Medieval Hunting

Richard Almond

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780752459493
• eBook ISBN: 9780752474625
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

Hunting was a major economic and leisure activity throughout the later European Middle Ages, but while aristocratic practices have featured in studies of romantic and narrative literature, hunting in its wider sense across the social spectrum and with attendant male and female roles - has largely been ignored by modern medieval historians. Richard Almond's study brings vividly to life the universality and centrality of hunting to medieval societies, both as an economic necessity and as an expression of medieval humanity's almost atavistic sense of oneness with nature. ' Medieval Hunting ' dispels some of the myths and misunderstandings surrounding hunting, including the persistent views that it was exclusively an aristocratic, male pursuit. Using a wide variety of contemporary textual and art historical evidence, Richard Almond shows that hunting, including fishing and poaching, was enjoyed by women as well as men.

Notes

The following abbreviations have been used:

Birrell: Jean Birrell, ‘Peasant deer poachers in the medieval forest’, in Richard Britnell and John Hatcher (eds), Progress and Problems in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 68–88.

BSA facsimile edn: Dame Juliana Berners, The Boke of Saint Albans, 1486, facsimile edition (London, 1899).

Dalby: David Dalby, Lexicon of the Mediaeval German Hunt (Berlin, 1965).

H & H: John Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk, The Art of Medieval Hunting (London, 1988).

Ldc, 616: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Livre de chasse, MS fr. 616.

Ldc, Tilander: Gaston Phébus, Livre de chasse, ed. Gunnar Tilander, Cynegetica, XVIII (Karlshamn, 1971).

MG, 1904: Edward, Duke of York, The Master of Game, ed. W.A. and F. Baillie-Grohman (London, 1904).

MG, 1909: Edward, Duke of York, The Master of Game, ed. W.A. and F. Baillie-Grohman (London, 1909).

Modus: Gunnar Tilander, (ed.), Les Livres du roy Modus et de la royne Ratio, Vol. 1, Société des Anciens Textes Français (Paris, 1932).

Pisanello: Luke Syson and Dillian Gordon, Pisanello, Painter to the Renaissance Court (London, 2002).

PTA: M.Y. Offord, (ed.), The Parlement of the Thre Ages, Early English Text Society No. 246 (London, 1959; repr. 1967).

Tristan: Gottfried von Strassburg Tristan, trans. and ed. A.T. Hatto (London, 1960; repr. 1967).

Introduction

1. Nicholas Orme, Medieval Children (New Haven and London, 2001; repr. 2002), pp. 133 and 155.

2. Linda Colley, Britons, Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven and London, 1992), pp. 170–1.

3. Marcel Thomas and François Avril, The Hunting Book of Gaston Phébus, Commentary by Wilhelm Schlag (London, 1998), p. 18.

4. Roger B. Manning, Hunters and Poachers (Oxford, 1993), p. 116.

5. Ralph Whitlock, Historic Forests (Bradford-on-Avon, 1979), pp.18 and 21.

6. H & H, pp. 57–9.

7. The author is grateful to Professor Anthony J. Pollard for access to, and use of, his unpublished conference paper ‘The 1390 Game Law’.

8. J. Langton and G. Jones (eds.) Forests and Chases of Medieval England and Wales, c.1000–c.1500 (St John’s College Research Centre, Oxford, 2010).

9. Whitlock, Historic Forests, p. 21.

10. Anne Rooney, ‘Hunting in Middle English Literature, 1300–1500’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Trinity College, Cambridge, 1985), p. 3.

11. Richard, Almond, and A.J. Pollard, ‘The Yeomanry of Robin Hood and Social Terminology in Fifteenth-Century England’, Past & Present, No. 170, February 2001, pp. 52–77.

12. J.N. Bartlett, ‘The Expansion and Decline of York in the Later Middle Ages’, Economic History Review, 2nd Series, Vol. XII, 1959–60.

13. H & H, p. 2.

14. Ldc, Tilander, p. 55, fol. 4v. ll. 35–7.

15. PTA, Prologue, p. 1, ll. 7–14.

16. Ldc, Tilander, p. 51, fol. 3, ll. 3–6.

17. William Langland, Piers Plowman, the C-text, ed. Derek Pearsall (London, 1978), Passus IX, p. 170, l. 223.

18. MG, 1904, p. 161.

19. Marcelle Thiébaux, The Stag of Love: The Chase in Medieval Literature (Ithaca and London, 1974), p. 22.

Chapter One

1. Marcel Thomas and François, Avril, The Hunting Book of Gaston Phébus (London, 1998), p. 5.

2. Ldc, Tilander, p. 51, fol. 3, ll. 3–6.

3. John of Salisbury, Policraticus, Bk 1, trans. Joseph B. Pike (London, 1938), pp. 22–5.

4. Ibid., p. 18.

5. MG, 1904, p. 4.

6. Ibid., p. 5.

7. Ibid., p. 69.

8. Nicholas Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry (London, 1984), p. 82.

9. Tristan, pp. 68–71.

10. Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry, p. 84.

11. Ibid., p. 84.

12. Ibid., p. 191.

13. Ibid., p. 193.

14. Marion Wynne-Davies, Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature (London, 1989; repr. 1992), pp. 399–400.

15. Ldc, 616: Reading and learning the names of hounds from scrolls, Ch. 22, fol. 51v. and Practising blowing horns and holloaing, Ch. 26, fol. 54.

16. Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry, p. 41.

17. Nicholas, Orme, Medieval Children (New Haven and London, 2001; repr. 2002), p. 280.

18. Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry, pp. 118 and 191.

19. H & H, p. 176; A.C., Spearing, The Gawain Poet: A Critical Study (Cambridge, 1970), p. 10.

20. William, Langland, Piers Plowman, the C-text, ed. Derek Pearsall (London, 1978), Passus VIII, p. 147, l. 24.

21. Ibid., p. 147, ll. 28–31.

22. Robert P. Miller, (ed.), Chaucer: Sources and Backgrounds (Oxford, 1977), pp. 180 and 182.

23. Philippe Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, trans. Michael Jones (Oxford, 1984), p. 215.

24. Pisanello, p. 85.

25. Spearing, The Gawain Poet: A Critical Study, p. 9.

26. Langland, Piers Plowman, ed. Derek Pearsall, Passus IX, p. 172, l. 264.

27. London, British Library, The Luttrell Psalter, Add. MS 42130, fol. 31.

28. Derek Brewer, Chaucer in his Time (London, 1963), p. 187.

29. William Twiti, The Art of Hunting, 1327, ed. Bror Danielsson (Stockholm, 1977), p. 21.

30. MG, 1904, pp. 202–3.

31. London, British Library, MS Egerton 1146, Calendar for April, fol. 5v.

32. Ldc, 616: Making nets and snares from cord with the aid of a rop...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction
• One: ‘Delite’ and Other Functions
• Two: ‘Lordes to Honte’
• Three: ‘Bestis’ and ‘Crafte’
• Four: Everyman
• Five: Crossing the Barriers
• Six: Medieval Dianas
• Seven: Conclusions
• Notes
• Bibliography