Johnston R.A. All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World

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The Luttrell family’s psalter, one of the best-preserved illustrated manuscripts,

uses the 15th-century Gothic script. It was a minuscule script, although letters

that started lines or sentences were often large and decorated. The lower loop

of a G was closed, not open, in the Gothic; R was drawn in an abbreviated

form; S was a straight line within a word, but at a word’s end it appeared as an

angled curve similar to a modern S. Some Gothic scribes meticulously drew

three-pointed feet on the bottom of their letters, while others were content

with simpler serifs. (The British Library/StockphotoPro)

Insular majuscule writing in the Book of Kells is made up of letters that

resemble modern capital letters. This style, developed in Ireland, was beautiful but

still easy to read. Here, many capital letters are decorated as animals. (The Print

Collector/StockphotoPro)

Alphabet

By the eighth century, court scribes often chose to write scripts that were

very difﬁ cult to read. If they were hard to read, they were also hard to

forge, and it meant another scribe must be asked to read the document. Be-

cause they often wrote royal charters, the term “charter script” means this

intentionally dense, complicated writing. They used exaggerated ascend-

ing and descending strokes and crowded the letters together. Merovingian

royal documents are very difﬁ cult for modern scholars to read, and there is

evidence that contemporaries, including the kings and Popes themselves,

could not decipher them.

A new approach called for a new script. King Charlemagne set up schools

and a scriptorium to try to copy as many texts as possible and build up

literacy and libraries. He set an example by becoming the ﬁ rst pupil in

his school, along with his sons. To build up general literacy and generate

new books as quickly as possible, he needed a simple script that was easy

to read and write. His English adviser, Alcuin, wrote in insular minuscule,

but other styles met in the land of the Franks. A script from the monastery

at Luxeuil featured exaggerated ascending and descending strokes, while

scripts from Italy were more similar to the original Roman style. Alcuin and

his scribes could choose from a variety of known styles.

Charlemagne’s scriptorium developed a standardized minuscule style

now known as Carolingian minuscule. It used moderate, conservative as-

cending and descending strokes so lines could be written closer together to

ﬁ t more on a page, and its letters were rounded and uniform. It used capi-

tal letters and periods to set off sentences. Words had small spaces between

them to make reading easier, although close word spacing continued to be

an issue until the late Middle Ages. A lowercase N in the modern form n

evolved, as did the earliest step toward a modern W , as overlapping U and V .

Because Carolingian scribes copied a very large number of old texts that

were falling apart, their script became universal and dominant. They also

used some of the older scripts from the material they were copying in order

to set off headings and ﬁ rst letters.

During the 11th century, a new script, now called Gothic, came into use.

Gothic letters were narrower, in order to ﬁ t more letters on a page of parch-

ment. They were written quickly, and the style included serifs—lines left

as the pens were lifted at an angle. Ideally, the appearance of every letter

was, at ﬁ rst, highly uniform, and to modern eyes the letters blur into a se-

ries of lines. Gothic letters were often connected by ligatures or ended with

a ﬂ ourish, and individual scribes, particularly in Northern Europe, some-

times made their Gothic letters so decorative that we have difﬁ culty read-

ing them. Some Gothic scripts used large, colored designs for capital letters

called versals. Versals were often irregular or alternative shapes for the let-

ters, and they were often set off in decorative boxes.

Alphabet

The Gothic script continued to be dominant through the 15th century,

and since the architectural and artistic style was ornate, scribes wrote in

increasingly ornate hands. Ascending strokes were tall, looped, curled, bro-

ken, and dotted. Descending strokes also curled and looped, and letters

became slanted, rounded, and irregular. National script trends developed;

letters tended to be tall and narrow in Northern Europe and rounded in the

Mediterranean. Writing in Germany tended toward heavy strokes and elab-

orate capital letters. Paleographers call the uniquely ornate style that came

out of 14th-century Germany “Gothic Littera Bastarda.” Every hand in this

style was different, although the letters had the same essential formation.

Pages of ornate Gothic writing were as beautiful as stone tracery in a Gothic

cathedral.

By the late Middle Ages, scribes in the more conservative Mediterranean

regions were turning back to forms of Carolingian minuscule. Gothic let-

ters had become too ornate and difﬁ cult to read. Carolingian minuscule

became the basis for styles in the Renaissance and the new technology of

typeface.

The Latin alphabet was not the only one in common use in medieval Eu-

rope. Jews continued to read and write in Hebrew, and the Muslims of

Spain and Sicily used Arabic. Arabic was often written with elaborate, artistic

calligraphy, and it inﬂ uenced styles in art. Arabic writing was often painted

onto ceramic dishes and woven into silk. Arabic was also the daily language

of half the Mediterranean and most of Spain. Even Christians and Jews in

Spain spoke Arabic and wrote Arabic treatises and poetry. Arabic was a more

beautiful, civilized alphabet in contrast with the crude block letters of Latin.

Hebrew was inﬂ uenced by Arabic to become more elaborate and dec-

orative in the Muslim countries where Jews absorbed Arabic culture. In

Northern Europe, Hebrew script was inﬂ uenced by Latin and by the need

to use it as a business correspondence language. During the Middle Ages,

Jews in France and Germany developed faster, simpler ways to write the an-

cient Hebrew letters. Their shortcuts are now known as cursive, although

the letters are not connected by ligatures as in a true cursive. Whereas the

formal Hebrew script required calligraphy, medieval Hebrew cursive could

be written quickly with lines. The cursive used in Israel today is very similar

to medieval German Jewish cursive.

Further Reading

Bischoff, Bernhard. Latin Palaeography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1990.

Blair, Sheila S. Islamic Calligraphy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008.

Animals

Brown, Michelle P. A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600.

Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993.

Drogin, Marc. Medieval Calligraphy: Its History and Technique. Mineola, NY:

Dover Publications, 1989.

Pollington, Stephen. Rudiments of Runelore. Hockwold, UK: Anglo-Saxon Books,

1998.

Yardeni, Ada. The Book of Hebrew Script: History, Paleography, Script Styles, Callig-

raphy, and Design. London: British Library, 2003.

Animals

During the Middle Ages, the word animal meant any living thing, human

or nonhuman. Beast, originally a French word for a wild animal, came to

mean any nonhuman living thing and encompassed both domestic and wild

animals by the end of the period. The distinction between wild and domes-

ticated animals was not as clear in the Middle Ages as it is now. Even today,

some dogs can be wild, pets, or working animals; at that time, many other

animals could be any of these categories.

Medieval philosophers and common people were convinced that animals

felt emotion and could think to some extent. Certain animals were thought

to exemplify emotional or moral traits: dogs love their masters, apes are

lunatics, camels are ﬁ lled with lust, and lions do not hate men unless they

are wounded. Although they did not consider man an animal, they lived in

harmony with animals, surrounded by them at all times, down to the ﬂ eas

on their bodies.

Books about Animals

There were many books about animals in the Middle Ages. The most

common type had encyclopedia-style entries and was called a bestiary. The

most inﬂ uential was known as the Physiologus, after its anonymous author.

This bestiary, emerging from classical times in Greek, was translated into

every known language. The original had about 50 beasts; as it was trans-

lated and copied, anonymous authors added local animals as well as more

hearsay. Artists added illustrations that were very inaccurate for unknown

animals but quaintly accurate enough for native beasts.

Bestiaries began as guides to the animals of the Bible, many of which were

unfamiliar to Europeans. The lion was not native to Europe, and its hab-

its had to be explained. In later bestiaries, familiar European animals such

as wolves and sheep were explained in moral terms, in addition to the ex-

otic animals. Animals were described as morally good or bad. Wolves were

the epitome of evil, and the habits of wolves could help a medieval reader

Animals

understand the habits of the devil. A wolf’s eyes shine in the dark like a

lamp because the devil’s works seem beautiful. Wolves, the reader learns,

cannot turn their heads to look backward, but must turn their whole body,

which means the devil cannot turn and repent. Because bestiaries began as

natural history companions to the Bible, they tried to provide sermon illus-

trations to teach moral lessons.

Bestiaries classiﬁ ed animals into beasts, birds, reptiles, and ﬁ shes. Reptiles

and ﬁ sh were grouped together in a primitive recognition of their cold-

blooded nature. Bats were birds, but the bestiary noted that bats were the

only birds that had teeth and gave birth to live young. Satyrs, mythical hu-

manoids, were beasts. Ants were beasts, since they were not birds or ﬁ sh,

but worms of all kinds were classed with the snakes, with ﬂ eas added for

completeness. Whales and dolphins were ﬁ sh, and frogs were also grouped

with ﬁ sh. In some cases, an animal was clearly considered to be ﬁ sh, bird, or

beast, but in other cases, it may only have been a convenience of grouping.

The Middle Ages did not seem to consider insects as their own class.

Rumored animals from far away also appeared in bestiaries; some are rea-

sonably identiﬁ able or even accurate (the hyena and the ostrich), but most

In a 13th-century bestiary, the wolf’s image was more important as a symbol of

evil and danger than as an accurate drawing of the real animal. (The British Library/

The Bridgeman Art Library)

Animals

are ﬁ ctitious monsters (the grifﬁ n and the unicorn). The manticora, the

medieval reader learned, was a man-eating beast with a lion’s body and a

man’s face. The unicorn was the size of a goat, was both swift and ﬁ erce,

and could only be captured by a young virgin. The phoenix, dying on its

funeral pyre to come to life again, was reported as factually as any other

animal. Some bestiaries tried to be careful, and one 12th-century work ex-

plained to the reader that the many-headed hydra dragon was a myth.

Bestiaries passed on the accumulated scientiﬁ c knowledge of animals,

often from Roman sources like Pliny the Elder. The information was more

often inaccurate than accurate. For example, a 12th-century reader learned

from one bestiary that the livers of mice are enlarged at the full moon,

that weasels give birth through their ears or mouths, that rams butt heads

because it helps the itching in their brains caused by worms, and that el-

ephants live 300 years. Some accurate information could be found in a bes-

tiary, especially concerning animals native to Europe. The stag’s rutting

season was accurately described, as well as the deer’s habit of giving birth in

a hidden place. Bestiary writers observed that deer moved upwind to mask

their scent, migrated from pasture to pasture, and crossed rivers in a line.

Even in relatively accurate information, inaccuracy and folklore intruded.

Stags eat snakes to cure their sicknesses, said the writer, so if you want to

keep snakes away, use the ashes of a burned stag’s horn.

Writers of the later Middle Ages tried to improve the accuracy of these

sources. The Dominican monk Albertus Magnus, writing in the 13th cen-

tury, composed De Animalibus, a many-volume encyclopedia of animals

based on the ideas of Aristotle, with several original volumes from his own

observational knowledge. His motivation for writing was still to educate

preachers and other writers about animals they might not have seen and

to apply the animals’ traits to moral teachings. However, unlike previous

copiers and annotators of bestiaries, Albertus Magnus tested the unques-

tioned knowledge of the ancients by experimenting. He veriﬁ ed that moles

did not have eyes but found that neither did they have black oil for eyes, as

Aristotle had said. His concern was to make an accurate book as much as a

complete book.

Veterinary information was nonexistent at ﬁ rst, and animals had no med-

ical care. But as the wealthy began to have highly bred, well-trained animals,

they wanted to know how to treat their disorders. Medical philosophy of-

fered the same framework to animal medicine as to human medicine. All liv-

ing things were made up of hot and cool, wet and dry. The creature’s overall

complexion was the way these four humors were balanced. Bees were cold

and dry, while horses were hot and dry. Fish, obviously, were cool and wet.

This system was very consistent and passed as scientiﬁ c, but it could recom-

mend few practical therapies for colic, sprains, worms, or injuries.

Animals

The falconers or horse trainers of kings sometimes wrote books. Emperor

Frederick II of Germany himself wrote a treatise on the care of falcons, tak-

ing a scientiﬁ c approach. His Master of Stables wrote a similar work on the

care of horses that examined their common ailments and discussed how best

to manage them. Veterinary medicine may have moved beyond Aristotle

more quickly than human medicine, abandoning the four humors theory in

favor of pragmatic therapies.

Domesticated Animals

Domesticated animals of the Middle Ages were the same kinds we still

have on our farms and in our homes, although the animal breeds were

somewhat different. A domesticated animal is entirely dependent on its

owners for food, but a wild animal forages on its own. Some medieval

farm animals were not fully domesticated and lived half wild. Pigs, horses,

and even cows were sometimes kept half wild and lived on their own in

forests.

When animals were free to forage for themselves, they often bred with

wild species, such as the wild boar. Half-wild animals were often smaller,

since they could not be selectively bred like farm animals. Although the

Romans had practiced selective breeding to produce larger farm animals,

the Middle Ages saw a reversal of this trend, and animals became on aver-

age smaller. Medieval pigs were only about one-third the size of a modern

pig. Cows were smaller and leaner. Foraging also meant the animals did not

get as much to eat as barn-fed animals. Farm animals tended to be kept lon-

ger than modern animals. Because they were smaller and leaner, they did

not reach a useful size quickly.

Pigs were the chief animal raised for food in medieval Europe. They

were smaller than modern pigs, but with longer legs. Like the wild boar,

they had long faces with pointed snouts, were dark brown, and had very

stiff, bristly hair. Unlike cattle and sheep, pigs did no useful work when they

were alive, but they had the advantage of eating nearly everything. Pigs

could be released to forage on acorns and beechnuts in the forest, or they

could wander a town’s streets, eating garbage and the waste grain from

breweries. In cities, they were considered a serious nuisance. Not only were

they voracious, but occasionally they killed a small child who also had been

left to wander the streets. Many medieval towns tried to ban or restrict

pigs, but they were too important to the medieval diet for the effort to

be successful. Pork was easy to preserve, since it was still fairly good after

being salted, smoked, or dried. Its fat was good for cooking. Pigs became

less important in the food economy of the late Middle Ages because forests

were being cut for charcoal to make iron, which reduced acorn foraging.

Animals

Cattle and sheep were more numerous than pigs after that time. However,

the pigs that remained were more often kept in pigsties in the farmyard.

These pigs grew larger and fatter and, over time, grew lighter in color and

less like wild pigs.

Poultry were the most common animal kept by the poor, even in cities.

In Anglo-Saxon times, England had more chickens than geese, but geese

became the primary poultry of the later Middle Ages. Many manors also

kept doves as producers of manure. The primary value of poultry was in egg

production. Chickens and geese were only eaten for special occasions, since

their eggs had more food value than their meat. A hen could lay on average

one egg every two days, and some peasants paid rent in eggs.

Sheep were among the most prized farm animals, and they were the

most numerous in some regions. Medieval sheep were smaller than modern

sheep. They could ﬁ nd grass on land that was not rich enough for wheat

ﬁ elds, including at elevations where crops could not grow. They were milked,

and farmers made sheep cheeses and butter. Sheep’s milk was originally

more commonly used than cow’s milk. They dropped manure on ﬁ elds

that could later be plowed and planted, and, for this reason, their folds

were moved frequently, even daily. Their wool, particularly as longhaired

sheep were bred, was highly valuable, and wool was the primary export of

England. Once slaughtered, their meat was mutton and their skin became

parchment for books.

During the 14th century, sheep herds greatly increased. Cloth produc-

tion made their wool more important than their milk, and shepherds fo-

cused on lambing rather than milking. Sheep were also kept longer before

slaughter, since they produced wool long past their milking usefulness.

By the 12th century, some monasteries and manors were beginning se-

lective breeding to produce better wool, and, by the 14th century, these

new breeds had ﬁ ner wool. Sheep bred by Cistercian lay brothers were

the best.

In 13th-century Spain, sheep breeders created the Merino sheep with

the softest wool. Spanish shepherds had to move their sheep from summer

to winter pastures, sometimes over long distances. Late medieval Spain was

honeycombed with sheep trails, which were maintained by the mestas, the

sheep owners’ regional organizations. The level of organization required to

maintain the trails and rules also permitted organized breeding, overseen

by the mestas. The new breed they developed was perfect for their condi-

tions. The Merino sheep could walk long distances and it could get by on

only scruffy grazing in a hot, dry climate. It produced large amounts of

very ﬁ ne wool.

Cattle were primarily draft animals and only shifted to dairy and meat

animals as the horse became the main draft animal. There may have been

more cattle than sheep in early medieval England. They were smaller than

Animals

modern cattle and had longer horns. A castrated male was called an ox

and was the main plowing animal for most of the Middle Ages, until the

13th-century shift to growing oats made it easier to keep horses. Oxen

typically plowed in teams of eight, where possible. They could be eaten

when they wore out their strength in work; their other parts produced

glue, leather, parchment, and fat for soap. Horses could plow faster, but

the church did not allow people to eat them. Until the murrain outbreaks

of the 14th century, cattle had fewer diseases than horses, and they did not

need shoes.

During the 13th century’s agricultural shift to three-ﬁ eld crop rotation

and draft horses, cattle became more important as dairy cows. Males were

still castrated as oxen if not needed as bulls, but barn and ﬁ eld resources

shifted to maintaining as many females as possible for milk. Once cattle be-

came more valuable for their milk, they were given more food and began

to grow larger.

Goats and sheep were the most common farm animals in Mediterranean

countries. Goats were never well established in the north, although they

were kept in some places. By the 13th century, English farms rarely kept

goats. In Alpine regions, goats and sheep had to be moved to winter or

summer pastures for the most efﬁ cient use of scanty pasturage.

Wild hares were native to Europe, but the smaller, fatter domesticated

rabbit was an invader during the Middle Ages. Monasteries kept rabbits,

since baby rabbits were declared ﬁ sh by the church and could be eaten on

fast days. As monasteries made progress in raising rabbits on their farms,

aristocrats introduced them back into the wild in new areas so they would

reproduce for sport hunting. The rabbit came to England in 1176, and, at

the same time, aristocrats introduced partridges, pheasants, peafowl, and

fallow deer. Domestic and wild rabbits interbred, and rabbits easily went

wild if they escaped. Although they were rare during most of the Middle

Ages, by the Renaissance rabbits were a common nuisance and had dis-

placed the native hare.

Manure from all domesticated animals was an important agricultural

product that had high market value. Manure’s value as fertilizer was well-

known. The landowner often claimed not only the dung of his own estates

and ﬁ elds, but also the swept-up droppings on the town streets, which

poorer people would have been glad to salvage. Street droppings swept up

in London were sold to country farms. Peasants could not develop their

ﬁ elds as well, since they had fewer animals.

Pets

Rabbits were not only wild or farm animals. Like people today, medi-

eval people noticed that rabbits made good pets. They were easy to feed