Medieval Hunting

by Richard Almond

  Ladies of the nobility had several roles to play, which were presumably approved by their men folk, within the aristocratic field of hunting. As audience they were allowed to watch the fine spectacle of the hunt streaming across the fields and lawns of an enclosed park, but from a safe viewing point, such as a hill top, castle tower or roof.25 In 1452, the Emperor Frederick III visited King Alfonso of Aragon. To commemorate the visit, Frederick was taken hunting on the plain of Palma and the grand finale to the day was a staged hunt in the royal park of Astroni. Here, the ladies were spectators and were accommodated on a dais, protected from the sun by an awning and surrounded by a wooden palisade.26 One of the colourful illustrations in the early sixteenth-century Thuerdank of Emperor Maximilian I shows the ladies of his court sitting at ease by the Plansee in the Tyrol, enjoying the spectacle of Maximilian hunting red deer in the forests and chamois in the mountains, and fishing in the lake.27 The illustrations in this book are composite pictures, the artist employing the oft-used painting technique of representing two or more separate activities as happening simultaneously, rather than painting a sequence of events with an identical, or similar, background. This method was ideal for showing progressive sporting activities such as hunting and hawking.

  Much of the illustrative evidence shows ladies in this passive role of admiring onlookers, and there appears to be little doubt that female approval, applause and even adoration, were important to the aristocratic medieval hunter and sportsman, just as they were to the tourneying knight. The four hunting tapestries in the Victoria and Albert Museum, known as The Devonshire Hunts, illustrate this point clearly. Probably made to celebrate the occasion of the marriage of John, Lord Talbot, to Margaret Beauchamp in 1424, the tapestries contain many vignette scenes of aristocratic ladies watching and admiring the various hunting activities of their husbands and lovers.28 As John Cummins comments ‘It is difficult to assess which of these are hunters and which spectators, but clearly the ladies . . . have not been charging through river and thicket in pursuit of boar, bear or deer.’29

  Admiring ladies are also conspicuous in the April and September tapestries of Les Chasses de Maximilien cycle in the Louvre, although these ladies are mounted.30 Again, it is unclear whether they have just ridden up from a safe view-point to coo and flirt with their men during a lull, or if they are active participants in the chase. In the tapestry for April, one girl is sitting coyly behind her man whereas another lady looks more workmanlike, apparently riding side-saddle. The vexing question of whether and when women rode astride or side-saddle is difficult to answer from medieval and early Renaissance illustrative sources. When women travelled, they sat either ‘pillion’ behind a man, or, according to the Anglo-Norman historian Odericus Vitalis ‘in female fashion on women’s saddles’. When they hunted, they usually rode astride their mounts. Probably the earliest illustration of a lady riding astride in clothing designed for that specific purpose is an etching by Antonio Tempesta, (1565–1630).31 A bas de page illustration from The Trinity of The Hours of Marguerite D’Orléans, made shortly after her marriage in 1426 to Richard, Count of Etampes,32 does show the involvement of some aristocratic women. The par force hunt is in full cry, pursuing a fine hart along a streamside beside a forest, and two elaborately dressed ladies are near the front of the field sitting up behind their men folk. No ambiguity or symbolism here, everybody is clearly enjoying a good day out together.

  If ladies were fortunate enough to be present at the ceremony of the unmaking of the hart or buck, they were liable to be presented with a foot, or occasionally the head, of the beast.33 This symbolic bestowal of a special titbit to the fair sex, the meaning of which may be erotic but is not clear from the sources, continued in English fox hunting well into recent times by the presentation of a fox’s pad to lady hunters attending the kill. It may well be that the hart’s foot was regarded by aristocratic medieval hunters, both male and female, as a ‘secret’ and erotic symbol. Deer are ungulates and have cloven feet, each of which is referred to as a slot. Prints of deer in soft ground are still called slot-marks. The appearance of a deer’s foot, when viewed from beneath, bears a distinct resemblance to the vulva, ‘slit’ or ‘slot’. On the other hand, the foot is the least useful part of the carcass, its only function being as a decorative trophy. On another level, perhaps this also symbolised the male notion of a noblewoman’s place, not only in the medieval hunt but also in upper-class society.

  The death at the end of the hunt provided the necessary closure to the sporting part of the aristocratic chase. It was not intentionally prolonged, as the earlier descriptions in chapter three make clear. The life-blood of the quarry was regarded as significant too, and not only in the curée ceremony of feeding the hounds. Blooding, the ancient ritual of daubing the faces of young stag hunters present at the kill for the first time, continued as a tradition in fox hunting well into the middle of the twentieth century and, covertly, probably much later. Here, the huntsman would daub each cheek of novice young hunters with the blood of the newly killed fox, applied with its brush. The ‘anointing’ of novice hunters with animal blood was a rite of passage, an initiation into the ‘mysteries’ of adult hunting, which probably had its origins in pagan times. Some regard these ceremonies as profane, appearing to be travesties of Christian baptism.34 However, blood was regarded as one of the four humours of the body and as such was thought to have remarkable, even magical, properties. The hart was a ‘noble warrior’, the premier beast of the chase, so it is hardly surprising that his life-blood was regarded with some superstition. Thus, medieval ladies-in-waiting smeared their hands in stag’s blood after the breaking ceremony, believing it would whiten the skin. On one occasion, Queen Elizabeth I was said to be ‘gratified’, meaning ‘pleased’, personally to despatch a stag by slitting its throat.35 This was undoubtedly an unusual action by a woman, its success demonstrating both the courage and anatomical knowledge possessed by the queen. This latter ‘lernedness’ is further illustrated in a woodcut in George Gascoigne’s treatise The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting. The royal huntsman presents a knife to Elizabeth in order for her to slit open the belly of a stag,36 the first process in the ritual of undoing the hart. Elizabeth apparently had no repugnance to fresh, warm blood in quantity and did not consider her sex a barrier to full participation in the post-chase sanguinary rituals.

  What is significant about this varied corpus of evidence is that some women of royal, noble or gentle birth were actually present at the climactic ritual of unmaking and therefore qualified for a specific piece of the carcass to which no other group was entitled. What is not clear, and is almost impossible to substantiate, is whether these ladies had followed the hunt on horseback as part of the field and been present at the death, or had been summoned to the unmaking from a convenient viewing point by their lords. It seems most reasonable to suppose that both situations occurred, perhaps the former event being rather more unusual at the end of a Forest hunt, whereas the latter was more likely and convenient in a park hunt.

  The female roles of spectator, admirer and participator in end-rituals, also include an erotic function, lust being for some participants a natural result of the excitement and heat experienced during a fast and successful hunt. The alternative word for hunting, ‘venery’, has a dual meaning, derived on the one hand from the Latin venari, meaning ‘to hunt’; on the other from venereus, meaning ‘pertaining to Venus’.37 In the minds of many writers and artists the two were inextricably entwined and it is therefore unsurprising that sex features in some sources. A cameo scene from The Devonshire Hunting Tapestries makes public this private eroticism between hunters and their consorts. While watching the breaking-up of the hind, and the curée or ceremonial feeding of the hounds by the hunt servants, the gentle hunters and their ladies are caught indulging in enjoyable love-play.38 In the poem Guillaume de Dole, the hunters return to camp to wash before supper. There are no towels so, quite naturally ‘They borrow the ladies’ white chemises, /And take
their chance to put their hand /On many a white thigh.’39 This erotic element was not always restricted to the hot, sweaty aftermath of the hunt, when adrenalin was still pumping through the veins. In the May tapestry of Les Chasses de Maximilien, one dismounted hunter takes time off to caress the breasts of his coy but compliant female companion while the pre-hunt feast is being set up by busy servants.40 May was traditionally regarded as the month of love so perhaps this lustful cameo at the margin of the main scene is appropriate. Hunting had several physical levels and Veronica Sekules comments ‘The image of the hunt often does refer quite evidently to lustful relationships between men and women’.41 Before or after the chase was a natural and opportunist occasion for lovers to consummate their passion so at one level these erotic scenes can be read quite literally. It is also possible that the covert message from the artist is an illustration of the parallel between hunting and the pursuit of love, comparable to the imagery employed by poets and writers.

  Hunting imagery developed into perplexing allegory in some late medieval sources. The theme of morality is illustrated by The Pursuit of Fidelity, a fifteenth-century tapestry from the upper Rhineland in the Burrell Collection.42 Here, a fine hart of ten is being driven into a fixed net by three hounds while the hunter, mounted on a dapple-grey with his lady up behind, winds his horn. Above the hunter, a scroll is inscribed with the Middle German words ‘uf iag nach triuwen Frau’, meaning ‘in pursuit of a faithful woman’. A scroll over the lady reads ‘ich die kein Lieber zu gelebt’, her rejoinder meaning ‘I with whom no lover has lived’. The ‘die’ of her reply is feminine gender and clearly indicates that this is a dialogue between the young noble and his love: he states his quest or hunt for a faithful wife; she avers her innocence and virginity, hence her suitability and enduring fidelity as his future wife. The source, like all medieval allegories, can be read in several ways, however. John Cummins’s interpretation is that the lovers are in pursuit of the elusive quarry fidelity, represented by the hart, which is on the verge of capture in their net.43 Another level may be warning against the deceit of women of uncertain virtue looking for a well-bred but gullible husband. In this case, the hart may represent the hunter (and his ‘heart’) being driven into the net of marriage by the hounds of his lady’s protestations and wishes. In addition, the hart can be seen as symbolic of the maid, hunted by her lover and being moved into the net of fulfilment by his hounds which represent his desires and good qualities. It became conventional to give hounds allegorical names in later hunting allegories, particularly in German poetry. These often represented the characteristics and qualities of the male lover and included Courtesy, Kindness, Bliss, Longing, Daring, Delight and Grace.44 Such pointed and appropriate naming of hounds assisted the audience in the complex and sometimes ambiguous interpretation of a literary or pictorial source, as well as often giving, no doubt, wry amusement.

  The most peculiar role in hunting played by noble women involved that fabulous single-horned beast, the unicorn. It was supposed to be the fiercest of beasts, able to fight and defeat an elephant using its single horn, as illustrated in Queen Mary’s Psalter.45 Literate European hunters with a knowledge of bestiaries and hunting manuals seriously believed in unicorns. The main reason for this was that much of the information used by the writers of bestiaries and hunting books was taken from the Greek collection of animal legends called the Physiologus, compiled between the second and fourth centuries. This book describes the unicorn as small, fierce and impossible to capture by conventional means. The only successful method known used a young virgin as bait, placing her in a passive and apparently vulnerable situation. She was taken by the hunter into a remote piece of forest which the quarry was known to frequent. The hunter then concealed himself nearby. When the evasive unicorn scented the demure virgin, it approached silently and then laid its head upon her lap, before falling into a deep slumber. This enabled the wily hunter to steal up and quickly despatch the beast, before cutting off its magical horn.46 These are quite extraordinary instructions, totally unlike any other hunting methodology, and it seems absurd that practical and educated hunters should take such directions seriously. However, there was a genuine precedent for their belief.

  In the late thirteenth century, Marco Polo described unicorns he had seen in Sumatra, probably rhinoceroses, and he too, mentions this technique of capturing the beast.47 Europe lacked the rhino and it is almost certain that this exotic Asian animal became the reality of the legendary fairy beast. Therefore, as it apparently existed, it could be hunted and slain, like any other forest animal. A number of late medieval sources illustrate unicorn hunting techniques, including MS Royal 12 F xiii in the British Library48 and the Unicorn Tapestries, dating from 1495–1505. The sixth depicts male hunters on foot slaying the unfortunate beast with spears; the seventh shows the resurrected and tamed unicorn within a paling enclsure, the hortus conclusus.49 The classic unicorn tableau can be seen in a perfect and charming tiny manu-script miniature in the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge.50 The allegorical and religious symbolism of the unicorn surrendering to a young virgin, and the increasing complexity of this relationship in the texts of the later Middle Ages, is a separate subject and dealt with in other studies. However, the role of the maiden within the context of hunting is interesting in its ambiguity. As bait, she is vital to the success of the hunt, yet her role could be said to be passive as she plays no part in physically killing the unicorn. But she has performed the most dangerous part of the hunt, taming a fierce, magical animal by a combination of her sexual purity and feminine courage. This is hardly ‘passivity’ in modern eyes but to medieval minds the gender relations in the unicorn hunt must have been clear; ‘slaying’ defines the masculine role of the hunter, whereas other activities, whatever the qualities necessary, are subsidiary.

  To be fair to the medieval authors, starved of accurate and scientific information, it must be remembered that bestiaries contained depictions and descriptions of all manner of birds and beasts, most real but some imaginary. These texts were attempts to make sense of the natural world by classifying all birds and beasts. Educated people looked at bestiaries and believed and marvelled at the information they contained because, owing to the lack of accurate evidence in their restricted world, they had no choice. The unicorn and its stories appealed to medieval people, whether hard-headed hunters or not. It is thus perhaps understandable that the unicorn was one of the few fabulous fictitious creatures, the reptilian basilisk was another, to survive the Renaissance and remain credible for several centuries.51

  In spite of all the sources which present these so-called passive feminine roles, there is some literary and illustrative evidence that women of noble birth did take both a real and an active part in certain types of hunt. A twelfth-century Scottish poem called The Enchanted Stag describes a tinchell, or deer drive, in which 120 fian or hunters, with 1,000 hounds, and 100 women and 1,000 men in attendance, killed 100 deer and 100 stags. The tinchell of beaters drove the deer towards an elrick or barrier, behind which stood the hunters armed with bows and spears, their hounds ready to pull down wounded beasts.52 The fact that only a small number of women are specified in this poem may indicate the presence of a noble female élite of active participators. As described in chapter three, classic bow and stably hunting in the later Middle Ages and early Renaissance involved hunters waiting on foot at stands or stations for the driven quarry to appear within bowshot. Wooden standings were often available for the comfort of important guests and their ladies. These constructions, often called stable-stands, could be raised platforms built next to a drive or ride, or on a boundary of the section driven. Sometimes they were erected between the branches of a large tree, providing effective and safe cover for the hunter.53 In George Gascoigne’s book, The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting, published in 1575 and originally attributed to George Turbervile, a woodcut depicts Queen Elizabeth standing upon such a structure, receiving her kneeling huntsman’s report.54 He is presenting
her with a ‘dish’ of leaves containing the fewmets, or droppings, of the hart which he proposes will be hunted that day. He waits for her approval of his estimation of the warrantability or huntability of the beast which is based upon the size, shape and consistency of the fewmets. As a keen huntress, Elizabeth would have had the knowledge to comment with authority on her huntsman’s evaluation and advice.

  On a larger scale, Lucas Cranach the Younger’s painting of the hunting party given by Elector John Frederick of Saxony for Emperor Charles V at the castle of Torgau, 1544, includes an elaborately attired lady armed with a loaded crossbow waiting at a hidden stand by a lake into which red deer are being driven.55 She is John Frederick’s wife, Electress Sybille. Admittedly, she is the exception in this painting as an active representative of her sex and has been allocated little picture space, yet she is fulfilling the same hunting function as her male counterparts. She is probably using a relatively light crossbow called a German spring-bolt, whereas the key huntsmen in the foreground, including her husband and the Emperor, are using heavy crossbows, or arbalests.56 Three male assistants have two more crossbows ready loaded to quickly hand her, an indication, perhaps, of her skill with this weapon. She is not the only woman visible but is accompanied by six similarly attired ladies-in-waiting who provide her with company and support. In this cameo scene, Cranach has made a clear distinction between Sybille, the active royal huntress, and her passive courtly female audience. In addition, she is looking directly out of the picture at the viewer, not at where she is shooting; she thus arrests one’s attention and this emphasises her importance as the lone woman hunter. Cranach paid much knowledgeable attention to the details of this hunt and to its personages, yet it recorded a political illusion as Charles V and John Frederick never hunted together at Torgau. The panorama illustrates the Elector’s hope that the quarrel between the Catholic monarch and the Protestants was over.57