to the Senate. In c.130 he attained the position of consul suffectus and was later appointed prefect or legate of Cappadocia, where he repelled an invasion by the Alans. Among his writings are a work on military tactics, the Discourses of Epictetus, the Enchiridion of Epictetus, the Anabasis of Alexander, the Indica and the Kynegetikos (On Hunting). Asser (d. c.909) Asser was a Welsh monk of St David’s (Wales). Most of what we know of him comes from his Life of King Alfred, written in 893. Asser entered Alfred’s service c.885 as one of the learned men the king gathered around him and eventually became bishop of Sherbourne.

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Athanasius I of Alexandria (Athanasius the Great, Athanasius the Confessor) (c.296/298–373) Athanasius became the twentieth bishop of Alexandria (as Athanasius I) in 328, although his repeated conflicts with Roman emperors caused him to be exiled on five occasions. He was a theologian and the first to list the twenty-seven books of the New Testament canon now in use, as well as the chief defender of Trinitarianism against Arianism. He is regarded as a Church Father. Despite his problems, his writings were highly regarded in his lifetime and in both Western and Eastern Churches in the Middle Ages.

Augustine of Hippo (354–430)

Augustine was bishop of Hippo Regius in the Roman province of Numidia from 395 to 430 and became a saint of the Catholic Church. His views on freedom, sin, grace, and sexuality had an enormous influence in the Latin Middle Ages, touching on many aspects of the human condition and anthropology, including the structure of the human mind, will, the emotions, freedom and determinism. Augustine’s authority in theological matters was unquestioned in the Middle Ages and remained so for long afterwards in the western Christian tradition. Although Augustine significantly adjusted many tenets of the earlier Christian Church and may be considered a founder of the medieval philosophical tradition, he was born and worked in the Greco-Roman tradition, much of which would be lost to the West during the century in which he died. Augustine was baptised in 387, but he had earlier been a Manichaean for ten years. His studies in Neoplatonism also had a powerful influence on him, although he never acknowledged the influence of Neoplatonist thought on his Christian philosophy. Augustine’s output was huge. His works include his philosophical autobiography Confessions, The City of God, On Christian Doctrine, and three works interpreting Genesis.

Bartholomew the Englishman (Bartholomaeus Anglicus) (bef. 1203–1272)

Bartholomew’s early life is a mystery, but he probably studied at Oxford and taught in Paris in the mid-1220s and was a member of the Franciscan Order. He was later appointed bishop of Łuków. He was author of the compendium De proprietatibus rerum (“On the Properties of Things”), dated to c.1240. The encyclopedia was widely read and cited in the Middle Ages.

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599

Bartolo of Sassoferrato (Bartolus de Saxoferrato) (1313–1357)

Bartolus was born in Venatura village, near Sassoferrato, in Marche. He read civil law at the universities of Perugia and Bologna and became a doctor of law in 1334. From 1339 he taught at Pisa, then in Perugia. In 1355, Emperor Charles IV appointed him as his consiliarius. Although he died at the age of 43, he left a huge number of works, including commentaries on the Corpus Juris Civilis and treatises on many subjects, one of which was De insigniis et armis in which he discussed not only the law of Arms but also trademark law. Bartolus also wrote on political issues and a variety of constitutional law issues. Thought to be the first theorist of international law and already widely known in his lifetime, Bartolus was later regarded as the greatest jurist after the renaissance of Roman law.

Basil of Caesaria (330–379)

Basil of Caesaria was bishop of Caesarea Mazaca (now Kayseri) in Cappadocia and an influential theologian, besides being a saint of both eastern and western Churches. He is regarded as a father of the monastic communities in eastern Christianity (alongside Pachomius) and produced guidelines for the lives their members should live. He, his brother Gregory of Nyssa and his associate Gregory of Nazianzus are known as the Cappadocian Fathers. Bede (672/3–735) An English Benedictine monk at the double monastery of St Peter and St Paul (Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey) in Northumbria. He spent most of his life in the monastery, but also travelled extensively in Britain. Bede was a teacher and scholar and the author of several theological and exegetical works, Bible commentaries and the Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

Benedict of Nursia (St Benedict) (480–548)

Benedict is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Anglican Communion. He founded twelve communities for monks at Subiaco, Lazio, Italy and then moved to Monte Cassino in central Italy. His “Rule of Saint Benedict”, a set of rules for his monks to follow that was heavily influenced by John Cassian’s

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writings, was adopted by most Christian religious communities in the Middle Ages and gave Benedict a reputation as the real founder of Western Christian monasticism. The ‘Order’ of Saint Benedict is actually a group of autonomous congregations following this rule. Benedict XII (Pope Benedictus XII) (1280s–1342) Born Jacques Fournier in Saverdun in the County of Foix in c.1285. He joined the Cistercian Order and studied at the University of Paris at the Collège des Bernardins. In 1311 he was made Abbot of Fontfroide Abbey, and in 1317 bishop of Pamiers, where he played a large part in wiping out vestiges of Catharism and investigated supposed water-poisoning by lepers. In 1326 he became Bishop of Mirepoix in the Ariège, and in 1327 a cardinal, and finally pope in 1334. As pope he was a monastic reformer, but though based at Avignon in France he was at loggerheads with the French king Philip VI.

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153)

Bernard was born into the high nobility of Burgundy. Having gone to Citeaux in 1113, he became abbot of a new community at Clairvaux in 1115. Bernard did not favour the rational approach to divine understanding of the scholastics and professed an immediate faith modelled on the life of Christ with an emphasis on the Virgin Mary as intercessor. Bernard was a theologian, mystic, co-founder of the Knights Templar, and a major figure in the revitalization of Benedictine monasticism in what became known as the Cistercian Order. He was also an important advocate of crusading. He was canonized just 21 years after his death by Pope Alexander III.

Bernard Gui (c.1261–1331)

Gui was born c.1261 or 1262 in the Limousin region. He entered the Dominican monastery at Limoges as a novice in the early 1270s. He was a diplomat and administrator on behalf of the papacy as well as an inquisitor. He was appointed bishop of Tui in 1323 and bishop of Lodève in 1324, He also wrote numerous works of history, especially concerning the Church and saints, but he is better known for his inquisitor’s manual, Practica inquisitionis heretice pravitatis, and the register of the sentences he pronounced.

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601

Bernardus Silvestris (fl. 1140s)

A medieval philosopher and poet about whom little is known except that he studied and taught in Tours, and he may have been born there. He was obviously influenced by the ‘Chartrians,’ and he dedicated his most famous work, Cosmographia, to Thierry of Chartres, chancellor of the cathedral school at Chartres from 1141. It was probably written in the 1140s and was supposedly presented to Pope Eugene II in 1147.

Berthold of Ratisbon (Regensburg) (c.1210–1272)

Berthold seems to have come from a middle-class Ratisbon family and clearly had a good education. At some stage he became a Franciscan friar, recorded from 1246 when the papal legate chose him and David of Augsburg as inspectors of Niedermünster convent. He was already a popular preacher, and subsequently travelled to the valley of the Rhine, Alsace, Switzerland, Austria, Moravia, Bohemia, Hungary and Silesia. He attracted such huge crowds that he usually had to preach in the open. In c.1270 he seems to have returned to Ratisbon where he died.

Biondo, Flavio (Flavius Blondus) (1392–1463)

Born in Forlì, in the Romagna, Flavio was well educated as a child. He became a Renaissance humanist historian and an early archaeologist. In Rome from 1433, he was appointed secretary to the Chancellery under Pope Eugene IV in 1444 and subsequently was employed by Popes Nicholas V, Callixtus III and Pius II. He wrote several important works in which he was careful to use primary and reliable sources, Historiarum ab Inclinatione Romanorum Imperii decades (Decades of History from the Decline of the Roman Empire), written from 1439 to 1453) and Italia Illustrata (Italy Illuminated) being the most significant. Blund, John (c.1175–1248) The Englishman Blund was a royal clerk by 1227 and studied at Oxford and Paris, where he was in 1229. He was a canon of Chichester before 1232 and spent about a year as Archbishop of Canterbury before his election was quashed. Blund’s only surviving work is the Tractatus de anima (Treatise on the Soul).

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It is one of the first works of western philosophy to make use of Aristotle’s De Anima and Avicenna’s commentary on it. Blund taught at Oxford University and was appointed chancellor of the see of York shortly before his death.

Boccaccio, Giovanni (1313–1375)

Boccaccio was born in Florence or near Certaldo, the home of his family, as a son of Florentine merchant, Boccaccino di Chellino, and an unknown woman. He grew up in Florence and spent some time at the Neapolitan court. He was an apprentice at his father’s bank, but then studied law before turning to what he thought was his true vocation, poetry. He returned to Florence but spent time in Ravenna, managing to avoid the Black Death when it struck in 1348. He was temporarily driven out of Florence during political upheavals. His many writings include the Decameron and De mulieribus claris (On Famous Women). He died after much illness.

Bonaventure (Bonaventura, b. Giovanni di Fidanza) (1221–1274)

Giovanni di Fidanze was born at Civita di Bagnoregio in the Papal States, but little is known of his childhood. He entered the Franciscan Order in 1243 and studied at the University of Paris, receiving the degree of Master in 1255. Having defended them against the attacks of the anti-mendicant party, he was elected Minister General of the Franciscan Order. He aided in the election of Pope Gregory X and was rewarded with the title of Cardinal Bishop of Albano. At the Second Council of Lyon in 1274 he helped to achieve a union of the Greek and Latin churches but then died suddenly and mysteriously. He was canonized in 1482. His many theological works were of great importance.

Bonvesin da la Riva (Bonvesino, Buonvicino) (c.1240–c.1313)

Bonvesin was a wealthy lay member of the Milanese “Ordine degli Umiliati” (Order of the Humble Ones), who taught Latin and was a noted Lombard writer and poet of the 13th century, writing also in the Lombard language. He taught in Legnano and Milan.

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603

Brant, Sebastian (1457/58–1521)

Brant was born in Strasbourg to an innkeeper, but attended the University of Basel from 1475. He studied philosophy and then transferred to the school of law, completing his doctorate in both canon and civil law in 1489. He worked on many collections of stories, fables and wonders, and wrote the famous Narrenschiff. He was made syndic in Strasbourg in 1501, and as a councillor of Maximilian obtained the title of Count Palatine. He later became a judge for the Imperial Court in Speyer and in 1503 had the position of chancellor (stadtschreiber). He was a Catholic but criticized Church abuses and tolerated early Protestantism.

Bruno of Segni (c.1045–1123)

Bruno was born in Solero to parents of uncertain wealth. He studied under the Benedictines and at the university in Bologna before being appointed a canon of the cathedral chapter of Siena. He was invited to Rome to a synod and was appointed bishop of Segni in 1079. He advised four consecutive popes as a staunch defender of orthodoxy and opponent of compromise with the German kings/emperors over the investiture disputes, He also served as Abbot of Montecassino, but lost this post after criticizing Pope Paschal II severely. He wrote a number of works, mostly exegetical.

Burchard of Worms (c.950/965–1025)

Burchard was born into a wealthy family in the northern Hesse region. Having risen through the Church and founded a monastery, Burchard became bishop of the Imperial City of Worms in 1000, which embroiled him in secular politics and power struggles, notably a violent conflict with Herzog Otto I of Carinthia, as well as in Church affairs. He adopted a child from the enemy household, who later became Emperor Conrad II (c.990–1034). He was author of a canon law collection of twenty books known as the Decretum (Decretum Burchardi, Decretorum libri viginti) and responsible for several ecclesiastical construction projects.

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Caesarius of Arles (Caesarius Arelatensis or Cabillonensis) (468/470–542)

Caesarius was born in Cabillonum (Chalon-sur-Saône) in the Western Roman Empire, which by then existed only in name. His parents were RomanBurgundian. He trained at the island monastery of Lerinum (Lérins), but having been appointed cellarer was removed because he was too strict, whereupon he moved to Arles and rose to become bishop in 502. He presided over the Council of Orange in 529. Caesarius was famed for his concern for the poor and the sick and for saving and ransoming captives in the wars between Germanic kings in Gaul, and as a preacher. Charles VI of Valois (1368–1422) Charles inherited the French throne in 1380, at the age of 11. During his minority, France was ruled by his uncles as regents until he was 21. From 1392 he suffered periods of psychosis and the regents (relatives) who governed with his wife Isabeau squabbled and two were murdered (Louis of Orléans and John of Burgundy), while France descended into civil war. Henry V of England conquered a large part of France and at the Treaty of Troyes in 1420 the dauphin was disinherited in his favour, but Henry died a few weeks before Charles’ death in 1422.

Chaucer, Geoffrey (1340s–1400)

Chaucer was born in London of an upwardly mobile family. He studied law in the Inner Temple (an Inn of Court) and became a member of the royal court of Edward III in 1367, where he had various tasks. In the reign of Richard II, he was comptroller of the customs for the port of London for twelve years, clerk of the king’s works in 1389 and then Deputy Forester in the royal forest of Petherton Park in 1391. He went abroad many times, at least twice on military expeditions to France under Edward III, and also to Italy where he must have become familiar with Italian works of literature. He is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages. He is thought to have started work on The Canterbury Tales in the early 1380s.

Quoted Authors

605

Cogitosus (fl. Mid-7th Century) Irish monk and author of the first Hiberno-Latin life of a saint, Brigid of Kildare (d. 525). He was probably a monk at the double monastery of Kildare, as he states he was compelled in the name of obedience to write the life of the community’s foundress. He also says he was a descendant of Aed, probably Aed Dub, abbot of Kildare in the early seventh century.

Columbanus (543–615)

Columbanus (Colmán) was born in Leinster in 543 and was educated at Cluaninis and then Bangor Abbey. In 590 he travelled to the continent, after which he led a tempestuous life of travel as a missionary in Burgundy, the Alpine regions and Lombardy, narrowly escaping execution at the hands of Theuderic II of Burgundy. He founded several monasteries including Luxeuil in present-day France and Bobbio in present-day Italy, and the monastery of St Gall was founded in the site of his cell 70 years after his death at Bobbio. He authored the monastic Rule of Columbanus, based on Irish monasticism.

Columbus, Ferdinand (1488–1539)

Second and illegitimate son of Christopher Columbus. He and his brother served as pages at court after Christopher’s first voyage to America, and hence received a good education. He assisted his father in his writings and accompanied him on his fourth voyage, and after Christopher’s death wrote a biography of him, Historie del S. D. Fernando Colombo, while fighting lawsuits to claim his rights in the ‘New World.’

Daniel of Beccles (Danielis Becclesiensis) (fl. Late 12th Century)

Daniel of Beccles may have at Henry II’s court, for which John Bale (16th century) wrote that he had seen documentary evidence. Some of the manuscripts of Daniel’s Urbanus Magnus, a guide to aristocratic etiquette, are dateable to the early 13th century, and there is also a reference to the Abbot of Bury

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St Edmund’s giving a Daniel of Beccles the patronage of the church of Endgate in Beccles in the “seventh regnal year of King John” (c.1206). Dicuil (Late 8th Century) Probably a monk in a Frankish monastery, of Irish origin. He wrote an astronomical work and De mensura Orbis terrae, a geographical summary that describes various lands, based on a work of 435 compiled during the reign of Emperor Theodosius II. Eadmer (c.1060–c.1126) Eadmer was a historian, theologian, Benedictine monk and companion to Anselm, who became archbishop of Canterbury. He wrote several saints’ lives, of which the Vita Anselmi is the most important, and many other works. His Historia novorum in Anglia gives the public image of Anselm and supports the primacy of the archbishopric of Canterbury over York, and he played a major role in spreading the doctrine of the immaculate conception in England.

Eckbert of Schönau (d. 1184)

Eckbert was born on the Middle Rhine in the early twelfth century into a distinguished family, Hartwig, He studied in Paris, and spent time as a canon in the collegiate churches of St Cassius and St Florin at Bonn. Eckbert became a Benedictine monk at Schönau in the Diocese of Trier in 1155 and subsequently its abbot in 1166. He wrote and preached for the salvation of souls and the conversion of heretics, especially the Cathars, and debated with them publicly, notably in Cologne.

Edward of York (Edward of Norwich) (1373–1415)

Edward was the eldest son of Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York, and a grandson of King Edward III of England. He served on the councils of both Richard II and Henry IV and became duke of York in 1402. He was Henry’s Master of the Hart Hounds. Between 1406 and 1413 he translated and dedicated to the Prince of Wales the Livre de Chasse of Gaston III, Count of Foix, and added five chapters of his own, the English-language work being known as The Master of Game. He was killed at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.

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607

Einhard (c.775–840)

Born in the “German” region of the Frankish kingdom and educated at Fulda Monastert, Einhard became noted scholar and was invited to Charlemagne’s court. He became Louis the Pious’ private secretary after Chalemagne’s death. He wrote several works, the most well-known being the Vita Karoli Magni (The Life of Charlemagne), composed c.817–835).

Ermold the Black (Ermoldus Nigellus) (fl. 824–830)

Ermold was a son of Emperor Louis the Pious. At some stage he was a poet at the court of Pippin of Aquitaine and he accompanied his father on campaign in 824. He was exiled for “foul deeds” (his words) by Louis and Pippin in the 820s, and his known letters and works, especially In Honour of Emperor Louis, appear to have been an attempt to return to favour. Whether he did or not is unknown.

Erasmus, Desiderius (Erasmus of Rotterdam) (1466–1536)

Erasmus was educated in monastic or semi-monastic schools, where he learnt Greek as well as Latin. Compelled by poverty, he entered the Augustine monastery in Stein in 1485/86, but ten years later went to study at the University of Paris in the Collège de Montaigue. Influenced by Renaissance humanism, he acquired a strong aversion to Aristotelianism and Scholasticism. He made several visits to England during which he taught or studied, further studied Greek at Paris and produced a new edition of Jerome’s Bible, and graduated as Doctor of Divinity at the University of Turin in 1506. He remained a Catholic during the Reformation and sought a ‘middle way’ through reform within the Roman Church.

Eudes of Rouen (Odo Rigaldus, Eudes Rigaud), (d. 1275)

Born near Paris (date uncertain), Eudes joined the Franciscan Order in c.1236, and studied theology at the University of Paris from 1240/1 to 1245, when he became regent. He was archbishop of Rouen from 1248 to 1269. Many of his writings are unedited, and he is currently most well-known for his Regestrum visitationum, an account of his episcopal activity which reveals his commitment to ecclesiastical reform.

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Eustace Deschamps (Morel) (1346–1406/7)

Born in Vertus and studied law at Orleans University. He travelled throughout Europe as a diplomatic messenger for Charles V, and in 1372 was made huissier d’armes to Charles. He occupied many other important offices, was bailli of Valois and later of Senlis, squire to the Dauphin, and governor of Fismes. He wrote a treatise on verse, over 1100 ballades, often satirical, about the worsening state of the world and worsening morals.

Eustache of Amiens (fl. Early 13th Century)

Nothing is known of him other than that he wrote the fabliau, Du bouchier dabevile (The Butcher of Abbeville) in Picardy dialect.

Fitzherbert, Anthony (Master Fitzherbert) (1470–1538)

Anthony Fitzherbert was a knight and lord of the manor of Norbury in England, which he obtained as sole surviving son of Ralph Fitzherbert. He was a judge, scholar and writer on legal matters. His Boke of Husbandrie, on agriculture, including the management of animals, was published in 1523 and his most noted work, the treatise on English law New Natura Brevium, in 1534.

FitzNigel, Richard (Richard FitzNeal) (d. 1198)

Richard held the post of Lord Treasurer at the head of Henry II’s exchequer for almost 40 years, as well as being Dean of Lincoln, a major ecclesiastical administrative position. In 1177 Henry asked him to write a book about his work; the result was Dialogus de Scaccari (Dialogue Concerning the Exchequer). It is the first administrative treatise of the Middle Ages. FitzNigel was also awarded the position of bishop of London from 1189 until his death in 1198.

Florence of Worcester (Florentius) (d. 1118)

A monk of Worcester. The final entry for 1118 in the Chronicarum Chronica led scholars to believe initially that Florence was responsible for writing the

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work up to that point, but for stylistic reasons it seems that another monk of Worcester, John, wrote the whole work, although he acknowledged a considerable debt to Florence, who may have assembled much of the material.

Francis of Assisi (1181/1182–1226)

Born Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, Francis of Assisi was an Italian friar, deacon, and mystic who founded the men’s Order of Friars Minor, the women’s Order of St Clare, the Third Order of St Francis and the Custody of the Holy Land. Francis was canonized in 1228 and is still one of the most venerated religious figures in Christianity, and it is customary for churches to hold ceremonies blessing animals on or around his feast day. He later became associated with patronage of animals (that is, nonhuman) and the natural environment. Unlike most saints, many of Francis own writings have survived. Frederick II (1194–1250) King of Sicily from 1198, king of Germany from 1212, king of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor from 1220 and king of Jerusalem from 1225. Frederick spoke six languages and played a major role in promoting literature and the translation of Arabic works of scientia at his court in Palermo. He is author of the first European treatise on falconry, De Arte Venandi cum Avibus (The Art of Hunting with Birds), both a scholastic and a scientific work based on observation and experience. For most of his reign he was in conflict, often at war, against the Popes and their allies.

Galbert of Bruges (Galbertus notarius Brugensis) (fl. Early 12th Century)

Galbert was a Flemish cleric and chronicler who lived in Bruges and served in the administration of the count of Flanders. He wrote a day-by-day Latin account (De multro, traditione et occisione gloriosi Karoli comitis Flandriarum) of the events surrounding the murder of Count Charles the Good, in 1127.

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Gaston Fébus (Gaston III, Count of Foix) (1331–1391)

As the lord’s eldest son, he inherited his extensive lands in south-western France, but he also gained a fortune from ransoming of noble captives after his victory over the Armagnacs at Launac (1362). He maintained his lands without serious disturbance throughout his life. His French-language treatise on hunting (Gascon was his native tongue) became the most influential hunting treatise in Latin Europe.

Geoffrey of Durham (Probably Identical to Geoffrey of Coldingham) (d. c.1215)

Identified in 14th-century manuscripts of his chronicle as sacrist of the Benedictine priory of Coldingham, Scotland, a cell of Durham Cathedral priory. He wrote the Liber de statu ecclesiae Dunelmensis as the second continuation of Symeon of Durham’s Libellus de exordio Dunelmensis ecclesiae (ends 1096).

Geoffrey of Monmouth (d. 1155)

Probably from Monmouth, as he described himself. For most of his life he seems to have been an Oxford cleric. He became bishop of St Asaph in 1152, but is best known for his Historia regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), which led to “King” Arthur becoming a major figure in European literature. Geoffrey claimed the work was based on a “very old book in the British tongue” brought from Brittany, which is clearly invention.

Geoffroy IV de la Tour Landry (before 1330 – 1402–06)

Geoffrey was a nobleman from Anjou who fought in the Hundred Years War and served as chamberlain to the French king. The Livre pour l’enseignement de ses filles du Chevalier de La Tour Landry was written in 1371–72 as a guide for his daughters to proper behaviour at court. It was very popular and was translated in the late 15th century into German (Der Ritter vom Turn) and by William Caxton into English (as The Book of the Knight of the Tower).

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611

Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis) (c.1146–c.1223)

Gerald of Wales was a Norman of part-Welsh descent who was brought up in south Wales. He taught in Paris and became royal clerk to King Henry II and two archbishops. His extensive travels provided the inspiration for his writing, which began following his visit to Ireland in the company of Prince John in 1185. His final position was as archdeacon of Brecon, after which he retired to study.

Gervase of Tilbury (c.1150–1220)

Gervase was born around 1150 in West Tilbury, Essex. He travelled widely, studied and taught canon law at Bologna, and entered the service of Henry II of England and of his son Henry the Young King. He also served William II, Henry II’s son-in-law and Norman king of Sicily, and later Emperor Otto, who appointed him Marshal of the Kingdom of Burgundy-Arles. Between 1210 and 1214 he wrote the Otia Imperialia and other works. His activities in his later life, after Otto’s defeat, are uncertain.

Gilbertus Anglicus (Gilbert of England) (c.1180–c.1250)

Gilbert received his early education in England before studying in Europe’s the foremost school of medicine at Salerno, probably under Roger Frugard. He returned to England briefly to serve Archbishop Hugo Walter but left for Europe again after Hugo’s death in 1205. He is known mainly for his attempt at a comprehensive overview of the best practice in pharmacology, medicine, and surgery at the time, the Compendium Medicinæ, probably written between 1230 and 1250. The work was influential long after his death.

Giles of Rome (Aegidius Romanus, Egidio Colonna) (c.1243–1316)

Giles’ early life is a mystery, but later he entered the Order of the Hermits of St Augustine in Rome. He was sent to the University of Paris where he studied under Thomas Aquinas, probably in 1269–72. He produced many commentaries on Aristotle’s works, but seems to have left academia after Bishop Étienne

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Tempier’s condemnation of Aristotelianism. He returned to Italy and was later appointed by Philip III of France to educate his son, and wrote more material. In 1295 he was appointed Archbishop of Bourges and died in office.

Giovanni Vilanni (c.1276/1280–1348)

Born into the Florentine merchant middle class as son of Villano di Stoldi di Bellincione. Villani was a member of a mercanzia council of eight in the Arte di Calimala (wool finishers) guild in Florence from 1300. He was often embroiled in the politics and economics of Florence and gained a suspect reputation after corruption in the building of new walls around the city, ending up in prison for a period. Having visited Rome, he was inspired to write his Nuova Cronica, which contains much valuable information but also anecdotes within a history that emphasized supernatural direction of events.

Goscelin of Saint-Bertin (c.1040–1106 or after)

Goscelin was a Fleming or Brabantian who became a monk of St Bertin’s, Saint-Omer before travelling to England in 1058 with Herman, bishop of Ramsbury in Wiltshire, joining his household. He fell out of favour with his successor and was at Peterborough in the early 1080s. He is last heard of in 1106. While in England, he visited many monasteries and gathered materials for his numerous hagiographies.

Gottfried von Strassburg (fl. 1210)

Probably a member of the patriciate of the city of Strassburg. The title ‘meister’ and the knowledge displayed in his work would suggest someone who undertook study at an ecclesiastical centre of learning, probably a cathedral school. Virtually all that is known of him comes from his works, of which Tristan is by far the most important.

Gregory the Great (Gregorius I) (c.540–604)

Son of a Roman senator who entered a monastery and rose to become pope in 590. Gregory was known for his strengthening of papal authority, his

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missions to convert still pagan regions, his revisions of liturgy and his written works, especially the Dialogues. One of the Latin Church Fathers and a saint of both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, as well as some protestant denominations.

Gregory of Nyssa (c.335–95)

Gregory was bishop of Nyssa from 372 to 376 and from 378 until his death. He is considered a saint in Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Lutheranism and Anglicanism. Though less well-known in his lifetime than his elder brother Basil of Caesarea or the third Cappadocian father, the theology of Gregory made a significant contribution to the doctrine of the Trinity and the Nicene Creed.

Gregory of Tours (538–594)

Gregory was born Georgius Florentius in Clermont, Auvergne, in Gaul. into the upper class of Gallo-Roman society. He was ordained bishop of Tours in 573, and so became a leading prelate in the former Roman province of Gaul during the Merovingian era. His relations with successive Merovingian kings were often difficult. He was author of Decem Libri Historiarum (Ten Books of Histories), now known as the Historia Francorum (History of the Franks), as well as books of saints’ miracles.

Guiart des Moulins (1251–1312 or 1322)

Guiart (Guyart) des Moulins (Desmoulins) was a canon, later dean, of St Peter in Aire-sur-la-Lys. He owes his fame entirely to his Bible Historiale, the first Bible in French, which was largely taken from Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica. Guiart later added translations of sections of the Vulgate to it.

Guibert of Nogent (c.1055–1124)

Guibert was born into the minor nobility at Clermont-en-Beauvaisis. He became a monk and then abbot of the small abbey of Nogent-sous-Coucy in 1104. He wrote a history of the First Crusade, Dei gesta per Francos (God’s deeds through the Franks) and an autobiography, De vita sua sive monodiarum

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suarum libri tres or Monodiae (Memoirs), which seem to have attracted little interest in his lifetime, but more in recent times. Guicennas (13th Century) Guicennas was a German knight who served as a falconer, first in Germany and then in the Kingdom of Sicily as court master of hunting, serving Frederic II Hohenstaufen. Though he did not write the Latin hunting treatise De arte bersandi, he is considered its author, as the writer says the information came from him. The extant copy is incomplete.

Guillaume le Clerc (fl. c.1200–c.1240)

A French poet who may have had a strong connection to Scotland. According to his own attribution, he was author of a parodic romance Roman de Fergus.

Guy de Chauliac (Guigo de Cauliaco) (c.1300–1368)

Born in Chaulhac, Lozère, France, he began his study of medicine in Toulouse before going to study in Montpellier, then became a Master of Medicine and Surgery in c.1325. After receiving his degree, he went to Bologna to study anatomy. He quickly acquired a reputation and went to Avignon to serve as personal physician to Pope Innocent VI (1352–1362), and then to Pope Urban V (1362–1370). He died there in 1368. He wrote more than one work, but the most influential was his lengthy treatise on surgery, Chirurgia Magna.

Hartmann Schedel (1440–1514)

Schedel was a German humanist historian, physician, and cartographer who was born and died in Nuremberg. Matheolus Perusinus served as his tutor. He was one of the first to use the printing press and is best known for his Weltchronik or Nuremberg Chronicle, published in 1493. Its maps were the first known illustrations of many cities and countries. Schedel was also a collector of books, art and old master prints.

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615

Henri de Ferrieres (14th Century)

The Livre du Roy Modus et de la Royne Racio is attributed to someone of this name, but nothing is known of him and no-one who could plausibly be him has been identified.

Henry of Bracton (c.1210–c.1268)

During his life known as Bratton, or Bretton, Henry was born c.1210 in Devon and had an ecclesiastical education. From 1248 until his death in 1268 he often served as a justice of the assize in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. He was a member of the coram rege which later became the King’s Court. He retired in 1257 for uncertain reasons, and his major work, De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliæ (The Laws and Customs of England) was left unfinished. Nevertheless, it comprises four volumes.

Henryson, Robert (fl. Late 15th Century)

Henryson almost certainly lived in the royal burgh of Dunfermline and may have had some association with the abbey there. Little is known of his career, but there is a record of someone by this name from 1462 who took a post at the University of Glasgow. Assuming this was the same man, he must have completed studies in arts and canon law.

Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179)

Hildegard was born into the free lower nobility of the Rhineland in c.1098. Her parents gave her as an oblate to the monastery of Disibodenberg, where she was elected magistra of the community of nuns in 1136. She moved to Rupertsberg monastery as abbess in 1150, taking 20 nuns with her. She was a philosopher, mystic, visionary, composer and medical practitioner, largely self-taught, and wrote theological, botanical, and medicinal works, as well as liturgical music. Convincing the Church of the genuineness of her visions enabled her to transcend prohibitions on women’s interpretation of scripture and sometimes to challenge male ecclesiastics.

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Honorius Augustodunensis (Honorius of Autun)1 (c.1080–c.1140)

Honorius was a popular Christian theologian of the twelfth century, who wrote in a non-scholastic manner and was thus the first to make his works approachable for the lay community. He was a monk and was Anselm of Canterbury’s student for a time, and seems to have been in Regensburg in the Scots Monastery (Schottenkloster)2 towards the end of his life, but otherwise his history is largely unknown.

Hugh of Fouilloy (d. c.1172)

Hugh of Fouilloy (near Amiens) was a French cleric, prior of St.-Nicholas-deRegny (1132) and St.-Laurent-au-Bois (1152), where he died. He wrote two allegorical texts on monastic spirituality, De claustro animae (The Cloister of the Soul) and De medicina animae (The Medicine of the Soul), and the bestiary-style moral treatise on birds, De avibus.

Hugh of Rhuddlan (Hue de Rotelande) (Late 12th Century)

Hugh was a cleric born in Rhuddlan, but he wrote in Credenhill, Herefordshire. with Gilbert de Monmouth Fitz Baderon as his patron. In the 1180s he wrote two metrical romances, Ipomedon and Protheselaus. The former was translated several times from Anglo-Norman into Middle English.

Hugh of St Victor (c.1096–1141)

Hugh was a Saxon canon regular who transferred to the Abbey of St Victor in Paris some time in the early twelfth century. He was a theologian, philosopher and biblical exegete who wrote numerous works on all these subjects. He also promoted the idea (with limited success) that philosophy and science could lead to a greater understanding of God.

1 The identification of Augustodunensis as meaning “of Autun” is now rejected, but the name was used in many twentieth-century editions of his work and is used even now because no other identification has been possible. 2 ‘Scots’ meaning Irish or Scottish.

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617

Humbert of Romans (c.1190–1200 – 1277)

Nothing is known of his early life, but he must have studied Arts and canon law at the University of Paris, where he then became a professor. He joined the Dominican Order in 1224, and rose by stages to become prior at the priory in Lyon in 1226, Prior Provincial of Tuscany in 1240 and then France in 1244, and was elected Master General of the Dominican Order in 1254. In this capacity he reorganized the Order’s liturgy, did much to improve discipline, prepared new constitutions for Dominican nuns and encouraged linguistic studies among the Dominicans, especially of Arabic. He resigned the position of Master General in 1263. He was primarily an effective administrator, and his writings were tailored to the Order’s requirements.

Isabella d’Este (1474–1539)

Isabella was born 1474 in Ferrara. She was betrothed to Francesco Gonzaga in 1480, and by the time they married in 1490 he was Marquess of Mantua. She ruled Mantua as regent during her husband’s absences and for their son Federico after his death in 1519. Isabella had received a good classical education and she met many famous humanist scholars and artists. She was a patron of the arts as well and a model of fashion for upper class women. As a result of the huge number of letters she wrote her life is very well documented.

Isidore of Seville (c.560–636)

Isidore was archbishop of Seville for thirty-two years. He was predominantly a compiler of summaries or abridgements of other’s work (sometimes compendia themselves). He compiled a work on the structure of the physical cosmos, On the Nature of Things (De Natura Rerum), based on Greco-Roman scholarship in which Christian interpretation and allegories were incorporated, but even more influential was his twenty-volume encyclopaedia, Etymologies, an attempt to compile a summa of all knowledge. It appears to have been the most popular compendium in medieval libraries and retained its place into the Renaissance.

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Ivo of Chartres (c.1040–1115)

Ivo became prior of the canons of Saint-Quentin at Beauvais in the late 1060s and was Bishop of Chartres from 1090 until his death. Three important and large canonical works are attributed to him, Tripartita, Decretum, and Panormia. He is regarded as a saint in the Catholic church, although no canonisation is known to have occurred.

Jacme d’Agremont (d. 1350)

Not much is known of him, but he was clearly Catalan and a physician. In response to the onset of the Black Death in 1348, he produced his Regimen de preservacio de pestilència (Directions for Protection from the Plague), which was presented to the mayor of Lleida. He was taken by the plague himself in 1350, in the same place.

Jacobus of Voragine (Jacopo De Fazio) (c.1230–1298)

Jacopo, born in Varagine (Varazze) in Italy, was a Dominican who became prior of several houses before rising to become Archbishop of Genoa in 1292. He was also a chronicler and the compiler of the Legenda Aurea (The Golden Legend), a collection of the legendary lives of the most important saints of the medieval Church, which was a very popular religious work for two centuries. However, its reputation declined towards the end of the Middle Ages and in the sixteenth century it was attacked even within the Catholic Church because of its catalogue of barely believable wonders.

Jacques de Brézé (1440–1490)

Jacques de Brézé was a trusted soldier and statesman of Charles VII of France and grand sénéchal of Normandy during Charles’ and his son Louis XI’s reign. He was married to the illegitimate daughter of Charles, Louis XI’s sister. whom he murdered after catching her committing adultery. He narrowly escaped execution and lost all his goods as a result, but they were restored by Charles VIII after Louis’ death.

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619

Jacques de Vitry (James de Vitry, Jacobus de Vitriaco) (c.1160/70–1240)

Jacques was born in central France (perhaps Reims) and studied at the University of Paris, becoming a canon regular in 1210 at the Priory of Saint-Nicolas d’Oignies in the Diocese of Liège, and bishop of Acre in 1214. He returned to Europe in 1225 In 1229, Pope Gregory IX appointed Jacques to the College of Cardinals, and thereafter he spent almost all his time working at the papal court. His Historia Orientalis (or Historia Hierosolymitana) is a key source for the historiography of the Crusades and he was a noted theologian and sermoniser.

Jean de Garlande (c.1190–c.1270)

Jean was born in England and studied at Oxford and the University of Paris, where he taught by 1220. In 1229, he was one of the first Masters of the new University of Toulouse, but left again for Paris in the 1230s because of disorder caused by conflict with the Cathars. His grammatical works were much used, and he composed numerous poems as well as his Dictionarius.

Jerome (St Jerome, Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus) (c.342–347 – 420)

Commonly known as St Jerome, recognised as a saint and Doctor of the Church by the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran and Anglican Churches. He was a priest, confessor, theologian, and historian, best known for his commentaries on the Bible and his translation of most of it into Latin, the version referred to as the Vulgate. He based his translation of the Old Testament on a Hebrew version rather than the Greek Septaguint. He also wrote historical and polemical works and letters of moral advice, especially to Christian aristocratic women.

Jocelyn of Furness (fl. 1175–1214)

A Cistercian monk of Furness Abbey, Cumbria, known for his Lives of St Waltheof, St Patrick, St Kentigern and St Helena of Constantinople.

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Johan Georg Groß (1581–1630)

Johan Georg Groß was a Swiss theologian who served as a pastor in several parishes. He became a doctor of theology at the University of Basel in 1611. His chronicle of Basel was based on earlier sources.

Johannes Nider (c.1380–1438)

Born in Swabia, Nider entered the Dominican Order and studied philosophy before being ordained. In 1427 he was elected prior of the Dominican convent at Nuremberg. He became renowned as a preacher and reformer, as well as negotiating with the Hussites in Bohemia and being active as legate and theologian at the Council of Basel. He also taught as Master of Theology at the University of Vienna, where he was twice elected dean. He wrote several works, of which the Formicarius is the most notable.

John Barbour (c.1320–1395)

Barbour first appears in a record from 1356 when he was promoted to the archdeaconry of Aberdeen, having served briefly in Dunkeld Cathedral. In 1357, when David II returned to Scotland from exile Barbour travelled to the University of Oxford. After David’s death in 1371, Barbour held several posts served at the court of Robert II and composed poetry, for the first time written in Scots. His most well-known surviving work is The Brus, which mainly tells the story of the First War of Independence (1296–1328).

John Bromyard (d. c.1350)

John Bromyard was an influential English Dominican friar who composed numerous aids for preaching, probably with the assistance of other friars. Not much is known of his life, but he was trained in canon law and spent many years at the (then new) friary at Hereford.

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621

John Buridan (Jean Buridan) (c.1300–c.1359)

In the fourteenth century, with the universities now well-established as self-governing organisations, more masters who were not in the Church came to the fore. Among them John Buridan, who was a teaching master in the arts faculty at the University of Paris for his entire career. It is possible that Buridan deliberately chose not to study theology, law or medicine. Buridan applied analytical techniques developed during the previous century to metaphysics and natural philosophy and thereby established philosophy as a secular discipline separate from theology, pondering many questions of natural philosophy that had not yet been considered in detail, mainly through commentaries on Aristotle.

John Chrysostom (c.347–407)

John Chrysostom was an important Church Father and one of the most prolific authors of the early Christian Church, known for his preaching and public speaking, in which he gave a straightforward message explaining the practical application of the Scriptures to everyday life. He is a saint in almost all Churches. Born in Antioch, he was baptised in 368 or 337 and thereafter dedicated himself to the faith, among other things by practising extreme asceticism for two years. In 397, John was appointed archbishop of Constantinople, but he upset the powerful clerics and others of the city and was deposed and banished, then reinstated and banished again, subsequently being condemned to exile for unknown reasons. He died in Comana on his way. John never lost popularity with the ordinary people.

John Duns Scotus (1265/66–1308)

John Duns Scotus was born in Duns, Scotland. He studied philosophy and then theology at Oxford in the 1280s and was ordained the priesthood in the Friars Minor (Franciscan Order) in 1291. He left Oxford for Paris in c.1302. In the next year he and 80 other friars were expelled from France for taking the side of Pope Boniface VIII in his dispute with King Philip IV, but they returned after Boniface’s death in 1303. Scotus became Doctor of Theology in 1305 and was Franciscan regent master at Paris in 1306–07. He began duties as lector to

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Quoted Authors

the Franciscan studium at Cologne in 1307. He is regarded as one of the most influential philosopher-theologians of the High Middle Ages, who wrote on numerous subjects including the nature of human freedom, the semantics of religious language, divine illumination, and the problem of universals.

John Lydgate (c.1370–c.1451)

A self-confessed childhood miscreant, Lydgate was admitted to the Benedictine monastery of Bury St Edmunds Abbey in 1382 and was ordained as a subdeacon in 1389. At some stage between1406 and 1408 he was a student at Oxford University. His main interest seems to have been in travelling and writing, and he was author of many poems, allegories, fables and romances. He died in Bury St Edmunds Monastery.

John Mandeville

It is generally accepted that “Sir John Mandeville,” who supposedly travelled the known world and wrote an account of his travels, never existed. Parts of the Travels are derived from other travel accounts, parts are taken from dubious ancient sources, and parts are invented, but it was widely read in the late Middle Ages.

John Mirk (fl. Late 14th–Early 15th Century)

The Augustinian canon regular John Mirk was active in the late 14th and early 15th centuries in Shropshire, at some time prior of Lilleshall Abbey. He composed many works to assist parish priests and other clergy in their tasks. The most well-known is his Book of Festivals (Festial), which was widely disseminated, especially in printed form, before the mid-sixteenth century.

John Page (Early 15th Century)

John Page is known only from the poem about the siege of Rouen in 1418–19, at which he claims to have been present. The poem is patriotic but also sometimes compassionate and includes elements of historical romance.

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623

John of Salisbury (c.1117–1180)

Born in Salisbury, England, John studied in France under many of the most illustrious theologians and philosophers, including Peter Abelard and William of Conches. For seven years in the mid-twelfth century he was secretary to Archbishop Theobald in Canterbury, where he knew Thomas Becket. John went on many missions to the Papal See and attended several Church councils. In 1163, he returned to France. He composed a number of highly significant philosophical works, including the Policraticus (1159) and the Metalogicon, He was back in Canterbury at the time of Becket’s assassination. In 1174, John became treasurer of Exeter cathedral and in 1176 bishop of Chartres, where he spent the remainder of his life.

John Scotus Eriugena (c.815–c.877)

Johannes Scotus Eriugena (“Ireland-born”), who worked in Carolingian Frankia, was the author of a Christian-Neoplatonic summa of the nature of creation, that is, the entire cosmological domain and the Creator too. His greatest work, Periphyseon (On Nature, or in Latin De Divisione Naturae, The Divisions of Nature), is a mystical exploration of the essentially dialectical relation between Creator and created.

John of Gaddesdon (c.1280–1361)

John of Gaddesden wrote in the early part of the fourteenth century. He was a member of Merton College (Wood), and a doctor of physic of Oxford and later in priest’s orders. He studied medicine from c.1299, and subsequently had a large practice in London, treating among others, a son of Edward I for smallpox. He wrote a treatise on medicine entitled Rosa Medicinæ between 1305 and 1307.

Jonas of Susa (Jonas of Bobbio) (c.600–after 659)

Jonas of Susa became a monk at Bobbio (founded by Columbanus) in 618, and transferred to Gaul in 628, where he did missionary work amongst the Franks in the north of the region and eventually became an abbot of an unnamed

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Quoted Authors

monastery. Jonas wrote several vitae, notably the Vita sancti Columbani (Life of Saint Columbanus), either of people he knew or, as in Columbanus’ case, based partly on testimony from others who knew the person.

Jordanes Rufus (Giordano Ruffo) (fl. 1200–1256)

Jordanes was born in Calabria around 1200 into a noble family. He served Frederick II and was made lord of Val di Crati in 1239, but his choice to serve Konrad IV after Frederick’s death led to his own imprisonment by Manfred after Konrad died in 1254. He was author of one of the oldest works on veterinary treatment of horses, De Medicina Equorum, which has survived in translated versions and heavily influenced several later works on marshalcy.

Juan Ruiz (c.1283–c.1350)

The Castilian priest (known as the Archpriest of Hita) who supposedly wrote the Libro de buen amor (Book of Good Love) gives his name as Juan Ruiz. At the end of the work there is also a claim by this supposed author that he was in prison for some time – perhaps for writing the work or conceivably because he behaved in as unpriestly a manner as the priest of the Libro.

Juliana Berners (b. 1388)

An English writer or compiler of material on heraldry, hawking and hunting. Though said to have become prioress of the Priory of St Mary of Sopwell (near St Albans), little that can be certain is known of her. Many credit her with writing the Boke of Saint Albans or at least part of it, but this cannot be verified. It is the first treatise to handle fishing as well as hunting, hunting etiquette and ‘conservation.’

Justin of Lippstadt (c.1220–c.1280)

We know almost nothing of Justin’s life. In 1263 he appears in a document among the family of Cappel Abbey and in another from 1309, one of his successors calls him “magister Justinus, rector scolarum in Lippia” (Latin school in Lippstadt). He describes himself as the author of a “heroic poem” about the nobleman Bernhard II of Lippe, which he called “floriger”, and the work has

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been known as “Das Lippiflorium” since at least 1520. Later evidence places Justin’s death in c.1280.

Justinger, Conrad (fl. 14th Century, d. c.1438)

Conrad was probably born in Strasbourg, where he seems to have learnt to write as a chronicler. Towards the end of the fourteenth century he moved to Bern. From 1390 until his death, Justinger served the city of Bern as a magistrate and notary public. In c.1400 he was appointed chronicler of Bern and he completed the work known as the Bernese Chronicle (Chronik der Stadt Bern) in 1430.

Langland, William (Willielmus de Langland) (c.1332–c.1386)

What is ‘known’ of Langland, the probable author of the Middle English verse work known as Piers Plowman, comes from that work, but it is not easy to distinguish reality from dream. Langland was likely born in the West Midlands of England around 1330, as he mentions the area and the dialect of Piers Plowman is from that region. The poem transformed the language and concepts of monasticism into symbols and allegory that could be understood by a layman.

Lemaire, Jean (c.1473–c.1525)

Born in Bavay, Hainaut. Lemaire was a humanist and admirer of Italian culture. His major work in prose, Les Illustrations de Gaule et singularités de Troye (1509–13) is a mythological and scholarly history of the peoples of Europe. He was often at the court of Margaret of Austria, duchess of Hainault and regent of the Netherlands, serving as her librarian, and later served Anne of Britanny, wife of the French king Louis XII. Leo VI (866–912) Born on 19 September 866 to the empress Eudokia Ingerina, but his father, though an emperor, is uncertain. His reign was marked by disputes with the nobility and the Church, and several wars, which included defeats against the Bulgars and mixed success against Arab enemies. He continued to codify the law. Leo was also a prolific writer, among his treatises being a military one.

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Leo the Deacon (b. c.950)

Born around 950 at Kaloe in Asia Minor and educated in Constantinople, Leo became a deacon in the imperial palace there. He wrote a history in a style reminiscent of the poet Homer and Ancient Greek historians, covering the reigns of Romanos II, Nikephoros II, John Tzimiskes, and the early part of the reign of Basil II. He was an eyewitness to many of the events.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)

Italian Renaissance humanist polymath who was a painter, draughtsman, sculptor, architect, engineer and scientist. His notebooks include drawings and notes on many subjects, including astronomy, cartography, painting, anatomy, botany and palaeontology. He began his career in Florence, but subsequently spent much time in Milan in the service of Ludovico Sforza.

Lorenzo Rusio (14th Century)

Birth and death dates are uncertain. He practiced his profession in Rome from 1320 and wrote a treatise on equine veterinary medicine around 1340, Liber Marescalciae Equorum, which he dedicated to his protector, Cardinal Napoleone Orsini (1263–1342), whom he served in Avignon. It was republished as Hippiatria sive marescalia and has been known by various names. Lutwin (14th Century) Lutwin was a German author, but he is known only from his Adam und Eva, written in the fourteenth century. It tells of their lives after their expulsion from Paradise.

Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469–1527)

Machiavelli was a diplomat, author, historian and philosopher, best known for his political treatise The Prince (Il Principe), written about 1513. He served for many years as a senior official with diplomatic and military responsibilities in the Florentine Republic and worked as secretary to the Second Chancery of

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the Republic of Florence from 1498 to 1512, while the Medici were not in power in Florence.

Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius (fl. Fifth Century CE)

Little more certain is known about Macrobius than that, in his own words, he was “born under a foreign sky” (sub alio ortus caelo, in his work Saturnalia), although he has been tentatively identified with various public figures. He was alive in c.400 and was almost certainly a pagan. His commentary on Cicero’s Dream of Scipio was instrumental in transferring knowledge of Neoplatonist philosophy to medieval scholars.

Malory, Thomas (c.1415–1471)

Sir Thomas Malory was the author or compiler of Le Morte d’Arthur, the most famous English-language version of the Arthurian legend, published in 1485. His identity is not certain, but he was probably Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel in Warwickshire. In his book he is said to be a “knight prisoner.” The Newbold Revel Malory was a knight and soldier who was imprisoned several times and was accused of theft, robbery, kidnapping and rape, besides supporting both sides at different times in the Wars of the Roses.

Marie de France (fl. 1160–1215)

The name Marie is recorded in her own manuscripts, as is her probable French origin. Little else is known of her. She certainly lived in England but wrote in a French dialect, and seems to have known Latin, English and perhaps Breton. As well as a few other works, she is usually accepted as the author of a collection of lais and she translated Aesop’s fables from English to French, adjusting them to the courtly culture of her era.

Marius of Avenches (Marii Episcopi Aventicensis) (532–596)

Bishop of Aventicum (now Avenches) from 574. The episcopal see was moved to Lausanne, where Marius died and where he was subsequently venerated as a saint. He came from a distinguished and presumably Gallo-Roman family and

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considered himself a Roman. Known mainly for his brief chronicle, a continuation of an earlier one.

Matthew Paris (c.1200–1259)

Of English birth, Matthew was educated at St Albans Cathedral School and was admitted as monk at the monastery there in 1217. He seems to have been acquainted with nobility and even royalty, although he sent most of this life in the monastery. After taking a message to Håkon IV of Norway he was invited to assist in the reformation of the Benedictine Nidarholm Abbey there. He wrote an important chronicle covering Creation to 1259 which became known as the Chronica Majora, and several abridged versions of it. It was copied many times later in the Middle Ages.

Michael Savanorola (1385–c.1466)

Michele Savonarola was an Italian physician, humanist and historian, and professor of practical medicine at Padua. He was a trusted counsellor of princes and became court physician to the House of Este at Ferrara in 1440. Savonarola authored over thirty works on medical, moral, political, historical, and religious issues, including a guide to pregnancy and pediatrics, A Mother’s Manual for the Women of Ferrara. Muirchú (b. 7th Century) Muirchú moccu Machtheni (Latin, Maccutinus) was a monk and hagiographer from Leinster. He wrote the Vita sancti Patricii, (Life of Saint Patrick), one of the first accounts of the saint, at the instigation of Bishop Aedh of Slébte. The account has more value as a document of Muirchú’s era than as history of the fifth century.

Nemesius of Emesa (fl. c.390)

We have no precise dates and little information for Nemesius’ life except that he was the bishop of Emesa, as stated in his own work. He was clearly familiar

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with Hellenistic thought, appears to have known the writings of Galen well and may have had some medical training. He may be the Nemesius who was governor of Cappadocia Secunda around 386–87, encouraged to become a Christian by Gregory of Nazianzus. His most important work was De natura hominis (On the Nature of Man).

Nicholas Oresme (Nicole Oresme) (c.1320–1325 – 1382)

Born in Normandy, probably of peasant stock, as his attendance at the royally subsidised College of Navarre (University of Paris) indicates poverty. Having become a Master of Arts, he is known to have been a student of theology at Paris in 1348. He received his doctorate and became grand master of the College of Navarre in 1356. In 1364, he was appointed dean of the Cathedral of Rouen and became bishop of Rouen Lisieux in 1377. He died there in 1382.

Nicholas of Vaudémont (Late 14th-Century)

Nicholas was a master of arts at the University of Paris who worked in the 1370s.

Nigel of Longchamp (Nigel Witeker) (d. c.1200)

An English satirist and poet who wrote in the late twelfth century. From 1186 to 1193, perhaps longer, he was a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury. His Speculum stultorum (A Mirror of Fools) was a popular satire on society and especially the clergy, composed in Latin elegiac verse. In addition, other shorter poems were attributed to him.

Notker the Stammerer (Notker Balbulus) (c.840–912)

Notker was a Benedictine monk at the Abbey of Saint Gall. He was a leading literary scholar, poet, and probably composer of a collection of early sequences in the Liber hymnorum. He wrote Vita Sancti Galli and is widely accepted as the “Monk of Saint Gall” who wrote Gesta Karoli (the “Deeds of Charlemagne”).

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Olivier de la Marche (1426–1501)

Born at the Chateau de la Marche, in Franche-Comté, he was knighted by Count de Charolais, who became Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy two years later in 1467. He made Olivier captain of his guards. Olivier was captured at the Battle of Nancy (1477), where Charles was killed, but was ransomed and was then made maitre d’hôtel by Charles’ daughter and heiress Marie. Olivier’s memoirs cover the years from 1435–92, and have some value but are full of long descriptions of tournaments and feasts.

Onulf of Speyer (fl. 11th–12th Century)

Not much is known of Onulf, but he was a monk and a master in Speyer, possibly a teacher at the Cathedral School. Bishop Bruno of Speyer issued a certificate dated August 29, 1114, in which an Uonulfus magister was listed as a witness, and there is an entry in the necrology of Speyer Cathedral, begun in 1273, that may be him.

Orderic Vitalis (1175–c.1142)

Born in 1075 in Shropshire, son of a French priest and an Englishwoman. He was educated by an English monk before entering the abbey of Saint-Evroul in Normandy, where he was given the name Vitalis., but he did not forget his English heritage. He became a deacon in 1093 and a priest in 1107, and was master scribe of the monastery. He seems to have travelled widely. He wrote several works, among them a history of Saint-Evroul monastery that grew into his Historia Ecclesiastica, which also covered secular events and is an invaluable source for social and political history.

Patricius (Gilla Pátraic) (d. 1084)

Gilla Pátraic was a monk in a Benedictine abbey at Worcester, when he was made second bishop of Dublin after Dúnán’s death in 1074. He was consecrated by Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury. He and his companions drowned while crossing the Irish Sea on 10 October 1084.

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Peter Alphonso (Petrus Alfonsi) (fl. Early 12th Century)

Born Moses Sephardi in Al-Andalus, but converted from Judaism to Christianity in 1106. He was a physician, astronomer and polemicist, who moved from Spain to England, where he was court physician to Henry I for a while, and then to France. To defend his conversion, he wrote the Dialogue against the Jews, which was widely read and used throughout the Middle Ages.

Peter Comestor (d. 1178)

Petrus Comestor (Pierre le Mangeur) was born in Troyes and studied as the cathedral school there before moving to Paris. He subsequently became dean of Troyes Cathedral before going back to Paris to teach. He held the chair of theology there and became chancellor of Notre Dame in Paris, and hence head of the cathedral school, around 1164. The Abbey of St Victor, where he was buried, later celebrated him as a canon there. His Historia Scholastica became a core text for teaching.

Peter Damian (Petrus Damianus, Pietro / Pier Damiani) (c.1007–1072/3)

Born in Ravenna into a poor noble family but sent to be educated in theology and canon law by an elder brother, from whom he adopted his second name. He studied at Ravenna, Faenza, and finally at the University of Parma, and became a famous teacher. After a period of extreme asceticism, he became prior at the hermitage of Fonte Avellana in 1043. He served as papal envoy and was made Cardinal-bishop of Ostia by Pope Stephen IX in 1057, serving as papal legate several times before retiring to Fonte Avalla again. He was an energetic ecclesiastical reformer and wrote many works as well as letters, the most famous being on divine omnipotence (De Divina Omnipotentia).

Peter of Kottbus (15th Century)

“Petrus de Kothobus” is named as the author of 15th-century plague treatise in a manuscript from Brandenburg that contains a large anonymous “Pharmacopoeia of Ortolff von Bayerland” and several other medical works.

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Peter the Venerable (Peter of Montboissier) (c.1092–1156)

Born in Auvergne and given to the monastery at Sauxillanges of the Congregation of Cluny at birth. He was appointed prior of the monastery of Vézelay aged twenty and later transferred to Domène, then elected abbot general of the Cluniac order at thirty. He was a reformer of the Cluniac Order, attended many Church Councils, promoted contact with Islam and supported translation of Islamic texts. He has been honoured as a saint but not officially canonized.

Peter John Olivi (1248–1298)

Born in Sérignan in Languedoc. Peter entered the Franciscan Order at the age of twelve and studied in Paris from 1267 to c.1272, although he never became a master of theology, and spent the rest of his life teaching at various Franciscan houses in southern France, with an interlude in Florence from 1287–89. He was a controversial figure because of his views on the implementation of the Franciscan vow of poverty, and many of his works were condemned as heretical after his death. Alongside several other medieval philosophers he was a “voluntarist,” assigning a more important role to will than the intellect in both divine and human action. In addition, Peter was less inclined to follow Aristotle than some of his contemporaries.

Peter of Blois (c.1130–c.1211)

Born of a minor noble family of Breton origin. Peter studied Roman law at the University of Bologna, and theology in Paris, where he probably taught. From 1167–69 he was preceptor and guardian of the royal seal of King William II of Sicily, before being forced to return to France. Several years later he became one of Henry II of England’s diplomatic agents in negotiations with the pope and the king of France, then became chancellor of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Archdeacon of Bath in 1176, where he became entangled in ecclesiastical disputes. He was out of favour with Richard I but after joining the Third Crusade became secretary of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine (1190–95) and was made Archdeacon of London. He wrote numerous letters that are extant and some controversial works such as Contra perfidiam Judaeorum (Against the Perfidy of the Jews).

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Philip of Commynes (1447–1511)

Philippe was born at Renescure, Flanders, and took his surname from a seigneurie on the R. Lys. He was left with an estate and huge debts when his father died in 1453 but was taken into the care of Duke Philip the Good (1419–1467) of Burgundy, his godfather. Later Louis XI of France, who believed Philip had saved his life, enticed him away from Duke Philip’s son Charles the Bold to his court. He became a trusted advisor for some years but thereafter his fortunes fluctuated. He was imprisoned after Louis’s death (1487–89) after implication in the Orleanist rebellion. By 1490 he was back at court in the service of Charles VIII. His Memoirs are regarded as a relatively truthful, not to say cynical, account of the reigns and character of Louis XI and Charles VIII.

Philip of Thaon (fl. Early 11th Century)

Philip was possibly a member of the noble family that held Than or Thaon in Normandy, near Caen. At some time late in the 11th century he went to England. He is the first poet known to have written in the Anglo-Norman French vernacular. His earliest work, Comput or variants, was on the calendar, his second the Bestiaire, written between 1121 and 1139. The last, not signed by name but similar in style, is Le Livre de Sibile, a translation of an earlier Latin poem on prophecies of a sibyl.

Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni (1463–1494)

Giovanni was born at Mirandola, then an autonomous county, near Modena, into the ruling family. He studied canon law and then philosophy at the University of Ferrara. A Neoplatonist, he saw the Earth as a microcosm that mirrored a perfect macrocosm elsewhere and argued that the Hexameron was the most ancient source of knowledge and Moses, as its (supposed) author, a founder of natural knowledge.3 His accommodation of non-Christian thought such as the Kabbalah and Hermeticism led to his 900 theses being the first printed work to be banned in its entirety as heretical by the Church, but it remained influential. 3 Pico, Heptaplus, 74.

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Pietro de’ Crescenzi (Petrus de Crescentiis) (c.1230/35–c.1320)

Pietro was born in Bologna and educated at the university there. He studied logic, medicine, the natural sciences and law, but did not take his doctorate. He practised as a lawyer and judge from c.1270 to 1299. Having retired he spent much time on his nearby country estate, the Villa dell’ Olmo, when his experience as a landowner contributed to the writing of the treatise on agriculture Ruralia commode or Liber ruralium commodorum.

Pietro della Vigna (Pier delle Vigne, Petrus de Vineas) (c.1190–1249)

Born in 1190 in Capua and from a humble background, but studied law at Bologna. His knowledge of Latin and poetry came to the notice of Emperor Frederick II, who made him his secretary, and afterwards judge of the highest court, councillor, governor of Apulia, prothonotary and chancellor. However, for unknown reasons, he was arrested and blinded in 1249, and died shortly afterwards in uncertain circumstances.

Pliny “the Elder” (Gaius Plinius Secundus) (23/24–79)

Roman author, senior military officer, and natural philosopher. Though he lived long before the Middle Ages, his Historia Naturalis was a very important source for later Roman, medieval and early Renaissance scholars or writers who sought material about the natural world. He was regarded as an authority and the accuracy of his information was rarely questioned.

Primus of Görlitz (fl. Early 14th Century)

Author of a “plague regimen.” His name suggests a German origin, but other indications, including the text, link him to France and Italy (Sicily). He is listed as a Master of Arts and Professor of Medicine at the University of Paris.

Rabanus Maurus (Hrabanus Maurus) (c.780–856)

Born in Mainz. Rabanus became a Benedictine monk at Fulda in 801, was ordained a priest in 814, and abbot of Fulda in 822. In 847 he was elected Archbishop of Mainz. He was primarily a theologist, but wrote the encyclopaedic De rerum naturis (The Nature of Things), commentaries on the Bible and

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essays about education and grammar. He was also a famed hymn-writer. As one of the most prominent writers and teachers of the Carolingian era, he was known as “the teacher of Germany.” Rahewin (d. 1170–77) Rahewin was a monk and chronicler at the Bavarian abbey of Freising, secretary and chaplain to its bishop, Otto von Freising. The former Cistercian abbot Otto was half-brother of King Conrad III and thus uncle to Frederick I Barbarossa. Rahewin continued the chronicle of Frederick’s reign that Otto had begun, Gesta Friderici (books 3 and 4), after the latter’s death in 1158. He is also known to have composed poetry.

Ralph of Caen (Raoul of Caen, Radulphus Cadomensis) (c.1080–c.1120)

Of unknown but obviously noble origin, Ralph was a Norman chaplain and author of the Gesta Tancredi in expeditione Hierosolymitana (The Deeds of Tancred in the Crusade). After his education at the cathedral school in Caen he was ordained as a priest and recruited by Bohemond I in 1106. He accompanied him on his campaigns in the Balkans and then joined the First Crusade. His history is full of classical allusions and describes Tancred’s deeds in heroic terms.

Ralph Glaber (Rodulphus Glaber, Raoul Glaber) (985–c.1050)

Born in Burgundy in 985. His uncle sent him to a monastery, from which he was expelled for disobedience, after which he was at several monasteries, eventually the Abbey of St Benignus, near Dijon, in c.1010. There he met the reform-minded Abbot William of Volpiano, with whom he travelled to Italy. His book Historiarum libri quinque ab anno incarnationis DCCCC usque ad annum MXLIV (History in five books from 900 CE to 1044 CE) was dedicated to Odilo, abbot of Cluny. He died at Cluny Monastery in c.1050. Ramón Llull (c.1232–1315/1316) Llull was born into a wealthy family of Barcelona patricians in Palma, Majorca in 1229. In 1257 Llull married Blanca Picany and they had two children, but after seeing a vision five times of Jesus Christ on the Cross, he left his old life

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behind. He made several pilgrimages and learnt Arabic. He travelled to Tunis three times, lastly in 1314, insisting that Moslems should be converted through prayer, not force. Between 1271 and 1274 Llull wrote his first works. Later he (as he claimed, through divine revelation) devised a system of logical thought he called Ars (Art). One of his best known works is the Book of the Gentile and the Three Wise Men, originally in Catalan. In 1311 the Council of Vienne ordered the creation of chairs of Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic (“Chaldean”) at the universities of Bologna, Oxford, Paris, and Salamanca and at the Papal Court, partly through Llull’s influence. However, Llull encouraged the expulsion from Europe of Jews who refused to convert. Ratramnus (d. c.868) A Frankish monk at the monastery of Corbie (near Amiens), France, and theologian best known best for his works on the Eucharist and predestination.

Raymond of Aguilers (fl. Late 11th Century)

Raymond was a lay canon of the cathedral of Le Puy. He went on the First Crusade and was probably in the entourage of the papal legate, Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy before he was ordained a priest during the siege of Antioch in 1098 and then became a chaplain to Count Raymond IV of Toulouse. All we know of him comes from his own Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem (History of the Franks who captured Jerusalem).

Reginald of Durham (d. c.1190)

Few details of Reginald’s life are known, but he was a Benedictine monk of Durham Priory who also had some association with Coldingham Priory. He is known now for his hagiographical works: the Vita et Miracula Sancti Godrici (Life and Miracles of St Godric), Libellus de Admirandis Beati Cuthberti Virtutibus (The Admirable Virtues of the Blessed Cuthbert) and a short work on St Oswald. He knew Godric personally, while the cult of St Cuthbert was important to Durham, where the saint’s tomb was housed.

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Regino of Prüm (d. 915)

Later sources say that Regino had noble parents. He became abbot of the monastery of Prüm in Lotharingia in 892, at a difficult time as the monastery had been ransacked by the Vikings twice and was in a politically contested region. He was expelled in 899 and moved to Trier, where he became abbot of St Martin’s Abbey. He is most noted as a chronicler of the Carolingian era.

Richard le Pèlerin (12th Century)

La Chanson d’Antioche, a chanson de geste that tells of the First Crusade from 1097 to 1099, is attributed to Richard le Pèlerin, a north French or Flemish jongleur who was present at the events and began the work during the Siege of Antioch. In the mid-twelfth century the poem was revised by Graindor de Douai.

Richer of Saint-Rémi (10th–11th Century)

Son of Rodulf, a commander and councillor of Louis IV of France (r. 936–954). Richer studied at Reims, taught by Gerbert, the future Pope Silvester II. In 991 he travelled to Chartres to consult the medical manuscripts there. He is last heard of in 998. His four-book Histories are an important source for the period 888 to 995.

Roger Frugard (Ruggerio Frugardo, Rogerius Salernitanus, etc.) (1130s–c.1195)

Roger was a surgeon who studied and practised at Salerno. His Practica Chirurgiae or Chirurgiae Magistri Rogerii was the first medieval work on surgery to dominate its field throughout Europe. The status of surgery relative to other medicine was raised from being regarded as a craft practice as a result. His pupil Rolando da Parma, a professor at Bologna, produced an updated edition in c.1250, which maintained its position in the thirteenth century.

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Robert Grosseteste (c.1168–1253)

An English statesman, scholastic philosopher, theologian and preacher who became bishop of Lincoln in 1235. According to one chronicler he came from a humble family. In his writings he shows a strong interest in the natural world as a major source of theological reflection. He played an important role in promoting scientific thought in medieval Oxford, leading some modern commentators to call him the founder of the tradition. Grosseteste was not afraid to challenge the papacy on many issues.

Roger Bacon (Early 13th Century–c.1292)

Born in Ilchester in the early 13th century, Bacon studied and became a master at Oxford. In c.1240 he was invited to teach at the University of Paris, where he lectured on mathematics and related subjects and Latin grammar. In 1247 he left, probably for Oxford. In 1256/57 he became a friar in the Franciscan Order. During much of this period he was short of money. Aided by Pope Clement IV he researched and wrote secretly, but after Clement’s death he fell out with contemporaries who opposed his ideas and superiors in the Order, and he may have been imprisoned. After 1278 he continued his research. He died near the end of the century. He wrote works on linguistics, logic, alchemy and optics, and his Opus Maius (Greater Work) of 1267 included material on mathematics, optics, alchemy, and cosmology.

Saxo Grammaticus (c.1150–c.1220)

A Danish theologian and the author of a history of the Danes, now usually referred to as Gesta Danorum (The Deeds of the Danes or The History of the Danes). The first nine books are concocted from mythology, oral tradition and Saxo’s imagination, the last six are more historical. He is thought to have been a clerk or secretary to Absalon, Archbishop of Lund (c.1128–1201).

Schilling, Diebold (c.1436/39–1486)

Born in Hagenau, Alsace. In 1456, he began working at the Lucerne chancellery. He moved to Bern in 1460 and became a member of its Grand Council in 1468,

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served as secretary to the treasurer in 1476 and court clerk from 1481 to 1485. He fought in the Waldshut War and against the Burgundians in 1476. Three Swiss chronicles by him have survived: the Berner Schilling (Amtliche Chronik) of 1483, the Zürcher Schilling of 1484, and the Spiezer Schilling (1480s). Siviard (d. c.730) A monk and later abbot of Saint-Calais Abbey on the River Anisole in France. His father had also served as abbot. Siviard wrote a life of Saint Calais (Carilef), the founder of the monastery. He also became a saint.

Skelton, John (John Shelton) (c.1463–1529)

Possibly born in Diss, Norfolk, Skelton seems to have been educated at either Oxford or Cambridge, or both, and received a degree in rhetoric from both. He translated Greek and Latin works and was tutor and later poet laureate to Henry VIII. He is best known for his poetry, although the majority has been lost. Much of his work was satirical, often directed at the Church, which made him unpopular with many clerics.

Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241)

Snorri was born in 1179 at Hvammur í Dölum into the powerful Sturlungar clan of the Icelandic Commonwealth, but he was brought up by Jón Loftsson, a relative of the Norwegian royal family who provided for his education. During the prosperous phase of his life he was lawspeaker at the Althing twice, visited Norway at the invitation of King Hákon Hákonarson and became the most powerful chieftain in Iceland, but after 1230 he lost this status during the period of internecine strife in the commonwealth and was murdered by his opponents in 1241. Throughout his adult life he was famed as a poet and his interest in history and culture led him to record (and perhaps interpret) mythology and history as he knew it. He authored the Prose Edda or Younger Edda, comprising Gylfaginning (The fooling of Gylfi) on mythology, the Skáldskaparmál, a book of poetic language, and the Háttatal, a list of verse forms. He was probably also the author of the history of the Norwegian kings now known as Heimskringla and possibly the author of Egils saga.

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Stephen of Bourbon (Étienne de Bourbon) (1180–1261)

From 1230 onwards the Dominican Stephen of Bourbon was active for many years as a preacher and inquisitor in various districts of France and Savoy. He authored the Tractatus de diversis materiis praedicabilibus (A Treatise on Various Preachable Materials), which includes many model sermon examples and stories from the First Crusade, and he was also a historian of medieval heresies, as well as being one of the first inquisitors.

Taillevant (Guillaume Tirel) (d. 1395)

Tirel rose from assistant cook to become head chef of Philip VI of France, then of the Duke of Normandy, who subsequently became King Charles VI. He expanded and developed Le Viandier into what would become a famous and influential treatise on cookery technique and collection of recipes.

Teodorico Bordognoni (Theodoric of Lucca) (1205–1296/98)

Born in Lucca, Italy in 1205. He studied medicine at the University of Bologna. He became a Dominican friar during the same period but continued to practice surgery. In the 1240s, he became personal physician to Pope Innocent IV, and in 1262 he was made bishop of Bitonto. He then served as Bishop of Cervia from 1266 until his death in 1296. He wrote a treatise on surgery, Chirurgia.

Theobald Loneti (fl. Early 15th Century)

Theobald (or Thibaud) Loneti’s plague treatise from Munchener Cod. lat. 205 tells us that he was from Aurigny in the diocese of Besançon in Burgundy. He seems to have been well-travelled and had wide experience as a physician.

Theodore of Canterbury (Theodore of Tarsus) (602–690)

Theodore grew up in Tarsus, but fled to Constantinople, after either the Persian or the subsequent Islamic conquest of his homeland. He then went to study in Rome and was later appointed Archbishop of Canterbury on the orders of Pope Vitalian. Accounts of his life are given in two 8th-century texts. Theodore

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is known for his reform of the English Church, supervising the foundation of a school at Canterbury.

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274)

Thomas’ father was a knight and landowner who served Frederick II, and he was probably born in the family castle at Roccasecca, near Aquino (now in Lazio). As a Dominican friar and Doctor of the Church, Thomas of Aquino (Lazio, Italy) is probably the most well-known of medieval theologians. He wrote commentaries on scripture and Aristotle, but his is best-known works are the Disputed Questions on Truth (1256–1259), the Summa contra Gentiles (1259–1265), and the Summa Theologiae, which was unfinished when he died. He studied in Paris under Albert the Great, who was more well-known in their lifetimes. Many of Thomas’ ideas were then controversial, but his theology subsequently became dominant in the Catholic Church, while much modern philosophy has either expanded on or opposed his ideas on metaphysics, natural law, ethics and political theory. Alongside Albert he adopted many ideas put forward by Aristotle and worked to synthesize his philosophy with the principles of Christianity.

Thomas of Cantimpré (1201–1272)

Thomas was born of noble parentage in 1201 at Sint-Pieters-Leeuw (near Brussels) in the Duchy of Brabant. He studied at Liege and first became an Augustinian canon and was later ordained a priest. He joined the Dominican Order in 1232, continuing work as a theologian, writer and preacher. He is known for his influential encyclopedia of nature, De natura rerum (On the Nature of Things), and for Bonum universale de Apibus (The universal virtue of the bees), a moral treatise that uses the beehive community as an allegory. He was also a writer of hagiography.

Thomas of Celano (c.1185–c.1265)

Thomas was born into the noble family of the Conti dei Marsi at Celano in the Province of the Abruzzi. He received education in the liberal arts at a Benedictine monastery but joined the Franciscan Order around 1215. He became custos of the convents at Mayence, Worms, Speyer, and Cologne and

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vicar in the government of the German province, before returning to Italy in 1223, where he had close contact with Francis. He wrote a life of Francis for his canonization in 1228, a supplement in c.1245, and a treatise on the miracles of Francis in the 1250s.

Thomas of Chobham (b. c.1160, d. 1233–36)

Presumably born in Chobham, Surrey, Thomas studied in Paris in the 1180s and was later subdean of Salisbury. He wrote an influential work on penance, Cum miserationes domini sint super omnia, which combined theology, Canon law and practical advice for confessors. He produced several other works, including one on preaching, Summa de arte praedicandi, and many of his own model sermons are extant.

Vegetius (Flavius Vegetius Renatus) (fl. Late Fourth Century)

Almost nothing is known of his life, but his work Epitoma rei militaris (usually called De re militari) is usually considered to have been written in the Western Roman Empire, probably in the late fourth or early fifth century. The author was likely neither a soldier nor a historian: his work is unorganised and sometimes inconsistent, and concentrates on the army of the earlier empire. Nevertheless, it contains much of value and became a major source of military science in the Middle Ages.

Vincent of Beauvais (c.1184/1194–c.1264)

Vincent was a Dominican friar. His early career is in doubt, but between 1228 and 1235 he was at the monastery of Royaumont on the Oise. He is most well-known for his ‘encyclopaedia’ the Great Mirror (Speculum Maius), begun in the late 1230s. It was intended as a compendium of all the knowledge of the Middle Ages and seems to have consisted of three parts: the Speculum Naturale, Speculum Doctrinale and Speculum Historiale, eighty books and 9,885 chapters in all. He also produced other works such as The Foundations of Royal Morals (De morali Principis institutione) and The Education of Noble Children (De eruditione filiorum nobilium).

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Walafrid Strabo (c.808–849)

Walafrid Strabo was born in Swabia and educated at Reichenau Abbey and Fulda Monastery, before returning to Reichenau as abbot in 838. Probably for political reasons, he was subsequently expelled but returned in 842. Walafrid wrote the Vita sancti Galli (The Life of Saint Gall), several other saints’ lives, and a Liber de visionibus Wettini (Book of the visions of Wetti), mostly in rhyme. His poetic Liber de cultura hortorum (Book on the Art of Gardening) is an account of the small garden on Reichenau Island that he tended himself, describing the herbs and their uses.

Walter of Henley (fl. Late 13th Century)

Walter’s one known work, the Hosebondrie (“Husbandry”), was written in c.1280 and handles the management of a manor estate. It was influential in England. A manuscript of this work kept at the University of Cambridge states that Walter was first a knight and later a Dominican friar, which is all that we know of his life.

Walter the Englishman (Gualterus Anglicus)

An Anglo-Norman poet who produced a version of the fables of ‘Romulus’ (Aesop via Phaedrus) in distichs (elegiac couplets) in the late twelfth century. The name was identified by Léopold Hervieux (1831–1900) from manuscript evidence, but his argument that Walter was archbishop of Palermo is not widely accepted. There are 62 fables in the collection. Willem (13th Century) The dialect of Van den Vos Renaerde is East Flemish and there are other clues to a Flemish origin; otherwise nothing is known of Willem other than what he tells us in his own text, that he composed another work that has not survived. Confusingly, there is a reference to another name, Arnout, said to have failed to complete one of the stories.

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William of Auvergne (1180s–1249)

William probably came from Aurillac, but not much is known of his early life. By 1223 he had become a canon at Notre Dame cathedral, and a master of theology in Paris by 1225. In 1228 he was appointed bishop of Paris. He was closely associated with the university, but had an often strained relationship with it. However, he was a key figure in helping the friars to establish themselves there and one of the first to make use of the recently translated works of Aristotle in his theology. The largest of his works was Magisterium Divinale et Sapientiale (Teaching on God in the mode of Wisdom), itself comprising seven works.

William of Conches (d. after 1154)

William was born in Conches, Normandy. One of the group of scholars associated with Chartres (the so-called ‘Chartrians’). He taught from about 1120 to 1154. William of Conches was a natural philosopher, known mainly for his Philosophia mundi and the dialogue Dragmaticon, a revised version of the Philosophia mundi he produced after he had been forced to withdraw some parts of it. William sought to combine what he saw as Plato’s vision of the cosmos with the biblical account.

William of Malmesbury (c.1095–c.1143)

William was born c.1095/96 in Wiltshire, son of a Norman father and an English mother. He lived his entire life in England. He was educated at Malmesbury Abbey in Wiltshire and spent his adult life there as a monk. He was clearly familiar with the literature of the classical, patristic, and medieval eras. In 1125, inspired by Bede and others, he completed his Gesta Regum Anglorum (Deeds of the Kings of England), which he followed with Gesta Pontificum Anglorum (Deeds of the English Bishops) and an unfinished history of his own time. He is usually considered one of the best medieval historians.

William of Nassington (d. 1354)

William and his family were ecclesiastical administrators from Nassington, Northamptonshire. William was a master of law by the late 1320s, and held

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several church positions in the Diocese of Exeter in the 1330s and the Diocese of York in the 1340s. He is one of the two candidates for author of the mid-14th century poem Speculum Vitae, of which a prose version, was also produced. He is suspected to have died of the plague.

William of Newburgh (William Parvus, Guilelmus Neubrigensis)

William was born in 1136 in Bridlington, Yorkshire. As a boy he entered the Newburgh Priory to study theology and history and seems to have remained there as an Augustinian canon for the rest of his life. He composed several works, the most valuable being the Historia rerum Anglicarum or Historia de rebus anglicis (History of English Affairs), a history of England from 1066 to 1198.

William Twiti (d. bef. 1328)

William Twiti was responsible for the first hunting treatise composed in England, L’Art de Venerie (in Anglo-Norman French), which was subsequently redacted in English editions such as the fifteenth-century Craft of Venery and had a strong influence on works such as Edward of York’s Master of Game. Not much is known of William, but brief mentions in manuscripts of the work and a few documents indicate that he was huntsman (venator or venator regis) to Edward II (r. 1307–27).

Wolfram von Eschenbach (c.1160/80–c.1220)

As in the case of several others above, all that we know of Wolfram’s life comes from his own works. He was a German knight, poet and minnesinger. The dialect of his most well-known epic work, the Arthurian romance Parzifal, is East Franconian. In that work he claimed to be illiterate.

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God creating the animals Elephant ivory plaque, Amalfi, Italy, from 1084; Metropolitan Museum of Art collection

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Noah’s Ark, as depicted in the Old English Illustrated Hexateuch: the dove returns to the ark with the olive branch, and Noah, his family and the animals disembark on God’s instructions Second quarter of the 11th century; Cotton Claudius B. IV., folio 15v. Aelfric, from the British Library archive

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Adam, represented as a bonde, drives a plough with an iron share, drawn by two horses. Detail of a ceiling fresco by the ‘Elemelunde master,’ Elmelunde Church, Møn, Denmark, c.1480 © Alamy

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“Castrated animals.” An illustration of common domesticated animals from the Tacuinum Sanitatis, a medieval handbook concerned largely with health, popular in Europe during the 14th and 15th centuries. It was available in several Latin translations of the original Arabic work Taqwīm aṣ‑Ṣiḥḥa (The Maintenance of Health), an 11th-century medical treatise by Ibn Butlan of Baghdad. Rhineland, mid-15th century; Lat 9333, folio 71r., Bibliotheque Nationale de France

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An illustration of a medieval park from an edition of Edward of York’s Master of Game, depicting a variety of animals who lived in or entered parks. A park would more likely be surrounded by a palisade and/or ditch than a crenelated wall. Second quarter of the 15th century, Ms. Bodl. 546, Bodleian Library. University of Oxford

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Figure 6

Falconry: an illumination from the Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift (Codex Manesse) illustrating a poem of Conradin (1252–1268) Zürich, c.1300–1340; Cod. Pal. germ. 848, f.7r, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg

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Lady shooting at a rabbit, an illumination from the Taymouth Hours. Whereas written sources portray hunting as an exclusively male pursuit, there are several depictions of noblewomen hunting beasts of the warren or even bigger game. Ladies may have hunted mainly within the confines of the park or warren. English, c.1325–35, Yates Thompson MS 13, f.68v, from the British Library archive

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Figure 8

The unicorn defends himself, from the Unicorn Tapestries. The hunted animal may be mythical, but the image has otherwise realistic elements, among them the dog being severely wounded by the quarry animal. Made in the southern Netherlands, 1495–1505; Metropolitan Museum of Art collection

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The Hunt of the Frail Stag. Portrayed as courtly ladies, Vanity Sounds the Horn and Ignorance unleashes the hounds Overconfidence, Rashness, and Desire. The tapestry series represents ‘man’ as the frail stag beset by failings represented by the hounds and their handlers. Tapestry made in the southern Netherlands, 1495–1510; Metropolitan Museum of Art collection

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Figure 10 Beavers bite off their testicles or show that they have already done so to save themselves from hunters seeking the testicles for their medicinal properties. Just so, the person who wishes to reform his life and live chastely as God has commanded should cut away all vices and hurl them in the devil’s face, so the devil will see that he has nothing belonging to him and leave the person alone. Bestiary produced in “S” (Salisbury?), England, second quarter of the 13th century; Harley 4751 f. 9v., from the British Library archive

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Figure 11 A caladrius perching at the bedside of a king. “As the Physiologus says,” the bird has the power to foretell whether a sick patient will live or die; if it turns its back on the patient, he or she will surely die, but if it faces the patient, he or she will live. Bestiary produced in “S” (Salisbury?), England, second quarter of the 13th century; Harley 4751 f. 40., from the British Library archive

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Figure 12 The fox plays dead to trick birds into coming close to it so it can seize and devour them. Thus, the fox symbolizes the devil, who appears dead to all living things until he has them by the throat. Aberdeen Bestiary, c.1200; MS 24, fol. 16r., Aberdeen University Library

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Figure 13 Having killed her young, the pelican revives them by piercing her breast and giving them her blood, thus symbolizing Christ’s sacrifice for mankind. Bestiary possibly produced in Thérouanne, France, c.1270; Ms. Ludwig XV 3 (83.MR.173), fol. 72, Getty Museum. Digital image courtesy of Getty’s Open Content Program

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Figure 14 The leopard and the panther. Leopards are born of the adultery between the lioness and a pard, a swift and bloodthirsty animal. The panther, an animal of varied colours and beauty, having slept for three days after eating, wakes up and emits a sweet-smelling belch that causes other animals to follow it, all except the dragon, who flees into caves deep in the earth. Bestiary, produced in England 1255–65; Harley 3244, f. 37., from the British Library Archive

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Figure 15 ‘Fish (pisces).’ The animals that live in water include mythical or imaginary amphibians or reptiles, some with fins, long tails and horns. Bestiary produced in “S” (Salisbury?), England, second quarter of the 13th century; Harley 4751 f. 68., from the British Library archive

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Figure 16 Elephant carrying a tower full of soldiers. There had been more realistic portrayals of elephants and less improbable towers in earlier European medieval bestiaries and other works, but the artist has let his imagination run free: the German text speaks of majesty and power and mighty places, of all the things and all the opportunities that are found on the journey to and from the holy sepulchre of the Lord Jesus Christ. Bestiary, fifteenth century; Egerton 1900 f. 110, From the British Library archive

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Figure 17 A stone relief with the arms of the Porcelet family of Provence: an example of canting arms, a play on the word porc Late 13th or early 14th century; Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection, the Cloisters Collection of 1925

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Figure 18 An illumination from the Hours of Simon de Varie by Jean Fouquet. (The shield was repainted with the fleur-de-lis in the 17th century.) The coat of arms is supported by a lady and a ‘greyhound,’ which functions as a symbol of loyalty, one of the ‘noble’ characteristics frequently attributed to dogs in written sources. The scrolls display Varie’s mottoes Vie à mon desir (Life according to one’s desire), also on the dog’s collar and an anagram of Simon de Varie’s name, and Plus que jamais (More than ever). Produced in Paris or Tours, c.1455; Ms. 7 (85.ML.27), fol. 2v, Getty Museum. Digital image courtesy of Getty’s Open Content Program

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Figure 19 Fresco of a lion mounted on canvas from Burgos, Castile-León. The lion, first among the beasts, has distinctly (male) human-like facial features. Probably 13th-century; Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection, Cloisters Collection of 1931

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Figure 20 The sick lion, A popular fable in its own right, also included in the Reynard tales, in which the fox, having failed to visit the bedside like the other animals, persuades the lion that he has found a cure, namely that the lion must skin a wolf and wrap himself in the warm skin. In this version readers are cautioned that only unquestioning trust in their master – the lion, symbolizing the Church – will safeguard them from the evil machinations of the wolves and foxes of this world. The illustration is from a block book with nine woodcuts with text banderoles, produced in the Basel region, c.1450; Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection, Elisha Whittelsey Collection

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Figure 21 The plagues of Exodus 8:21. Upper left, the third plague of lice; upper right, the second plague of frogs; lower left, the fifth plague, murrain. On the lower right is the fourth plague, arov; in the rabbinical interpretation this plague was believed to be of various kinds of wild animals, whereas in the Latin tradition, following the Vulgate translation, it was “all kinds of flies (omne genus muscarum).” Nonhuman animals are both fellow-sufferers and causes of hardship for humans. From the Haggadah for Passover (the Golden Haggadah), a Jewish work illustrated in contemporary European style produced in Catalonia, second quarter of the 14th century; Add. 27210, f.12v., from the British Library archive

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Figure 22 Slaughtering the pig in December. Illumination from the Horae ad usum Parisiensem, also named the Heures de Charles d’Angoulême, by Robinet Testard. Pigs were sent to the woods in autumn to fatten up before being slaughtered. Cutting the throat and allowing the pig to bleed out, whether or not the animal was stunned first, was a common method of killing. The woman is collecting and stirring blood to make blood sausage, eaten under various names throughout medieval Europe. Fifteenth-century; Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Gallica, Archives et Manuscrits

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Figure 23 A fabulous beast with a mane, pointed teeth, a scaly rump and clawed feet. Similar beasts, in the bestiary tradition, represented vices, but having been leashed, the danger from this one appears to have been contained. A fragment of a wall hanging or tapestry, Upper Rhenish, Basel, 1420–39; Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection, the Cloisters Collection, 1990

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Figure 24 An assortment of hybrid or otherwise fantastic beasts. Bernard of Clairvaux may have thought such images a distraction for monks, but all had lessons to convey to the faithful: here we have (left to right) a manticore, a pelican, a basilisk, a harpy, a griffin, a dragon or amphisbaena, a centaur, and a lion. A marble arch said to have come from a twelfth-century church in Narbonne, France; Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection, John Stewart Kennedy Fund, 1922

Figure 25 Bear-baiting, Dog-owners set their dogs on the chained bear while the keeper of the bear supervises the contest, armed with a stick and a club-headed staff. The Luttrell Psalter, East Anglia, England, c.1325–1335; Add. 42130, f.161, from the British Library archive

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Figure 26 Illumination from the Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift (Codex Manesse) illustrating the work of a unidentified poet, ‘Von Obernburg’ (probably lived mid-13th century). The lapdog, or occasionally another small animal, became a common pet accessory of the lady in illustrations from the later Middle Ages. Zürich, c.1300–1340; Cod. Pal. germ. 848, f 342v, in Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg

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Figure 27 The mocking of Thomas Becket. A free interpretation of the episode in which Thomas’ enemies cut off the tail of his horse as an insult to him. The connotation of emasculation is clear from the action of the man with the severed tail. Detail of a panel of the St Thomas Alterpiece by Meister Francke, c.1424; Hamburger Kunsthalle

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Figure 28 St Anthony blessing the poor, the sick, and nonhuman animals. Here the desert father of the 4th century appears with the black cape and tau cross of the Knight Hospitallers, who adopted him as a patron saint. In part because of this association, people appealed to Anthony to prevent and cure disease in both themselves and (their) animals. The animals here are domestic, apart from the deer, the essential stock of every park and the noblest quarry in the late medieval hunt. Miniature painted by the Master of St. Veronica (German, fl. c.1395–1415); Ms. Ludwig f 2, leaf 2, 83, Ms 49.2 recto, in the Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Digital image courtesy of Getty’s Open Content Program

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Figure 29 Charlemagne in battle with heathens, as illustrated in an edition of the chivalric novel Willehalm of Wolfram von Eschenbach, commissioned by the Landgraf of Hesse, Heinrich II (c.1299–1376). The illustrator no doubt had contemporary battles such as Mühldorf in mind, fought in 1322 between the forces of the German king Louis of Wittelsbach and his cousin Frederick of Habsburg, the anti-king. This is one of the few depictions of battle from the Middle Ages that depicts wounded and dead horses as well as men (the Bayeux Tapestry is another), although this occurrence must have been common in battles, even those like Mühldorf whose result was determined predominantly by combat between knights. Kasseler Willehalm-Kodex, c.1335; 2 ° Ms. poet. et roman. 1, Universitätsbibliothek Kassel

Bibliography Texts in the original or medieval languages are given first, followed by translations if one or more are available. “Translated by …” means an English translation; translations into other modern languages are specified where no English translation is available. ‘English’, ‘French’, etc. refer to the modern languages, whereas earlier ones are referred to as ‘Old …’, ‘Middle …”, etc., as appropriate in the chronological classification of the language concerned. The translations listed were not necessarily used in the book; those that were not used are provided for the reader if needed. In addition, some listed works in the original languages that I am unable to read (Greek, Old Irish, Sardinian …). are listed for those who can read them. All those works (original or translated). that were used, as specified after the quoted passages in the main text, are among those listed. Where more than one language is listed within brackets at the end of an entry, e.g. [Middle Welsh and English], this refers to the languages in which the medieval text appears in the edition, not the introduction, notes, etc. Most of those texts that appear in the original language and translated within the same edition are facing page translations.

Abbreviations BAR CCCM CCSL EETS os FCMC MGH SRG SS rer. Merov. AA PG PL

British Archaeological Reports Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis Corpus Christianorum Series Latina Early English Text Society original series The Fathers of the Church Mediaeval Continuation Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptum Rerum Germanicum Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum Auctores Antiquissimi Patrologia Graeca Patrologia Latina

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Adamnán. Adamnani Vita S. Columbae. Edited by William Reeves and J.T. Fowler. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894. Adamnán. Life of Saint Columba. Edited and translated by Richard Sharpe. London: Penguin Books, 1995. Adelard of Bath. Conversations with his Nephew, On the Same and the Different, Questions on Natural Science, and On Birds. Edited and translated by Charles Burnett. Cambridge Medieval Classics 9. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 [Latin and English]. Den ældre Gulathings-Lov. Edited by R. Keyser and P.A. Munch. Oslo (Christiania): Gröndahl, 1847. Aelfric of Eynsham. “Colloquy”. In An Anglo-Saxon Abbot Aelfric Of Eynsham: A Study. Translated by S. Harvey Gem. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1912, 183–95. “Ælfrici colloquium.” In Analectica Saxonica: A Selection, in Prose and Verse, from Anglo-Saxon Authors. Edited by Benjamin Thorpe, 18–36. London: John Russell Smith, 1868. [Latin and Old English]. Ágrip af Nóregskonungasǫgum. Edited and translated by M.J. Driscoll. Viking Society for Northern Research Text Series 10. London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1995. [Old Norse and English]. Albertus Magnus. De animalibus Libri XXVI. Edited by H. Stadler. Münster: Aschendorf, 1916–20. Albert the Great. On Animals: A Medieval Summa Zoologica. Edited and translated by K.F. Kitchell, Jr. and I.M. Resnick. 2 vols. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1999. Albert the Great. Questions Concerning Aristotle’s On Animals, edited and translated by Irven M. Resnick and Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr., FCMC 9. Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2008. Albertus Magnus. Book of Minerals. Translated by Dorothy Wyckoff. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967. Aldhelm of Malmesbury. Aldhelmi Opera. Edited by Rudolf Ehwald. MGH AA 15. Berlin, 1919. Aldhelm of Malmesbury. Saint Aldhelm’s Riddles. edited and translated by A.M. Juster. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015. Alexander of Hales. Doctoris Irrefragabilis Alexandri de Hales Ordinis Minorum Summa Theologica. 5 vols. Florence: Quaracchi, 1924–48, Vol. 2 (1928). Alexander Neckam. De Natura Rerum et De Laudibus Divinae Sapientae. Edited by Thomas Wright. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green, 1863. Ambrose of Milan. “Exameron.” In Sanctii Ambrosii Opera, Pars Prima. Edited by Karl Schenkl. Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 32.1, 3–261. Prague: F. Tempsky; G. Freytag, 1896.

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Ambrose of Milan. Hexameron, Paradise, and Cain and Abel. Translated by John L. Savage, 287–356. The Fathers of the Church 42. Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1961. Ambrose of Milan. “De Paradiso”. in Sanctii Ambrosii Opera, Pars Prima. Edited by Karl Schenkl, 263–336. Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 32.1. Prague: F. Tempsky; G. Freytag, 1896. “Anatomia Porci ex traditione Cophonis.” In Anatomiae, hoc est Corporis humani dissectionis pars prior, etc. Edited by Johann Dryander. Warpurgi apud Eucharium Cervicornum, 1537. Anatomical texts of the earlier Middle Ages, with translations of four texts. Edited and translated by G.W. Corner. Washington D.C.: Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1927. The Ancient Cornish Drama. 2 vols. Vol. 1. Translated by Edwin Norris. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1859. [Cornish and English]. Ancient Laws of Ireland. Edited by Commissioners for Publishing the Ancient Laws and Institutes of Ireland. 6 Vols. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1865–1901. [Old Irish and English]. Aneirin. The Gododdin of Aneirin: text and context from Dark-Age North Britain. Edited by John Thomas Koch. Cardiff: University of Wales, 1997 [Old Welsh and English]. Aneirin. The Gododdin: Lament for the Fallen. translated by Gillian Clarke. London: Faber & Faber, 2001. [Welsh and English]. Andrew of Wyntoun. The Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland. Edited by David Laing. 3 vols. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1872, Vol. 3. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Vol 1: Original Texts. Edited by Benjamin Thorpe. London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1861. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Edited and translated into modern English by Michael Swanton. 2nd edn. London: Dent, 2000 [1996]. The Ancient Cornish Drama. 2 vols. Vol. 1. Translated by Edwin Norris. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1859. [Cornish and English]. Annales Fuldenses sive Annales Regni Francorum Orientalis. Edited by Georg Heinrich Pertz and Friedrich Kurze. SRG ex MGH Hanover: Hahn, 1891. Annales Gandenses / Annals of Ghent. Edited and translated by Hilda Johnstone. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. [Latin and English]. Annales Regni Francorum (Annales Laurissenses Maiores et Einhardi). Edited by G.H. Pertz. MGH Separatim Editi. Hanover: Hahn, 1895. Annals of Ulster (to A.D. 1131). Edited and translated by Seán Mac Airt and Gearóid Mac Niocaill. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1983. [Old Irish and English]. “Annals of Tigernach.” Edited and translated by Whitley Stokes. Revue Celtique 16 (1895), 374–419. [Old Irish and English, ms Rawlinson B 502].

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Other Source Books

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Secondary Literature

The following list is not intended to be exhaustive, but includes examples that give a variety of perspectives on human-nonhuman animal relationships in the Middle Ages (and sometimes other periods also), including

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Aberth, John. An Environmental History of the Middle Ages: The Crucible of Nature. London: Routledge, 2013. Aberth, John. The Black Death. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. Adamson, Melitta Weiss. Food in Medieval Times. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. Adamson, Melitta Weiss. “Medieval Germany.” In Regional Cuisines of the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays, edited by Melissa Weiss Adamson, 153–96. New York: Routledge, 2002. Aguiriano, Begoña, et al. Le cheval dans le monde médiéval. Aix-en-Provence: Presses universitaires de Provence, 2014. Alexander, Dominic. Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008. Almond, Richard. Medieval Hunting. Stroud: Sutton, 2003. Arens, William. The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. Barber, Richard and Juliet Barker. Tournaments. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989. Barlow, Frank. Thomas Becket. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986. Beattie, Blake. “The Cardinal’s Frogs: Constructing Animal Imagery in Two FourteenthCentury Curial Sermons.” Medieval Sermon Studies, 62, no. 1 (2018), 29–41. Bedini, Silvio A. The Pope’s Elephant. London: Penguin, 2000. Beglane, Fiona, Anglo-Norman Parks in Medieval Ireland. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2015. Berlioz, Jacques, and Marie Anne Polo De Beaulieu, eds. L’animal exemplaire au Moyen Âge Ve–XVe siècles. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1999. Berman, Paul Schiff, “Rats, Pigs, and Statues on Trial: The Creation of Cultural Narratives in the Prosecution of Animals and Inanimate Objects,” New York University Law Review 288 (1994), 318–319. Bintley, Michael D.J., and Thomas J.T. Williams, eds. Representing Beasts in Early Medieval England and Scandinavia. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2019. Bliujiene, Audrone, and Donatas Butkus. “Burials with Horses and Equestrian Equipment on the Lithuanian and Latvian Littorals and Hinterlands (from the fifth to the eighth centuries),” Archaeologica Baltica, no. 11 (2009), 149–62. Blumenkranz, Bernhard. Juifs et chrétiens dans le monde occidental, 430–1096. ParisLouvain: Peeters, 2007. Boehrer, Bruce, ed. A Cultural History of Animals in the Renaissance. New York: Berg, 2007. Breiner, Laurence A. “The Career of the Cockatrice.” Isis, 70, no. 1 (1979), 30–47.

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Bynum, Catherine Walker. Metamorphosis and Identity. New York: Zone Books, 2005. Cam, Helen Maud, “The Legend of the Incendiary Birds.” The English Historical Review, 31, no. 121 (1916), 98–101. Cartwright, Julia Mary. Beatrice d ́Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475–1497. Frankfurt am Main: Outlook Verlag, 2018 [1909]. Choyke, Alice M., and Gerhard Jaritz, eds. Animaltown: Beasts in Medieval Urban Space. BAR International Series 2858. Oxford: BAR, 2017. Clark, John, ed. The Medieval Horse and its Equipment: c. 1150–c. 1450. 2nd edn. London: Boydell, 2004. Cohen, Esther. “Law, Folklore and Animal Lore.” In Past & Present, no. 110 (1986), 6–37. Cohen, Esther. The Crossroads of Justice: Law and Culture in Medieval France. Leiden: Brill, 1992. Cohen, Simona. Animals as Disguised Symbols in Renaissance Art. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Crane, Eva. The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting. London: Routledge, 2000. Crane, Susan. Animal Encounters: Contacts and Concepts in Medieval Britain. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. Cummins, John G. The Hound and the Hawk: The Art of Medieval Hunting. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989. D’Addosio, Carlo. Bestie Delinquenti. Naples: Luigi Pierro, 1892. Dagron, Gilbert. “Image du bête ou image de dieu, La physiognomie animale dans la tradition grecque et ses avatars byzantines.” In Poikilia: Études offertes à Jean-Pierre Vernant (Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 1987): 69–80. Davis, R.H.C. The Medieval Warhorse. London: Thames and Hudson, 1989. Dean, Katharine R., et al., “Human ectoparasites and the spread of plague in Europe during the Second Pandemic”, PNAS 115/6 (2018), 1304–1309. De Keyser, P. “De nieuwe reis naar Luilekkerland.” In Ars folklorica Belgica. Noord- en Zuid-Nederlandse volkskunst. Edited by P. de Keyser, 7–41. Antwerp:‎ De Sikkel, 1956. Demaitre, Luke E. Leprosy in Premodern Medicine: A Malady of the Whole Body. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2007. Demaitre, Luke E. Medieval Medicine: The Art of Healing, from Head to Toe. New York: Praeger, 2013. DeWindt, Anne Reiber, and Edwin Brezette De Windt, eds. Royal Justice and the Medieval English Countryside: The Huntingdonshire Eyre of 1286, the Ramsey Abbey Banlieu Court of 1287, and the Assizes of 1287–88, Part One: Introduction and TextsScan. Studies and Texts of the Pontifical Institute 57. Leiden: Brill, 1981. De Vos, Mariette. “The Rural Landscape of Thugga: Farms, Presses, Mills, and Transport.” In The Roman Agricultural Economy: Organization, Investment, and Production, edited by Alan Bowman and Andrew Wilson, 143–218. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

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Index Aaron 43n Absyrtos 433 Acts, Book of 63, 332n, 347, 348n, 351–53, 384 Acts of the Apostles, apocryphal 458 Adam 28–31, 34–37, 52–53, 127, 130, 136, 298–99, 302, 365–66 Adamantius 149 Adamnán 351, 482–84 Adelard of Bath 55, 79–81, 432, 437, 541–42 Adelinus 301 Adversus Jovinianum (Jerome) 359–60, 415 Aelian 119, 124, 322 Aelfric of Eynsham, abbot Ælfric 141–42, 167–68, 195–97 Aesop 33 Aethelflaed, queen of Mercia 567 Agnellus of Ravenna 447 Ágrip af Nóregskonungasọm 356–57, 590 Alan of Lille 51, 63, 139, 382 Albert of Cologne 451 Albertus Magnus, bishop and saint 60, 65–66, 92–95, 105–08, 127, 133, 151, 153–54, 172, 175, 179–80, 217n, 248, 275n, 297, 303–05, 421–22, 426, 432, 439–40, 514, 518–19, 542 Aldobrandino of Sienna 151 Aldhelm of Malmesbury 515 Alemannic laws 254, 256 Alexander II, pope 519 Alexander of Aphrodisias 68 Alexander of Hales 54 Alexander of Tralle 413, 418 Alexander Neckham 118–19, 136–37, 333, 536–39 Alfonso XI, king of Castile 198, 211–12, 222–23, 268 Alfred, king of Wessex 202–03, 256, 330, 418 alms 405–06 alopecia 442 Ambrose of Milan, bishop and saint 1, 9–10, 13, 28–29, 122, 124, 129–30, 138, 345–46 anathema 281, 283, 290–91, 353 Anatomia porci 424–25 Ancrene Rule [Ancre Wisse] 525–26 Andrew of Wyntoun 378

Aneirin 571–72 angels 15, 24, 30, 59, 61, 64, 121, 127. 129, 152, 307–08, 384, 466–68 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 230–31, 448–49, 573 Anglo-Saxon law 252, 256 De Animalibus (Albertus Magnus) 60, 66, 92–95, 106–08, 151, 153–54, 179–80, 217n, 303–05, 421–22, 426, 432, 439–40, 514, 518–19, 542 Annales Ecclesiastici Francorum 283 Annales Fuldenses 457 Annales Gandenses 560 Annales Regni Francorum 495, 579–80 Annals of Tigernach 448 Annals of Ulster 448 Anonymous Latinus 149–51 Anselm of Canterbury, archbishop 139–40 Anselm of Liège 382–83 ant 22, 93, 108, 335, 543–44 The Ant and the Cricket (Marie de France) 335 antelope 53 Anthony, desert father and saint 144, 300, 459–61, fig. 28 anthropophagy 344, 346, 377–79 Antioch, (first) siege of, 1097–98 374–75, 584–85 ape 45, 66–67, 70, 93–94, 96–97, 120–21, 193, 262, 305, 355, 416, 424–25, 445–46, 495, 499, 502, 519–21, 526, 536–37, 543 Aphorisms (Galen) 413 Apicius 385 Apologia (Bernard of Clairvaux) 305–06 Apologia pauperum (Bonaventure) 372 Apuleius 185–86 Arborea 269–71 De Arca Noe Morali (Hugh of St Victor) 41–43 Arderne, John 431 Ariosto, Ludovico 563 Aristotle 10, 20–22, 49, 54, 56–57, 60–62, 64–66, 68, 71, 79, 83–85, 89, 92, 94n, 101–05, 107–08, 123, 137, 147–48, 151, 161, 247, 381, 425–26, 440n, 441, 459n, 544 ark 40–47, 280, 578, Fig. 2

718 Arnald of Villanova 372, 454–55 Arrian 199 De Arte Bersandi (Guicennas) 225 De Arte Venandi cum Avibus (Frederick II) 216–20 L’art de Venerie (William Twiti) 204–05 Artaxerxes I, king of Persia 145 Arthur, mythical king 207–209 Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria 201 Asinus Aureus (Apuleius) 185–86 ass 27, 33, 44, 120, 126, 152, 180–81, 185–86, 270, 301, 322, 328, 338–39, 389, 417, 431, 458n, 474, 477, 507, 536, 551, 578–79, 581, 589 Asser, bishop of Sherbourne 202–03, 330 astrology 79, 154, 432, 435 Athanasius 364, 459–60 Attila, king of the Huns 154 Augustine of Canterbury, archbishop and saint 180 Augustine of Hippo, bishop and saint 1, 8, 10, 15–19, 22–23, 28–29, 40, 71–76, 81–83, 99, 112–13, 138, 298–99, 307–08, 318, 348, 361, 383, 532 aurochs 200–01, 211, 236, 275 Avenzoar (Ibn Zuhr) 455 Averroes (Ibn Rushd) 2, 65n, 88, 426 Aviarium (Hugh of Fouilloy) 131–33 Avicenna 2, 65, 69, 84, 88–89, 426, 443–44, 450, 454–55 Balaam’s ass 458n, 474, 477 Bannockburn, battle 560 Bannvürst 276 barber-surgeons 423 Barbour, John 560–61 Barthélemy de Chasseneuz 290n Bartolomeo de Messina 148 Bartolomeo della Rocla [Cocles] 151 Bartholomeus Anglicus 55, 58–59, 124, 137, 180, 300–01, 535, 537, 548–49 Bartholomeus of Salerno 414, 436 Bartholomew, hermit 470–71 Bartolo da Sassoferrato 158–59 Basel 288, 505, figs. 20, 23 Basel, Council of 353–54, 372 Basil of Caesarea, bishop and saint 1, 10, 19, 22, 40, 55, 112, 122, 130n, 138, 322

Index basilisk 128, 134, 288, Fig. 24 Beaumanoir, Philippe de 283 bear 23, 38, 45, 150, 152, 156, 158–60, 175, 206, 211–12, 222, 226, 228, 236, 262–64, 267, 272, 275, 277, 313–15, 325, 340–41, 355, 376, 402, 404–05, 416, 441, 460–65, 480–81, 495, 497–500, 502, 504, 511, 535–38 ‘beasts of battle’ 570–77 beaver 59, 370, 419, 499, Fig. 10 Bede 10–12, 14, 28–29, 31–32, 55, 418, 460, 468–70 bee 22, 93, 97, 105–07, 137–38, 152, 168, 175–77, 190, 264–65, 274, 309, 352–53, 475, 567–68 Benedict of Nursia, abbot and saint  368–69, 372, 416, 469 Benedict XII, pope 371–72 Benevento, battle 557–58 Beowulf 155–57, 314, 572 Berchtold V of Zähringen, count 159–60 Bernard of Clairvaux 305–06, 331, 370–71 Bernard Gui 385 Bernardus Silvestris 25–27, 39, 51, 63, 122, 537 Berner Chronik (Conrad Justinger) 97, 160, 280–81 Bern 97, 160, 280 Berners, Juliana 220–22, 437 berserkers 313–16 Berthold of Ratisbon (Regensburg), bishop 146–47 Bestiaire d’Amour (Rochard de Fournival) 124, 160 bestiality 278–79, 288, 293–94, 322–24, 331 bestiary 52, 119–35, 159–61, 440–41, 543, 550, Figs 10–16, 23 Betha Máedóc Ferna II 487–88 Bible anonyme 38–39 Bible historiale (Guiart de Moulin) 36–38 Biclarel 320 Biondo, Flavio 500 birds 10–13, 21–23, 28–29, 31, 38–41, 43, 45–46, 53, 57n, 58–59, 64, 73, 92, 109–11, 124n, 126, 129–33, 136, 144, 156–57, 159, 170, 193 (mechanical), 196–97, 216–22, 224–25, 227, 233–35, 244, 262–64, 273–74, 279n, 288, 308–09, 313, 337–38,

Index birds (cont.) 352, 357–60, 368, 376, 379, 385, 390–93, 395–98, 400–04, 420–21, 453–54, 463, 468–72, 474–76, 490–91, 495, 498–500, 505–07, 509, 521–24, 529, 568–69, 571–77 Bisclavret (Marie de France) 320–21 bison 200–01, 211, 275, 465 bittern 45, 393, 398 Black Death 395, 449, 451–52 blackbird 227 Blansby Park, Yorkshire 189 blood (as food) 342, 344–45, 347–48, 351–54, 356, 368, 374–75, 415–17, 427, 445, 574–75, 584–85, Figs 13, 22 Blund, John 89–92 boar, wild 39, 117, 149, 152–53, 155–58, 179, 189, 191, 195, 200, 204–12, 226, 231, 236, 242–43, 274–75, 305, 313, 364, 390, 398, 480–85, 511–12, 537 Boccaccio, Giovanni 450 Bockenheim, Johannes 395–96 Bọðvar Bjarki 314–15 Boethius 25, 51, 56, 63, 94n, 302 Boeve de Haumtone 553 Bohemia 146, 228, 260, 361n, 453, 496 Bonaventure, Franciscan minister-general and saint 359, 372, 489, 507–08 Boke of Husbandry (Anthony Fitzherbert) 438–39, 456–57 Boke of Marshalsi 434–35 Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe (John Skelton) 524–25 Book of St Albans (Juliana Berners) 220–22, 437 Books of Hours 446, 525 Boucher, Guillaume 428 Le Bouchier d’Abevile 182–183 bow [and arrow] 191–92, 194, 197, 210, 225, 227–28, 237, 239, 258, 380, 475, 548–49, 558n, 561–63, fig. 7 Bracton, Henry of 257–58, 273–75, 357, 533 brannskatt 590 Brant, Sebastian 505–06 Brigid, saint 458, 460, 485–87 Brehon Law 264 Bromyard, John 406, 514 The Bruce (John Barbour) 560–61

719 Bruno of Cologne 372 Bruno of Segni 348 Brut y Tywysogion 447, 580–81 bull 97, 125, 152, 158, 255, 264–65, 267, 283, 302, 304, 440, 460, 465, 537 Das Buoch von guoter Spize 397 Burchard of Worms, bishop 322, 327–28 Burgundian law codes. See Lex Burgundionum, Lex Romana Burgundionum burbot 196 Buridan, John 66, 71n, 93n, 94n, 103–04, 148 Caesarius of Arles, bishop 326–27 Calendar Rolls of Richard II 241–42 calf 144, 170, 178–79, 221, 262, 304, 326, 394, 439–40, 482, 487–89, 530 caltrop 563 camel 44, 389, 404, 495–96, 499 cancer 428, 444–45 cannibalism. See anthropophagy  cannon 563 Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer) 386, 393–94, 408–10, 510–11 Capitulare [Brevium Exempla] de Villis  168–69, 215, 386, 546 Capitulary of Mantua 547 capon 170, 341, 391, 395, 398 caracal 223–24 Carileff, hermit, abbot of Anisole and saint 465–66 Carmina Burana 361n Carmina Cantabrigiensia 180–81 Carmina in Honorem Hludovici (Ermold the Black) 547 carrion 46, 180, 238, 351, 355, 375, 391, 456, 572–76 carroccio 566–67, 570 Carta Abbatis Beate Marie Eboracensis 188 Carta de Foresta 276 Carta de Logu d’Arbarê 269–71 Carta Radulphi de Bolemer 188–89 Carthusian Order 372, 382 Cassiodorus 416 castration 439–40, 388, fig. 4 cat 44–45, 96–97, 107, 191, 236, 262, 282, 351, 374, 409, 506, 509, 514–19, 524–27, 529, 531

720 Cathars 383–85 cathedral schools 7, 48 Catraeth, battle 571 cattle 14n, 18, 21, 23, 29, 40, 43–44, 77, 166, 169–72, 178–79, 189–90, 242, 264–66, 269–70, 280–81, 294, 296, 323, 345–46, 355, 375, 388, 446–49, 452, 456–457, 481–82, 507, 526, 566, 587, 589–90 Celsus 425, 444 centaur 128, 305, 549, fig. 24 Chalcidius 62–63 chameleon 416, 502 Chanson d’Antioche 551, 578–79, 585 chansons de geste 403, 549, 556 Charlemagne 168–69, 192, 200–02, 275, 495–96, 546, 569, fig. 29 Charles the Bald, king of the Franks 59n, 547 Charles V, king of France 400, 498 Charles VI, king of France 223–24, 233–34, 514, 528 Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily 558 Chartrians 25 Châteaudun 294–95 Chaucer, Geoffrey 63, 393–94, 408–10, 510–11 de Chauliac, Guy 431–32, 444–45 cheetah 223–24 Chester Mystery Plays 43–45 chicken 168, 170, 181, 262, 275, 288n, 341–42, 351–52, 367, 388–89, 391, 400–403, 416–18, 427–29, 440, 445, 499, 509, 521, 529 Une Chien doit presque tout Scavoir (Eustache Deschamps) 509–510 Childebert, king of the Franks 466 Chirurgia (Teodorico Bordognini) 430 Chirurgia Magna (Guy de Chauliac)  431–32, 444–45 Cholmley, Richard, steward of Pickering Forest 229–30 Christ 10n, 62n, 117, 120, 125–27, 136–37, 141, 143, 146, 281, 331, 345, 349, 359–60, 367–68, 370, 382, 462, 465–66, 476–78, 481, 488, 579–80, figs. 13, 16 Christian I, king of Denmark 294 Chronica (Marius of Avranches) 447 Chronica Majora (Matthew Paris) 497–98, 500

Index A Chronicle at Large and Meere History of the Affayres of Englande and Kinges of the Same (Richard Grafton) 453 The Chronicle of London 498 Chronicon de Lanercost 520–21 Chronicon ex Chronicas (John of Worcester) 448 Chronicon Scotorum 448 Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys 223–24 Chroniques (John Froissart) 198 Chwsten Cleek, reputed cannibal 378 Chrysippus 129 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 62n, 247 Circe 308 De Civitate Dei (Augustine of Hippo)  298–99, 307–08 Claudian 124 Clermont 284–85 cock 45, 144, 152, 159, 170, 288, 351, 360, 401–02, 422, 510–11, 538–39, 569 cockatrice 288n, 401 Cogitosus 485–87 Cóir anmann 316–17 Cokaygne, imaginary land of 361–64 Collectorium minus 453–54 Colloquy (Aelfric of Eynsham) 167–68, 183, 195–97 Columba, missionary and saint 482–84 Columbanus, missionary and saint 368–70, 463–64 Columbus, Christopher 565 Columbus, Ferdinand 565 Columella 172, 456 Commentaria in Quatuor Libros Sententiarum (Bonaventure) 507–08 Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis (Macrobius) 62 Compendium Aromatariorum (Saladino Ferro d’Asculi) 456 Compendium Medicinae (Gilbertus Anglicus) 427, 430–31, 442, 444 Conan I, duke of Britanny 563–64 Conquereuil, battle 563–64 Consiglio contro la pestilenza (Marcilio Ficino) 454 Consolat de Mar 517–18 Constantine I, Roman emperor 433, 494 Constantine the African 422–25, 442

Index Contra Celsum (Origen) 14–15 Contra Haereticos, Valdenses, Iudaeos et Paganos (Alain of Lille) 382 Copho 424–25 coral 21, 432 Coria Cima-Coa charters 534 Corinthians, Paul’s first Epistle to 43, 361, 382n, 383, 416 Corrector sive medicus Burchardi 322, 327–28 Cortenuova, battle 570 Cosmographia (Bernardus Silvestris) 25–27, 39, 122 Council of Basel, decree 353–54, 372 Courtrai, battle 530n, 554, 559–60 Coutumes de Beauvaisis (Philippe de Beaumanoir) 283 The Coventry Leet Book 411 cow 125, 166, 169–71, 178–79, 242, 246, 262, 266, 283, 294–95, 322, 325–26, 362, 389, 394, 433, 487–89, 525–26 crab 134, 196, 309, 441, 444 crane 38, 45, 106, 110, 133, 217, 221, 393, 398, 416, 509, 521, 543–44 Crecy, battle 561 cricket 335 crocodile 60, 131, 134 Cronica (Giovanni Vilanni) 557–58 Cronica (Salimbene de Adam / of Parma) 569–70 crossbow 197, 210–11, 225, 228, 240, 558n, 562, 565 crow 21, 45–46, 152, 469, 490, 572 Ctesias 123 Cuenca, Code of. See Forum Conche de Cuenca 268–69, 534, 588–89 Culhwch ac Olwen 207–08 curlew 45, 393, 398 Cursor Mundi 35–36 Cuthbert, hermit and saint 465, 468–472 dairy produce 33, 125, 167–68, 170, 264, 344, 361n, 363, 367–68, 379, 385–86, 389, 392, 394, 397–98, 401, 407–08, 417, 437–38, 446–47, 487–89, 511, 519 Daniel, Book of 481 Daniel of Beccles 509 D’Ausson, Pierre 428 Decameron (Giovanni Boccaccio) 450

721 Decretum (Ivo of Chartres) 323 Decretum Gratiani [Concordia Discordantium Canonum] (Gratian) 248, 322, 353, 372 Decretorum Libri Viginti (Burchard of Worms) 322, 327–28 deer 23, 39, 52–53, 97, 116–17, 146, 149, 162–63, 167, 179, 187, 189, 191, 195, 199, 204–06, 209–11, 215–16, 222–23, 225, 229–33, 236–37, 239–41, 243, 262, 264, 271, 274–75, 277, 328, 364, 378, 380, 389, 411, 416, 421, 431, 441, 466–67, 477, 484, 501, 512, figs 5, 9, 28 Deidis of Armorie (Adam Loutift) 160–61 denbera 167 Description of Greece (Pausanius) 123 Demonstratio Anatomica [Second Salernitan Demonstration] 414–15 deodand 251, 257–60, 292 Deschamps, Eustache 509–10 Descriptio Kambriae (Gerald of Wales) 330 Deuteronomy 24, 43, 53, 349, 383 the devil 34–35, 41, 117, 120–21, 129, 132, 135, 141, 143, 147, 289, 302, 309–10, 317, 322, 326, 366, 384, 409, 458–60, 478, 493, 514, 563, figs. 10, 12 Dialogi (Gregory the Great) 461–63 Dialogi Contra Judaeos (Peter Alphonso) 349 Dialogues (Plato) 25n, 57n, 61n, 67, 146n Dialogus de Scaccario (Richard FitzNigel) 229, 276 Dictionarius (Jean de Garlande) 521 Dicuil 496 Didiscalion (Hugh of St Victor) 8, 194–95 Digesta seu Pandectae 247 disease. See pestilence dissection 423–25 Les Dits du Bon Chien Souillard (Jacques de Brézé) 512–13, 531 De divisione naturae. See Periphyseon dog 27, 38, 44, 72, 79–80, 82, 93, 96, 99–100, 102, 104, 108–09, 116–117, 129–131, 140, 145, 148, 152, 161, 164, 167, 169, 171, 180, 188, 194–95, 198–99, 201–03, 205, 207–12, 214–19, 222–224, 226, 228, 232–33, 236–37, 239–43, 246, 250, 253–56, 261–62, 264, 266–68, 270–73, 279, 282–83, 300–04, 311, 313, 321, 329, 331, 334, 338, 351–53, 357, 366–67, 374,

722 dog (cont.) 390, 405–07, 415, 419, 421–22, 428, 432, 437, 456–57, 459, 466–67, 479, 483, 487–88, 491–93, 497, 500–01, 505–07, 509–15, 519, 522–23, 526–29, 530–34, 537–38, 545, 564–65, 577, figs. 8, 9, 18, 25, 26 dog fish 119 Dolopathos (Johannes de Alta Silva) 492n dolphin 59, 118–19, 196, 370 Dominican Order 1, 65, 137, 142–45, 384–85, 406, 429–30 donkey. See ‘ass’ Dózsa Rebellion 234 dove 45–47, 107, 131–32, 152, 220, 234, 432, 481, 490, 499, 577–78, fig. 2 Dragmaticon Philosophiae (William of Conches) 12–13, 81–83 dragon 60, 128–29, 158, 288n, 418, 572, figs. 14, 24 duck 45, 262, 341, 471, 521 Dürer, Albrecht 502, 505, 547 Eadmer 139–40 eagle 38, 63, 114, 126–27, 144, 149, 159, 221, 330, 416, 500, 572–74, 576 Ecclesiastes, Book of 370, 538 Eckbert of Schönau 384 Edgar, king of England 479, 522 Edith of Wilton, princess, nun and saint 480–82, 522 Edward I, king of England 236, 403, 498 Edward III, king of England 198, 241n Edward IV, king of England 358–59 Edward of York, second duke of York  215–16, 218, 380–81, 437, 514 eel 196, 279n, 363, 389, 395, 399, 405, 411 Egbert, bishop of Trier and kansler 283 eggs (as food) 344, 367–68, 372, 379, 385, 388–89, 392, 394, 396–97, 398n, 401–02, 417, 419, 432, 511 Eike von Repgow 228, 260–61 Einhard 200 Ekkehard I 550–51 Eleanor of Montfort, countess of Leicester 519 Eleonora of Arborea 269 elements 10–13, 24–27, 57, 59, 62, 71, 77, 381, 387, 413, 446

Index elephant 93, 128–30, 152, 404, 495–98, 500, 502–04, 538, 545, 569–70, figs 1, 16 elephantia, disease 442–43 Eligius of Noyon 327 elk 221, 275, 501 entremets 399–405 Ephesians, Paul’s second epistle to 143, 360 Epistola ad Acircium …, Enigmata Octosticha (Aldhelm of Malmesbury) 515 Epistola de cynocephalis (Ratramnus) 302–03 Epistola CCX (Bernard of Clairvaux) 370–71 Epistola CCXLI (Bernard of Clairvaux) 331 Epistola LXXXVI (Peter Damian) 415–16, 519–20 Epistola XCIV (Peter of Blois) 442 Epistola [to Frederick II, 1237] (Pietro della Vigna) 570 Epitoma Rei Militaris (Vegetius) 586–88 Eraclius, bishop of Liège 442 Erasmus, Desiderius 245–46 Eriugena, Johannes Scotus 76–79, 83n ermine 160, 532 Ermold the Black 547 De Erudicione Praedicatorum (Humbert of Romans) 143–45 Esther, Book of 145 estimative power 69, 86, 88–92, 96–98, 102–03 Etymologia (Isidore of Seville) 51–54, 58, 122, 125, 127, 132, 135, 163–64, 248, 299–300, 308–09, 413, 497 Eudo, archbishop of Rouen 523–24 Eustace, saint 117, 476–78 Eustache d’Amiens 182–83 Evagrius Ponticus 459n Eve 33–36, 130, 366 Exodus, Book of 278–79, 287, 383, fig. 21 Expositio et Quaestiones in Aristotelis De Anima (Nicholas Oresme) 66–67 Expositio in Leviticum 11 (Bruno of Segni) 348 Ezekiel, Book of 141, 144, 353n, 544 Le Fabliau de Cocagne 361n Fagrskinna 313–14, 356n, 575–76 falcon. See also hawk 38, 216–21, 224n, 500, 509 falconry 197–98, 203, 214, 216–21, 225, fig. 6

723

Index Fasciculus Morum 538 Feckenham Forest 187, 241 Federico Gonzaga 527 Felix 467–69 Félix (Ramón Llull) 183–85 ferret 45, 233, 421, 532 Festial: De Dominica in Quadragesima; Sermo Brevis (John Mirk) 367–68 Fête de l’âne 328 fianna 317 Ficino, Marsilio 151, 454 firearms 197, 563 fish 12–14, 22–23, 26, 29–31, 37–39, 53, 57n, 58–59, 73, 97, 111, 118–19, 126–27, 131, 146–47, 152, 159, 168, 189, 194, 196, 215, 220, 228, 234–35, 244, 273–74, 306, 345, 352, 359, 362, 368, 370, 376, 384, 388–89, 391–92, 395–99, 405, 410, 444, 456, 466n, 491, 497, fig. 15 Fitzherbert, Anthony 176–77, 438–39, 456–57 FitzNigel, Richard 229, 276 flea 93, 362, 452 fly 19, 38, 92, 97, 101, 269, 279n, 338, 362, 410, 525, 586, fig. 21 flood, biblical 13–14, 31–32, 39–41, 44–45, 52, 280, 344, 361, 578 forest laws 230–31, 234–39, 241–42, 275–77 Forest of Dean 238 foresta 186–87, 190, 228–32, 235–36, 241–42, 271, 275–77, 390n The Forme of Cury 401–02 Forum Conche de Cuenca 268–69, 534, 588–89 Forum Judicum 254–56, 350 fox 44, 107, 117, 130, 152, 163, 184–85, 188, 191, 205–06, 221, 228, 236, 336, 339–42, 351, 362, 415, 440, 443, 485–87, 510–11, figs. 12, 20 Fragmentary Annals of Ireland 567–68 Francis, saint 489–91, 508 Franciscan Order 54n, 98, 100, 137, 142, 359, 372, 489–90, 507, 537–38 Frederick I Barbarossa, king of Germany and emperor 583, 591–92 Frederick II, king of Germany and emperor 216–20, 225, 423, 433, 437, 499–500, 569–70 frog 19, 336n, 338, 416, 430, 451, fig. 21

Froissart, John 198, 532 Frugard, Roger 426, 443 Fuero Real 268 Fulcher of Chartres 377 Fulk III Nerra, count of Anjou 563–64 Galatians, Paul’s epistle to 384 Galbert of Bruges 557 Galen 20, 83, 148, 364, 387, 413–16, 421–26, 431 Gall, missionary and saint 464–65 Game Law 232–33 Gaston ‘Febus’ of Foix, count 200, 205, 209–11, 214, 224, 226–27, 511–12, 532 Gaufridi Vita Bartholomæi anachoretæ Farnensis (Geoffrey of Durham) 470–71 gazelle 220 De Genesi ad Litteram (Augustine of Hippo) 15–17, 22, 23 De Genesi ad Litteram libri duodecim (Augustine of Hippo) 73 De Genesi contra Manichaeos (Augustine of Hippo) 18–19, 29 Genesis, Book of 9–47, 51, 53, 73, 112, 135, 145, 278–79, 289, 303, 344, 361, 381, 578 Geoffroy de La Tour Landry 407 Geoffrey of Durham [of Coldingham] 470–71 Geoffrey of Monmouth 161n, 380 Gerald of Wales 317–19, 320, 323–26, 330 Gerard of Cremona 149–50 Gervase of Tilbury 118–19 Gesta Danorum (Saxo Grammaticus) 331, 582–83 Gesta Dei per Francos (Guibert de Nogent) 554–55 Gesta Episcoporum Leodiensium (Anselm of Liège) 382–83 Gesta Friderici Imperatoris (cont. by Rahewin) 591–92 Gesta Karoli (Notker the Stammerer)  200–02, 495 Gesta Regum Anglorum (William of Malmesbury) 496–97 Gesta Romanorum 445, 492n Gesta Tancredi in Expeditione Hierosolymitana (Ralph of Caen)  377–78, 549

724 Gian Galeazzo, duke of Milan 223–24 gicht [infirmity] 417, 421 Gilbert de Clare, earl of Hereford 277 Gilbert of Poitiers 375 Gilbertus Anglicus 426–27, 430–31, 442, 444 gluttony 151, 345, 351–52, 364–68, 514 goat 23, 33, 44, 116, 137, 166–67, 169, 179, 184, 190, 195, 206, 220, 226, 244, 267n, 269, 283, 295–96, 300, 305–06, 324, 352, 362, 374, 389, 416–17, 430, 440–41 God 1, 4, 8–20, 23–25, 28–32, 34, 36–40, 42–44, 50–55, 59, 62, 64, 68–73, 76–77, 111–14, 117, 120, 127–28, 132, 135, 137, 141–45, 147, 152, 160, 163–64, 193, 202–03, 228, 231–32, 234–35, 244, 247–49, 257, 259, 278–82, 289–93, 298–99, 306–08, 310, 318–19, 322, 325, 328, 330, 346–47, 349, 354, 360–61, 368, 370, 375, 393, 407, 412–13, 416, 420–21, 423, 442, 450, 451n, 454–55, 458–70, 474–76, 479–85, 488–92, 507–08, 513–14, 522, 553, 560, 570, 580, 584–85 Godfrey de Bouillon 551 Y Gododdin (Aneirin) 571–72 Godric of Finchale, hermit and saint 465, 473–74 God’s House Hospital of St Julian, Southampton 372–73 goose 107, 170, 262, 410, 417–18, 497, 561–62 Goscelin of Saint-Bertin 479–82, 522 Gottfried von Strassburg 212–13 gout 394, 416–17, 421n, 422, 430–31 Grafton, Richard 452 Grágás 265–67, 504 Gratian 248, 260, 322, 353, 372 Grégori Bechada 578–79 Gregory of Nazianzus 138 Gregory of Nyssa, saint 19–20, 55 Gregory of Tours, bishop 164 Gregory I the Great, pope, saint 115–16, 144, 289, 364–66, 376, 460–63 Gregory III, pope 357 Gregory XIII, pope 77 griffin 38, 158, fig. 24 Groß, Johan Georg 288 Gudwal, saint 478n Guiart de Moulin 36–38

Index Guilbert de Nogent 554–55 Guicennas 225 Guillaume le Clerc 126–27 Guinefort, canine saint 492–93 Guiot de Provins 372 Gulatingslov 228, 266, 272–73 Gundobad, king of the Burgundians 252 Guthlac, hermit and saint 467–69 Hadrian, pope 357 Hadrian, Roman emperor 476 Håkon the Good, king of Norway 356 Håkon VI, king of Norway 265–66 Halmote Court Rolls of the Prior and Convent of Durham 177–78 Haly Abbas [Alī ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Majūsī] 422n Hanno, elephant 502–04 Harald Fairhair, king of Norway 313–14, 575–76 Harald Hardrada, king of Norway 568–69 Haraldskvæði (Hrafnsmál) 313–14, 575–76 hare 38–39, 44–45, 70, 82, 102, 116, 130, 139–40, 149, 152, 159, 188, 191–92, 195, 204–06, 209, 220, 231, 233–34, 236, 238, 243–44, 341–42, 352, 360, 364, 414, 430, 491, 499, 512 hart. See stag Harun-al-Raschid, caliph of Baghdad 192, 201–02, 495 Harz 228 Háttatal 2 (Snorri Sturluson) 156 hawk 131–32, 149, 194, 196–98, 203, 216, 218–23, 224n, 227, 263–64, 415, 432, 437, 471–72, 505–06, 522, 533, 573, 575 hedgehog 120, 497 Heimskringla (Snorri Sturluson) 313, 356n, 568–69, 575n hen. See chicken Henri de Ferrières 116–17, 159, 206–07, 214–15 Henry I “the Fowler”, king of Germany  275n Henry I, king of England 126, 232, 496–97 Henry II, king of England 119n, 276, 509, 558 Henry II, king of Germany and emperor 536

Index Henry III, king of England 187, 232, 238, 259, 497–99 Henry III, king of France 501 Henry V, king of England 373–74, 529, 585 Henry VII, king of England 187 Henry of Ghent 74n Henry Percy, fifth earl of Northumberland 391–93 Henryson, Robert 333, 335–37, 341 heraldry 157–62, 306, 358 herpes estiomenus, disease 442 heron 45, 132–33, 393, 398, 403, 521 herring 196, 399, 405 Hervarar Saga ok Heiðreks 356 Hesdin, park in Artois 191–93, 404, 530 Hesdin, Accounts of the Château 193, 530 Hexameron (Ambrose of Milan) 122, 124n, 130, 345–46 Hexameron (Basil of Caesaria) 19, 112, 122 Hildegard of Bingen, abbess and saint 347, 368, 390, 419, 420–21 Hippiatria sive Marescalia (Lorenzo Rusio) 433–34, 440 Hippiatrica 433 Hippocrates 10, 426 Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal 555–56, 558–59 Historia (Richer of Saint-Rémi) 443, 563–64, 566 Historia Animalium (Aelian) 119n Historia Animalium (Aristotle) 23n, 64, 123, 426, 440n, 544 Historia Ecclesiatica (Orderic Vitalis) 590–91 Historia Francorum (Gregory of Tours) 164 Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem (Raymond of Aguilers) 374–75 Historia Hierosolymitana (Fulcher of Chartres) 377 Historia Naturalis (Pliny) 117–18, 119n, 124, 297 Historia Rerum Anglicarum (William of Newburgh) 232, 329 Historia Rerum Britanniae (Geoffrey of Monmouth) 380 Historia Scholastica (Peter Comestor) 8, 29–31, 35–37 Historiae Libri X (Leo the Deacon) 315–16

725 Historiarum ab Inclinatione Romanorum Imperii (Flavio Bondio) 500 Historiarum sui Temporis Libri Quinque (Ralph Glaber) 564 Hogge of Ware, fictional cookshop owner 386, 409 Homer 62, 543n Homilies on the Book of Ezekiel (Gregory I) 376 Homilies on Genesis (John Chrysostom) 40, 140, 361 Homily: Dominica II post Pasca (Aelfric) 141–42 Honorius III, pope 77 Honorius Augustodunensis 376 hook (as animal-taker) 194, 196, 215, 483 horse 21, 33, 43–44, 64, 97, 114–15, 123, 139–40, 148, 150, 152, 156–59, 169, 171–74, 179, 184–85, 190, 196, 198–99, 201–02, 210–11, 215–19, 224, 242, 250, 253–58, 262–64, 266, 269–70, 275, 277, 283, 285, 296, 301–02, 306, 309, 311n, 315, 339–40, 346, 351–52, 355–57, 362, 373–75, 404, 408, 432–36, 438, 440, 447, 482, 484, 501, 505, 507, 509, 511–12, 530n, 532–36, 539–40, 544–65, 571, 576n, 578, 580–86, 589 The Horse, the Goose and the Sheep (John Lydgate) 561–62  hound. See dog Hoyer of Falkenstein, count 260 Hrólf Kraki, mythical king 314–15 Hrólfs saga kraka 314–15 Hubert, bishop of Liège and saint 476–77, 513 Hugh of Fouilloy 131–33 Hugh of Rhuddlan 556 Hugh of St Victor 8, 41–44, 113–14, 194–95 humanism 49, 528 humoural theory, humours 24, 27, 59, 151, 387–88, 390, 395, 412–13, 420–21, 425, 427, 429, 443, 445–46, 455 Humbert of Romans 143–45 hunting 32, 44, 116–17, 133, 137, 139–41, 155, 160–62, 167, 186–92, 194–246, 271–77, 321, 341, 343–44, 355, 380, 390, 432, 437, 465–67, 477–78, 485, 487, 500, 505, 509, 511–12, 514, 522–23, 530

726 hunting treatises 116–17, 199, 203–07, 209–12, 214–23, 225–27, 437, 511–12, 531–32 Husbandry (anon.) 169–70 Husbandry (Walter of Henley) 173–75 hybrid human-nonhuman animals 164, 296–97, 300–306, fig. 24 hyena 415 Iamblichus 61, 69 Ibn Butlan fig. 4 Illtud, saint 465–67 Indica (Ctesias) 123 Inge, king in Sweden 356 Innocent III, pope 371 Innocent IV, pope 500 insects. See also bees and ants 53, 58, 92–93, 97, 101, 274, 279–81, 338, 362, 452, 567–68, 586, fig. 21 Ipomedon (Hugh of Rhuddlan) 556 Isagoge (Porphyry) 56–57 In principium Genesis (Bede) 10–12, 14, 29, 31 Isabeau (Isabelle), queen of France 528–29 Isabella, queen of Castile and Spain 350 Isabella d’Este, marchioness of Mantua 225–26, 515, 526–28 Isaiah, Book of 125, 145, 361n Isembart, count of Autun 200–01 Isidore of Seville, bishop and saint 51–54, 58, 120, 122, 124–25, 127, 132, 135, 161, 163–64, 248, 299–300, 308–09, 413, 415, 497, 515n Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi 583–84 Iudicia Theodori 352–53 Ivo of Chartres 322–23 J. de Pleine, official of Philip the Good 403–04 Jacobus of Voragine 477–78 Jacquerie 234 Jacme d’Agramont 450–52, 586 Jacques de Brézé 512–13 Jacques de Vitry, bishop and cardinal  145–46, 410 Jane Scrope, nun 521, 524–25 Janus 326–28

Index Japheth 44–45 Jean de Berry 499 Jean de Garlande  521 Jehan de Seure, knight 532 John II, king of France 497 Jerome, saint 7, 14n, 302, 359–61, 364, 368, 415, 459–61 Jesu Ali (Issa ben Ali) 432n Jews 126, 347–50, 354, 364–65, 377, 382, 384–85, 452 Jocelyn of Furness 325, 474–76 Job, Book of 111–12, 115–16, 131, 144–46, 289, 474 John, king of England 188, 318, 497 John Chrysostom, saint 40, 140, 348, 361 John Davies, attorney of King James I in Ireland 190, 537 John, Gospel of 10n, 125, 136, 141, 310, 383, 466n, 481 John of Gaddesdon 427–28 John of Salisbury 25n, 232, 252, 242–45, 248 John of Trillek, bishop of Hereford 191–92 John Tzimiskes, emperor of Byzantium 315–16 John of Worcester 448 Jonas of Susa 463–64 Judges, Book of 353 Justin of Lippstadt 535 Justinger, Conrad 159–60 Justinian I, East Roman emperor 247, 253 Justinianic plague 452n Jyske Lov 175–76 Kalender of the Shepeherdes 445–46 Kalends 326–27 Kentigern, saint 474–76 king fish 119 Kirialax Saga 332 Kitāb Kāmil aṣ-Ṣināʿa aṭ-Ṭibbiyya (Haly Abbas) 422n kite 45, 336–37, 500 ‘Knight, Death and the Devil’, engraving by Albrecht Dürer 547 knight fish 119 Koine, heath in Germany 228 Kong Valdemars Jordebog 175 Konrad, king of Germany and Sicily 433 Konrad of Megenburg 137

Index Konungs skuggsjá 306, 317–18 Kurze Baßler Chronick (Johan Georg Groß) 288 Lactantius 73 ‘Lady with an ermine’, painting 532 lamb 89, 96, 101, 125, 152, 170, 178–79, 220, 262, 304, 382, 388, 445, 481, 530 lamprey 196 Langland, William 394 lark 191, 220, 363, 392, 398, 521, 523–24 De Laudibus Sapientiae Divinae (Alexander of Neckham) 538–39 Lausanne, bishop of 280–81 law, natural 247–49, 273 Laws of Alfred 256 leech 279n, 416, 429 Leechbook of Bald 418–19 Legenda Aurea (Jacobus of Voragine) 477–78 Leges Barbarorum 252–56, 263 De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ (Henry of Bracton) 257–58, 273–75, 357, 533 Lemaire, Jean 528 Leo VI, Byzantine emperor 586 Leo X, pope 501–04 Leo the Deacon, secretary to John Tzimiskes 315–16 Leonardo da Vinci 133–35, 532 leontiasis, disease 442–43 leopard 44, 149–50, 158, 160–61, 223–24, 416, 460, 496, 498–500, 502, 529, fig. 14 leprosy 420–21, 442–43, 462 Leviticus, Book 36, 43n, 53, 278–79, 322–23, 348–49, 353n Lex Burgundionum 252–54 Lex Romana Burgundionum 252 Lex Visigothorum 252n, 254–56, 264, 350 Libellus de Admirandis Beati Cuthberti Virtutibus (Reginald of Durham) 471–72 Libellus de Arte Coquinaria 385 Libellus de Imaginibus Deorum 445 Libellus de Vita et Miraculis Sancti Godrici, Heremite de Finchale (Reginald of Durham) 473–74 Liber Almansoris 149–50 Liber de Coquina 385

727 Liber de Mensuris Orbis Terrae (Dicuil) 496 Liber de Natura Rerum (Thomas of Cantimpre) 137–38, 301–02, 440–41, 544 Liber Memorabilium (Solinus) 122 Liber Phisionomie (Michael Scot) 151 Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis (Agnellus of Ravenna) 447 Liber Ruralium Commodorum (Pietro de’ Creszenzi) 32–33, 172–73, 438 De Libero Arbitrio (Augustine of Hippo) 73–76 Libro de Buen Amor (Jan Ruiz) 332–33 Libro de la Montería (Alfonso XI) 211–12, 222–23 El Libre del Ordre de Cavalleria (Ramón Llull) 551–52 lime (as bird-trap) 194, 196 lion 13, 23, 27, 38, 39, 44, 53, 63–64, 107–08, 114, 128n, 130, 143, 149–50, 152, 158–161, 184–85, 201–02, 244, 305, 340, 376, 402, 404–05, 414, 416, 443, 445–46, 460–61, 476, 481, 495–502, 532, 561, figs. 14, 19, 20, 24 Lippiflorium (Justin of Lippstadt) 535 Livre de Chasse (Gaston Fébus) 205, 209–11, 226–27, 511–12 Livre pour l’Enseignement de ses Filles du Chevalier de La Tour Landry (Geoffrey de la Tour Landry) 407 Le Livre de Roi Modus et de la Reine Ratio (Henri de Ferrières) 116–17, 206–08, 214–15 Llewelyn, prince of Gwynedd 580–81 Llibre de Consolat dels fets maritims 517–18 Llyvyr Taliessin 571 lobster 196 Lodewijk van Welthem 554 Loneti, Theobald 429 Loudon Hill, battle 560–61 Louis I, emperor 547 Louis IV, d’Outremer 443 Louis IX, king of France and saint 407, 498, 530, 585 Louis X, king of France 498 Louis XI, king of France 500–501, 512 louse 362, 452, fig. 21 Loutfut, Adam 160–61 Loxus 149–50

728 Lucan 127 Lucidarius (Honorius Augustodunensis) 376 Ludovico II Gonzaga, marquis of Mantua 527 Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan 532 Luke, Gospel of 366, 369–70, 466n, 481n De Lupo et Cane (Walter the Englishman) 334 Luttrel Psalter 547, fig. 25 Lutwin 36–37 Lydgate, John 561–62 lynx 82, 191, 275, 496, 498, 500 Machiavelli 198 Macrobius 62–63 Máedóc, saint 487–89 Magetheide, Germany 228 Magisterium divinale et sapientiale (William of Auvergne) 250 De Magnalibus Mediolani (Bonvesin de la Riva) 567 Magnus Erikssons Landslag 178–79, 274n Mahaut [Mathilda], countess of Artois 193, 530 Maldon, battle 330 Mallory, Thomas 213–14 Manfred, king of Sicily 148, 557–58 Manichaeans 18, 29, 74, 365, 383, 385 manorial courts 290 mantichore 123–24, 128, fig. 24 Manuel I, king of Portugal 502 Marechaucie (Jordanes Rufus) 433–35 Margaret of Austria, princess and duchess of Savoy 528 Marianus IV, judge/king of Arborea 269 Marie de France 320–21, 333, 335, 336n Marius, bishop of Avranches 447 Mark, Gospel of 353, 366n, 481 marmoset 45 Martin V, pope 395 Martin Gil, huntsman 212 martlet 159 The Master of Game (Edward of York)  205, 215–16, 218, 380–81, 437, 514, 531–32, fig. 5 Mathieu d’Escouchy 404

Index Matthew, Gospel of 112, 144, 289n, 353–54, 366n, 584 Matthew Paris 497–98, 500 meat 45, 168–69, 172, 182, 184, 190, 197–99, 215, 224, 237–40, 246, 273, 290, 343–57, 359–64, 367–82, 384–86, 388–94, 396–403, 405–07, 409–11, 420–21, 438–39, 441, 446–47, 498, 511, 523n, 529, 579, 584–85, 589 medication 59, 147n, 175, 364, 387–90, 395, 412–24, 427–33, 435–38, 441, figs 4, 10 Melion 320 Mémoires (Philippe de Commymes) 500–01 Memoires (Olivier de la Marche) 404–05 Memoirs of Usāmah ibn-Munqidh 550 menageries 191, 480, 494–504, 522, 528, 530, 533 Ménagier de Paris 220, 227, 399 metamorphosis 296–97, 307–21 metempsychosis 314–15 Michael Savanorola 154 Michael Scot 151 Midrash on Psalms 348–49 Midrash Tanhuma 445 military equipment 154–57, 555, 562–63, 566–67 De Mineralibus (Albertus Magnus) 60 minnow 196  De Mirabilibus Hibernie (Patricius / Gilla Patrick) 317–20 Mirk, John 367–68 Modus, ‘King’ 116–117, 206, 214–15, 235 mole 279n, 282n, 283, 426 de Mondeville, Henri 431, 444 Moneta of Cremona 384 monk fish 118–19 monkey. See ape monkeys, mechanical 193 monasteries 7, 122, 305, 309, 370–72, 385, 413, 415, 416–20, 423, 436, 458, 461–64, 466, 469, 479n, 480–81, 519, 522–24, 550 monsters 118, 154, 163, 297–306, 326–27, 329, 405, 482–84, 577 de Montaigne, Michel 541 Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian (Robert Henryson) 333–34

729

Index Morgarten, battle 561 Moriae Encomium (Erasmus) 245–46 Le Morte d’Arthur (Thomas Mallory) 214 Moses 13, 42, 43n, 112, 136, 349, 360 Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides) 2 mouse 45, 152, 177, 336–37, 341, 351, 374, 515–16, 518 Muirchú maccu Machtheni 484–85 mule 42, 179, 185–86, 201, 283, 309, 339, 346, 501, 551, 578, 581, 583 De Multro, Traditione et Occisione Gloriosi Karoli Comitus Flandriarum (Galbert of Bruges) 557 murrain 411, 448–49, 456–57, fig. 21 mussel 196 mutilation of animals 293, 357, 532–34, 552, fig. 27 A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen 365–67 Names of All Manner of Hounds 531–32 Daß Narrenschyff (Sebastian Brant) 505–06 De Natura Hominis (Nemesius) 20–22, 64, 69–70 De Natura rerum (Isidore of Seville) 51–52 De Natura rerum (Thomas of Cantimpre) 60, 137–38, 301–02, 440–41, 544 Naturalis Historia (Pliny) 117–19, 124n, 297 De Naturis Rerum (Alexander Neckham) 118, 136–37, 536–39 Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon 306 Nemesius of Emessa, bishop 20–22, 64, 69–70, 83, 109 Neoplatonism 24–25, 49, 58, 60–63, 68, 71, 76 nets 146–47, 194–97, 199, 211, 233, 236, 241, 352 New Testament 7, 49, 347, 384 Nicholas of Vaudémont 109–10 nightingale 337–38, 509 Nigel of Longchamp (Nigel Wireker) 338–39 Njáls saga 539–40 Noah 40–41, 43–46, 278, 280, 445, fig. 2 Norbert of Xanten, saint 478n Notitia Dignitatum 156 Notker the Stammerer 200–02, 211, 495

Novus Aesopus (Alexander Neckham) 333 noxal surrender 251, 253, 256, 261, 268 Numbers, Book of 458n, 475 Nuremburg Chronicle 543 Oðinn 312 Les Oeuvres de Guiot de Provins 372 offal 344, 370, 397, 510, 584 Old Testament 9, 14, 43n, 55, 127, 250, 278, 348, 382 Olga, Rus princess 569 Olivier de la Marche 404–05 onager 52–53 onocentaur 301–02 Onulf of Speyer 536 De Opificio Hominis (Gregory of Nyssa) 19–20 Orderic Vitalis 590–91 Ordinationes et reformationes pro bono regimine monacorum Nigrorum ordinis S. Benedict (Benedict XII) 371–72 Oresme, Nicholas 66–67 Origen 14–15 Origo Mundi [Cornish Ordinali] 43, 46–47 Orlando Furioso (Ludovico Ariosto) 563 Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland (Andrew of Wyntoun) 378 ostrich 38, 416, 474, 499 otter 41, 44, 117, 191, 206, 215, 236 Otia Imperialia (Gervase of Tilbury) 118–19 Ottokar II, king of Bohemia 361n Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Sextus Empiricus) 129 Ovid 53, 243n, 309, 326n, 524, 543n owl 45, 152, 337–38, 420, 500, 529 The Owl and the Nightingale 337–38 ox 13, 33, 44, 63, 114, 115n, 125, 140, 146, 166–69, 171–74, 178–79, 184–85, 236n, 242, 253, 255–62, 268, 278–79, 283, 285, 325–26, 362, 388, 416, 419, 447, 455, 465, 513, 566–67, 578, 581, fig. 4 oyster 66, 134, 196, 399 Page, John 373–74 Pangur Bán 515–17 pannage 167 Panormia (attrib. Ivo of Chartres) 322

730 Pantegni (Constantine the African) 422–24, 442 panther 128, 244, 500, 502, fig. 14 De Paradiso (Ambrose of Milan) 28–29 parks 167, 186–93, 225, 227, 229–30, 232–33, 237, 241–42, 271, 275, 277, 357, 494–95, 533–34, figs. 5, 7, 28 Parlement of the Thre Ages 239–41 parrot 502, 528–29 partridge 149–50, 191–92, 220, 226–27, 233, 392, 398, 403, 521 Parzival (Wolfram von Eschenbach) 552 Patricius 319–20 Patrick, missionary and saint 461, 484–85 Paul, apostle and saint 7n, 9, 40, 42, 112, 121, 143, 347, 348n, 349–50, 354, 360, 364, 383–84, 416 Paul of Concordia, desert father 302, 459–60 Paul, earl of Orkney 496 Paul Warnefrid 368 Pausanius 123 peacock 45, 134–35, 149, 170, 393, 398, 403, 416, 521, 561 Peasants’ Revolt 232, 234 Peasants’ War 234–35 pelican 136–37, 159, figs. 13, 24 Paenitentiale Umbrense 352–53, 355, 377 Penitential, Old Irish 351–52 Pentateuch 7n, 9, 43n, 57 Periphyseon (Johannes Scotus Eriugena) 76–79 pestilence 168, 281, 291, 428–29, 446– 57, 580, 586 Peter, apostle and saint 353, 384 Peter Abelard 94n Peter Alphonso 349 Peter Comestor 8, 30, 36 Peter Damian 415–16, 440, 519–20 Peter John Olivi 74n, 98–100 Peter Lombard 49, 248, 375 Peter of Abano 151 Peter of Blois 442 Peter of Kottbus 454–55 Peter of Poitiers 375 Peter the Hermit 551 Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny 370, 384, 436

Index Phaedrus 145, 333 Pharsalia (Lucan) 127n pheasant 191–92, 233, 360, 393, 395, 398, 403–05, 416, 499, 521 Philip III, king of France 498 Philip IV, king of France 498–99 Philip VI, king of France 498 Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy 499 Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy 193, 285, 403–05 Philippe de Commynes 500–01 Philippe of Thaon 126 Philoponus 68 phlebotomy 413, 423, 429, 432, 436 phoenix 128–29, 159 Physica (Hildegard of Bingen) 390, 420–21 Physiognomonia (Anonymous Latinus) 149–51 Physiognomonica (Pseudo-Aristotle) 148–49 physiognomy 66–67, 147–54, 337, 435 Physiologus 52, 119–23, 128, 130n, 137, 519, fig. 11 Pickering Forest 187, 229–30 Pierre de Beauvais 124 Piers Plowman (William Langland) 394 Pietro de’ Crescenzi 32–33, 172–73, 176, 438 Pietro della Vigna 570 Pietro Lorenzetti, artist 506 pig [domestic] 13, 33, 43–44, 140, 153, 167–70, 167, 171, 174–75, 177–79, 189–90, 220, 242, 253–54, 256, 261–62, 283–87, 289, 296, 305, 347, 352–53, 355, 362, 366, 389–90, 392, 394, 397n, 401–02, 411, 414–17, 419, 423–25, 428, 440, 443–45, 447, 450, 455, 479, 485–86, 509, fig. 22 pigeon 45–47, 107, 131–32, 152, 220, 234, 274, 391, 428, 432, 461, 481, 490, 499, 577–78, fig. 2 pike [fish] 196, 389, 399, 405, 411 pisces. See fish  pit [as animal trap] 194, 211, 215, 226–27 plague. See pestilence plaice 196, 389 Plato 25, 57n, 60–62, 67–69, 73, 85, 146n, 153–54, 505n Pliny 117–19, 124, 127, 152, 297, 299, 415, 496–97, 502, 543n

Index Plotinus 61, 62n Plutarch 4, 119 poaching 191–92, 199, 229, 233, 237–42 poison 31, 94, 134–35, 215, 288, 309, 360, 418–19, 428–29, 446, 451, 455–56, 473, 492, 518, 572, 579, 586 polecat 44, 421 Polemon 149–50, 153 Policraticus (John of Salisbury) 232, 242–45, 248 Polyhistor [Liber Memorabilium, Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium] (Solinus) 122, 124n Poppo, abbot of Stavelot and saint 536 porcupine 496–97, 499 Porphyry 4, 56–57, 69 Practica Chirurgiae (Roger Frugard) 443 Practica inquisitionis heretice pravitatis (Bernard Gui) 385 Primus of Görlitz 455–56 Il Principe (Machiavelli) 198 Proclus 61, 63 Prophets, Books of 7n De Proprietatibus Rerum (Bartholomeus Anglicus) 58–60, 300–301, 535, 548–49 Proverbs, Book of 115, 407, 470, 475, 521 Psalms, Book of 7n, 43n, 116n, 125, 127, 135, 145, 480–81 Pseudo-Aristotle 150 Pseudo-Dionysius the Aeropagite 24n, 63–64, 114–15 Pseudo-Oppian (Oppian of Aramea) 199 poultry. See also cock, hen, chicken, goose 391, 398n, 400–01 Ptolemy II Philadelphus, pharoah 494 pygmy 92, 94–95, 543–44 quadrivium 49 quadrupeds 17–18, 23, 52–53, 58, 77, 159, 179, 254, 301, 305, 323, 368–70, 378–79, 395, 414, 441, 578 quail 227, 360, 392, 398 Quaestiones Disputatae de Potentia Dei (Thomas Aquinas) 381–82 Quaestiones in Secundum Librum Sentenarium (Peter John Olivi) 98–100 De Quantitate Animae (Augustine of Hippo) 71–73

731 Questiones Naturales (Adelard of Bath) 55, 79–81, 541–42 Rabanus Maurus 58, 122, 132, 135–36, 368, 586 rabbit 191–92, 220, 233, 364, 369, 389, 398, 403, 417, 491, 522, fig. 7 Rahewin 591–92 Ralph Glaber 563–64 Ralph of Caen 377–78, 549 Ratio, “queen” 116–17, 207–08 Ratramnus 302–03 Ramón Llull 183–85, 551–52 De Raptu Proserpinae (Claudian) 124 rat 45, 279n, 290n, 373–74, 437, 441, 452, 517–18 raven 45–46, 144–45, 156–57, 312–13, 351, 469, 481, 571–76 Raymond of Aguilers 374–75, 584 De Re Coquinaria (attrib. Apicius) 385 De Rebus Alsaticis Ineuntis Saeculi XIII  499 Recceswinth, king of the Visigoths 350 redshank 45, 393 refuse 44, 408, 410–11, 451–52 Régime du corps (Aldebrandino of Sienna) 151 Regimen Pestilenciale (Primus of Görlitz) 455–56 Regimen Sanitatis (Maino de Maineri) 386 Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum 386, 388–89 Regiment de preservació a epidèmia o pestilència e mortaldats (Jacme d’Agramont) 450–52, 586 Reginald of Durham 469–74 Regino of Prüm, abbot 309–10, 327 Registrum Coquine (Johannes Bockenheim) 395–96 Registrum Johannis de Trillek Episcopi Herefordensis 191–92 Reichenau Abbey 515–16 reindeer 501 reptiles 17–18, 23, 40, 44, 57n, 77–78, 135, 150, 283, 441, 491, fig. 15 The Republic (Plato) 73, 505n Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres (Varro) 32–33 res nullius 232, 271, 276

732 Rules [of St Robert] (Robert Grosseteste) 406 Revelations of John 360 Reynard the fox 336, 339–42, 393n, 510, 531, fig. 20 Rhazes 149 rhinoceros 115–16, 502, 538 Richard I “Coeur de lion”, king of England 558–59 Richard II, king of England 162–63, 232–33 Richard de Fournival 124, 160 Richard le Pèlerin 578–79 Richard of Southwick, merchant 526 Richard of Sutcherche 569 Richard the Redeless 162–63 Richer of Saint-Rémi 443, 563–64, 566 Robert, duke of Normandy 389n, 551 Robert I Bruce, king of Scotland 560–61 Robert II of Artois, count 191, 192–93, 530, 554 Robert of Coquina, bishop of Durham 520–21 Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln 328, 406 Rochester Bestiary 550 rodents 44, 278, 452–53, 515, 517–19, 531 Roger II, king of Sicily 423 Roland L’Ecrivain 151 Roland of Parma 444 Roman de Renart 340–42 Romans, Paul’s Epistle to 42, 112, 143, 347, 360–61 Rosa medicinae (John of Gaddesdon)  427–28, 431 Ruiz, Jan 332–33 Rule of St Benedict 368–69, 371 Rule of Columbanus 368–69 Rule of the Master 368 Rouen, Siege of (1418–19) 373–74 Rufus, Jordanes 433–34, 436, 440 Rusio, Lorenzo 435–36 Sachsenspiegel 228, 235, 260–62 Sacrifice-Sven, king in Uppland 356 Saladino Ferro d’Asculi 456 Salic Law 252 Salimbene of Parma 569, 570n salmon 196, 363, 405

Index Saltair na Rann 34–35 Epistula LXXIX ad Salvinam (Jerome) 360–61 Saxo Grammaticus 331, 550, 581–83 scala naturae 20, 22, 58–67, 106, 332, 340, 426–27, 543n Schilling, Diebold 280–81 scorpion 135, 305, 309, 422, 460 scrofula 420, 443–44 seal (animal) 41, 273, 485 Secreta et consilia Carnificis et Danszon 428 Secretum Secretorum 151–52, 387–88 On Sects for Beginners (Galen) 413 seiðr 315 Senchus Már 264–65 Seneschaucy 171–72 Sententiae in Quatuor IV Libris Distinctae (Peter Lombard) 376, 507 Sermo CXCII: On the Calends of January (Caesarius of Arles) 326–27 Sermo LXVIII (Augustine of Hippo) 112–13 Sermones contra Catharos, Sermo I (Eckbert of Schönau) 384 Sermones feriales et communes (Jacques de Vitry) 145–46 Sermones vulgares (Jacques de Vitry) 410 serpent. See snake The Seven Sages of Rome 492n Sextus Empiricus 129 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 187, 208, 528n sheep 33, 43–44, 89–92, 125, 141–42, 159, 166–69, 179–80, 182–84, 190, 220, 235, 246, 256, 267, 269, 283, 296, 305, 319, 327, 331, 362, 366, 381, 389, 394, 411, 428, 435, 439, 445–47, 449, 455, 462, 479, 487–88, 530, 561, 589 shellfish 12, 21, 65–66, 134, 397 Shem 44–46 The Ship of Fools. See Daß Narrenschyff siege tower 566 Sigismund, king of the Burgundians 252 Sigmundr, mythical king 311–12 Silvanus 306 Siviard 465–66 Skånske Lov 263–64 Skelton, John 524–25 snail 279n, 338, 362, 419, 438

Index snake 17, 33–36, 53, 58, 60, 94, 100, 129, 131, 135–36, 140, 151, 164, 185, 278, 279n, 288, 306, 362, 402, 404, 415–16, 418, 441–42, 453, 459–60, 465, 473–74, 492, 518 snares 179, 194, 196, 233, 244 Snorri Sturluson 156, 313, 356n, 568–69 sole (fish) 196 Solinus 122, 124 Song of Songs, Book of 120 sparrow 132, 397–98, 461, 475, 521, 524–25 spear 156, 194, 197, 209, 210–11, 225, 237, 258, 313–14, 317, 550, 559–62, 572–74 Speculum Maius (Vincent of Beauvais)  83–84, 137, 195n, 288, 308, 422 Speculum Phisionomie (Michael Savanorola) 151, 154 Speculum Stultorum (Nigel of Longchamp) 338–39 Speculum Vitae 365–66 spider 97, 101, 109, 338, 418–19, 441 sponge 21, 59 squid 417 squirrel 45, 124n, 160, 191, 499, 523, 529 Statutes of the Realm [England] 232–33, 358–59 stoat 160, 421 stag 38, 44, 130, 146, 159, 162–63, 191, 195, 204–06, 209–11, 213, 226, 231, 239–40, 243, 327, 349, 352, 404, 467, 476–78, 480–81, 488, 501, 511, 531, fig. 9 Stephen of Bourbon, Dominican inquisitor 492–93 Stoics 49, 71, 94n, 129, 247, 379n, 479 sturgeon 196, 363 Summa de arte praedicandi (Thomas of Chobham) 32, 143 Summa de Arte Praedicatoria (Alain of Lille) 139 Summa de Creaturis (Albertus Magnus) 248 Summa adversus Catharos et Valdenses (Moneta of Cremona) 384 Summa Aurea (William of Auxerre) 248 Summa Halesensis 54–55, 329 Summa Praedicanteum (John Bromyard) 406 Summa Theologiae (Thomas Aquinas)  22–25, 65, 85–88, 248–49, 289–90, 364–65, 379

733 Summi Magistri (Benedict XII) 371–72 surgery 422–24, 429–32, 438–40 Svend Grade, king of Denmark 581–82 Sviatoslav, ruler of Kiev 315–16 swallow 101, 109, 283, 416, 468–69, 491 swan 45, 130, 221, 357–59, 392–93, 403, 521, 533, 561 sword 155, 157, 192, 200–02, 209–11, 320, 537, 545n, 551, 556–58, 573 Synod of Worms (868) 353 Taillevent [Guillaume Tirel] 400–02 Taktika (Leo VI) 586 Taqwīm aṣ-Ṣiḥḥa fig. 4 Teodorico Bordognoni 429–30 Teruel, Code of 268 Themistius 68 Theodorus 69 therianthropes 296–97 Thessalians 2, epistle of Paul 121 Thomas Aquinas, saint 22–25, 49, 65, 74n, 85–88, 108, 248–49, 251, 282–83, 289–90, 364–65, 378–79, 381–82, 532 Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury 534, fig. 27 Thomas de Cantilupe, bishop of Hereford 277 Thomas of Cantimpre 58, 60, 137–38, 301–02, 440–41, 518, 544 Thomas of Celano 489–91 Thomas of Chobham 31–32, 143 Thomas de Lisle, bishop of Ely 191 thrush 220, 227, 333, 455 tiger 123–24, 202, 244, 305, 404 Timaeus (Plato) 25, 61–62, 73, 83 Timothy, Paul’s Epistle to 23n, 354n, 360–61 Timothy of Gaza 119 toad 288, 336–37, 341, 451, 518 Topographia Hibernica (Gerald of Wales) 317–19, 324–26 tortoise 23, 150–51, 441 Tractatus de Anima (John Blund) 89–92 Tractatus de Diversis Materiis Predicabilibus (Stephen of Bourbon) 492–93 Tractatus de Insigniis et Armis (Bartolo da Sassoferrato) 158 Tractatus de Pestilencia (Peter of Kottbus) 454–55

734 trap (animal) 194, 196–97, 199, 237, 244, 272, 373, 378, 491, 563n Tractatus pestilentialis (Theobald Loneti) 429 Trial of the Fox (Robert Henryson) 336 Tristan (Gottfried von Strassburg) 212–13 Tristram 213–14 trout 196, 389 turtle 107, 152, 431, 521 turtledove 132, 360, 521 The Twelve Articles 234–35 Twiti, William 204–05 Twrch Trwyth, magical great boar 207–08 ulfheðnar 314–15, 576 unicorn 128, 159, fig. 8 universals 91, 95–96, 98, 108 De Universo de Rerum Naturis (Rabanus Maurus) 58, 122, 135–36 Urbanus Magnus (Daniel of Beccles) 509 Urien, king of Rheged 571 Usāmah ibn-Munqidh 550 Valdemar I, king of Denmark 583 Valdemar II, king of Denmark 175 valkyries 312, 313, 574 Van der Vos Reynaert (Willem) 341–342 variole [disease, later usually smallpox] 427–28, 447 Varro, Marcus Terentius 32–33, 163, 172 Vega Real, battle 565 Vegetius 456, 563n, 586–88 De Velitatione Bellica 581 vermes 3, 58, 60, 93, 137–38 Vesalius, Andreas 425 Viandier (Taillevent) 400–402 Vilanni, Giovanni 557–58 Visigothic law code. See Forum Judicum 252n, 254–56, 264, 350 Vita Adae et Evae 37n Vita Ælfredi regis Angul Saxonum (Asser) 202–03 Vita Antonii (Athanasius) 459–60 Vita Beati Francisci (Thomas of Celano) 489–91 Vita Carileffi Abbatis Anisolensis (Siviard) 465–66

Index Vita Caroli Magni (Einhard) 200 Vita Columbae (Adomnán) 482–84 Vita Columbani (Jonas of Susa) 463–64 Vita Kentigerni (Jocelyn of Furness) 474–76 Vita Sanctae Brigitae (Cogitosis) 485–87 Vitae Sanctae Edithae Virginis (Goscelin of Saint-Bertin) 479–82, 522 Vita Sancti Anselmi (Eadmer) 139–40 Vita Sancti Bartholomaei, Farnensis (Geoffrey of Coldingham) 470–71 Vita Sancti Cuthberti (Bede) 469–70 Vita Sancti Finiani 482 Vita Sancti Galli (Walafrid Strabo) 464–65 Vita Sancti Guthlaci (Felix) 468–69 Vita Sancti Iltuti 465–67 Vita Sancti Maedoc Episcopi de Ferna 487–89 Vita Sancti Patricii (Muirchú maccu Machtheni) 484–85 Vita Sancti Pauli Primae Eremitae (Jerome) 460–61 Vita Sancti Popponis Abbatis Stabulensis (Onulf of Speyer) 536 Vita Sancti Tathie 478–79 Vita Waldevi (Jocelyn of Furness) 325 Vivendier 400, 402–03 Les Voeux du paon 403  Völsunga saga 311–12 Von Vier Stricken, Sermo XXX (Berthold of Ratisbon) 146–47 Vincent of Beauvais 57, 83–84, 137, 195n, 288, 308, 422, 518 Voortzetting van der Spiegel Historiael (Lodewijk van Welthem) 554 Walafrid Strabo 464–65 Walter of Henley 173–75 Walter the Englishman 334 Waltharius (Ekkehard I) 550–51 Waltheof, earl of Northumberland 325 warren 188–89, 191–92, 215, 227, 233, 236–38, 271, 522, fig. 7 Wars of the Remences 234 wasp 93, 106, 177, 525 weasel 45, 94, 312, 421–22, 441, 532 Weltchronik (Rudolf Ems) 8, 543 weregild 252, 256, 261

735

Index werewolf 316–21 whale 11–12, 59, 131, 370, 399 wildbann 276 wildcat 191, 236, 514 William I, king of England 230–31, 325, 496, 590–91 William Marshall, earl of Pembroke, regent of England 555–56, 558–59 William of Aragon 148 William of Auvergne 250, 282 William of Auxerre 248 William of Conches 12–13, 25n, 57, 81–83 William, count of Liguria 519–20 William of Malmesbury 496–97 William of Nassington 365–66 William of Newburgh 232, 329 wolf 38, 70, 89–91, 96–97, 101, 117, 140–42, 156–57, 159, 181, 204–07, 214–15, 226, 235–37, 244, 262, 264, 311–14, 317–21,

331, 334, 340–41, 362, 366, 376, 380–81, 402, as disease 442, 445, 460, 476, 478–79, 482, 487, 489, 493, 529–30, 572–75 wolfskins [wolfskin-wearers]. See ulfheðnar woodpecker 420–21 woodwose 306 worm 19, 21, 53, 279n, 338, 362, 419, 480, 560, 577, 586 Wulfthryth, abbess of Wilton and saint 479 Xenophon 199 Xerxes, king of Persia 145n, 163 Zachary, pope 357 zoonotic diseases 446–50, 454–56 zoophilia 294–95, 321–24 Zopyrus, magician 147