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

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Animals

and did not take up much space. Anyone with a fondness for animals and

enough money to produce a little spare food might keep a rabbit or squir-

rel. Manuscript pictures show ladies with squirrels in collars that are clearly

tame pets.

Birds were also popular small pets. Today’s pet birds are usually exotic

birds from the Orient, but in the Middle Ages, the only exotic bird known

was the parrot, called a popinjay. It was extremely expensive and very rare.

Native birds could be tamed, most commonly jays, jackdaws, and magpies.

Jackdaws and magpies could be trained to imitate speech. The queens of

England kept cages of small birds such as nightingales, and a few had Afri-

can parrots—gifts sent by foreign royalty.

North African monkeys were imported to Europe and were popular aris-

tocratic pets. While a monkey would be beyond the means of a university

student, who might rather keep a rabbit or bird, some ladies kept mon-

keys. Monkeys could be bought at large fairs, and traveling minstrels used

trained monkeys in their shows.

Dogs were part of European civilization from the start, ﬁ rst as hunting

dogs. Most knights kept hunting dogs at their manors. By the Middle

Ages, there were many different breeds. Hunting required different sizes

and skills in dogs: greyhounds and alaunts could catch up to running deer

and pull them down, mid-sized running hounds tracked and chased the

quarry, and bloodhounds tracked and killed downed animals. Mastiffs and

similar dogs were used for guarding ﬂ ocks. Hunting dogs were not exactly

pets, since they lived in kennels, but some favorite hunting dogs were per-

mitted to come into the castle hall and eat scraps. Dogs are described in

bestiaries in terms similar to the modern phrase “man’s best friend”: dogs

had been known to help solve crimes or to leap onto the funeral pyre of a

dead master.

Ladies had lap dogs, and, in the less disciplined convents, nuns kept dogs

as pets. The dogs ate table food that might have been given to the poor or

used by the nuns themselves, so the church tried to discourage the habit.

Even worse, in some places, nuns brought their pets to chapel, where they

distracted everyone from the service. Aristocratic ladies kept dogs with-

out any fear of ecclesiastical rebuke; a pet dog was a socially approved sign

of wealth. Pet dogs are pictured in manuscript illuminations in different

shapes and sizes; some look like small spaniels, a later popular pet of the

aristocracy.

Cats were not part of early medieval Europe but became popular luxury

pets in the late Middle Ages. They rate scantier mention in the bestiaries

than mice. They ﬁ rst entered Europe’s economy as small predators similar

to ferrets, probably brought from the East on ships. Their bones are found

in French towns from the 10th century, but they appear to be small and

feral. As the rat population grew in towns, cats were useful town animals

Animals

to keep them in check. Many churches and businesses kept cats around for

that purpose, but these were usually feral cats. Common people must often

have tamed them, but they were considered low animals and were always

associated with witchcraft by the church. Feral town cats might be killed for

their fur, which could be passed off as fox fur if the seller were lucky. Even

as cat fur, it had value. In the late Middle Ages, though, travelers began

importing exotic breeds, such as the Persian cat, from the East. Exotic cats

joined lap dogs as pets for aristocratic ladies, and paintings from the late

medieval years show cats in settings with people.

Wild Animals

While some animals were wild but became domesticated, others were al-

ways wild. These included predatory animals like wolves, foxes, and bears

and grazing deer hunted for their meat. They also included many small ani-

mals that still live at the margins of human society.

The most feared animal was the wolf. In the 7th and 8th centuries, much

of Europe was covered with deep forest, and human settlements were iso-

lated or coastal. By the 14th century, the forests were nearly gone, except

for fringes on mountain slopes. Wolves withdrew to these ranges, and, where

possible, they were hunted to extinction. While modern man has a sense

that wolves are needed to keep the natural world balanced, medieval man

saw wolves as wholly wicked. The real wolf of the forest easily became the

wicked wolf of the fairy tale, since man’s only contact with wolves was their

ﬁ erce predation against his ﬂ ocks. Medieval wolves were large enough to

take down horses, cattle, sheep, and goats. In the forests, they hunted the

same animals that hunters pursued. In outlying villages, older wolves some-

times killed small children.

Wolves were not valuable animals to hunt. They carried rabies, and me-

dieval people believed their bite was generally poisonous. Their fur could

make good blankets, but it had a distinctive smell that had to be removed.

Because they were evil, nobody ate them; however, for that same reason,

some of their parts were thought to have magical or medicinal power.

Bears were also hunted to extinction in medieval Europe, although there

were always some in captivity. They may have originally been more com-

mon in Spain, where they were protected as royal hunting game. Bears

were possible to tame, unlike wolves. Foxes were not tamed and were both

less dangerous and more numerous than wolves. They were prized for their

fur and were very popular hunting targets, as they are today.

Deer were protected in royal forests in much of Europe, so they were

kept from extinction by the efforts of professional foresters. The red, roe,

and fallow deer were Europe’s native breeds. Fallow deer were native to the

Mediterranean; they were the smallest kind. Red and roe deer were native

Animals

to the British islands. They continued to live wild, while fallow deer in-

creased in numbers in protected forests and parks. All kinds of deer lived

in the large royal forests.

Deer browsed on meadow grass and tree leaves. The medieval practice

of coppicing trees produced many young shoots suitable for deer to eat. In

winter, deer in protected parks were often fed hay. Their rutting (mating)

season was in the fall, and they gave birth to fawns in the spring. Professional

hunters were careful to hunt bucks only in the summer and does only in

the fall.

Fierce wild boars, twice the size of domesticated pigs, roamed the forests

and could easily kill both dogs and hunters. They were black and had very

coarse, bristly hair. The wild sows were also ﬁ erce, but the boar had long,

sharp tusks.

Other wild animals abounded: otters, beavers, and muskrats in the lakes

and streams; hares, badgers, and hedgehogs in the ﬁ elds; and weasels and

lynx in the forests. In the Alps and Pyrenees, there were ibex and chamois

mountain goats.

Entertainment with Animals

In addition to the rare entertainment of a king’s parade of his private

zoo —a menagerie of exotic animals—medieval townspeople enjoyed shows

of more common animals. Animal ﬁ ghting was a very popular spectacle for

medieval peasants and townspeople. Animals could also be trained, in some

cases. Trainers for dogs, horses, bears, and apes traveled to fairs and cas-

tles or stayed at a nobleman’s court. Bears and dogs could both learn to

dance. Apes could learn to juggle, ride on dogs, or work simple machines

like wheelbarrows. Bears also learned to pretend to ﬁ ght with actors so the

crowd could enjoy watching a wrestling match.

Cockﬁ ghting began as a sport for boys in France, but it became an adult

sport for betting. Medieval people believed that roosters were natural ﬁ ght-

ers, like knights, and that it was noble for them to ﬁ ght each other. Cock-

ﬁ ghts were like tournaments for the poor. The watchers were used to the

blood and injury and found ﬁ ghts very exciting.

The most popular spectacle at a fair was bearbaiting. A bear, muzzled so

it could not bite, was kept in an enclosure or tethered to a stake. Sometimes

the bear was blind. Fighting dogs were sent to attack the bear, which could

only use his paws to defend himself. People placed bets on how many dogs

the bear could kill before it died.

Bulls, too, were baited. In Spain, the tradition of bullﬁ ghting goes back

to medieval times. Nobles fought bulls to prove their courage, and com-

moners fought bulls for cash prizes. In Northern Europe, bulls were baited

like bears, with dogs set on them. Bulldogs were bred to have vice-like

Animals

jaws that could clamp onto a bull’s nose, even if the bull shook and tossed

the dog.

Animal cruelty as entertainment could take more direct forms. School-

boys played a game of burying a chicken up to its neck and throwing rocks

at it until it was dead. Some games made the normal slaughter of farm an-

imals into gory play, such as mock jousting to decapitate a goose or a blind-

folded game of beating a sow to death. A number of small wild animals,

such as birds and frogs, also served as targets for rock throwing or muti-

lation.

See also: Agriculture, Food, Forests, Horses, Hunting, Minstrels and Trou-

badours, Zoos.

Further Reading

Barber, Richard. Bestiary: Being an English Version of the Bodleian Library, Oxford

MS Bodley 764. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2006.

Cummins, John. The Art of Medieval Hunting: The Hound and the Hawk . Edison,

NJ: Castle Books, 1998.

Flores, Nora C., ed. Animals in the Middle Ages . New York: Routledge, 2000.

Hurst, Derek. Sheep in the Cotswolds: The Medieval Wool Trade. Exeter, UK: NPI

Media Group, 2005.

The men watching this bearbaiting have placed bets on how many dogs the bear can

kill before it collapses or dies. (The British Library/StockphotoPro)

Armor

Kitchell, Kenneth. Albertus Magnus “On Animals”: A Medieval “Summa Zoolog-

ica.” Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.

Reeves, Compton. Pleasures and Pastimes in Medieval England . New York: Oxford

University Press, 1998.

Resl, Brigitte, ed. A Cultural History of Animals in the Medieval Age. New York:

Berg, 2007.

White, T. H. The Book of Beasts: Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the

Twelfth Century. New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1954.

Armor

During the Middle Ages, armor began as ﬂ exible chainmail tunics and only

gradually developed into the knight ’s plate armor that is more familiar in

our imaginations. New spear-based weapons made plate armor a necessity

in war, and it took center stage in the fad for tournaments. Gunpowder

then began the process of making plate armor obsolete. The height of plate

armor craft came after the Middle Ages, during the early Renaissance, when

it had become a ceremonial and athletic accessory. Real war technology had

moved on.

Even in the late Middle Ages, chainmail was still in use in real wars, and

only a small percentage of ﬁ ghters ever had a full suit of expensive plate

armor. Any sort of armor was always a mark of status; low-ranked ﬁ ghters

had a quilted or leather tunic, at most. Leather could be hardened to be as

tough as wood, and it never went completely out of use as primary armor.

During the 14th century in Italy, some hardened leather armor was tooled

and gilded and was used by those who could have afforded metal. It was

cooler and easier to use for light combat.

In most of Europe, though, the trend was always toward incorporating

the largest amount of iron available at the time and for the user’s budget.

The standard was chainmail, made of interlocked iron rings and called sim-

ply “mail.” Mail was deemed good enough until two new weapon devel-

opments early in the 14th century. In Flanders and Switzerland, in 1302

and 1315, peasants and townsmen used halberds and pikes to kill large

numbers of well-armed knights. The sharp point of a spear could go through

mail. And, in 1346, English longbows sent yard-long arrows through French

knights’ armor at the Battle of Crécy. The French army had a squadron of

Genoese crossbowmen, and their bolts, too, could pierce a mail hauberk.

Plates were ﬁ rst attached to leather and then were bolted together in increas-

ingly complete suits.

Milan was the armor-making center of Europe during the Middle Ages.

Although armor was made locally in all parts of Europe, the ﬁ nest armor

Armor

always came from Milan. When trends changed, they changed ﬁ rst in Milan.

In the 1280s, the Milanese armorers began to reinforce mail with plates to

block arrows at key points. By 1340, they viewed plate armor as their main

product and supplementary mail as a secondary product. The wealthiest

aristocrats and kings ordered armor from Milan.

Milan-trained armorers were enticed to move elsewhere, bringing their

knowledge. Milan sent armorers into other cities of Italy: Brescia, Rome,

Venice, Modena, and Naples. Around 1400, Milanese craftsmen began

moving to England and France and populated Milanese shops in Paris,

Tours, Innsbruck, Bruges, and Artois. In Nuremberg and Augsburg, cit-

ies of southern Germany, armor-making increased in the middle of the

14th century. German armies were pushing back a Turkish invasion at the

Hungarian border, and these cities supplied the armor. Germany also ex-

ported armor to Poland.

Before its downfall as a craft in the 16th century, armor-making was big

business in Europe. Merchant armorers worked with craftsmen to ﬁ ll very

large orders for kings who were preparing for war. A king might buy armor

pieces for several thousand men in addition to his knights, who already had

armor. Guild regulations prevented arms from being sold in large amounts

on the open market so that craftsmen could retain control over their wares,

but no single craftsman could ﬁ ll these large orders. Determined merchants

found ways around the guild rules or simply ﬂ outed them. Large multina-

tional corporations with stockholders grew up in the arms trade.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, kings, dukes, and earls spent a great deal

on armor that would stand out from the rest of their knights. Sometimes

the armor was ceremonial, and sometimes it was really intended for war.

The armor had gold- plated decorations in visible places, like on the visor

of a helm, or was engraved with ﬁ ne decorations on the main plates. Some

armor was even enameled black with gold designs or was embedded with

jewels. These gold-decorated armor pieces cost as much as the annual in-

come of the kingdom. Most of the luxury armor came in the period after

the Middle Ages proper. In the Renaissance, luxury armor was a great pres-

tige symbol, even though it was no longer useful in war.

Shields

In the early Middle Ages, reinforced wooden shields were a key part of

a warrior’s kit. They were usually round, in Northern European usage.

Anglo-Saxon and early Frankish round shields probably had metal rims

to protect the edges from splintering as easily. It seems likely that they

were painted or decorated with metal. The shield found in the rich Sutton

Hoo grave had silver rivets and other decorative metal touches, while the

Armor

decorative shields from a boat burial in Norway were painted yellow and

black directly on the wood. Shields were critical to Anglo-Saxon warfare.

Foot soldiers formed a shield wall, and the strategy depended on not allow-

ing the enemy to break through the wall.

The Norse Vikings used round, ﬂ at wooden shields covered with leather,

often painted. Their purpose was to ward off arrows and some blows, but

they could easily be shattered with an ax, and some Vikings ran through

more than one shield in a battle. The shields were about the size of a

pizza—14 inches to 30 inches at the largest. They had a hole cut in the

center large enough to ﬁ t a hand. A metal boss covered this hole; it had a

handgrip bar at the back. It was nearly cone-shaped, with a point to deﬂ ect

blows. Very few wooden shields have survived, but many shield bosses have

been found in pagan graves.

The Norman invasion in 1066 brought a new style of shield. The shields

shown on the Bayeux Tapestry are large and kite-shaped, carried on the left

arm. It is likely the kite shape was an adaptation to carrying the shield on

horseback. From this time on, Norman knights carried shields for mounted

warfare—usually some form of a triangle, narrower at the bottom where

they might knock against the horse. During the Middle Ages, shield shapes

changed as their purpose shifted.

Shields were made of plywood, not iron. From round Norse shields to

medieval jousting shields, they began with thin layers of wood glued to-

gether so the grain of each layer was at right angles to the grain of its neigh-

bors. Most shields were bent into a curved shape so blows would slide off.

The face of a shield was covered with leather and then often with gesso, a

plaster glue used to prepare wooden surfaces for painting in ﬁ ne art. The

shield could then be painted.

The back of the shield needed straps or handles. Norse shields had a han-

dle bolted to the metal center boss as well as a strap for the elbow to help

support the shield. Straps on the back of a shield are called enarmes. Medi-

eval shields had leather straps riveted to the plywood to support the elbow

and wrist. Some shields also had a third, small strap to hook ﬁ ngers into

when they were not being used. Additionally, most had a strap that could

sling the shield around the neck or back when at rest. This strap was called

the guige. The shield’s back was covered with fabric, either linen or some-

thing ﬁ ner. A pad of horsehair often padded the area where the arm rested

against the shield to protect it from being bruised by direct blows.

At ﬁ rst, the new tactical method of cavalry charges with lances made

knights carry larger, heavier shields during the 12th and 13th centuries. The

shields were called targes and were covered with leather. Knights needed to

take several shields, which were carried by their squires, into battle. How-

ever, this increased use of shields did not last. Shields were not used as an

active part of a knight’s defenses after full plate armor came into use. Some

Armor

armored knights still used small shields, but a wooden shield was not nearly

as strong as the armor itself. Tournament shields still had a function since

they helped support the lance. They were designed with a notch cut in one

top corner to rest the lance while charging.

Shields had a second life as less personal weapons in later warfare. In

sieges, many kinds of wooden walls and shields were needed to protect

those who were shooting or operating machinery. A tall, freestanding

wooden shield, called a pavis, was supported by legs and could shelter two

or more ﬁ ghters. Archers usually fought behind pavises. These shields were

not much more than large boards.

Helmets

Viking helmets, like the helmets used by the Franks and Anglo-Saxons,

were close-ﬁ tting and made of metal or leather. They did not generally have

horns, but they often had nose guards. Some had cheek plates and chin-

straps; they were made of several metal plates, riveted together. The few hel-

mets that survived in rich ship burials often have totem animals mounted

on top, like a crest.

On the Bayeux Tapestry, the ﬁ ghters wear close-ﬁ tting round steel hel-

mets with nose guards. They are ﬁ tted over chainmail hoods (coifs) that

protect the neck. Under the mail coif was a padded cloth cap. This type of

head protection was the most common through most of the Middle Ages.

Variations were in how rounded or pointed the helmet was or whether it

The helmet of King Henry V of

England is in the expensive, elaborate

style required for 15th-century

tournaments. Whether in battle or

jousting, the knight’s neck, head, and

face were entirely covered. The small slit

allowed vision only when the knight’s

head was lowered in a charge. The full

helmet sacriﬁ ced visibility for

protection. (Royal Armouries/David

Lyons/StockphotoPro)

Armor

was made from a single plate or several plates welded to a frame. In the later

Middle Ages, the simple round helmet was called, in French, a cervellière.

It could even be worn under a larger helmet.

Later helmets were larger and ﬂ at on top. They protected the head bet-

ter but restricted visibility. They had ﬁ tted leather linings that supported

the helmet, similar to a football helmet. As ﬁ ghting tactics changed, so

too did helmet styles. There was always a trade-off between visibility and

protection. Knights who were jousting or ﬁ ghting in cavalry charges with

lances needed maximum protection, even at the expense of visibility. Foot

soldiers needed mobility and wore helmets that left the face open.

The knight’s bascinet, in the 14th century, had a hinged visor that could

be closed in ﬁ ghting conditions or left open for visibility; one version had

a hinge that allowed the visor to hang at the chin. The neck of the bascinet

was covered with a plate so a chainmail hood was not necessary and the

neck was better protected. This curved plate, called a gorget or an aventail,

went all around the neck. Tournament helms were often beaked in front

so they would turn a lance’s point to the side. Closed great helms were less

and less used on the battleﬁ eld.

A more practical battleﬁ eld helmet looked more like a hat with a brim;

blows from above, such as from a mounted knight or a descending arrow,

would glance off. It was used extensively by infantry soldiers during the

12th century and after. It was variously called a chapel de fer or war hat. It

did not protect the wearer’s face, but it also did not restrict vision at all.

In the 15th century, battleﬁ eld helmets still included both bascinets (es-

pecially to protect the face from arrows) and brimmed iron hats. Mail coifs

were no longer used; most chainmail had fallen out of favor. Gorgets and

aventails protected the throat and neck instead.

Mail Armor

A mail shirt was usually called a hauberk, but in the Norse literature, it is

called a byrnie. It was the earliest type of European armor, and it defended

a ﬁ ghter well against sword or knife cuts. It was not a good defense against

spears or arrows, which could pierce and tear the rings.

Mail was made from a fabric of interlocked iron rings. These rings were

either made from iron wire or punched out from a thin sheet of iron. When

they were made from wire, the process was fast. Wire was wrapped in a spi-

ral around a rod and then cut along one side to make many single rings.

The mail maker ﬂ atted the ends of each wire ring, reheating it to make it

soft, and punched tiny holes in the metal. The ends overlapped so the ring

could close. Wire rings were riveted with a special tool; when solid punched

rings were used, they had to alternate with riveted wire rings—one riveted

ring for every four solid ones connected to it.

A 12th-century mailed knight kneels to receive a blessing. Embroidered crosses on his

surcote show that he is a Crusader. (The British Library/StockphotoPro)