Hell itself was envisaged as monstrous animal consuming and digesting the damned, although this idea did not crystallise until the 10th century (Schmidt 1995). So human dominion in medieval western thought appears to have been conditional, and the idea that people could become prey to earthly or otherworldy predators can be found in contexts ranging from the comical to the disturbing and horrific.

This tension makes the study of medieval predator-prey relationships particularly interesting and exciting - it is effectively about how people situated themselves physically and conceptually in the broader context of the natural world. The topic is also particularly relevant to modern Western society, since many hold the view that our fascination with, and fear of, impressive predators is rooted in the past, and particularly in the case of wolves, in the experiences of the Middle Ages (Kruuk 2002:69). Despite the popular status of the wolf as the most feared predator in medieval Europe, aerial and aquatic hunters also played an important role in medieval societies. The Great White Shark (depicted above) became a popular icon of predation after attacks on humans began to be regularly recorded in the 19th and 20th centuries, but in medieval societies the idea of being devoured by an impressive marine predator was a recurring motif in religious art and thought (for English examples see Schmidt 1995).

Despite the apparent links between concepts of predation in the past and present, it is essential to be aware of their specific cultural and ecological contexts. Modern responses to threatening predators are complex and range from extermination to fascination to conservation (for recent work exploring this complexity see Quammen 2004), and responses to predatory animals in medieval societies were equally diverse – using wolves and whales as metaphors for the demonic did not mean that live individuals roaming the landscapes and seascapes were envisaged as physical manifestations of the devil. With the exception of England, sustained persecution of wolves in Continental Europe and Scandinavia took place in the post-medieval period and there is no evidence that lupines or indeed any other predatory animals were hunted as a form of exorcism. However, the blurring of the boundary between human and animal was often expressed in terms of bestial violence and predation, for example amongst certain martial groups in pre-Christian Scandinavia (Price 2002).

But the nature of the evidence presents many challenges. Actual depredations were recorded relatively infrequently before the 16th century (much later in some regions) and predation is more frequently encountered in medieval contexts as a literary or iconographic motif. The relationship of these to ecological realities is far from a straightforward reflection, whilst faunal remains in medieval archaeological contexts invariably represent human rather than animal predation, although examples of the latter are occasionally identified. The study of predation and the ecological status of humans in medieval Europe therefore necessitates an interdisciplinary approach, supported by modern ecological, ethological and anthropological analogues. It is hoped this brief introduction will encourage others to explore this fascinating and continually relevant topic.