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Connecting with the Public through Medieval Animals

As medievalists and scholars who spend our days reading, researching, and teaching the Middle Ages, it is easy to take for granted the vibrancy, intrigue, and importance of the period. But how can we help audiences outside the academy connect to people and cultures so distant from themselves? My own work offers me a readymade solution: animals. For several years, including in my current position as the Public Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow at Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute, I have had the privilege of speaking to many different groups of children and adults across multiple countries about the Middle Ages and its animals. It is always such a great joy to introduce them to the weird and wonderful world of medieval animal riddles and poetry, facts from bestiaries and other encyclopedias, and of course manuscript illuminations.

I usually start these talks with a series of strange animal illustrations from medieval manuscripts, asking the audience simply to guess what the animals are. A recent event for kids at the St Joe County Public Library thus began with these four pictures and more:

Manuscript illuminations from: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Parker Library, MS 053, fol. 193v (CC BY-NC 4.0); Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. gall. 16, fol. 17r; British Library, Royal MS 2 B VII, fol. 102v; Bibliothèque Municipale de Douai, Ms. 711, fol. 11v (CC BY-NC 3.0).

Then comes the reveal that all of the wildly different illustrations are meant to be the same animal: a crocodile. What follows are usually cries of incredulity and laughter over how inaccurate all the images are. They’re not all terrible, of course, and I do make it clear that I choose the silliest ones available.

The significant question, then, is why there are so many bad medieval animals out there. With animals like crocodiles, one straightforward answer is that the illustrators had never seen the creatures in real life, but were drawing them based on writings from other parts of the globe. This becomes a good opportunity to talk about the interconnectedness of the medieval world — an animal from the Nile gets written about by a bishop in Seville, whose words inspire a drawing in Peterborough. This can also lead to conversations about the nature of the writers and illustrators themselves, often monks and other holy men and women who are testament to the importance of medieval religious houses as centers of science and learning, thus challenging a popularly held stereotype about the “Dark Ages”.

With children (and their grown ups), there’s a silly drawing game I like to play to put them in the shoes of these medieval illustrators — how good can they be at drawing an animal they have never seen before? This can be done by making up an entirely new beast, but I prefer to defamiliarize an animal that the children already know, asking them to draw it one feature at a time, as with this example with information drawn from medieval accounts:

  1. The animal is reddish in colour.
  2. It has four feet and legs like those of a bull or a deer.
  3. Its body is short at the back and tall at the front so it looks like it is always sitting down.
  4. It has a long neck like a horse.
  5. It has a head like a camel.
  6. It is covered in white spots like a leopard.

By the time the kids figure out that they are drawing a giraffe, the results are usually already hilariously wonky, not far from the illustrations they were laughing at a few minutes ago!

Left: Activity sheets from the St Joe County Public Library event. Right: Manuscript illumination from British Library, Additional MS 11390, fol. 22v.

When giving these talks in the UK, often to school groups, I would generally begin with a different animal that they would be fairly familiar with, the badger. As with crocodiles, medieval illustrations of badgers could be ridiculously unrecognizable, as evident in the two images below.

Manuscript illuminations from: Cambridge University Library, Kk.4.25, fol. 74v (CC BY-NC 4.0); University of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. 130, fol. 85r (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Unlike crocodiles and giraffes, however, medieval Europeans should have been more familiar with badgers; literary, archaeological, and place-name evidence suggests that the animal was a common feature of the British landscape. What excuse, then, could medieval illustrators have in this case? In some instances, there was a method to their madness. According to the Third-Family Bestiary in the above Cambridge manuscript, the badger is called melo in Latin either because of its fondness for honey (mel) or because it is rotundissimo like a melon (melo). It’s safe to say that this particular illustrator was inspired by the notion of roundness.

The Cambridge illustration also to me recalls Thomas of Cantimpré, the thirteenth-century Flemish Dominican friar and preacher who in his natural encyclopedia, De natura rerum, wrote that the fatness of a badger increases when the moon waxes and diminishes when it wanes. As nocturnal animals, some badger behaviours (notably their mating patterns) are thought to be influenced by lunar cycles. Lunar influence on its rotundity may be more dubious, but did have significant practical implications. Thomas later stated that badger fat is a useful cure for fevers, which means that it was important to know when the animal would be at its fattest and most medicinally useful, and illustrations are a good way to get that lesson across. These may not be the most accurate illustrations, but they are undoubtedly memorable, which makes them extremely effective teaching and memorization tools.

This example thus becomes a good way to demonstrate to audiences beyond the academy that the so-called “Dark Ages” were really a time of curiosity, observation, experimentation, and innovation, when science and medicine were given great importance and there was a deep investment in understanding the world around us. Medieval animal texts are a testament to a love for learning and science and stories, and therefore a great way to help the public, children and adults alike, to connect with the Middle Ages.

Of course, it’s also very possible that many of these illustrators were simply bad at drawing animals and decided to lean into the absurdity of their creations. On this, I am sure we can all relate.

Ashley Castelino, DPhil
Public Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow
Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame

Further Reading:

For anyone interested in medieval bestiaries and animal illustrations, bestiary.ca is an invaluable resource, as is theriddleages.bham.ac.uk for anyone interested in medieval riddles. On badgers, see articles on ‘Foxes and Badgers in Anglo-Saxon Life and Landscape‘ and ‘European Badger’s Mating Activities Associated with Moon Phase‘, and Exeter Book Riddle 15.

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Song and Sustenance: The Fable of the Ant and the Cicada

Image 1: Illustration of Ant and Cicada from Tuscan bestiary, mid-15th c. Wellcome Collection, MS.132, fol. 23r.

In the well-known fable of The Ant and the Cicada1 (or cricket, or grasshopper, according to the version—the second character is always a singing insect), a hungry cicada asks an ant for food in the wintertime. The ant asks what the cicada did during the summer, and the cicada replies that she had been singing. The ant then refuses to help her, on the grounds that the cicada had been idle, when she should have been working and acquiring food for the future instead, like the ant herself had done. The moral typically advises that we avoid idleness and plan for the future.

The perspective offered by the moral may seem predictable, based on the narrative. Yet, some medieval versions of the fable suggest that the cicada, at least in her own view, was not a self-absorbed, improvident reveler—she was an uncompensated artist, who entertained others and anticipated some return for her efforts.

The fable’s morals encourage us to take the ant’s position: the cicada’s performances were not labor, and they don’t merit any material reward. As I will discuss below, certain insects’ supposed obsession with song was not always construed negatively in medieval literature; this very disregard of worldly security could also be interpreted as virtuous.

An early version of this fable is by Babrius, in Greek, from the third century; there is also a fifth-century Latin version by Avianus.2 Medieval versions can be found in several Romulus collections in Latin prose and verse,3 Marie de France’s Fables (Old French, late twelfth century), a Latin prose collection by the English bishop and sermonist John Sheppey (d. 1360), and William Caxton’s Aesop (late Middle English prose, 1483–4).

In some versions of the fable, singing seems to be a sort of solitary pastime for the cicada. For example, in John Sheppey’s version, the cicada claims that during the summer she had gone “singing and dancing through the woods, hedges and meadows” (per siluas, sepes et prata ibam, cantans et exultans).4 In Caxton’s Aesop, the cicada, asked by the ant what she has done during the summer, simply reports, “I have sung” (I haue songe).5 The ant’s callous rejoinder in these and some other versions is to the effect of, “If you sang during the summer, then dance during the winter.”6

Image 2: Illustration of cicadas from Tuscan bestiary, mid-15th c. Wellcome Collection, MS.132, fol. 4v.

However, in Marie de France’s Fables and some Romulus versions, the cicada claims she sang for other creatures, and clearly sees this as a form of labor which should be materially rewarded. Marie’s cricket replies to the ant’s inquiry as follows: “‘I sing,’ she said, ‘and so entertain the other animals, but now I don’t find anyone who wants to to repay me for it.’” (“Jeo chant,” fet il, “e si deduis / a autres bestes, mes ore ne truis / ki le me veule reguerduner,” lines 11–13).7

In the Romulus Anglicus cunctus, similarly, the cicada says, “At that time [i.e., in the summer] I was singing for those who were working, and I received no wages from them” (Ego tunc illis qui laborabant cecini, et nichil mercedis ab eis recepi).8 The ant’s dismissive response, and the morals, take the position that performing for others’ pleasure doesn’t count as work, however—material acquisition for the security of oneself and one’s family is what counts.

In every version, the morals side with the ant. John Sheppey’s version is perhaps most straightforward and harsh: “Whoever doesn’t work shouldn’t eat, and, if a worker is worthy of wages, then no wages should come to one who doesn’t work.”9 The same word, merces, which I have translated as “wages,” is used in both the Romulus Anglicus cunctus and Sheppey versions. Apparently, though the cicada clearly expected some sort of wages, she didn’t deserve them, despite all her activity.

While the ant in this fable is portrayed as fairly selfish—she is interested in providing for herself and her own household alone, and essentially refuses to give alms to a beggar—elsewhere in ancient and medieval culture ants were understood as communal animals who worked together for a common good. For example, according to Albert the Great (d. 1280), humans and ants are among those animals who “collaborate in many things in a community of affairs and sustenance, which serve the common utility.”10 The fact that the ant in The Ant and the Cicada is portrayed as possessing the foresight to gather resources ahead of time, too, is consistent with representations of ants in other medieval sources, such as in Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies, in which the ant is said to have “great shrewdness, for it provides for the future and prepares during the summer what it consumes in the winter.”11

Image 3: Illustration of ants collecting grain, from Northumberland Bestiary, 13th c. Getty Museum, MS. 100, fol. 23r.

The notion that a singing insect, such as a cricket, would be so consumed by the act of singing that it might fail to take care of its bodily needs and ultimately die, is also found in Pierre de Beauvais’s Bestiaire d’amour (early thirteenth century): the cricket “loves to sing so much that it loses its appetite, forgets itself in song, lets itself be caught and dies singing.”12

However, unlike in the fable of The Ant and the Cicada, this absorption isn’t read negatively in the Bestiaire, which concludes: “The cricket gives us the example of the just man who is always doing good deeds and penance, and forgets all about the things of this world and bodily pleasures, and thinks about everlasting joy and is always in prayer, and dies praying, that is that he dies singing just as does the cricket.”13

Whether the singing insect in these medieval texts is construed as a doer of good deeds who is “always in prayer,” as a solitary reveler, or as starving artist, the notion remains that its way of life is not compatible with material security. What I find compelling is that the cicada, in some versions of the fable discussed above, believes that there shouldn’t be such an incompatibility. She (naïvely, perhaps) expects to be supported by others for the music she offers them—and, it is implies, dies when she doesn’t receive this support.

While the fable doesn’t suggest that the cicada’s talents could or should be sustained within a broader interspecies community—quite the opposite—the message might change if we think a bit more in terms of natural history. After all, cicadas aren’t known for being able to construct complex nests in which grain can be stored, and ants aren’t known for musicality. Rather, each creature has a different modus vivendi and a different niche. I’d like to envision a scenario that counters the general fable trend of interspecies antagonism, in which each creature could provide in accordance with their own abilities, and receive in accordance with their own need.

Linnet Heald
PhD in Medieval Studies
University of Notre Dame

  1. Perry Index 112. ↩︎
  2. J. Wight Duff and Arnold M. Duff, ed. and trans., Minor Latin Poets, Volume II, Loeb Classical Library 434 (Harvard University Press, 1934), p. 734. ↩︎
  3. See Léopold Hervieux, Les fabulistes latins depuis le siècle d’Auguste jusqu’à la fin du moyen âge, vol. 2 (George Olms Verlag, 1970). ↩︎
  4. Hervieux, Les fabulistes latins, vol. 4, p. 435; my translation. Exsultare can literally mean to leap, which is amusingly appropriate given the speaker, but it can also mean to revel or rejoice. Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Clarendon Press, 1879), s.v. “exsulto.” ↩︎
  5. R. T. Lenaghan, ed. Caxton’s Aesop: Edited with an Introduction and Notes (Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 133. ↩︎
  6. For example, John Sheppey: “Si in estate cantasti, in yeme salta.” ↩︎
  7. Charles Brucker, ed., Les fables: édition critique accompagnée d’une introduction, d’une traduction, de notes et d’un glossaire (Peeters, 1998), p. 180; my translation. ↩︎
  8. Hervieux, Les fabulistes latins, vol. 2, p. 624. ↩︎
  9. “Qui non laborat, non manducet et, si mercede dignus est operarius, non operantem nulla merces contingat.” Hervieux, Les fabulistes latins, vol. 4, p. 435; my translation. ↩︎
  10. “conferunt multa in unum communitate negotiorum et ciborum, ex quibus communi consulitur utilitati.” Albert the Great, De animalibus libri XXVI, ed. Hermann Stadler (Aschendorff, 1916), 16 [59]. Quoted in Juhana Toivanen, “‘Like Ants in a Colony We Do Our Share’: Political Animals in Medieval Philosophy,” in State and Nature: Studies in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, ed. Peter Adamson and Christof Rapp (De Gruyter, 2021), p. 368. The translation above is Toivanen’s (p. 369). ↩︎
  11. Stephen A. Barney et al., eds. The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 254. ↩︎
  12. “[I]l aime tant le canter qu’il en pert son mangier; et qu’il s’entroublit tot en chantant et s’en laise a porcachier, et muert tot en chantant.” In Le Bestiaire, version longue attribuée à Pierre de Beauvais, ed. Craig Baker (Champion, 2010), p. 159. Quoted in Nancy Freeman Regalado, “Force de parole: Shaping Courtliness in Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’amours, Copied in Metz about 1312 (Oxford, Bodl. MS Douce 308),” in Shaping Courtliness in Medieval France: Essays in Honor of Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, ed. Daniel E. O’Sullivan and Laurie Shepard (Boydell  & Brewer, 2013), p. 258; translation Regalado’s. ↩︎
  13. “Par le crisnon prendons example del juste home qui adés est en bienfaits et en penanche; et met totes les choses del monde et tos delis del cors en obli, et pense pour la joie pardurable et est adés en oroison et muert tot en orrant, c’est a dire qui einsi meurt qu’il muert tot en cantant aisi comme li crisnon.” Ibid., trans. Regalado. ↩︎

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Aries Across the Ages: Bighorn Sheep, Medieval Rams, and Springtime Symbolism

Since relocating from England and returning to my hometown in Colorado somewhat unexpectedly, I’ve been spending a lot of time soaking up the sunshine by the Arkansas river, and when a bighorn sheep approached the bank to drink the other day, it was not only a sure sign of spring but also a reminder of how medieval symbolism and modern day animals create connections across time and space, even entire continents.

Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, one of seven subspecies native to North America, occupy mountainous areas in the United States and Canada. They are named for the male’s large, curved horns, a pair of which can weigh up to 30 pounds – the equivalent of the weight of all the bones in the male’s body. They are powerful, steadfast creatures with males weighing upward of 500 pounds.

Male bighorn sheet. Photo courtesy of The National Wildlife Federation Blog.

During rutting season, which runs from October to January, rams battle for dominance and breeding rights with ewes. After descending from steep, treacherous terrain to lower territory, males can be observed rearing and smashing their horns together in a violent collision, producing sounds that can be heard up to 40 miles away.   

Rams butting heads. British Library, Yates Thompson MS 13 [Taymouth Hours], folio 183r.

Indeed, we are in the season of the Ram, just as the Western medieval world would have been at this time of year. The sun entered the constellation Aries, the ram, on March 20th in line with the spring, or vernal, equinox in the northern hemisphere and will remain in this astrological sign until approximately the same date in April before transitioning into Taurus, the bull.

The spring equinox marks the moment the sun crosses the celestial equator, bringing nearly equal day and night lengths and signifying the start of spring. When the sun passes through Aries, it also marks the astrological new year. As the first sign of the zodiac, Aries season symbolizes a reset after a long winter and a sense of reemergence, both in modern and medieval times.

Ram depicted in Bibliothèque Municipale de Douai, MS 711 [De Natura animalium], folio 18r.

In the medieval world, the season was perfect for pilgrimage. The characters of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, of course, begin their journey to Canterbury in mid-April as described by the first several lines of the General Prologue:

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, an the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne… (Chaucer 1-8).

When April with its sweet-smelling showers
Has pierced the drought of March to the root,
And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid
By which power the flower is created;
When the West Wind also with its sweet breath,
In every wood and field has breathed life into
The tender new leaves, and the young sun
Has run half its course in Aries… (Translation from Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website)

Sheep have maintained a strong presence in the English landscape since their domestication during the Neolithic era. Although they were not initially valued as highly as other livestock, they were integral in the early medieval period as providers of milk, wool, and manure. Their bodies were also harvested for meat, skin, fat, bones, and horns. They were hardy animals, able to thrive on rough grazing and survive during harsh winters.

A shepherd holding a lamb and tending a flock of sheep, including two rams in the foreground. Cambridge University Library, Kk.4.25 [Bestiary (Third Family)], folio 58v.

They were also used for ecclesiastical purposes. The best vellum was produced from either calf or lamb skin, and regular parchment was procured from the skin of sheep and goats. Additionally, rams were some of the first animals to be sacrificed on altars in the ancient world. Isidore of Seville, in his 7th-century Etymologies, writes, “The ram [aries] is either named after the word aris, that is, after ‘Mars’ whence we call the males in a flock ‘males’ [mas, maris] – or because this animal was the first to be sacrificed on altars [ara, aris] by pagans.”

Further to the etymological origins of the word, the Oxford English Dictionary defines a “ram” simply as an adult male sheep, and the word has remained relatively unchanged since it first appearance in English during the Anglo Saxon period, wherein rams appear as sacrifices in Biblical stories, notably that of Abraham, and other Christian contexts.

Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac with ram behind. Morgan Library & Museum, Bible historiale MS M.322 I, fol. 032r.

The term ram, however, also appeared in the context of battle, describing both a weapon of war (later renamed the “battering ram”) and the action of ramming as with the weapon itself, just as two rams would collide in conflict. Circa 1470, Thomas Malory in Morte Darthur describes how knights “hurteled togydirs lyke too rammes,” emphasizing the brute strength and blunt impact of the men as their bodies meet in battle.

At this time of year, bighorn sheep are less interested in fighting and more focused on lambing. Females typically give birth between late April and June, during which time they find steep, secluded habitats to protect their newborn babies from predators like mountain lions, coyotes, and bears. Males, during this time, live apart from females, maintaining a hierarchy of dominance amongst themselves. The separation during the springtime season creates an apt juxtaposition of violence and renewal from an ecological perspective, as well as a personal one: the hardest part has passed, and rebirth is possible.

The sighting of a bighorn sheep in early spring — powerfully yet gracefully poised on a rocky mountainside — poignantly connects my Colorado roots with my medieval interests and my previous home in England. It also reminds me that I am on the precipice of a new life after a difficult struggle, that this season symbolizes the beauty of living after a battle.

Emily McLemore, Ph.D.
Alumni Contributor, Department of English