Conceptualising predation in medieval Europe

Extract from 'Del leün malade e del gupil' ('The Sick Lion and The Fox'),
Marie de France, mid-12th century (Spiegel 1994:121)

The fundamental relationships between predators and prey, hunters and hunted were widely recognised in European societies from prehistory through to the present day. A diverse range of archaeological, written and artistics sources from the 11th-15th centuries AD indicate that the ecological realities of predation were observed in terrestrial, aerial and aquatic environments. From a modern ecological perspective humans were apex predators, and from the perspective of medieval Western Christian theology and philosophy this dominion had been ordained by God during the creation (Salisbury 1996:6-7). Aside from the management of edible domesticates, human predation reached its zenith in seigneurial hunting culture which exalted deer as the ultimate prey.

Simplified, major predator-prey relationships in medieval Europe. These are not represented as energy flows but as links from predator to prey. The purple link from humans to wild ungulates represents forms of management found in western Europe particularly from the 12th century. Predation by bears and wolves on humans was almost certainly rare, but as evidence suggests, possible.

However, human dominion was challenged physically and conceptually by other predatory animals, notably the largest terrestrial carnivores. These animals preyed on livestock and game – both groups under (variable) human management and 'protection'. In the case of game animals such as deer, it is possible that competition existed or was perceived to exist between certain groups of humans and wolves. Whilst occasional and contextually specific predation on humans cannot be ruled out (see Linnell et al. 2002), anxieties concerning the relationship between eater and eaten - animal and human - were expressed in a range of artistic and written sources, some inherited from Classical and early Christian culture, others in northern Europe from interactions between Christian and pagan cosmologies (Bynum 1995, Pluskowski 2003). The spiritual threat to the human soul was expressed in the lethal relationship between predator and prey – the devil and demonic beings appear as predatory wild animals hunting or threatening humans often represented by suitable prey animals, particularly sheep. This imagery was rooted in the Bible, where carnivores feature as both expressions of God's power:

"occurram eis quasi ursa raptis catulis et disrumpam interiora iecoris
eorum et consumam eos ibi quasi leo bestia agri scindet eos"

"I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will tear open their breast, and there I will devour them like a lion, as a wild beast would rend them" (Hosea 13:8)

...and as metaphors for the demonic:

"sobrii estote vigilate quia adversarius vester diabolus
tamquam leo rugiens circuit quaerens quem devoret"

"Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, walks around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour" (1 Peter 5:8)

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 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.

The study of the human impact on large carnivores in the past is particularly relevant for European society today, because it has a significant contribution to make to debates and EU policy-making on their current status and future conservation/re-introduction.

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