Medieval Hunting
Page 5
This notion of hunting as the exclusive preserve of the aristocracy persisted for several centuries, even in England, arguably one of the more ‘democratic’ European nations. The Institucion of a Gentleman, an anonymous tract published in 1568, makes this very point:
There is a saying among hunters that he cannot be a gentlemen which loveth not hawking and hunting, which I have heard old woodmen [yeomen foresters] well allow as an approved sentence among them. The like saying is that he cannot be a gentleman which loveth not a dog.31
In 1653 Izaak Walton included a commendation of hunting in The Complete Angler ‘Hunting is a game for princes and noble persons; it hath been highly prized in all ages.’ Interestingly, Walton then cites the medieval conventional justifications, or functions, of the chase, demonstrating the entrenched attitudes and continuity of aristocratic mores:
Hunting trains up the younger nobility to the use of manly exercises in their riper age. What more manly exercise than hunting the Wild Boar, the Stag, the Buck, the Fox, or the Hare? How doth it preserve health, and increase strength and activity!32
For the English gentry, hunting and hawking methodology remained largely unchanged well into the seventeenth century. This is evidenced by the remarkable, possibly unique, cycle of wall paintings in the Turret Room at Madingley Hall near Cambridge, dated to between 1605 and 1633. The murals probably depict current practices and consist of bear hunting, boar hunting and hawking, plus two panels of decorative work, almost certainly commissioned by Sir Edward Hynde, the owner between these dates and a known enthusiast for hawking and animal-baiting.33 In both the bear and boar hunting scenes, gentleman-hunters on horseback and more plainly dressed servants on foot use spears to slay the beasts which are being attacked by mastiffs and greyhounds. Bear-baiting was a popular entertainment and this particular bear provided the quarry for an unusual day’s hunting. By this date, wild boar were long extinct in England and park-bred animals were used for hunting. The hawking mural illustrates a classic scene: hounds put up a partridge for a mounted falconer (incomplete) while a gentleman on horseback flies his bird at a mallard on the river.
The aristocratic involvement in hunting is, of course, indisputable. The textual evidence is not only provided by the hunting manuals; the hunting theme also commonly occurs in romantic and imaginative European literature. Its symbolism, the imagery of hunting and the hunting motif, all appear frequently in late medieval romances, narratives and stories. The hunt is often used as a vehicle for a hero on a journey or quest, the flight of the animal leading him to the next stage of an adventure.34 This usage of hunting, one of the main activities of the upper classes, is hardly surprising as authorship of romantic and imaginative literature was almost invariably aristocratic and the intended and actual audience courtly, noble or of gentle birth. The invariably aristocratic authors included the material of a pastime which was familiar to their predominantly élite audience, weaving the theme of the hunt, with its recognisable progression and procedures, in with the less tangible topics of love, magic and religion. The chase as a narrative agent in aristocratic romances was thus infinitely flexible to the subject matter and apposite to a courtly audience.
Even the patron saint of hunting was portrayed as a member of the nobility, emphasising the exclusive nature of hunting. The legend of the conversion of St Eustace, or Eustachius, to Christianity was well-known and a subject illustrated by several medieval and Renaissance painters, including Pisanello and Dürer. The story of Eustace is told in the Golden Legend and, briefly, is as follows. Placidus was a member of a distinguished Roman family and an officer of the Emperor Trajan, well known for his charitable works. While out hunting, he was transfixed by the vision of a stag at bay, a fine hart, supporting a glowing cross and an image of Christ between its antlers. Through the hart, or the image, Christ then spoke to Placidus:
O Placidus, why are you pursuing me? For your sake I have appeared to you in this animal. I am the Christ whom you worship without knowing it. Your alms have risen before me, and for this purpose I have come, that through this which you hunted, I myself might hunt you.
The religious symbolism of the vision is interesting as the hunted beast can be compared to Christ who, in a role-reversal of hunter and prey, is actually hunting the pagan Placidus in order to convert him.
Placidus was at once converted to Christianity and changed his name to Eustachius, afterwards modernised to Eustace.35 Some time later, Eustace, his wife and two sons, were put to death as Christians under Hadrian in AD 118. His feast day in the Roman Catholic calendar is 20 September.36 A similar visionary conversion story applies to the equivalent of St Eustace in Germany, St Hubert of Tongres. He too was an aristocrat, said to have been a nobleman of Aquitaine and employed at the Court of Pepin of Heristal. Bishop Hubert converted many heathens to Christianity and performed several miracles. He died in AD 727 and his relics were enshrined in the ninth century in St Hubert’s Abbey in the Ardennes. The feast of St Hubert is 3 November.37
The Vision of Saint Eustace was painted by Pisanello between 1438 and 1442, not as an altarpiece or mere narrative of the religious event but to demonstrate to his patron his remarkable skill in depicting animals, particularly those associated with aristocratic hunting. It appears from the style and pose of some of the animals that Pisanello’s painting was informed by personal knowledge of the illuminations in Livre de chasse, and other key hunting treatises.38 For example, the bear at the upper right-hand side of the painting appears to have been derived directly from the animal being hunted by Gaston Fébus in MS fr. 616 and also closely resembles the bears which appear earlier in the same manuscript.39 Significantly, Le Livre du roy Modus et de la royne Ratio describes the vision of St Eustace in detail and links the ten tines of the hart to the Ten Commandments. Copies of Roy Modus and Livre de chasse were in plentiful supply at this time and were known in Italy.40 Pisanello was a meticulous observer and painter of animals so it appears inevitable that he used such canonical manuscript illustrations as a basis for his hunting studies.
The rank and high status of Eustace is firmly established and maintained by Pisanello in three ways. Firstly, by the quarry, a magnificent hart; other noble quarry also feature in the picture, another hart, a hind, a fallow buck, a doe, a hare (being coursed by a greyhound) and a brown bear. Secondly, by the aristocratic method of hunting: on horseback with hounds, several specific types of which are shown including two greyhounds or gazehounds, two scenting or running hounds which were particularly useful in hunting stags, two alaunts and two spaniels, usually used for flushing small game, partridge and quail.41 Thirdly, by the dress of Placidus: a golden fur-trimmed jacket and a extravagant blue headdress, the height of fifteenth-century court fashion. He carries a decorated hunting horn with gilded mounts and wears long rowelled gilded spurs, the latter denoting his knightly rank. Pisanello has painted not a Roman centurion but a fifteenth-century Renaissance prince, out hunting alone with his hounds.42 In reality, solitary hunting of this variety did not, and practically could not, occur. However, here the rest of the hunt, comprising other noble hunters, professional hunters and hunt servants was irrelevant to the main subject of the painting. Pisanello may well have been depicting his patron as St Eustace, but the patron and exact date of this small panel painting remain unknown.43
The symbolism and icons of hunting and aristocratic love have long fascinated scholars of Middle English and European literature; much has been written on this very complex and esoteric subject. Romances and imaginative literature are brimful of imagery for the initiated. So, for example, the hart can represent a lover, his lady, desire, thoughts, longevity, and even, as has been shown, Christ himself.44 The imagery of animals very much depended upon the situation or need. The coney or rabbit was associated with women and the hound with men, a clear and erotic connection which can be seen in a number of manuscripts.45 However, it is the exclusive nature of aristocratic hunting and aristocratic love which is under discussion here, and Mi
chael Camille’s masterly interpretation of an illuminated page of a late thirteenth-century French songbook or Chansonnier illustrates this point superbly. The page of music, words and visual scenes is of a complex motet for three voices by Pierre de la Croix concerning love’s sorrows and delays. The illustrations relate to each voice, the triplum, duplum and tenor. The hunting/love motifs are explicit and Camille comments ‘The lady fondles her own smirking rabbit and her lord’s thigh while he strokes his puppy and places his white-gloved hand on the lady’s shoulder’.46 The bas-de-page illustration is of stag-hunting, featuring an archer, hound and mounted hunter, viewed by another grinning rabbit. Obviously, to read such a complicated picture with its multilayered and hidden messages successfully, the medieval audience would have been expected to be educated and well-versed in such interpretations. This view is borne out by the comments of the medieval musical theorist Johanees de Grocheo, who claimed that such motets could not be appreciated by the common people, but were ‘for the learned’ and ‘those seeking subtleties in the arts’.47
The exclusive nature of hunting in respect of rank and status which is the main message gained from the main primary sources has, understandably perhaps, been perpetuated by many secondary source writers. In 1963, Derek Brewer expressed this conventional view as follows:
The amusements of most men in the court were active and outdoor. Of these hunting was the chief, and the sound of the dogs [sic], the bustle and excitement of gaily-clad riders, the thrills of the chase, the triumphant chanting of the horns, were amongst their highest joys.48
In 1970, A.C. Spearing commented:
Hunting was felt to be the most characteristic activity of the medieval aristocracy, the appropriate means by which in peace-time the aggressive instincts of what was still a warrior class might be given a dignified outlet.
He, too, highlights the importance of procedure and ritual, continuing ‘There is a proper way of doing everything, even cutting up the dead beast, and knowledge of this way is a prerogative of the aristocracy and their skilled servants.’49
Spearing believes the Gawain-poet was a ‘jantylman’ (gentleman) writing for other ‘jantylmen’, learned in the lore and language of hunting;50 there is no doubt this is correct as the anonymous author displays his own learned knowledge of hunting deer, wild boar and fox in all its procedural detail. There are 280 lines of the poem devoted to the hunting scenes compared with 370 to the conversations between Sir Gawain and the lady, an indication of the significance of hunting to the courtly narrative.51 Interestingly, Rooney comments that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight provides us with the only complete description of a stag hunt available in Middle English literature.52
More recent historians of the medieval period continue in the same vein. Nicholas Orme, writing of the education of the medieval English kings and aristocracy, says that hunting came second only to fighting as the most prestigious physical activity and it was widely practised by male and female aristocrats.53 He further remarks that throughout the later Middle Ages hunting was a favourite sport of royal princes, but the ‘lust for hunting’ was not confined only to royalty in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; it spread throughout the aristocracy, right down to the children of the gentry. Hawking was equally popular as an aristocratic pastime but less demanding and more leisurely without the same educational status, presumably because of its lack of personal danger or resemblance to warfare.54 Marcelle Thiébaux writes ‘that men in the Middle Ages were passionately fond of the hunt’, and the Anglo-Saxon and Norman kings of England restricted vast areas of forest for their own sport, notably the New Forest in Hampshire. The noble hunters, who had inherited or purchased legitimate rights, hunted as a form of recreation and military exercise.55
The sport of falconry, or hawking as it is more often called in the hunting texts, was, like the mounted chase, a prerogative of the nobility and gentry. In Spain, for example, the aristocratic Chancellor of Castile, Pero Lopez de Ayala, saw falconry as a superior and appropriate pastime for the aristocracy.56 The historian Abram, writing in the introduction to The Art of Falconry, believed that ‘the sport pre-eminently associated in our minds with the Middle Ages is hawking’.57 Although hawking was pursued by the same social groups as the chase, it was in some ways completely different from the fast, noisy and dangerous excitement of mounted hunting in which hounds pursued quarry that was often out of sight. It was, in contrast, a single combat, like that between knights, usually in full view of the participants.58 It was also a rather more sedate and introspective pastime, better suited to older men and ladies. Intelligent and truly dedicated falconers, such as Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, doubtless enjoyed the exacting nature of their sport. Falconry also lacked the ritualistic procedures of hunting, thus appealing to the individual and the aesthetic hunter, allowing the development of a more intimate relationship between man, falcon and quarry. However, hawking had a major drawback in that there was a frustrating period during the year when the birds were mewing, or moulting, in the dark of their quarters or mews, and therefore unfit to fly and hunt. Edward, Duke of York, comments adversely on this aspect in the Prologue to The Master of Game when he compares hawking and hunting:
For though it be that hawking with gentle hounds and hawks for the heron and the river be noble and commendable, it lasteth seldom at the most more than half a year. For though men find from May unto Lammas [1 August] game enough to hawk at, no one will find hawks to hawk with.’59
Noble falconers valued their hawks more than any other of their possessions.60 The expense of buying and equipping falcons naturally restricted this mounted sport to the aristocracy, as did the provision of proper accommodation, and the long hours required to train a hunting bird. The gift of hunting birds was much favoured by kings and nobles; it frequently occurred in practice and often features in medieval literature. Indeed, hawks and falcons were so highly regarded that they were sometimes used to pay ransoms.61 The demand for good birds was constant in England and on the continent; prices were consequently high, and there was a profitable trade collecting and distributing falcons and hawks. Flanders, particularly the city of Bruges, was the main staging point.62 The Cely Letters of 1478–79 show that George Cely, a Merchant of the Staple, was trading in hawks, and probably dogs and horses too, from Calais and Bruges. An abundant family correspondence gives us a rare and fascinating insight into the cross-Channel luxury trade in hunting birds during the later fifteenth century. In 1478, the Vicar of Watford wrote to George Cely ‘Ferthermore, I pray you to remembre [me] in thys seson for a goshawke or a tarsel. . . . Also I pray you to send me a bylle of your wellfare, and the prys . . . .’
In October 1478, Richard Cely the elder at London wrote to Richard Cely the younger at Calais:
Also youre gosehawke, the weche was delyuerd to my Lorde of Send Johnys, ys dede for defayte of good kepying, for the weche I wolde we hadde kepyt the hawke the weche Wyll Cely bravthe home and ys delyvered to the Vekery of Watforde.
A later letter to George, or perhaps Richard, Cely, Merchants of the Staple at Calais, instructed the purchase of another goshawk at the considerable price of 8 or 9s for Lord St John ‘yeff ye covd bey any at Callas for viij or ixs., and he would pay for the sayd hauke hemselffe for the pleser of my Lord’.63 On 12 October 1479, John Roosse at Calais wrote to George Cely at Bruges ‘that I scholde com to Breges to you for to helpe to conuey your haukys into England’. These birds would be conveyed via Calais. He mentions that ‘I bowte a mewd hauke in Callys syn I cam; sche coste me x/s. and more, the wysche I have sent into Eyngland’. Later that year, Robert Radclyff at Calais wrote to George Cely at Bruges enquiring about buying a ‘flecked spaniell’ and a horse on his behalf;64 it seems likely that both these animals were also purchased for hawking.
Throughout Europe, legislation protected and preserved hawks and restricted hawking to the privileged élite. Penalties for disturbing eyries could be savage, including blinding the culprit.65 During Norman rule in Englan
d, the right to keep a hawk was restricted to the upper classes, but the Forest Charter of 1215 stated that every free man might have an eyrie (hawk’s nest) in his own woods, from which he could lawfully take nestlings to train to hunt. A bird taken from the eyrie was termed an eyass, as opposed to a haggard, a hawk or falcon in mature plumage captured and reclaimed from the wild.66 Stealing a hawk was regarded as a felony in England and any person who destroyed raptor eggs was liable to a year’s imprisonment. The Church apparently approved and sometimes imposed these laws, the Bishop of Ely going to the lengths of excommunicating a thief who stole a hawk from the cloisters of Bermondsey.67 Phillip Glasier must be referring to this incident in his classic As the Falcon her Bells when he recounts that ‘People took their hawks everywhere with them, even to church, and one bishop, hearing that his favourite falcon had been stolen from the cloisters while he was preaching his sermon, marched straight back into the pulpit and excommunicated the thief forthwith.’68
Like the quarry of hunters, birds of prey were classified by medieval writers. The basic division in the manuals is between hawks of the tower and hawks of the fist, which conveniently corresponds largely to the falcons (Falconidae) and the hawks (Accipitridae).69 The short-winged hawks were more popular with the French whereas the long-winged hawks, generically falcons, were more favoured in England. The latter birds include the peregrine, merlin and hobby, all of which were, and still are, used by falconers to fly at live quarry.70 Roy Modus’s division differs somewhat from the basic classification. He places the peregrine falcon, lanner, saker and hobby as hawks of the tower, whereas the goshawk, sparrow hawk, gyrfalcon and merlin are classed as hawks of the fist.71 The hawks of the tower were unhooded and allowed to climb on thermals before stooping on the prey which had been put up by spaniels or pointers, then come in to the lure, whereas the hawks of the fist were trained to come to the fist only, not to the lure. Only short-winged hawks were trained in this manner, never falcons.72