Medieval Hunting (5 page)

Various medicines were made up by apothecaries from antler, and the heart and penis of male deer, those of the hart being considered particularly efficacious. These included antidotes for the plague and poison, and remedies for the bloody flux, colic, gout and birth pains.
⁷¹
Antler had many other uses including as knife handles, sword grips, picks, buttons and combs. The recent excavations at Jorvik, Viking York, show that comb-making from antler was an ancient industry. Bones were ground up and made into glue. Teeth were made into tools, such as the burnishers used by illuminators to polish gold leaf in manuscripts; and into ornaments, especially the eye-teeth of red deer hinds which were popular with hunters' ladies. On the continent,
charivaris
were made from the mounted teeth, claws, tusks, horns and antlers of quarry. These elaborate pieces of hunting jewellery not only adorned the wearer but were also believed to protect them from sickness and danger.
⁷²

Even feathers had their uses. The primary feathers of large birds, particularly the goose, were cut and made into writing quills, and also used to fletch arrows. Long decorative feathers, such as the tail-feathers from the cock pheasant, were used to ornament hats and caps. The two tiny first primaries, or ‘pin-feathers', from woodcock wings were used by medieval artists as paint brushes in the production of manuscript miniatures and marginalia. French shooters still call the pin-feather
la plume du peintre
.
⁷³

The final, and in some ways most important, function of hunting and hawking was that of providing pleasure, and this surely applied at all levels of society. However, under the Roman Catholic regime of the later Middle Ages, any kind of pleasure was regarded with suspicion and could be linked with sin, particularly lust. This attitude was so entrenched in the medieval mind that pleasure often engendered a sense of guilt in the psyche of believers. In
The Testament
, François Villon repeats an old warning on the theme of upper-class pleasures:

‘In hawks and hounds, in love and war,'

everyone says the melancholy:

‘One joy per hundred pains or more.'
⁷⁴

However, this is the cynicism of a ruined gentleman-playboy. Gaston Fébus, who delighted in hunting above all else, even love and war, tried to increase the enjoyment of his fellow-men by instruction through his treatise. He found great pleasure in the pastoral way of life and being at one with nature, a feeling experienced by all genuine hunters. Gaston's monologue from
Livre de chasse
clearly communicates this aesthetic appreciation.
⁷⁵

The unknown author of the alliterative poem
The Parlement of the Thre Ages
also expresses his delight in the pastoral scene when the lawless hunter and dreamer enters the wood to seek a deer to poach:

Als I habade one a banke be a bryme syde,

There the gryse was grene growen with floures–

The primrose, the pervynke, and piliolepe riche–

The dewe appon dayses donkede full faire,

Burgons & blossoms & braunches full swete,

And the mery mystes full myldely gane falle:

The cukkowe, the cowschote, ken were pay bothen,

And the throstils full throly threpen in the bankes.
⁷⁶

He then describes the habitats where game may be lying-up at this time of day, those creatures with the potential to supply the further pleasures of the hunt, even though in this case the hunting is of the illegal variety.
⁷⁷

Fébus also enjoyed immensely the more obvious excitement of the chase itself and the accompanying rituals and ceremonies. His description of hunting the hart overflows with enthusiasm, every aspect being described as ‘good'.
⁷⁸
In short, everything connected with hunting gave pleasure and satisfaction to Fébus, and by extension to all other hunters. Edward of York echoes Fébus's sentiments and maintains that hunters were happier than other men because of their appreciation of the beauties of nature and their pleasure in the thrills of the chase.
⁷⁹
Gaston Fébus sums it up neatly, even including a piece of reassurance for those concerned about the after-life ‘Good hunters live long and happily, and when they die, they go to Paradise'.
⁸⁰

Fébus thus returned to one of his original points, and one repeatedly emphasised in other medieval treatises and manuals, that of the moral nature of hunting. This was an essential function to the educated élite as it balanced the nagging guilt created by the pleasures of the chase. Hunting would make a better man during this life, save his mortal soul from sin and guarantee his speedy passage to paradise. Hunting was the obvious anodyne to the most worrying of medieval man's problems, or rather to those which concerned the ruling classes, and a place in heaven was perhaps the most pressing as it was uncertain. Whether the peasant poacher, or noble or ecclesiastical poacher for that matter, felt morally improved by a spot of illegal hunting is open to question and the sources are not clear on this delicate point. Perhaps like the opportunities for pre- or post-hunt sexual dalliance, the moral sin of poaching was best kept locked away in a dark corner of the hunter's conscience. Certainly, the pleasure of poaching game must then, as now, have been part of the attraction of illicit hunting. Sometimes the pleasure of poaching local venison had a very sound and understandable human basis for those villagers surrounded by vulnerable herds of red or fallow deer. Recent research into the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century records of the Forest courts reveals that peasants poached deer not only for immediate consumption but for future pleasures too, such as a family wedding feast or Christmas dinner. There is also evidence of peasants making gifts of venison and undoubtedly deriving a very human enjoyment from their unusual opportunity to provide largesse.
⁸¹

In addition to providing pleasure at all levels, sporting leisure activities like hunting and hawking were an important part of making connections; medieval aristocratic ‘networking'. As Maurice Keen points out:

the acquaintanceships and friendships formed through them, played an important part in the social life of the landed classes. An invitation to hunt offered the prospect of pleasure . . . and also of encounters in which all sorts of matters could be discussed usefully and informally – local and national politics, family affairs, marriage and giving in marriage.
⁸²

Standing around at covert-side, waiting for game to be flushed or received, was not perhaps a time for conversation, though doubtless it occurred and was frowned upon, as now (‘coffee-shopping'), by the more dedicated hunters. It was the pre- and post-hunt festivities which were particularly valuable times for these political and familial conversations, as well as for less serious gossip and flirtation.

H
unting rights have been a bone of contention and division in European society for at least twelve hundred years. Hunting was regarded as a privilege of the ruling classes and restrictions on gratuitous hunting were initiated by European monarchs in the early medieval period. On the continent, the hunting rights of free men began to be replaced by extended imperial and royal rights during the Carolingian period. Large areas were declared royal Forest, essentially hunting preserves, within which the local population was not allowed to hunt or trap game. The local nobility progressively obtained or assumed the right of setting up and administering such preserves. In Germany, from the eleventh century onwards, the free peasantry increasingly lost their hunting rights to local overlords. This development marked the beginning of new social divisions within medieval society based on privileges, leisure and pastimes.
¹
The privilege to hunt denoted status and was an expression of leisure, a mark of the ruling élite. This entitlement was therefore much sought after by those with any pretensions to gentility. The well-bred author of
Tristan
, Gottfried von Strassburg, commented in 1210 that this occurred in German lands ‘at a time when the petty nobility were acquiring social refinement with an
élan
of which only upstarts are capable'.
²
He wittily made the distinction between ‘those who were skilled in the chase' and ‘those who wished to pass the time hunting',
³
thus comparing the established nobility with the newly arrived
parvenus
, always an easy target for aristocratic commentators. Hunting was therefore already well established as an indicator of rank and status in European society by the early thirteenth century. By the time of the Renaissance in northern Italy, hunting was regarded as a noble activity throughout the Italian peninsula and very much ‘the privilege of the patrician and signorial classes.'
⁴
These Italian self-made princes and nobles, whose favoured pastimes were hunting and hawking, accorded very well to von Strassburg's earlier sarcastic description of ‘upstarts'. They had, largely, made their fortunes and acquired power through the practice of arms, usually as hired mercenaries or
condottieri
. Now they were determined to demonstrate their power, wealth and status. As Neil MacGregor remarks:

But these were no simple action men. They tempered the brutalities of
Realpolitik
and the chase with the chivalric culture of Arthurian romance, emulated the refined opulence of Franco-Burgundian courts and, while professing Christian values, sought the
virtu
of pagan Greeks and Romans.
⁵

These were the new hard-headed nobility who were going to take the opportunity of acquiring any and every ancient aristocratic privilege and making it very much their own inclusive right, thus reinforcing their power and dominance. The same motive, but perhaps on a lesser scale of real social power, applies to the English Tudor nobles and gentry. Relatively few of them were descended from feudal lords and knights; many were newly arrived, but all wished to present an authentic public face of aristocratic values in order to legitimise their place in society.
⁶
Naturally, as occurred in the fourteenth century with the Edwardian revival of chivalry, these ambitious men turned to the past for appropriate symbols and pastimes, enthusiastically embracing the martial skill of jousting with its attendant noble element of visual ‘badging', heraldry, and the aristocratic arts of hunting and hawking. The English Paston family provide a good case in point. This family emerged from obscure origins in Norfolk, the result of the efforts of William Paston (1378–1444) who, thanks to a good education, rose to be a judge by 1429. His sons and grandsons attained prominent positions, acquiring both wealth and property, thus confirming themselves as landed gentry. The Pastons became one of the most influential families in East Anglia from about 1485 to the outbreak of the Civil War.
⁷
As members of the ruling élite, they naturally participated in gentle pursuits including hawking, as is shown in their family letters. Thus in October 1472, John Paston III wrote to his brother John Paston II ‘Item, as for a goshawk or a tercel, I weened to have had one of yours in keeping ere this time; but far fro eye, far fro heart. By my troth, I die for default of labour.' Bored on his estate in Norfolk, he had in fact asked his brother several times for a hawk to fly.
⁸
His brother replied three weeks later ‘I sent you word of an hawk; I heard not from you since. I do and shall do that is possible in such a need.'
⁹

Although there is much persuasive evidence of commonalty hunting in England and Europe, the late medieval manuals and treatises make it clear that the pursuit of certain quarry using particular methods was the preserve of the nobility and gentry, the so-called upper classes. This rather loose generic term must be qualified and clarified at this point as it covers a wide social range of men and women. Within ‘upper class' all ranks of society are included from royalty and the greatest nobles down to the esquire and gentleman. However, Marcelle Thiébaux comments that ‘authorised hunters covered a range of men from barons and honoured clerics to tenants and freemen'.
¹⁰
This is rather ambiguous as it might include men who were all upper class (many men of gentle birth were tenants) but equally it could be interpreted to include some who were not strictly of gentle birth.

The most highly regarded and informative authors of hunting and hawking books were aristocratic, sometimes royal, and often closely connected to a royal or noble court. Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, the author of
De Arte Venandi cum Avibus
, possibly the most practical book ever written on falconry, was Holy Roman Emperor from 1215 to 1250 and the maternal grandson of Frederick Barbarossa.
¹¹
Henri de Ferrières, the late fourteenth-century writer of
Les Livres du roy Modus et de la royne Ratio
, was a member of a famous noble Norman family.
¹²
Gaston Fébus, the late fourteenth-century author of probably the most influential hunting text,
Livre de chasse
, held the titles of Comte de Foix and Vicomte de Bearn.
¹³
Edward of Norwich, who translated and adapted Fébus' book for an English audience as
The Master of Game
, was Duke of York.
¹⁴
Maximilian I,
Der gross Weidmann
and the author of many books including the
Jagd und Fischereibücher
, was Emperor of Germany and later Holy Roman Emperor.
¹⁵
In addition, the authors of medieval romance and other imaginative literature containing passages on hunting reveal their own gentle origins by demonstrating their personal knowledge of hunting. Gottfried von Strassburg, the author of
Tristan
, was probably a member of the urban patriciate of Strassburg, a very cultured man who was also ‘deeply versed in hunting lore and no doubt a keen hunter'.
¹⁶
From their familiarity with courtly practice, the anonymous authors of
The Parlement of the Thre Ages
and
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
were clearly gently born, and Geoffrey Chaucer, although of London middle-class origins, was educated as a gentleman with all that that implies. These and other aristocratic authors had enormous influence on the education, mores and social attitudes of the gently-born for generations to come.