Animals and Hunters in the Late Middle Ages

Evidence from the BnF MS fr. 616 of the Livre de chasse by Gaston Fébus

Hannele Klemettilä

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317551904
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia europea

This book explores views of the natural world in the late Middle Ages, especially as expressed in Livre de chasse (Book of the Hunt), the most influential hunting book of the era. It shows that killing and maiming, suffering and the death of animals were not insignificant topics to late medieval men, but constituted a complex set of issues, and could provoke very contradictory thoughts and feelings that varied according social and cultural milieus and particular cases and circumstances.

Part I
Introduction

1 Introduction

This study explores human-animal relationships and attitudes to animals at the end of the Middle Ages, in particular, as expressed in the MS fr. 616 of Gaston Fébus’ hunting manual. The Livre de chasse was one of the most influential texts of its era—it not only reflected but also shaped and strengthened beliefs, notions, opinions, and mentalities prevalent in France and West Europe.¹ The MS fr. 616 of the Livre de chasse was executed on orders of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, by some of the best illustrators of the early fifteenth century. Their unusually elaborate illuminations supported well Fébus’ advice and messages, and they can provide us valuable glimpses to beliefs, opinions, and ideals of late medieval men.

Aims, Objectives, and Hypotheses

For many years, I specialised in late medieval ways to perceive violence, death, and suffering (in particular, from the angle of criminal justice, but also more generally), and so when I started researching for this monograph, my hypothesis was that general attitudes must have reflected, at least to some extent, to ways of viewing hunting, hunters, and the wild game.² I was not convinced by claims of those scholars who asserted that before the early modern era, Europeans were not able to identify with beasts, or to see them with sympathetic eyes.³ I considered such “Eliasian” approaches and views as outdated and erroneous and felt that a lot of nuancing was needed.

Inspired by the example, methodologies, and approaches of the pioneers of cultural history and microhistory, I thought that close-reading of the MS fr. 616 of Livre de chasse, together with other relevant primary sources, could bring up fruitful clues and evidence supporting my hypothesis. The plan was to search for answers to larger questions by taking as a starting point one very special manuscript source.

I have no intention to go deep into the technical details of medieval hunting, in the present study, because these have been studied by experts, previously. Instead, I will focus on detecting and interpreting the ways of thinking and feeling about encounters between men and beasts; how the hunted and the hunters were depicted, classified, and ranked in the text and images of MS fr. 616; and why—what were the cultural background factors behind the logic and visions of men who lived more than six hundred years before us?

Gaston Fébus wrote his “bestseller” during an era when the sensitivity to animals and nature had become a central feature in West Europe. Larger game and woodlands suitable for their needs and for the aristocratic hunt had declined significantly as a result of advancing clearance and settlement. The importance of ownership and right to use hunting lands (forests, woods, chases, private parks, etc.), for the chase, and as markers of status, wealth, and power, had augmented, and animals related to hunting received new meanings and symbolic or practical functions. These changes reflected not only the perceived alterations in flora and fauna of West European forests but also ruptures and shifts in social and economic systems, in fashions, values, and at ideological levels, and had notable effects on Gaston Fébus’ thinking and work.

Structure, Terminology, and Language

The present study consists of an Introduction, three main parts, and a Conclusion.

Chapter 2 explores the ways of classifying and describing the game (the many divisions and hierarchies created or shared by Gaston Fébus and other authors, experts, and natural historians) and what their origins, logic, and purposes were. Chapter 3 examines opinions, beliefs, and attitudes related to different modes of hunting from “noble” to “ignoble”, and how the ways to view death and violent encounters in the society of humans were reflected in the animal world. In Chapter 4 I will take a closer look at various materials obtained from game (food, medicine, clothing, etc.) and their many uses and symbolic meanings.

Chapter 5 focuses on the hunter’s indispensable auxiliary, the hunting dog, which had a prominent role in Fébus’ work. I will study the depictions of different types of hounds, their main features, uses, ranking, and breeding. Next, in Chapter 6, I shall examine the ideals and practices of daily care and training of dogs, and how Gaston Fébus’ notions and advice were related to other experts’ views on rearing and care of animals. In Chapter 7 special emphasis is placed on Fébus’ contribution to the history of veterinary medicine, and I also discuss the changes in the image of the dog during the long medieval era.

Chapter 8 examines the four stages of the huntsman’s career defined and depicted by Gaston Fébus: the page boy, the valet, the assistant, and finally, the huntsman. Chapter 9 casts light on the essential goals and benefits of hunting in Fébus’ thinking and pro-hunting rhetoric. In Chapter 10 I examine the concept of the “good hunter”, crucial in Fébus’ logic and reasoning, and the main models, characteristics, and purposes of this mental image or construct. Lastly, I will analyse the development of Fébus’ public image as the leading expert of hunting and a model for the “good hunter”, and why his hunting treatise was so special to the dukes of Burgundy. Throughout my study, I shall pay attention to iconographical evidence and examine the relations between text and the accompanying images.

As for the terminology of the present study, I will follow the example of my colleagues who have referred by the term “hunting” to pursuit and taking of game (animal or bird) by any method or technique.⁴ By the term “venery” I refer to hunting with dogs.⁵ I use the word “game” in medieval sense, so that it covers more than modern game animals. The word “animal” is employed in this study in its modern sense to mean nonhuman animal.⁶

I have placed in the footnotes and parentheses numerous quotations from my key primary source, the MS fr. 616, so that my arguments and interpretations would become more understandable to those readers who do not have access to the original manuscript. All transcriptions are mine—and they are nonmodernised citations, i.e. I have reproduced the original text without any changes, additions, or corrections. Unfortunately, the only modern edition basing solely on the MS fr. 616 is very unreliable, and it contains many errors and major omissions.⁷ There are critical editions, based on several different manuscripts of Livre de chasse, available for those scholars and readers who find either Old French or Gothic book hand script (libraria gothica formata) too hard and time-consuming to decipher.⁸

Methodology

This study contributes to several fields of historical research, besides Fébusian studies and manuscript studies. Methodologically, I have been influenced by approaches and techniques of new cultural history and anthropological history,⁹ environmental history,¹⁰ microhistory,¹¹ and symbolic history.¹² I have improved the methods I employed and developed while preparing my monograph on the representations of late medieval executioners, around the mid-2000s.¹³ Once again, I have tracked down and analysed signs by means of which people of the past communicated their ideas, opinions, and attitudes. As great names of cultural historical studies, Carlo Ginzburg and Robert Darnton, showed in their pioneering works, tiny details that first seems insignificant can offer to the historian important clues to a past foreign culture and help one to gain a deeper understanding about bygone patterns of thinking and viewing the world.¹⁴

I have found, for example, Gaston Fébus’ choices of words, when discussing different types of hunting, most revealing: In particular cases, he defined a game animal’s mode of death as “noble” and “beautiful”, and in others he described it as “ignoble” or “vile”. Similarly, the specific external features of hunters, portrayed by the illustrators of MS fr. 616, expressed and signalled feelings of appreciation and disapproval related to different techniques of hunting and towards hunters with different statuses and aims. These subtle definitions or labels, as well as many carefully constructed distinctions, rankings, and hierarchies,¹⁵ can give to the historian valuable evidence about the wide range of feelings and attitudes that were current by the turn of the fifteenth century.

I have used both textual and iconographic evidence and tried to read them together in order to produce a more detailed picture about a past mental universe. Alternately examining textual and visual evidence has been a demanding but also rewarding task. The essential rule is to always respect the coherence and own ways of argumentation of different types of sources.¹⁶ Throughout my work, I have taken into account several possible levels of meaning of my sources. Medieval writers, artists, and their patrons were quite concerned with didactic and propagandistic aims, and they constructed their texts and images, intentionally, so that there usually were multiple levels of meaning. For example, activities related to hunting that took place within forests could be interpreted as pure on the one hand, and they could be stigmatised or even eroticised on the other. The ritualised butchery of highly appreciated large game animals (red deer stag) could be understood as a demonstration of respect for the natural world and an emblem of the crucified Christ, but at the same time, such unmaking scenes could be employed as devices for courtly love.¹⁷

The historian who wishes to explore Gaston Fébus’ attitudes regarding hunting and the natural world should always study the text and the images together because in several passages of his treatise, Fébus referred directly to the accompanying miniatures. The central purpose of these illustrations was to serve as a support to the text, and as visual aide-memoires. These images lacked complicated religious symbolism typical of pictorial products of the late medieval era, but they can provide to the historian important clues to past attitudes, ideals, and ways to view venerial acti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• PART I Introduction
• PART II The Game
• PART III The Hound
• PART IV The Hunter
• PART V Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index