Introduction to Medieval Animals

Introduction

The Medieval period is an exceptional moment for the study of human-animal relationships. Many aspects of the political, economical and symbolic realms from medieval societies cannot, in fact, be fully understood without taking animals into consideration. The Spanish sheep economy exemplified by the Mesta would be one such case in point.

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Animals were present in practically every aspect of material life in the Middle Ages, including diet, trade, husbandry, fishing and hunting, industry, trade and transport, warfare, and everyday matters. At the same time, animals were prominent items in various aspects of non material life, including mentality, symbolism, magic, literature and art.

As the Middle Ages lasted for more than a millennium, and encompassed societies of different cultural backgrounds, perceptions concerning animals and their interactions with people were often anything but homogeneous. Space interacted with culture and time to complicate matters further. Such facts notwithstanding, it is true that Christianity did provide an encompassing mentality of sorts - a belief system of shared values- that shaped human attitudes towards animals in Europe to this day. One should nevertheless stress that Medieval societies occasionally held opposite views to those expressed by the Church when it came to valuing animals from a moral standpoint. This was the case of dogs and horses, animals with an often negative symbolic connotation for the Christian religion, that feudalism enthroned as the most appreciated beasts of Medieval times.

A central aspect for understanding human-animal relationships and attitudes towards animals during this period is that Nature was rarely under the control of men, constituting a permanent menace for their life, crops and goods. The fact that large wild animals were far more numerous then than nowadays may partly explain the fear towards Nature but often pests and animal-borne diseases played a more prominent role, in particular during the second half of the Middle Ages.

Information about medieval animals (i.e., “zoohistory”) can be gathered from a wealth of sources. Documentary data are often dispersed and literally buried within texts dealing with other matters. Data often appear on all kinds of literary genders – Bestiaries being a Middle Ages’ favorite - and also in iconographies, but legal texts are a source not to be neglected. When it comes to physical evidence, archaeozoology offers a unique and innovative venue that allows one to deal with aspects often overlooked by the literature, such as the transformation of the environment, and also to contrast documentary data with the material record.

Medieval scholars elaborated different systems of zoological taxonomy, mostly based on the classical sources and often with a more practical than scientific outlook yet some of these paved the way for the scientific classifications that were to follow during the ensuing Modern Age.

Bestiaries, also in their iconographic versions (e.g., in art, iniatures, etc.) constitute the paradigm of symbolic zoology. Here animals were used for the purpose of illustrating religious dogma and moral values. Within such context, faunas served a didactic purpose that taught an essentially illiterate population to imitate good acts and avoid evil ones.

The Medieval World is full of iconic animals. Many of these derive from Christian symbols such as the lamb, the fish and the dove. Others, like the aforementioned dogs and horses, were highly esteemed from feudal times onwards, the later also among the Arabs. Eagles and lions were all time-favorites in armories. Cats and birds, and also dogs, were favored as pets in the Christian lands, where bear and wild boar constituted two of the most popular hunting icons. The Medieval World witnessed the importance given to exotic animals –such as elephants and monkeys - that often became part of an exchange system among kings and noblemen, and who were responsible for the rise of the menageries, the root of our present-day zoos.

Bibliography

• Le Goff, J.(2009): “Los Animales” in Una Edad Media en Imágenes.Paidós. Barcelona.: 182-205.

• Nogales Rincón, D: "El reino animal como gobierno utópico en la Castilla bajomedieval (siglos XIII-XV)", Medievo Utópico. Sueños, ideales y utopías en el imaginario medieval, coord. Martín Alvira Cabrer y Jorge Díaz Ibáñez, Madrid: Sílex Ediciones [en prensa], : 67-86.

• Morales Muñiz, D.C.(1999): “Los animales en el mundo medieval cristiano-occidental: actitud y mentalidad”. Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, III 11 :307-29.

• Morales Muñiz, D.C. (2000): “La Fauna Exótica en la Península Ibérica: apuntes para el estudio del coleccionismo animal en el medievo hispánico” . Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, III, 13: 233-270

• Resl, B.(Ed.)(2007): A cultural History of Animals in the Medieval Age.Berg.Oxford-New York.

• Salisbury, J.E. (1994): The Beast Within. Animals in the Middle Ages. Routledge. Nueva York-Londres.

Author

Dolores Carmen Morales Muñiz