Our Dogs, Our Selves Dogs in Medieval and Early Modern Art, Literature, and Society 2016031145, 2016036376, 9789004269163, 9789004328617

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Our Dogs, Our Selves

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004328617_001

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Art and Material Culture in Medieval and Renaissance Europe Edited by Sarah Blick Laura D. Gelfand

VOLUME 6

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/amce



Our Dogs, Our Selves Dogs in Medieval and Early Modern Art, Literature, and Society Edited by

Laura D. Gelfand

LEIDEN | BOSTON

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Cover illustration: Detail of Jean Hey, Nativity with Cardinal Jean Rolin (Musée Rolin, Autun, France. 1480). Photo: Alfredo Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Gelfand, Laura Deborah, editor. Title: Our dogs, our selves : dogs in Medieval and early modern art, literature, and society / Edited by Laura D. Gelfand. Description: Boston : Brill, 2016. | Series: Art and material culture in Medieval and Renaissance Europe ; Volume 6 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016031145 (print) | LCCN 2016036376 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004269163 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9789004328617 (E-book) Subjects: LCSH: Dogs in art. | Arts, European--Themes, motives. | Animals and civilization--Europe. Classification: LCC NX650.D63 O97 2016 (print) | LCC NX650.D63 (ebook) | DDC 700/.462977209--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031145

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2212-4187 isbn 978-90-04-26916-3 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-32861-7 (e-book) Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Contents

Contents

Note to the Reader ix Acknowledgments x List of Figures xii List of Contributors  xviii Abstracts xxv



Introduction: Our Dogs, Our Selves 1 Laura D. Gelfand

Part 1 Literal and Literary Dogs 1

In Praise of Dogs: An Encomium Theme from Classical Greece to Renaissance Italy 19 Craig A. Gibson

2

Who Did Let the Dogs Out?—Nuisance Dogs in Late-Medieval and Early Modern England 41 Emily Cockayne

3

Wolf Cubs, the Butchers, and the Beaune Town Council 68 Kathleen Ashley

4

Dogs in Medieval Egyptian Sufi Literature 78 Nathan Hofer

Part 2 Signs, Symbols and Dogs 5

Fables, Bestiaries, and the Bayeux Embroidery: Man’s Best Friend Meets the “Animal Turn” 97 Elizabeth Carson Pastan

6

Federico Barocci’s Faithful Fidos: A Study in the Efficacy of CounterReformation Imagery 127 Judith W. Mann

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Contents

Part 3 Love and Dogs 7

And Your Little Dog, Too: Michal’s Lapdog and the Romance of the Old Testament 165 Alexa Sand

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The Commedia of Joachim and Anna at the Scrovegni Chapel 187 Jane C. Long

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Die Jagd nach der Treue, or When Desire Met Devotion 218 Jane Carroll

Part 4 Death and Dogs 10

From Biblical Beast to Faithful Friend: A Short Note on the Iconography of Footrests on Tomb Monuments 243 Sophie Oosterwijk

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The Canine Domain: At the Feet of Royal Tomb Effigies in Saint-Denis 261 Donna L. Sadler

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Eternal Devotion: The Stone Canine Companions of Gothic Castile y León 279 Janet Snyder

Part 5 Good Dogs and Bad Dogs 13

Medieval Scavengers: Dogs in Japanese Handscrolls 303 Karen M. Gerhart

14

Dogs in the Identity Formation and Moral Teaching Offered in Some Fifteenth-Century Flemish Manuscript Miniatures 325 John Block Friedman

Contents

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Metaphorical Dogs in the Later Middle Ages: The Dogs of God and the Hounds of Hell 363 Walter S. Gibson



Bibliography 387 Index 418

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Contents

to the Reader Note toNotes the Reader

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Note to the Reader Kindly note that although Laura D. Gelfand is one of the managing editors of the AMCE series she was NOT part of the decision-making/review process with regard to this volume.

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Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments This book was several years in the making and I am profoundly grateful to many friends and colleagues who have accompanied me so enthusiastically along the way. Working with Brill as an author, series editor, and volume editor has been, and continues to be, a wonderful experience. In particular, I wish to thank Julian Deahl, who first green-lighted the series in which this book appears. Working closely with Marcella Mulder is a privilege and I am grateful to her for her exceptional organization, her unfailing patience, and the good humor that she maintains even at the most stressful moments. Kate Hammond gracefully stepped into Julian Deahl’s shoes and has been a marvelous shepherd of this and several other projects. Finally, Katherine Harper’s careful copyediting improved every page of this volume, Thalien Colenbrander’s thoughtful suggestions about typesetting and her keen eye polished the final appearance of this volume immeasurably, and Chris Retz’s speed and skill as an indexer got it past the finish line in record time. I am grateful to the organizers of the International Congress on Medieval Studies for their willingness to allow whimsical ideas to take a turn on the merry-go-round in their lush academic playground. This book originated in two sessions: “Dogs, Dogs, Dogs!” and “Doggy Deux: Dogs Redux,” held at the International Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, Michigan in 2013 and 2014 respectively. Several authors included in the present volume presented papers in these sessions and expanded them into the chapters published here. This book’s many strengths come from the thoughtful scholarship of the fifteen authors who contributed their work to the volume. I am humbled by their quick and cooperative responses to my many requests and for the generosity and patience all of them have shown throughout this process. Thanks as well to the anonymous reviewer whose suggestions made a significant and positive difference in shaping the book’s final form and who reviewed the book not once, but twice. Academics typically work in relative isolation, alongside only a handful of colleagues with shared research specializations. Because of this, I feel especially fortunate to have found a community of colleagues at Utah State University with whom I can share ideas and enthusiasm; they include Leon Anderson, Phebe Jensen, Tammy Proctor, Alexa Sand, Christopher Scheer, Marissa Vigneault, and David Wall. I am also grateful to Craig Jessop, Dean of the Caine College of the Arts, for his sympathetic understanding of the belief that scholarship is what shapes us as people and keeps us sane as administrators; his support throughout this project has been invaluable.

Acknowledgments

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It is not possible to give sufficient thanks to Sarah Blick, my longtime collaborator and friend. For over a decade, through projects that typically start out small and morph into ever larger endeavors, she has been an ongoing source of inspiration and support. For those seeking a similarly copacetic collaborator, I recommend that you find someone who relishes all the tasks you dislike and vice versa. If you are very lucky, he or she will be as kind, generous, and easy to work with as Sarah. For this volume, Sarah read the first drafts of every essay and edited all the footnotes as well as the first draft of the bibliography. As with so many projects, I could not and would not have done this without her. Friends and colleagues who may or may not know how helpful they have been include Laura Bidwell, George Bowes, Robert L.A. Clark, Janet Hancock, John Messina, Rachel Middleman, Vibeke Olson, James Robinson, and Mark Trowbridge. I am inexpressibly grateful to my mother, Donna Gelfand. Few people, if any, could balance the roles of pioneering feminist, successful teacher, researcher, administrator, intellectual, and loving, supportive mom with such apparent ease. Thank you to my always-patient husband, Andrew McAllister, who puts up with a lot and complains very little. He has made, and continues to make, all the difference. And, last but not least, for the dogs that I have known and loved, most especially Mirabelle Barksalot and Yoshi Burger, thank you for embodying unconditional love and for making the importance of walks and naps so abundantly clear.

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List of Figures

List Of Figures

List of Figures 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 5.1

5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7a 5.7b 5.8 5.9 5.10 6.1

Jean Hey, Nativity with Cardinal Jean Rolin, 1480, Autun 3 Jean Hey, Nativity with Cardinal Jean Rolin, 1480, Autun 4 Master of 1499, Diptych with Margaret of Austria, c. 1500, Ghent 5 Master of 1499, Virgin in a Church and Abbot Christiaan de Hondt, c. 1500, Antwerp 7 Portraits of Margaret of Austria and Philibert II, c. 1520, Brou 8 Portraits of Margaret of Austria and Philibert II (detail) 9 Title Page from Henry Parrot, The Mastive, or Young-Whelpe of the Old-Dogge, 1615 43 Frontispiece from Thomas Dekker, The Belman of London, 1608 45 Illustration for The Poets Dream: or, the Great Out-Cry and Lamentable Com­ plaint of the Land against Bayliffs and Their Dogs, 1683 46 Detail of the recipe book of Lady Ann Fanshawe, compiled from 1651, “Against the biting of a Mad Dogge,” fol. 7r, 1651 50 Title page from Thomas Dekker, A Rod for Run-awayes, 1625 55 Detail from the Bayeux Embroidery, eleventh century: Earl Harold, holding a falcon in his left hand, rides with his soldiers and hounds to Bosham, scene W2 103 Detail from the Bayeux Embroidery, eleventh century: Harold and his men set out to sea, scene W4 104 Detail from the Bayeux Embroidery, eleventh century: Duke William’s messengers gallop, scene W12 104 Detail from the Bayeux Embroidery, eleventh century: Messengers come to Duke William, scene W13 105 Detail from the Bayeux Embroidery, eleventh century: Duke William travels to his palace with Harold, scene W16 105 Detail from the Bayeux Embroidery, eleventh century: Body of King Edward is carried to Westminster Abbey, scenes W29–30 106 Dog collar excavated in a twelfth-century context, Waterford, Ireland 113 Iron collar with original leather lining and a leash ring, German, fifteenth–sixteenth century, Leeds Museum of the Dog Collar 113 Bear-baiting, Luttrell Psalter, c. 1330, British Library, MS 42130 113 Entry for the dog, Aberdeen Bestiary, late twelfth century, Aberdeen University Library MS 24 125 Entry for the dog, Worksop Bestiary, Radford Abbey, England, c. 1187, Morgan Library MS M.81 125 Federico Barocci, Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, 1557–58 Cathedral, Urbino 128

List of Figures 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 6.10 6.11 6.12 7.1 7.2

7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9

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Federico Barocci, Study for a Falcon, n.d., Berlin 132 Correggio, Madonna of St. Sebastian, c. 1524, Dresden 136 Federico Barocci, Martyrdom of St. Vitalis, 1583, Milan 139 Parmigianino, St. Vitalis, 1520s (?) Parma, San Giovanni Evangelista 142 Federico Barocci, Compositional study for the Martyrdom of St. Vitalis, ca. 1580–83, Paris 143 Federico Barocci, Last Supper, 1590–99, Urbino 147 Federico Barocci, Institution of the Eucharist, 1603–07, Rome 154 Federico Barocci, Compositional Study for the Institution of the Eucharist, c. 1603–04, Chatsworth 156 Federico Barocci, Compositional Study for the Institution of the Eucharist, c. 1603–04, Cambridge 157 Federico Barocci, Studies for the Institution of the Eucharist, Berlin 160 Federico Barocci, Study for Dog Legs, Berlin 161 Betrothal of David and Michal (above), David fights the Philistines (below), Crusader Bible, ca. 1250. Morgan Library MS M.638 168 David presents the Philistine "foreskins" to Saul, marriage of David and Michal (above), Saul commands Jonathan to murder David, Jonathan warns David, Crusader Bible, ca. 1250. Morgan Library MS M.638 169 Knife handle with standing woman holding a dog, Bone. Paris, early fourteenth century 178 Tristan and Iseult, elephant-ivory gravoir. Paris, 1330–1360 179 Michal returned, Michal presented to David (II Kings 3.16), Crusader Bible, ca. 1250. Morgan Library MS M.638. 181 David dances before the Ark while Michal derides him, Crusader Bible, ca. 1250. Morgan Library MS M.638. 181 David observes Bathsheba at her bath (above), David lies with Bathsheba, David commands Uriah, Crusader Bible, ca. 1250. Morgan Library MS M.638 182 Giotto, Expulsion of Joachim. Padua: Scrovegni Chapel, c. 1305 189 Giotto, Joachim in the Wilderness. Padua: Scrovegni Chapel, c. 1305 190 Giotto, Annunciation to Anna. Padua: Scrovegni Chapel, c. 1305 190 Giotto, Sacrifice of Joachim. Padua: Scrovegni Chapel, c. 1305 191 Giotto, Annunciation to Joachim. Padua: Scrovegni Chapel, c. 1305 191 Giotto, Meeting at the Golden Gate. Padua: Scrovegni Chapel, c. 1305 192 San Martino Master, Madonna and Child with scenes of Joachim and Anna, Pisa, third quarter of the 13th century 193 Joachim in the Wilderness. Istanbul: Church of the Holy Savior in Chora, c. 1315 196 Meeting at the Golden Gate and Birth of the Virgin, Ohrid, Macedonia, early 14th century 203

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List Of Figures

Die Jagd nach der Treue, Glasgow, c. 1480–90 219 Monogrammist bxg, Young Couple on Horseback, Vienna, c. 1480 222 Albrecht Dürer, A Couple on Horseback, Berlin, 1496 223 Hortus Conclusus Annunciation, Munich, c. 1500 227 Gaston Phébus, Livre de chasse, “The Quest,” Paris, 1388 230 Gaston Phébus, Livre de chasse, “The Chase,” Paris, 1388 232 Suche nach der Treue, Zurich, c. 1500–10 238 Hunting Scene, St. Petersburg, c. 1550 239 Tomb monument of William “the Silent,” Prince of Orange (d. 1584), by Hendrick de Keyser, 1614–25, Nieuwe Kerk, Delft 244 10.1b Detail of the dog at the feet of the marble effigy of William “the Silent,” Prince of Orange 244 10.2 Brass of Sir John Harsick (d. 1384) and his wife, Southacre, Norfolk 246 10.3a Brass to Margaret Wyllughby (d. 1483) in St Andrew’s church, Raveningham (Norfolk) 248 10.3b Detail of brass to Margaret Wyllughby (Norfolk) 249 10.4 Detail of brass of priest Laurence de St Maur or Seymour (d. 1337), church of St Mary the Virgin, Higham Ferrers (Nort­hamp­tonshire) 249 10.5a Tomb slab of Wolter van Baexen (d. 1559) and Peterke van Echtelt (d. 1557), Sint-Maartenskerk in Zaltbommel, Netherlands 250 10.5b Detail of the sleeping dog beneath the skirt of Peterke van Echtelt 251 10.6 Footrests on the brass to Margaret Torryngton (d. 1349) and Richard (d. 1356). Brass made c. 1380. Great Berkhamstead (Hertfordshire) 252 10.7a Joint brass of John Catesby (d. 1404 or 1405) and Emma Cranford (d. 1433) in Ashby St Ledgers (Northamptonshire) 253 10.7b Effigy of Emma Cranford, wife of John Catesby 254 10.8 Incised slab of Henry Doggett (d. 1491) and his wife in Pusey (Oxfordshire) 255 10.9 “Terri” beneath the feet of Alice, wife of Sir John Cassy (d. 1400), on their joint brass in Deerhurst (Gloucestershire) 256 10.10 “Jakke” on the lost brass to Sir Brian de Stapleton (d. 1438), formerly in Ingham (Norfolk) 256 10.11 Effigy of Archbishop Walter de Gray (d. 1255) in York Minster 257 10.12 Detail of the brass of Sir Roger de Trumpington (d. 1289) in Trumpington (Cambridgeshire) 259 11.1 Tomb of Blanche de France, d. 1323 (from Cordeliers Convent, Paris), Saint-Denis 263 11.2 Tomb of Marguerite de Flandres, d. 1382, Saint-Denis 264 11.3 Tomb of Marguerite d’Artois, d. 1311 (from the Jacobins, Paris), Saint-Denis 264

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11.4 Tomb of Unknown Princess, Blanche de Bretagne? d. 1327 (from the Jacobins, Paris), Saint-Denis 265 11.5 Tomb of Jeanne de France, d. 1371, Saint-Denis 272 11.6 Tomb of Isabelle of Aragon, d. 1271, Saint-Denis 272 11.7 Tomb of Isabeau de Bavaria, d. 1435, Saint-Denis 273 11.8 Tomb of Blanche de Navarre, d. 1398, Saint-Denis 274 11.9 Tomb of Marie d’España, d. 1379 (from the Jacobins, Paris), Saint-Denis 274 11.10 Tomb of Jeanne de Bourbon, d. 1377 (from the Celestins, Paris), Saint-Denis 276 12.1 Carrión de los Condes, west façade, Church of Santiago: capital of a man attacked by sight hounds. Comparison: Galgo Español 280 12.2 Ferdinand III offering a ring to Beatrice, Burgos Cathedral, c. 1270 285 12.3 Detail: spaniel-type dog resting at the feet of Ferdinand III, Burgos Cathedral, c. 1270. Comparison: Phalène 285 12.4 The first tomb-recess along the west aisle of the Burgos Cathedral upper cloister 287 12.5 Detail: guardian dog, west aisle of the Burgos Cathedral upper cloister, 1482. Comparison: Alano Español 289 12.6 Detail: Burgos Pointer at the feet of the gisant, west aisle of the Burgos Cathedral upper cloister, 1482. Comparison: Perdiguero de Burgos 291 12.7 Detail: dog at the feet of the late fifteenth-century ecclesiastic, tomb-recess along the east aisle of the Burgos Cathedral upper cloister. Comparison: Mastín español 293 12.8 Detail: Philip Bigarny, gisant of Mencía de Mendoza y Figueroa, the Chapel of the Condastables, Burgos Cathedral, 1534. Comparison: Perro de Agua Cantábrico 296 12.9 Detail: Gil de Siloé and workshop, gisant of Isabel of Portugal, Cartuja de Santa María de Miraflores, 1489–93. Comparison: Ratonero Bodeguero Andaluz 297 12.10 Juan Laurent, “Burgos, Drawing of Tomb of Juan II of Castille and his wife, Isabella of Portugal, in the Miraflores Charterhouse” 297 13.1 Clay dog-shaped figurine, Excavated at Fujioka Shrine, Tochigi Prefecture 305 13.2 Diagram of humans and dogs hunting deer, drawn after bronze bell, middle Yayoi (100 BCE – 100 CE). Excavated at Sakuragaoka, Hyōgo Prefecture 305 13.3 Clay haniwa dog, Tenjin-yama Kofun, Kofun period (ca. 250–538 CE) 306 13.4 Two dogs wearing collars, Boki ekotoba, fourteenth century 312 13.5 Two dogs playing in garden, Kōbō Daishi gyōjō e, fourteenth century 313 13.6 Dog waiting for food, Kasuga gongen genki-e, fourteenth century 313 13.7 Black dog barking at warriors, Boki ekotoba, fourteenth century 314 13.8 White dog lapping up vomit, Kasuga gongen genki-e, fourteenth century 315 13.9 Dogs cleaning up after illnesses, Kōbō Daishi gyōjō e, fourteenth century 316

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13.10 Black dog and beggers’ huts, Ippen hijiri-eden, late thirteenth century 317 13.11 Black-and-white dog pawing corpse, Gaki zōshi, late twelfth century 319 13.12 Dogs and crows tearing at flesh of corpse, Kūsōzu emaki, fourteenth century 319 13.13 Black and white dog accompanying Kukai, Kōbō Daishi gyōjō e, fourteenth century 321 13.14 Modern-day Shiba inu 323 14.1 January, Bonmont Psalter 334 14.2 Dog in domestic interior. Proverbes en Rimes, Proverb no. 144 335 14.3 Young gallant with symbols of vanity including dogs, Henry Suso, Horloge of Sapience 342 14.4 Dog as classroom distraction, Giovanni Pietro da Birago, Aelius Donatus, Grammatica 344 14.5 Dining Scene with dog, Master of the Dresden Prayerbook, Valerius Maximus, Lives and Deeds of Philosophers 347 14.6 Dog in Baths of Sergius Orata, Philippe de Mazerolles, Valerius Maximus, Lives and Deeds of the Philosophers 349 14.7 Dog and cat showing the world upside-down, Matthaeus Platearius, Livre des Simples Médicines 351 14.8 Dog detects adultery, Twelfth Joy, Fifteen Joys of Marriage 352 14.9 Philip the First repudiates his queen, Robinet Testard, Les Grandes Chroniques de France 354 14.10 Greyhound with motto and anagram initials of Simon de Varie, Jean Fouquet and Associates, Horae 356 14.11 Dogs with insignia-bearing collars, The Unicorn Tapestries 359 14.12 Charles the Bold visits David Aubert, Loyset Liédet, Histoire de Charles Martel 360 14.13 Philip the Good visits Jacques de Guise, Loyset Liédet, Chroniques de Hainaut 361 15.1 January: A Nobleman's Banquet, Grimani Breviary, Venice, c. 1515 364 15.2 The Annunciation to the Shepherds and the Adoration of the Shepherds Spinola Hours, Getty Museum 365 15.3 Andrea de Bonaiuto, The Church Militant and Triumphant 369 15.4 Cerberus Reclining at the Feet of Pluto and Proserpina before the Mouth of Hell, le Livre des échecs amoureux 371 15.5 Devil and Hell Hound Attacking a Soul, Taymouth Hours 377 15.6 Jean Colombe, Purgatory, Tres Riches Heures 378 15.7 Formerly Attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, The Seven Deadly Sins and Four Last Things 380

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15.8 Formerly Attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, Detail of Fig. 15.7: Hell, detail showing one of the Damned attacked by hellhounds 381 15.9 Hieronymus Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights, Right Inner Wing, Hell 383 15.10 Formerly Attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, Triptych of the Temptation of St. Anthony, central panel, detail of the left background 384

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List of Contributors

List Of Contributors

List of Contributors Kathleen Ashley has published numerous articles on medieval and modern literature, social history, cultural theory, cultural performance, and hagiography. Her books include Being a Pilgrim: Art and Ritual on the Medieval Routes to Santiago (2009) and Writing Faith: Text, Sign and History in the Miracles of Sainte Foy (coauthored with Pamela Sheingorn, 1999), as well as an edition of the morality play Mankind (2010). She has edited Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural Criticism: Between Literature and Anthropology (1990) and Moving Subjects: Processional Performance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (2001) and coedited Interpreting Cultural Symbols: St. Anne in Late Medieval Society (with P. Sheingorn, 1990), Autobiography and Postmodernism (with L. Gilmore and G. Peters, 1994), and Medieval Conduct (with R. Clark, 2001). Forthcoming articles include a chapter on “Social Functions” for the medieval volume in the multivolume series Cultural History of the Theatre (Bloomsbury). Her current project, based on extensive archival research, is a book entitled Shapers of Urban Culture: The Bourgeoisie of Burgundy, 1400–1650. Jane Carroll (Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is Senior Lecturer in Art History and Assistant Dean at Dartmouth College. She is the coeditor of Saints, Sinners and Sisters: Gender and the Visual Arts in Medieval and Early Modern Northern Europe (2003), and contributed an article to that volume. Her other publications include “Subversive Obedience: Images of Spiritual Reform by and for Fifteenth-Century Nuns,” in Reassessing the Roles of Women as “Makers” of Medieval Art and Architecture (2012) and “Addressing Power: 1506–1509 and Burgundian Politics,” in the forthcoming Festschrift for Jeffrey Chipps Smith. She has received fellowships from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, American Philosophical Society, and DAAD for work on late medieval and early modern art. Her research has ranged from artwork produced by and for German Dominican nuns during their fifteenth-century reform to early modern prints and tapestries. Emily Cockayne is a cultural historian who lectures at the University of East Anglia. After studying at Cambridge University, she taught for Oxford University and the Open University. Her work focuses on interpersonal relationships, nuisances, and

List of Contributors

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domestic and street environments in England, primarily in the Early Modern period, but sometimes incorporating the medieval and the modern periods in order to capture developments in the longue durée. She has two published books: Hubbub: Filth, Noise & Stench in England (2007), which examines the less-pleasant aspects of urban life, and Cheek by Jowl: A History of Neighbours (2012), which explores neighborly relations through history. Emily has also written about the history of deafness, the human senses, and beard-wearing. Her doctoral thesis was an investigation of aspects of the cultural history of noise and sounds in Early Modern England. John Block Friedman is Professor Emeritus of English and Medieval Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, The Ohio State University. His research combines interests in material culture, medieval manuscript studies, the history of art, iconography, alterity, animals, and fashion history. His most recent books and articles are Breughel’s Heavy Dancers: Transgressive Clothing, Class, & Culture in the Late Middle Ages (2010); and “Werewolf Transformation in the Manuscript Era,” The Journal of the Early Book Society 17 (2014), 35–93. Forthcoming are “Hair and Social Class,” in Roberta Milliken, ed., Hair in the Middle Ages (Bloomsbury, 2016); and “Coats, Collars, and Capes: Royal Fashions for Animals in the Early Modern Period,” in Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, eds., Medieval Clothing and Textiles, Vol. 12 (Boydell and Brewer, 2016). Laura D. Gelfand is Professor of Art History in the Department of Art & Design at Utah State University, where she also serves as Department Head. Her research focuses primarily on examining the influence of contemporary devotional practices on the art and architecture of Northern Europe from 1400– 1520. She has published widely on such topics as devotional portrait diptychs, the patronage of Margaret of Austria, Nicolas Rolin’s commissions and social (im)mobility, and architectural copies of the Holy Sepulcher as “sensory simulacra.” Her rewarding collaboration with Sarah Blick (Kenyon College) began with coediting the essays in the two-volume set Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative and Emotional Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art and Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative and Physical Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art (2011), and continues in their coeditorship of the Brill series Art and

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Material Culture in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, in which the current volume appears. Karen M. Gerhart is Professor of Japanese Art History in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. Her published work includes The Eyes of Power: Art and Early Toku­gawa Authority (1999), about the paintings of seventeenth-century Japanese painter Kano Tan’yū, and con­tribu­tions to the edited volumes Critical Perspectives on Classicism in Japanese Painting, 1600–1700 (2004) and Copying the Master and Stealing His Secrets: Talent and Training in Japanese Painting (2003) and to journals such as Monumenta Nipponica, Ars Orientalis, and Bijutsu Forum. Her recent research is focused on medieval Japanese art and ritual and includes The Material Culture of Death in Medieval Japan (2009). She is currently editing a volume on women, rites, and objects in pre-modern Japan. Craig A. Gibson is Professor of Classics and Collegiate Scholar at the University of Iowa. He received a B.A. in Classics from Rhodes College (1990) and a Ph.D. in Classical Studies from Duke University (1995) and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He is the author of Interpreting a Classic: Demosthenes and His Ancient Commentators (2002), Libanius’s Progym­nasmata: Model Exercises in Prose Composition and Rhetoric (2008), a forthcoming translation (with Jeffrey Beneker) of Nikephoros Basilakes’s Progymnasmata in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series, and many articles on ancient rhetorical education. He is currently editor of TAPA, the journal of the Society for Classical Studies, and coeditor (with Ronald F. Hock) of the Society of Biblical Literature’s book series “Writings from the Greco-Roman World.” Walter S. Gibson earned a BFA cum laude in Art History in 1957 at The Ohio State University and a Masters in Art History in 1960. He earned Ph.D. in Art History from Harvard University in 1969. His dissertation, “The Paintings of Cornelis Engebrechtsz,” was published in 1977 in the Garland “Outstanding Dissertations in the Fine Arts” series. His other publications include Bruegel (1973, with later editions in English, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, and Korean), and Bosch (1977, with later editions in Dutch, Japanese, and Korean), as well as various public

List of Contributors

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lectures, studies, and book reviews on sixteenth-century Netherlandish art and artists. In 1966, Professor Gibson joined the Department of Art History at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and served there as departmental chairman until his retirement in 1997. He now lives in Pownal, Vermont, and has occasionally taught in the art history program at nearby Williams College in Massachusetts. Nathan Hofer (Ph.D. 2011, Emory University) is Assistant Professor of Islam in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Missouri. He works on the social and religious history of Islam in medieval Egypt and Greater Syria. He is the author of The Popularisation of Sufism in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt, 1173–1325 (2015) and is currently working on several projects dealing with medieval Arabic biography and hagiography. He also dabbles in the history of the Jews of the medieval Islamic world and has published several articles on the so-called Jewish Sufis of medieval Egypt. Jane C. Long is the Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo Professor of Art History at Roanoke College. Her research centers on Italian Renais­ sance art, though she specializes more narrowly in four­teenth-century Florentine painting. She is particularly interested in narrative composition, the ways that audience expectations shaped the understanding of works of art, and how artistic choices helped to determine the messages different audiences received. Her work has been published in Renaissance Quarterly, Studies in Iconography, Gesta, and The Sixteenth Century Journal. Her understanding of the comical character of dogs has been strongly shaped by living with the Big Bad, an Old English Sheepdog whose life goal is world domination. Judith W. Mann holds a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis. She has served as the curator of European Art to 1800 at the Saint Louis Art Museum since 1997. From 1991 until 1997, she held a joint position with the University of Missouri–St. Louis. She has organized several international loan exhibitions, including Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi: Father and Daughter Painters in Baroque Italy (Palazzo Venezia, Rome; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Saint Louis Art Museum,

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2001–02) and Federico Barocci: Renaissance Master (National Gallery, London and Saint Louis Art Museum, 2012–13). She continues to publish on the Gentileschi and on Barocci, as evidenced by her essay in this volume. Her current exhibition projects include a show exploring the history of painting on stone surfaces (marble, alabaster, slate, lapis lazuli, etc.) in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, scheduled for 2018; an exhibition and catalogue of an important collection of Old Master prints and sculpture scheduled for spring of 2017; and an international loan exhibition, Guercino: Mastering Narrative in the Baroque Age, planned to open in 2021. Sophie Oosterwijk is an expert on medieval tomb monuments and their iconography. She has published widely, including the edited volumes Monumental Industry: The Production of Tomb Sculpture in England and Wales in the Long Fourteenth Century (2010, with Sally Badham) and Mixed Metaphors: The Danse Macabre in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (2011, with Stefanie Knöll). She holds Ph.D.s in Art History (Leicester) and Middle English Literature (Leiden). During 2011–13 she was coordinator of the tomb monument component of the Medieval Memoria Online (MeMO) project at Utrecht University (Netherlands). She coedits the international journal Church Monuments for the Church Monuments Society and is currently an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of St Andrews (United Kingdom). Elizabeth Carson Pastan is Professor of Art History at Emory University and President of the American Corpus Vitrearum. She is the author of Les vitraux du choeur de la cathédrale de Troyes (XIIIe siècle) (2006); a coeditor of The Four Modes of Seeing: Approaches to Medieval Art in Honor of Madeline Harrison Caviness (2009); a coauthor with historian Stephen D. White of The Bayeux Tapestry and Its Contexts: A Reassessment (2014), for which both received a 2009 Collaborative Research Grant in the Humanities from the American Council of Learned Societies; and a dog lover. She has written numerous articles dealing with the interpretation of monumental art that have appeared in such periodicals as Gesta, Word & Image, the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Speculum, and Anglo-Norman Studies. Recent articles implicated in this paper include: “Imagined Patronage: the Bayeux Embroidery and Its Interpretive History,” Medieval Patronage: Power & Agency in Medieval Art, ed. Colum Hourihane, Index of Christian Art, Princeton, Occasional Papers 15 (2013):

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54–75; “Problematizing Patronage: Odo of Bayeux and the Bayeux Tapestry,” with Stephen D. White, in New Approaches to the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Martin K. Foys, Karen Eileen Overbey, and Dan Terkla (2009): 1–24; and “Montfaucon as Reader of the Bayeux Tapestry,” in Medieval Art and Architecture after the Middle Ages, ed. Janet T. Marquardt and Alyce A. Jordan (2009): 89–110. Donna L. Sadler received her B.A. from Boston University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Indiana University. She has spent most of her career teaching at Agnes Scott College and her research focuses on medieval sculpture ranging from Reims Cathe­ dral to the art commissioned by Philip the Bold to late medieval retables. Her publications focus on issues of royal and ecclesiastical patronage, performative piety, ritual, and audience reception. Her books include Reading the Reverse Façade of Reims Cathedral: Royalty and Ritual in 13th-Century France (2012) and Stone, Flesh, Spirit: The Entombment of Christ in Late Medieval Burgundy and Champagne (2015). She is working on a new book on late medieval retables entitled Touching Heaven: Seeing the Late Medieval Altarpiece through the Eyes of Faith. Alexa Sand is Associate Professor of Art History and has taught at Utah State University since 2004. She earned a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in art history with an emphasis on medieval French art and literature. Her research focuses on book illumination and other small-scale art forms in the later Middle Ages, as well as connections between word and image in the art and writing of the period. She is the author of the book Vision, Devotion, and Self-Representation in Late Medieval Art (2014). She has also published numerous essays in peerreviewed journals and book-length collections. Since coming to Utah State, she has received, among other awards, the AAUW American Fellowship for Publication, the ACLS Charles Ryskamp Fellowship, the Gilbert and Ursula Farfel Fellowship at the Huntington Library, and a Paul Mellon Senior Visiting Fellowship at the Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts (CASVA). She is currently at work on a second book.

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Janet Snyder is Professor of Art History in the School of Art and Design at West Virginia University and will hold the J. Bernard Schultz Endowed Professorship from 2015 to 2018. Her best-known work analyzes depicted textiles and clothing in medieval monuments: Early Gothic Column-Figure Sculpture in France: Appearance, Materials, and Significance (2011); “Ves­tiary Identity in Twelfth-Century Seals,” in Susan Solway, ed., Medieval Coins and Seals: Con­ structing Identity, Signifying Power (2015); and “Vestiary Signs of Pilgrimage in Twelfth-Century Europe,” in James Robinson and Lloyd de Beer, eds., Matter of Faith: An Interdisciplinary Study of Relics and Relic Veneration in the Me­di­eval Period (2014). Related publications address the transportation and quarrying of stone. She received West Virginia Humanities Council Fellowship support for her participation in All Things Stone: New Research into Masons and Sculptors during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries colloquia, where the dogs depicted in Spanish monuments first spoke to her and introduced her to the capitals of Notre-Dame la Daurade (1120–1130) in Toulouse, which led in turn to her ongoing collaboration with neuroscientist Mary Shall concerning responses of the human brain to medieval narrative sculpture.

Abstracts Abstracts

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Abstracts Introduction:  Our Dogs, Our Selves

 Laura D. Gelfand, Utah State University

The interdisciplinary essays gathered in this volume examine the diverse roles played by dogs in Medieval and Early Modern society, including how these were developed, enforced, and performed. These essays consider a wide range of interactions and representations across Europe, in Japan, and within Islamic culture. Contributors investigate, among other things, the dog as companion, iconographic signifier, saint, sinner, urban citizen, and laborer. The ways in which dogs were integrated into society and their behavior was molded and controlled is a particular focus. The volume provides rich new source material for scholars and dog lovers who wish to gain a more complete understanding of canine/human relations during the Medieval and Early Modern periods.



Part 1—Literal and Literary Dogs

Chapter 1

In Praise of Dogs: An Encomium Theme from Classical Greece to Renaissance Italy Craig A. Gibson, University of Iowa

The purpose of this chapter is threefold: to (a) document the history of encomia of dogs in Greek and Latin rhetoric from the fourth century BCE to the fifteenth century CE; (b) analyze the three extant medieval and Renaissance encomia of dogs—those by Nikephoros Basilakes (twelfth century, Greek), Theodorus Gaza (fifteenth century, Greek), and Leon Battista Alberti (fifteenth century, Latin)—in the light of the rhetorical tradition; and (c) highlight the physical, mental, and moral attributes of dogs that these medieval and Renaissance writers found most worthy of praise. Although no encomium of a dog is extant from Graeco-Roman antiquity, the theme is implicit in Aristotle, Lucian, and Basil. Three rhetoricians (Quintilian, Menander Rhetor, and Aphthonius) briefly discuss animals as possible subjects for encomia, but only Ps.Hermogenes in his textbook on rhetorical composition provides instructions on how to praise them.  It is not until the middle ages that we find an extant encomium of the dog. Nikephoros Basilakes (twelfth century) praises dogs for their service to their human masters as hunters, seeing-eye dogs, rescuers, protectors, companions, and faithful friends, illustrating his essay with references to famous ancient dogs. The emigrant Byzantine humanist Theodorus Gaza (fifteenth century) does not closely follow ancient prescrip-

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tions for encomia, but instead illustrates a few key benefits of dogs with numerous examples drawn from a wide range of ancient authors. For Gaza, dogs are loving, kind, loyal, obedient, and brave in battle. He gives special emphasis to their usefulness in hunting and warfare. The Italian humanist Leon Battista Alberti (fifteenth century) was written as a funeral oration in honor of a favorite dog that had been poisoned. Born of illustrious ancestors, Alberti’s dog rejected military glory and instead pursued learning. Drawing on Gaza’s earlier encomium, Alberti praises the furry humanist for his prodigious memory, devotion to learning, philosophical lifestyle, and ability to distinguish good men from bad. Chapter 2

Who Did Let the Dogs Out?—Nuisance Dogs in Late Medieval and Early Modern England Emily Cockayne, University of East Anglia

Dogs were ubiquitous on urban streets in late medieval and Early Modern times. Reports suggest that more than five hundred dogs were killed in the Westminster parish of St Margaret’s as part of a plague prevention scheme in 1603. These were free-roaming dogs; many more populated the street scene. Certain itinerant tradesmen used dogs to accompany or help them, including bellmen, lantern carriers, tinkers, and knife-grinders. Butchers kept dogs to bait beasts before slaughter. Bigger households kept turnspit dogs, and ladies had lapdogs. Man and dog did not always enjoy a symbiotic relationship. Samuel Pepys mentions the irritation of being kept awake by a barking dog in his diary, and his experience was far from singular. Noise was not the only concern. The fear of dog attack fueled a fashion for carrying walking sticks and canes. Many people were bitten, and some (mostly children) died. Many towns issued orders forbidding unmuzzled mastiffs or bitches on heat to “go abroad on the street,” particularly at night. In 1668 the Liverpool authorities ordered that all dogs “which can devour children or disturb others” be muzzled; seventeenthcentury Manchester had a dozen officers responsible for enforcing a similar law. Many parishes employed dog-whippers to keep nuisance dogs out of congregations. Using manorial and leet records, civic and borough documents, petitions, diocesan records, quarter sessions material, diaries and personal accounts, coroners’ reports, and trade company minutes, this chapter reveals the nuisances and dangers that dogs posed to people in late medieval and Early Modern English urban settlements. The key cities under study are London, Norwich, York, Portsmouth, Manchester, Southampton, and Oxford. Chapter 3

Wolf Cubs, the Butchers, and the Beaune Town Council Kathleen Ashley, University of Southern Maine

Animals figure prominently in medieval texts, whether as tropes in didactic literature, magical beings in romances, symbols in hagiography, or comic and moral foils in visual

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iconography. This brief essay turns instead to animals in the historical records, specifically the registers of sixteenth-century town council meetings in Beaune, center of the wine country of Burgundy, France. In general, animals are mentioned in these town records when they pose problems for public health, safety, or commerce. But in the domain of history—as in literary and artistic domains—animals occupy an important semiotic position in relation to human behaviors. At times the animals are regarded as extensions of, or participants in, a particular profession that is being regulated; but they can also stand for that which is “other” to humans. The specific example of butchers adopting wolf cubs described in the Beaune town records raises the issue of the perceived boundary between “wild” and domesticated in late medieval urban life. It was the job of the town council to determine and enforce such categories through their regulations, and by studying the records we see modern urban society coming into being. Significantly, within the context of this volume on dogs, the way council members distinguished between domesticated dogs and their wild cousins raises the further question of why the familiar butchers’ dogs are never mentioned and reveals a profoundly puzzling difference between English and French town records of the period. Chapter 4

Dogs in Medieval Egyptian Sufi Literature Nathan Hofer, University of Missouri

Dogs did not enjoy a particularly positive reputation in the medieval Islamic culture and few Muslims devoted much time and energy to discussing them in any detail. The primary exceptions to this situation are legal treatises that deal with, among a great many topics, the ritual status of dogs, zoological treatises that treat the animal kingdom more broadly, and a handful of idiosyncratic texts that discuss dogs explicitly. The limits of this small textual field are compounded by the supposedly widespread prohibition on pictorial representations of living beings rooted in this ḥadīth. While this prohibition is not so true for the Persianate and Turkic manuscript traditions, it is the case that images of animals and humans in medieval Arabic manuscripts are more rare. This is not to say that there are no pictures of dogs in Arabic manuscripts, but these are few and far between, typically limited to certain literary and zoological treatises. In general, then, representations of dogs from the medieval Arabophone world appear primarily in texts. One textual field that contains quite a large number of references to dogs is that of Sufi literature. Sufis, the so-called “mystics of Islam,” were particularly fond of using dogs in their texts to elucidate a variety of themes, doctrines, and praiseworthy characteristics. Specifically, they rhetorically exploited the ritual and social ambiguity of dogs in the Islamicate world to illustrate and amplify key Sufi concepts. This short essay offers a brief overview of the sources of this ambiguity in the Islamic tradition and discusses several examples of dog narratives from medieval Egyptian Sufi literature.

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Part 2—Signs, Symbols and Dogs

Chapter 5

Fables, Bestiaries, and the Bayeux Embroidery: Man’s Best Friend Meets the “Animal Turn” Elizabeth Carson Pastan, Emory University

The thirty-five dogs on the Bayeux Embroidery are the most identifiable animals in the textile after horses. Domestic familiars such as horses, mules, sheep, pigs, and oxen populate the main frieze, but exotic creatures such as lions, camels, harpies, and ostriches from bestiaries, fables, and other literary traditions regularly appear in the borders. Yet the dog, as a hunting companion in the main frieze and protagonist in Aesopian fables, figures in both. There is no mistaking the collared hounds with their leash rings hunting with Duke Harold, the loyal pet baying at king Edward’s funeral, and the multiple canine pups figuring in the two reiterations of the Aesop’s fable of the Pregnant Dog and her Puppies. Might the different scenes of dogs and their contexts hold some clues to the source materials of the Bayeux Embroidery and therefore to the associations their intended viewers were expected to make? How do these dogs augment, nuance, or add comment to the story unfolded in this vast pictorial narrative?  Scholarship on animals from the last several decades provides a stimulating point of departure for evaluating the representations of dogs on the Bayeux Embroidery. In particular the interdisciplinary body of work known as the Animal Turn, which examines relationships between humans and other animals under new premises, challenges us to reassess the way we think about our fellow creatures. Although the concerns of animal studies may seem far removed from the eleventh-century textile that is my focus, I will argue that the Bayeux Embroidery’s imagery reflects thinking about animals and thinking with animals that is congruous to issues of the Animal Turn. Indeed, the Bayeux Embroidery does not merely depict the traditional world of kings and warriors, as it might appear at first on this pictorial narrative of the Norman Conquest of England of 1066, but it is a realm also enlivened by priapic stallions, belittling birds, bear-baiting, and dogs chafing at their collars. Chapter 6

Federico Barocci’s Faithful Fidos: A Study in the Efficacy of CounterReformation Imagery Judith W. Mann, Saint Louis Art Museum

The appealing charm of Federico Barocci’s paintings derives from a number of things— their engaging color, their controlled sensuality based on the contemporary notion of vaghezza, and the artist’s inclusion of details from the world around him. Some of Barocci’s most creative observations focused on members of the animal world. Birds, donkeys, and cats populate many of his pictures, but no creature is used so inventively

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and to such good effect as the dog. Positioned to capture attention and invite the viewer into his pictures, these charming canines were also designed to elucidate sacred themes. At times, his incorporation of man’s best friend into the subject was innovative. At others, the artist followed tradition by including a dog, yet using it to introduce new ideas and associations into the depicted subject. This chapter examines four of Barocci’s altarpieces that effectively and resourcefully employ dogs to reveal new levels of meaning in their subjects. These include The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, where a dog curls up on Sebastian’s abandoned cloak; The Martyrdom of St. Vitalis, where a dog reacts to the arrival of a lizard; The Last Supper, where a dog considers drinking from a wine cooler; and The Institution of the Eucharist, with a dog who accompanies the foreground servants as they depart the scene. An examination of the ingenious incorporation of a dog in these four pictures underscores Barocci’s importance as one of the first original iconographers of the Counter-Re­formation.



Part 3—Love and Dogs

Chapter 7

And Your Little Dog Too: Michal’s Lapdog and the Romance of the Old Testament Alexa Sand, Utah State University

Little dogs, useless for hunting anything larger than a rat and kept for no purpose other than companionship and to display their owners’ wealth and social status, date at least to Roman antiquity. Even then, they were closely associated with women. By the later Middle Ages, these adorable creatures had wriggled their way into literary laps; the magical mutt Petitcrieu shows up in the Tristan and Iseult legend around the beginning of the thirteenth century, and in the late fourteenth century, Chaucer’s Prioress feeds her “smale houndes” meat and bread off her own plate while paupers starve. The popularity and polysemia of little dogs in vernacular literature contrasts with their place in the Bible, which has very little good to say about them; generally, when not serving as metaphors for abjection and evil, they show up to eat desecrated meat, the pus oozing from a leper’s sores, their own vomit, or the bodies of those who have offended God. Regardless, a small, portable dog was, for the thirteenth century, less a signifier of contamination than a fashionable accessory that marked its owner as a noble lady, along the lines of those desirable and unobtainable damsels who feature so prominently in medieval romance. Injecting lapdogs into the Bible seems an unlikely and possibly impious move, but around 1250 the artists of the Morgan Old Testament Picture Book did just that.

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This essay examines the way in which lapdogs figure in the pictorial narrative of King David’s early career, in particular, his engagement and subsequent marriage to Saul’s daughter, Michal. Depicting Michal as the very attached owner of small dog, the artists infuse the otherwise epic character of the narrative with a strain of contemporary romance, tying the ancient story to the literary imagination of their late medieval audience. While much scholarship has focused on the Picture Book’s connection to the chansons de gestes and the early development of prose histories of the Crusades, this essay investigates a less-often discussed aspect of this strange and monumental cycle of wordless illuminations, namely its engagement with vernacular romance traditions, particularly in its depiction of love, marriage, and reproduction. Against an understanding of the Picture Book as primarily political in its intent, framing the contemporary experience of the Crusades in terms of Biblical precedent, Michal’s little dog reminds viewers that for its medieval makers and viewers, such a book was as much about a thirst to know Scripture deeply, imaginatively, and empathetically as it was about justifying and explaining a bloody and expensive foreign war. Chapter 8

The Commedia of Joachim and Anna at the Scrovegni Chapel Jane C. Long, Roanoke College

Scholars have long posited a link between the naturalistically observed gestures, expressions, and actions of the figures in Giotto’s frescoes at the Scrovegni Chapel and the character of liturgical dramas performed in late medieval Italy. No attempt has been made, however, to analyze how different types of sacre rappresentazione might have influenced the artist’s conception of the narratives. This essay proposes that comedic performance lies at the root of the Joachim and Anna story in the fresco cycle. The six scenes that comprise the story of Mary’s conception are occasionally represented in Byzantine and Western European art before Giotto, but his version of the narrative clearly diverges from both traditions. His composition of the whole conspicuously “opens” and “closes” the story; he emphasizes human experience and emotion in every scene; he gives an unprecedented weight to a comical dog in a third of the frescoes; and he represents abbreviated settings that serve as a kind of synecdoche for the real world. These distinguishing characteristics of Giotto’s approach to the story of Joachim and Anna may also be found in comedic dramas of the late Middle Ages. Literary scholars have devoted considerable attention to the humorous aspects of medieval mystery plays (e.g., the Wakefield Second Shepherds’ Play), and their work offers a thought-provoking model for considering whether Giotto’s innovations bring something to the viewers’ experience beyond a mere admiration for an artist’s clever observations. Like play cycles that begin with comedy and continue through serious religious drama, the Scrovegni Chapel frescoes are designed to give viewers access to the

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emotional implications of sacred stories and thus a deeper understanding of and a more profound engagement with the Christian scheme of salvation. Chapter 9

Jagd nach der Treue, or When Desire Met Devotion Jane Carroll, Dartmouth College

Hunting and dogs are inextricably linked. In fact, humans have encouraged breeds of canines for the various skills of speed, smell, or strength they bring to the chase. Assorted medieval tapestries and manuscript illuminations record dogs exhibiting these traits accompanied by men who follow their lead or move in for the kill. More surprising is when the stalking hounds are assigned allegorical meanings. Yet in late medieval scenes of the mystical hunt for the unicorn, the dogs are clearly labeled as representing specific concepts, such as “charity,” “peace,” or “faith.” They rush toward the unicorn and the harried beast finds refuge in the Virgin’s lap. In such scenes, the hunting dogs have used their intrinsic properties of justice or mercy to drive this symbol of purity to its natural home, the woman chosen to receive God’s child. Thus the viewer is asked to read the dogs as both allegory and hunting tool. The dogs in the hortus conclusus Annunciation type, which incorporates the mystical hunt for the unicorn, argue the theological justification of Mary and give her role a preordained inevitability. Two small tapestries found in the Burrell Collection of Glasgow and in a private collection include cousins of the stylized hortus conclusus Annunciations canines. Like the unicorn-chasing dogs, these hounds follow medieval hunting treatises by representing two methods used in the chase—the sharp-snouted varieties who hunt by sight, and the blunt-snouted breeds who follow their prey by scent. Their chosen quarry is a stag, a traditional symbol of faithfulness. Close behind him, riding a white horse, is a young couple with a banderole floating above them proclaiming their hunt for Treue (fidelity, loyalty, faithfulness). The young man blows a horn and drives the stag into a net strung between two trees, making the goal of the hunt seem within their grasp. Like the dogs in the scene, many of the elements found in the Glasgow tapestry are present in other art works. They are a part of the common visual vocabulary used at the end of the fifteenth century. Yet their particular combination is almost unique and requires some explication. This scene does not explore the search for love; love has been found. Rather the tapestry expounds upon the elements necessary for love to sustain itself. By exploring the clothing, props, flora, hunting techniques, and especially the role of the dogs, this essay examines the lessons about relationships embedded in this pleasant pastoral scene.

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Part 4—Death and Dogs

Chapter 10

From Biblical Beast to Faithful Friend: A Short Note on the Iconography of Footrests on Tomb Monuments Sophie Oosterwijk, University of St. Andrews

The liveliest and most attractive animals serving as footrests on medieval tombs are probably dogs. They may be seen peeping out from under ladies’ skirts, looking up at their master or mistress, or barking for attention. As an emblem of fidelity, dogs were evidently considered an appropriate symbol for the medieval tomb monuments of married women. The meaning of this motif is unclear, but one might wonder whether these dogs represented the deceased’s own pets. This idea is not as far-fetched as one might think, for personalized pet dogs do occur on medieval monuments, in particular beneath the feet of female effigies. This essay examines the lost origins of this popular motif and how its meaning may have changed over time. Chapter 11

The Canine Domain: At the Feet of the Royal Tomb Effigies in Capetian France Donna L. Sadler, Agnes Scott College

Before the dog took his position beside the ruler in the Renaissance portrait, he found himself depicted below the king’s feet in the tomb sculpture of the Middle Ages. The presence of a small breed beneath the feet of the queen was commonly associated with hearth and home, a symbol of domestic bliss. However, this formula broke down when the same dog curled up beneath the king’s feet instead of the manly hunting dog that should have, according to this logic, been found there. Indeed, dogs in medieval royal tombs seem to warm the feet (and hearts) of their masters, a role they fulfilled in life and art. This essay examines dogs on the tomb monuments in Saint-Denis for further signs of the “anatomy of fidelity” in the canine domain. Do the dogs beneath queens behave differently than those beneath kings? Do royal offspring warrant a different breed of dog? Does the gender of the dog matter? How do the dogs in Westminster behave? Do the dogs beneath royal effigies distinguish themselves from other aristocratic tombs that feature canines? When the Valois dukes chose lions instead of dogs, was the choice based purely on animal symbolism? The royal tombs at Saint-Denis have been studied from a political, ecclesiastical, and historical perspective. However, the royal dogs slumber beneath the feet of kings and queens. Classification of these canines increases knowledge of the tombs they enliven with their presence and the rulers they obeyed.

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Chapter 12

Eternal Devotion: The Stone Canine Companions of Gothic Castilla y León Janet Snyder, West Virginia University

Details of the animals represented in art in northern Spain during the Middle Ages conveyed significant ideas in much the same way as attributes of saints and depictions of clothing. An examination of sculpted canines in Castilla y León reveals not only that these apparently portraitlike images represented the recognizable dog breeds that originated in Spain but also that the carvers expressed notions of the stature and rank of the persons associated with these dogs: small companion dogs accompanied the ruling elite; canine guardians replaced lions in supporting monumental sarcophagi; coursing or hunting hounds indicated the special role played by bishops who served in the stead of absent monarchs during times of need. Making use of detailed photographs of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century sculptures and modern photos of descendants of ancient Spanish breeds and the historical context for these painted sculptures, this essay deciphers the lexicon of a sophisticated language of images in gothic Castilla y León.



Part 5—Good Dogs and Bad Dogs

Chapter 13

Medieval Scavengers: Dogs in Japanese Handscrolls Karen M. Gerhart, University of Pittsburgh

This essay seeks to explain the role of dogs in Japan’s medieval period (twelfth–fifteenth centuries) through an examination of contemporary written records and images in illustrated handscrolls. In the late twelfth century, when Japan’s ruling military elite reshaped the politics of the country, they also reconfigured the role of dogs to suit their needs and interests. Dogs in texts and paintings sponsored by the military elite became associated with fighting and blood sports, such as inu-ō-mono, where dogs were confined within an enclosure surrounded by a bamboo fence, pursued by men on horseback, and killed with arrows, activities which also served as tactical and weapon training for the warriors. But dogs also remained part of the medieval cosmology of the satoyama (farm village) landscape, which appears both in the writings of low-ranking aristocrats and Buddhist priests and in illustrated handscrolls they commissioned. The satoyama included both the sato (human settlement) and the yama (surrounding hills). While animals that lived in the foothills—mainly foxes, badgers, and monkeys—populate the folk literature of Japan and frequently appear as local gods (kami), dogs lived in the human settlements and are found in illustrations of commoner settings, temple environs, and scenes associated with illness and death. This essay examines the relationship

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between the context in which dogs appear in medieval handscrolls and the social status of their patrons. Chapter 14

Dogs in the Identity Formation and Moral Teaching Offered in Some Fifteenth-Century Flemish Manuscript Miniatures John B. Friedman, The Ohio State University

The principle on which collections such as Aesop’s Fables and their medieval progeny is founded is that by examining animals behaving like people, often badly, some aspects of human behavior can be called into question and ameliorated. Generally these are not domestic animals, but more usually wild ones: foxes, crows, wolves, and the like. A few fables do portray domestic animals, such as the story in which mice or rats bell a cat. But oddly, one of the most ubiquitous of domestic animals, the dog, is not chief among the actors in fables. Yet the dog has a long and illustrious history in medieval culture as a model for human behavior to be avoided or emulated. This chapter examines a number of instances in which medieval miniature painters used familiar dogs in interior scenes to serve as counterpoint to or heighten certain human traits, both desirable and undesirable, in courtly manuscript painting. In trying to understand the significance of dogs in courtly medieval manuscript illustration, it is vital to look at context. In a complex triptych for example, a dog can on one wing be a tormentor of Christ and on the other symbolize loyalty. This chapter explores some of the different contexts for the dog in medieval art with a focus on its symbolism of civility and loyalty in courtly domestic interior scenes. The focus is primarily on Flemish manuscript painting of the later fifteenth century, but includes the appearance of the dog in medieval calendars as well to show how it comes to occupy such an important place in interior spaces and how, with the rise of Flemish realism, it goes along with plate, textiles such as bedding and hangings, and other things to affirm the values of the class for which the manuscripts were commissioned. Chapter 15

Metaphorical Dogs in the Later Middle Ages: The Dogs of God and the Hounds of Hell Walter S. Gibson, Case Western Reserve University

Good dogs abound in medieval religious literature. Prominent among them are the dogs that licked Lazarus’s sores in Christ’s parable: they signified the priests and preachers who cleansed the faithful of their sins. But there were also the hounds of hell, the name often given to Satan and the lesser demons. The Vier Uitersten, a Dutch version of the “Four Last Things,” a widely read meditation on death and the afterlife, warns that “the Hound,” i.e. the Devil, and his followers will appear to the dying “in fearful shapes.” In his Inferno Dante witnesses two “black bitches” dismembering a damned soul in the Valley

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of the Suicides. Such canine devils were inspired by Psalm 21:17, in which the Psalmist complains: “For many dogs have encompassed me: the council of the malignant hath besieged me.” Visual representations of hellhounds vary. In the early fifteenth-century Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, a devil-dog attacks a soul in Purgatory, while in the Taymouth Hours, illuminated a century earlier, devils and fierce greyhounds pursue the damned across the lower borders of three successive folios. Although such canine demons were confined chiefly to manuscript illumination, they were often depicted by Hieronymus Bosch, most prominently in the Hell panel of his Garden of Earthly Delights. By this time, the hounds of Hell had pretty much run their course in art, but their literary career lasted somewhat longer. A notable example is a moralizing poem by the Antwerp schoolteacher-poet Anna Bijns (d. 1575), which contains the warning refrain “otherwise, the hell hounds will devour your soul.”

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Introduction: Our Dogs, Our Selves Introduction

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Introduction: Our Dogs, Our Selves Laura D. Gelfand Dogs have little imagination about us and our inner lives but limitless intuition about them; we also have false intuitions about their inner lives but limitless imagination about them. Our relationship meets in the middle. Adam Gopnick, “Dog Story”

⸪ The work that has gone into this volume has been, for me, as it has for many of the contributors, a labor of love. Editing this volume with my Belgian sheepdog, Mirabelle Barksalot, at my feet, has given me an opportunity to reflect on how our owner-dog relationship resembles those of the past as well as how it differs from them. The comfortable companionship that dogs provide and the undeniably strong emotional bonds we build with them are exceptional among interspecies relationships. This easy coexistence with our dogs is a result of the long evolutionary path we have travelled together, and our unique relationship is more closely akin to codependence than domestication.1 Like many historical practices so common as to have been little remarked upon in the written record, our knowledge of how earlier generations conceived of their own relationships with dogs is fairly obscure. In the medieval West, a major shift seems to have occurred when the nobility consolidated sufficient wealth to make hunting no longer essential for subsistence. Large dogs

1 There are simply too many sources on this evolutionary development to summarize here, but some of the more useful include The Domestic Dog, Its Evolution, Behavior, and Interactions with People, ed. James Serpell (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), and Stanley J. Olsen, Origins of the Domestic Dog: The Fossil Record (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985). New archeological finds continue to refine our understanding of how long dogs and humans have lived together; see, for example, James Gorman, “The Dog’s Tale,” New York Times, January 19, 2016. Thousands of years of cohabitation have produced a variety of significant biological connections; see Jan Hoffman, “The Look of Love Is in the Dog’s Eyes,” New York Times, April 16, 2015, and Michael Gross, “Are Dogs Just Like Us?” Current Biology 25, no. 17 (2015): R733–53.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004328617_002

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transitioned from essential tools for survival into symbols of knightly status.2 At roughly the same time smaller dogs became markers of social position and the lives they lived in noble residences started to more closely resemble those of our own beloved pets.3

Establishing Boundaries

Art and literature abound with dogs: they appear in secular settings and in all strata of society, in interiors, exteriors, and ecclesiastical scenes. The ubiquity of dogs in texts and images must at some level reflect their actual presence in the medieval and Early Modern world. Yet serious scholarly consideration of textual and visual representations of dogs is somewhat rare, and those wishing to know more must consult sources scattered across a range of diverse, discipline-specific publications.4 The presence of dogs in a particular text or image is often noted, but unless they are quite clearly out of place, or distinguish themselves in some remarkable way, they are usually dismissed as staffage or identified as straightforward symbols, usually of faith. The essays in this volume provide an important resource for readers who wish to know more about how humans and dogs lived and worked together during the medieval and Early Modern periods. The book’s fifteen authors present a nuanced picture of medieval and Renaissance dogs that enriches our understanding of historical cultural practices and beliefs, including how dogs were viewed and understood within earlier societies. We find that that dogs could be far more than staffage or symbols; in fact, querying the presence of dogs in images and texts provides a catalyst for the study of a wide range of critical questions. And while it is occasionally possible to identify specific answers to these questions, in other cases they lead us to ever more fundamental questions. For example, when Cardinal Jean Rolin (1408–1483), the son of the wellknown Chancellor of Burgundy, Nicolas Rolin (1376–1462), commissioned a painting of the Nativity (Fig. I.1), in addition to the standard portrait of the 2 Sophie Menache, “Hunting and Attachment to Dogs in the Pre-Modern Period,” in Companion Animals and Us: Exploring the Relationships between People and Pets, eds. Anthony L. Podberscek, Elizabeth S. Paul, and James A. Serpell (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 42–60, especially 49–53. 3 Small dogs, or lapdogs, had to be able to fit through an oval ring seven by five inches in diameter, Menache, ibid, 50. See also Kathleen Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2012), 1–23. 4 This volume’s bibliography provides interested readers with extensive source material for further study.

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Figure I.1 Jean Hey (Previously Master of Moulins), The Nativity with Cardinal Jean Rolin (Musée Rolin, Autun, France. 1480). Photo: Alfredo Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.

work’s patron, the artist Jean Hey (active 1480–1505), seems to have included a portrait of the cardinal’s dog (Fig. I.2). The dog, perhaps an early version of a pug, sits within the folds of his owner’s red cassock, where he mirrors the cardinal’s dour expression as they both gaze toward a depiction of the Nativity. Most viewers of the painting cannot help but notice this fat little dog with his sour expression immediately, yet it has received virtually no scholarly attention.5 The specificity of Jean Hey’s rendering of this dog seems to indicate that it is a portrait of a particular pet and it is natural to assume that this was the Cardinal’s own. Further, the inclusion of a portrait of the cleric’s dog seated proudly on his ecclesiastic regalia must have been intended to convey some 5 Philippe Lorentz, “Le Cardinal Rolin et Jean Hey,” La bonne étoile des Rolin, Mécénat et efflorescence artistique dans la Bourgogne du XVe siècle (Autun: Musée Rolin, 1994), 116–18, and idem., “Les Rolin et les ‘Primitifs flamands,’” La splendeur des Rolin; Un mécénat privé à la cour de Bourgogne, ed. Brigitte Maurice-Chabard (Paris: Picard éditeur, 1999), 157–60.

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Figure I.2 Detail of Fig. I.1. Jean Hey (Previously Master of Moulins), The Nativity with Cardinal Jean Rolin (Musée Rolin, Autun, France. 1480). Photo: Alfredo Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.

specific meaning. If the dog was simply a symbolic embodiment of his owner’s faith, why include a portrait of a unique animal rather than a more generic, less distracting one? Is the dog meant to identify the donor in some way? Surely the prominent heraldry and ecclesiastical regalia accomplished this. Or was this dog meant to attract viewers to the painting, alter their engagement with it, and shape or soften their impression of the man who paid for it? Perhaps the specificity of the dog’s portrait was meant to help viewers develop an enduring memory of the painting in order to garner more or better prayers for Jean Rolin’s soul? These kinds of questions open up important investigative avenues and require innovative methodological approaches. The meaning of dogs when they appear in art is neither static nor univalent. For example, two portraits of Margaret of Austria (1480–1530) show the Regent of the Netherlands with a dog. The first is a small devotional portrait diptych: the wings were produced by two different artists and the portrait panel is by the artist known as the Master of 1499 (Fig. I.3). Margaret is shown at prayer in a cozy room with a leashed monkey and a small dog curled up on the cloth

Introduction

Figure I.3 Master of 1499, Diptych with Margaret of Austria (Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent, c. 1500).

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covering her prie-dieu.6 Thanks to the survival of several inventories, we know a great deal about Margaret’s collections, including the fact that she had a lapdog named Boute or Bonté; perhaps this is the attentive little dog shown with the Regent.7 Intriguingly, in the Diptych of Abbot Christiaan de Hondt (Fig. I.4), the Master of 1499 depicted the diptych’s clerical owner in essentially the same domestic interior as the one in which Margaret of Austria is shown. As in Margaret’s diptych, the figure of de Hondt is accompanied by a small dog; this, however, is a different animal and it is sleeping rather than looking toward the adjacent wing, which features a copy of Jan van Eyck’s Virgin in a Church.8 De Hondt’s dog provides a punning allusion to the abbot’s name and, like Margaret’s, symbolizes the owner’s faith. The domestic interiors in both diptych wings are similar down to the number of oranges placed on the furnishings behind the owners; they may be copies of a now-lost original. The wings are distinguished from one another by the inclusion of two different donors and two different dogs. While it may not be possible to establish with certainty that these are portraits of specific pets owned by Margaret or de Hondt, the Master of 1499 must have been asked by his commissioners to paint different dogs on each of the diptych wings. Such requests give rise to questions. Why, for example, was the individualization of a dog more important than the personalization of the entire setting in which the diptych’s owners were placed? Was the perceived efficaciousness of a private devotional painting enhanced by the inclusion of personal possessions, including pets? 6 See John Oliver Hand, Catherine A. Metzger, and Ron Spronk, eds., Prayers and Portraits: Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2006), 11; This diptych may be the one mentioned in the 1523–24 inventory of Margaret’s collection; see Dagmar Eichberger, Leben mit Kunst, Wirken durch Kunst. Sammelwesen und Hofkunst unter Margarete von Österreich, Regentin der Neiderlande (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), 209 n. 68. See also Dagmar Eichberger, “Devotional Objects in Book Format: Diptychs in the Collection of Margaret of Austria and Her Family,” in The Art of the Book: Its Place in Medieval Worship, eds. Margaret M. Manion and Bernard J. Muir (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1998), 291–323. 7 The 1524 inventory lists a painting of a slave girl, on the cover of which Charles Ourssin, his father, and Margaret’s dog, Boute, are shown. Eleanor E. Tremayne, The First Governess of the Netherlands, Margaret of Austria (London: Methuen, 1908), 327. See also Laura D. Gelfand, “Regency, Power, and Dynastic Visual Memory: Margaret of Austria as Patron and Propagandist,” in The Texture of Society: Medieval Women in the Southern Low Countries, eds. Ellen E. Kittell and Mary A. Suydam (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 212–13. 8 The Diptych of Abbott Christiaan de Hondt can be explored in high-quality reproductions on the National Gallery of Art website: .

Introduction

Figure I.4 Master of 1499, Virgin in a Church and Abbot Christiaan de Hondt (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, c. 1500).

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Figure I.5 Portraits of Margaret of Austria and Philibert II (St.-Nicolas-of-Tolentino, Bourg-en-Bresse, Brou, c. 1530). Photo Credit: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

A second portrait of Margaret of Austria with a dog is located in the Royal Monastery of Brou, which she founded and constructed between 1506 and 1532.9 The stained glass in the choir includes impressive full-length portraits of Margaret and her second husband, Philibert II, Duke of Savoy (1480–1504) (Fig. I.5). As in the Ghent diptych discussed above, Margaret kneels at a priedieu, but at Brou she is accompanied by a large dog with a red leather collar; the hound turns away from Philibert and directs a dolorous look toward the choir below (Fig. I.6). This dog, with its tragic, focused expression, acts as an interlocutor for viewers and delivers a powerful emotional gloss on Philibert’s death at the age of twenty-four and Margaret’s grief—a grief commemorated in her foundation of the funerary church. The iconographic program at Brou highlights Margaret’s public devotion to Philibert’s memory as well as the political might generated by the alliance of 9 Markus Hörsch, Architektur unter Margarethe von Österreich, Regentin der Niederlande (1507– 1530): Eine bau- und architekturgeschichliche Studie zum Grabkloster St.-Nicolas-de-Tolentin in Brou bei Bourg-en-Bresse (Brussels: Koninkiljke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van Belgie, 1994).

Introduction

Figure I.6 detail of Fig. I.5. Margaret of Austria and Philibert II (St.-Nicolas-of-Tolentino, Bourg-en-Bresse, Brou, c. 1530). Photo Credit: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

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her Habsburg and his Savoy lineages.10 Margaret recognized that she had more power and freedom as a noble widow than a noble spouse, and despite tremendous pressure from her father and brother to remarry, she remained a widow until her death in 1530.11 Her self-penned motto, Fortune, Infortune, Fort Une, is painted on a winding banderole between the portraits of Margaret and Philibert in the window at Brou; it serves to remind viewers of the vicissitudes of her life and how these troubles ultimately honed her leadership skills.12 The dog beside her in the window makes clear reference to Margaret’s infortune, specifically Philibert’s tragic death, and its pitiful mien enables her to be shown as Fort Une. The dog thus serves several important roles: it engages with ­viewers, drawing our attention, and it embodies the sorrow of the widowed Margaret so that she can be shown as a strong and capable female leader.

Our Dogs, Our Selves

The title of this book, Our Dogs, Our Selves, was inspired by the well-known feminist sourcebook on women’s health, Our Bodies, Ourselves,13 and the books have more than just titles in common. Both include contributions by multiple authors who use a range of methodologies to investigate a specific and intimate relationship, in the case of this volume, that of dogs and humans. The title also serves to remind readers that the lives of humans and dogs are now and have always been inextricably intertwined, and that any examination of historical dogs reveals as much, if not more, about the people who came before 10

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Laura D. Gelfand, “Margaret of Austria and the Encoding of Power in Patronage: The Funerary Foundation at Brou,” in Widowhood and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. Allison Levy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 145–60. For more on this see, my forthcoming essay “What’s Love Got to Do with It? Unlacing the Love Knots in Margaret of Austria’s Royal Monastery at Brou,” in “Ut picture amor”: The Reflexive Imagery of Love in Artistic Theory and Practice, 1400–1700, eds. Walter Melion, Joanna Woodall, and Michael Zell (Leiden: Brill, expected publication 2017). Translated, the multivalent motto can be read most simply as, “Fortune, Misfortune, Makes a woman strong.” Eduard-Louis-Christophe Laussac, Eglise de Brou, notice explicative du quintuple sens de la devise Fortune-Infortune-Fort-Une (Bourg-en-Bresse: impr. de J. Dureuil, n.d. [1896]); and M.J. Schoutten, “L’Iconographie de Marguerite d’Autriche,” Publication du Centre Europèen d’Etudes Burgundo-Medianes 9 (1967): 88–92. This revolutionary book was first published by Simon & Schuster in 1973 and it has been revised and reprinted, as well as translated into many different languages, countless times in the years since. The OBOS website, , provides a timeline and history, as well as a link to the most recent edition of the book.

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us as it does about their dogs. Several fellow dog-loving authors expressed to me how difficult their chapters were to write because their research ended up detailing violence and suffering. While some dogs lived in ways that were more or less comparable with our own, others fared far worse: unfortunately, the same can be said for the people we study, too. Current scholarly bibliography on this subject addresses all facets of dog/ human development and relationships. Potential methodological approaches to this complex evolutionary, culturally diverse relationship include the genetic, ethologic, humanist, geographical, psychological, legal, semiotic, theological, and sociological. The recent “animal turn” and an interest in posthuman studies, particularly by feminist scholars, have established new ways of thinking about animals and the relationships we have with them.14 The authors included in this volume explore a range of methodologies, and their diverse approaches vividly illustrate the fecund potential of the subject. Anyone who reads this volume in its entirety will not be able to help but notice that almost every chapter includes a mention of the unpleasant predilection dogs have for eating their own vomit. The canine ability to stomach human and animal waste, as well as lots of other things people do not consider edible, meant that one of their primary roles in early human societies was to help maintain a clean living area. This role continued when people and their dogs began settling in communities and towns, as is noted in several of the essays included here.15 Repeated reference to this disgusting canine behavior reinforces the fundamental nature of the animals with whom we share our living spaces, and for those who, like me, are devoted “dog people,” it acts as a reminder that our dogs will always differ quite dramatically from ourselves. Through the specificity of its focus, this volume makes several significant contributions to the study of dogs. It is primarily art historical in nature and the majority of the essays investigate elements of dog/human history that have been preserved in visual culture. Additionally, several essays examine the roles played by real dogs in medieval and Early Modern life by examining their presence and absence in civic and court records. A number of authors concentrate on textual sources and literary representations of canines. The book takes a global approach, allowing readers to compare the roles and reception of dogs in the twelfth through the sixteenth centuries in several different cultures. While the majority of the essays focus on European subjects, the book also includes studies of dogs in medieval Sufi literature and Japanese handscrolls; 14 15

For more on the “animal turn” and other recent methodological approaches to animal studies, see Elizabeth Pastan’s essay in this volume and the bibliography. See, in particular, the essays by Cockayne, Ashley, and Gerhart.

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these investigations of non-western topics expand the context within which we may interpret representations of dogs in earlier periods. This book has its origins in two sessions, entitled “Dogs, Dogs, Dogs!” and “Doggy Deux: Dogs Redux,” that were held at the International Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 2013 and 2014. Before the sessions began, audience members were treated to a slide show of dog images from a range of medieval and Early Modern paintings, sculptures, and objects that played in a continuous loop. The slides provided viewers with an overview of some of the breeds depicted, the frequency with which dogs are shown, and the diverse range of places in which they appear. Attendees quickly realized that they could identify individual artists, stylistic periods, geographical origins, and all sorts of other information by looking only at these details from larger works. As the slides revealed, although dogs were rarely the central subject of artwork and texts, their presence provides us with invaluable information about the cultures that produced them.

Contents and Essays

This book is a bit unusual in its inclusion of two somewhat shorter essays along with those of more traditional length. While holding their own as important contributions to the study of dogs, the essays by Kathleen Ashley and Sophie Oosterwijk also amplify ideas contained in the longer chapters and help to contextualize them. Some readers may be disappointed that a particular dog-related theme does not appear within this volume, or that a favorite representation of a dog is not included. However, this collection is in no way intended to be an encyclopedic study; rather, it is a snapshot in time that showcases the current state of research on dogs in art and literature. I encourage readers interested in further study to refer to this volume’s bibliography, which provides an extensive list of resources and scholarship on medieval and Early Modern canine topics. The book is divided into five sections, each containing two or more essays focusing on related ideas and concepts. There are many places of overlap between the sections and several of the essays would fit just as well within one or more. Literal and Literary Dogs, the first section, begins with Craig Gibson’s examination of three encomia of dogs from the fourth to the fifteenth century. He identifies the most appropriate ways in which dogs were to be praised and which characteristics were seen as most praiseworthy. Gibson also clarifies the intended function of each encomium within the culture that produced it. Most readers will be charmed, and perhaps surprised, by Leon Battista Alberti’s

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encomium for his dog, a witty and moving contribution to the literary genre. The second and third chapters delve into civic and court records to reveal a startling difference between the ubiquitous documentation of dogs in Early Modern England and its nearly complete absence across the Channel. Emily Cockayne’s exploration of dangerous dogs in Early Modern English towns expands our understanding of what it was like to inhabit cities that were also home to violent and/or poorly supervised dogs and the measures civic authorities took to manage them. Evidence from abundant legal and civic documents shows that, although dogs could certainly injure the unwary, they were far from the most dangerous animals in English cities and towns. Wolves, the wild cousins of domesticated dogs, have been a source of fear and superstition throughout history; city walls were built to help keep them out. In chapter 3, Kathleen Ashley’s case study of sixteenth-century Beaune examines the response of the town council when they discovered that the transgressive butcher’s guild was raising a litter of wolf pups in the center of town. Her analysis of this specific case also reveals that the abundant evidence for dogs in English records is completely absent in contemporary Burgundian documents, and she proposes several explanations for this odd lacuna. The fourth and final chapter in this section is Nathan Hofer’s discussion of dogs in Egyptian Sufi literature. Hofer’s analysis of a variety of medieval Sufi texts provides us with new insights about how the ritual and social ambiguity of dogs was used as a rhetorical device to explicate and amplify important Egyptian Sufi concepts. The book’s second section, Signs, Symbols, and Dogs, includes two chapters that address the emotional and symbolic role of dogs in very different visual contexts. Using the lens of the “animal turn,” Elizabeth Pastan investigates the numerous depictions of dogs on the Bayeux Embroidery. Her study reveals that dogs are included in specific locations in order to amplify and complicate the narratives of the central scenes through pointed references to Aesop’s fables and other well-known literary sources. The designers of the Embroidery understood the multivalent potential embodied within dogs and incorporated it to great emotive effect. Judith Mann’s study of dogs in Federico Barocci’s paintings explores the artist’s innovative use of canines to address new requirements for Catholic Reformation artwork. Mann examines four of Barocci’s altarpieces to find that the artist’s inclusion of dogs within religious narratives visually engaged viewers while helping to communicate complex doctrinal messages. Although they are closely related to the chapters in the second section, those in the third, Love and Dogs, center their investigations more specifically on dogs as symbols of diverse facets of love. Alexa Sand focuses on the lapdog held by Michal in the story of David in the Morgan Old Testament Picture Book.

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Examining the manuscript within the framework of vernacular Romance literature, she finds that the Morgan manuscript has an even stronger component of lyrical romance than the chansons with which it is usually associated. The unusual inclusion of Michal’s little dog may have helped the book’s female readers envision the Old Testament stories within a contemporary setting, making the narrative more empathetic and memorable as a result. In chapter 8, Jane Long reveals how the dogs Giotto included in his Scrovegni Chapel frescoes amplify the formal and the emotional aspects of Joachim and Anna’s narrative scenes. Giotto’s use of the dog as an emotive device helped the fresco cycle communicate to a varied audience, similar to contemporary mystery plays in which emotional expression was valued for its ability to help audiences understand and engage with biblical narratives. Jane Carroll’s investigation of the tapestry known as Die Jagd nach der Treue or The Hunt for Fidelity, now in Glasgow’s Burrell Collection, reveals how the designer used the allegorical language of the hunt to create an object for a domestic space that vividly symbolizes the happy promise of a long and faithful marriage. Turning from love to death, section four, Death and Dogs, includes three chapters that examine the common practice of including dogs at the feet of the deceased on sculpted medieval tombs. Tombs are one of the most common places to find dogs represented; the essays in this section share natural connections in terms of sources, but each author has a different point of departure and covers different geographic territory. Sophie Oosterwijk looks at a number of tombs picturing named dogs, a practice that was particularly popular with women. She traces the origins of these charming footrests to earlier tombs where dragons and lions—symbols of evil—were shown vanquished under the deceased’s feet in a reference to Psalm 91. Donna Sadler’s study of French nobles’ gisants in Saint-Denis reveals that the tomb dogs serve a function that is visually significant and semiotically essential. In the final chapter in this section, Janet Snyder identifies specific breeds of medieval dogs on sculpted tomb monuments in Castilla y León. She argues that the depiction of particular breeds was far from accidental; rather, it was intended to cause viewers to associate the specific, positive characteristics of each breed with the noble individual with whom the dog was associated. The final section, Good Dogs and Bad Dogs, begins with Karen Gerhart’s investigation of representations of dogs on medieval Japanese handscrolls. According to the visual evidence, medieval Japanese dogs seem to have had the most difficult lives of all those discussed in this volume: the military elite shot them for target practice, and the handscrolls Gerhart analyzes show dogs within impoverished villages where they are primarily associated with cleaning up after the sick and the dead. Gerhart’s essay is the only extended study to

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date of medieval Japanese representations of dogs published in English or Japanese. In the chapter that follows, John Friedman examines fifteenth-century Flemish manuscripts to find that the decorum of dogs pictured within well-appointed domestic interiors was intended to serve as a form of visual instruction for ideal, noble conduct. Friedman also discusses the types of collars shown on these dogs, comparing them with those that have survived to the present day. In the book’s final essay, Walter Gibson investigates hellhounds, tracing these beasts from early literary sources to the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and members of his artistic circle. He then follows the beasts as they return to more contemporary literary sources, up to and including the works of Arthur Conan Doyle. The essays in this volume investigate a wide range of representations of dogs and the authors use an equally diverse set of innovative approaches when interpreting them. While it is certainly possible to read one or two chapters and learn a great deal, when read cover to cover, the book provides readers with a rich, nuanced understanding of dogs in medieval and Early Modern art, literature, court and civic documents, and society. It is my hope that it will open the door to more scholarship on the important and diverse roles dogs played in the lives of our predecessors. As the essays gathered here show, our dogs have much to tell us about ourselves and we have only begun to scratch the surface of this enormously complex love story.

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Introduction

Part 1 Literal and Literary Dogs

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In Praise of Dogs

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Chapter 1

In Praise of Dogs: An Encomium Theme from Classical Greece to Renaissance Italy Craig A. Gibson In a wide variety of ancient literary genres, the Greeks and Romans sang the praises of dogs as companion animals, herders, guards, and hunters.1 They recorded stories of particularly praiseworthy dogs, and they saw in these noble creatures examples of the virtues—bravery, fidelity, friendship—to which human beings aspire, but which they often fail to reach. As the centuries passed and certain works of literature became canonized as Classics, the dogs featured in them acquired even greater influence as moral examples. This was true not only in antiquity, but also in the Byzantine period and the Italian Renaissance. For when educated authors of these later periods wished to write formal works of literature in praise of dogs, they looked to Greco-Roman antiquity for inspiration, searching both for rhetorical models to follow and for anecdotes about dogs to support and elevate their discourse. In this chapter I examine three works written to praise dogs: an encomium by twelfth-century Greek author Nikephoros Basilakes, an encomium by fifteenth-century Greek humanist Theodorus Gaza, and a funeral speech in Latin by fifteenth-century Italian humanist Leon Battista Alberti. I begin by tracing the history of encomia of dogs in ancient Greco-Roman rhetoric in order to establish their formal characteristics. I then analyze the three extant medieval and Renaissance encomia of dogs in the light of this rhetorical tradition, highlighting the physical, mental, and moral attributes of dogs that these writers found most worthy of praise. Of course, other texts from antiquity praise * I am grateful to Jeffrey Beneker, Sarah Blick, John Ensminger, Laura Gelfand, Katherine Harper, and Joshua D. Sosin for their comments and corrections. 1 On dogs in Greco-Roman antiquity, see Kenneth F. Kitchell, Jr., Animals in the Ancient World from A to Z (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013), 47–53; Douglas J. Brewer, Dogs in Antiquity: Anubis to Cerberus: The Origins of the Domestic Dog (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 2001); Saara Lilja, Dogs in Ancient Greek Poetry (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1976); Rene Henry Albert Merlen, De Canibus: Dog and Hound in Antiquity (London: J.A. Allen, 1971), chaps. 3–6; Denison Bingham Hull, Hounds and Hunting in Ancient Greece (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), which includes translations of some important ancient texts; and Otto Keller, Die antike Tierwelt, vol. 1 (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1909), 91–151.

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particular dogs or say favorable things about dogs in general, and our three authors mined some of them to illustrate their encomia. My main focus here, however, is on those texts that have an explicit connection to the ancient rhetoric of praise as it was applied to dogs.2 I examine how these authors both followed and creatively modified the formal characteristics of the genre in order to showcase their classical learning and to praise dogs in general as well as dogs that were special to them.

Classical Antiquity

Although no encomium of a dog survives from Greco-Roman antiquity—and no invective (psogos), either—Aristotle, Lucian, and Basil allude to the theme. For example, in the fourth century BCE, Aristotle in his Rhetoric illustrates a class of fallacious arguments based on homonymy or equivocation of a situation with the example of an encomium of the dog that cites “the dog in the sky [Sirius] or Pan, because Pindar said, ‘O, blessed one, whom the Olympian gods call the dog of the Great Goddess [Cybele], dog taking many forms,’” or states that “the dog is clearly honorable because being without a dog is most dishonorable.”3 Although Aristotle declines to discuss what would constitute valid praise of the dog, in rejecting these defective strategies he acknowledges an encomium on the theme as a possibility. Dogs could also be praised in an encomium of hunting with dogs (Greek κυνηγεσία, literally “dog-leading”), a theme known from Plutarch’s essay On the

2 Limiting this study to formal encomia has no doubt excluded some fine passages in praise of dogs. For example, in the second century CE, Arrian in his Cynegeticus (6.1–5) describes a favorite gray-eyed hunting dog named Horme (a word whose basic meaning is “rapid motion forward”), praising her swiftness, cleverness, hard work, agility, gentleness, affection, and devotion to her human companions, and ability to communicate, noting especially her heartbreaking supplications to anyone who mentioned the word “whip” in her presence. I am grateful to John Ensminger for this reference. As for ancient Greek views of dogs’ blameworthy qualities, see Cristiana Franco, Shameless: The Canine and the Feminine in Ancient Greece (Oakland: University of California Press, 2014), 153–59. 3 Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.24.2 (1401a15–20), citing Pindar, Partheneia fr. 96 Maehler-Snell: εἴ τις κύνα ἐγκωμιάζων τὸν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ συμπαραλαμβάνοι, ἢ τὸν Πᾶνα, ὅτι Πίνδαρος ἔφησεν ‘ὦ μάκαρ, ὅν τε μεγάλας θεοῦ κύνα παντοδαπὸν καλέουσιν Ὀλύμπιοι,’ ἢ ὅτι τὸ μηδένα εἶναι κύν’ ἀτιμότατόν ἐστιν, ὥστε τὸ κύνα δῆλον ὅτι τίμιον. The end of this passage depends on a metaphorical meaning of “dog,” but which one is unclear; see George A. Kennedy, trans., Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press), 185 n. 191.

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Cleverness of Animals (first century CE),4 but encomia of dogs themselves are not found again until the second century, when the satirist Lucian has his character Lycinus respond to a complaint that his glowing portrayal of Panthea, the mistress of the emperor Lucius Verus, in his Imagines had crossed the line into unbelievable flattery. Nonsense, replies Lycinus; this is simply how the rhetorical game is played: οἷον εἴ τις κύνα ἐπαινῶν εἴποι ἀλώπεκος εἶναι μείζω αὐτὸν ἢ αἰλούρου, ἆρά σοι δοκεῖ ὁ τοιοῦτος ἐπαινεῖν εἰδέναι; οὐκ ἂν εἴποις. ἀλλὰ μὴν οὐδ’ εἰ λύκῳ φαίη ἴσον αὐτὸν ὑπάρχειν, οὐδὲ οὕτως μεγαλωστὶ ἐπῄνεσεν. ἀλλὰ ποῦ τὸ ἴδιον τοῦ ἐπαίνου ἀποτελεῖται; ἢν ὁ κύων τῷ λέοντι ἐοικέναι λέγηται καὶ μέγεθος καὶ ἀλκήν. ὡς ὁ τὸν Ὠρίωνος κύνα ἐπαινῶν ἔφη ποιητὴς λεοντοδάμαν αὐτόν· οὗτος γὰρ δὴ κυνὸς ἐντελὴς ἔπαινος. For example, if someone in praising a dog were to say that he is bigger than a fox or a cat, does such a man as this seem to you to know how to offer praise? You would say that he does not. Moreover, if he should say that the dog is equal to a wolf, in doing so he would not have praised it magnificently. But where will he find the appropriate animal for his praise? When he says that the dog resembles the lion in both size and strength. Thus the poet [Pindar] in praising Orion’s dog said that he was a lion-tamer; for this is the perfect praise of a dog.5 Thus Lucian’s speaker defends the practice of praising subjects by comparing them not to their inferiors or equals, but to their apparent superiors. Even if the example is intended to be humorous or deflating, it assumes the possibility of the encomium of a dog and suggests that the work could include remarks on the dog’s physical qualities and favorable comparisons to other animals. In the fourth century, St. Basil writes that when a Christian praises a martyr, the focus should be on “the wealth of his spiritual gifts” (ὁ πλοῦτος τῶν πνευματικῶν χαρισμάτων). The speaker, he says, is not obliged to follow the rules of “pagan encomia” (τῶν ἔξωθεν ἐγκωμίων), in which one praises the subject’s parents and ancestors, because it is disgraceful to adorn someone conspicuous for his own virtue with qualities that belong to others.6 He continues:

4 Plutarch, De sollertia animalium (Moralia 959B–C). 5 Lucian, Pro imaginibus 19, citing Pindar, Dithyrambi fr. 74 Maehler-Snell. 6 Basil, Homily 23, In Mamantem martyrem (Patrologia Graeca 31:591.52–592.8).

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οὔτε γὰρ ἵππον ταχὺν ποιεῖ ἡ τοῦ πατρὸς περὶ τὸν δρόμον εὐμοιρία, οὔτε κυνὸς ἐγκώμιον τὸ ἐκ ταχυτάτων φῦναι. ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἄλλων ζώων ἡ ἀρετὴ ἐν αὐτῷ θεωρεῖται ἑκάστῳ, οὕτω καὶ ἀνδρὸς ἴδιος ἔπαινος ὁ ἐκ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων αὐτῷ κατορθωμάτων μαρτυρούμενος. τί πρὸς τὸν παῖδα ἡ τοῦ πατρὸς περιφάνεια; οὕτως οὐκ ἔλαβεν ἑτέρωθεν τὸ περιφανὲς ὁ μάρτυς· ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς τῷ ἐφεξῆς βίῳ λαμπτῆρα εὐκλείας ἀνῆψεν. For his father’s talent in running does not make a horse swift, nor is it an encomium of a dog that it was born of very swift parents. Rather, just as the virtue of other animals is seen in each individual, so also the praise appropriate for a man is that which is attested [μαρτυρούμενος] by his successes. How is a father’s distinction relevant to his child? Thus the martyr [St. Mamas] did not obtain his distinction from others; rather, he himself lit the lamp of glory by means of his entire life.7 Arguing from the lesser (animals) to the greater (humans), Basil’s rejection of pagan rhetorical precepts conflates contemporary instructions for praising a person, in which the speaker should praise the subject’s parents and ancestors, with instructions for praising an animal, in which one does not, because the animal is usually conceived of as a type rather than an individual. Like Lucian, Basil incidentally confirms that the encomium of a dog was conceivable and again shows that a physical quality—its swiftness—could form part of it. Several rhetoricians of the Roman Empire briefly acknowledged animals as possible subjects for encomia, as had Aristotle long before them.8 Quintilian says that even soulless animals (carentium anima) can be the focus of praise, just as gods and humans are.9 In his treatise on epideictic or display oratory, Menander Rhetor classifies irrational (ἄλογα) animals as land- and waterdwelling and says that the land animals can be further divided into those that fly and those that go on foot, but he provides no further details about how to praise them.10

7 8

9 10

Basil, in Patrologia Graeca 31:592.8–16. Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.9.2 (1366a28–31). Jan Fredrik Kindstrand, “Notes on Theodorus Gaza’s Canis Laudatio,” Eranos 91 (1993): 93–105, at 93–95, also discusses ancient evidence for encomia of animals. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 3.7.6. Menander Rhetor, 332.8–19, in Donald Andrew Russell and Nigel Guy Wilson, eds and trans., Menander Rhetor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981).

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This brings us to the preliminary exercises in prose composition, or progymnasmata.11 The purpose of the progymnasmata was to prepare elite young men not only for declamation, the culmination of the ancient rhetorical curriculum, but also more generally for a public life of writing and speaking.12 According to the four extant ancient treatises on progymnasmata, the possible subjects of encomium include people, abstract ideas (such as justice), occasions, places, animals, plants, and objects. In the case of persons, which is by far the most common type, the encomium praises the subject’s origin (homeland, distant ancestors, and parents), nurture, and upbringing, and then his deeds, divided into those attributable to his mind or soul, to his body, and to external factors (such as money or friends).13 In this section, the writer is directed to emphasize the subject’s deliberate moral choice and connect his actions to his possession of particular virtues; to omit, disguise, or downplay the subject’s mistakes, but not defend them; to praise the length of his life, whether long or short, the manner of his death, and events resulting from his death; and to supply a comparison asserting the superiority of the subject.14 11

12

13 14

The following editions are used for the progymnasmata: Michel Patillon and Giancarlo Bolognesi, eds., Aelius Théon: Progymnasmata (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1997); Michel Patillon, ed., Corpus Rhetoricum I (Paris: Belles Lettres, 2008) [for Ps.-Hermogenes and Aphthonius]; Joseph Felten, ed., Nicolai Progymnasmata (Leipzig: Teubner, 1913); Ricardus Foerster, ed., Libanii Opera, 12 vols. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1903–1927) [for Libanius and some texts of Ps.-Nicolaus]; and Christianus Walz, ed., Rhetores Graeci, 9 vols. in 10 (Stuttgart: J.G. Cottae, 1832–1836) [for other texts of Ps.-Nicolaus]. On the progymnasmata, see Donald Lemen Clark, Rhetoric in Greco-Roman Education (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), 177–212; George Alexander Kennedy, Greek Rhetoric under Christian Emperors (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 52–73; Heinrich Lausberg, Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik, 3rd ed. (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1990), 532–46; Ruth Webb, “The Progymnasmata as Practice,” in Yun Lee Too, ed., Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 289–316; Manfred Kraus, “Progymnasmata, Gymnasmata,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik, vol. 7 (Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 2005), 159–91; Manfred Kraus, “Exercises for Text Composition (Exercitationes, Progymnasmata),” in Ulla Fix, Andreas Gardt, and Joachim Knape, eds., Rhetoric and Stylistics: An International Handbook of Historical and Systematic Research, vol. 2 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), 1396–1405; and Robert J. Penella, “The Progymnasmata in Imperial Greek Education,” Classical World 105.1 (2011): 77–90. See also Stanley Frederick Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome: From the Elder Cato to the Younger Pliny (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 250–76, on the Latin progymnasmata. These instructions are informed by the Platonic and Aristotelian division of “goods” (desirable possessions) into goods of the soul, goods of the body, and external goods of fortune. In the interest of avoiding unnecessary complexity, in this paragraph I have combined details from the manuals of Theon (109.19–112.21), Ps.-Hermogenes (7), Aphthonius (8), and Nicolaus (47.4–58.18) to form one account.

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These headings and instructions for encomia of persons could be adapted for use in other types of encomia. Ps.-Hermogenes explains: παραπλησίως δὲ καὶ τὰ ἄλογα ζῷα κατὰ τὸ ἐγχωροῦν. καὶ γὰρ ἀπὸ τοῦ τόπου, ἐν ᾧ γίνεται, ἐγκωμιάσεις. εἰς δὲ τὴν τοῦ γένους χώραν ἐρεῖς, τίνι θεῶν ἀνάκειται, οἷον ἡ γλαῦξ τῇ Ἀθηνᾷ, ὁ ἵππος τῷ Ποσειδῶνι. ὁμοίως δὲ ἐρεῖς, πῶς τρέφεται, ποταπὸν τὴν ψυχήν, ποταπὸν τὸ σῶμα, τίνα ἔργα ἔχει, ποῦ χρήσιμα, πόσος ὁ χρόνος τοῦ βίου. καὶ συγκρινεῖς δὲ καὶ ὅλως τοῖς ἐμπίπτουσι τῶν τόπων χρήσῃ. Similarly, [you will praise] irrational animals as far as possible. For indeed, you will praise them on the basis of the places in which they are born. In addition to the land of their birth, you will say to which of the gods they are dedicated; for example, the owl to Athena, the horse to Poseidon. Likewise you will say how they are nurtured, what they are like in soul, what they are like in body, what deeds they do, where they are useful, how long is their lifespan. And you will use comparisons and in general use all available headings.15 Note the alterations that are recommended here. Like human beings, animals can be praised for their origin (but limited to praise of their homeland), nurture, the deeds of their bodies and souls, and their death (but limited to lifespan), and they can be favorably compared to other animals. Unlike human beings, animals are praised for their connection to specific gods and evaluated in terms of their usefulness to humans. The most significant change is that encomia of animals praise types of animals, not individuals. Of the few extant ancient encomia of animals, most are of the so-called adoxographical type, offered in jest and/or merely for the sake of rhetorical display.16 Late-antique collections of progymnasmata contain a few examples of encomia that seem to follow Ps.-Hermogenes’s precepts. In the fifth century, Ps.-Nicolaus wrote an encomium of the ox and invective exercises against the lion and the deer.17 Because the encomium of the ox in the collection of the 15 16

17

Ps.-Hermogenes, Progymasmata 7.11. Arthur Stanley Pease, “Things without Honor,” Classical Philology 21.1 (1926): 27–42, at 40: “Of animals we find representatives of those which are more or less homely or mean, such as the ass, the horse, the cow, the parrot, the ant, and the bumblebee, but also of those which are annoying or dangerous, as flies, gnats, fleas, lice, and bedbugs.” Encomium of the ox (Walz, Rhetores Graeci 1:332.17–333.32), invective against the lion (1:346.1–347.26), and invective against the deer (1:350.12–351.12). For the date, see Craig A. Gibson, “The Alexandrian Tychaion and the Date of Ps.-Nicolaus Pro­gymnasmata,”

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fourth-century Greek rhetorician Libanius is such a fine specimen of the animal encomium, it is useful to analyze it here.18 Libanius quickly establishes the animal’s divine connection, place of origin, and manner of nurture: the ox, he writes, is beloved of the gods Selene, Demeter, and Helius and is even found among the stars; it lives everywhere that humans do; and it eats plants (1–2). As for their bodies, oxen are beautiful, multicolored animals, whose beauty is also amply illustrated in mythology (2–5); they exhibit strength in hauling loads (8); and their horns protect them from their enemies (9). They are beneficial to agriculture, which makes human life possible, as the poet Hesiod attests (6–7). As for their souls/minds, they can be hot-tempered against animals that would attack them or gentle in their submission to the yoke and the whip (8). As for comparisons to other animals, oxen are superior to horses (10–13). Heracles and Theseus were honored for their labors involving oxen, and the Egyptians even worship an ox-god [Apis] (14). Libanius does not praise the ox for its lifespan but instead mentions a benefit derived from its death: honeybees generate spontaneously in the carcasses of dead oxen.19 In sum, Libanius’s encomium of the ox closely follows the precepts of Ps.-Hermogenes but goes beyond them in its use of mythological examples (i.e., Heracles and Theseus).

Nikephoros Basilakes

It is not until the twelfth century at Constantinople that we find an extant encomium of the dog. It serves as the only encomium in Nikephoros Basilakes’s collection of progymnasmata.20 In the prologue to this text, Basilakes estab-

18

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Classical Quarterly 59.2 (2009): 608–23. However, if Kevin W. Wilkinson in two articles— “Palladas and the Age of Constantine,” Journal of Roman Studies 99 (2009): 36–60; and “Palladas and the Foundation of Constantinople,” Journal of Roman Studies 100 (2010): 179–94—is correct in arguing that Palladas is writing earlier in the fourth century and at Constantinople rather than at Alexandria, then the Alexandrian Tychaion was not converted into a tavern in c. 391, and the date for Ps.-Nicolaus advanced in my article would therefore need to be revised to the fifth century (before 488), instead of a date between c. 391 and 488. Ekphrasis 8, translated with notes by Craig A. Gibson, Libanius’s Progymnasmata: Model Exercises in Greek Prose Composition and Rhetoric (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), 256–61. A common belief in Graeco-Roman antiquity: see, e.g., Vergil, Georgics 4.281–558, esp. 281–314, 528–58; Nicander, Theriaca 741–42; Aelian, De natura animalium 2.57. On Basilakes’s life and writings, see Ronald F. Hock and Edward N. O’Neil, The Chreia and Ancient Rhetoric: Classroom Exercises (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002),

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lishes his classical literary credentials and humorously wards off potential criticism of his choice of topic by disavowing any attempt to deify the dog— this, he says, is what the god Dionysus had attempted to do in one of Lucian’s comic dialogues, only to be mocked by Momus, the god of sarcastic criticism.21 I interpret this also as a humorous take on Ps.-Hermogenes’s recommendation to praise an animal for its special connection to divinity: one god made a fool of himself in his treatment of a dog, and another, lesser god mocked him for it. However, Basilakes also uses this reference to Lucian to segue into the standard use of the heading, noting that Artemis, who takes dogs along when she hunts (12–13), is the sponsor of the divinely instituted practice of hunting (κυνηγεσίας, 14). In a comment that may shed some light on Basilakes’s desired readership, he observes that hunting offers pleasure to kings/emperors (βασιλεῦσι, 17) and provides delicious game for their banquets. This very brief initial praise of hunting highlights one important area in which the dog proves useful to humans. It also serves to introduce Basilakes’s praise of the dog’s body, not only the vision and sense of smell that make its skill in hunting possible, but also its physical appearance. In the interest of offering generic praise, Basilakes collapses the distinction between sight-hounds and scent-hounds: “For when an animal is hidden from the dog’s eyes and escapes into the midst of a thicket, the dog employs a power other than vision as he goes through thick woods and forest, both tracking the animal down and sniffing it out” (22–25). Basilakes then introduces an ekphrasis,22 an exercise intended to bring a scene vividly before the eyes of the reader or listener: “You also wish for me to describe for you in words, as if in a painting, the practice of hunting.” This is an unusual move in an encomium and a sign of Basilakes’s literary aspirations: although as an educational tool, the progymnasmata were designed to be recursive, meaning that advanced students could return to simpler exercises later and incorporate elements of more complex exercises in them,23 ekphrasis appears not to have featured in encomia. This strategy allows Basilakes to offer an aesthetic appreciation of

21 22 23

280–83. The Greek text is edited in Adriana Pignani, ed., Niceforo Basilace: Progimnasmi e Monodie, Byzantina et neo-hellenica neapolitana 10 (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1983), 133–38, with Italian translation on 309–12; this is also the text used in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. Jeffrey Beneker and I are preparing an English translation of Basilakes’s Progymnasmata for the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series. I cite the encomium by the line numbers in Pignani’s edition. Lucian, Deorum concilium 5. See Ruth Webb, Ekphrasis: Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2009). Penella, “The Progymnasmata,” 83–84.

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dogs for their visual beauty. The dogs awaiting the hunt offer “a pleasant sight for onlookers” (43–44) in their variety: “At any given time you could see one dog rolling around at the man’s feet, whining in a fawning manner, and another exercising his legs and eagerly competing against others in a race, and still another glorying in the collar on his neck, reveling in the gems and taking pride in the golden leash” (38–43).24 The beauty of the scene, for Basilakes, is found in the athleticism of the dogs, their loving attachment to their master, and the richness of their adornment. As the hunt begins, Basilakes asks the reader to study his “painting” more closely, even if its quality betrays that it was not produced by a famous ancient artist (50–56). The hunt is described in overtly military language. Basilakes has already compared the hunter and his dogs to a general and his army marshaled for battle (37–38); now he explicitly conjures up the battle scene itself (another favorite theme of ekphrasis)25 as the dogs attack and slaughter deer, “an entire phalanx of rabbits,” a boar (using their teeth like spears), and other animals (56–61). After the battle, the verbal painting depicts the victorious dog soldiers returning to their general bearing tribute: “When at last, glutted with the killing, the dogs must end the battle, visualize the very pleasant spectacle that happens then: no dog comes back empty-handed and unsuccessful, but each and every one comes dragging his quarry and bringing it to the master himself as if he were a tax-collector” (61–65). This celebration of the dogs’ physical beauty and military prowess as if depicted in a painting creatively answers Ps.Hermogenes’s recommendation to praise the “goods” (see above, note 13) of the animal’s body, in the end returning the dogs to the human they serve as their military and political superior. Ancient rhetorical theory, as we saw above, had established “irrational” (ἄλογα) animals as a legitimate subject for praise. In turning to praise the goods of the dog’s mind and soul, Basilakes, in a move that he predicts “will also strike [his] audience with some astonishment” (75–76), seeks to complicate the category of irrational animals by separating dogs from all other animals and placing them closer to humans: “For although all the irrational animals are cursed with an absolutely irreconcilable inability to reason, in terms of his rationality the dog alone—do not be disturbed at hearing this—has been found to have an advantage there, too” (πάντων γὰρ τῶν ἀλόγων ἀξύμβατον 24 25

On dogs and their collars, see the essays in this volume by Elizabeth Pastan and John Friedman. See, for example, Libanius’s Ekphrasis 1, a description of an infantry battle, and Ekphrasis 11, a description of a naval battle (translated with notes in Gibson, Libanius’s Progymnasmata, 428–33 and 450–51, with notes to other ancient references).

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πάντη τὴν ἀλογίαν δυστυχησάντων, τῇ λογικότητι μόνος ὁ κύων, ἀλλὰ μὴ ταραχθῇς πρὸς τὴν ἀκοήν, ἐφεύρηταί τι κἀνταῦθα πλεονεκτῶν, 76–79). The sounds made by horses, oxen, and rams are meaningless, says Basilakes, “but when a dog barks, the sound has an additional underlying meaning [προσυπεσήμαινέ τι]; it reveals the presence of strangers, just as if the dog were able to use articulate speech [διηρθρωμένα λέγειν], and perhaps he is also asking each visitor, ‘Who are you, and from where?’” (82–85). After thus investing the dog with the ability to challenge strangers with meaningful barks, Basilakes goes on to incorporate another advanced exercise not usually found within encomia (the speech in character, or ethopoeia) in order to portray the dog as using a human voice to reassure his worried master that he is equal to the task of protecting him against those who would harm his property and person. The dog is imagined as saying, “Why are you so diligent in putting up these fences all around you, master? Why are you so attentive to the gates and so concerned over the locks, and why do you spend so much money on all this? Let none of these things concern you. I will guard you like a gatekeeper and protect you all around like a bodyguard” (86–90). In imagining the dog as a creature capable of speech— persuasive, consolatory, fully rhetorical—Basilakes temporarily removes the distinction between rational humans and irrational dogs, and between speaker and subject matter, by enlisting the dog to describe his own praiseworthy qualities. The dog testifies to the goods of his almost-human mind by identifying yet another good of his canine body: he is not only a skilled hunter but also an effective guard, one that (as Basilakes goes on to say in his own voice) “is also not ignorant of how to guard flocks of sheep and herds of oxen and horses, and is not untrained in fighting wild beasts” (92–94). Basilakes will shortly return to the dog as guardian in a different context. Having imagined the dog as possessing a mind capable of quasi-human reasoning, Basilakes next delineates the dog’s moral qualities, what ancient critics called the “goods of the soul.” First, in what may be the earliest literary reference to a seeing-eye dog,26 Basilakes says: “Why do I not mention the most unusual characteristic of all, that he both leads the blind and becomes another eye for them, and that he leads them around everywhere to beg for bread at people’s doors, and then leads them back again to their lodging?” (94–98). He then draws the moral from this striking trait: “What goodwill [εὐνοίας] from the gods could be greater than this? For something that humans do not even tolerate doing for each other is precisely what this irrational animal [τὸ τὴν ἀλογίαν λαχόν] does for humans” (98–101). This special emphasis on the supposed irra26

A fresco from Pompeii may depict a dog leading a blind man. See discussion in .

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tionality of dogs draws attention to the fact that the label does not really apply to them. It also raises a troubling corollary question: can a human who lacks such goodwill for his fellow humans be considered truly rational? This example looks backward as well as forward, both supporting the earlier claim for the dog’s distinctive level and mode of quasi-rationality and pointing forward to further discussion of its humble service to humanity. The dog is morally superior to average humans in his willingness to lower himself to the level of one of the most physically and economically disadvantaged members of Byzantine society. And this willingness to abase himself, as it turns out, is the result of a rational calculation. Basilakes goes on more generally to recast the apparent subservience of dogs as a respectful humility that they adopt by deliberate choice: For he reverently and humbly bends his neck in submission [καθυποκλίνει] to anyone who wishes, and he skillfully keeps in step so that he may not seem to be forcefully dragging the one who is leading him. And yet what would prevent him, if only he wanted to, from barking at his master, breaking his leash, and running away? To the contrary, even when being beaten, this animal endures it, and when being chased, he does not run away. For when he is being beaten he would sooner die than move away from his master even a little (101–09). It is doubtless difficult for a modern animal lover to view willingness to take a beating as a commendable characteristic, or to view Basilakes favorably for so casually making this observation without criticism of any master who would do such a thing. But let us not miss the crucial point about the dog here: by deliberately choosing to do certain praiseworthy things, even though he could easily not do them, in the Greek philosophical tradition the dog is exercising moral agency, a quality usually restricted to human beings. And this is worthy of high praise indeed. Basilakes continues his discussion of the goods of the dog’s soul by enumerating other fine qualities: in addition to his “goodwill” (τὴν εὐνοίαν, 109), the dog has a “noble pride in his nature” (οὐκ ἀγεννές τι φύσεως φιλοτίμημα, 110) and a “love of his master” (τὸ φιλοδέσποτον, 117). Basilakes illustrates the dog’s goodwill by alluding to a story in which “[Aesop] confidently affirms that the female dog shows more goodwill to her master than her mistress does, markedly instilling a bit of humor into his serious point” (111–14)27 and by recounting a story from Aelian’s collection of animal stories (second/third century CE) in 27

Cf. the story of Aesop and the philosopher Xanthus in the Vita Aesopi 44–50.

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which a dog, unable to rescue his master from a fire, “decided that the man’s suffering required human help, and using his teeth to drag passersby by their cloaks, he led them around the charcoal pit and informed them of the disaster” (120–23).28 He concludes the section with explicit reference to the heading of the goods of the soul: “So very benevolent [φιλανθρωποτάτης] is the soul of this animal, a soul lacking no part of [virtue] at all” (123–24). Basilakes then cites several irresistible classical examples from Homer and Plato that did not fit neatly into his earlier schema29: the pathetic tale of Odysseus’s dog Argos, who recognized his disguised master after twenty years and died on the spot (124–30)30; a reference to dogs’ swiftness and service as bodyguards in Homer (130–33)31; and that Plato called the soldiers in his Republic dogs, “since they are protective and gentle to friends, but ruthless and formidable to strangers” (133–35).32 Under the heading of comparison, the purpose of which is to cast the subject in a favorable light by downgrading something supposedly comparable to it, Basilakes rejects the praise of horses and oxen on grounds that guardians (dogs) deserve more praise than things guarded by them (herd animals) (136– 38). After some remarks to show again that he is familiar with the writings of Lucian (138–41), Basilakes concludes the encomium: “Thus I would confidently declare that among the things valued by humans that are signs of a noble soul, there is not one to which dogs will not also aspire” (ὡς ἔγωγε θαρρούντως ἀποφηναίμην μηδέν τι τῶν παρ’ ἀνθρώποις εἶναι τιμίων ὅσα ψυχῆς εὐγενοῦς τυγχάνει γνωρίσματα, ἐφ’ ᾧ μὴ καὶ κύνες φιλοτιμήσονται, 141–43). According to Basilakes, dogs share a common set of moral values with humans and actively seek to live by them. If we compare Basilakes’s encomium of the dog to Ps.-Hermogenes’s instructions for encomia of animals, we find that Basilakes does not mention the places where dogs live, their care and upbringing, or the lengths of their lives. But he does mention their special connection to Artemis, goddess of hunting, near the beginning of the encomium; he describes in detail the goods of their bodies and souls, their deeds, and their usefulness to human beings; and he uses comparisons, not only when he asserts the superiority of dogs to the 28 29

30 31 32

Aelian, Historia animalium 1.8. Basilakes’s rhetorical questions “Where shall we place that famous old Ithacan dog … ?” and “What about the fact that … ?” suggest to me that these examples were an afterthought. Homer, Odyssey 17.290–327. Swiftness: Homer, Iliad 1.50, 18.283, 18.578, 24.211; Odyssey 2.11, 17.62, 20.145. Service as bodyguards: Homer, Odyssey 2.9–12. Plato, Republic 2.375A–376C.

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animals they guard, but also when he praises dogs alone for making meaningful sounds.

Theodorus Gaza

Theodorus Gaza, a Greek humanist who immigrated to Italy in the fifteenth century,33 seems not to have known Basilakes’s encomium when he composed his own encomium of the dog.34 In the prologue, we learn that this work accompanied the gift of a female puppy to an unknown dignitary, often (but possibly incorrectly) identified in modern secondary literature as the Sultan Mehmed II.35 Gaza begins the encomium boldly with a big claim: that whereas other animals, such as lions, oxen, horses, and asses, are useful to humans in one particular way or exhibit one particular virtue, the dog’s usefulness and virtues are supreme and comprehensive in city and country and in peace and war (2). Like Basilakes, Gaza identifies hunting, which he also says takes its name from dogs, as a “valuable and useful” practice for human life (3). Following ancient recommendations to praise a practice (ἐπιτήδευμα) by lauding the gods and heroes who invented or first used it,36 Gaza, like Basilakes, says that hunting is especially connected to Artemis, but he also names several other mythological figures, including Odysseus, who bore a scar on his leg from a boar hunt in his youth (3).37 Gaza’s goal in the section on hunting is not to evoke the visual spectacle or pleasure of hunting with dogs or to praise dogs for 33

34 35

36

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For Theodorus Gaza’s life and writings, see Deno J. Geanakoplos, “Theodore Gaza: A Byzantine Scholar of the Palaeologan ‘Renaissance’ in the Italian Renaissance,” Medievalia et Humanistica 12 (1984): 61–81. The text is edited in Patrologia Graeca 61:986–93 with facing Latin translation. There is no translation into a modern language. Also noted by Kindstrand, “Notes,” 95. For doubts, see Kindstrand, “Notes,” 98–101. Kindstrand, “Notes,” 102 n. 13, also suggests that Gaza’s prologue contains a verbal reminiscence of Lucian’s Pro Imaginibus, a text mentioned above as providing one of the few ancient references to the dog as a subject for encomium. Ps.-Hermogenes, Progymnasmata 7.12: “You will praise things from those who invented them; for example, Artemis and Apollo invented hunting; from those who made use of them, [saying] that heroes used it.” Nicolaus, Progymnasmata 57.18–19: “in the case of practices, taking up in place of origin those who invented or first made use of them … ” The other figures are Chiron, Cephalus, Asclepius, Melanion, and Nestor. The list of famous hunters comes from Xenophon’s treatise on hunting (Cynegetica 1.1–2). For Odysseus’s wound, Gaza quotes Homer, Odyssey 19.465–66. Kindstrand, “Notes,” 101–05, provides a helpful discussion of Gaza’s sources in the encomium.

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providing delicious game for kings, as Basilakes had done, but rather to praise hunting for its application to military training, as he illustrates with anecdotes about hunting among the ancient Spartans, Macedonians, and Persians: For hunting accustoms one to wake up early, go to bed late, and stay up all night; to endure heat, cold, thirst, and hunger; to walk and, if necessary, by Zeus, to run through smooth and level ground, wooded glens, and steep areas alike; furthermore, to hurl weapons and inflict wounds, and not to yield when struck, and to endure every labor, danger, and difficulty (3). A citation of Plato’s Laws corroborates Gaza’s historical examples: hunting, Plato says, allows future guardians of the country to learn thoroughly the lay of the land (4).38 Dogs themselves have been left behind for the moment, but Gaza soon brings the discussion back around to them. Like Basilakes, he describes hunting dogs with military metaphors, saying that they use their vision and sense of smell to chase down their quarry, and “they do battle alongside us in support of us” (μάχονται μεθ᾽ ἡμῶν ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν), often catching and killing their quarry before the hunters arrive (4). Gaza concludes his discussion of hunting by suggesting that someone with more time could more fully explain how “without hunting, everything would become full of wild beasts that would do harm to humans and shut them in their cities, all of which we are freed from through the use of dogs and hunting with dogs” (διὰ τῶν κυνῶν καὶ τῆς κυνηγεσίας, 4). This is the weakest point in the encomium, as Gaza’s apparent desire to raise it and quickly move on also suggests, but it does serve to close the discussion of hunting and bring the focus back to dogs themselves, as distinct from hunting with dogs. Gaza next praises dogs for being “very capable guards” (φυλακτικώτερον) and for “very faithfully” (πιστότερον) discharging their duties (5). Basilakes had briefly mentioned that dogs are good at guarding flocks after he had praised them for guarding their masters’ homes and possessions, and again in a comparison intended to show that guard dogs are much more worthy of praise than the animals they guard. Gaza omits the usefulness of dogs to home security and begins with their role as guards of flocks, in which he says they are “gentle to herd animals, dreaded by wolves, and obedient to shepherds” (τοῖς μὲν προβάτοις ἤπιοι, τοῖς δὲ λύκοις φοβεροί, τοῖς δὲ ποιμέσι πειθήνιοι, 5). He cites in support of this a fable of Aesop in which the wolves tricked the sheep into 38

Plato, Laws 6.763B.

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agreeing to a peace treaty that stipulated getting rid of the guard dogs (5).39 There follows the story of a guard dog that helped catch a temple-robber in Athens and was rewarded with maintenance at state expense (5).40 This historical example of a dog serving the state helps pave the way for Gaza’s discussion of the guard dog analogy in Plato’s Republic. Where Basilakes had only briefly mentioned Plato’s comparison of soldiers to guard dogs in a short addendum on dogs in Classical literature, Gaza quotes the passage at length41 and expresses his admiration that Plato chose the dog—and not the horse, the ox, or the elephant—as the best guard for his state, an animal that is “philosophical in its soul” (φιλόσοφος τὴν ψυχήν, 6). This characterization of the dog leads Gaza’s discussion in two directions: he must describe the dog as a philosophical being, and more generally he must treat the goods of the dog’s soul. In order to support his claim for the philosophical dog, he violates Aristotle’s dictum against using homonymy or equivocation to praise the dog, mentioning not only Aristotle’s example of the Dog Star but also the ancient philosophers who gladly called themselves Dogs (the Cynics), Diogenes the Cynic’s quip that he bites not his enemies but his friends in order to save them, and the Egyptians’ worship of a dog god [Anubis] (7). As for the other goods of the dog’s soul, Gaza says that everyone knows the dog is “very friendly” (φιλικώτατος) and “very affectionate” (φιλοστοργότατος, 7). To illustrate this, he describes how the dog is always at his master’s side, whether at home or outside, no matter the length or difficulty of the journey or the weather conditions: “He follows along, now running ahead, now returning to his master, now playing and wagging his tail, and in general behaving in such a way as to provide his master with pleasurable sport” (ἀκολουθεῖ δὲ νῦν μὲν προτρέχων, νῦν δὲ πρὸς τὸν δεσπότην ἐπανερχόμενος, νῦν δὲ παίζων καὶ τὴν οὐρὰν σείων, καὶ ὅλως πρᾶγμα ποιούμενος παιδιὰν τῷ δεσπότῃ καὶ ἡδονὴν παρέχειν, 7). Basilakes had used the dog’s close attendance at his master’s side, when he could easily run away, to illustrate its voluntary submissiveness; Gaza shows that going for a walk is fun for dogs and humans alike, and that it is the dog’s love and devotion that makes this possible. (Gaza missed an opportunity here: he could have promised his addressee the same kind of fun with his new puppy.) This is not to say that the dog’s submissiveness is overlooked. Gaza observes that the dog comes when he is called, is humble (ταπεινός) when his 39 40 41

Aesop 158 and Babrius 93. Libanius includes a version of the fable in his Progymnasmata (Fable 1, translated with notes in Gibson, Libanius’s Progymnasmata, 2–3). Plutarch, Moralia 969E–970A, from De sollertia animalium, a text discussed above as containing a reference to an encomium of hunting with dogs. Plato, Republic 2.375A and 375E–376B.

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master threatens him, and does not become angry (οὐκ ὀργίζεται) when his master beats him. This is reminiscent of Basilakes’s praise of the dog’s response when being beaten, except that Gaza praises the dog’s emotional control (not getting angry) rather than his behavior (not running away). Just as in Basilakes’s encomium, Gaza’s next example is the anecdote about Aesop and his female dog, which Aesop claimed showed him more goodwill than his wife did. Where Basilakes had stripped the misogynistic story of its content—Aesop’s master had directed him to give a nice piece of meat “to the female who showed him goodwill” (τῇ εὐνούσῃ), and so Aesop gave it to his dog rather than to his wife—and recalled it as a humorous anecdote about the goodwill of dogs toward their masters, Gaza uses it to support his observation about the dog’s emotional response to being beaten, reporting that Aesop defended himself as follows when his wife complained: “Did I do something incorrectly, master, in throwing the meat to my dog as the one who shows me goodwill? For even if you beat her or whip her, she forgets about it [ἀμνημονεῖ]; but if my wife once thinks that she has been abused, she is irreconcilable” (7). Gaza then selects what he says are the most memorable of the countless ancient anecdotes illustrating the “friendship and goodwill” (φιλίας καὶ εὐνοίας) shown by dogs toward their masters (8). All concern the dog’s heroic devotion in the face of his master’s or his own death, a topic not discussed in Basilakes’s encomium.42 The final section of Gaza’s encomium illustrates that the dog is “courageous and warlike” (ἀνδρεῖον καὶ μάχιμον, 9), attributes not discussed in Basilakes’s encomium, but certainly in keeping with Gaza’s earlier emphasis on the benefits of hunting to the military man (3–4). Framed in this way, these are technically goods of the soul, though in illustrating them Gaza also refers to the dog’s strength. The first example is the story of a huge dog given by a king to Alexander the Great. When it refused to fight a boar, Alexander became angry and had it killed. The king sent him another dog, “bidding Alexander not to make trial of him with small animals, but with a lion or elephant; so the dog killed both the lion and, shortly after, the elephant, and Alexander and everyone with him were marvelously delighted” (9). The remaining anecdotes concern dogs that were used in ancient wars by the Garamantes, Colophonii, Castabalienses, and Cimbri (9).

42

The stories in sections 8–9 come from Plutarch’s De sollertia animalium, the same text mentioned above as containing a reference to an encomium of hunting with dogs (Moralia 969C–E, 970C, 970F, 984D); Plutarch’s Life of Themistocles 10.6; Pliny’s Natural History 8.142–45 and 149–50; and Aelian’s Historia animalium. See Kindstrand, “Notes,” 102–05.

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Gaza concludes his encomium as follows: “Although I could say much more in general about the entire race of dogs and in specific about this most lovely female dog, I will bring my discussion to an end here, because the page will not hold more than this. I wanted to write this off-hand discussion as an encomium for a dog, a game for myself, and an amusement for you. Farewell and be happy” (πολλὰ δ᾽ ἔτι εἰπεῖν ἔχων κοινῇ τε ὑπὲρ σύμπαντος τοῦ τῶν κυνῶν γένους, καὶ ἰδίᾳ ὑπὲρ ταυτησὶ τῆς χαριεστάτης κυνός, ἐνταῦθα καταλύσω τὸν λόγον, τῆς σελίδος πλείω τούτων οὐ χωρούσης · ἐβουλήθην δ᾽ αὐτοσχεδιάσαι τὸν λόγον, κυνὶ μὲν ἐγκώμιον, ἐμοὶ δὲ παίγνιον, σοὶ δ᾽ ἀθυρμάτιον. ἔρρωσο καὶ εὐημέρει, 9). The light tone of the closing disavows any serious intent: Gaza claims to have put little effort into his encomium, to have ended it only because he ran out of paper, and to have designed it to praise the dog but also provide entertainment for himself and his reader. It is interesting that although Gaza claims to be able to say much more in praise of this specific dog, he has in fact said nothing about it. Of course this is the usual way of handling encomia of animals—as types rather than as individuals—but the omission is still striking. We will see that the next writer, although he drew on Gaza’s text, took a different approach. If we compare Theodorus Gaza’s encomium of the dog to Ps.-Hermogenes’s prescription for encomia of animals, we find that Gaza, like Basilakes, does not mention the places where dogs live or how they are raised, although it would have been easy to discuss nurture in an encomium designed to accompany the gift of a puppy. Like Basilakes, Gaza mentions the special connection of dogs to Artemis, goddess of hunting. Like Basilakes, he omits to mention their lifespan, but unlike Basilakes, he includes several examples of dogs that risked their lives and sometimes suffered noble deaths for their master or their country, as an illustration of one of the goods of their souls. Like Basilakes, Gaza describes the goods of their bodies and souls, their deeds, and their usefulness to human beings. He draws some comparisons to other animals, both in his initial claim for the overarching superiority of dogs and in his disparaging of several animals that Plato did not choose to symbolize guardians; however, unlike Basilakes, Gaza does not include a section devoted explicitly to comparison.

Leon Battista Alberti

The Latin encomium of Leon Battista Alberti, composed in the 1430s,43 was written in the style of a Roman funeral oration (laudatio funebris) in honor of 43

For Alberti’s life and writings, see Anthony Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the Italian Renaissance (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000). The text is edited in Rosario

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a favorite dog that had been poisoned.44 Alberti draws many of his examples from Theodorus Gaza in order to praise dogs in general,45 but casting the encomium as a funeral oration also allows him to praise his dog as he would a human family member. We will therefore encounter some familiar and some surprising features in this early Renaissance Latin text. After a long prologue in which he explains his rhetorical model and his subject and purpose (142–46), Alberti begins the encomium with praise of his dog’s parents: father Megastomus (“Big-mouth”) and his unnamed mother (146). This is new: Basilakes did not praise a particular dog, and Gaza did not mention his puppy’s lineage. In fact, in praising these “most noble parents” (parentibus nobilissimis), Alberti is following the established custom of praising a human subject for his origin, which included parents and ancestors. (Recall that St. Basil had protested against crediting a human or animal subject with his parents’ virtues.) In his father’s “most ancient family there existed innumerable very distinguished princes” (146), including those worshipped as gods by the ancient Egyptians and the star known to students of astronomy as the Dog Star. Like Gaza, Alberti violates Aristotle’s dictum against using homonymy by mentioning Sirius, and with it he also borrows Gaza’s reference to the Egyptian god Anubis. His dog’s mother, “distinguished for her piety” (pietate insignem), came from the same family, a long line of virtuous dogs. Alberti uses these references to distant ancestors of his dog as a pretext to introduce several ancient examples of brave, faithful, and devoted dogs, all borrowed from Gaza’s encomium (146–50), in order to show that his dog “had in no way degenerated from the ancient uprightness and virtue of his family” (a pristina suorum probitate et virtute minime degenerasse, 146). He then asks the reader’s forbearance as he relates a few outstanding examples of friendship (amicitia) in dogs, which he again borrows from Gaza (152). In concluding this section, Alberti returns the focus to his dog, which he says dutifully imitated the virtues

44

45

Contarino, Leon Battista Alberti: Apologhi ed elogi (Genova: Edizioni Costa & Nolan, 1984), 142–69 with facing Italian translation. I cite Alberti by page numbers in Contarino’s edition. Timothy Kircher, “Dead Souls: Leon Battista Alberti’s Anatomy of Humanism,” MLN 127.1 (2012): 108–23, at 109, briefly mentions this text, placing it in the context of Alberti’s writings on “the presence of death and the unremitting course of time” (p. 108). David Marsh, Lucian and the Latins: Humor and Humanism in the Early Renaissance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 156–59, analyzes this text in relation to Lucian, labeling it a “humanist paradoxical encomium” (p. 158) and arguing that it has an “ironic intent” (p. 156). On the Roman laudatio funebris, see George A. Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, 300 B.C.–A.D. 300 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 21–23. As noted also by Marsh, Lucian and the Latins, 157.

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of his ancestors and did not fall short of their example (152). Where Gaza’s encomium of the dog had used all these ancient examples to praise dogs in general, Alberti’s funeral oration treats them as actual ancestors, thus always directing the praise toward his own deceased dog. Alberti tends to downplay his dog’s physical attributes (the goods of the body) in favor of discussing his mental and moral ones. He first mentions his dog’s diminutive stature: “nature had created him tiny [pusillum] and by no means sufficiently stout [haud satis firmum] to endure the attack of any very huge and very powerful enemy” (152). Nevertheless, he says that his dog possessed a “keen and warlike mind for military affairs” (animo ad rem militarem adeo fuit acri et bellicoso, 152), and, because he preferred to excel as a general rather than a soldier, he turned his attention to famous generals of antiquity for inspiration and sought praise and glory in his struggle for justice, honor, and liberty (152–54). These qualities made him an excellent guard dog: “In order to protect my property continually he never feared to attack armed thieves and any unfamiliar, bold strangers and to vigorously and loudly shout out and contend against the most hostile people” (pro nostrisque subinde rebus servandis fures quoque armatos et quosvis advenas ignotos et audaces insultare ac strenue contra infestissimos conclamitare ac dimicare numquam pertimuerit, 154). But Alberti goes on to explain that it was his dog’s policy “to try always to resolve every conflict with reason rather than strength, with friendship rather than arms” (omni in certamine ratione quam viribus, amicitia quam armis, rem conficere semper studuit), and when he had to give chase, he did so “with great skill and knowledge of pursuit” (tanta … prosequendi arte et peritia), never missing “an opportunity for praise and victory” (laudis et victorie occasionem, 154). Alberti’s dog was not a dog of war like the ones praised by Gaza; rather, having rejected arms at an early age (ab ineunte etate spretis armis), his little dog dedicated himself to “most peaceful” intellectual pursuits (pacatissimis optimarum rerum studiis et disciplinis, 156).46 Observing his master’s own love of learning, the dog decided to play Alcibiades to Alberti’s Socrates, to the humanist Alberti’s great delight (156). Continuing his discussion of the goods of his dog’s body, Alberti says that he possessed “an honest and gentlemanly appearance” (facie honesta et liberali, 156), a “happy face” like his father’s (ore leto, 158), eyes that reflected his mother’s piety and modesty beautifully, and a broad chest and dignified, lovely legs 46

One further isolated reference to the dog’s military arts occurs late in the speech, when Alberti asks, “What type of war is there in which he himself was not engaged with praise?” He explains that the dog fought wars at sea against ducks and geese, in the field against locusts, and within the walls against lizards (p. 164).

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reminiscent of fine statues of his ancestors (158). He would have made a lovely subject for the famous ancient painter Zeuxis (156–58). Alberti’s comments on his dog’s physical beauty serve as a transition between mention of the extraordinary beauty of Socrates’ student Alcibiades—which Socrates believed was not inconsistent with the possession of excellent character and virtue (156)— and the beginning of a fuller discussion of his dog’s remarkable mental and moral qualities (admirabilem ingenii et animi vim, 158). Alberti pours on the praise so thickly and assigns his dog so many noble characteristics in the remainder of the speech that a summary can hardly do it justice. The dog was a quick study and possessed a prodigious memory, mastering Latin, Greek, and Etruscan (!) before he was even three years old (158). Although totally dedicated to learning, he was not “morose or disgustingly serious” (nihil … morosi aut fastidiose grave, 158–160), but rather was praised as a fine example of uprightness and good living (160). He despised wealth, laziness, and pleasure, was content to possess only “a single cloak” (una … veste), went barefoot in summer and winter, slept in moderation under the open sky, incurred no debt, and enjoyed no wine, rich food, or banquets (160). (Alberti misses an opportunity here to call the dog a Cynic philosopher, but surely saw the wordplay in Gaza’s encomium.) Kind, loyal, and generous to his noble human friends, he hated only ignoble men, especially those who would harm one another (160). Continuously engaged in pursuing “everything worth knowing” (omnia cognitu dignissima), wasting no time in idleness, and contemptuously rejecting all pleasurable distractions, the dog extended his study diligently even to the nighttime hours, when he would practice his music by singing to the moon (162). He even happily accompanied Alberti to the lecture hall (164). Along the way, he would sniff out the philosophical allegiances of other dogs he met and report them to his master. At the lecture hall, he listened attentively, silently, and without bias to the intellectual discussions around him; however, when he encountered “an arrogant showoff” (insolentem ostentatorem), he would bark loudly (maximis increpationibus) at the man’s foolishness to protest his time being wasted. Nor was he only an observer; the dog “quite often declaimed in a very loud voice [maximis vocibus declamavit] with the greatest attention of the audience” (164). Moreover, he possessed the greatest virtues and lacked the most conspicuous vices of famous ancient philosophers and statesmen (166). His untimely passing left everyone who knew him in great grief (164, 168). If we compare Leon Battista Alberti’s encomium of the dog to Ps.Hermogenes’s prescription for encomia of animals, we find that Alberti, like Basilakes and Gaza, does not mention the places where dogs live or how they are nurtured. None of the three praises the dog for its lifespan; Alberti has an

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excellent reason for declining to do so. Like Basilakes and Gaza, Alberti describes the goods of his dog’s body and soul, his deeds, and his usefulness as a guard dog. Unlike Basilakes and Gaza, Alberti does not mention the special connection of dogs to Artemis, and in fact almost entirely omits discussion of hunting. He also makes no comparisons between dogs and other animals.

Conclusion

We have seen three different interpretations of the ancient rhetoric of praise as applied to the dog. Nikephoros Basilakes shows a special aesthetic appreciation for his subject, introducing an extended ekphrasis (an exercise not commonly incorporated into encomium) in order to depict the visual appeal of dogs before, during, and after the hunt. He also takes the reader into the mind of the dog, using an ethopoeia (another exercise not commonly incorporated into encomium) to give this highest among the irrational creatures a voice capable of assuaging his master’s fears for his property and person. For Basilakes, the dog’s love of humanity is best shown not in famous stories from Classical antiquity, but in the dog’s contemporary treatment of the lowest in human society, the blind beggar seeking alms. Theodorus Gaza differs from Basilakes and Alberti in providing an extended justification for hunting as preparation for war; he shares with Alberti (who drew on him as a source) an interest in the role of dogs in ancient warfare and in stories of dogs that showed devotion unto death. Like his source, Theodorus Gaza, Leon Battista Alberti relates stories about the glorious dogs of the past in order to exalt a particular dog of the present; however, where Gaza mentions the particular dog only briefly at the beginning and end of his encomium, Alberti’s own recently deceased dog takes center stage. In praising one particular dog as an individual and invoking the Roman funeral oration as his rhetorical model, Alberti’s encomium more closely resembles the praise offered to famous men. In portraying his dog as his student and a fellow devotee of Renaissance Italian humanism, Alberti also uses this oration to praise himself.47 The encomium does not aim to provide a balanced assessment or even an argument; it is an extended piece of praise from a rhetorically trained author who could easily have opted to write an invective against dogs, either instead of or as a counterpart to his encomium. Ideally, the encomium does not 47

Marsh, Lucian and the Latins, 158 (following Contarino, ed., 158–62) notes that the text “present[s] distinct echoes of Alberti’s Vita” and that “the purported object of his praise, a specific dog, becomes a screen for the more generalized topic of the ideal humanist, which in Alberti’s writings often implies a self portrait.”

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acknowledge potential rebuttals; we should not expect to find (and in fact, do not find) any criticism of dogs in these texts, for it would require an argument to answer them, and the encomium is not intended to be an argumentative exercise. The purposeful one-sidedness of these texts, in addition to the fact that they are elite productions informed by and mediated through Classical literary models and sources, means that we must proceed very carefully in attempting to derive from them any understanding of dogs in medieval and Renaissance society. At worst, these texts are mere rhetorical exercises, or parodies of such exercises. However, if we accept them for what they purport to be—the fullest possible arsenal of observations and examples in praise of the dogs of the present, supported by stories of dogs from the past—and if we are willing to grant that even encomia written to amuse may nevertheless contain some grains of truth, it is surely justifiable to read their most common and/or prominent features as indicative of the ways in which dogs were esteemed in the real world. In the end, it is the dog’s service to humanity, in keeping with Ps.-Hermo­ genes’s recommendation to praise an animal on the basis of its usefulness to humans, that these three authors find most consistently and highly praiseworthy. With their bodies, dogs accompany us on the hunt, to the lecture hall, and everywhere else; they protect our persons and property; and they offer us the pleasure of observing them in action, conversing with them, and teaching them. With their minds, they extend the visual communication of their bodies by producing meaningful barks. With their souls, dogs display laudable virtues that we humans often fail to exhibit in our dealings with one another. Finally, dogs do all these things because they want to do them; they could easily abandon us at any time, but instead they choose to live with us, performing useful services even at the risk of their own lives and leaving us with bittersweet memories after their deaths.

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Chapter 2

Who Did Let the Dogs Out?—Nuisance Dogs in Late-Medieval and Early Modern England Emily Cockayne Three Cambridge University students visiting Manchester in 1725 were astounded by the size of the town’s dogs, which they reported were “of an uncommon bigness.”1 Half a century later, a local historian boasted that the dogs were “enormously tall and large; and children frequently ride upon them in play.”2 Dogs of all sizes were ubiquitous on late-medieval and Early Modern urban streets, but they were not always playthings. In his Description of England (1577), William Harrison paid attention to the nation’s canines, remarking that some were so placid that “children may ride upon theyr backs,” while others raged all day, and required constant chaining. Harrison himself had once owned a dog that gently intervened when he tried to beat his children.3 Instead we will take our lead from John Caius, whose De canibus Anglicis was translated and published by Abraham Fleming as Of Englishe Dogges (1576). Caius divided dogs according to their natures, finding gentle dogs, homely dogs, and “currishe” types.4 Of these dogs, there could be another division, between “some … which barcke only … but will not bite, [some] Which doe both barcke and byte, [and some] Which bite bitterly before they barcke.” The first type would be little feared, while the second were “dangerous” and wisdom steered people to “take heede of them.” The third type was “deadly, for they flye upon a man, without utterance of voyce, snatch at him, and catche him by the throate.”5 These various barking and biting dogs form the focus of this chapter. * I would like to acknowledge the very generous help of Carole Rawcliffe and thank Steven Gunn for giving me access to his researches on coroners’ reports. 1 Bath Central Library, “Diary of a Tour by Three Students from Cambridge, 1725,” MS, B914-238, 55. 2 John Whitaker, The History of Manchester, 2nd ed, 2 vols (London: J. Murray, 1773), vol. II, 66. 3 William Harrison, “The Description of England,” in Raphael Holinshed, et al, The Firste Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande (London: John Hunne, 1577), 130. 4 John Caius, Of Englishe Dogges, trans. Abraham Fleming (London: John Charlewood for Rychard Johnes, 1576), 2. 5 Caius, Of Englishe Dogges, 32; See also Randle Holme, The Academy of Armory and Blazon (Chester: Printed for the author, 1688), 184.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004328617_004

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Caius describes many types of dogs, mostly concerning himself with their functions. Dismissing mongrels as being “mingled out of sundry sortes,” he claimed they were useful for nothing except as watch dogs.6 Higher up the scale were mastiffs, which were believed to be more trainable, being chiefly employed as guard or watch dogs (Fig. 2.1). A tie dog, or “tighdogge,” was a dog that was tied up, or chained.7 When restrained, he noted, mastiffs became more aggressive and were known to bark loudly. These dogs were plentiful in the pre-police era. Leaning heavily on Caius, the heraldry expert Randle Holme described mastiffs as “vast huge stubborn ugly heavy” brave dogs that were “strong terrible and frightful.”8 Mastiffs were less valuable than other utility dogs, such as greyhounds and spaniels.9 When discussing various animals in Man and the Natural World (1983), Keith Thomas pointed to one important consideration: that “dogs differed in status because their owners did.”10 The London-based satirist Ned Ward versified about the different uses to which dogs were put. While the “Lap-Dog” was “dandled on my Lady’s Knee,” the “stout Mastiff” had a harder life and died “in Chains to keep the Yard.”11 Spaniels kept as lapdogs were called “comforters” by Caius, who described pretty “fine” dogs “sought for to satisfie the delicatenesse of daintie dames and wanton womens wills.” These lapdogs would snuggle in “their bosoms … [lie] in their lappes, and licke their lippes as they ryde in their waggons.”12 Thomas suggests that pugs joined the spaniels nestled on ladies’ laps in the seventeenth century.13 Not all such women preferred lapdogs; in her courtship letters to Sir William Temple, Dorothy Osborne wrote that a mastiff “is handsomer to me than the most exact little dog that every lady played withal.”14 6 7

8 9 10 11

12 13 14

Caius, Of Englishe Dogges, 34. Steven Gunn’s researches for the Economic and Social Research Council–funded project “Everyday Life and Fatal Hazard in Sixteenth-Century England” revealed that in 1553 such a dog bit his owner on “the small of the legge,” causing him to die a few days later. Details from the coroner’s report for John Smyth of Reigate in Surrey, 1553, The National Archives (TNA), KB, 9/585/168. Holme, Academy of Armory, 184; Caius, Of Englishe Dogges, 25. Max A. Robertson and Geoffrey Ellis, eds, The English Reports. Volume 91. King’s Bench Division XX (London: Stevens and Sons Ltd, 1909), 739. Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World (London: Allen Lane, 1983), 106. Edward (Ned) Ward, All Men Mad: or, England a Great Bedlam. A Poem (London: s.n., 1704), 8; Edward (Ned) Ward, The Wandering Spy: or, The Merry Travellers (London: Sam Briscoe, 1723), 17. Caius, Of Englishe Dogges, 21. Thomas, Man and the Natural World, 107. Edward Abbott Parry, ed., Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652–54 (Cambridge: Griffith, Farrah, Okeden & Welsh, 1888), 105.

Nuisance Dogs in Late-Medieval and Early Modern England

Figure 2.1 Huntington Library, San Marino, California, Title Page from Henry Parrot, The Mastive, or Young-Whelpe of the Old-Dogge (London: Printed by Thomas Creade for Richard Meighen and Thomas Jones, 1615).

43

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Dogs performed many tasks for their owners, from guarding to fetching, from turning spits to warming laps. Certain itinerant tradesmen used dogs to accompany or help them, including bellmen (Fig. 2.2), lantern carriers, and knife-grinders.15 The dogs that accompanied tinkers carried their masters’ tools and wares, “easing [them] of a great burthen” and providing companionship and protection to these traveling salesmen.16 Slavering dogs were used to add a snarl to the bailiff’s threats. The balladeer who penned The Poets Dream (1683) called for controls over bailiffs and their “currs” who hunted “poor men” (Fig. 2.3).17 Men involved in urban policing were also often accompanied by dogs. The constable in the Roxburghe Ballads is depicted with a dog, and dogs used by watchmen helped them capture thieves and other miscreants. In 1677, a man who robbed and stripped a brickmaker naked in London’s Frog Lane was taken by the watch, “or rather by their Dogs, for had it not been for them he [would have] escaped.”18 Similarities between dogs and their owners was a theme to which Ned Ward returned: “O’th’different Dogs we’re apt to fondle,” man was “prone to keep a Dog … Whose Qualities are like his own,” he observed in The Wandering Spy (1723). So, while the country squire doted on his hounds, the “mod’rate sportsman” kept greyhounds or setters. Ward’s attention was most clearly drawn to the artisan class and the rougher sorts. His poulterers had spaniels, “the Dog of Dogs,” good for work and play, while the tinker made do with a “Mongrel of some ugly Breed.” Worse still, the “Poor Alley Scoundrels” kept “yelping curs,” the lowliest of all urban dogs, Who by their noisy Barkings tell, Where Sots and Scolds in Discord dwell. And to each Passenger make known Their Keeper’s Failings by their own.19 Butchers kept dogs to bait beasts before slaughter and to help drive cattle to market. These pugnacious, stocky dogs would come to be known as bulldogs. Butchers, Ward notes, “must have their Bul-Dogs at their heels”: 15 16 17 18 19

Emily Cockayne, Hubbub: Filth, Noise & Stench in England 1600–1770 (London: Yale University Press, 2007), 128–29. Caius, Of Englishe Dogges, 29. The Poets Dream: or, the Great Out-Cry and Lamentable Complaint of the Land against Bayliffs and Their Dogs (London: P. Brooksby, c.1683). Old Bailey Sessions Papers, t16770711a-2, John Maxfield, violent theft, robbery, 11 July 1677. Ward, The Wandering Spy, 14–17.

Nuisance Dogs in Late-Medieval and Early Modern England

Figure 2.2 Houghton Library, Harvard University, Frontispiece from Thomas Dekker, The Belman of London (London: Nathaniell Butter, 1608).

45

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Figure 2.3 Houghton Library, Harvard University, Illustration for The Poets Dream: or, the great out-cry and lamentable complaint of the land against bailiffs and their dogs (London: P. Brooksby, c.1683).

Those lowring ill-look’d ugly Creatures, That threaten Destruction in their Features, Leering at e’ry Step they take, With vicious Eyes and Noses black, Expressing so much Spight and Ire, As if the Devil had been their Sire, And that their hold-fast moody Kind, For Mischief only were design’d. Therefore, we in the Brute may see His Master’s Rage and Cruelty. Thomas Wharmeby, a Manchester butcher, was presented to the manorial court in 1637 because he allowed his “great and violent mastive Dogs and

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bitches … to goe abroad in the streets.”20 Butchers’ dogs would eat up offal and other waste products—the meat fit only for dogs.21 In 1550 the Southampton leet court jurors complained about William Feverall and other city butchers at the Friars Gate who “caste owte theire oxe hedds to theire doges into the striate,” annoying passing pedestrians.22 People were economical and little was discarded. There was even a use for the waste left by dogs, which tanners employed to cure leather.23 There were medical applications for powdered dog excrement, including one to lessen the “swelling, and falling downe of the pallet through cold,” and it was stipulated that the material should be white, “of a dog that eateth nought else but bones.” The physician extolling this cure advised his readers to “abhore not the dogs turd, for in this extremitie it hath a marvellous operation.”24 Dog skins made fine gloves.25 Useful dead or alive, dogs were common on English streets.

Barking, Howling, Rotting

Man and dog did not always enjoy a sympathetic relationship. “One barking dog sets all the street a-barking,” one proverb complained.26 Samuel Pepys mentions the irritation of being kept awake by a barking dog, which caused him to waste the following day taking physic and stopping indoors.27 During 20

21

22 23 24

25

26 27

J.P. Earwaker, ed., The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester (Manchester: Henry Blacklock, 1884–90), vol. III, 260; Pamela Beatrice Hartshorne, “The Street and the Perception of Public Space in York, 1476–1586” (Ph.D. diss., University of York, 2004), appendix, A2iv. See also the essay by Kathleen Ashley in this volume. See Carole Rawcliffe, Urban Bodies: Communal Health in Late Medieval English Towns and Cities (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2013), 153; Holme, Academy of Armory, 184; ­Cockayne, Hubbub, 95. F.J.C. Hearnshaw and D.M. Hearnshaw, eds., Southampton Court Leet Records a.d. 1550– 1577. Vol 1, Parts 1 and 2 (Southampton: H.M. Gilbert & Son, 1905–06), 12. John Cherry, “Leather,” in John Blair and Nigel Ramsey, eds., English Medieval Industries (London: Hambledon Press, 1991), 295–318, esp. 296. Christof Wirsung, The General Practise of Physicke (London: Richard Field impensis George Bishop, 1605), 167; see also Timothie Bright, A Treatise, Wherein is Declared the Sufficiencie of English Medicines (London: Humphrey Lownes for Thomas Man, 1615), 80–81. Thomas Dekker, If It Be Not Good, the Divel Is in It (London: John Trundle, 1612), D3; advertisement, The Tatler 245 (31 October–2 November 1710): “Three Pair of oiled Dogskin Gloves” are listed, 1. Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia: Adagies and Proverbs (London: printed for B. Barker; and A. Bettesworth and C. Hitch, 1732), 159. Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, edited by William Matthews and Robert Latham, 11 vols. (London: Bell, 1970–83), vol. I: 1660, 17–18.

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times of epidemic sickness, the sounds that dogs made singled them out for attention from the authorities. In the 1430s, “the infectiousie tymes of sycknes” controls were tightened in Exeter, especially for those animals “which doe not only in the night tymes barke & fight in the streets to the noysaunce of the people in there beddes.”28 A similar proclamation of 1592 singled out for slaughter those dogs found wandering the streets “making howling or other annoyaunce to there neyghbours.”29 These concerns, however, only really came to the fore during epidemics. For the most part, there was little people could or cared to do to protect themselves from the noise of barking dogs.30 Noise was not the only factor; nuisances to the other senses brought some dog owners to the attention of the authorities. A petition addressed to the London Common Council in the mid-fifteenth century called for action to clear a lane that had become obstructed and made “foule and stynkyng with dede caryen of dogges and other bestes.”31 James Walmesley and William Sumner killed dogs for hawk meat in 1622, thereby disturbing the inhabitants of Fleet Street with the “howling and crying.” Even dead, these dogs posed a nuisance, as their “Blood and fylth [grew] soe Noysome” that infections were feared.32 Health concerns were raised also in 1661 when the neighbors of a Bermondsey yeoman were upset by the hounds he kept in a yard, not because of their noise, but because of the smells from the “dead carcases” he fed to them, which caused the air to become “unhealthy and much tainted.”33 The same year, a Brentwood collarmaker called William Cocke dumped putrid dog and horse flesh on the highway leading to Romford, causing the air to become corrupted and infected.34 A ditch in Streatham was reported as reeking of dead dog in 1667.35 The London Common Hunt had a doghouse in Moorfields in the fifteenth century that was the source of several dog food-related nuisance issues. It was 28 29 30 31 32 33

34 35

Cited in Rawcliffe, Urban Bodies, 155. Cited in Mark Jenner, “The Great Dog Massacre,” in William G. Naphy and Penny Roberts, eds., Fear in Early Modern Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 48. Cockayne, Hubbub, 107–114. Cited in Hartshorne, “The Street and the Perception of Public Space in York, 1476–1586,” p. 106. London Metropolitan Archive (LMA), CLC/W/JB/044/mS03018/001, St Dunstan in the West Precinct: Register of Presentments of the Wardmote Inquest, fol. 106r. Dorothy L. Powell and Hilary Jenkinson, eds., Surrey Quarter Sessions Records. Order Book and Sessions Rolls 1661–1663 (London: for the Surrey Record Society, 1935), 111. See also LMA, MJ/SP/XX/709, Middlesex Sessions of the Peace, Indictment, 1658. Essex Record Office (ERO), Q/SR 389/10, Sessions Rolls, Midsummer, Indictment, 1661. Dorothy L. Powell, ed., Surrey Quarter Sessions Records. Order Books and Sessions Rolls 1666–1668 (London: for the Surrey Record Society, 1951), 160.

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relocated in 1512 to a site just north of the present Finsbury Circus. In 1561 the Common Hunt made an agreement with the London Company of Butchers to obtain any “measled” (diseased or substandard) pork, brawn, and ox polls, which were to be transported to the doghouse in a closed cart.36 People living nearby petitioned to have the doghouse moved, so that they might be discharged of the great nuisance and grief that they are nowadays often time grieved withal by reason of the City’s old doghouse and of the unwholesome airs and stenches coming from the same. The doghouse was eventually relocated to Finsbury Fields in 1677,37 and then later, in 1690,38 the city paid substantial sums to renovate the doghouse, stables, and associated buildings. In addition to undertaking the more obvious hunting activities, in the sixteenth century the Common Hunt was tasked with slaughtering dogs that were loose on the streets.39 Given that worries over air infected by canine corpses were often expressed at the time, one might expect authorities to have addressed the problem of mad dogs biting people. Rabies was endemic in England at this time and recipes to cure dog bites appear in several publications.40 Thomas Spackman produced A Declaration of Such Greivous accidents as commonly follow the biting of mad Dogges, together with the cure thereof in 1613. His frontispiece shows an afflicted dog drooling and seemingly confused. (See also Fig. 2.4.) Indeed, civic anxiety about mad dogs only really became evident in the eighteenth century.41

36

37 38 39 40

41

Matthew Henry Oram, “The Common Hunt and the Doghouse,” The Guildhall Association Papers, October 31, 1978, 3–4. (accessed 8 May 2014). See Rawcliffe, Urban Bodies, 234–35, 238 for more details about measled meat. Oram, “The Common Hunt and the Doghouse,” 3–4. LMA, COL/SP/05/195, “Dog house,” 1677, 1690. Jenner, “The Great Dog Massacre,” 49. See Rawcliffe, Urban Bodies, 155; William Langham, The Garden of Health (London: By the deputation of Christopher Barker, 1597), 27; The Wellcome Library, London, WMS MS Wellcome 4054,“Prescription for Rabies,” c. 1700; see also Charles Jackson, ed., The Diary of Abraham de la Pryme, Publications of the Surtees Society 54 (Ripon: n.p., 1870), 251. Cockayne, Hubbub, 166. See also K.A. Macmahon, ed., Beverley Corporation Minute Books (1707–1835), Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series 122 (s.l.: Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 1958), 65.

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Figure 2.4 Wellcome Library, London, Archives and Manuscripts, 7113. Detail of a page from the recipe book of Lady Ann Fanshawe, compiled from 1651, 'Against the biting of a Mad Dogge,’ fol. 7r.



Roaming, Breeding, Straying

Before the eighteenth century, civic considerations about biting dogs did not focus on these specific fears; instead, they reveal other concerns. Dog management rules were drawn up by many communities and the variations in the terminology and justifications suggest different motivations behind bans and stipulations. Carole Rawcliffe has examined cases from the late medieval period, noting rules in Coventry, Bristol, and Northampton (where only wellbehaved dogs could be let off the leash after the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381).42 Some towns simply banned specific types of dog; in the medieval period, butchers’ dogs were often forbidden.43 By 1470, the citizens of Coventry had long been subject to a rule that stipulated that butchers’ dogs (‘Bochour dogges’) be tied up at night.44 42 43 44

Rawcliffe, Urban Bodies, 154 Arthur F. Leach, ed., Beverley Town Documents, Publications of the Seldon Society 14 (London: B. Quaritch, 1900), 29. Mary Dormer Harris, ed., The Coventry Leet Books: or Mayor’s Register, Early English Text Society, original series 134 (1907), 361.

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Bitches in heat (“sawte” or “salte” bitches) were increasingly singled out. The Letter Books of London record an ordinance made by the Common Council in 1475 that targeted them, but excluded gentlemen’s hounds and butchers’ dogs. It ruled that no persone hold nor have a dogge or dogges nor sawte Biche usyng to go at large oute of his Cloise or kepyng by day nor by nyght w[i]t[h]in the Fraunchese of this Citee except gentil houndes and Bochers dogges being no sawte Biche to the which it shall be lefull to go at large by day and not by nyght uppon payne to pay xld to thuse of the Chambre of every dogge or sawte biche goyng at large contrary to this Acte.45 The Southampton leet courts applied similar restrictions. In 1550 it was decreed that “none from hensforth suffer any sawte bitches to go abrode in the striate.” Steven Monsanger and John Jackson were each fined for breaking this rule in 1566. In 1581 the fines were increased to the standard 40d per bitch already imposed in London.46 The Boston Assembly demanded the same penalty from anyone allowing a “salte bytche” to wander the streets and made it lawful for a person to kill any that they found, and set a further fine of 20s (or imprisonment) for any owners who prevented the killing. This draconian bylaw was to be proclaimed by the beadle throughout the borough once a year.47 By the late sixteenth century, towns started to take notice of mastiffs as well. In 1569, municipal officers excluded mastiff dogs and “sawte” bitches from Southampton streets. Violators would be fined, half of which sum would pay the dog “dryvers” who found them, while the other half went to maintain the gates of the common.48 In other towns mastiffs could remain at large, but they had to be muzzled.49 In Liverpool, old bylaws were codified in the early 1540s, one stating that “noe person or persons within Lyverpoll suffer his mastice or mastices dogges goe in the street or in mens howsies unmoseled, and in the 45 46 47

48 49

Reginald R. Sharpe, ed., Calendar of Letter-Books of the City of London: L: Edward IV–Henry VII (London: R. Clay, 1913), 130–13. See also Holme, Academy of Armory, 183. Hearnshaw and Hearnshaw, eds., Southampton Court Leet Records A.D. 1550–1577, 6, 44–45, 223. Peter Clark and Jennifer Clark, eds., The Boston Assembly Minutes 1545–1575, Lincoln Record Series 77 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1987), 20. See also James L. Bolton and Marjorie M. Maslen, Calendar of the Court Books of the Borough of Witney 1538–1610, The Oxfordshire Record Society, vol. 54 (1981–82) (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1985), 15, 22, 24, 26. Hearnshaw and Hearnshaw, eds., Southampton Court Leet Records A.D. 1550–1577, 55. C.M. Fraser and Kenneth Emsley, eds., The Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, from October 1639 to September 1640 (The Wakefield Court Rolls Series, 1977), 73.

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nyght [to be kept] within howsies,” with a 6d fine being set for those breaking the rule.50 In 1561 this was repeated—with the modification that “noe great mastyce dogge or unreasonable dogges” should roam unmuzzled and loose on the streets, and the fine was upped to 3s 4d (40d).51 Ten years later any mastiff “or other unlawfull dogges” were to be muzzled or “tied in iron cheane.” Mastiff puppies under six months old were exempted from these muzzling rules in 1579; this was later extended to include dogs of up to nine months old.52 The reasons for banning particular dogs at particular times were stated by some authorities; and a variety of motivations are evident, including fears that the watch would be impeded, citizens would be annoyed, and people or their property could be damaged. In 1550, the residents of Southampton were forbidden from letting any dogs out of doors at night after curfew. The jurors justified this rule, explaining that it would prevent people from using dogs as lookouts when they were attempting to “rob theire neighbours.” Every dog caught would be killed and the owner fined 12d.53 In Manchester, the “gret dysquietnes” of the citizens and “gret Danger” to their “goods & chattels” saw restrictions established in 1584.54 When the Southampton leet jurors enforced new rules banning dogs in 1587, they made specific reference to unmuzzled mastiffs, which “ar very harmefull in the strets, running upon horsemen ryding along the streets many tymes endaundering them with overthrowing ther horses.”55 This concern had a foundation: in the early sixteenth century a Berkshire man tumbled headfirst from his horse after it had been frightened by a dog, dying of his injuries six days later.56 A mongrel bitch in East Mersea, Essex, found notoriety in 1622 after pulling people off their horses as they rode by.57 The Southampton leet jurors also mentioned other worries, urging that unmuzzled mastiffs be prevented from “spoyling & terying of every man’s dogg that passes by them,” observing that such incidents provided the “occasion many tymes to sett many men redy to go together by the eares & cause of unkyndness among neyghbors.” The Southampton jurors added the “hasard” to 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

J.A. Twemlow, ed., Liverpool Town Books, 2 vols. (Liverpool: For the University of Liverpool, School of Local History and Records by the University Press, 1918–1935), vol. I, 14. Twemlow, ed., Liverpool Town Books, vol. I, 175. Twemlow, ed., Liverpool Town Books, vol. II, 14, 336, 662. See also Earwaker, ed., Court Leet Records of Manchester, vol. I, 72, 241; vol. II, 37. Hearnshaw and Hearnshaw, eds., Southampton Court Leet Records A.D. 1550–1577, 16. Earwaker, ed., Court Leet Records of Manchester, vol. I, 241. Hearnshaw and Hearnshaw, eds., Southampton Court Leet Records A.D. 1550–1577, 253. Many thanks to Steven Gunn for this reference, TNA KB 9/440/23. ERO, Q/SBa 1/46, Sessions Bundles, Indictments, 1622.

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children to their long list of problems caused by mastiffs.58 In Liverpool, too, the authorities expressed consternation about the safety of their youngest residents, ordering in 1668 that all dogs “which can devour children or disturb others” be muzzled.59 It is clear that no single concern motivated these communities to devise rules to restrict the movement of dogs on the streets. Some towns revealed a bias in the application of their rules, specifically targeting the dogs that poorer citizens kept, and making exceptions for the hounds of rich men. In 1575 the Boston borough fathers established a new bylaw restricting the ownership of “any greate dogg cald mastiffs or grounde hounde spanyell or other dogg” unless it was kept “tyed up in the night tyme and other tymnes as the cases and need shall require.” This apparently general prohibition, however, did not apply to “persons so kepying any suche dogg or dogges [who] be or is rated taxed and sessed to pay subsidy to the Quene’s majestie.”60 In Liverpool in 1567 dog-keeping rules were modified. Henceforth, all mastiffs and “great band dogges” were to be tied up, in order to avoid “sondrie unconvenientes as for hurting of greyhoundes, houndes and spaniels, that is, gentylmens dogges.” 61 Service dogs that were owned by lesser citizens were restricted in order to allow dogs owned by gentlemen to move safely in the streets. These rules imply that all dogs had owners. Historians rarely offer concrete suggestions about the number of stray canines on the streets. Carole Rawcliffe notes that “many” strays “hunted in packs” in late-medieval towns, especially after the Black Death. Mark Jenner, also cautiously unspecific about the number of stray dogs, states, “it is likely that many urban dogs were not particularly closely tied to one household.”62 The extant information that might be used to assess the number of stray dogs derives from unusual or disturbed times. It may be tempting to use figures listing the numbers of dogs found on streets, rounded up, and slaughtered during plague epidemics.63 This would, inevitably, distort the figures, because some owners would have succumbed to illness themselves, rendering their animals ownerless and thus stray. During such 58 59 60 61 62 63

Hearnshaw and Hearnshaw, eds., Southampton Court Leet Records A.D. 1550–1577, 253. Michael Power, ed., Liverpool Town Books, 1649–1671, Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (Chester: For the Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1999), 231. Clark and Clark, eds., The Boston Assembly Minutes 1545–1575, 89. Twemlow, ed., Liverpool Town Books, vol. I, 349. Rawcliffe, Urban Bodies, 153; Jenner, “The Great Dog Massacre,” 52. See also Cockayne, Hubbub, 107. Extracts from the Rate Books (1603), J.V. Kitto, ed., St Martin-in-the-Fields: The Accounts of the Churchwardens, 1525–1603 (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Kent, Hamilton & Co., 1901), 577–79.

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times, owners might have been unable to care for their animals and fled, or barricaded themselves indoors without them (Fig. 2.5). Indeed, because it was believed that dogs could contract or transmit the plague, many owners would have abandoned their dogs for fear of catching disease from them. When reaching for a metaphor to conceptualize the cruelty of gaolers in 1618, the author of Certaine Characters and Essayes of Prison and Prisoners likened them to “a dogge-killer in the plague time to a diseased curre,” suggesting brutality and revealing that dogs were killed as a precaution against the plague, rather than more modern (but now doubted) notions centered on rats and their fleas.64 In 1586 Londoners were given six days to secure their dogs, before all loose dogs would be rounded up and killed. Similar warnings were issued in 1590, supplemented with a list of elite dogs that would be spared: greyhounds, spaniels, and hounds. Figures suggest that nearly one thousand dogs were killed in 1584 and even more in 1585.65 Clearly, there were strays on the streets, but we may never know in precisely what numbers. In a society in which the worth of everything was assessed and nothing was wasted, and in view of the fact that there are scant references to ownerless dogs in the civic records outside of plague time, it is possible that the number of strays was not especially significant. Certainly there is nothing to indicate the presence of massive packs of stray dogs on English streets during the Early Modern period.

Whipping, Muzzling, Exterminating

In his study of Early Modern English parish church congregations, John Craig shows that “dogs were invariably present during parish services.” Many parishes employed dog-whippers to keep the nuisance dogs outside. A diptych by John Gipkyn of a sermon at Paul’s Cross commissioned in 1616, now in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries of London, depicts a dog being whipped by a man carrying a sword.66 Dogs were allowed in church if they were wellbehaved, and they were accepted on streets if they were muzzled. In 1590, just one year after enforcing an order for the control of dogs on Manchester’s streets, the foreman of the leet jury, George Birch, had “bene overthrown by a 64 65 66

“Nouus Homo,” Certaine Characters and Essayes of Prison and Prisoners (London: William Jones, 1618), D2v. Oram, “The Common Hunt and the Doghouse,” 5. John Craig, “Psalms, Groans and Dogwhippers: The Soundscape of Worship in the English Parish Church, 1547–1642,” in Will Coster and Andrew Spicer, eds., Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 104–23, esp. 113; John Gipkyn, Old St Paul’s diptych (1616), left-hand inner panel.

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Figure 2.5 Huntington Library, San Marino, California, Title page from Thomas Dekker, A Rod for Run-awayes (London: by G. Purslowe for John Trundle, 1625).

greate Mastiffe dog” thought to belong to a smith, “beinge unmussled and goinge losse in the street.” The jurors upped the fine, previously set at two shillings, to 3s 4d, fearing the danger to “menes children and there catell.”67 The 67

Earwaker, ed., Court Leet Records of Manchester, II, 50.

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authorities continued to ponder the problem, and after 1595 Manchester had no fewer than ten officers responsible for ensuring that dogs were effectively muzzled. 68 In 1604, after “greate hurts … latelye susteyned,” the jurors ordered that mastiffs and mongrels should be chained and tied fast, and not be loose on the streets, and they regularly returned to the problem in their deliberations. In 1615 they settled on the need for dogs to be sufficiently muzzled so they could not hurt anybody.69 In Salford, the court leet jurors followed the example set by nearby Manchester, appointing overseers for the control of loose or unmuzzled dogs in 1609. Initially, attention turned to “band dogges” (the catchall term for mastiffs and the similar band dogs), and the overseers were to ensure that they were tied up. This requirement quickly developed into a more specific restriction prohibiting unmuzzled mastiffs (which would, presumably, have included band dogs also).70 Salford appointed two overseers per year. Their position was not prestigious: it was one of the lowliest appointments and was filled by tradesmen of modest means such as joiners and weavers. The Salford portmoot jurors were sometimes specific about the type of dog that had been discovered unmuzzled on the streets: in 1657, for instance, John Lightbowne was fined for “keepinge a mungrell Curre unmusled.” Usually only sketchy details are provided.71 On occasion, the imposition of a fine was deemed insufficient. In 1664, Thomas Richardson was fined one shilling, while the jury also ordered him to remove his dog from the town, or keep it chained up at all times.72 Curiously, on sixteen occasions between 1610 and 1667 the Salford overseers presented themselves for infringing this bylaw. Indeed, of the seventy-five overseers and erstwhile overseers known during this period, twenty-one, or 28 percent, were accused of having unmuzzled dogs loose on the streets at some

68

69 70

71 72

The number of officers increased to thirteen between 1597 and 1605. After 1606 there were a dozen officers; with only a few exceptions, that remained the case until the 1640s, when their number was reduced to ten. Earwaker, ed., Court Leet Records of Manchester, II, 94, 101, 129, 140–41, 176, 183, 203, 210, 213, 221, 229–30, 237, 246, 256, 262, 273, 284, 298, 304, 307, 315–16; IV, 34. Earwaker, ed., Court Leet Records of Manchester, vol. II, 203, 307. J.G. de T. Mandley, ed., The Portmote or Court Leet Records of the Borough or Town and Royal Manor of Salford, 1597–1669, 2 vols. (Manchester: for the Chetham Society, 1902), vol. I, 71, 75. Mandley, ed., The Portmote or Court Leet Records of Salford, vol. II, 156. Mandley, ed., The Portmote or Court Leet Records of Salford, vol. II, 202.

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point.73 Men who had previously allowed their dogs to roam free and without muzzles were not prevented from taking office in future years, and, seemingly, the overseers felt no requirement to set a good example to other dog owners. In 1634 Bonaventure Holland and Adam Siddall junior were the appointed officers, but were fined for not doing their duty in bringing presentments forward. They were appointed for another year, and in 1635, Siddall junior presented himself for failing to muzzle his own dog. This did not cause him to mend his ways; he was presented again in 1636 and 1638.74 In 1650, Henry Wharmbie and John Hilton were both presented (by themselves) for having loose unmuzzled dogs, each “beinge a sworne officer for the overseeing thereof.”75 This all suggests that there was little stigma attached to the breaking of rules designed to limit the numbers of dogs loose or without muzzles on the streets. In other places, the lists of offenders included those who held official positions, sometimes as elevated as mayors and aldermen.76 Sheriff Nykes of Nottingham owned “a banddog unmusselled,” exposing him to a fine of 3s 4d in 1605. Two years later the regulations about keeping unmuzzled mastiffs were reiterated, but this did not deter twenty-one citizens, including one alderman, from breaking them in 1620. At this point, the borough officials stressed the “discontent and fright of divers severall persons and neighboures and theire children.”77 Even so, an alderman was presented in 1630 for allowing his mastiff to be both unmuzzled and unruly on the streets of Nottingham.78 Loose unmuzzled dogs were not a high priority for the civic authorities: in the late fifteenth century they accounted for only 1.5 percent of cases presented to the York wardmote court. Although this figure rose to 2.5 percent by the late sixteenth century, this does not suggest pressing concern. Residents with defective and dirty paving, wandering pigs, and street obstructions were much

73

74 75 76 77

78

Various presentment and appointment details taken from Mandley, ed., The Portmote or Court Leet Records of Salford, from vol. I, 80 up to vol. II, 221. See also Hartshorne, “The Street and the Perception of Public Space in York, 1476–1586,” 65. Mandley, ed., The Portmote or Court Leet Records of Salford, vol. II, 9, 13, 17, 31, 44. Mandley, ed., The Portmote or Court Leet Records of Salford, vol. II, 101, 103. Twemlow, ed., Liverpool Town Books, vol. II, 673, 724; see also Hartshorne, “The Street and the Perception of Public Space in York, 1476–1586,” 65. Nottingham City Council, Records of the Borough of Nottingham, Being a Series of Extracts from the Archives of the Corporation of Nottingham, 9 vols. (London: B. Quaritch, 1882– 1951), vol. IV, 275, 283, 367. Nottingham City Council, Records of the Borough of Nottingham, vol. V, 147, 198.

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more likely to feature in the court records.79 It is unlikely that this was due to a lack of “unlawful” or nuisance dogs on the streets: there were instead periods of inattention to them interspersed by sudden and temporary clampdowns. As stated earlier, epidemics heightened the attention paid to dogs. These episodes have been amply described by Mark Jenner, who has investigated the public health exercises designed to combat plague. These saw the mass slaughter of dogs in some English cities, resulting (according to Jenner) in 1,882 dogs being killed in London between 1584 and 1586, 3,710 in 1636, and 4,380 in 1665 alone. Although these figures may have been exaggerated by dog killers exploiting the payment system, the campaigns killed many dogs.80 Francis Bacon detected a sixth sense in some of the victims: It is a Common Experience, that Dog[s] know the Dog-killer; when as in times of Infection, some Petty F[ellow] is sent out to kill the Dogges; And that, though they have never seene him before; yet they will all come forth, and barke, and fly at him.81 Henry Machyn, a London merchant-tailor who kept a diary in the mid–sixteenth century, made an entry for August 1563 in which he noted yet another mayoral proclamation informing the citizens that a man had been employed to kill “doges as many as he cane fynd in the streets,” and who would be searching by day and by night. That year, the churchwardens of St Margaret’s Westminster hired John Welche “for the killinge and carreinge awaye of dogs during the plague, and for putting theym into the ground and covering the same.”82 In the early 1630s John Campe was employed by the Norwich civic authorities to kill and bury “such Doggs, hogs, Catts & tame Doves as he shall finde abroad in the Streets because of the danger of Contagion.” Campe

79 80 81 82

Hartshorne, “The Street and the Perception of Public Space in York, 1476–1586,” appendix, A2x; Cockayne, Hubbub, chapters 4, 7, 8, and 9. Jenner, “The Great Dog Massacre,” 48– 49. Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum, or a Natural History in Ten Centuries (London: John Haviland and Augustine Mathewes for William Lee, 1627), 261. The 1603 epidemic saw similar arrangements put in place. John Gough Nichols, The Diary of Henry Machyn, The Camden Society Publications 42 (London: J.B. Nichols & Son, 1848), 312.

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received tuppence for every animal he bagged.83 Other cities took a similar approach.84 Towns with officers to prevent unmuzzled dogs from being loose on the streets do appear to have stepped up their concern during plague years. The Salford officers charged with this task initially presented several men for contravening the rules—seven in the first year (1610, five years after the outbreak of the plague), and another seven the following year. Thereafter, enthusiasm for punishing rule breakers abated, or citizens started observing the rules, because few additional presentations occurred until 1635. There were only three in the turbulent years of the 1640s (when other concerns were more pressing); this increased to twenty-six in the 1650s, despite there being some years with no presentments at all because of political disruptions. Figures reached seventy-three in the 1660s, when news of the London plague of 1665 would have been spreading across the country. In 1666 there were twenty-nine presentments, and in 1667 there were eighteen (including both of the officers appointed to present the owners of unmuzzled dogs).85 Far greater attention was paid to dogs in years when people were worried about disease, whereas for most of the time, careless owners went unpunished.

Biting, Maiming, Killing

Although it was not usually a high priority, urban authorities did pay some sporadic attention to the problem of dangerous dogs; they exacted fines and ordered negligent owners to tighten control of their animals, particularly any dogs known to bite. Enforcement may have been a bit shaky, but many communities did establish rules. Fines paid by several owners of mastiffs in Southampton were recorded in the mayor’s annual accounts for 1572–1594, which note, for example, that a tailor was fined 12d in 1577 for “suffring his dogge to goe aboute the streat contrarie to the order of the Towne.” Shortly afterward a butcher was caught with “his masty dog going about the street.” In 83 84 85

William L. Sachse, ed., Minutes of the Norwich Court of Mayoralty 1630–1631, Norfolk Record Society 15 (Norfolk: Norfolk Record Society, 1942), 61, 175–76. See also Jenner, “The Great Dog Massacre,” 49. Mandley, ed., The Portmote or Court Leet Records of Salford, vol. I, 80, 87, 94, 101, 106, 120, 152, 161, 171, 178, 185, 193, 200, 207, 240; vol. II, 21, 31, 44, 52, 60, 84, 103, 126, 134, 151, 156, 163, 179, 184, 190, 193, 198, 202, 205, 210, 217, 221.

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1592 a glover likewise let his bitch go free, earning him what appears to have been a standard fine of 12d. 86 Peter Quoyte’s dog caused the Southampton leet jurors to ponder long and hard in 1587. This talented animal, described as being somewhere “betwene a masty & a mungerell,” was in the habit of entering the houses of Quoyte’s neighbours and stealing things: pieces of meat, loins of mutton, and “a whole pownde of candells at a tyme”—without spoiling the produce with its teeth, and carrying the booty back to Quoyte, “being a p[ro]fytable dogg for his master.” Quoyte was fined for these incidents, ordered to “kepe him tyed or to putt him away,” and threatened with a fine of 3s 4d every time the dog was subsequently found on a mission. A marginal comment (“a well qualytyed doge”) hints that the jurors could not help being impressed by the chutzpah of this mischievous animal.87 When they were not compelled to address concerns about dogs during times of disease, the authorities generally busied themselves with other, more pressing public nuisancesᶜ, focusing on paving defects, obstructions, and piles of dirt, rather than on loose unmuzzled dogs. This approach forced some people to take the law into their own hands, which could cause trouble. Ralph Ramscot found himself accused of trespass in April 1665 after he stabbed to death a valuable mastiff belonging to George Wright in Derbyshire. In his defense Ramscot argued that Wright had let the animal “remain and walk in the streets … unmuzzled.” The mastiff had attacked Ellen Bagshaw’s guard dog, and Ramscot, Bagshaw’s servant, had intervened “lest he should do any further mischief.” The case dragged on. In 1667 it was decided that, to establish his innocence, Ramscot would have to prove that killing the mastiff had been the only way to protect his employer’s dog. It was judged that such an extreme response was unwarranted, because Wright was “not bound by law to muzzle his mastiff, so long as he does no damage; and it is natural for one dog to bite or worry another.” Nor had Ramscot established that killing the dog was his only option.88 With so many dogs at large and such lax observation of the rules that civic officers themselves often broke them, it can hardly come as any surprise that people were often attacked by dogs. In many cases the notoriety of the dog was 86 87 88

Cheryl Butler, ed., The Book of Fines: The Annual Accounts of the Mayors of Southampton, Volume III, 1572–1594 (Southampton: University of Southampton, 2010), 40, 56, 180. Hearnshaw and Hearnshaw, eds., Southampton Court Leet Records A.D. 1550–1577, 253. Max A. Robertson and Geoffrey Ellis, eds., The English Reports. Volume 85. King’s Bench Division XIV (London: Stevens and Sons Ltd, 1908), 92–93.

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highlighted and previous attacks seen as evidence. Sometimes children were bitten or mauled. Most attacks by canines were clearly the result of negligence, which was punishable by law. Since the fourteenth century the writ of scienter had made anybody who kept a dangerously vicious dog liable for any damage it inflicted. An injured person could also pursue a private lawsuit against the owner.89 This meant that owners were, effectively, less liable to be punished for their dog’s first bite, but more culpable for second and subsequent attacks.90 In 1575, Hugh Meredith of Fulham, Middlesex, kept “a big, noxious, biting dog, given to worry and bite the Queen’s subjects,” including eleven-year-old Katherine Yonge.91 In 1586 John Crosse, an ostler, was fined 2s 4d for having a dog that hurt a brewer, and an extra 15d “for bludshedd mad[e] by that dogg.”92 A yeoman found himself before the Essex magistrates in 1622 for keeping an unmuzzled mongrel bitch that had already bitten several people.93 Nathaniel Semper of Runsell in Danbury, Essex, was indicted in 1623 for negligently keeping a mastiff he knew to attack people, after it bit the right leg of Thomas Shawe.94 Widow Rose, whose unmuzzled dog had “done much hurt” in 1638, was indicted before the borough sessions. She had often been warned about her dog.95 Several of these attacks rendered the victim unable to work and forced him or her to appeal for welfare.96 In the mid-seventeenth century Jane Barone petitioned the Lancashire quarter sessions, claiming to have been “greviously” bitten by George Cheetame’s mastiff while “travelling about her business” near his house. Barone maintained that Cheetame’s dog “hath bitten sev[er]all per89 90

91

92 93 94 95 96

Robert C. Palmer, English Law in the Age of the Black Death (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 228, 238. S.F.C. Milson, Historical Foundations of the Common Law, 2nd edition (London: Butterworths, 1981), 311. See also Mason v Keeling (1699), where no judgement was reached in a case of an attack by an unmuzzled mongrel: Max A. Robertson and Geoffrey Ellis, eds., The English Reports. Volume 91, 1305–06. John Cordy Jeaffreson, ed., Middlesex County Records: Volume 1: 1550–1603 (London: The Middlesex County Record Society, 1886), 94. See also Sue Sheridan Walker, ed., The Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield: from October 1331 to September 1333 (Leeds: Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 1983), 170; Hartshorne, “The Street and the Perception of Public Space in York, 1476–1586,” 61. Butler, ed., The Book of Fines: Southampton, Volume III, 1572–1594, 105–06. ERO, Q/SR 237/24, 25, Sessions Rolls, Midsummer 1622, Presentments. ERO, Q/SR 240/17, Sessions Rolls, Easter 1623, Indictments. Nottingham City Council, Records of the Borough of Nottingham, vol. V, 187. J.W. Willis Bund, ed., Worcester County Records. The Quarter Sessions Rolls. Part 1 1591–1621 (Worcester: Printed for the Worcestershire County Council, 1899), 250.

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sons before and is accustomed to bite.”97 The clerk recording the presentment of Isaac Browne in Essex originally noted that Browne kept an unlawful “curre,” but later struck this out, replacing it with “dog.” This animal had bitten several people who had the misfortune to pass by his owner’s house in 1661.98 Ralph Josselin, the vicar of Earls Colne in Essex, recorded an injury inflicted on his son by a “great mastive bitch, who runne and snapt at him, and little grated his flesh.” Five years later, when his pig was killed by a bite from a mad dog, Josselin thanked God that a child had not been bitten instead. He later escaped injury himself, noting “Colemans dog [flew] upon mee.”99 The other great diarist of the time, Samuel Pepys, was “set upon by a great dog” in May 1663.100 In 1666 the unchained, unmuzzled mastiff owned by John Lawson sank its teeth into several people in Wanstead and put them “in great peril of their lives.”101 In the following year, Margery Blewett alarmed her neighbors on Fishmongers’ Alley in St Saviour’s parish in Southwark, on account of her “Molossian hound,” which attacked cattle and parishioners alike. One man was badly bitten by it.102 John Boy, a yeoman from the same place, was presented in October 1666 for having a mastiff that he knew to be in the habit of biting people. In July it bit William Eyer on the right leg and William Goosey in the back. Two years later another yeoman, John Ketcher, also of St Saviour’s, was presented for keeping a dog that had already bitten “several persons unknown,” and then went on to attack Oliver Congley.103 Most of these prosecutions appear to have concerned one-off random attacks. However, a case of dog biting reported in the Barnsley Sessions Rolls for 1668 may well be part of a bigger story, one that involved a Dutch engineer, Marcus van Valkenburgh, whose family had come over with Cornelius Vermuyden to drain Hatfield Chase in the 1620s and had become major landowners in the area. Bad blood had developed with locals who thought that the Dutch were intruding and interfering in land rights; and tensions increased during the Civil Wars, when locals deliberately scuppered drainage measures. 97 98 99 100 101 102 103

Lancashire Record Office (LRO), QSP/4/4, Lancashire County Quarter Sessions Petitions, c. 1648. ERO, Q/SR 390/26, Sessions Rolls, Michaelmas, 1661, Presentments. Alan Macfarlane, ed., The Diary of Ralph Josselin 1616–1683 (London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1976), 192, 352–53, 399. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, vol. IV, Matthews and Latham, eds., 131. ERO, Q/SR 408/21, Sessions Rolls, Presentments by Hundreds of Becontree, Barstable and Chafford, Easter 1666. Powell, ed., Surrey Quarter Sessions Records. 1666–1668, 162. Powell, ed., Surrey Quarter Sessions Records. 1666–1668, 99–100, 244.

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Some of the works did not sufficiently drain the chase, and parcels of land flooded. Various petitions were drafted and proceedings were instigated against those involved in the scheme.104 In the midst of these hostilities, a local man called John Midforth accused Marcus Van Valkenburgh of setting his “Mastife dogg” on him.105 A later suit, also brought by Midforth, saw van Valkenburgh charged with stealing clothing and wages.106 The impression given by these allegations is that every petty incident in which van Valkenburgh was involved was reported to the authorities. The leet jurors of Manchester struggled to deal with one of the borough’s most recalcitrant dogowners in the 1660s and 1670s. In October 1671 John Cowper complained that, while he was running an errand, a mongrel bitch belonging to Edward Gathorne bit his arm, inflicting a wound that he showed to some of the jurors. Gathorne, who belonged to a prominent local family, was fined twenty shillings and warned to keep his dogs muzzled.107 An erstwhile constable of the town, he had previously been a regular on the lists of presentments for keeping unmuzzled dogs, featuring as a serial offender in 1664, 1665, 1666, 1670, and April 1671.108 Robert Hill and John Tonge (both men also with previous records) were likewise presented for keeping an unmuzzled dog that had leapt at and bitten several people, creating terror among the citizens.109 Hill and Tonge continued to attract complaints, while Gathorne was presented twice in 1675 and once again in 1681.110 In some cases the civic authorities were unable to remove the threat posed by dangerous dogs on the streets. Some owners became notorious on account of the behavior of their dogs. Sensible pedestrians would have given them a 104

105

106 107 108 109 110

James Raine, Depositions from the Castle of York, Publications of the Surtees Society 40 (Durham: Published for the Society by F. Andrews, 1861), 12, 175; University of Nottingham, Manuscripts and Special Collections, “Hatfield Chase Corporation, 1538–1973,” (accessed April 21, 2014). Wakefield Archives [WA], QS1/7/5/5/1, Quarter Sessions, Barnsley Sessions Rolls, 1668; Piet van Cruyningen, “‘Any English settler would have been driven insane.’ Dutch Investors and the Draining of Hatfield Chase, 1626–1660,” paper given at ‘Rural History’ 2013, University of Bern, August 19–22, 2013, pp. 9, 12, 13, (accessed April 12, 2014) WA, QS1/8/5/5/1, Quarter Sessions, n.d. Earwaker, ed., Court Leet Records of Manchester, vol. V, 153–54. Earwaker, ed., Court Leet Records of Manchester, vol. V, 40, 52, 61, 77, 81, 109, 126, 131; vol. VI, 239. Earwaker, ed., Court Leet Records of Manchester, vol. V, 157. Earwaker, ed., Court Leet Records of Manchester, vol. V, 168, 240, vol. VI, 7, 123.

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wide berth, if they saw them coming. Not everybody managed to avoid them. In 1682, a Wakefield mercer allowed his mastiff to bite a child.111 In 1686 James Sydebotham of Manchester was fined for owning a big unmuzzled mongrel that had attacked some of his neighbors.112 In 1697, a butcher from Essex kept not one but two “unlawfull mastiff dogges,” which ran amok in the village of Bedham.113 In 1747 Ann and Francis Taylor were charged with keeping a disorderly dog after their large mastiff “did leap upon and endeavour to Bite divers” people who passed their Bridlington home, offending on more than one occasion.114 Some men and women were accused of deliberately inciting their dogs to attack people, and dog bites feature among a range of injuries reported in assault cases. In Portsmouth in 1658 Elizabeth Moore was attacked by Peter Juning and bitten by his dog.115 Bonham Spencer, a gentleman from Shorne in Kent, set his mongrel on Anne Hall, a laborer’s wife, in 1670, causing serious injuries to her left arm.116 If a person owned a dog that had inflicted hurt previously, he or she would be answerable at law if it injured someone again—and could be liable for any damages caused. 117 In addition, those people who deliberately set their dogs on others could be found guilty of incitement if their animals injured someone. In 1685 in Middlesex, Robert Pick kept a mastiff that he encouraged to attack John Messenger, leaving him badly injured, with a wound to his left leg that caused him to fear losing his life.118 After assaulting 111 112 113

114

115 116 117

118

Wakefield Archives (WA), QS1/21/4/5/9, Quarter Sessions Rolls, Pontefract Sessions, Traverses, 1682. See also ERO, Q/SR 448/246, Sessions Rolls, Michaelmas 1685, Recognizances. Manchester Cathedral Archives, Mancath/2/A1/53, Proceedings of the Court Baron for the Manor of Newton, 21 April 1686. ERO, Q/SR 491/72, Sessions Rolls, Epiphany 1697, Indictments. See also East Riding of Yorkshire Archives and Records Service, QSF/141/B/8, Quarter Sessions Files for Midsummer 1743. WA, QSF/159/B/3, Quarter Sessions Files, Indictments, Christmas 1747. See also East Riding of Yorkshire Archives and Records Service, QSF/222/B/4, Quarter Sessions Files for Christmas 1763, Indictments. Arthur J. Willis and Margaret J. Hoad, eds., Portsmouth Record Series Borough Sessions Papers 1653–1688 (London: Phillimore for the city of Portsmouth, 1971), 163. J.S. Cockburn, ed., Calendar of Assize Records. Kent Indictments Charles II 1660–1675 (London: H.M.S.O., 1995), 252. Richard Burn, The Justice of Peace, and Parish Officer, 2 vols. (London: printed by Henry Lintot for A. Millar, 1755), vol. II, 8. See also Michael Dalton, The Country Justice (London: E. and R. Nutts and R. Gosling, 1727), 464. Rex v Pick (1685) in John Tremaine, Placita Coronae: or Pleas of the Crown (London: E. and R. Nutts and R. Gosling, 1723), 240–41.

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Grace Wright near Leeds in 1672, Daniel Hoile threatened to set his “MastieDog” to pull her children “in peeces.”119 An Essex victualler kept a mastiff “accustomed to bite and injure” people in 1685, and was accused in the Michaelmas sessions of allowing his dog to bite and lame a laborer.120 Urban authorities broadly followed similar principles in determining how to handle vicious dogs on the streets. They stepped up fines for people who had previously broken dog restrictions and toughened the warnings to recidivists. They presented people before local courts, noting previous attacks. During the reign of Henry VII, Thomas Hawkyn of Great Canfield in Essex was accused of keeping a “mastygrehounde” (probably a mastiff), a dangerous dog apt to bite people.121 Some official responses were harsh. In Sowerby (near Wakefield, Yorkshire), in 1538, John Pachett was given forty days to “putt” his dog away.122 In 1624 a yeoman was presented before the Essex justices for having a mastiff dog that was prone to attack “divers neighbours and neighbours’ children and hath been commanded by the justices to hang him and will not.”123 Despite the laws, despite the rules, despite the muzzles and the orders to dispatch errant dogs, a few people were killed by dogs in this period. Pepys recorded that a child had been torn apart by dogs in Walthamstow in 1662.124 If, despite due diligence in securing a dog, it broke free and killed someone, the law generally disposed to find “no felony in the owner.” On the other hand, if the dog escaped and killed a person because of the owner’s negligence, he or she could face prosecution for manslaughter. If the animal had been let loose deliberately and killed someone, then a charge of murder would be on the cards. In providing Advice to Grand Jurors in Cases of Blood in 1677, Zachary Babington recommended that, in cases where a mastiff had previously injured someone and then went on to kill, it would “be Murther in the Owner, although not present when the fact was done.”125 In 1684 Thomas Jeffes was, indeed, 119 120

121 122 123 124 125

WA, QS1/12/2/2/7, Quarter Sessions Rolls, Wakefield Sessions, Informations, 5 November 1672. ERO, Q/SR 448/263, Sessions Rolls, Recognizances, 1685. See also East Riding of Yorkshire Archives and Records Service, QSF/221/C/10, Quarter Sessions Files for Michaelmas 1763, Recognizances. ERO, D/DMw M4, Court Roll of the Manor of Canfield, 1472–1508. Ann Weikel, ed., Wakefield Court Rolls Series, vol. 9, 1537–1539 (Leeds: Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 1993), 146. ERO, Q/SR 245/31, 32, Sessions Rolls, Presentments by Hundreds of Hinckford and Witham, Midsummer, 1624. Matthews and Latham, eds., The Diary of Samuel Pepys, vol. III, 205. Zachary Babington, Advice to Jurors in Cases of Blood (London: John Amery, 1677), 141–43.

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indicted for the murder of a man in London after the latter had been bitten by his dog. Jeffes had previously been ordered to hang the dog, but had not. He was acquitted at the Old Bailey, although this verdict would seem contrary to the letter of the law.126 In the light of the evidence presented above, surprisingly few people appear to have been killed by dogs. Material collected for Steven Gunn’s project Everyday Life and Fatal Hazard in Sixteenth-Century England shows that horses were the animals that most often caused deaths. This was likely to have been the case throughout the late medieval and Early Modern periods. Alice Traper was one victim of canine mauling, dying in the early sixteenth century seven weeks after being bitten on the right hand by a tie dog, probably from an infection of the wound.127 In 1587 an Essex coroner examined the body of Mary Bell, who was attacked and killed by two “mastyffes” as she went to milk cows in Prittlewell. The dogs belonged to a tanner and had been secured by an iron chain with “a clogge” fixed to it. They were usually chained up, and broke free without the tanner’s knowledge. The dogs having committed no previous attacks, the incident was chalked up to “misfortune” and not manslaughter.128 A sensational story published in 1700 centered on a Hackney tobacconist named Mr. Parker who was described as being “miserably Torn and Mangled” after he took a shortcut across a green and disturbed the cowkeeper’s bulldog, mastiff, and spaniel. Parker fought back with a small stick and a knife, but was mauled, especially by the bulldog.129 The truth of the story is difficult to ascertain, but it reveals concerns about dog attacks and that people carried sticks and other weapons which could be used for self-defense. According to Ralph Holinshed in England in 1586, few men went “without a dagger at the least at his back or by his side.”130 Faced with an angry dog in May 1663, Samuel Pepys took courage from having a sword with him; this knowledge gave him the strength to lessen the dog’s grip on his garters.131 That so many people were armed probably explains why so few people were apparently killed by dogs. Pedestrians on the streets were often accompanied by their own dogs, which may have helped fend off the attention of potentially dangerous strays. 126 127 128 129 130 131

Old Bailey Sessions Papers, t16840903-23, Thomas Jeffes, Killing, 1684. Many thanks to Steven Gunn for this reference, TNA KB 9/445/50. ERO, T/A 428/1/73 (presentment 106), Calendar of Queen’s Bench indictments Ancient 670, Part 1, Presentments. Anonymous, A Sad Account of the Unhappy and Deplorable Torture, and Terrible Death of Mr Parker, a Tobacconist, Shaklewel Near Hackney (London: E. Hawks, 1700). Ralph Holinshed, Chronicles (London: Henry Denham, 1587), 227. Matthews and Latham, eds., The Diary of Samuel Pepys, vol. IV, 131.

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The documents reveal that although dogs could pose a hazard on the streets, they did not threaten life and limb as much as might be supposed. They were certainly an urban nuisance at this time, but so were pigs, carts driven at speed, badly located market stands, and hucksters’ wagons. Responsible owners applied muzzles to their dogs, and readily available weapons could be used to ward off the unmuzzled. Consequently, attempts to reduce the numbers of loose or unmuzzled dogs on the streets were often feeble. The only times that the civic authorities made particular efforts to remove dogs from public areas were during periods of plague epidemics. It was the fear that dogs might spread disease, and not that they might bite pedestrians, that drove concerted responses to canines on urban streets.

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Chapter 3

Wolf Cubs, the Butchers, and the Beaune Town Council Kathleen Ashley As medievalists have long observed, animals figure prominently in medieval texts—whether as tropes in didactic literature, magical beings in romances, emblems of the saints’ power over evil in hagiography, or comic and moral foils in visual iconography. In this brief essay, I will turn instead to animals in the historical records. Specifically, I’ll be looking at the registers of town council meetings during the sixteenth century in Beaune, center of the wine country of Burgundy, France. In general, animals are mentioned in these town records only when they pose problems for public health, safety, or commerce. But in the domain of history—as in literary and artistic domains—animals occupy an important semiotic position in relation to human behaviors. At times the animals are regarded as extensions of, or participants in, a particular profession that is being regulated; but they can also stand for that which is “other” to humans. The specific example of the wolf cubs belonging to some butchers mentioned in the Beaune town records raises the issue of the perceived boundary between “wild” and domesticated in late medieval urban life. It was the job of the town council to determine and enforce such categories through their regulations, and by studying the records we see modern urban society coming into being. Significantly, within the context of this volume on dogs, the way in which the council members interpret these categories provides an opening into understanding perceived differences between domesticated dogs and their wild cousins, as well as revealing a profoundly puzzling difference between English and French town records during the late medieval period. The anomalous reference to wolf cubs in the Beaune council records, instead of the references to butchers’ dogs that we might expect, raises questions about the general absence of dogs in Burgundian civic documents, questions that the essay will pose and explore but that cannot be fully resolved. As Emily Cockayne’s essay in this volume demonstrates, references to “nuisance dogs” as well as working dogs are ubiquitous in the English records and in English texts of the Early Modern period; however, as she notes, even in England controlling loose unmuzzled dogs was not a high priority for authorities, except in the case

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004328617_005

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of disease. In contrast, the almost total absence of dog references in the Burgundy records is striking and demands our attention, even if no definitive explanation is possible.

Animals in the Town Records

This essay is centered on a brief and enigmatic entry from 1526 about wolf cubs that were being fostered within the town of Beaune, but because this is a volume on dogs, I would like to provide some context about other animals that regularly concerned civic leaders in Burgundy. The animals mentioned in the records are never just pets—innocuous participants in the private lives of citizens. Typically, they are working animals or public nuisances that have escaped the control of their owners. As important modes of transportation, horses appear fairly frequently in the records. Supplying adequate numbers of horses, as well as feeding and caring for those of travelers, is a recurring concern. Large pigs (porceaux) seem especially troublesome as they were only marginally under human control. Escaped pigs would roam the streets rooting for garbage, and they were believed to carry the plague. They could also be vicious and, very occasionally, were accused of attacking a child. Frequent regulations in Beaune and other Burgundian towns address the considerable problem of ordure (immondices) created by the presence of so many animals in a confined urban space. Beaune’s civic leaders attempted to regulate not just troublesome animals within the walls, but also animals whose activities were located outside them, in the fields. At harvest time in 1526, for example, the overseers of the grapes were to be fined sixty sols if they allowed sheep or cows to get into the vineyards (Que les vigniers qui scavoient les moutons pour lequel ilz sont en poursuite estre robe et que en ont mange soient condampnes en soixante cinq solz d’amende.).1 The only actual dogs mentioned in the Beaune records were working animals belonging to shepherds. At an April 4, 1526 meeting, the town council ruled that shepherds could not assemble together, that they should occupy separate pastures, and that each shepherd was permitted to have only two dogs. In one interpretation, this ruling—which was to be announced at all Beaune crossroads (carrefours) at the sound of the trumpet—was presumably to forestall fights among the sheepherding canines and conflicts (rebellions) 1 Beaune Municipale Archives, Registre Côte 1 f. 48. September 7, 1526. Note: fifteenth- and sixteenth-century French documents do not use accent marks.

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between their owners in the fields.2 The proscription about larger gatherings of shepherds also suggests that this occupational group that worked outside the town walls had a political agenda opposed to regulation by town elites.

Note on Pets in Wills

A side note that provides an interesting corollary to the way that animals are represented in the public records is the total absence of pet animals in Burgundian wills—that is, in privately generated documents. The question of whether “companion animals” or pets truly existed in premodern societies has long been debated. The consensus used to be that, because the modern nuclear family—the affective setting for pets—had not yet developed in the Middle Ages, there were no nonworking companion animals. After reexamining the textual and visual evidence, Sophia Menache challenged this assumption and suggested that dogs were present as companion animals even in traditional societies.3 Her challenge was fully met by Kathleen Walker-Meikle, who found ample evidence in medieval letters, chronicles, poems, and other written sources of animals that were given names and kept indoors primarily as companions.4 The visual materials discussed in numerous essays in the current volume also attest to the presence of pets in medieval households. However, I have read hundreds of wills, mostly those of members of the Burgundian bourgeoisie, and have yet to find one mention of a pet. This is especially significant because the testaments are extensive, detailed, and very personal. They reveal the testators’ wishes for the use of remaining wealth and their idiosyncratic preferences for memorial rituals. Above all, these documents provide a picture of the familial and social context within which the testator had lived.5 Typically, the affluent writer of a will left bequests to support people and causes close to their hearts. Yet, not once have I found a reference to a favorite dog or cat and its continued upkeep or ownership. Hats, dresses, jewels, furniture, and so on are bequeathed to close family members, friends, servants and others with whom the testator lived, but not a single mention of a beloved 2 Beaune Archives, Registre Côte 1 f. 60 3 Sophia Menache, “Dogs and Human Beings: A Story of Friendship,” Society and Animals 5 no. 1 (1998): 67–86. 4 Kathleen Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2012). 5 See Kathleen Ashley, “Abigail Mathieu’s Civic Charity: Social Reform and the Search for Personal Immortality,” in Money, Morality and Culture: Trading Values in Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds. Diane Wolfthal and Juliann Vitullo (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010), 47–60.

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pet!6 Pet animals evidently did not enter into private documentary discourse any more than they did the discourse of public regulation in the urban bourgeois setting of Burgundy.

Wolf Cubs and the Beaune Butchers

We hear about the wolf cubs in an entry from Friday, October 12, 1526.7 The mayor, the town prosecutor (procureur), and five councilmen met in the mayor’s chambers, and the record of their meeting notes that “they were notified that some butchers of this town have kept and nourished young wolves in their houses, which cannot lead to a good end” (lesquelx advertys que aulcungs bouchiers de ceste ville ont tiennent et nourissant en leurs maisons petits loups que ne seroient tournera bonne fin et consequence). After deliberation, the council ordered the butchers not to sell, but to kill the wolf cubs on pain of a ten-livre fine (Ont delibere commanderent audicts bouchiers ester faire incontinent tuee lesdicts loups et defenses de non les vendre a penne de dix livres de ce faire d’emand charge audict procureur). Ten livres was an enormous fine for the time. Clearly, these legislators thought that bringing wolves—even young ones—inside the town walls was potentially dangerous, but unlike the other occa­sionally dangerous animals (such as the porceaux) wolves were always categorized as dangerous because they were semiotically wild animals. In accordance with spatial semiotics, wild animals were not allowable within the town walls that symbolically enclosed civilized society. The significance of this categorization as “wild” was indicated both by the huge fine and the order to kill the cubs because (it says explicitly) that this would keep the butchers from selling them to another potential owner. The case also raises tantalizing questions about the social semiotics of the town. The owners of these wolf cubs are identified as “butchers”—members of a powerful industry in every late medieval/Early Modern urban setting. The increased consumption of meat across the social spectrum in the late Middle 6 See Kathleen Ashley, “Material and Symbolic Gift-Giving: The Evidence of French and English Wills,” in Medieval Fabrications: Dress, Textiles, Clothwork and Other Cultural Imaginings, ed. E. Jane Burns (New York: Palgrave, 2004), 137–46, 233–36. 7 Beaune Archives, Registre Côte 1, f. 50. Recent work on wolves in France emphasizes the history of wolf attacks on humans and their role in folklore; see Jean-Marc Moriceau, Histoire du méchant loup, 3000 attaques sur l’homme en France, XVe–XXe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 2007) and also Gilles Platret, Les loups dans l’histoire de Bourgogne (Chagny: La Voix des Siècles, 2007).

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Ages increased the profession’s power but, even so, butchers were the objects of concerted civic regulation. Carole Rawcliffe, in her study of communal health in late medieval towns and cities, identifies butchers’ “capacity for polluting the urban environment [which] was matched only by their notorious truculence in the face of authority.”8 In the post-medieval centuries their status fell even further, as Emily Cockayne points out: “City butchers were connected with corrupt meat, spilled blood and pavements covered with offal. Their trade offended the olfactory and visual senses. Their animals obstructed traffic, polluted streets, and poisoned consumers.”9 As a result, during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, butchers were increasingly objects of satire and caricature.10 Exactly why the Beaune butchers were raising young wolves remains obscure. It’s possible they rescued the cubs when the mother was killed in the woods or hills behind the town and brought them home to be pets. But the most plausible reason is that they were being raised as scavengers, to consume the offal of the butchers’ trade, which we know from the records often clogged the water channels running through town and sullied the streets. Typically, butchers kept dogs—often mastiffs—to eat the offal and also to bait bulls prior to slaughter, as that was believed to tenderize the meat.11 The butchers—while important to the urban food supply and a powerful craft guild in most towns—appear regularly as transgressors of rules that town leaders enacted for public health and welfare. As represented in the Burgundian records, their activities could challenge the norms for civic life being articulated by town councils and therefore required close scrutiny and frequent regulatory action. An entry from November 9, 1526 prods the butchers to select people who will examine and report on pigs, presumably to guarantee the health of the food supply.12 However, the record suggests that the butchers have been dilatory in complying with the regulation, since it says that “the butchers agree and promise tomorrow (or sooner) to name and empower, in writing, those who will begin to oversee the pigs this year” (Item, ont les bouchiers acorde et promys demain ou plustot nomme et baille par escripte ceulx qui commenceront visiter les porcs ceste annee pour lesquelz ils feront foy et 8 9 10 11 12

Carole Rawcliffe, Urban Bodies: Communal Health in Late Medieval English Towns and Cities (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2013), 147; also 147–52 and 241–46. Emily Cockayne, Hubbub: Filth, Noise and Stench in England, 1600–1770 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 41; also 193–94. Cockayne, op. cit., 42. Rawcliffe, op. cit, 153. Beaune Archives, Registre Côte 1. f. 53v–54.

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respondront de ce que visiteront lesdicts commis). Clearly, the butchers had dragged their feet in appointing such overseers. A later sixteenth-century record (October 24, 1583), notes that butchers bringing porceaux into town to sell should take them to the market in front of the convent of the Jacobins rather than to the wheat market in front of the Hôtel Dieu, the charity hospital, where they were selling their meat.13 (This area is still the site of a weekly market in the twenty-first century.) The edict of the council was to be published at the sound of the trumpet at carrefours throughout Beaune and obeyed on pain of a twenty-escu fine. Further, the entry states that the change of venue for the sale of porceaux is being made for the health of the poor sick people in the Hôtel Dieu (pour le bien sante et guerison des pouvres malades estans en grande hostel dieu). Entries from decades earlier had chastised the butchers for the mess created by their offal in front of the Hôtel Dieu, so their transgressive behavior obviously continued throughout the century. An entry from July 6, 1526 clearly outlines the dangers posed by butchery in town—that is, infections and the plague—which required close supervision by the butchers’ own inspectors as well as the town council.14 The council forbade the widow Guillemette Loppin and other butchers (la vefue Guillemette Loppin et aultres bouchiers) from killing in the accustomed places because of the infections that might result and to avoid the danger of plague (leur tueriez en lieux ou elles sont pour les infections quy en adviennent et eviter le dangier de peste). They had to do their killing outside the town. Also, in hot weather, they could not keep the blood of their animals for more than six hours or produce waste or they faced being punished (qui’ilz ne tiennent en temps de chaleur le sangue de leur bestes plus de six heures appenne d’en ester pugniz et pour faire lesdicts deschetteries). In times of great danger, the butchers were seen as incapable of self-regulation; two experienced town councilmen, Belin and Ythier, were therefore appointed to make sure that Guillemette and her fellow butchers followed these rules. This brief foray into the Beaune records allows us to draw some tentative preliminary conclusions about the categorization of animals in the late medieval/ Early Modern town. Urban regulation addresses primarily semi-domesticated animals that participated in the economic life of the town—either as working animals like the shepherds’ dogs or as part of the food supply like the porceaux. Because these animals were somewhat liminal—that is, only partially domesticated and therefore not under complete control of their owners at all 13 14

Beaune Archives, Registre Côte 15, f. 60. Beaune Archives, Registre Côte 1, f. 38v.

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times—they often required additional and official regulation. Burgundian town documents contain no reference to completely domesticated animals (that is, pets), even in private documents such as wills. Although paintings and manuscript illuminations indicate that domesticated dogs and cats were common, neither public nor private documents in Beaune acknowledge their presence; pets are simply not part of bourgeois civic discourse in this period. Finally, there is the category of wild animal, illustrated by the case of the wolf cubs being raised by the Beaune butchers. Despite the attempt by the frequently transgressive butchers to semi-domesticate the wolves, the town council was adamant: these were “wild” animals and therefore could not under any circumstances inhabit houses within the walls or be traded commercially; they had to be killed. The example of the butchers’ wolf cubs illustrates the process through which fifteenth- and sixteenth-century societies categorized animals and in doing so simultaneously defined the urban bourgeois entity and identity.

The Absence of Dogs

We turn now to the larger and at present unanswerable question: why are almost no dogs mentioned in these Burgundian urban documents, especially compared with similar English documentation? The contrast to English town records, which are full of dog references (chiefly nuisance complaints), could not be more stark. How can we understand this difference? The first possibility is that French town life of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries differed from English town life of that period in ways not previously recognized. Specifically, for the topic of this volume, perhaps the numbers of French dogs were much lower than the numbers in England. With a lower canine presence in public places, it would follow that there would be fewer “nuisance” events requiring regulation by the authorities. If this is the case, it has not previously been noticed by scholars writing about late medieval and Early Modern urban life in Europe. Granted, most in-depth studies of urban culture are focused on one city or one country, and those discussing multiple countries tend to be generalizing overviews whose purpose is to present the commonalities of European urban life—not to use comparative analysis to highlight differences. So the most we can say is that there has simply been no attention given to this possible difference in the urban scenes of France and England. A second possible explanation of the absence of dogs in Burgundian town records is that the region of Burgundy differs from other French regions, and

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that we would in fact find a plethora of references to nuisance dogs in town records from elsewhere in the country. If this is the case, it has not been noticed—again because most studies of French towns have an exclusive local or regional focus. There are not many comparative studies of towns across France. A third possibility is that the Burgundian town authorities had an effective enforcement system for violations by nuisance animals. Perhaps they systematically collected the fines indicated and that rigorous enforcement persuaded most owners to keep their animals under control. As a result, fewer violations existed to enter into town records. Once again, the data to support or disprove this explanation has not yet been gathered. All of these possible explanations assume that new historical data could provide definitive answers to the puzzling absence of dogs in Burgundy town records. If we take a step back from the “data,” we can see that it is always presented in a textual frame—the town register in Burgundy—which constrains what facts are appropriate for inclusion. In English town records, the canines mentioned are “nuisance dogs,” and in the Beaune records, similarly, the animals featured are always causing or potentially causing problems for the urban community. As noted, animals that do not disrupt town life by their pollution, danger, noise, etc. are simply not included because they do not require regulation, and the town records are—it is assumed, above all else—regulatory tools. The essays in this volume invite us to appreciate the wide variety of contexts within which dogs had significance during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Furthermore, each of the different frames or contexts clearly selects from the multiple attributes that classical through Early Modern cultures associated with dogs. In classical and humanist texts, dogs were laudable figures, often companions of scholars; in animal fables they were stand-ins for human foibles; in literature drawing on biblical sources dogs might represent greed, gluttony, and viciousness, but in funerary iconography they represented faithfulness unto and even after death. In late medieval books of hours the specific breed of dog portrayed in an illustration provided socioeconomic identification about the scene: aristocrats were shown hunting or feasting with their hunting dogs, while noble ladies held small fluffy dogs on their laps, and peasants sitting before their fires might have a small mongrel at their feet. In all these contexts, there is a clear connection between the breed of dog selected—with its specific attributes, both physical and symbolic—and the function of that text or image. Lavishly illustrated books of hours, for example, were commissioned by upper-class readers for private devotions and were personalized with paintings of family escutcheons, mottos, flora and fauna

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associated with the family, illustrations of holy figures with whom the owner identified (such as a name saint), and special prayers. The late fifteenth-century Book of Hours for Engelbert of Nassau (Ms. Douce 219–20, now at the Bodleian Library, Oxford) is decorated with greyhounds, his personal emblem and a marker of noble status. There are hawking scenes with hunting dogs (a noble sport), as well as mock-heroic tournaments of animals.15 When such devotional books were acquired by subsequent owners, the new family’s emblems were often added and those of earlier owners were sometimes effaced. The personalization of a book of hours accorded with its function as a private prayer book, whose effectiveness was enhanced by its personal relationship to a devout owner. As the Engelbert of Nassau example shows, and John Block Friedman’s essay in this volume points out, images of dogs could also reinforce the book owner’s claim to high status. To take another example, this time from hagiography, the legends of many saints make reference to animals—those, as with Anthony’s pig or Norbert’s wolf, that represent evil the saint has mastered through his miraculous powers. A slightly different miracle is represented by the dog in the iconography of Saint Dominic. According to an early legend recounted in Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend, Dominic’s barren mother, Joanna of Aza, went on pilgrimage to the Abbey of Silos, Spain, where her prayers were answered by the dream of a dog leaping from her womb with a torch in its mouth that “seemed to set the world on fire.” By means of a Latin pun on Domini canes, or “Dogs of the Lord,” the story was taken as a prefiguration of her son, the future founder of the Dominican order, an order of preachers. A dog with a burning brand in its mouth in illustrations of the saint refers to the dog in the dream and Dominic’s miraculous birth to a barren mother.16 Within this hagiographic context, then, dogs are associated with the power of holiness—a very different association than they have in the other theological, literary, devotional, satiric, and social contexts of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. To return to dogs that appear in historical records, I would argue that even for references to “real” dogs, the frame within which they appear matters. In other words, the textual frame of a town register is as much a selective device as the frames of literary and visual genres discussed elsewhere in this volume. Thus, we are left with two propositions: first, that the urban record frames of 15 16

The Master of Mary of Burgundy: A Book of Hours for Engelbert of Nassau. Introduction and Legends by J.J.G. Alexander (New York: George Braziller, 1970). Michael J. Walsh, “Joan of Aza,” A New Dictionary of Saints: East and West (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2007); The Golden Legend, trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).

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England and Burgundy are essentially identical in function, or, second, that they differ in important ways that affect what should be recorded. If the first is true, then we might deduce that Burgundian towns did not in fact have nuisance dogs in the troublesome numbers that English towns did; however, if the second proposition is true, then we would conclude that the regulatory function of these French registers differed from the English so that, perhaps, in Burgundian spaces problematic dogs were simply not considered significant enough to record. In their unambiguous status as “wild” animals, the wolf cubs provided a limit case that demanded inclusion in the records, whereas the butchers’ dogs did not. We would need a more thorough comparison between the urban recordkeeping texts of England and Burgundy to determine which of the two propositions is likely true, however, I lean toward the second, which would require an in-depth exploration of the mentalité of Burgundian town governments and their civic documentation.17 17

My study, Shapers of Urban Culture: The Bourgeoisie of Burgundy, 1400–1650, is ongoing and may provide some answers.

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Chapter 4

Dogs in Medieval Egyptian Sufi Literature Nathan Hofer People are pigs these days. If you see a dog, hold on to it, for it is much better than the people of our time.

Ibn al-Marzubān, The Book of the Superiority of Dogs over Many of Those Who Wear Clothes

⸪ There is a famous ḥadīth (a statement attributed to the prophet Muḥammad) in which the angel Gabriel tells Muḥammad that “angels will not enter a home in which there is a dog or an image.”1 This report nicely encapsulates the primary reasons that representations of dogs (Ar. kalb, pl. kilāb or aklub) are rather rare in the medieval Islamicate world. On one hand, dogs did not enjoy a particularly positive reputation in the culture and few Muslims devoted much time and energy to discussing them in any detail. The primary exceptions to this situation are legal treatises that deal with the ritual status of dogs (among a great many other topics), zoological treatises that treat the animal kingdom more broadly, and a handful of idiosyncratic texts that discuss dogs explicitly.2 The epigraph to this essay is taken from one of the most * My thanks to the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, which supported the research and writing of this work with a Kluge Fellowship in the fall and winter of 2014–15. I would also like to thank Leah Rosenberg and Omar Call, who read drafts of this essay and made invaluable suggestions for improvement. 1 This ḥadīth is in all the canonical collections. For references and analysis, see G.H.A. Juynboll, Encyclopedia of Canonical Ḥadīth (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 698. There is a variant that adds “or someone in a state of major ritual pollution” to the list of things that prevent angelic visitations to the home (ibid, 539). Yet another variant reads “Angels will never accompany a group of travelers in which there is a dog or in which there are bells” (ibid, 348). The bells could be a reference to Christians or to pre-Islamic practice. All translations from Arabic in this essay are mine unless otherwise noted. 2 On dogs in Islamic tradition in general, the surveys of F. Viré, “Kalb” in P.J. Bearman et al., eds., Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2007), and Mahmoud Omidsalar and

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004328617_006

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well-known such texts, which is both a work in praise of dogs and a humorous work of misanthropy. On the other hand, the limits of this small textual field are compounded by the supposedly widespread prohibition on pictorial representations of living beings rooted in this ḥadīth. While this prohibition is not so true for the Persianate and Turkic manuscript traditions, it is the case that images of animals and humans in medieval Arabic manuscripts are more rare. This is not to say that there are no pictures of dogs in Arabic manuscripts, but these are few and far between, typically limited to, again, certain literary and zoological treatises.3 In general, then, for representations of dogs from the medieval Arabophone world we have to look primarily in texts. One textual field that contains quite a large number of references to dogs is that of Sufi literature. Sufis, the so-called “mystics of Islam,” were particularly fond of using dogs in their texts to elucidate a variety of themes, doctrines, and praiseworthy characteristics. Specifically, Sufis rhetorically exploited the ritual and social ambiguity of dogs in the Islamicate world to illustrate and amplify key Sufi concepts. In this short essay I offer a brief overview of the sources of this ambiguity in the Islamic tradition before turning to several examples of dog narratives from medieval Egyptian Sufi literature. The negative reputation that dogs garnered in the later Islamic tradition is somewhat surprising given that the Qurʾān is actually quite dog-positive. It includes three references to dogs. The chronologically earliest of these is probably sūra 18, “The Cave,” in which verses 9–26 recount a version of the Teresa Omidsalar, “Dog (i. In Literature and Folklore),” in Encyclopaedia Iranica (London: Routledge, 1982 – present), vol. 7, 461–70, are very useful. For a broad survey of zoological treatises and of the topic of animals in Muslim art, see C. Pellat and J. Sourdel-Thomine, “Ḥayawān,” in P.J. Bearman et al., eds., Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition (Leiden: Brill, 1960– 2007). In addition to Ibn al-Marzubān (fl. tenth century), The Book of the Superiority of Dogs over Many of Those Who Wear Clothes, transl. and ed. by G.R. Smith and M.A.S. Abdel Haleem (Warminster, UK: Aris & Phillips, 1978), the Iraqi belle-lettrist al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 868) devotes much of the first two volumes of his zoological treatise to a debate between those who favor roosters and those who favor dogs. He presents the overwhelmingly convincing arguments of the partisans of dogs in the second volume of Kitāb al-ḥayawān, 8 vols., ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn (Cairo: Maktabat Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1965–1969). See also a somewhat later, wonderful zoological treatise by Kamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Damīrī (d. 1308), Ḥayāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, 4 vols., ed. Ibrāhīm Ṣāliḥ (Damascus: Dār al-Bashāʾir, 2005), in which the author devotes nearly one hundred pages to dogs (3:586–681). 3 See, for example, Anna Contadini’s fascinating study A World of Beasts: A Thirteenth-Century Illustrated Arabic Book on Animals (the Kitāb Naʿt al-Ḥayawān) in the Ibn Bakhtīshūʿ Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2012), which contains a large number of full-color plates from the Kitāb Naʿt al-Ḥayawān in the British Library (ms. Or. 2784). Unfortunately, the folio containing an illustration of the dog is missing from this manuscript (see pp. 22 and 27).

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widespread ancient near-eastern story of the seven sleepers of Ephesus.4 Here we are told that while the young companions slept soundly, “their dog stretched out its legs across the entrance [of the cave]” (Q 18:18), presumably protecting the sleepers from intruders. The exegetical expansions on this verse are quite extensive, some going so far as to speculate on the name and religion of the dog and the possibility that it was actually a human in dog guise, with some exegetes even suggesting that it will be one of only three individual animals to enter Paradise.5 Another early Qurʾānic reference to dogs is sūra 7, “The Heights,” which says, “[The unbeliever] is like a dog. If you attack it it lolls out its tongue. And if you leave it alone it lolls out its tongue” (Q 7:176).6 The point here is not that dogs are evil or problematic, but rather that they are intellectually and emotionally indifferent to human behavior. Likewise, unbelievers are indifferent to the truth and superiority of the Qurʾānic message. Finally, in the only verse that we might categorize as legally relevant to our subject, we have the statement in sūra 5, “The Meal,” that wild game caught by “trained hunting dogs” is licit and therefore acceptable for Muslims to eat (Q 5:4).7 This legal position is echoed in another set of well-known ḥadīth, widely attested in the canonical collections: “If you send your trained dog [after game] and it kills it, you may eat it. But if [the dog] eats [some of the game], do not eat it because it hunted it for itself.”8 Likewise, we have something similar in the ḥadīth that Muhammad ordered that all the dogs of Medina be killed “except for dogs used for hunting and herding.”9 This last statement raises the fundamentally critical issue about dogs in nearly all the medieval Islamic sources: what is their ritual status? Game killed by trained dogs is obviously licit, but what of the dog itself? A Muslim should be ritually clean to perform the daily prayers and therefore the question of contact with potentially polluting agents is an important one. A number of ḥadīth address this question, and they generally agree that a dog’s saliva will 4 Both the Egyptian chronology and Nöldeke’s chronology agree that this sūra dates to the Meccan period and that it is number 69 in the order of revelation. On the seven sleepers in the Qurʾān, see Roberto Tottoli, “Men of the Cave,” in Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, 6 vols. ed. Jane McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2002–2006), vol. 3, 374–75. 5 See Bruce Fudge, “Dog,” in Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾan, vol. 1, 545–46. 6 This is a Meccan sūra, which the Egyptian chronology places at 39, while Nöldeke places it much later, at 87. 7 This is a very late Medinan sūra, which the Egyptian chronology places at 112 and Nöldeke at 114. 8 There are many variants of the ḥadīth, on which see Juynboll, Encyclopedia of Canonical Ḥadīth, 138, 411, 418, 535, and 687. 9 Ibid., 171, 309–10, 330, and 532–33.

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render things it comes into contact with ritually impure.10 Simultaneously, however, a few ḥadīth relate that a certain person (in some versions a man, in others, a woman) who gave a thirsty dog a drink would be rewarded eternally in Paradise.11 While the historicity of these ḥadīth concerning dogs is a separate issue from the legal questions they address, there is a striking ambivalence regarding dogs in this early literature. (The canonical collections date roughly to the ninth century.12) Not surprisingly, then, the subsequent medieval legal literature devotes much space to exploring in more detail the legal status of dogs, dog ownership, and contact with various kinds of dogs—domestic and wild.13 In general, with some notable exceptions, most jurists held that one might keep dogs for utilitarian purposes such as hunting, guarding, and herding, but direct contact, especially with saliva, renders a person ritually impure. (This alone should not be cause for alarm, however, as the basic act of sleep also renders a person ritually impure.) One of the most prolific legal scholars from the period I examine here, Aḥmad ibn Taymīya (d. 1328), succinctly surveys the variety of Sunnī opinions in a fatwā (legal opinion in response to a question) on just this subject: The scholars are divided into three opinions on dogs. The first is that dogs are ritually clean, even their saliva. This is the opinion of the Mālikī [school]. The second is that dogs are ritually unclean, even their hair. This is the opinion of the Shāfiʿī [school] as well as in one of the narratives of Aḥmad [ibn Ḥanbal]. The third is that its hair is clean but its saliva is unclean. This is the opinion of the Ḥanafī school and in the other narrative of Aḥmad [ibn Ḥanbal]. This is the most correct opinion.14

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14

Ibid., 362 and 532–33. Ibid., 354–55. For an historical analysis of ḥadīth in this regard, see Knut Vikør, “The Truth about Cats and Dogs: The Historicity of Early Islamic Law,” Hisorisk Tiddskrift (Oslo) 82 (2003): 1–17. For a review of this literature, see Khaled Abou-El Fadl, “Dogs in the Islamic Tradition,” in Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, 2 vols, ed. Bron Taylor and Jeffrey Kaplan (London: Thoemmes Continuum, 2005), 1:498–500. Aḥmad Ibn Taymīya, Majmūʿa fatāwa Shaykh al-Islām Aḥmad Ibn Taymīya, 37 vols., ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Aḥmad ibn Qāsim (Medina: Majmaʿ al-Malik Fahd li-Ṭibāʿat al-Muṣḥaf al-Sharīf, 2004), 1:530. See also the short edition and translation of an eighteenth-century treatise on the difference between the Shāfiʿī and Mālikī schools on this question, R.Y. Ebied and M.J.L. Young, “An Unpublished Legal Work on a Difference between the Shāfiʿites and Mālikites,” Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 8 (1977): 251–62.

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Ibn Taymīya was, obviously, a Ḥanbalī. The Shiʿite jurist al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī (d. 1325) writes in his survey of Shiʿite jurisprudence: “The dog and the pig are both unclean, body and saliva. All of our scholars [i.e. the Shiʿites] agree on this point.”15 While interesting, these debates shall not detain us here except to say that there is great flexibility in Islamic law on these issues and it is quite clear that in the medieval period dogs were a visible component of rural and urban landscapes across the Islamicate world. These urban dogs were likely used primarily as scavenger garbage collectors.16 As such, they could occasionally pose serious public health risks. In the autumn of 1294, for example, the governor of Damascus ordered that all of the dogs of the city be expelled and set guards at the gates to prevent them from reentering.17 Outbreaks of rabies were a real danger in these times and it is possible that it was for this reason the governor expelled the dogs.18 In general, then, dogs were a source of ritual and medical anxiety for many medieval Muslims. Nevertheless, they did have their uses, valued as loyal hunting companions in rural areas and indispensable garbage collectors in urban areas.19 And if al-Damīrī (d. 1308) is to be believed, dogs and dog parts were also important ingredients in the folk medicine of his day.20 15 16

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Al-Ḥasan ibn Yūsuf al-Ḥillī, Tadhkirat al-fuqahāʾ, 2 vols. (Qom: Muʾassasat Āl al-Bayt li-Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth, 1993–94), 1:66. For an interesting treatment of this point, see Catherine Pinguet, “Istanbul’s Street Dogs at the End of the Ottoman Empire,” in Animals and People in the Ottoman Empire, ed. Suraiya Faroqhi (Istanbul: Eren, 2010), 353–71. Ibn al-Jazarī, Tārīkh ḥawādith al-zamān wa-anbāʾihi wa-wafayāt al-akābir wa-l-aʿyān min abnāʾihi, 3 vols., ed. ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Salām Tadmurī (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣrīya, 1998), 1:208. Unfortunately, Ibn al-Jazarī does not tell us why the dogs were expelled; nor does Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya, 21 vols., ed. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī (Cairo: Dār Hajar, 1997), 17:667. Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī adds in his report of this event that the dogs were prevented from entering the city “for a couple of months or so, and then they came back in.” Tārīkh al-Islām, 53 vols., ed. ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Salām Tadmurī (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1987–2000), 52:33. Al-Damīrī discusses rabies, which he describes as “an illness similar to madness,” in Ḥayāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, 3:589–91. I should mention here the utterly fascinating article by M.J.S. Allen and G.R. Smith, “Some Notes on Hunting Techniques and Practices in the Arabian Peninsula” in Arabian Studies II, ed. R.B. Serjeant and R.L. Bidwell (Cambridge, UK: C. Hurst and Company, 1975), 108– 47, which goes into great detail about the history of hunting with dogs and falcons in the Arabian peninsula as well as a treatment of the topic in classical Islamic sources. Al-Damīrī’s recipes include: “If you attach the canine teeth [of a dog] to a person who suffers from a dog bite, they will relieve the pain [of the bite]. If you place them on an apparently jaundiced person it will benefit him. If a person carries a dog’s canine tooth,

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Dogs thus inhabited a conceptually liminal space in the Muslim imaginaire: necessary, but potentially unclean, friendly and loyal, but sometimes dangerous. This ambiguity rendered dogs a particularly salient metaphor for Sufi theorists and storytellers of all kinds. The literary dog indexes a variety of ideas and attitudes in medieval Sufi texts and thereby proves to be a fruitful entrée into Sufi mentalities.21 The authors of classical Sufi texts were fond of using dogs in their stories for several reasons. On one hand, as we have noted, dogs represented a semi-dangerous, unclean, or marginal entity in the urban landscape. By portraying Sufi masters associating with dogs in unusual ways, authors narratively subvert normative or expected behavior and thereby provide an elegant introduction to a particular idea or doctrine. There are many stories in which a Sufi’s kind gesture to a dog occasions the elaboration of a memorable teaching moment. Furthermore, the ego-self (al-nafs) is often likened to a dog because of the ego’s dangerously base animal instincts. In an early example from the Epistle on Sufism by Abū l-Qāsim al-Qushayrī (d. 1074), a Sufi questions a Christian hermit about his identity. The Christian denies being a hermit, explaining that he only lives by himself because “I am guarding a dog. My soul is a dog that bites people. I therefore have removed it from them, so that they be safe from it.”22 On the other hand, dogs were well-known for their loyalty and fidelity to their masters, even after maltreatment. Sufi authors drew on this trait to urge the same type of behavior for novice Sufis who ought to be completely devoted to God, despite seemingly arbitrary or undeserved hardship in life. Likewise, Sufi authors sometimes drew on stories about dogs to illustrate a particular Sufi theme or doctrine. In a section on altruism (al-īthār), for example, Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) includes the following narrative as a clear and admirable example of altruistic behavior:

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dogs will not bark at him. If you dry out a dog’s penis and attach it to your thigh it will improve sexual performance. One who suffers from intense colic should find a sleeping dog and urinate on it. The colic will be cured immediately and the dog will die. If you place a canine tooth on a person who talks in his sleep, he will be quiet. Dog’s milk when applied to hair will make it fall out. It will instantly cure a cough if you drink it with water. Dog’s urine applied to warts will make them fall off. Wine infused with the ticks of a dog will cause the person who drinks it to become drunk immediately. The hair of a jet-black dog will soothe an epileptic” (al-Damīrī, Ḥayāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, 3:676–77). Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, “Miracles des saints musulmans et règne animal” in Miracle et Karāma, ed. Denise Aigle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 577–606, treats this subject in terms of Sufi miracle stories involving domesticated animals in general. Abu ʾl-Qasim al-Qushayri, Al-Qushayri’s Epistle on Sufism, transl. Alexander Knysh (Reading, UK: Garnet Publishing, 2007), 122.

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One of the Sufis said: We were in Tarsus where we met with a group and set out for Bāb al-Jihād. A dog from the town followed us. When we arrived outside the gate, we found a dead animal. So we climbed up to a high place and sat down. But when that dog saw the dead animal it returned to the town and came back an hour later with about twenty dogs. The [first] dog came over to the corpse and sat facing it while the other dogs set upon [eating] it. They continued to eat while that dog sat and watched the corpse until it was nothing but bones. When the other dogs returned to town, the dog went over and ate what little was left on the bones and departed.23 It is worth noting here that early Sufis were not the only authors to find such rich discursive inspiration in canines. One famous example involves a trial between humans and animals before the king of the jinn in the Ismāʿīlī Epistles of the Brethren of Purity (tenth century). Here, the Brethren use the traits of dogs to criticize problematic human behaviors. In the dialogue of the trial, the jackal claims that dogs have reprehensibly betrayed their own kind (i.e., wild canines) by taking up with humans. The bear illuminates this charge further, explaining that dogs seek out humans because they share similar characteristics: With men they found food and drink that they relish and crave—and a greedy, covetous, ignoble, stingy nature like their own. The base qualities they found in men are all but unknown among carnivores. … [Dogs] are so greedy, gluttonous, and mean that they cannot allow a wild beast into a town or a village, lest it compete with them for something there.24 The unique characteristics of domesticated dogs thus provided medieval Muslim authors with a variety of multivalent signs with which to articulate their particular message. So while we may not have a large corpus of illustrated 23

24

Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, 4 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, n.d.), 3:258–9. Javad Nurbaksh has collected quite a large number of these kinds of dog stories drawn from Sufi literature in Persian, now available in English translation: Javad Nurbakhsh, Dogs from a Sufi Point of View, transl. Terry Graham (London: Khaniqahi-Nimatullahi Publications, 1989). Epistles of the Brethren of Purity: The Case of the Animals versus Man before the King of the Jinn. An Arabic Critical Edition and English Translation of Epistle 22, ed. and trans. Lenn E. Goodman and Richard McGregor (Oxford: Oxford University Press in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2009), 158 (English) and 96–97 (Arabic). Translation here is theirs.

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dogs in the art of manuscript illumination from the medieval Arabophone world, we do have a substantial corpus of dogs in the art of Arabic narrative, particularly Sufi narrative. In the space that remains I will discuss some of the less well-known of these narratives from medieval Egyptian Sufi circles. In addition to their genuinely entertaining content, these texts highlight the rich discursive potential of the dog given its ambiguous ritual and social status in the medieval Islamicate world. One of the finest texts in this respect is a lengthy treatise on Sufis and Sufism from Upper Egypt penned by Ibn Nūḥ al-Qūṣī (d. 1308).25 Ibn Nūḥ’s text, al-Waḥīd fī sulūk ahl al-tawḥīd (The Unique Guide Concerning the Comportment of the People of Unity) is a fascinating mixture of hagiographical and theoretical treatments, containing a great deal of unique material.26 Ibn Nūḥ’s text is a particularly entertaining example of the multiple ways in which Sufis deployed the trope of the dog to explicate certain Sufi ideas. As noted above, one of the Sufis’ favorite metaphors is the dangerous ego-self (al-nafs) as a dog that the Sufi strives to tame and subdue. In a lengthy exposition on this subject, Ibn Nūḥ likens the destructive impulses of the ego-self to dogs by masterfully redeploying the famous “image” ḥadīth within a metaphorical reading of the heart: Angels will not enter a home in which there is a dog or an image. So how are divine secrets and lordly manifestations supposed to dwell in one whose heart is imprisoned by the image of the self’s desires and the dogs of blameworthy characteristics? The impurity of earthly trash has imprinted in that person all manner of forms of satanic characteristics and the image that encompasses the image of the apostates. Within that 25

26

The most valuable sources on al-Qūṣī and his life are al-Udfuwī, al-Ṭāliʿ al-saʿīd al-jāmiʿ asmāʾ nujabāʾ al-ṣaʿīd, ed. Saʿd Muḥammad Ḥasan (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma li-l-Kitāb, 2001), 323–27; al-Ṣafadī, Aʿyān al-ʿaṣr wa-aʿwān al-naṣr, 6 vols., ed. ʿAlī Abū Zayd et al. (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1998), 3:111; al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt, 29 vols., ed. Aḥmad al-Arnaʼūṭ and Turkī Muṣṭafā (Beirut: Dār Iḥyā al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 2000), 19:20; al-Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-shāfiʿīya al-kubrā, 10 vols., ed. Maḥmūd Muḥammad al-Ṭanāḥī and ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Muḥammad al-Ḥulw (Cairo: ʿIsā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1964–1976), 10:87–88; Ibn alMulaqqin, Ṭabaqāt al-awliyāʾ, ed. Nūr al-Dīn Sharība (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānijī, 2006), 390–91; al-Maqrīzī, al-Sulūk li-maʿrifat duwal al-mulūk, 8 vols., ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīya, 1997), 2:427; al-ʿAsqalānī, al-Durar al-kāmina fī aʿyān al-miʾa al-thāmina (Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, 1993), 2:385-86; Ibn Taghrībirdī, al-Manhal al-ṣāfī wa-l-mustawfī baʿd al-wāfī, 12 vols., ed. Muḥammad Muḥammad Amīn et al. (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣrīya al-ʿĀmma li-l-Kitāb, 1984–2006), 7:311–12. I draw heavily on this text in my book The Popularisation of Sufism in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt, 1173–1325 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), 202–49.

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person barks the dog that stray dogs bark at. Satan overpowers him and makes him forget the remembrance of the Merciful.27 Like al-Qushayrī’s account of the Christian hermit cited above, Ibn Nūḥ describes the blameworthy characteristics of the ego-self as barking dogs, more vicious and dangerous than those stray dogs that bark at people in the streets. However, as in the case of al-Ghazālī, dogs could also be vehicles for miraculous or praiseworthy events. In one fantastic anecdote, one of Ibn Nūḥ’s Sufi masters, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Minūfī (d. 1303), told him that he once saw a flock grazing in Giza. One of the goats lifted its head and said, “There is no god but God!” This reminds al-Minūfī that he once had a similar experience with a dog: “One time when I was walking I saw one dog bite another dog. The dog who got bit turned to the first and said, ‘Fear God, the exalted!’”28 Stories like these are effective not only because of the miraculous elements that demonstrate God’s power, but also for the subversion of expectations in which a ritually impure animal is seen proclaiming divine power. This ambiguity and subversion lies at the heart of several stories that Ibn Nūḥ relates in al-Waḥīd. In these narratives, a dog’s association with the Sufis completely destabilizes its ritual impurity and liminality. One of these involves the patron saint of the Upper-Egyptian city of Qena, ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Qināʾī (d. 1196): “The congregational preacher of Fustat [Old Cairo], Ibn al-Qaṣtallānī, told me that Shaykh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz told him that Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, who is buried in Qena, told him that he once saw a dog and treated it with great respect. The people asked him about this and he said, ‘I saw a blue cord around his neck, the kind worn by Sufis.’”29 Ibn Nūḥ returns to this story many pages later, adding a moral gloss: Consider this remarkable master [i.e., al-Qināʾī] and his precise glance, in which he honored the dignity of the dog who wore the mark of the Sufis, despite [the dog’s] ritually impure characteristics that are considered to

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Al-Qūṣī, al-Waḥīd fī sulūk ahl al-tawḥīd, 2 vols. (Sayyida Zaynab Mosque, Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Markazīya li-l-Makhṭūṭāt al-Islāmīya, MS #3182), 1:16b–17a. On this still unpublished work, see Denis Gril, “Une source inédite pour l’histoire du taṣawwuf en Égypte au vii/xiiie siècle,” in Livre du centenaire, 1880–1980 (Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale du Caire, 1980), 441–508. Al-Qūṣī, al-Waḥīd, 1:29b. Al-Qūṣī, al-Waḥīd, 1:124a.

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require seven ritual washings,30 one of them with earth, and the fact that angels will not enter a home in which [there is a dog]. This is an amazing lesson from the gnostic leader who instructed the greats along the path of God. So how much more so if a human being is wearing the mark, and how much more so the poor man who has taken the name of poverty, and how much more so the Sufi devotee wearing the mark!31 In several instances, the ambiguity of the dog quite literally marks the social ambiguity of an individual who has lost his mind to the divine presence, a person known as a muwallah in Arabic.32 For Ibn Nūḥ, spending time in the liminal space of graveyards and feeding stray dogs are clear signs that an individual is a muwallah. For example, Ibn Nūḥ records that several of his companions had met with a certain Zayn al-Muwallah, a man from the city of Qūṣ who hung out in the cemetery and walked around completely naked begging for scraps of bread that he would then feed to local dogs. He adds, “I saw a muwallah named Shāfiʿ in Luxor who used to feed dogs and frequent the cemetery.”33 Another ambiguous figure, the mysterious Kurdish Sufi from Damascus, ʿAlī al-Kurdī (d. 1225), had spent some time in Upper Egypt during this period. Ibn Nūḥ reports on the authority of his teacher al-Minūfī that al-Kurdī was once in a small village in Yemen with some Sufis: The Sufis brought him some yoghurt and bread but he told his servant to feed it to the dogs. The Sufis said “Master ʿAlī, you are feeding our food to the dogs! Shouldn’t [that food] be for the Sufi?” He responded to them, “I did not criticize your food when you brought me something that does not 30

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This statement is based on some of the ḥadīth cited above in which the prophet declares that any vessel that comes into contact with the saliva of a dog must be washed seven times. Al-Qūṣī, al-Waḥīd, 1:152a–b. This story is also at the very end of the biography of al-Qināʾī in al-Shaʿrānī, al-Ṭabaqāt al-kubrā, 2 vols. (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-ʿĀmira al-Sharafīya, 1897), 1:135. In al-Nabhānī, Jāmiʿ karāmāt al-awliyāʾ, 2 vols., ed. Ibrāhīm ʿAṭwa ʿAwad (Gujarat: Markaz-e-Ahl-e-Sunnat Barakat-e-Raza, 2001), 2:165, we have an alternate version: “Once a dog passed by him, so he went up to it, and he was asked [why]. He said, I did it in honor of the mark (athr) of the mendicants. So they searched [it] and found a Sufi khirqa around its neck.” See also al-Munāwī, al-Kawākib al-durrīya fī l-tarājim al-sādat al-ṣūfīya, 6 vols., ed. Muḥammad Adīb al-Jādir (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1999), 2:264. On the muwallah and the similar term majdhūb (one “attracted” or “touched” by God), see Éric Geoffroy, “Hagiographie et typologie spirituelle,” in Saints orientaux, ed. D. Aigle and A. Vauchez (Paris: De Boccard, 1995), 83–98. Both anecdotes are on the same page. Al-Qūṣī, al-Waḥīd, 1:40b.

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actually belong to you. So I fed it to some of God’s creatures that are truly in need of it.”34 Feeding dogs here serves both to mark al-Kurdī as an unusual—and by extension saintly—figure while also subverting and critiquing the “regular” Sufis who wrongly believe the food belongs to them. While these stories represent rhetorically effective uses of dogs in service of Sufi ideals, Ibn Nūḥ’s most satisfying narrative—both pedagogically and literarily—occurs in the second volume of al-Waḥīd. The story begins as a simple illustration of the Sufi qualities of loyalty and fidelity, but quickly becomes much more. The narrative deploys a favorite literary device of classical Arabic tales: complexly nested stories such as those found in Kalīla wa-Dimna and the Thousand and One Nights. The following story can be difficult to follow in translation as the number of narrators multiplies. I have therefore attempted to smooth out the narrative and indicate the identity of the speaker as much as possible. The story begins in Ibn Nūḥ’s own words: And it can happen that the qualities of loyalty (muḥāfaẓa) and fidelity (wafā) will appear in dogs … Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-Baghdādī al-Mustanṣirī told me, “Before the Caliph bought me I used to work in commerce and my master was a merchant.” One day [Bahāʾ al-Dīn] went to a person in order to buy or sell something: [Bahāʾ al-Dīn]: I found him sitting on a mattress and sitting next to him was a dog wearing human clothing. [Ibn Nūḥ]: I think he said it was silk or broadcloth. [Bahāʾ al-Dīn]: The man brought out some food and then said we should pray. I said to him “I absolutely can not eat until you tell me what is up with that [dressed-up] dog and why it is sitting with you on your mattress!” He said that the story is amazing and [the dog] deserves even more [than it enjoys in its present condition, dressed in clothing and resting on the mattress], or words to that effect. So I said, “What’s the story?” and he related the following. 34

Al-Qūṣī, al-Waḥīd, 1:98a.

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[Merchant]: I had a niece whom I loved and had married. I had gone out hunting when suddenly I came upon the Mongol army who had taken Aleppo.35 They did not attack us, but they had ransacked the city and taken my wife, for when I arrived [home] I could not find her. I was completely agitated. I could not sit still, sleep, eat, or drink. So I put on the clothing of the Mongols and set out to find their army. I spoke their language and I had this dog with me. One night I found the army that had taken Aleppo. So I stopped my horse, put the dog atop [the horse], and took off my clothes. I remained naked, like dogs are, and I searched tent by tent. If I came across a tent rope, I would jump it as a dog jumps, until I finally found [my wife] sitting in a tent. A beautiful young man was sleeping with his head on her lap; there was a candle near his head and a candle near his legs. I approached from behind the tent flap and when I opened it she saw me and called out, “Why are you here? By God if you don’t leave you will startle him and he will kill you.” I wept and said, “Your love brought me here! I just wanted to see you!” [Bahāʾ al-Dīn]: Then [the merchant] began to implore [his wife] asking that she meet him behind the tent so he could kiss her and convince her to return [home]. He went on [begging her] like this until she felt sorry for him and went outside. [Once they were outside], he spoke to her: [Merchant]: “I ask you, by God, to put your tongue in my mouth.” And she did it! When her tongue entered my mouth I clamped down on it with my teeth and grabbed her. I carried her off beyond the tents and placed her behind me on the horse, tying something around both our waists to keep us connected. I avoided the [main] road and rode all night. I traveled as fast as possible until sunrise the next morning, with the dog following us the whole way. I said, “Let’s stop here and rest a bit. There is no way anyone could have followed us or known the way we took.” So I lay down and fell asleep and she fell asleep as well. The next thing I knew the dog was biting my finger to wake me up. I awoke to find that Mongol standing over me about to strike my head with his sword. So I stood up, all confused from sleep, and threw myself against him. He threw me down and sat on my chest. [My wife] got up and said to [the Mongol], “Kill him!” But when he drew his knife to kill me, bending forward over my chest, the dog 35

The Mongols sacked Aleppo in 1260 and again in 1299. See Reuven Amitai, “Mongol Raids into Palestine (A.D. 1260 and 1300),” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, n.s. 119 (1987): 236– 55.

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attacked him from behind, chomped onto his balls, and threw him off me and onto his back. Then I got up and grabbed the sword or the knife and slit his throat and then slit the other one’s throat next to him [i.e., his wife]. [Bahāʾ al-Dīn]: Now the reason that the Mongol had been able to follow them and learn their route is that the woman was wearing a silk robe and she was ripping pieces of it off and leaving them along the route for [the Mongol] to track them. [Ibn Nūḥ]: So, may God have mercy on you, consider this story carefully for the way it combines determination, stratagems, the power of resolve, the loyalty of the dog and the corruption of the wife. Truly no thinking person would trust [women] except for the most righteous ones.36 What began as an illustration of the Sufi qualities of loyalty and fidelity exhibited in a dog has become a cautionary tale about a wife’s fickle affections. In this case, the merchant’s dog is more loyal and trustworthy than his wife. Even more, the dog saved his life from the wife’s Mongol lover. This is why when Bahāʾ al-Dīn first encounters the merchant narrator in his shop the dog has quite literally assumed his wife’s place. Man and dog are relaxing together on the mattress and the dog is dressed in what I assume to be the former wife’s finest silk dress. So much for Ibn Nūḥ. Another of the less well-known Sufis from Mamluk Egypt was Yūsuf al-Kūrānī, also known as Yūsuf al-ʿAjamī (d. 1367).37 Al-Kūrānī was originally from the vicinity of Isfarāyin, in present-day northwest Iran, not far from Turkmenistan. According to his biographers, al-Kūrānī came to Egypt after a divine impulse (wārid al-ḥaqq) compelled him to leave his native Iran. After arriving in Egypt, al-Kūrānī quickly established a reputation as a miracle worker, ascetic, and master trainer of novice Sufis. He built a zāwiya (Sufi lodge) in the Qarāfa cemetery in Cairo, wherein he trained his novices and 36 37

Al-Qūṣī, al-Waḥīd, 2:46a–b. The medieval sources on al-Kūrānī are al-ʿAsqalānī, al-Durar al-kāmina, 4:463; Ibn alMulaqqin, Ṭabaqāt al-awliyāʾ, 427–28; al-Maqrīzī, al-Sulūk, 4:310; al-Sakhāwī, Tuḥfat al-aḥbāb wa-bughyat al-ṭullāb fī l-khiṭaṭ wa-l-muzārāt wa-l-tarājim wa-l-baqāʿ wa-lmubārakāt (Cairo: Maktabat al-Kullīyāt al-Azharīya, 1986), 357; Ibn Taghrībirdī, al-Nujūm al-zāhira, 11: 75–76; al-Suyūṭī, Ḥusn al-muḥāḍara fī tārīkh miṣr wa-l-qāhira, 2 vols., ed. Muḥammad Abū l-Faḍl Ibrāhīm (Cairo: ʿĪsā l-Bābī l-Ḥalabī, 1967), 1:526; al-Shaʿrānī, al-Ṭabaqāt al-kubrā, 2:60–61; al-Munāwī, al-Kawākib al-durrīya, 3:108–112; and al-Nabhānī, Jāmiʿ karāmāt al-awliyāʾ, 2:534–36.

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from which his reputation spread, even attracting Jewish adherents.38 One of the devotional exercises for which al-Kūrānī was famous was khalwa, a Sufi technique in which devotees isolate themselves in small cells to engage in prayer and the ritual invocation of God’s name. A number of medieval sources maintain that upon leaving the khalwa cell, al-Kūrānī was extraordinarily powerful. After up to forty days in isolated communion with the divine presence, he was at the height of his Sufi powers. And because he was particularly gifted at training others in the Sufi path, this ability became even more pronounced after the practice of khalwa. Thus, we have the following account: Whenever [al-Kūrānī] emerged from the khalwa cell his eyes were like burning embers and anything that his gaze fell upon would be transmuted into a pure vessel. One day his gaze fell upon a dog and all the other dogs started to follow it around. If it stopped, they stopped. If it walked, they walked. The people told [al-Kūrānī about this], so he went after the dog and said, “Shoo!” But all the dogs turned on [al-Kūrānī] and bit him; he was forced to flee. Another time he exited the forty-day khalwa and his gaze fell upon a dog. All the other dogs started following it around, while people rushed to that dog so that it might grant their wishes. When the dog became ill all the dogs gathered around it, weeping and displaying their sadness for it. When it died those dogs really cried and lamented, so God inspired some people to bury it. The dogs visited the grave until they themselves died. So if [al-Kūrānī’s] gazing upon that dog did what it did, imagine what it would do when it fell upon a human!39 There are a few points worth making about this story. First, the story clearly relies for its narrative punch on the ambiguous social and ritual status of dogs in medieval Egypt. Those who tell the story are emphasizing that al-Kūrānī’s power was so great after his time in the cell that he could turn even dogs into Sufi masters. These canine Sufis even had dog devotees who followed them around in life and made pilgrimage to their graves after death, just as human

38 39

S.D. Goitein, “A Jewish Addict to Sufism in the Time of the Nagid David II Maimonides,” Jewish Quarterly Review 44 (1953): 37–49. This account is found in al-Shaʿrānī, Ṭabaqāt, 2:59; al-Munāwī, al-Kawākib, 3:111; and al-Nabhānī, Jāmiʿ, 2:535. These versions are mostly in agreement; I have followed al-Munāwī in some of the minor details as his version is the clearest and most complete.

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Sufis do with their masters. Even more intriguingly, this idea of the dog as Sufi master may be connected with a strikingly similar tradition in central Asia. I have to wonder if it is possible that since al-Kūrānī was originally from Isfarāyin, and that he was known for his pedagogy, his practice of khalwa, and the power of his gaze, that he might be linked in some way to the central Asian tradition of Kubrawī Sufism. Najm al-Dīn Kubrā (d. 1220) was from Khwārazm and trained a large number of Sufi masters.40 Because of his reputation for training other masters he was known in the Persian hagiographical tradition as valī tarāsh—“the saint-maker.” A substantial portion of this tradition was built upon Kubrā’s miraculous ability merely to gaze upon a person and turn him or her into a saint. Furthermore, Najm al-Dīn Kubrā was famous for his practice of khalwa. Indeed, his treatise Fawāʾiḥ al-jamāl wa-fawātiḥ al-jalāl (The Fragrances of Beauty and the Disclosures of Majesty) is a fascinating diary of his visionary experiences in the cell.41 I mention this because Devin DeWeese has written about a tradition of dog saints and dog shrines in Central Asia connected to the Kubrawī Sufis.42 In point of fact, one of the medieval Persian hagiographers, Jāmī (d. 1492), includes a story in which Kubrā gazes at a dog and turns it into a saint. This dog saint then goes out and gathers a number of dog followers around it. When the dog dies, Kubrā has it buried and they build a shrine for it.43 Like the story of Yūsuf al-Kūrānī and the canine saint, DeWeese argues that even later accounts that interpret these events in a negative vein agree on the basic moral point of the story: that Kubrā’s gaze is so powerful that it “turns even a dog into a saint.”44 Without positing any undue historical link between Najm al-Dīn Kubrā and al-Kūrānī, I think the connection is worth considering. The ability to create saints merely by means of a gaze, even when that gaze is directed at a dog, is 40

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For an accessible overview of Najm al-Dīn Kubrā and the Kubrawīya, see Hamid Algar, “Kubrā,” in P.J. Bearman et al., eds., Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2007). Fritz Meier, Die Fawāʾiḥ al-jamāl wa-fawātiḥ al-jalāl des Naǧm al-Dīn al-Kubrā (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1957). Devin DeWeese, “Dog Saints and Dog Shrines in Kubravī Tradition: Notes on a Hagiographical Motif from Khwārazm,” in Miracle et Karāma: Hagiographies médiévales comparées, ed. Denise Aigle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 459–97. See also his “Aḥmad Yasavī and the Dog-Men: Narratives of Hero and Saint at the Frontier of Orality and Textuality,” in Theoretical Approaches to the Transmission and Edition of Oriental Manuscripts: Proceedings of a Symposium Held in Istanbul, March 28–30, 2001, ed. Judith Pfeiffer and Manfred Kropp (Beirut: Orient-Institut/Würzburg: Ergon-Verlag, 2007), 147–73. DeWeese, “Dog Saints,” 464. DeWeese, “Dog Saints,” 465.

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remarkable in both hagiographical traditions—Central Asian and Egyptian. In both traditions the two Sufis are famous for their pedagogy and the practice of khalwa. Is it possible that al-Kūrānī, a Persian-speaking Sufi from the region of Isfarāyin, a region at the center of the Kubrawī movement in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, brought these dog saint traditions to Egypt with him? Two major Kubrawī masters were from al-Kūrānī’s home region and lived a couple of generations before him: Nūr al-Dīn al-Isfarāyinī (d. 1317) and his student ʿAlā al-Dawla al-Simnānī (d. 1336).45 Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to determine whether one of al-Kūrānī’s teachers was linked to al-Simnānī or another of the Kubrawī masters of Isfarāyin.46 Alternatively, and perhaps more likely, early-Ottoman Egyptian hagiographers such as the aforementioned al-Shaʿrānī and al-Munāwī linked the dog saint traditions associated with central Asian Sufi masters to al-Kūrānī because of his natal links to that region. Nevertheless, even if there is no historical or literary connection between the two traditions, the larger point of comparison is important. Because of their ritual and social ambiguity in Islamic life, dogs furnished many Sufi authors with the rich imaginative material with which they constructed Sufi narratives. Thus, even a ritually impure dog could be transmuted into a saintly vessel by a powerful Sufi master. It is precisely because of the dog’s ambiguous status in the Islamic tradition that they were able to play a critical rhetorical role as the unexpected recipients of saintly power in these texts. 45

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On al-Isfarāyinī, see Hermann Landolt, Le Révélateur des mystères = Kâshif al-asrâr (Lagrasse: Verdier, 1986). On al-Simnānī, see Jamal Elias, The Throne Carrier of God: The Life and Thought of ʿAlāʾ ad-Dawla as-Simnānī (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995). The biographical and hagiographical literature on al-Kūrānī record several of his Sufi teachers from Isfarāyin, but unfortunately I have not been able to find any of these men in the sources.

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Dogs in Medieval Egyptian Sufi Literature

Part 2 Signs, Symbols and Dogs

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Chapter 5

Fables, Bestiaries, and the Bayeux Embroidery: Man’s Best Friend Meets the “Animal Turn” Elizabeth Carson Pastan Scholarship on animals from the last several decades provides a stimulating point of departure for evaluating the representations of dogs on the Bayeux Embroidery. In particular the interdisciplinary body of work known as the Animal Turn, which examines relationships between humans and other animals under new premises, challenges us to reassess the way we think about our fellow creatures.1 Although the concerns of animal studies may seem far removed from the eleventh-century textile that is my focus, I will argue that the Bayeux Embroidery’s imagery reflects thinking about animals and thinking with animals that is congruous to issues of the Animal Turn. Indeed, the Bayeux Embroidery does not merely depict the traditional world of kings and warriors, as it might appear at first on this pictorial narrative of the Norman Conquest of England of 1066, but it is a realm also enlivened by priapic stallions, belittling birds, bear-baiting, and dogs chafing at their collars.

The Animal Turn

At its core, the Animal Turn is a problematizing of the relationship between humans and animals. It seeks to redraw or dissolve the traditional boundary between the human and animal realms, contesting the Judeo-Christian notion * I thank the following friends and fellow dog-lovers for their kindness, assistance, and insight: Robin Fleming, Laura Gelfand, Kate Gilbert, Frank Jackson, Janice Mann, Kelin Michaels, Vibeke Olson, Carson Pastan, and Daniel Pastan. And of course my rescue puppy, Brandon. 1 See the Introduction and useful selection of articles assembled in Peter Singer, ed., In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2006). Among other recent studies in this field, with further bibliography, see Marianne DeKoven, “Why Animals Now?” PMLA 124 (2009): 361–69; Bruce Holsinger, “Of Pigs and Parchment: Medieval Studies and the Coming of the Animal,” PMLA 124 (2009): 616–23; Kari Weil, “Report on the Animal Turn,” Differences 21 (2010): 1–23; Cary Wolfe, “Moving Forward, Kicking Back: The Animal Turn,” Postmedieval 2 (2011): 1–12; and Sarah Stanbury, “Posthumanist Theory and the Premodern Animal Sign,” Postmedieval 2 (2011): 101–14.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004328617_007

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of man’s preferential status as the only creature made in God’s image and likeness, and its corollary that the animal and vegetal realms were created for his use.2 Instead, scholars associated with the Animal Turn view the relationship between human and animal as one of “massive interdependence.”3 This newer scholarship marks a profound shift from perceiving the animal’s primary role as helpmeet—regardless of how mutually beneficial that relationship might be portrayed—to fully embracing animals as coinhabitants of our planet. Such a reappraisal is reflected in master animal trainer and theorist Vicki Hearne’s description of the relationship between owner and pet as one that reaffirms the “personhood” of each.4 Nonetheless, difficulties arise when the conventional dichotomy between humans and other animals is eliminated.5 A case in point is Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s analysis of humanity’s ambivalence in truly accepting other creatures, which she compares to difficult relatives. As she memorably observes, The problem of our kinship to other animals mirrors that of our relation to other problematic beings: for example, the unborn, the mentally disabled, the drunk or the terminally comatose—beings, that is, who are recognizably our own kind but not yet, not quite, not just now, or no longer what we readily think of as what we ourselves are.6 We will return to Smith’s theme of our ambivalent relations with other animals, which will be used to structure this investigation of the images of dogs on the Bayeux Embroidery. Undeniably, the conveniences of modern life have permanently altered relations between humans and animals. As John Berger pointed out, “Countless productive inventions were necessary before animals could be marginalized:

2 See Jeremy Cohen, “Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It”: The Ancient and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989); Jan M. Ziolkowski, Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750–1150 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 32–35, arguing that there was no single medieval Christian view of animals; and Joyce E. Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2013), 1–2, who suggests that while early Christians maintained a strict divide between humans and animals, people in the later Middle Ages tended to blur this boundary. 3 DeKoven, “Why Animals Now?” 366. 4 Vicki Hearne, Adam’s Task: Calling Animals by Name (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), 25. 5 Harriet Ritvo, “On the Animal Turn,” Dædalus 136 (2007): 118–22, esp. 121. 6 Barbara Herrnstein Smith, “Animal Relatives, Difficult Relations,” Differences 15 (2004): 1–23 at 1.

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the railway, electricity, the conveyor belt, the canning industry, the motor car and chemical fertilizers.”7 Many would agree with Berger that modern culture has isolated animals in peculiar and artificial ways, fetishizing them as the pets that complete us, trapping them as specimens in zoos, and worse. In the same vein, David Peterson del Mar plumbed 1950s’ issues of Reader’s Digest, the magazine known for its “common touch,” to gauge popular beliefs about animals.8 Unsurprisingly, the dog was featured more than any other animal, appearing in about one in every four issues,9 where the dog’s chief virtue for Digest readers was its love for its owner. Peterson del Mar persuasively correlated the magazine’s focus on dogs to the increasing estrangement of modern suburban Americans from one another.10 But if scholarship associated with the Animal Turn was provoked by the treatment of animals in modern life, medievalists have nonetheless been vital contributors and participants. Peggy McCracken and Karl Steel articulate three chief points of difference between medieval scholarship of the Animal Turn and previous medieval work on animals, saying that the former is distinguished first, by its methodological interaction and conversation with leadingedge posthuman philosophical and ethical studies …; second, by its interest in animals, not as walking allegory or mere tools, but as creatures sharing a material and discursive world in a variety of ways with the human animal; finally, by its interest in humans themselves as animals, which necessitates an investigation of the practices that attempted— and still attempt—to cordon humans apart from all other life.11 Susan Crane’s analysis of the medieval hunt is a case in point.12 As she notes, the medieval hunt à force made use of dogs’ natural abilities in tracking other 7 8 9 10 11

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John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?” in idem, About Looking (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 1–26, at 10. David Peterson del Mar, “‘Our Animal Friends’: Depictions of Animals in Reader’s Digest during the 1950s,” Environmental History 3 (1998): 225–44. Peterson del Mar, “Animal Friends,” 27. Peterson del Mar, “Animal Friends,” 37–39. Peggy McCracken and Karl Steel, eds., “The Animal Turn,” issue summary for Postmedieval 2 (2011) in the journal archives, . Susan Crane, “Ritual Aspects of the Hunt à Force,” in Barbara A. Hanawalt and Lisa J. Kiser, eds., Engaging with Nature: Essays on the Natural World in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 63–84. For other examples, see Esther Cohen, “Animals in Medieval Perceptions: The Image of the Ubiquitous

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creatures, but from a purely practical perspective there were many more efficient means of capturing game, including traps, snares, and nets.13 Crane argues that the hunt was structured as a ritual “so as to assert and act out the rightness of aristocratic domination in the human social hierarchy, and the completeness as well of human control over animals.”14 Rather than simply describe and thereby reify the mechanisms of the medieval hunt, Crane seeks to uncover the hunt’s role in expressing the nobility’s dominance over other creatures, both non-noble and animal. Yet, as this example suggests, the incorporation of dogs into elite hunting rituals and as household familiars conferred on them a special status.15 Unlike stags or horses, medieval dogs were never primarily valued as food or for portage. Within the discussion of humanity’s relations with other creatures, the assessment of dogs poses peculiar challenges because dogs have traditionally lived in close proximity to men, and are often treated as “humanized animals.”16 As a result, attitudes to the creature known as “man’s best friend” can be weirdly disjointed: then as now, the dog was a creature people both cultivated and sought to distinguish themselves from. James Jordan’s account of attitudes to dogs within a traditional rural community in modern-day Georgia elaborates: On the one hand, the dog is highly esteemed for his various abilities in hunting, tracking, guarding and providing companionship and trustworthy fidelity. On the other hand the dog is used as a low-status marker within the same cultural context: to label a human a dog, to suggest that

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Other,” in Aubrey Manning and James Serpell, eds., Animals and Human Society: Changing Perspectives (Hoboken, NJ: Taylor and Francis, 2002), 59–80; and Peggy McCracken, “Nursing Animals and Cross-Species Intimacy,” in E. Jane Burns and Peggy McCracken, eds., From Beasts to Souls: Gender and Embodiment in Medieval Europe (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), 39–64. Crane, “Ritual Aspects of the Hunt,” 65. Crane, “Ritual Aspects of the Hunt,” 79. For medieval perspectives on the special status of dogs, see Dorothy Yamamoto, The Boundaries of the Human in Medieval English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 115–23. See Cary Wolfe, Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 100–02, for his notion of a “species grid” with animalized animals, humanized animals, animalized humans, and humanized humans.

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a human is the offspring of a female dog, or to liken a human as being in any way similar to a dog is to insult the human deeply.17 As James Serpell concluded, “The dog is treated as though it is useful and useless; the dog is referred to as symbolically valuable and worthless; the dog is employed as a standard of excellence and of baseness.”18 Fundamentally, as Jordan and Serpell point out, many animal studies are less about the treatment of animals (though that may certainly play a part in some considerations) than about how we view ourselves in relation to our fellow creatures. As Jeffrey Jerome Cohen put it, “Animals are the vehicles through which desires for a differently configured (if obdurately anthropocentric) world are expressed.”19 We move now from the wide-ranging considerations of the Animal Turn literature to the pictorial narrative of a specific example, to bring both visual evidence and a particular historical moment—the Bayeux Embroidery’s account of the Norman Conquest of 1066—into focus. To do so I will borrow from two themes suggested by Smith in developing her notion of humanity’s ambivalent kinship with other creatures. First, she raised the issue of our ethical taxonomy of the animal kingdom, demanding to know why we care so much for dogs, cats, and horses, but not birds, snakes, and butterflies. She also examined our imaginative intimacy with animals, particularly the non-working creatures, or pets, of our choosing. As we shall see, both of Smith’s themes—our taxonomy of the animal kingdom and our projected intimacy with certain creatures—are at play in the representations of dogs on the Bayeux Embroidery (Figs. 5.1–5.6).

Down on the Bayeux

The Bayeux Embroidery, a hanging only twenty inches high and now almost 225 feet in length—originally even longer—features the contest for the crown of England between Earl Harold Godwinson (Fig. 5.1), the aging monarch’s brother-in-law, and Duke William of Normandy (Fig. 5.4), a cousin of the 17

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Quoted in James Serpell, “From Paragon to Pariah: Some Reflections on Attitudes to Dogs” in James Serpell, ed., The Domestic Dog: Its Evolution, Behavior, and Interactions with People (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 245–56 at 248. Serpell, “From Paragon to Pariah,” 248. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Inventing with Animals in the Middle Ages,” in Barbara A. Hanawalt and Lisa J. Kiser, eds., Engaging with Nature: Essays on the Natural World in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 39–62 at 40.

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childless king.20 The medieval textile is replete with animals, as almost any view reveals (Figs. 5.1–5.6). Among the 738 zoomorphic forms stitched in colored wool on the textile,21 birds appear 217 times,22 horses 184 times, and dogs somewhere between twenty-four and fifty-five times.23 When the zoologist Brunsdon Yapp considered the depiction of animals in the Bayeux Embroidery in 1987, he could state with confidence that no previous writer on the textile had dealt with the animals qua animals more than incidentally.24 Following Sarah Larratt Keefer’s study of the representation of horses on the textile and Gale Owen-Crocker’s examination of the ways the birds are shown, however, the animals are now understood as active participants in the narrative of the Norman Conquest. Keefer, for example, persuasively demonstrated that the gendering of the horses provides a commentary on 20

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The Bayeux Embroidery has a vast literature, which can only be cited selectively. Shirley Ann Brown, The Bayeux Tapestry, Bayeux Médiathèque Municipale: MS 1, A Sourcebook, Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin 9 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) includes an annotated bibliography that offers a fine orientation to the textile. For color reproductions, see David M. Wilson, The Bayeux Tapestry: The Complete Tapestry in Colour (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985); for convenience of consultation, episodes will be identified throughout this study according to their plate number in Wilson, as scenes W1–73. For context and analysis, see Elizabeth Carson Pastan and Stephen D. White, with Kate Gilbert, The Bayeux Tapestry and Its Contexts: A Reassessment (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2014). See Michael John Lewis, The Archaeological Authority of the Bayeux Tapestry, BAR British Series 404 (Oxford: John and Erica Hedges, Ltd., 2005), 89 and 94–95 for his statistics; and see his plates following p. 267, where he has numbered each of the elements in the embroidery, including figures, buildings, ships, animals, vegetation, and trees. Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Squawk Talk: Commentary by Birds in the Bayeux Tapestry?” Anglo-Saxon England 34 (2005): 237–54, where on p. 240 she gives this revised figure for the number of birds. The calculation of the number of dogs is made difficult by the fact that it is sometimes impossible to tell the difference between the stitched renderings of foxes, wolves, and dogs. W. Brunsdon Yapp, “Animals in Medieval Art: The Bayeux Tapestry as an Example,” Journal of Medieval History 13 (1987): 15–73 at p. 47 notes that it is often only the context that allows one to distinguish among various creatures. For the numbers of dogs, see George Wingfield Digby, “Technique and Production,” in Frank M. Stenton, ed., The Bayeux Tapestry: A Comprehensive Survey, 2nd rev. ed. (London: Phaidon Press, 1965), 35–55 at 42, who counts thirty-five representations of dogs; Simone Bertrand, La tapisserie de ­Bayeux et la manière de vivre au onzième siècle (La Pierre-qui-Vire: Zodiaque, 1966), 32, who counts fifty-five; and Lewis, Archaeological Authority, 94–95, who gives the low figure of twenty-four dogs, partly because he does not recognize them in the fable of Mother Dog and Puppies (Fig. 2) or in the image of Edward’s dog (Fig. 6), both discussed below. Yapp, “Animals in Medieval Art,” 24.

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Figure 5.1 Detail from the Bayeux Embroidery –11th century: Earl Harold, holding a falcon in his left hand, rides with his soldiers and hounds to Bosham, scene W2 (photo: Centre Guillaume le Conquérant, With Special Permission from the City of Bayeux, France).

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Figure 5.2 Detail from the Bayeux Embroidery –11th century: carrying oars, hounds and a falcon, Harold and his men set out to sea, with the Aesopic fables of Fox and Crow, Wolf and Lamb, and Mother Dog and Puppies shown in the lower border, scene W4 (photo: Centre Guillaume le Conquérant, With Special Permission from the City of Bayeux, France).

Figure 5.3 Detail from the Bayeux Embroidery –11th century: Duke William’s messengers gallop to the left, with a scene of bear-baiting shown in the lower border, scene W12 (photo: Centre Guillaume le Conquérant, With Special Permission from the City of Bayeux, France).

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Figure 5.4 Detail from the Bayeux Embroidery –11th century: the messengers come to Duke William, who is seated near a stone building for his first appearance on the embroidery, with the fable of Stag and Spring shown in the lower border, scene W13 (photo: Centre Guillaume le Conquérant, With Special Permission from the City of Bayeux, France).

Figure 5.5 Detail from the Bayeux Embroidery –11th century: Duke William travels to his palace with Harold, in the last appearance of the falcon and hounds from England, scene W16 (photo: Centre Guillaume le Conquérant, With Special Permission from the City of Bayeux, France).

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Figure 5.6 Detail from the Bayeux Embroidery –11th century: the body of King Edward is carried to Westminster Abbey in a procession with acolytes carrying bells, clerics singing and holding books, and a howling dog, scenes W29-30 (photo: Centre Guillaume le Conquérant, With Special Permission from the City of Bayeux, France).

the human characters—Duke William of Normandy is frequently astride an unmistakably priapic stallion (Fig. 5.5), while a mule serves as the mount of a marginalized character.25 For her part, Owen-Crocker showed that the birds on the embroidery are not depicted with any ornithological specificity, but rather are rendered with what she termed an “ironic anthropomorphism,” manifested 25

Bayeux Embroidery, W14. Sarah Larratt Keefer, “Body Language: A Graphic Commentary by the Horses of the Bayeux Tapestry,” in Gale R. Owen-Crocker, ed., King Harold II and the Bayeux Tapestry (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2005), 93–108.

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in the ways the birds mimic the human activities in the central field.26 The work of Keefer and Owen-Crocker invites further inquiry into how animals are represented on the Bayeux Embroidery and serves as an underpinning of this study of the depiction of dogs on the textile.

The Textile’s Taxonomies

In taking up Smith’s first theme, humanity’s arbitrary taxonomy of animals, it is immediately apparent that the Bayeux Embroidery’s overall organization offers its own particular way of categorizing living creatures.27 The animals are a “co-presence” that ornament, inhabit, enable, and satirize the events surrounding the Norman invasion of England.28 In fact, one of the things that makes the depiction of the Battle of Hastings in the final third of the textile so horrific is that familiar elements such as the dogs, trees, and buildings found throughout earlier portions of the narrative, which offer a reassuring sense of mundane reality and locale, are no longer present.29 Also reflecting the peculiar taxonomy of this textile is the fact that women are largely offstage: the representation of Queen Edith mourning the dying king is one of only six depictions of women among the 627 humans on the Bayeux Embroidery, and one of only three clothed representations of women, all of them identified with the English.30 As we shall see, the dogs fare better than the women do in several key regards. 26 27

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Owen-Crocker, “Squawk Talk,” 239. For another medieval taxonomic system, see Paul H. Freedman, “The Representation of Medieval Peasants as Bestial and as Human,” in Angela N.H. Creager and William Chester Jordan, eds., The Animal/Human Boundary: Historical Perspectives (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2002), 29–49. For an amusing example of modern taxonomies involving dogs, see Meisha Rosenberg, “Golden Retrievers Are White, Pit Bulls Are Black, and Chihuahuas Are Hispanic: Representations of Breeds of Dog and Issues of Race in Popular Culture,” in Linda Kalof and Georgina M. Montgomery, eds., Making Animal Meaning (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2011), 113–25. “Co-presence” is a term coined in Donna J. Haraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), and quoted in Stanbury, “Posthumanist Theory,” 106. Bayeux Embroidery, W52–73. Elizabeth Carson Pastan, “Building Stories: The Representation of Architecture in the Bayeux Embroidery,” Anglo-Norman Studies 33 (2011): 150–85, esp. 174–75. Bayeux Embroidery, W30. Weil, “Report on the Animal Turn,” 2 points out that in contrast to studies of those underrepresented such as women and minorities, those who are the focus of the Animal Turn cannot speak for themselves. On the representation of women in the Bayeux Embroidery, and whether they can be said to speak for themselves, see Karl

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The textile has a large central frieze where human activities dominate. Along the upper edge of this frieze, a 378-word inscription succinctly describes the actions taking place in this register and names key protagonists.31 Animals appear only once in this inscription, in the text describing the debarkation of the Norman horses for battle in England: “hic exeunt caballi de navibus.”32 While the animals shown in the central frieze are almost exclusively domestic, and chiefly comprise horses, hounds, and hawks; the borders use a different mode of representation (see figs. 5.1–5.6).33 Here, a greater range of creatures real and imaginary is shown, including harpies, lions, panthers, bears, stags, and griffins. Instead of the familiar landscapes and architecturally bounded spaces with inscriptions found in the main frieze, the borders show a grid-like

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F. Morrison, History as a Visual Art in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 164–66; Madeline H. Caviness, Chapter 2, “Norman Knights, Anglo-Saxon Women and the “Third Sex”: The Masculinization of England after the Conquest,” in eadem, Reframing Medieval Art: Difference, Margins, Boundaries (Tufts University E-book, 2001: ), 1–51 at 6–7; adapted in eadem, “Anglo-Saxon Women, Norman Knights and a ‘Third Sex’ in the Bayeux Embroidery” in Martin K. Foys, Karen Eileen Overbey, and Dan Terkla, eds., The Bayeux Tapestry: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2009), 85–118; and Catherine E. Karkov, “Gendering the Battle? Male and Female in the Bayeux Tapestry,” in Gale R. OwenCrocker, ed., King Harold II and the Bayeux Tapestry (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2005), 139–47. Wilson, Bayeux Tapestry, 172–73 for a full transcription and translation of the inscriptions. For statistics about the types and numbers of images, see Bertrand, La Tapisserie de Bayeux, 51–58. “Here the horses leave the boats.” Bayeux Embroidery, W43–44. Many scholars credit the Norman cavalry with winning the Battle of Hastings, including Lynn White, Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), 37. It is a scene with a long history going back to Bernard de Montfaucon, the first scholar to publish a study of the textile (1729), who felt that a more triumphal entry of the Normans into England was called for. See discussion in Elizabeth Carson Pastan, “Montfaucon as Reader of the Bayeux Tapestry,” in Janet T. Marquardt and Alyce A. Jordan, eds., Medieval Art and Architecture after the Middle Ages (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), 89–110. Like the dogs, women are named only once in the inscription: in the enigmatic scene of Ælfgyva (W17); see Karkov, “Gendering the Battle?,” 140–43. Yapp, “Animals in Medieval Art,” 27. Also see the study by Edmund Leach, “Anthropological Aspects of Language: Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse,” in Eric Lenneberg, ed., New Directions in the Study of Language (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1964), 23–63, which draws attention to the ways our terms of reference for animals can signal their degree of closeness to us.

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array of animals in heraldic-type poses.34 These bordering creatures are not merely decoration, but rather serve as the immediate audience for human activities in the central field and offer comment on them,35 particularly through the Aesopic animal fables.36 Quite possibly mirroring their special status in relation to men, dogs are unusual among the nonhuman animals shown because they appear prominently in both the central frieze as domestic familiars and in the Aesopic fables in the borders (see fig. 5.2). None of these stitched images of canines is a trueto-life snapshot, of course, but to be effective each had to be rendered in ways that were relatable for medieval beholders. This leads us to consider one of the textile’s most noteworthy aspects of animal depiction generally: the collars and other restraints men put on them.

Collared

Throughout the Bayeux Embroidery, the animals’ relationships to men are manifested in the bridles, collars, leads, and jesses they wear (Figs. 5.1–5.5). Seemingly small details, these restraints have traditionally been viewed as evidence of medieval technological advances, illustrating how humans harnessed the power of animals through the invention of the saddle and stirrup, the plough, and the leash.37 Clearly, these trappings are also signs of ownership, signaling the animals’ roles in serving man. However, the Animal Turn challenges us to think about our relation to our fellow creatures more broadly. Fables, legislation, and archaeological evidence offer valuable context for how medieval humanity regarded the animals they kept.

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David J. Bernstein, The Mystery of the Bayeux Tapestry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 87–88; J. Bard McNulty, The Narrative Art of the Bayeux Tapestry Master (New York: AMS Press, 1989), 24–58; idem, Visual Meaning in the Bayeux Embroidery: Problems and Solutions in Picturing History, Studies in French Civilization 28 (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2003), 23–36; and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “The Bayeux Tapestry, the Voice from the Border” (2007), reprint in eadem, The Bayeux Tapestry: Collected Papers, Variorum Collected Studies (Farnum, UK: Ashgate, 2012), Chapter X, 235–58. As noted in Owen-Crocker, “Squawk Talk,” 253–54. For a detailed analysis of the fable images and an extensive bibliography of fables and fable scholarship, see Stephen D. White, “The Fables in the Borders,” in Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry and Its Contexts, 154–82. White, Medieval Technology, 14–38; idem, Medieval Religion and Technology: Collected Essays (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), xiv–xv, 78–79, 278–79, and 286–87.

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Nowhere is this clearer than in the satirical observations about man and animal in the Aesopic fables. As a living tradition of animal stories, the fables were available not only in the Latin versions of Aesopic tales taught in monastic schools throughout the Middle Ages, but also in the vibrant retellings by Anglo-Norman writers such as Marie de France (late twelfth century) and Odo of Cheriton (whose fables were published after 1225).38 Animal restraints are the subject of annoyance and derision in the fable literature, and this commentary must be taken into account when interpreting them. The fly that threatens to sting the mule unless they travel more quickly is told: “I don’t fear your words, but those of the one who sits in the saddle and holds the reins.”39 The tale’s moral indicates that it has wide potential application: “This fable can be effectively used to ridicule a person who makes empty threats without having the power to back them up.”40 The wolf who is lured to the city with the promise of food and a life of ease balks as soon as he sees a dog’s collar,41 claiming that he would rather live free in the woods than luxuriously on a chain.42 I’m not aware of a fable commenting on the jesses or leather strips knotted around the hawks’ legs, but two different kinds of evidence highlight them: later hunting treatises specifically allude to soft leather jesses made from 38

39

40 41

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On the vitality of the fable tradition and these writers’ role in it, see Arnold Clayton Henderson, “‘Of Heigh or Lough Estat’: Medieval Fabulists as Social Critics,” Viator 9 (1978): 265–90. For Marie, see Marie de France, Fables, ed. and trans. Harriet Spiegel (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), and on her identity, see the convenient synopsis in Jill Mann, From Aesop to Reynard: Beast Literature in Medieval Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), Appendix 1, 309–11, with further bibliography. For Odo, see Odo of Cheriton, The Fables of Odo of Cheriton, trans. John C. Jacobs (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1985), and on his life and works, see Albert C. Friend, “Master Odo of Cheriton,” Speculum 23 (1948): 641–58. Babrius and Phaedrus, trans. Perry, no. 6, 267, and Aesop’s Fables, trans. Laura Gibbs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), no. 223, 111, with cross-references to other collections and numbering of fables that corresponds to her searchable website: . The fable is discussed in Mann, From Aesop to Reynard, 41. Aesop’s Fables, trans. Gibbs, no. 223, 111. On the zoological process of the dog’s genetic drift from the wolf, see Catherine Johns, Dogs: History, Myth, Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), and Juliet Clutton-Brock, “Origins of the Dog: Domestication and Early History” in James Serpell, ed., The Domestic Dog: Its Evolution, Behavior, and Interactions with People (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 7–20, esp. 15–16, with further bibliography. Babrius and Phaedrus, trans. Perry, no. 100, 129; Aesop’s Fables, trans. Gibbs, no. 3, 5; and Marie de France, Fables, trans. Spiegel, no. 26, 95–97. Discussed in R. Howard Bloch, “The Wolf in the Dog: Animal Fables and State Formation,” Differences 15 (2004): 69–83.

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dog skin;43 and Owen-Crocker notes that whenever a tame bird of prey appears in the central field of the embroidery, the border birds react to it, usually by pointedly turning away in apparent disgust (see figs. 5.1, 5.2, and 5.5).44 Her insight allows us to observe how the creatures within the embroidery do at times respond to one another in humorous, self-aware, and even subversive ways that are comparable to the animals’ comments voiced in fables. The embroidery’s depiction of collared and leashed dogs is echoed in diverse contemporaneous materials, in which the responsibilities, status, and pleasure of owning medieval dogs are evident, further suggesting that one did not have to be educated in the monastic schools to be alert to the larger cultural significations of dog collars. The Lex Romana Burgundiana of c. 515–16 is the first identified legislation to stipulate that any damage caused by a dog that was not tied up would be the full responsibility of its owner; while the book of King Hywel Dda of Wales from c. 945 rated the value of various dogs according to their level of training and the rank of those who owned them.45 The Vita Ædwardi of 1065–66 stated that the sole worldly pleasure of King Edward the Confessor (Fig. 5.6), the dying monarch shown in the embroidery and the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, was his birds and hounds, which he inspected daily after mass, delighting in their activity: “certe delectabur applausibus multorum motuum canibus.”46 In short, to view the leashed and collared dogs on the embroidery as unproblematized instances of humanity’s dominion is to ignore the medieval cultural contexts in which they appeared and were commented upon. Archaeological finds have also yielded interesting corroborative material. The dogs in the textile resemble greyhounds, one of the most ancient foundation breeds, with their slim midsize form, alert ears, prominent muzzles, and

43 44 45

46

John Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk: The Art of Medieval Hunting (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1988), 200. Owen-Crocker, “Squawk Talk,” 253. Marco Iuffrida, “Dogs and Human Relationship between Solidarity and Otherness in Leges Barbarorum” in Francisco de Asís García García, Mónica Ann Walker Vadillo, and María Victoria Chico Picaza, eds., Animals and Otherness in the Middle Ages, Perspectives across Disciplines, BAR International Series 2500 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2013), 75–83 at 77. As Iuffrida points out, this evidence anticipates the more frequently cited legislation of the king of Wales from c. 945 by several centuries. For more on the latter, see Juliet Clutton-Brock, “The Animal Resources,” in The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England (London: Methuen, 1976), 373–92 at 385–87. “[King Edward] was really delighted by the baying and scrambling of the hounds.” Vita Ædwardi Regis, ed. and trans. Frank Barlow (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), i. 6, 62–63.

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longish tails (Fig. 5.1).47 Within England, analysis of the remains of the dogs frequently found on late Anglo-Saxon sites suggests that they were relatively well treated, as they lived into adulthood and their bones showed no signs of periodontal disease, which is common in the jawbones of dogs fed an inadequate diet.48 This archaeological evidence is amplified by the splendid copper-alloy openwork dog collar found in a twelfth-century context in the port town of Waterford, Ireland, second only in importance to Dublin (Fig. 5.7a).49 The collar’s small size, less than five inches in diameter, suggests an imported species such as a greyhound, while six holes within indicate points of attachment to a leather backing.50 Sadly, the elegance of this collar—which was probably also imported—and the fondness it seems to reflect for the dog that wore it are belied by the faunal evidence in Waterford, where dog bones recovered in excavation paint a dismal picture of the treatment of dogs. The frequent chop marks on the leg bones are signs that the dogs were skinned, whether for their fur or for meat, while the multiple occurrences of rehealed injuries on nasal bones and the high incidence of skull fractures attest to routine beatings.51 47

48

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Clutton-Brock, “Origins of the Dog,” 16–18; and eadem, A Natural History of Domesticated Mammals (1987; Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), 34–45. A similar type of dog, also shown with leash ring, is depicted in the contemporaneous Anglo-Saxon Miscellany (London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B. v, fol. 7r); see Elżbieta Temple, AngloSaxon Manuscripts, 900–1066, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 2 (London: Harvey Miller, 1976), cat. no. 87, 104–05. Clutton-Brock, “Animal Resources,” 385–87. For earlier Saxon sites with evidence of considerably harsher treatment of dogs, see Pam J. Crabtree, “A Note on the Role of Dogs in Anglo-Saxon Society: Evidence from East Anglia,” International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 25, no. 6 (2013): n.p. For this reference, as for much other help and encouragement, I thank Robin Fleming. Also see Anna Sofie Gräslund, “Les Chiens de la Tapisserie de Bayeux: quelques elements de réflexion,” in Sylvette Lemagnen, ed., La Tapisserie de Bayeux: Une chronique des temps Vikings, Actes du colloque international de Bayeux (Bonsecours: Editions Point de Vues, 2009), 133–45; and eadem, “Dogs in Graves—A Question of Symbolism” in Barbro Santillo Frizell, ed., Man and Animal in Antiquity: Proceedings of the Conference at the Swedish Institute in Rome (PECUS), September 9–12, 2002 (Rome: Svenska Institutet, 2004), 167–76. Collection of the Waterford City Council, Waterford, Ireland, Inventory No. 1999.0498. See Maurice F. Hurley, Orla M.B. Scully, and Sarah W.J. McCutcheon, Late Viking Age and Medieval Waterford, Excavations 1986–1992 (Waterford, Ireland: Waterford Corporation, 1997), 19–20. H.E. Jean Le Patourel, “The Dog Collar,” in Hurley et al., Late Viking Age and Medieval Waterford, 523–24. Finbar McCormick, “The Animal Bones: Dog,” in Hurley et al., Late Viking Age and Medieval Waterford, 833–34.

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113 Figure 5.7a Dog collar excavated in a 12th-century context from Waterford, Ireland. Collection of the Waterford City Council, inventory no. 1999.0498 (photo: by kind permission of Waterford Treasures Museum, Waterford, Ireland).

Figure 5.7b Iron collar with the original thick leather lining and a leash ring, German,15-16th century (photo: Leeds, Museum of the Dog Collar, Inv. No. 56089).

Figure 5.8 Bear-baiting in the Luttrell Psalter, c. 1330 (photo: © British Library Board, London, BL, Additional MS 42130, fol. 161r).

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A later medieval collar from the Museum of the Dog Collar in Leeds (Fig. 5.7b), with the leather strap that encircled the dog’s neck still intact, represents another common type.52 Its jagged stirrup-shaped links attest to the collar’s defensive function. This kind of dog collar is frequently represented in scenes of bear-baiting,53 such as the later image from the Luttrell Psalter made in Lincolnshire in the 1330s (Fig. 5.8).54 Bear-baiting was part of a training strategy that used the bear as a stand-in for a human because its size and upright stance encouraged dogs to become capable of killing a man in defense of their masters.55 Its presentation in the lower border of the Bayeux Embroidery does not include attacking dogs (Fig. 5.3), but it is an equally disturbing image in which a man with a shield deliberately provokes a leashed and muzzled bear with his sword. Indeed, as is visible to the right, the scene of bear baiting is immediately followed by an episode of collared and leashed hunting dogs chasing their quarry under the direction of a huntsman blowing a horn.56 The further irony is that on the textile, it is the trained dogs who attack and the least-fettered dogs that are best-behaved. In discussing the collars sported by dogs on the Bayeux Embroidery and the contexts in which they are found, it becomes evident that dogs were valued and treated quite differently throughout the Middle Ages. Any fellow feeling 52

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Museum of the Dog Collar in Leeds, England, Inventory No. 56089. I am grateful to curator Tori Reeve for her assistance while the museum was closed for renovation. See the related example in Charles R. Beard, “Dog-Collars,” The Connoisseur 91 (1933): 29–33 at 29, no. II. Astonishingly, as noted in Janet Backhouse, Medieval Rural Life in the Luttrell Psalter (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 57, bear-baiting was a public spectacle that was not outlawed in England until 1835. Also see the description of dogs pitted against bears, lions, and elephants in Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, trans. John Bostock and H.T. Riley (London: H.G. Bohn, 1855), Book VIII, Chapter 61, now available online through the Perseus Catalog: . London, British Library, Additional MS 42130, fol. 161r. On the Luttrell Psalter, see Lucy Freeman, Gothic Manuscripts: 1285–1385, 2 vols., A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 5 (London: Harvey Miller, 1986), 2: cat no. 107, 118–21; and Michael Camille, Mirror in Parchment: The Luttrell Psalter and the Making of Medieval England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 67–68 and 267 and page 64, illus. 17. Camille argues that the scene is “a complex piece of visual wordplay” on the town of Berwick, a contested stronghold on the Scottish border, which Geoffrey Luttrell had participated in taking. Linda Kaloff, Looking at Animals in Human History (London: Reaktion Books, 2007), 54–56. Also see Lisa J. Kiser, “Animals in Medieval Sports, Entertainments and Menageries,” in A Cultural History of Animals in the Medieval Age, ed. Brigitte Resl, vol. 2 (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 103–26 at 117–18, emphasizing bear-baiting as a public spectacle. On bear-baiting in the embroidery, see McNulty, Narrative Art, 37.

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attested to in the medieval retellings of beast fables, the existence of luxury dog collars, or the report of King Edward’s delight in his dogs, undeniably coexisted with abject cruelty in the form of routine beatings of dogs and in the dogs’ training with bears. This evidence echoes and complements themes in the Animal Turn literature that remind us that dogs are both “symbolically valuable and worthless.” By focusing on individual episodes in the Bayeux Embroidery, we can further gauge attitudes toward dogs in this singular example.

The Three H’s: Horses, Hounds, and Hawks

Dogs first appear on the embroidery accompanying Earl Harold Godwinson, the wealthiest and most powerful man in England, and Queen Edith’s brother (Fig. 5.1). The dogs register multiple associations for Harold: first and foremost, his noble status as the possessor of elite, trained dogs and costly tamed birds of prey used in hunting, generally either hawks or falcons.57 As such, the hounds plainly reflect the popularity of the hunt among the English nobility and appear as part of the expected trappings of Harold’s rank. Nonetheless, other associations may also be at play. As Madeline Caviness has noted, Harold’s portrayal may hint at a certain frivolity or foppishness, since he is shown taking part in the sport that trained nobles for combat, not combat itself, and no quarry is shown.58 In this, Caviness points out, Harold offers a notable contrast to the representations of his rival, Duke William of Normandy (see fig. 5.4), which consistently show more gravitas and heroism. 57

58

On the coordinated identity of noble warrior and noble beast, see Susan Crane, “Chivalry and the Pre/Postmodern,” Postmedieval 2 (2011): 69–87. Writing in the same issue, Wolfe, “Moving Forward,” 9 refers to the Three H’s of elite identity: horses, hounds, and hawks. See also Nicholas Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English kings and Aristocracy, 1066–1530 (London: Methuen, 1984), 191–98; Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk; and Richard Almond, Medieval Hunting (Thrupp, UK: Sutton Publishing, 2003), esp. pp. 19–20, 39, 58–60, 73, and 123–24. For emphasis on Anglo-Saxon material and on visual evidence, see R.S. Oggins, “Falconry in Anglo-Saxon England,” Mediaevalia 7 (1981): 173– 208, and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Hawks and Horse-Trappings: The Insignia of Rank” (1991), reprint in eadem, The Bayeux Tapestry: Collected Papers, Variorum Collected Studies (Farnum, UK: Ashgate, 2012), Chapter XV, 220–37, esp. 224–28. Caviness, “Norman Knights, Anglo-Saxon Women,” 12. Wilson, Bayeux Tapestry, 174 identifies the creatures in the front of the pack of hounds as hares, but they read more plausibly to me as young pups. A rabbit, with the long ears and short puffy tail one would expect, is clearly shown in the lower border of Bayeux Embroidery, W54.

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Conceivably, the hawk and hounds shown with Earl Harold are diplomatic gifts and allude to Harold’s role as the king’s envoy (Fig. 5.1).59 In the episode of Harold’s departure for the continent that follows (Fig. 5.2), the dogs are carefully cradled and carried over the water onto the ship, like prized offspring. Whether or not he journeyed to the continent on a diplomatic mission for the king (contemporaneous medieval historians disagree about the reason for his trip),60 at the very least the hawk and hounds signal Harold’s declining fortunes, as he is seized and traded among captors after his landing. Tellingly, the last appearance of these dogs imported from England is just before Harold’s fateful meeting with Duke William (Fig. 5).61 The image of Harold riding with his pack of five dogs has a joyous and unfettered quality that may also evoke a certain nostalgia, and this is part of the multivalent power of the imagery. The carefree nature of his run is underscored by its context on the embroidery: the progress of Harold and his hunting party is bounded only by a large budding tree (Fig. 5.1), and the scene is followed by an exuberant feast at Harold’s seaside estate in Bosham (Fig. 5.2).62 Further, the scene is described in the inscription by the verb equitant, “they ride on horseback,” a very different choice from the term used to describe the “mounted shock combat” riders shown later on in the textile’s frieze in battle, who are repeatedly characterized by the word ceciderunt, meaning they both killed and fell.63 59

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Frequently noted, including C.R. Dodwell, “The Bayeux Tapestry and the French Secular Epic,” The Burlington Magazine 108 (1966): 549–60 at 554 n. 33; and Owen-Crocker, “Squawk Talk,” 250. An issue highlighted by Charles H. Gibbs-Smith, “Notes on the Plates,” in Stenton, ed., The Bayeux Tapestry, 174–88 at 174. See discussion in Elizabeth Carson Pastan, “Imagined Patronage: The Bayeux Embroidery and Its Interpretive History” in Colum Hourihane, ed., Patronage: Power & Agency in Medieval Art, Index of Christian Art, Princeton, Occasional Papers 15 (Princeton: The Index of Christian Art, Dept. of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, in association with the Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013), 54–75. The hawk and hounds are shown first in Bayeux Embroidery, W2 (Fig. 5.1), reappear in W4, W8–9, and W14. Their last appearance is W16 (Fig. 5.5), the meeting of William and Harold at the former’s palace. Bayeux Embroidery, W2–4. On Bosham, the destination of Harold’s ride, see Pastan, “Building Stories,” 162–66. See Wilson, Bayeux Tapestr, 172–73 for a full transcription and translation of the inscriptions. On the word choice adopted here, Pastan and White, The Bayeux Tapestry and Its Contexts, 36 and 242. To describe the riders in battle, Crane, “Chivalry and the Pre/Postmodern,” 71 uses the term “mounted shock warriors,” from White, Medieval Technology, 1–38.

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Harold’s canter with hawk and hounds may hark back to the conditions of hunting before the Norman Conquest. When he became king, William the Conqueror was notorious for imposing forest laws that protected the animals of royal sport in special enclaves and denied the average Englishman the freedom to hunt for food.64 These royal preserves are estimated to have covered approximately one-fourth of the land of England by the thirteenth century,65 and contributed to making hunting an elite and restricted enterprise.66 By law all dogs owned within the king’s forest had to be “expeditated”: crippled so that they were unable to chase the protected game animals. Often this meant that three claws were cut off from the forefoot, although sometimes some of the pads were removed as well.67 In the representation of hounds with Harold (Fig. 5.1), the dogs are running freely, and all three claws of the hound at the top of the phalanx of three collared dogs are clearly delineated. Since Harold never lived to see the imposition of the mandates of King William I (1066–87), his image with his hounds effectively evokes the freedom of the hunt in more innocent times. The subject of William’s proprietary rights over his animals is further pursued in the trenchant verse eulogy for him in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of 1087, which states that [King William] made great protection for the game And imposed laws for the same, That who so slew hart or hind Should be made blind … [He] loved the stags as much As if he were their father … Powerful men complained of it and poor men lamented it, 64

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Clutton-Brock, “Animal Resources,” 391. Also see Almond, Medieval Hunting, 4–5, with clear definitions of forests (the legal term for an area that belonged to the monarch and was subject to Forest Law), chases, and deer parks; John Aberth, An Environmental History of the Middle Ages, The Crucible of Nature (London: Routledge, 2011), 181–89; and Charles R. Young, The Royal Forests of Medieval England, The Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979), 1–17. For a fascinating glimpse into those who defied forest law, see Jean Birrell, “Who Poached the King’s Deer? A Study in Thirteenth Century Crime,” Midland History 7 (1982): 9–25. Young, Royal Forests, 5. Richard Thomas, “Chasing the Ideal? Ritualism, Pragmatism and the Later Medieval Hunt in England,” in Aleksander Pluskowski, ed., Breaking and Shaping Beastly Bodies: Animals as Material Culture in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2007), 125–48. Aberth, Environmental History, 187.

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But so fierce was he that he cared not for the rancor of them all….68 The entry slyly associates William’s game laws with his solicitude for the stags’ welfare, a “fatherly” concern that also led the king to blind the human poachers who encroached on his preserves. But the rich irony of the passage, that the king’s stags were sheltered in the royal forests in order that the king and his huntsmen could chase, kill, and eat them, underlies its verse. In instilling awareness of the ways that man uses animals to comment on his own condition, the Animal Turn literature helps to bring images such as these into sharper focus. The first images of dogs on the Bayeux Embroidery (Figs. 5.1–5.2), the scenes of Harold riding with his hounds and transporting them overseas, draw us into both the charm and the subtle undertones of the pictorial narrative. Simultaneously, these dogs allude to Harold’s elite status and a love of sport that hints at a lack of seriousness. As we have seen, it is also possible to view Harold’s unbounded canter with horse, hawks, and hounds as a commentary on the freedoms enjoyed in pre-Conquest England, an image of man’s harmony with nature that is soon disrupted as the joyous equitation gives way to mounted warriors in battle. In addition, Harold’s companionable ride with his hounds (Fig. 5.1) sets him up for comparison with his rival, Duke William (Fig. 5.4), whose first portrayal on the embroidery includes dogs attacking their prey.

The Fables in the Borders

The Aesopic fables in the Bayeux Embroidery’s borders are another place where dogs appear prominently. From at least the time of the Greek fabulist Aesop (c. 620–564 BCE), if not before, storytellers have held up the animal kingdom as an image of human social structures; this has served as one of the ways that contemporary structures can be affirmed, questioned, mocked, or redesigned.69 Indeed, the Animal Turn literature intersects with the Bayeux Embroidery through their mutual engagement with beast fables. Aesopic fables are referenced in the textile both through familiar elements such as dog 68 69

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation, ed. Dorothy Whitelock (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1961), sub 1087, 164–65. On the fable tradition, see Ziolkowski, Talking Animals, 1–46; Edward Wheatley, Mastering Aesop: Medieval Education, Chaucer and his Followers (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 1–96; and Mann, From Aesop to Reynard, 1–52.

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collars and in direct depiction at key moments in the pictorial narrative of the Norman Conquest. In his study of the medieval reception of the Aesopic fables, Peter Travis observed that the beast fables, with their animalized narrative and human morality, naturally disequilibrate category boundaries between animal and human.70 Noting that the fables were the basis of medieval monastic education in Latin and also served to introduce students to the principles of literary exegesis,71 Travis summarized that they “performed an impressive amount of cultural labor, educating children and adults while interrogating human nature and dramatizing the politics and ethics of human society.”72 The exegetical method instilled in medieval students through the study of beast fables was flexible and encouraged retellings, new endings, and creative engagement. As Edward Wheatley elaborated, “any fable could be interpreted according to any allegorical form, at the whim of the reader, or perhaps at the behest of the teacher.”73 Because of their use in the monastic schools, one can infer widespread knowledge of the fables among educated viewers, as well as knowledge of the exegetical method taught along with them. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the depiction of the fables on the Bayeux Embroidery provoked the same depth of engagement as their written counterparts. Indeed, the imagery on the Bayeux Embroidery shows how the fables could be adapted in visually provocative ways. The structure of the textile causes the viewer to make comparisons between the human activities in the central realm and the animal fables that populate the borders. Yet the comparison is never a simple juxtaposition of field and frame, because as we have seen, the animals in the central frieze also comment on the humans among them: in addition to the collars and other restraints worn by many, the beasts that provide transportation are gendered or neutered according to the status of the rider, and the wild birds recognize and react to the tamed hunting falcons. The overlap of human and animal characteristics is particularly interesting for dogs, which sometimes appear as pets and at other times as rather feral.

70 71 72 73

Peter W. Travis, “Aesop’s Symposium of Animal Tongues,” Postmedieval 2 (2011): 40–41, with further bibliography. Travis, “Aesop’s Symposium,” 35. Travis, “Aesop’s Symposium,” 33. Wheatley, Mastering Aesop, 91.

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The Fable of Mother Dog and Puppies

In the border, just a few feet from the scene of Harold hunting, is the wellknown fable of “Mother Dog and Puppies,” which tells of a dog who lends her home to another dog who is about to give birth, and then has difficulty evicting her temporary tenant once the puppies are born (Fig. 5.2, lower right).74 On the Bayeux Embroidery the tale is presented in a distinctive emblemlike form, encapsulated by a single scene of five canines. A mature dog at right faces off against four opened-mouthed creatures backed up into what appears to be the upturned prow of a ship at left. It is impossible to overlook the fable, because it is offered up in a group of eight Aesopic scenes shown one after the other in the lower border as Harold begins his sea voyage to the continent. The depiction of these fables thus disrupts the usual scheme of confronted birds and beasts, in order to raise questions about the wisdom of the voyage and its purpose propaedeutically.75 The significance of “Mother Dog and Puppies,” with its themes of predation and deceit, is further underscored by its second iteration at another critical juncture, on the eve of battle when William makes his charge to his Norman troops (scene W57). This is also the last appearance of any dog on the textile. Thereafter, the absence of dogs and other familiar elements of everyday life further underscores the horrors of the battle. The fables have often been interpreted as offering partisan editorial commentary supporting either the Norman or the English cause, but Stephen White has argued that they make a mockery of all concerned, writing of Mother Dog and Puppies that [b]ecause in written versions [the fable] shows how a bad predator used trickery, the threat of force, and spurious but plausible legal arguments to seize the land of another predator too foolish and trusting to foresee either eventuality, it could not have reinforced Norman or English propaganda but surely served as a vehicle for satirizing property disputes among the powerful.76 Indeed, leaving aside the fact that the comparison of man to dog can itself be a form of ridicule, this particular point of comparison is unflattering to all con74

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Babrius and Phaedrus, trans. Perry, no. 19, 215; Aesop’s Fables, trans. Gibbs, Fable 116, 61. Also see discussion in Daniel Terkla, “Cut on the Norman Bias: Fabulous Borders and Visual Glosses on the Bayeux Tapestry,” Word & Image 11 (1995): 264–90, at 271. McNulty, Visual Meaning, 38. Stephen D. White, “Beasts Who Talk on the Bayeux Embroidery: The Fables Revisited,” Anglo-Norman Studies 34 (2012): 209–36, at 225.

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cerned: would it be better to be the gullible homeowner or the opportunistic squatter?77

The Fable of Stag and Spring

The fable of “Stag and Spring” appears in the lower border, beneath the first appearance of Duke William of Normandy (Fig. 5.4).78 Unlike the scene of his rival Earl Harold running with his hounds (Fig. 5.1), the hunting imagery associated with William appears considerably more violent, as a pack of eight dogs, goaded on by their owners with blasting horns, sticks, and leashes (visible to the right in Fig. 5.4, and in Fig. 5.3), surround and attack a helpless stag. On the evidence of how each of the competitors for the English throne is shown in relation to dogs, Duke William is unmistakably more aggressive. However, the tale adds another level of interpretation, available to those who knew the text. In the fable, the stag becomes so entranced by the reflection of his antlers in a spring that he unwittingly allows himself to be surrounded by hunting dogs. Although the stag initially outruns the dogs, his antlers later contribute to his capture when they become caught in tree branches. Images of horned sheep and deer with branched antlers appear immediately above the fable in the upper border, further drawing attention to the stag’s source of pride.79 For those familiar with medieval hunting rituals, it would not escape notice that the stag’s antlers were also used to pin the captured creature into the ground at the “unmaking” of the quarry, as the stag’s body was systematically dismembered and distributed to hunt participants.80 The heart, lungs, liver, and windpipe were washed, cut into pieces, mixed with

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Dogs next appear in the fable of the Lion’s Share, W7–8, discussed in White, “Beasts Who Talk,” 210, 215–16, 222–23, and 226–27. Babrius and Phaedrus, no. 43, 57, and no. 12, 207; Aesop’s Fables, trans. Gibbs no. 262, 127. McNulty, Narrative Art, 35 discusses this sequence of images as a “genre scene” commenting on the fact that Harold (who is not shown above) is like “the hapless creature caught in the middle,” whereas White, “Beasts Who Talk,” 218–19 and 224, persuasively reads the sequence as a specific fable. Yapp, “Animals in Medieval Art,” 40 has difficulty identifying the species of deer, but suggests those with branched antlers in the upper border correspond to the red deer stag. Marcelle Thiébaux, “The Mediaeval Chase,” Speculum 42 (1967): 260–74; and Thomas, “Chasing the Ideal?,” 128 and 142–44; Salisbury, Beast Within, 35–39; and Aberth, Environmental History, 195–200 questioning “romance vs. reality” in medieval hunting rituals.

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blood and bits of bread, and arranged on the hide for the hounds, further tying the dogs into the hunting ritual.81 Marie-Laure Ryan and Suzanne Lewis have described the fables in the embroidery as “embedded narratives” because they trigger a complex, storylike chain of events that leads the story to unfold in unforeseen ways.82 This is certainly the case for the fable of “Stag and Spring,” which not unlike a series of nested dolls keeps opening up and posing new complications: will the dogs finally capture the stag? Will the antlers be the stag’s ultimate undoing? What species of horned animals are shown in the upper border? And what does this fable indicate about Duke William of Normandy, who is shown for the first time on the textile, directly above?83 The common medieval practice of retelling fables as a school exercise taught pupils to produce “variations or innovations upon old ones and encouraged everyone who received an education … to make fables their own.”84 Educated viewers of the embroidery would have known not just to recognize the fables, but also to employ the exegetical method taught by means of fables in the schools and consider the possibility of a new ending or a different application. An example is the topos of the creature entranced by its own reflection. In other versions, it is not the stag admiring its antlers, but a dog carrying food who, observing that his reflected image in the stream appears bigger, loses the scrap of meat in his grasp as he lunges toward the illusory reward indicated in his watery reflection.85 These kinds of variations complicate the portrayal of any creature, human or animal, by highlighting the contingency of fortune: the viewer might be the predator in one fable, but could well be the victim in the next. As Travis insists, the fables in themselves disequilibrate category boundaries, which thus assimilates them to the project of the Animal Turn.86 81 82

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Thiébaux, “Mediaeval Chase,” 272. Marie-Laure Ryan, “Embedded Narratives and Tellability,” Style 20 (1986): 319–40, esp. 319–25; adapted by Suzanne Lewis, The Rhetoric of Power in the Bayeux Tapestry (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 62–63. See Pastan and White, The Bayeux Tapestry and Its Contexts, 180–82 for an analysis of the embroidery’s fables from the perspective of the monks of St Augustine’s in Canterbury, where the textile was made. White, “Beasts Who Talk,” 217–18, drawing upon Ziolkowski, Talking Animals, 22, and Wheatley, Mastering Aesop, 6 and 17. Also see Mann, From Aesop to Reynard, 6. Babrius and Phaedrus, nos. 79, 99, and 4, 197; Aesop’s Fables, trans. Gibbs, no. 263, 128. Also see “The Dog and the Scrap of Meat,” no. 91, in The Fables of Odo of Cheriton, trans. Jacobs, 138–39. Mentioned and depicted in the Aberdeen Bestiary. Travis, “Aesop’s Symposium,” 41.

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The creature that truly defies the binaries of domestic animal/exotic species, real animal/fabled creature, and indeed human/nonhuman in the Bayeux Embroidery is the dog shown baying at the funeral of King Edward the Confessor (Fig. 5.6).87 As Keith Thomas wryly observed, it is generally not the working dogs that received the real affection of their owners, but rather the nonworking and “nonessential” pets, who were often better fed and housed than the servants.88 While other portrayals on the embroidery may gently allude to the dog’s role as man’s best friend, this example fully embodies the emotional intimacy of man and animal, which is Smith’s second theme defining our kinship with animals.89 Unleashed and uncollared, with birds placed symmetrically to either side, this lone dog appears immediately beneath the king’s funeral bier, his mournful cry mingling with the acolytes’ bells and the singing of those in the funeral procession above. The dog helps amplify the significance of a scene that is the major catalyst for the events depicted on the textile, the death of the king with no biological heir. Edward’s dog draws on a rich literary tradition that portrays the dog as the quintessential pet and the very emblem of devotion,90 yet the Bayeux Embroidery anticipates the earliest extant medieval bestiary entries on the dog by at least a century.91 The Aberdeen Bestiary entry from the late twelfth century, for example, asserts dogs’ love for their masters and the fact that they cannot exist without men; this is accompanied without any apparent irony by the image of three chained and leashed dogs (Fig. 5.9).92 The embroidery’s por87 88 89

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Bernstein, Mystery, 87; McNulty, Narrative Art, 23 observed that the howling dog helps to establish the “mood” of the episode. Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500–1800 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1983), 102–04. On medieval pets, see Salisbury, The Beast Within, 108–20, esp. 116, where she defines the pet as an animal kept solely for companionship; and Wolfe, Animal Rites, 101, who describes pets as “humanized animals.” See especially Pliny, Natural History, and Isidore of Seville, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, ed. and trans. Stephen A. Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), Book XII, Chapter ii, entry 25, 253. For good overviews of medieval bestiaries, see Debra Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), and Ron Baxter, Bestiaries and Their Users in the Middle Ages (Stroud, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1998). Aberdeen, Aberdeen University Library, Univ. Lib. MS 24, f. 18r–20v. On the Aberdeen Bestiary, see the splendid website . In the website’s commentary, it is suggested that the three leashed dogs correspond to the three spiritual

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trayal also evokes an episode of canine loyalty known as the King Garamantes episode. Illustrated here by the image from the Morgan Library Bestiary of 1187 (Fig. 5.10), the scene depicts the story of the dog who was so grief-stricken at his master King Garamantes’s death that he lay at the king’s bier howling inconsolably until he recognized his master’s murderer and seized him by the throat.93 The episode portrayed in the embroidery draws on the Garamantes narrative to evoke the constancy of the loyal pet, thereby further deepening the significance of the scene.94 Moreover, Edward’s dog eschews the field and frame divisions used throughout most of the textile (Fig. 5.6). Through its incorporation into the funeral above, Edward’s dog expands the fictive and emotional space of the king’s burial, with the dog’s impassioned howl adding an aural component to viewers’ visual senses, which are already engaged.95 In this way, the funeral scene joins the longest episode in the Bayeux Embroidery’s pictorial narrative: the battle, where slain warriors spill out into the borders, similarly enlarging the scope and impact of the scenes of combat. In the peculiar economy of the Bayeux Embroidery, the dog is actually allotted more scope for grieving than the queen in the central frieze, who stands out only because women appear so infrequently on the textile as a whole.96 Moreover, in giving himself over to

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guides described near the end of the dog section on fol. 20r: a tearful heart, true confession, and sincere repentance. The entry includes three illustrations: the leashed dogs fol. 18r; the episode of King Garamantes’s dog on fol. 18v; and a three-part image labeled “again on the nature of the dog” on fol. 19r, encapsulating different traits of dogs. Morgan Library, MS M.81, f. 28. On the Garamantes episode, see the useful Medieval B­estiary website: . The episode is discussed in Jonathan Alexander, “Sigmund or the King of the Garamantes?” in Neil Stratford, ed., Roma­nesque and Gothic: Essays for George Zarnecki (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 1987), 1–6. As Alexander notes on p. 6, the scene was painted in the king’s wardrobe at Westminster Palace, where it must have served as a caution about loyalty. Also see Esther Cohen, “Law, Folklore and Animal Lore,” Past & Present 110 (1986): 6–37 at 22–23, for a later medieval version of the tale known as the Dog of Montargis, wherein the faithful pet avenges his master by engaging in a formal judicial duel with the murderer. Because of the scene’s purposeful relationship to the King Garamantes story, and in contrast to Lewis, Archaeological Authority, 89 and 94–95, I cannot concur that this is any creature other than a dog. On the representation of sound in the Bayeux Embroidery, see Richard Brilliant, “Making Sounds Visible in the Bayeux Tapestry,” in Martin K. Foys, Karen Eileen Overbey, and Dan Terkla, eds., The Bayeux Tapestry: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2009), 71–84. Bayeux Embroidery, W30. On women in the textile, see Karkov, “Gendering the Battle?”

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Figure 5.9 Entry for the dog in the Aberdeen Bestiary, late twelfth century (photo: Scotland, Aberdeen University Library, Univ Lib. MS 24, f. 18r).

Figure 5.10 Entry for the dog in the Worksop Bestiary, Radford Abbey, England, c. 1187 (photo: The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, MS M.81, f. 28r. Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913) in 1902).

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unrestrained grief, Edward’s dog offers devotion that is unqualified, thereby hinting at its absence in the human realm.97 Is the dog’s great cry for his beloved master, whose love of dogs was emphasized in the contemporaneous Vita Ædwardi? An evocation of the archetypal King Garamantes narrative of the loyal dog who avenges his master’s death? A grand lament for the way of life in Anglo-Saxon England before the Norman Conquest that died with Edward the Confessor? Or a plaint for mortal creatures generally, and the cruelties that besiege our short existence? Through his unrestrained howl, the dog can be said to express a fellow sadness that gestures at what Cary Wolfe has termed the “posthuman.”98 The dogs on the Bayeux Embroidery routinely appear in relation to human activities and in that sense are fully explicable by Smith’s characterizations of our taxonomy of the animal kingdom and our imagined intimacy with animals. But Edward’s dog moves toward something else: to our animal selves and to the expression of pure grief and devotion. In emphasizing elemental emotions that humans lost as we became civilized, Edward’s dog is not a problematic Other, as Smith’s animals are. Rather, this dog stands for our best selves. If the Animal Turn literature seeks to instill awareness of the imbrication of human and animal, then the Bayeux Embroidery is its medieval visual counterpart. The dogs on the textile, generally collared, appear as emblems of their owners’ noble rank, as prized diplomatic gifts, as trained hunters, in the embedded narratives of the fables, as beloved pets, and even as absences in the final devastation of the battle. The representations of dogs both naturalize and complicate these activities by raising issues of status, dominion, predation, loyalty, and grief, themes that are central to the Bayeux Embroidery’s account of the Norman Conquest of England.99 In this way, the dogs highlight the subtlety of the embroidery’s pictorial narrative, and suggest that the medieval textile is anything but the straightforward tale of victory it is too often assumed to be. 97

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On the complex relationship of King Edward with Queen Edith and her family, for example, see Frank Barlow, The Godwins: The Rise and Fall of a Noble Dynasty (Harlow, UK: Longman, 2001). On this term, Wolfe, “Moving Forward,” 2; but for reservations, see Ritvo, “On the Animal Turn,” 119. Pastan and White, The Bayeux Tapestry and Its Contexts.

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Chapter 6

Federico Barocci’s Faithful Fidos: A Study in the Efficacy of Counter-Reformation Imagery Judith W. Mann The charm of Federico Barocci’s paintings stems from a number of factors— their engaging color, their controlled sensuality based on the contemporary notion of vaghezza (as revealed by Stuart Lingo in his important 2008 book), and their many details drawn from nature. Within this last category, some of Barocci’s most creative observations involve members of the animal world. Birds, donkeys, and cats populate many of his pictures, but no creature is used so inventively and to such good effect as the dog. Positioned to capture attention and invite the viewer into his pictures, these captivating canines were also designed to elucidate sacred themes. In some examples, his incorporation of man’s best friend represented Barocci’s innovation, whereas in others the artist followed tradition by including a dog, although with a fresh take that introduced new ideas into the depicted narrative. This essay examines four of Barocci’s altarpieces that effectively and resource­fully employ dogs to achieve new levels of meaning in their subjects. These include The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, 1557–58 (Fig. 6.1), where a dog curls up on Sebastian’s abandoned cloak; The Martyrdom of St. Vitalis, signed and dated 1583 (Fig. 6.4), that includes a dog reacting to the approach of a lizard; the Last Supper, 1590–99 (Fig. 6.7), featuring a dog that contemplates drinking from a wine cooler; and The Institution of the Eucharist, 1603–07 (Fig. 6.8), in which a dog accompanies the foreground servants as they clear away dishes from the Passover meal. An examination of the ingenious incorporation of a dog into these four pictures underscores Barocci’s importance as one of the first original iconographers of the Catholic Reformation. Furthermore, it challenges the notion that these animals were intended simply as lures to invite viewers into the picture by arguing that they are essential elements of Barocci’s intended message.1 1 Stuart Lingo, Federico Barocci: Allure and Devotion in Late Renaissance Painting (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 76–77, offered a compelling argument as to the role of various simple and quotidian elements that Barocci utilized in his paintings, including animals and children. He maintained that they were intended to address the viewer and often speak to particular conditions or levels of viewer response. He wrote further that they work indepen-

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Figure 6.1 Federico Barocci, Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, 1557–58, Cathedral, Urbino. (Permission Urbino, Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, Soprintendenza BSAE delle Marche).

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Barocci, like many sixteenth-century artists, responded to the conservative attitudes on orthodoxy and propriety that resulted in the Council of Trent’s decrees addressing visual imagery (“On the Invocation, Veneration, and Relics, of Saints, and on Sacred Images”), issued on December 4, 1563.2 The pronouncements stressed decorum, clarity, and adherence to doctrine, while they cautioned against lasciviousness. Furthermore, the threat of Protestantism motivated patrons and clergy to seek artists who could involve churchgoers more completely in the depicted narratives, similar to some of the writings of contemporary theologians. Ignatius Loyola, for example, encouraged the faithful to imagine the sensate experience of sacred scenes such as the texture of Christ’s Cross or the pain inflicted by the pricking thorns, ideas that painters attempted to convey via oil paint and fresco.3 Artists such as Lorenzo Lotto, Correggio, and Tintoretto each, in his way, adopted compelling styles and narrative strategies intended to make the events they illustrated more immediate for their audience. Barocci’s genius lay in his ability to provide pictures that charm the viewer with their likeable protagonists and harmonious color. At the same time, the artist incorporated complex understandings of church doctrine that informed and enriched his portrayals without overriding their clarity or visual beauty. His inclusion of shaggy donkeys, sleeping cats, and of course faithful dogs was part of this larger tactic of visual engagement. In analyzing Barocci’s use of dogs in his narratives, it is best to begin by addressing a central issue related to his animals: the question of whether the artist was a true naturalist and an accurate observer of the world around him. This has been an underlying assumption for those who write about the various creatures that populate Barocci’s canvases.4 In conducting research for the dent of associated symbolism or textual reference. This is partly the case, although as argued here, at least in the case of dogs, Barocci’s meaning is even more complicated and multivalent. 2 On the Council of Trent, see John W. O’Malley, Trent: What Happened at the Council (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013). 3 The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, trans. W.H. Longridge (London: A.R. Mowbray & Co., 1955), 92. For example, during the prescribed second week of prayer, in the Second Contemplation on the Nativity, Ignatius recommended the devout “behold and consider what they are doing as, for example, the journey and the toils they undergo in order that our Lord may be born in extreme poverty, and after so many labours, after the hunger and thirst, heat and cold, insults and injuries, may die at last on the Cross …” 4 As Simona Cohen, Animals as Disguised Symbols in Renaissance Art (Leiden: Brill, 2008), xxxiii, points out, this has tended to be the case for most Renaissance artists who introduced animals into their paintings. Her contention, that in the Renaissance animals continued to be used in symbolic and metaphoric ways and not just as elements of a new naturalism, is true to some

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2012–13 Barocci exhibition, it became apparent to me that the artist had an exceptional eye, particularly attuned to the natural world and the countryside surrounding Urbino, as demonstrated in his beautiful and remarkable landscape drawings.5 These sheets form a distinctive body within the artist’s work, as they appear to have been undertaken for purposes different from the rest of his graphic oeuvre. It is clear that Barocci made most of his drawings to prepare paintings and to instruct students, while he produced a smaller group for the delight of collectors. The landscape drawings do not fit comfortably into any of these three categories, and should probably be seen as proof of the artist’s love of the hills and fields surrounding his natal city and the particular topography and flora that he encountered there.6 This is not unlike Titian, whose sketches, based on his treks through the local countryside, portray more than four hundred different identifiable species of indigenous flora, seeming testament to a desire to record the specifics of the Venetian landscape rather than to experiment with possible backgrounds for his pictures.7 It is tempting, therefore, to wonder whether Barocci’s animal studies grew out of a commitment to natural observation that he then used to enliven his pictures through accurate references to the everyday world. In preparation for the 2012–13 exhibition, Babette Bohn and I evaluated approximately eighty percent of Barocci’s surviving graphic oeuvre (1,200 out of nearly 1,500 sheets) and concluded that most of the animal drawings associated with Barocci’s hand were the work of his students or followers, including three studies of dogs previously attributed to the artist.8 Among the twenty-one autograph animal sheets, only four depict dogs. Most of these were attempts to work out

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degree for Barocci, but as will be seen, his ability to tease new meaning out of the dog’s relationship to other figures in the painting is his hallmark. For Barocci as consummate naturalist, see David Scrase, ed., A Touch of the Divine: Drawings by Federico Barocci in British Collections, exh. cat. (Cambridge, UK: The Fitzwilliam Museum, 2006), 184, who comments about a drawing of a donkey in a private collection, “Although there are few animal drawings by Barocci, he brings to them his own special qualities of direct observation.” Federico Barocci: Renaissance Master was presented at the Saint Louis Art Museum from October 21, 2012 through January 20, 2013. A showing followed at the National Gallery, London, under the title Barocci: Brilliance and Grace. On Barocci’s landscape drawings, see Babette Bohn, “Landscape Drawings,” in Federico Barocci: Renaissance Master of Color and Line, exh. cat., eds. Judith W. Mann and Babette Bohn with Carol Plazzotta. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 252–61. Sheila Hale, Titian (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 15. Those drawings are all in the Uffizi: Florence 17887 F: Andrea Emiliani, Federico Barocci (Urbino 1535–1612), 2 vols. (Ancona: Ars Books, 2008), II, 237, cat. 66.64, illus.; Florence 920 ORN: (unpublished); Florence 921 ORN: (unpublished).

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a specific pose for a given painting. In fact, only seven of the animal drawings appeared to be studies based on direct observation of an actual animal and none of these depict dogs.9 Barocci’s celebrated study of a falcon (Fig. 6.2), for example, a preparatory work for his Urbino Stigmatization of St. Francis, illustrates how little interest he seems to have had in accurately recording his animal subjects. Although the drawing appears to document a specific bird of prey, when shown to one of the ornithologists at the Saint Louis Zoo, it elicited the comment that the bird is generic and does not possess features that would identify any specific species.10 Surely the artist, working in a court where the dukes were noted falconers, would have had many opportunities to study the anatomy of a falcon had he wished to do so. His few sheets devoted to canine studies display similar generic forms rather than depicting a specific dog involved in a particular activity. This suggests that when Barocci used an animal in his paintings, his primary purpose was not necessarily to enhance the naturalistic appeal of the work. There appear to be other reasons he included fauna, mainly to contribute to the meaning of the subject. It is worth noting, however, that in spite of his failure to study their visual form, Barocci does seem to have been a student of animal behavior, either through direct observation or through a familiarity 9

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The twenty-one autograph animal studies that I believe to have been made by Barocci are as follows: Cats: Florence, GDSU, inv. 913 ORN (Emiliani, II, 29, 42.28, illus.); Florence, GDSU, inv. 914 ORN (Emiliani, II, 29, cat. 42.26, illus.); Florence, GDSU, inv. 916 ORN (Emiliani, II, 29, cat. 42.27, illus.); Florence, GDSU, inv. inv. 922 ORN (Emiliani, II, 143, cat. 54.9, illus.); Florence GDSU, inv. 923 ORN (Emiliani, II, 29, cat. 42.25, illus.); Berlin, KdZ inv. 20216 (unpublished). Donkeys: Amsterdam inv. RP-T-1981-29 recto (Emiliani, I, 234, cat. 26.22); Florence GDSU, inv. 928 ORN (Emiliani, I, 238, cat. 26.26, illus.); Florence GDSU, inv. 924 ORN (Emiliani, I, 239, cat. 26.27, illus.); Florence GDSU, inv. 17871 (Emiliani, II p. 236, cat. 26.24, illus.); Florence, GDSU, inv. 925 ORN (Emiliani, I, 236, cat. 26.23, illus.); Florence, GDSU, inv. 926 (Emiliani, I, 238, cat. 26.25, illus.); Private Collection, UK (Scrase, A Touch of the Divine, 184, cat. 66, illus.). Falcon: Berlin inv. KdZ 20350 (Emiliani, II, 161, 57.5, illus.);. Oxen: Florence, GDSU, inv. 918 ORN (Emiliani, II, 200, cat. 63.36, illus.); Florence, GDSU, inv. 917 ORN (Emiliani, II, 200, cat. 63.35, illus.). Sheep: Amsterdam RP-T-19981-26 verso (Emiliani, II, 167, cat. 57.18). Dogs: Florence, GDSU, inv. 927 ORN (Emiliani, II, 402, 113.2, illus.); Berlin, inv. KdZ 20173 (Emiliani, II, 308, cat. 81.23, illus.); Berlin, inv. KdZ 20328 (4340) (Emiliani, II, 307, cat. 81.15, illus.); Würzburg, Martin-von-Wagner Museum der Universität, inv. 7183 (Emiliani, II, 237, cat. 66.62). In an e-mail dated April 16, 2009, Michael Macek, an ornithologist at the Saint Louis Zoo, responded to Barocci’s drawing as follows: “The image is a pretty generic interpretation of a raptor. I cannot say that there is any real defining feature in this interpretation with the exception that it is some kind of ‘hawk.’” Nonetheless, Nicholas Turner, Federico Barocci (Paris: Vilo International, 2000), 117, labeled the drawing “Peregrine Falcon.”

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Figure 6.2 Federico Barocci, Study for a falcon, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. KdZ 20350. (Permission Volker-H. Schneider, Berlin).

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with contemporary treatises on animals. As we analyze how the artist incorporated dogs into four of his most important altarpieces, it is clear that he relied on his audience’s knowledge of animal behavior in order to glean his fuller meaning. Barocci’s earliest altarpiece adorns a side altar dedicated to St. Sebastian in the Cathedral of Urbino (Fig. 6.1).11 It depicts the saint’s martyrdom, and was commissioned in 1557 by Benedetto Bonaventura, a noted scientist and mathematician whose father had bequeathed money for such a purpose.12 It was probably completed during 1558, after the artist’s first trip to Rome. Stuart Lingo argued that Barocci’s overt homage to Michelangelo’s The Punishment of Haman, evident in Sebastian’s dynamic pose, as well as the decision to portray nude putti, may have been intended to show off the artist’s absorption of the Roman infatuation with the body.13 The picture brims with color and movement although it lacks the clarity and directness of some of the artist’s other early altarpieces. However, it reveals Barocci’s ability to invent new forms for established subjects and imbue them with enhanced meaning, including the manner in which the artist has inserted a dog into the narrative. Sebastian, a Roman soldier, was tortured for his outspoken advocacy of martyrdom as a means to undermine Roman rule. He convinced the families of imprisoned Christians that it was far better for them to be persecuted and martyred for their beliefs than to continue to live with their loved ones in tacit acceptance of pagan practice.14 The Emperor Diocletian ordered him bound to a post and shot full of arrows. The saint survived although, according to the Golden Legend, “they shot so many arrows into his body that he looked like a porcupine.”15 Left for dead, he recovered and continued to espouse opposi-

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In some of the Barocci literature, the earlier painting of Sta. Cecilia is identified as an altarpiece because it was thought to be based on Raphael’s celebrated altar painting, but the artist also based it on Marcantonio Raimondi’s well-known engraving, which changed some details of the painting. Peter Gillgren, Siting Federico Barocci and the Renaissance Aesthetic (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011), 79–81, argued that the picture was most likely an organ shutter; given its size, proportions, and contemporary references, this makes much more sense. Emiliani, I, 110–11, cat. 7; Harald Olsen, Federico Barocci (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1962), 140, no. 5; Lingo, 150–52; Gillgren, 240, no. 3. Lingo, 150. Gillgren, 83, saw the genesis of this figure in Sebastiano del Piombo’s Martyrdom of St. Agatha, 1520, which was in Urbino during Barocci’s time. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), I, 97–101. Op. cit., 100.

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tion to the emperor until he achieved martyrdom when he was ordered beaten to death and his body thrown into the sewer. In spite of the true cause of his death, traditional renderings of Sebastian’s martyrdom focused on archers directing their arrows toward his torso, an artistic custom that goes back to at least the fourth or fifth century.16 Beginning in the middle of the sixteenth century, the depiction of St. Sebastian surrounded by archers began to wane, partly in response to Tridentine requirements that sacred depictions focus on the central issues of the stories. In the case of Sebastian, the most important element was the saint’s suffering, which led to an increase in portrayals of the martyr shown isolated and in pain, and eventually to images where his wounds were tended by St. Irene.17 Barocci’s painting adheres to the earlier practice of including archers, an instance where the artist relied on tradition rather than innovation, the result perhaps of his youth and inexperience. Barocci consistently used Venetian models and true to form, in this work the artist has followed a popular Venetian tradition showing Sebastian tied to a tree rather than a column.18 He was also influenced by an example closer to home: a 1551 altarpiece by Gerolamo Genga, who worked for the court in Urbino and who pictured the saint tied to a tree underneath a heavenly apparition of God the Father.19 Building on Genga’s model, Barocci replaced the vision of God with that of the airborne Virgin and Child. Perhaps he included Mary to match the Cathedral’s dedication to the Assumption of the Virgin. He may also have been inspired by a type of altarpiece in which St. Sebastian appears, among other saints, before an image of the Virgin and Child. A probable model was Correggio’s Madonna of St. Sebastian, c. 1524 (Fig. 6.3), where the saint turns his head as he strains to see the heavenly vision. Correggio’s painting, now in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, was the altarpiece for the Oratory of St. Sebastian in Modena. It remained there through the end of the seventeenth century, where the younger artist may have seen it, especially if he 16 17 18

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On the early representations of St. Sebastian, see Irving L. Zupnick, “Saint Sebastian in Art” (doct. diss., Columbia University, 1958). Ibid. This trend ultimately led to a preponderance of images depicting St. Irene ministering to the wounded and suffering saint. David Ekserdjian, Correggio (New Haven, NJ: Yale University Press, 1997), 309, n. 20. See, for example, Titian’s very moving late painting in the Hermitage, dated 1570–72, in Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, ed., Late Titian and the Sensuality of Painting, exh. cat. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (Venice: Marsilio editore, 2007), 304–07, cat. 3.19. The painting is now in the Uffizi. See Annamaria Petrioli Tofani, “Per Girolamo Genga,” Paragone 229 (1969): 18–36; Paragone 231 (1969): 39–56; and Gli Uffizi: Catalogo Generale (Florence: Centro Di, 1979), no. 1535, 284.

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visited nearby Bologna, a likely destination for a young and ambitious painter.20 Barocci supplemented the central players with a seated Diocletian, turbaned and holding a scepter, who oversees the attempted execution from the lefthand side of the picture. Barocci focused his altarpiece on a thoroughly dynamic St. Sebastian, building upon the work of innovative artists such as Fra Bartolomeo and Correggio. Fra Bartolomeo, as Janet Cox-Rearick argued some time ago, created one of the earliest of these moving and gesturing images of the early Christian martyr, a picture that was in the church of San Marco in Florence as early as 1515, although it is now known only through copies.21 It has become generally accepted that Barocci visited Florence during his first trip to Rome in the 1550s and may have known Fra Bartolomeo’s picture.22 By imbuing his saint with an energy similar to Fra Bartolomeo’s or Correggio’s, Barocci alluded to the actual outcome of the story, where the martyr survives. Furthermore, by using such a lively protagonist, the artist drew viewers into the picture to address and contemplate the lengths to which true belief took the early Christian martyrs. Barocci’s foreground dog, a visual and iconographical tie between the martyr and the Virgin, helps to reinforce the lesson of faith that images of martyrdom were intended to inspire among contemporary viewers. The dog in this altarpiece is a perfect example of Barocci’s employment of animals within sacred narrative. The animal itself, while charming, does not present a prime specimen of canine conformation. Its head and body are not in proportion and it is difficult to determine the structure of the dog’s hindquarters. The suggestion of fluffy fur, a stumpy tail, and long ears allows the artist to avoid anatomical particulars, but in general this pup confirms what the analysis of the dog drawings suggested—that Federico Barocci was not 20

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Vittorio Venturelli’s funeral oration for Barocci implied that the artist had traveled extensively, noting that he had “seen the most famous cities in Italy,” which would have very likely included Bologna. Scholars have not attempted to lay out what the artist’s itinerary may have been. Modena is only twenty-four miles from Bologna and we know that Barocci was an avid student of the Parmese painter. Therefore, it is not unlikely that Barocci knew this painting. For the full reference on the funeral oration, see Jeffrey Fontana, “Evidence of an Early Florentine Trip by Federico Barocci,” Burlington Magazine 139 (July 1997): 473, n. 13. The Modena painting entered the collection of the Duke of Modena in 1649, and then was purchased along with four other Correggios by Augustus III of Saxony in 1746. They were moved to Dresden in 1761. See Gerald Heres, Dresdener Kunstsammlungen im 18. Jahrhundert. (Leipzig: E.A. Seemann, 1991). Janet Cox-Rearick, “Fra Bartolomeo’s St. Mark Evangelist and St. Sebastian with an Angel,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorisches Institutes in Florenz 18 no. 3 (1974): 343–49. See Fontana, “Evidence of an Early Florentine Trip,” 471–75.

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Figure 6.3 Correggio, Madonna of St. Sebastian, c. 1524, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden. (Permission Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen).

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spending time executing detailed studies of local dogs. That doesn’t mean, however, that Barocci was not an attentive observer of animal behavior. The dog is shown standing in the middle of the saint’s discarded cloak, preparing to lie down. The animal is in the process of tamping down the fabric to prepare a bed. Anyone who has ever watched a dog prepare a spot for napping can easily recognize exactly what the artist depicted. Barocci may have been inspired to use such a foreground attraction as a visual bridge into the painting by Genga, who positioned two loaded quivers in the center front of his St. Sebastian altarpiece. While Barocci’s animal appears initially to be merely an appealing detail, it is actually a key aid for experiencing the narrative. The dog’s action indicates that it intends to remain by its master for an indeterminate period of time. Dogs were understood as symbols of perseverance, making this activity particularly relevant for Sebastian, who first endured the assault of arrows before being beaten up and cast over a cliff into a sewer.23 However, the dog’s embodiment of faith, a quality still associated with dogs today, was the primary message that Barocci wished to evoke in this early painting. Although dogs carried both positive and negative connotations in the literature written about them in the sixteenth century, one common observation that Renaissance authors articulated was the tendency of dogs to be faithful to their owners.24 There was also a visual tradition associating the dog with the attribute of Faith, found in images of scholar saints and famously on the obverse of a medal cel-

23 24

Patrik Reuterswärd, “The Dog in the Humanist’s Study,” in idem, ed., The Visible and Invisible in Renaissance Art: Essays in the History of Art (Vienna: IRSA, 1991), 211. For the dog as a symbol of Christ’s tormenters, see perhaps the most frequently cited work in James Marrow, “Circumdederunt me canes multi: Christ’s Tormentors in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance,” Art Bulletin 50 (1977): 167–81. For a broader description of the sins associated with the dog in Medieval and Renaissance thought, see Cohen, Animals as Disguised Symbols, chapters 1 and 2. Colin Eisler, Dürer’s Animals (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 163–64, for one, noted that the idea of the dog as a loyal companion comes from Pliny the Elder, citing the wellknown passage, “Of all the domestic animals, the one most worth studying, and before all the one most faithful to man is the dog” (Natural History, Book 8, 61.) This idea of dogs continued through later writings: for example Albertus Magnus, De animalibus xxvi. trans. Kenneth F. Kitchell and Irven Michael Resnich, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), book 22, 71: “The dog is a faithful animal whose love for humans sometimes prompts it to lay down its life for the sake of its master.” For the dog as a symbol of Faith in the Renaissance, see Reuterswärd, “The Dog in the Humanist’s Study,” 212–13.

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ebrating Michelangelo.25 Perhaps most significantly, Cesare Ripa’s well-known iconographic handbook, The Iconologia, recommended the dog as an illustration of several attributes, including Faith.26 Lorenzo Lotto frequently inserted dogs as allusions to this virtue, indicating that the practice may reflect a local tradition.27 Barocci, however, did not simply insert the animal into his composition. Through formal rhyming, he associated the animal with the saint himself by aligning the angles of the dog’s and Sebastian’s heads. As the saint inclines his head back toward the Virgin and Child, so Sebastian’s dog angles its nose toward the subject of his fidelity. Stuart Lingo has argued, quite correctly, that Barocci often populated the foreground sections of his pictures with still-life and quotidian details to engage viewers. In this altarpiece, however, Barocci’s dog doesn’t just lead the faithful into the picture to address the suffering saint (echoed by the powerful figure of the muscular archer on the painting’s righthand side). The dog’s attentive gaze draws the onlooker toward the saint’s head, then up toward the summit of the picture where the Virgin and her infant son preside. Thus, Barocci reminded his viewers of the faith that led early Christian martyrs to endure inhuman cruelties and invited them to follow Sebastian as a model. Nearly twenty years later, Barocci was contracted by the Casentine brothers in Ravenna to produce a second image of suffering, The Martyrdom of St. Vitalis (Fig. 6.4), signed and dated 1583, for a chapel dedicated to the saint in their sixth-century church built by the emperor Justinian.28 Unlike the account of Sebastian’s torture, which enjoyed great popularity during the Renaissance (no doubt due to its focus on the standing male nude), artists had only occasionally undertaken the depiction of St. Vitalis’s death. It is hardly surprising since the story calls for the main figure to lie on his back in a hole in the ground, a challenge for any artist. Vitalis, a consular knight and father of two sons, visited Ravenna, where he encouraged other early Christians not to engage in the wor25

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See Reuterswärd, “The Dog in the Humanist’s Study,” 212–13. On Leone Leoni’s medal of Michelangelo, see Philip Fehl, “Michelangelo’s Crucifixion of St. Peter: Notes on the Identification of the Locale of the Action,” Art Bulletin 53, no. 3 (September 1971): 340. Cesare Ripa, Iconologia, 1593, where the emblem of Fedeltà is a woman with a white dog. Reuterswärd, “The Dog in the Humanist’s Study,” 213. The picture was commissioned in 1580; by June of that year, Barocci had already presented a preliminary design in a cartoncino now in the Louvre (inv. no. 2858 r.). The completed altarpiece left Urbino to be placed in the church in April of 1583. For the documentation surrounding this commission, see Santi Muratori, “Il Martirio di San Vitale del Barocci,” Felix Ravenna 6 (1912): 244–59. On the painting itself, Emiliani, I, 377– 405, no. 40; Olsen, Federico Barocci, 172–75; Lingo, 169–72; Turner, Federico Barocci, 85–87.

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Figure 6.4 Federico Barocci, Martyrdom of St. Vitalis, 1580–83, Pinacoteca Nazionale di Brera, Milan, inv. 401. (Permission Milan, Soprintendenza, Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali).

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ship of idols and supported them during the travail of their martyrdoms, resulting in his own condemnation and ultimate death.29 The judge Paulinus, with whom Vitalis had traveled to Ravenna, ordered him to sacrifice to idols to prove his allegiance. Paulinus further decreed that should Vitalis refuse, a ditch was to be dug, “so deep that you reach water,” in which the knight was to be buried alive, “lying on his back.” Barocci’s painting vividly portrays the saint’s demise. In the lower portion of the picture, a circular pit has been dug; spades and shovels, their task complete, lie on the ground. Vitalis falls into the hole, facing the upper right corner of the picture, where the seated and turbaned Marcus Aurelius extends his right hand in condemnation. A magistrate, charged with the saint’s execution, stands along the central axis of the picture, both arms still extended from throwing the martyr into his grave. One soldier prepares to heave a boulder on top of Vitalis; another worker, in a straw hat, begins to shovel soil into the grave. A third soldier, wearing a helmet, stands at the upper left, while a putto flies down from the heavens, carrying the martyr’s palm and a laurel wreath. Two well-dressed boys—presumed to be Vitalis’s sons Gervasius and Protasius— observe from the left side. On the bottom left, a mother nurses her infant while she encourages her young daughter to watch the martyrdom. On the lower right, a female dog diverts her attention from the loaf of bread that lies beside the discarded blue cloak to look toward a lizard crawling in from the lower right.30 The commission presented several difficulties for the artist because there was no strong visual tradition for the representation of this event. Given Barocci’s proclivity for invention, this may not have been too problematic. More challenging, however, was the position in which the saint was to be placed. The details of the story required an extremely awkward pose for the protagonist. Furthermore, in his attempt to tie the narrative to the location in which it would be viewed, Barocci placed the saint in a depression in the ground, making overt reference to the holy well that stood near the altar over which this painting hung.31 29 30

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Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend, I, 249–50. Lingo, 170, suggested the food was a meal that the soldier has put aside to eat later, although because it lies directly underneath his cloak, a more likely scenario is that the food belongs to Sebastian. The picture was removed and first placed in the sacristy (by 1758), then taken to Paris late in the eighteenth century. When the French painter Charles-Nicolas Cochin visited Ravenna in 1768, he noted that the painting was in the sacristy. See Gillgren, Siting Federico Barocci, 118, n. 15, who cited Cochin’s account of his travels, Le voyage d’Italie de Charles-Nicolas Cochin (1758) édité en facsimile avec un introduction et des motes, ed.

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Scholars have identified a number of sources that Barocci drew upon to design the picture, including a soldier from Giulio Romano’s Battle of Constantine in the Vatican; the same artist’s Stoning of St Stephen in Genoa; and the Orestes sarcophagus, which Barocci most likely saw in Rome.32 To these we must add Barocci’s own earlier St. Sebastian, as well as Parmigianino’s fresco of St. Vitalis on the wall of San Giovanni Evangelista in Parma (Fig. 6.5), executed around 1530, where a dog prances in front of the saint.33 Finally, the impact of Titian’s majestic altarpiece of the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence in the Church of the Gesuiti in Venice, 1558–59, should be acknowledged.34 Titian’s saint, lying horizontally, reaches heavenward toward an illuminated opening in the night sky, a powerful representation of the promise of salvation that must have impressed Barocci since he used the same position for the body in his early compositional drawing for the St. Vitalis in the Louvre (Fig. 6.6). The original location for the altarpiece was a pilgrimage site where the faithful came to see the well in which Vitalis was martyred. As noted above, the artist was bound to follow the details of the story, responding to Catholic Reformation expectations for accurate rendition of religious narrative.35 Barocci’s task was thus to lead the viewer toward the partially interred body of the saint. He employed several means to accomplish this. The central magistrate, having just thrown the martyr into the well, stands over the prone body and extends his right arm and splays the fingers of his hand; this echoes the extended arm and hand of Vitalis as well as that of the gesturing emperor. Furthermore, the airborne putto directs the martyr’s palm downward toward the saint. Both of these compositional solutions help the viewer navigate the complicated scene. The foreground dog and lizard, however, together with the mother and child, help clarify the image and aid the viewer in another, more inventive way. Few authors have paid adequate attention to the variety of objects and creatures positioned across the foreground of this altarpiece. These include a large

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Christian Michel, (Rome: École française de Rome, 1991). The picture arrived at the Brera, its current home, in April 1811. It can no longer be taken out of its gallery as a result of remodeling undertaken in the 1990s, which narrowed the doorway so that the stretched and framed painting cannot fit through it. Emiliani, I, 378 identified Giulio Romano as a source; Gillgren, Siting Federico Barocci, 111–13, associated Barocci’s works with the Orestes sarcophagus. David Ekserdjian, Parmigianino (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 56. On the Titian, see Hale, Titian, 630, 781, n. 4. The decrees from the twenty-fifth session of the Council of Trent, in December 1563, cited above, stated that the “facts and narratives of sacred Scripture are portrayed and represented.”

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Figure 6.5 Parmigianino, St. Vitalis, 1520s (?), San Giovanni Evangelista, Parma. (Permission Ministero per i Beni e la Attività Culturali-Soprintendenze PSAE di Parma e Piacenza).

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Figure 6.6 Federico Barocci, Compositional study for the Martyrdom of St. Vitalis, ca. 1580–83, 33.8 × 22.6 cm, Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques, Paris, inv. 2858. (Permission Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY).

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cawing bird and sprig of cherries on the left, a shovel at center, and a loaf of bread, a wine jug, a vigilant female dog, and a lizard at the lower right. Bellori noted that the bird eating cherries was intended to establish the date of the saint’s martyrdom, which occurred in April, a time when cherries would be in season.36 Stuart Lingo discussed some of the foreground objects in his analysis of Barocci’s implementation of still-life elements, noting the presumed Eucharistic implications of the bread and wine, but offered no commentary on the role of the dog and lizard.37 Peter Gillgren identified the dog as an allegorical figure of Fides, but gave no explanation as to why the dog reacts to the lizard beside her.38 Ted Pillsbury noted only that Barocci changed the dog’s pose from an earlier compositional drawing where the artist depicted a sleeping animal.39 By analyzing how the imagery of the dog developed in this painting, it is possible to clarify Barocci’s intentions. The sequence of available documents indicates that Barocci provided the Casentine monks with a preliminary design for the picture that had already been reviewed and accepted, with some desired changes, by the date of the earliest document, June 20, 1580.40 The drawing cited is believed to be the sheet in the Louvre (Fig. 6.6), in which architectural elements seem to make reference to the physical church building. The view is framed by partial walls and a threshold; a background archway highlights the foreground stone thrower. The monks were displeased, however, with the number of figures, since the story suggested large crowds and Barocci’s drawing included only twenty-two participants. The finished composition, by comparison, incorporates a total of thirty-one if every face, no matter how fragmentary, is counted. In the drawing, the figure of the magistrate had not yet been included and there is no young girl at lower left nor a dog at lower right. A second, less-finished line drawing records a later stage in the composition that includes a dog

36

37 38 39

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Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Le vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti moderni (1672), ed. Evelina Borea (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1976), 190; Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Vita di Federico Barocci di Urbino pittore (1672) trans. Nicholas Turner (Paris: Vilo International, 2000), 181. Presumably Bellori is reliable on the availability of cherries, although today one does not find them until June. (Thanks to Laura Gelfand, who kindly reminded me of this fact.) Lingo, 105–06, 169–70. He did, nonetheless, acknowledge the importance of these details, especially because Barocci positioned his signature prominently nearby Gillgren, Siting Federico Barocci, 114. Edmund P. Pillsbury and Louise S. Richards, eds. The Graphic Art of Federico Barocci: Selected Drawings and Prints, exh. cat. (New Haven, CT: The Yale University Art Gallery, 1978), 68. Emiliani, I, 377; Muratori, “Il Martirio di San Vitale,” 244.

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sleeping in the foreground.41 This is especially important since it indicates that Barocci added the dog at a fairly early stage. Stuart Lingo and Peter Gillgren both noted that Barocci typically added still-life and animal details after he created the highly finished compositional drawings (cartoncini), usually at a very late preparatory stage, intending them as glosses on the narrative and aids for viewers’ contemplation. That the dog entered the St. Vitalis composition prior to the final design stage suggests he considered it an essential iconographical element. Barocci was probably inspired by the dog’s symbolic role as a reference to Faith, his intended meaning when he used it in the St. Sebastian painting. In fact, the proximity of the dog to Vitalis’s cloak in the painting, and the direct tie between the animal and the cloak in the line drawing (the dog lies directly upon the garment) both establish the dog’s link to the saint. Further, these connections confirm that the clothing belongs to Vitalis rather than to the worker holding the stone, as others have suggested.42 Barocci may have also seen Parmigianino’s fresco of St. Vitalis (Fig. 6.5) and recognized how appropriate it was to portray the martyr accompanied by a dog. Given the canine association with fidelity, Vitalis’s dog could also allude to his role as a knight who pledged loyalty to a lord. To understand Barocci’s replacement of the sleeping hound with a vigilant mother dog, the animal must be seen in terms of the whole painting and Barocci’s need to clarify the composition after being urged by the Casetines to increase the number of figures. As Lingo astutely noted, the nursing dog is a visual counterpart to the nursing mother on the lower left, and it is essential that it be read in that context.43 The mother nurses her infant, but with her right arm, she corrals her daughter who has been feeding cherries to the bird, urging the girl to abandon this unimportant diversion and focus her attention on the saint. That interaction is inversely paralleled by the female dog’s response to the lizard. The dog has been moving toward the sack of bread lying in the foreground. However, the approach of a lizard distracts her from the 41 42 43

For an image of the drawing, see Emiliani, I, 380, cat. 40. Lingo, 175. Ibid., 175. Only one other example of a nursing mother dog in sixteenth-century painting is known to the present author: Titian’s Boy with Dogs (c. 1570–76, Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam), which includes a female dog in the process of nursing her young as well as another dog that appears to be the pet of the young boy. Mary Garrard, “‘Art More Powerful than Nature?’ Titian’s Motto Reconsidered” in Patricia Meilman, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Titian (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 251–52, has interpreted the nursing mother as an image of natural behavior, and the boy with the dog as an illustration of trained behavior.

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object of her hunger. A lizard, as understood in contemporary animal treatises, was not an ominous creature. It is, therefore, a nonthreatening intervention that unnecessarily distracts the mother dog from tending to her own needs and providing food for her pups.44 Thus, in the lower register of his altarpiece, Barocci offers a parable, illustrating faithful contemplation and urging viewers to direct their attention to the important model before them and not yield to inconsequential distractions. In the post-Tridentine period, the details and meanings of martyrs’ deaths were seen as essential subjects for meditation.45 Barocci placed his signature on the rock beneath the dog, perhaps less a commentary on himself than as a means for highlighting the important exchange between the dog and the lizard.46 The manner in which Barocci integrated the dog into the theme of this picture represents a significantly more complicated and mature usage of animal imagery than in the earlier St. Sebastian. That sort of sophisticated implementation is especially evident in Barocci’s late masterpiece, the Last Supper (Fig. 6.7) one of the artist’s most ambitious undertakings.47 The painting was commissioned by Archbishop Antonio Giannotti for the Chapel of the Most 44 45 46

47

Albertus Magnus devoted Book 25 to serpents; no. 37 is the lizard. See Albertus Magnus, De Animalibus (Scanlon trans.), 407. The twenty-fifth session at Trent, held on December 4, 1563, underscored the importance of the veneration of martyr’s bodies by the faithful. Barocci did not routinely sign his pictures; only ten of his paintings are signed, and it is difficult to ascertain whether there was any iconographical significance to the appearance of his painted name. In addition to the Martyrdom of Saint Vitalis, where the signature on the rock reads FEDERICUS BAROCIUS/URBINAS P.A.D. MDLXXXIII., the signed paintings include: Madonna del Popolo, 1575–79, signed on the bottom right: FEDERICUS BAROTIUS/URBINAS MDLXXIX; Entombment of Christ, 1579, signed in the mouth of the cave: FEDERICUS BAROCIUS/URBINAS F. MDLXXXII.; Calling of Saint Andrew (Brussels), 1580–83, on the stone at the lower right corner: FEDERICUS BAROCIUS/URBINAS FACIEBAT/MDLXXXVI (originally MDLXXXIII); Aeneus Fleeing Troy, 1598, at the bottom right: FED. BAR. URB./FAC. MDXCVIII.; Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalen (Munich), 1590, at the lower left: FED. BAR. URB./MDXC.; Circumcision, 1590, on the Virgin’s hassock: FED. BAR. URB. PINX. MDLXXXX.; Crucifixion with Mourners and Saint Sebastian (Genoa,) c. 1590–96, on the bottom right: FEDERICUS BAROCCIUS/URB. F. MDLXXXXVI; Saint Jerome in Penitence, 1590s, on the bottom left: FED. BAROCIUS/URBAS PING.AT; and the Portrait of Count Federico Bonaventura, 1602, on the chair at the lower left hand corner: FED. BAR. URB./AD MDCII. Although the Martyrdom of St. Vitalis has the same number of players (thirty-one), the Last Supper is far more difficult and complicated. Over half of the participants are full figures and most of the half-figures assume complex poses. The only painting that has more figures is the Madonna del Popolo, with forty-one.

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Figure 6.7 Federico Barocci, Last Supper, 1590–99, Chapel of the Santissimo Sacramento, Cathedral, Urbino. (Permission Urbino, Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, Soprintendenza BSAE delle Marche).

Holy Sacrament in the Cathedral of Urbino.48 Barocci probably accepted the assignment in early 1590; the completed painting was installed in the Cathedral in 1599.49 48

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Documents outlining the commission begin with a letter dated 7 November 1582 from Giannotti to Barocci’s patron, Duke Francesco Maria II. See Giorgio Gronau, Documenti artistici urbinati: Con una tavola fuori testo (Florence: G.C. Sansoni, 1936), 165–72. The original commission called for two paintings, the Last Supper and the Gathering of the Manna. By 1601, it was clear that Barocci’s chronic health problems would not allow him to make the second painting. In 1606, after considering several other artists, the consiglio hired Barocci’s student Alessandro Vitali, with the stipulation that the painting be done under his master’s direction. Vitali’s canvas hung in the chapel until at least 1801, when it was recorded there in Andrea Lazzari’s guide to Urbinate churches. No later documents provide the subsequent history of the picture, and its present whereabouts are unknown. See Andrea Lazzari, Delle chiese di Urbino e delle pitture in esse esistente:

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Anchored by a calm and static Christ, Barocci’s Last Supper is focused along a central axis. With three rays of light suggesting a halo, Jesus sits in the center of a long table parallel to the picture plane. Seated around him are his twelve apostles, evenly divided with six on either side. Twelve servants clean up after the meal; most prominent are those located in the foreground. On the left, a man and two boys wipe and store majolica plates. On the right, attendants prepare to remove the wine cooler and two jugs, accompanied by a dog who, just about to drink from the cooler, looks out at the viewer. The iconography of this painting, one that the artist labored on for nearly a decade, is complicated. A thorough explanation is needed, however, in order to properly appreciate the significance of the dog. The final Passover meal that Christ shared with his disciples is described in all four gospels as well as in Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians.50 Jesus tells his disciples that one of them will betray him and then urges them to eat bread and wine in remembrance of him. He also promises that he will not drink wine with them again until they meet in Heaven. Particularly important for understanding Barocci’s interpretation of the narrative are passages in both John and Luke in which Jesus asks who should be deemed greater, the master or the servant, and tells them that he himself has served.51 Traditionally, illustrations of the Last Supper focused on two events, the announcement of impending betrayal and the request for a ritual meal to commemorate Jesus’s sacrifice. Barocci included both.52 Christ raises his right hand to bless the small loaf of bread in his left. A container of wine rests on the table before him. Together, they allude to the ritual meal. Barocci also indicated that the announcement of betrayal has been made because the apostles respond not only in attitudes of contemplation and reflection inspired by the Eucharist, but also with animated and inquiring poses that indicate their reactions to the unsettling news. Although Barocci has provided a flurry of activity and response among all of the apostles, he has directed the viewer to think longest and hardest about

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compendio storico (Urbino: Presso Giovanni Guerrini, 1801), 107–8; Anna Maria Ambrosini Massari and Marina Cellini, eds., Nel segno di Barocci: Allievi e seguaci fra Marche, Umbria, Siena (Milan: Federico Motta, 2005), 136. Today, G.B. Urbanelli’s Adoration of the Magi appears on the right wall of the chapel, according to Franco Negroni, Il duomo di Urbino (Urbino: Accademia Raffaello, 1993), 103, n. 38, it was placed there in the nineteenth century. I Cor. 11.28. This is made more explicit in John’s gospel (John 13.4–11) where Christ washes the apostles’ feet. Mark 14.17–25; Matt. 26.20–29; John 13.1–30; Luke 22.7–27.

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Judas, who sits opposite Christ, calmly wiping his lips while he proffers his glass for more wine.53 He alone still eats. Judas is intended to serve as a foil to Christ, enabling viewers to understand Jesus as a model of humility, therefore emphasizing the need for penance as a prerequisite for Communion (see below). Their contrasting, but symbiotic relationship is conveyed in a number of ways. Barocci transposed identical colors for Christ’s and Judas’s clothing (red robe/blue mantle for Christ; blue robe/red mantle for Judas). Together they embrace the Eucharistic meal. Christ holds the bread and Judas the wineglass. Christ is the focal point of the painting, but Judas is situated so that his oversized left foot falls along the central axis. Judas occupies the largest amount of visual space in the picture. A strong diagonal from the lower right corner of the canvas directs the visitor’s attention to Christ’s betrayer. It is noteworthy that the della Roveres entered the Sacrament Chapel through a passage that linked the Cathedral to the ducal palace, causing them to approach the picture from the right side.54 Interestingly, commentators have not identified Judas correctly despite Barocci’s placing him in the position used most frequently in Last Supper imagery, the near side of the table at Christ’s right. Perhaps Barocci’s omission of one of the most obvious signifiers, the money bag that he usually either wears on his belt or holds in his hand, may explain this misidentification.55 Had Barocci included the bag, however, the emphasis would have been on the betrayal. The artist focused instead on Judas’s attempted participation in the Eucharist by adapting an action that commonly appears in fifteenth century depictions of the scene: Judas’s reaching into a dish, which is described in the gospel text.56 Here, however, Judas doesn’t merely ask for more wine. When all the others no longer eat nor drink, Judas selfishly wipes his mouth and mindlessly thrusts out his glass for a refill. Judas’s bold request for more wine, made just as Christ blesses the Eucharistic meal, is sinister. By isolating the wineglass on the table in front of Christ, Barocci alluded to the biblical text in which 53 54

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Barocci has also gone to great pains, however, to identify the other apostles. See Judith Mann, “Last Supper,” in Mann and Bohn, 227. On this detail, see Silvia Cuppini, “L’Ultima Cena di Federico Barocci, dettagli iconografici,” in Giuseppe Cucco and Anna Fucilli, eds., Iconografie eucaristiche: testimonianze dall’Arcidiocesi di Urbino-Urbania-Sant’Angelo in Vado (Urbino: Litostella, 2005), 158. Numerous examples of both types can be found throughout the history of art. A rough and admittedly not exhaustive survey of Last Supper imagery suggests that the moneybag is pictured roughly one-half of the time. In Matt. 26.23, Mark 14.20, and John 13.26, Jesus describes his betrayer as someone who has dipped his hand into the wine dish or who receives bread dipped in the wine dish.

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Jesus identifies his betrayer as the one dipping from “the same dish,” for Judas is the only other person with a glass. Barocci emphasized the announcement of the Eucharist by setting his scene after the meal has finished. Most artists presented a surface strewn with food, whereas Barocci painted a barren table to indicate that the dinner is finished and the servants have cleaned up. Luke recounted that Christ asked that they eat bread in remembrance of him during the meal, but that he did not introduce the Eucharistic wine until after the meal was over.57 Luke ended the account of the Last Supper with the following: An argument also began between them about who should be reckoned the greatest; but he said to them, “Among the gentiles it is the kings who lord it over them, and those who have authority over them are given the title Benefactor. With you this must not happen. No, the greatest among you must behave as if he were the youngest, the leader as if he were the one who serves. For who is the greater: the one at table or the one who serves? The one at table, surely? Yet here am I among you as one who serves!58 This lesson was understood as teaching humility (Christ humbled himself and exhorted his followers to do the same). The act of humble servitude referred to penance or confession and had particular resonance in the sixteenth century, for it related to a contemporary discussion on how one prepared for taking the Sacrament.59 In 1551, the Council of Trent decreed that confession, or penance, was required to ready oneself for Communion.60 57

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One writer has interpreted the obviously cleared surface as a reference to the two Easters, the idea being that the Passover meal was the model for the Eucharistic meal. Nicola Ivanoff, “Il ciclo Eucaristico di S. Giorgio Maggiore a Venezia,” Notizie da Palazzo Albani 4.2 (1975): 55, has noted the words of the consiglio statement as to the subject (“Last Supper of our Lord shown when, having eaten the Pasqual Lamb, he instituted the Sacrament”). This stipulation that the painting was to show the time after the meal had been eaten suggests to Ivanoff that the intention was to remind viewers that the paschal lamb had been replaced with the bread of the Eucharist. Luke 22.4–27. See Louis Réau, Iconographie de l’art chrétien (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1955–59), 2, 411–12. The Decree Concerning the “Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist” was issued on October 11, 1551. Chap. 7, titled “The Preparation to Be Employed that One May Receive the Sacred Eucharist Worthily,” gives instruction on the proper preparation before taking Mass.

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The theme of humble service as an illustration of penance explains Barocci’s emphasis on the attendants. The composition is framed by serving staff whose bustling activity dominates the scene. Although such helpers appear frequently in the Veneto, and occasionally in Florence and Lombardy, no other artist included so many. It is no coincidence that their number matches that of the apostles, an intentional emphasis on the preparation for Communion (the servants) and those who will take Communion (the apostles). In 1593, while Barocci was painting his Last Supper, the theologian Roberto Bellarmino issued a treatise in which he argued against taking the Sacrament without confession. The person who does so, he wrote, takes it unworthily and to his damnation, citing Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, 11.29: Everyone is to examine himself and only then eat of the bread or drink from the cup; because a person who eats and drinks without recognizing the body is eating and drinking his own condemnation. The 1551 Tridentine decree included the same text. A medallion above the entryway to the Sacrament Chapel carries an excerpt from Paul’s letter in Latin (Probet autem se ipsum homo—Man should examine himself).61 In Barocci’s painting, Judas improperly drinks the wine before Christ administers the Mass, embodying the person who, without penance, unworthily takes the Sacrament. Through the inclusion of the dog, Barocci underscored the impropriety of drinking the wine by introducing an inventive twist on another Last Supper tradition. Dogs were commonly included in Last Supper illustrations as a means to symbolize Judas’s betrayal since, as previously noted, in medieval and Renaissance bestiaries dogs carried negative as well as positive associations. Although they were associated with fidelity, they also connoted envy, avarice, promiscuity, and treason.62 The association with Judas and treachery was particularly strong among Venetian painters. Both Titian and Tintoretto, for example, repeatedly included a dog to symbolize this.63 Barocci, however, 61

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While the roundel itself may not date back to the sixteenth century—much of the chapel was refurbished after the dome collapsed in 1789—the inscription very likely repeats one that was originally there, given its topicality when Barocci’s painting was created. See Cohen, Animals as Disguised Symbols, 146; on dogs and sexuality, see Beryl Rowland, Animals with Human Faces: A Guide to Animal Symbolism (London: Allen and Unwin, 1974), esp. 58–66. In Flemish art, as Marrow argued in “Circumdederunt me canes multi,” the dog symbolized treachery and persecution. There is a good deal of literature on the symbolic presence of dogs in scenes of the Last Supper. Most germane to the present discussion are Cohen, Animals as Disguised Symbols, 130–46; and Michael Levey, “Tintoretto and the Theme of Miraculous Intervention,”

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offered a more interesting and nuanced reading of this tradition. Through his compositional design, he associated Judas with the dog through the servant who rushes to refill Judas’s glass. Rather than being simply an emblem of Judas’s betrayal, the dog offers commentary on the traitor’s action. Paralleling Judas’s request for more wine is the dog’s contemplation of a drink from the water in the wine cooler. Although for the animal it is a physical thirst that may be slaked, for Judas only physical thirst can be sated through the wine, for he is not eligible to partake properly of the ritual drink. By including the dog, also not worthy of salvation, Barocci provided a narrative gloss for contemplation and reflection.64 Critical to Barocci’s concept, however, is the dog’s role as the sole figure within the picture that makes direct eye contact with the viewer. It becomes the compositional keystone that enjoins the onlooker to think about the issue at hand. Just as the dog pauses before it laps up the water, the faithful would have been cautioned to reflect upon their own worthiness for partaking in the Eucharist before they participated in the Mass, a theme that was announced to them upon entering the chapel via the medallion over the doorway. Barocci’s sensitive portrayal of Judas is perhaps one of the most telling examples of the artist’s narrative style. Most artists relied upon standard conventions for the representation of Christ’s betrayer that included a dark beard, a profile view that emphasized a hooked nose and treacherous demeanor, and a person slightly withdrawn from the scene. For Barocci, Judas was a more complicated personality who wipes his mouth and beckons for wine as he reflects upon the person seated across from him at the table. One gets the sense that he may even be experiencing the first pangs of remorse as he wipes his face in a gesture that also suggests the need to wipe away his sin. As we turn to Barocci’s final depiction of Judas, we find that he depicted the apostle in tortured thought, a pose that prompts the viewer to wonder whether Judas recognizes his own need for repentance.

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Journal of the Royal Society of the Arts 113 (1965): 721. Levey’s discussion relates the presence of the dog to lines from the feast of Corpus Christi composed by Thomas Aquinas, Non mittendus canibus, from a longer passage that translates, “Behold the Bread of Angels, made the Food of wayfarers, Truly the bread of children, not to be given to the dogs.” The passage underscores the required worthiness of those who would partake of the bread/ Christ’s body. Among the group of Barocci’s animal drawings, one has traditionally been associated with the dog in this picture: Uffizi inv. 17887 F., Emiliani, 2, 237, cat. 66.64, illustrated. Bohn and I have each independently come to the conclusion that the sheet is not by Barocci. The uniform handling of the shading across the dog’s head and back and the application of red chalk do not conform to his autograph work.

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Barocci continued his meditation on penance and the worthy’s preparation for celebrating Mass when he fulfilled one of the most important commissions of his career, the request from Clement VIII Aldobrandini for an altarpiece to adorn the family chapel in Santa Maria sopra Minerva where the pope’s parents were interred. The picture, The Institution of the Eucharist (Fig. 6.8), was commissioned through Duke Francesco Maria’s ambassador in Rome, and took time to work out.65 Negotiations began in 1603, and the altarpiece was finished and ready to place in the chapel by July 24, 1608, although it was not installed there until the following year.66 The painting continued Barocci’s meditation about who might partake of the sacrament of the Eucharist. It features a contemplative Judas, now holding his traditional bag of money, sitting off to the right side of the central event. As would be expected, Barocci addressed some of the same themes undertaken in his earlier picture for Urbino Cathedral. He selected a new approach, however, in representing the biblical narrative and, most significant for this study, used the dog in a very different way. He changed the roles of traitor and dog to establish a more direct illustration of St. Paul’s text that urges self-examination before participating in Communion. The scene takes place at night; several discrete light sources illuminate the interior. Christ stands just to the left of the central line of the painting, raising the Eucharistic wafer in his right hand as St. Peter (left) and St. John the Evangelist (right) kneel before him. Assuming one of the artist’s most successful and persuasive poses, John conveys complete submission and humility as he bows his head in preparation for the ritual. His position is echoed by the diligent servant at lower right who cleans the tableware following the meal, establishing an association between humility and service. At Christ’s right is a decanter of wine as well as a goblet, no doubt reflecting the practice of mixing water with the Eucharistic wine, a requirement that was addressed in the twenty-second session of the Council of Trent in 1562.67 Apostles observe from 65 66

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On the commission, see Gronau, Documenti artistici urbinati, 176–86; Olsen, Federico Barocci, 209–10; Emiliani, II, 296–98; Gillgren, Siting Federico Barocci, 265. Clement died in 1605. Subsequent negotiations were handled by his nephew, Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, who was informed in a letter of July 24, 1608 from Duke Francesco Maria that the finished painting was ready; in 1609 it was sent to the pope’s sister, Olimpia Aldobrandini, in Rome, per Pietro Aldobrandini’s instructions, proof that it was surely completed by that date. It was installed on the altar when the chapel was consecrated on March 9, 1611. The decree issued by the Council reads as follows: “The holy Synod notices, in the next place, that it has been enjoined by the Church on priests, to mix water with the wine that is to be offered in the chalice; as well because it is believed that Christ the Lord did this, as

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Figure 6.8 Federico Barocci, Institution of the Eucharist, 1603–09, Aldobrandini Chapel, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome. (Permission Rome, Archivio Fotografico Soprintendenza Speciale per il Patrimonio Storico Artistico ed Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma).

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the left and right, and servants busily clean tabletops, clear dishware, and return washed platters to their proper place on background shelves. In the foreground, closest to the viewer, in addition to the young man already described who washes pewter plates, a figure on the left carries a basket on his hip as he reaches to pick up a kettle. At the far left a dog shadows the servant, turning with interest toward the various foreground vessels in hopes of receiving some table scraps. The compositional drawings that the artist submitted to the pope’s secretary for approval offer early evidence of the importance of Judas and the dog in Barocci’s thinking. One of the sheets is in the Duke of Devonshire’s collection at Chatsworth (Fig. 6.9); the other is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Fig. 6.10).68 Both drawings were presented to the pope at the same time, alterations were requested, and Barocci resubmitted the Fitzwilliam sheet having made some of the corrections demanded by the pope.69 Importantly, both versions contain a dog. The Chatsworth study lays out the essential ideas that informed Barocci’s early thinking about the commission. Its left foreground grouping could be interpreted as signifying charity or as depicting a family in need of handouts, both of which had precedents in earlier representations of the subject. As will become apparent, though, in deciphering other elements of the narrative, it is simply an image of a mother with her children.70 There is no doubt that the group in the middle ground includes the devil speaking to Judas who kneels before Jesus as he prepares to receive the wafer. We know from Bellori that the

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also because from His side there came out blood and water; the memory of which mystery is renewed by this commixture; and, whereas in the apocalypse of blessed John, the peoples are called waters, the union of that faithful people with Christ their head is hereby represented.” Although scholars have not yet come to complete agreement about how many drawings were submitted to the pope, I have argued elsewhere that there were only two, although they represent three distinct stages in Barocci’s thinking. See Mann, “Institution of the Eucharist,” in Mann and Bohn, 288–98, for the summation of my argument, as well as for a review of the different opinions as to the number and sequence of the preparatory compositional studies. For a more thorough analysis of the changes made, see Ibid. Lingo, pp. 158–60, argued that the decision to include a partially nude female figure may have stemmed in part from Barocci’s recollection of the expectations of a Roman audience from his time in Rome. Lingo’s larger argument, however, concerned this figure as illustration of the notion of vaghezza, or the idea that imagery can be alluring to the viewer.

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Figure 6.9 Federico Barocci, Compositional study for the Institution of the Eucharist, c. 1603–04, 48 × 34.3 cm, Chatsworth House, Derbyshire. (Permission Chatsworth Settlement Trustees/The Bridgeman Art Library).

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Figure 6.10

Federico Barocci, Compositional study for the Institution of the Eucharist, c. 1603–04, 51.5 × 35.5 cm, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. (Permission Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum/The Bridgeman Art Library).

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pope found the presence of the devil so close to Jesus and the altar unacceptable, and Barocci abandoned that composition. Barocci’s daring presentation of the devil is significant for the current discussion, as it indicates that he initially wished to call attention to Judas’s role in the first Communion, one that is usually omitted or downplayed in other depictions of the scene.71 The artist may have used the gospel of John as his guide, where it is stated that the devil came into Judas at the point when he took the bread that had been dipped in the dish. Barocci’s attempt to illustrate this passage may have been inspired by a wish to adhere closely to the gospel narrative.72 When starting to design the Aldobrandini altarpiece, after having worked through his ideas about Judas in painting the Urbino Last Supper, Barocci was able to offer the pope a forceful representation of Judas receiving communion which he offset on the lower right with the servant accompanied by a dog. By juxtaposing the dog and a mother with her children, it is clear that Barocci was illustrating another biblical passage associated with the Eucharist, Christ’s words to the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15.22–28: “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs,” which was understood to refer to the Eucharistic bread that should not be eaten by the unworthy, meaning they should not participate in the Mass. In this early concept for the altarpiece, Barocci contrasted the casting of the children’s bread to the dogs in the foreground with Judas’s participation in the Mass behind. The artist abandoned this version, turning instead to the Fitzwilliam drawing (Fig. 6.10) and amending it in response to the pope’s criticisms. Here, Barocci maintained the centrally placed Jesus, having eliminated the devil and moved the servant and dog to the left side, to closely align with Judas. The mother and children have been replaced with three figures on the lower right. These individuals have defied precise interpretation, although it seems that a child is being schooled in the lessons of the Eucharist while a kneeling soldier looks on.73 In the final painting (Fig. 6.8), Barocci opted for a less obvious association between the dog and Christ’s betrayer. He placed the dog at the lower left, looking longingly at the basket of leftovers, placed along a diagonal that includes 71

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On Judas as a participant in the first Communion, see Silvia Tomasi Velli, “Federico Barocci, Clemento VIII e la ‘communione di Giuda,’” Prospettiva 87–88 (1997): 157–67, who reached similar conclusions to mine about the painting’s theme. John 13.25–27. One theory, which cannot be supported at this time, would hold that the three figures represent those not eligible to take the Eucharist—a Roman soldier to represent a preChristian pagan; a cleric in a dark vestment who may represent a Protestant reformer; and a child who has not yet taken Communion.

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the meditative Judas, posed, as noted by a number of writers, to replicate Raphael’s depiction of Heraclitus in the School of Athens.74 The seated traitor holds back from Communion and reflects upon whether he should partake. He therefore embodies the words of St. Paul that had informed Barocci’s earlier Urbino picture: that “a person who eats and drinks without recognizing the body is eating and drinking his own condemnation.” Furthermore, the combination of the dog that hopes to consume the cast-off bread and the apostle who does not partake of the bread recalls Christ’s words to the Canaanite woman cited above. The dog is a pivotal feature that underlines the theme of the picture, which is somewhat ironic, given that of all the canines Barocci included in his paintings, this one is the least emphasized. Yet the animal also behaves entirely in character for its species. As it descends the stairs, it is closely attuned to the movements of the servant and nearly underfoot. It manages to stay as close as it can to the basket of dirty dishware, a behavior well known to any dog owner today. The importance of the dog to Barocci in fashioning his account of the narrative is underscored in that the Institution of the Eucharist is the only painting for which we have individual surviving preparatory drawings showing studies of dogs. The first, a badly damaged sheet in Berlin (Fig. 6.11), contains a study for the dog as it appeared in both preliminary designs.75 Like so many of the known drawings for this altarpiece, it is most likely a study for the revision of the lighting, because one of the early changes that the pope requested was a change from a daytime to a nighttime scene. Barocci, therefore, had to insert various internal light sources and adjust the highlights on the figures accordingly. A second sheet, also in Berlin (Fig. 6.12), was made for the dog as it appears in the completed painting. Confirming the earlier discussion regarding Barocci’s failure to study individual animals, this sheet shows the artist testing out various dog parts rather than examining an actual living creature. He was only interested in the parts of the dog that are visible in the painting and he did not reconcile them into a complete animal. Barocci focused the Aldobrandini painting on Christ, who dominates the central axis and whose commanding presence underscores the liturgical nature of the depicted event. In fact, the compositional structure invites the viewer to approach and participate in the Mass. The artist, however, cautioned faithful observers to engage in self-reflection about their worthiness before 74

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For the fullest discussion of Barocci’s motivation in using such a source, see Ian Verstegan, “The Apostasy of Michelangelo in a Painting by Federico Barocci,” Source 22 (Spring 2003): 27–34. Emiliani, II p. 308, cat. 81.23 (not illustrated).

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Figure 6.11 Federico Barocci, Studies for the Institution of the Eucharist, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. KdZ 20173 (Permission Berlin, Volker-H. Schneider).

doing so. Interestingly, the artist used the seated figure of Judas to model such reflection. The foreground servants signal the themes of the painting for the chapel visitor—the need for penance in preparation for taking the Eucharist and the need for self-examination. The servant on the right, posed to echo the humble pose of St. John the Evangelist, makes reference to Christ’s assertion that he who serves is as important as those served, a reference to penance as discussed above. The servant on the left, accompanied by the dog symbolizing Judas, invites the informed viewer to recall the text of Matthew to make sure that the unworthy do not participate. In the case of this painting, the dog is essential to the supplemental narrative and the symbolic references. Without it, Barocci’s foreground would lose all meaning. Federico Barocci was an attentive observer of the world around him but he was also attuned to the power of symbols. In using animals, particularly dogs, as elements within his painted oeuvre, he recognized the efficacy of the familiar and appealing animal as a way to convey meaning and move his audience to higher levels of religious understanding. He must, therefore, be appreciated as one of the most effective agents of Post-Tridentine ideas, as well as a marvelous recorder of our beloved friend, the dog.

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Federico Barocci, Study for dog legs, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. KdZ 20328 (4340). (Permission Berlin, Volker-H. Schneider).

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Chapter 7

And Your Little Dog, Too: Michal’s Lapdog and the Romance of the Old Testament Alexa Sand Little dogs, useless for hunting anything larger than a rat and kept for no purpose other than companionship and the display of their owner’s wealth and social status, date at least to Roman antiquity. Even then, they were closely associated with the feminine: Plutarch chides the man who wants to be both a lion and “a little Maltese dog cuddled in the lap of a widow,” while Martial’s epigram on the adorable little puppy, Issa, is a catalog of female coquetry.1 By the later Middle Ages, these irresistible creatures had wriggled their way into the vernacular; the magical mutt Petitcrieu appears in the Tristan and Iseult legend around the beginning of the thirteenth century, and in the late fourteenth, Chaucer’s Prioress feeds her “smale houndes” meat and bread off her own plate while paupers starve. The popularity of little dogs in both Classical and vernacular literature contrasts with dogs’ place in the Bible, which has very little good to say about them; generally, when not serving as metaphors for abjection and evil, they show up to eat desecrated meat, the pus oozing from a leper’s sores, their own vomit, or the bodies of those who have offended God. Regardless, a small, portable dog was, for the thirteenth century, less a signifier of contamination than a fashionable accessory that marked its owner as a noble lady, along the lines of those desirable and unobtainable damsels who feature so prominently in medieval romance.2 Still, injecting lapdogs into the Bible seems an unlikely and possibly impious move, but around 1250 the artists of the Morgan Old Testament Picture Book (New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, M.638) did just that. In this essay, I exam1 Plutarch, “De Tranquilitate Anime,” in Moralia, vol. VI, Loeb Classical Library no. 337, trans. W.C. Hembold (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939), 211; Martial, Epigrams, vol. I, Spectacles, Books 1–5, Loeb Classical Library no. 94, trans. D.R. Shackelton Bailey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 124–25. 2 For a useful overview of dogs in medieval romance, see Ben Ramm, “Barking up the Wrong Tree? The Significance of the Chienet in Old French Romance,” Parergon 22.1 (2005): 47–69. On Petitcrieu, see Katharina-Silke Philipowski, “Mittelbare und unmittelbare Gegenwärtigkeit oder: Erinnern und Vergessen in der Petitcriu-Episode des Tristan Gottfrieds von Straßburg,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 120 (1998): 29–35.

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ine the way in which a small dog figures in the pictorial narrative of King David’s early career, in particular, his engagement and subsequent marriage to Saul’s daughter, Michal. Depicting Michal as the very attached owner of a diminutive hound, the artists infuse the predominantly sacred and martial character of the narrative with a strain of contemporary romance and interiority, tying the ancient story to the literary imagination of their late medieval audience. While much scholarship has focused, rightly, on the Picture Book’s connection to the chansons de gestes and the early development of prose histories of the Crusades, here I investigate a less often discussed aspect of this strange and monumental cycle of wordless illuminations, namely its engagement with vernacular themes in its depiction of love, marriage, and reproduction.3 In contrast to an understanding of the Old Testament Picture Book as primarily political in its intent, Michal’s little dog reminds us that for its medieval makers and viewers, such a book was as much about a thirst to know Scripture deeply, imaginatively, and empathetically as it was about justifying and explaining a bloody and expensive foreign war. In I Kings 18, Saul, seeking a way to put an end to David that will not look like murder, promises the young hero the hand of his daughter, Michal, in exchange for one hundred Philistine foreskins.4 He imagines that the task will prove fatal, but David and his company kill twice as many of the enemy and bring back the bloody and bizarre dowry, so Saul must fulfill his promise. The Biblical text does not give any indication of David’s feelings on the matter of this marriage, but it does mention twice that Michal loved David, both before her engagement to him and after their marriage (I Kings 18.20 and 18.28). In the 3 Daniel Weiss has been the most clear proponent of the Crusading interpretation, as discussed in his Art and Crusade in the Age of Saint Louis (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 47, 126–28; The Morgan Crusader Bible Commentary, ed. Daniel Weiss, Sussan Babaie, Sydney Cockerell, Vera Basch Moreen, and William Voelkle (Lucerne: Faksimile Verlag Luzern, 1999); and “The Old Testament Image and the Rise of Crusader Culture in France,” in Daniel Weiss and Lisa Mahoney, eds., France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 3–10. The Crusading connection was also the central focus of the 2002 Walters Art Museum exhibition and subsequent volume of essays dedicated to the Morgan Old Testament Picture Book, The Book of Kings: Art, War, and the Morgan Library’s Medieval Picture Bible, eds. William Noel and Daniel Weiss (New York: Third Millenium, 2002). Many in the scholarly community have taken to calling the manuscript “The Crusader Bible,” a rhetorical move symptomatic of this understanding of M.638 as primarily a document of Crusading politics and ideology. 4 All biblical citations reference the Douay-Rheims edition for its fidelity to the Vulgate that would have been familiar to medieval audiences. The Douay-Rheims edition is accessible online in conjunction with the Latin Vulgate: .

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Morgan Old Testament Picture Book, this strange courtship unfolds over the course of four scenes on two facing folios (Figs. 7.1 and 7.2, fol. 29v, 30r). In the upper register of the first folio, David, the picture of a handsome young courtier, enters from the left making an open-handed gesture with one hand and holding his gloves in a typically aristocratic way in the other. Behind him come his equally debonair, though more mature, companions. This group faces Saul, seated on his throne and surrounded by his court, including one beardless youth and one bareheaded woman. These are probably his children, Jonathan and Michal, both of whose love for David serves as a counterweight to Saul’s rising hatred in subsequent scenes. Michal, in a minium (lead-red) gown, a tightly cinched golden belt with an attached net purse, a gold brooch, and a gold circlet, is unmistakably a noblewoman, her loose hair indicating her unmarried state. In contrast to the figure of David, who stands apart from his company, his vermilion, vair-lined coat and gold tunic bright against the ultramarine ground, Michal is surrounded by other figures, yet the orangey-red of her gown and her position at the front of the picture plane draw the eye to her.5 The painter has also turned the spotlight on Michal with a series of gestures. Two of these are alliterated; David’s raised open hand, suggesting his liberality, is underscored by the repetition of the same gesture by the figure following him, while Saul’s pointing finger directed at his daughter has its match in the pointing hand of the man in blue at the center of David’s company. Jonathan, meanwhile, rests his open hand on Michal’s upper arm, and behind her, the bearded man in white and green gathers a fold of his cloak just under the line of her lower arm, as if to frame and enclose her. Michal, the center of all this gestural attention, stands slightly turned toward David, her gaze seeming to meet his, while her upper torso recoils gracefully. Tucked between her chest and her arm she holds a tiny dog whose back she strokes with her other hand. There is something poignant in the way she clutches the pet to her breast and comforts herself, perhaps, by comforting it. The accretion of visual clues indicating that this is Michal’s big moment culminates in her interaction with her little dog. Michal, already smitten with the shepherd boy who has become a

5 Recent technical analysis of the pigments in the Morgan Old Testament Picture Book has established that the painter responsible for this folio used both minium (orange-red, leadbased) and vermilion (true red, mercury-based) pigments. For more information, see “Technical Analysis of the Crusader Bible,” Thaw Conservation Center’s blog, November 21, 2014: (accessed January 23, 2015). Morgan conservator Frank Trujillo confirmed the probable pigments of both David and Michal’s garments in a private correspondence of January 13, 2015.

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Figure 7.1 Betrothal of David and Michal (above), David fights the Philistines (below). Old Testament Picture Book, Paris or Northern France, ca. 1250. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library ms. M.638, fol. 29v. Photo: Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

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Figure 7.2 David presents the Philistine "foreskins" to Saul, marriage of David and Michal (above), Saul commands Jonathan to murder David, Jonathan warns David. Old Testament Picture Book, M.638, fol. 30r. Photo: Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

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hero, now sees him transformed into a princely youth, and the painter subtly and surely evokes her heightened emotional state. The little lapdog constitutes the artist’s clever deployment of a social signifier of high-status femininity in aid of the narrative of the picture cycle. The painter of these scenes clearly felt comfortable introducing extratextual flourishes to scenes such as this, and just as comfortable altering the details of the narrative to make for better visual storytelling, as in the scene on the upper left of the following folio, where David and his company, fresh from battle and still in their mail and hauberks, present Saul with, not the foreskins, but the heads of the defeated Philistines. I would not put this down to prudery or squeamishness, but issues of pictorial intelligibility. The challenge of representing two hundred foreskins and somehow tying that into the preceding battle scene would be formidable. Here, the transition between the many decapitations in the lower scene on folio 29 verso and the heads in the scene in the upper left of folio 30 recto makes what a film editor would call a “match cut” strengthening the episode’s narrative continuity. The dog, which reappears with Michal in the wedding scene on the upper right of folio 30 recto, likewise comes to serve as an element that identifies the bride.6 This is particularly important because in this scene both David and Michal are dressed far less opulently than in the scene of their betrothal, David in earth-green and Michal in light umber, her gold parrure replaced with white, his vair-lined coat substituted by a simple gray cloak with a white facing. Saul glowers at David and seems to yank both David’s and Michal’s arms roughly as he joins their hands. David looks nervously at the king, raising his free hand in a gesture that may be one of blessing or speech, but that seems tentative under the circumstances. Michal, meanwhile, ducks her chin and gazes at David. She and her dog are the only ones in the scene with eyes for him. Everyone else either looks at Saul or, in the case of the figure immediately behind Michal, back at his companions, as if to comment on the proceedings. Though this is not the last appearance of Michal in the Morgan Picture Book, the dog has served its purpose, and vanishes after this scene. Later, 6 The repetition of motifs to better integrate disparate narrative episodes is a common literary device in vernacular epic and romance of the period, often described by literary scholars using Chrétien de Troye’s term conjointure or the more generic term, interlacing. Alyce Jordan explores parallels between this literary device and the visual narratives of the stained glass windows at the Sainte Chapelle (closely related in style, ideological content, and audience to the Old Testament Miniatures) in chapter 3 of her Visualizing Kingship in the Windows of the Sainte Chapelle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), 32–41. The best definition and discussion of the medieval sense of conjointure remains Douglas Kelly, The Art of Medieval French Romance (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 1–31.

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Michal’s role changes. When her father sends soldiers to kill David, she helps him escape by lowering him out a window, then placing a dummy in his bed and telling the would-be murderers that he is too sick to rise, thus giving him time to escape before the ruse is uncovered (I Kings 19.11–17), a scene treated in the upper register of folio 31 recto. Tragically for Michal, this is the last time she will see her husband before her father decides to give her as wife to one of his followers, Phalti (I Kings 25.44). Much later, when he becomes king of Judah, David demands the return of Michal from the king of Israel as a condition for accepting the allegiance of Saul’s cousin, Abner. Over the loud protests of her new husband, David’s ultimatum is satisfied (II Kings 3:13–16). In the Morgan Picture Book, this episode appears in the lower register of folio 37 recto. Michal appears twice, once taking leave of her second husband, who wrings his hands pitifully, and again, head submissively bowed, standing before the enthroned David. She comes dressed as a matron, her hair covered with a veil, and there is no indication of tenderness between the reunited pair. Michal’s last action in the Picture Book as in the Bible is to mock David for dancing and playing before the ark; her derision results, according to Scripture, in her barrenness. Thus, the little dog has a connection to the betrothal narrative of the earliest phase of Michal and David’s relationship. That the two scenes featuring Michal and her dog are the work of two distinct painters underlines the iconographic and narrative utility of the dog. The first scene, painted by the artist responsible for the largest number of illuminations and generally deemed the most accomplished and innovative of the six or seven painters who worked on the book, uses the dog, patterns of gesture, color, and composition to create an emotionally complex vignette, charged with Michal’s as-yet unfulfilled desire for David, Saul’s malevolence, and David’s youthful candor.7 The second scene, the wedding, on the other hand, reads more simply. Saul’s threatening presence consumes most of the depicted attention, while Michal’s coy adoration of David strikes a false note, and the dog feels more like an accessory than a beloved pet. This painter’s handling of color is less imaginative and dramatic, and the treatment of gesture has more of an element of pantomime. This penchant for stagey overstatement is immediately evident in the lower register of folio 30 recto, where Saul orders Jonathan and his men to kill David, and Jonathan then warns his beloved friend of the king’s intentions. None 7 For the attribution of works to hands, see Sydney Cockerell and John Plummer, Old Testament Miniatures: A Medieval Picture Book with 283 Paintings from the Creation to the Story of David (New York: George Braziller, 1969), 18–21; and for further discussion, see Daniel Weiss, “Portraying the Past, Illuminating the Present: The Art of the Morgan Library Picture Bible,” in The Book of Kings, 18–25.

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of the agonized emotional conflict that the first painter could have milked from Jonathan’s predicament emerges from the exaggerated horizontal line of Saul’s pointing arm, Jonathan’s pat expression of dismay indicated by the open hand raised before his chest, and then his didactic raised-finger gesture as David repeats the “dismay” motif on the right. Nevertheless, the two painters must have been in communication, on the evidence of the seamlessness of the narrative between the first painter’s vividly imagined betrothal and battle scenes and the other painter’s less compelling depiction of the presentation of the Philistine heads and the wedding. The Morgan Picture Book was the result of collaboration between a number of artists and was probably organized by a book-dealer, or libraire, who operated as an agent for a patron with a very specific and unusual set of expectations.8 Following a suggestion first raised by Harvey Stahl in his unpublished doctoral dissertation, C. Griffith Mann has traced the Picture Book’s adoption of contemporary literary narrative strategies found in the chansons de geste.9 In particular, Mann reads the narrative structure of the pictures dedicated to I Kings as reflective of the book’s intended audience’s familiarity with the Chanson de Roland. He compares the parallel laisses of the epic genre, in which nearly identical sequences of action are described using nearly identical vocabulary, to the repetition of motifs such as disembowelment and behead8 There has been some scholarly disagreement over the exact composition of the “workshop” that produced the book and the identification of its patron. The prevalent view sees it as a product of royal patronage based on parallels to the Sainte Chapelle; for example, Cockerell and Plummer, Old Testament Miniatures, 6, and most recently Weiss, “Portraying the Past,” 16. However, based on iconographic and sartorial details, Alison Stones suggests a northern French origin for the artists, and accordingly for the manuscript (see “Questions of Style and Provenance in the Morgan Picture Bible” in C. Hourihane, ed., Between the Picture and the Word: Manuscript Studies from the Index of Christian Art (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), 112–21. Paul Binski, The Painted Chamber at Westminster, Society of Antiquaries Occasional Papers 9 (London: Society of Antiquaries, 1986), 24–31, has discussed the possibility that some of the group of mural painters responsible for the Painted Chamber may have been the same as or in contact with the authors of the Morgan Picture Book, which would indicate that the group was relatively peripatetic. Emily Guérry’s recent work on the painted quatrefoils of the martyrdoms of the saints at the Sainte Chapelle has confirmed Robert Branner’s suspicion that the hands at work on the murals were very close to those in the Picture Book: The Wall Paintings of the Sainte Chapelle: Picturing Passion in the Age of Saint Louis (London: Harvey Miller, 2014). This would tend to support the hypothesis of Louis IX or one of his brothers as patron. 9 Harvey Stahl, “The Iconographic Sources of the Old Testament Miniatures, Pierpont Morgan Library M.638,” PhD diss., New York University, 1974, 94–96. C. Griffith Mann, “Picturing the Bible in the Thirteenth Century,” in The Book of Kings, 39–59, especially 55–57.

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ing in the battle scenes that figure so prominently in the Old Testament books selected for illustration in the Morgan Picture Book.10 Furthermore, the painters create what he describes as “the uneasy tension between the resplendent beauty and destructive force of martial action” in the same way that the poet of Roland balanced descriptions of butchery with delicate, loving evocations of material beauty.11 In my own work on the Ruth sequence in this manuscript, I have observed that this tension exists not only within battle scenes, but also between depicted episodes and sequences of episodes, so that, for example, the pastoral idyll of Ruth’s story begins quite literally in the face of one of the most visually disturbing and violent episodes in the book, the division of the violated corpse of the Levite’s wife and the slaughter of the tribe of Benjamin (folio 16 verso). These are linked, visually and narratologically, to Ruth’s story by way of the scene in the upper register of folio 17 recto, depicting the rape of the daughters of Shiloh by the Benjaminites who have survived the battle. As courtly as the ladies dancing on the left appear, the motif of wrist grabbing by mail-clad soldiers leaves no doubt as to their fate.12 Where most scholarship on narrative in the Morgan Picture Book has explored the strong link to thirteenth-century vernacular epic and the militaristic culture of the Crusades, I have maintained that the Ruth sequence suggests an equally profound investment in the less martial, more pastoral or at least domestic concerns of the Romance genre. Both assessments may rely too heavily on generic distinction and imply, incorrectly as it happens, that a visual tradition linking scenes of either battle or courtship already existed in conjunction with vernacular texts in the 1240s for the Morgan Picture Book’s artists to consult. In terms of genre, literary scholarship has for the last twenty years recognized that romance and epic modes of depiction are intertwined in the emergent vernacular literature of France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and that contemporary audiences did not make the kind of absolute distinctions between them that philology later imposed.13 Furthermore, as 10 11 12

13

Mann, “Picturing the Bible,” 55. Mann, “Picturing the Bible,” 56. Alexa Sand, “Inseminating Ruth in the Morgan Picture Bible” in Albrecht Classen, ed., Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: New Approaches to a Fundamental Cultural-Historical and Literary-Anthropological Theme (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 535–64, at 551. The question of whether medieval audiences themselves recognized clear boundaries between epic and romance genres has been much discussed. However, given that authors themselves often categorize or typify their works and shape their narratives according to generic conventions, most scholars concur that some form of generic distinction was part of the production and reception of literary works in the vernacular. See Paul Zumthor,

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Sandra Obergfell Malicote points out, illuminated manuscripts of vernacular texts from the (mostly later) thirteenth century seldom pair the chansons de geste with images of battle or single combat, whereas the depiction of knightly martial activity is far more common in concert with the Arthurian romances.14 Work by Sandra Hindman, Alison Stones, Gabrielle Spiegel, and Howard Bloch has established a strong connection between the class-related anxieties of northern French aristocrats in the face of Capetian expansion of royal authority and the insistent visual and verbal rhetoric of knightly prowess articulated in the epic and romance strains of vernacular literature of the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.15 In light of this, the Morgan Picture Book, as well as the glass of the Sainte Chapelle, the Saint Louis Psalter, and the Arsenal’s Acre Bible appear to turn the usual “words before pictures” model of artistic development on its head. Instead, the way in which the artists of these works visualize biblical narratives seems to lead the way for the translation of vernacular literary themes and genres into pictorial forms. Themes of agricultural and human fertility, mutual erotic desire and consensual sex, and profound sentiments of love and attachment characterize the Ruth cycle’s treatment of the biblical material, and while these themes are of course familiar from the romance tradition, they are also part of the Book of Ruth.16 The narrative subtlety and the emotional depth of the sequence are the

14 15

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Essai de poétique médiévale (Paris: Seuil, 1972), 69; Sarah Kay, The Chansons de Geste in the Age of Romance: Political Fictions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 2–11; Simon Gaunt, “Romance and Other Genres” in Roberta Krueger, ed., Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 45–59; Keith Busby, “Narrative Genres,” in Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 139–52. Sandra Obergfell Malicote, “The Illuminated Geste de Saint Gille: Questions of Genre,” Romantic Review 90 (1999): 285–301. Sandra Hindman, Sealed in Parchment: Rereadings of Knighthood in the Illuminated Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 130–56, 190–91; Gabrielle Spiegel, Romancing the Past: The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in the Thirteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 214–68; Alison Stones, “Secular Manuscript Illumination in France” in Christopher Kleinhenz, ed., Medieval Manuscripts and Textual Criticism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1976), 83–102; and more recently, “L’enluminure au temps de Jeanne de Constantinople et de Marguerite de Flandre,” and catalogue entries, in Jeanne de Constantinople, comtesse de Flandre et de Hainaut, ed. Nicholas Dessaux (Paris: Somogy éditions d’art, 2009), 177–89, 192–207; Howard Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 92–127. Alyce Jordan notes the deployment of the Ruth scenes in tracery of the Joshua window (N) at the Sainte-Chapelle as a chronological displacement that helps serve as a conjointure

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work of the same painter responsible for the betrothal scene of David and Michal and entirely in keeping with that artist’s fine control of compositional, iconographic, gestural, and coloristic elements to evoke affect and to heighten the narrative potential of any given scene. This was an artist who knew how to visually signal the differences in pacing and emphasis that distinguish the martial genre of the chanson, with its emphasis on deeds, from the romance, with its focus on interpersonal relationships, interiority, and sexuality. Like the great poets of the day, who moved easily between epic and romance modes within a single text, this painter could shift gears from carnage to courtliness. Furthermore, the Morgan Picture Book, while it may treat the Old Testament as a compound of epic and chivalric romance, is also deeply invested in the narrative patterns and rhythms of Scripture as they relate to the experiences, values, and concerns of its audience. As Weiss observes, the particular emphasis on scenes of blood sacrifice connects the contemporary rhetoric of Crusade to the spiritual logic of the history books of the Bible. Purgative and salutary episodes of fatal violence punctuate the Octateuch and the Books of Kings (in other words, the texts upon which the illuminations of the Morgan Picture Book are based) and help to explain and justify the terrible bloodletting and bodily suffering that Crusaders, potential Crusaders, and their families knew to expect.17 In the Morgan Picture Book, just as in contemporary vernacular literature, romance and epic modes are entangled with sacred and even liturgical modes, and the contrapuntal relationship between these various strands indicates that the audiences for such works came to them with a complex set of expectations, values, and anxieties that they hoped to see addressed in the work of art, literary or pictorial. So where does Michal’s little dog fit into all of this? In the betrothal and wedding scenes the dog works on the most basic level as a continuity element that makes clear the identity of the two representations of Saul’s daughter. As an attribute, the lapdog is distinctive; in this book only Michal ever holds a dog, and only in her role as bride. She is also the only consenting virgin bride in the book and the scenes of her betrothal and marriage account for two-thirds of the scenes that directly represent marriage—David’s subsequent marriage to Bathsheba on folio 42 verso is the only other wedding scene. Even such important marriages as those of Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and

17

between the lineal motifs of the north nave windows, the genealogy of Christ in the hemicycle, and the focus on biblical heroines in the Esther and Judith windows of the south nave; the emphasis on marriage and childbirth in the windows is also highlighted by Jordan. Visualizing Kingship, 18, 39. Weiss, “The Old Testament Image,” 9.

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Rachel, or Ruth and Boaz happen in the interstices between depicted episodes, despite abundant iconographic precedents from which the authors of the Morgan Picture Book’s cycle might have drawn. Compare this dearth of marital iconography to the abundance of such scenes in the nearly contemporary glass at the Sainte Chapelle, where at least seven weddings appear (either as feasts or as handclasping), and the exceptional nature of the artists’ visual interest in Michal as a bride becomes apparent.18 In the mid-thirteenth century, a variety of literary sources align noble ladies, sexual desire, and small pet dogs; some of the earliest pictorial treatments of these narratives, all postdating the Morgan Picture Book, feature the motif of the lady holding a lapdog. The tragic tale of the Chastelaine de Vergi, of the mid-thirteenth century, but reflective of themes present in the romance tradition from a much earlier date, turns on the heroine’s little dog.19 To signal to her knightly lover that the way is clear for a tryst, she lets her pet out into the garden. When circumstances compel the lover to reveal the affair to the Duke of Burgundy, the Duchess, who desires the knight, taunts the Châtelaine (who is never named) about her “well trained dog,” clearly alluding to the knight rather than the actual canine. Heartbroken that her lover has abrogated the vow of secrecy he made to her, the heroine dies. The horrified knight takes his own life. The anonymous author of the romance capitalizes on the canine as a double-edged allegory of obedience and faithfulness versus treachery. In the logic of the tale, the animal both signals the Châtelaine’s libidinous desire for and erotic receptivity to the knight and the fatal trouble into which adultery leads them.20 Kathleen Walker-Meikle has noted that pets, and in particular lapdogs, were closely associated in the later Middle Ages with noblewomen.21 Thus the knight’s entanglement with the dog, both in terms of the ruse insti-

18 19

20 21

See Jordan, Visualizing Kingship, 18. There is a significant bibliography on this text, beginning with the first modern edition in 1892 (Gaston Raynaud, “La chastelaine de Vergi,” Romania 21 [1892], 145–93). Particularly useful to me in preparing this essay were the following: Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann, “La Châtelaine de Vergi auf Pariser Elfenbein-Kätschen des 14. Jahrhunderts. Zum Problem der Interpratation literarischer Texte anhand von Bildzeugnissen,” Romanistisches Jahrbuch 27 (1976): 52–76; Sylvia Huot, “The Chastelaine de Vergi at the Crossroads of Courtly, Moral, and Devotional Literature,” in Joan Tasker Grimbert and Carol J. Chase, eds., Philologies Old and New: Essays in Honor of Peter Florian Dembowski (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 269–79; Ramm, “Barking up the Wrong Tree?” For more on the pivotal role of the dog in this work, see Ramm, “Barking up the Wrong Tree?,” 54–55. Kathleen Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2012), 24.

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tuted by his lady and the cruelly sarcastic innuendo of the Duchess, is a sort of emasculation for which the only remedy is suicide. The Chastelaine de Vergi enjoyed a degree of popularity attested to by the twenty-plus surviving manuscript copies from the later Middle Ages, as well as by the existence of a prose version and an Italian translation, both dating to the first half of the fourteenth century.22 Visual interest in the tale primarily took the form of carved ivory and bone items suited to high-status feminine grooming and self-adornment. A group of six ivory boxes with carved lids and sides depict virtually identical sequences of episodes from the story. While these boxes postdate the composition of the poem by about a century, they show remarkable fidelity to the text and to a single iconographic scheme.23 Earlier bone or ivory hair-parters, or gravoirs, that depict a standing lady holding a small dog may also refer to the story’s heroine, as Raymond Koechlin originally suggested (Fig. 7.3).24 While many such objects depict generic types, a king with a scepter or a youth with a hawk, for example, specific characters from romance narrative were also popular. One example (Fig. 7.4, Turin, Palazzo Madama-Museo Civico d’Arte Antica, Inv. 158/AV) depicts a couple who are unmistakably Tristan and Iseult, with Iseult holding her small fairydog Petitcrieu, Tristan’s love-gift, introduced by Gottfried von Strassburg in his Tristan.25 In all these examples, the lady tucks the petite animal elegantly into the crook of her elbow, just as Michal does in the Morgan Picture Book, a gesture as soigné and studied as the stereotypical male gestures of courtliness, such as carrying a falcon on the fist or, perhaps more to the point, casually flourishing a pair of gloves in one hand, as David does in the Morgan illumination. The ivory examples with their dog-toting ladies postdate the Morgan Picture Book by at least half a century, so they cannot have served as models for its iconography. Rather, as I have suggested, the visual formulation of Michal-aslovestruck-bride pioneered by the artists of the Morgan Picture Book may have filtered outward from the elite and restricted audience that had access to such a book and informed the way later listeners, readers, and image-makers imagined the dog-owning heroines of romance, even as the formula may first have been shaped by a sensitivity to the romancelike elements of the biblical 22

23 24 25

These figures are based on the data collected by Arlima (Les Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge), an online database administered by Laurent Brun. . Consulted May 29, 2014. Laila Gross, “‘La Chastelaine de Vergi’ Carved in Ivory,” Viator 10 (1979): 311–22. R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, 417–19; II, no. 1122; III, pl. CLCCIX. Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan, ed. Reinhold Bechstein, 2 vols (Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1978). For Petitcrieu, see II, vv. 15769–16406. Cited by Ramm, 55, n. 21.

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Figure 7.3 Knife handle with standing woman holding a dog. Bone, 9cm high. Paris, early 14th century. Photo courtesy of Collection Dr. J.H. van Heek, Foundation Huis Bergh’s-Heerenberg, The Netherlands.

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Figure 7.4 Tristan and Iseult, elephant-ivory gravoir, 7 cm high. Paris, 1330–1360. Turin, Palazzo Madama – Museo Civico d’Arte Antica, inv. 158/AV. Photo: Studio Fotografico Gonella 2010. Reproduced by permission of the Fondazione Torino Musei. Not for further duplication by any method whatsoever.

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narrative. Regardless, Michal’s dog cannot be dismissed as a simple attribute, for not all brides and not all noble ladies are characterized by lapdogs. Instead, the dog in Michal’s arms casts her as a certain type of heroine: young, beautiful, enamored, sexually available to her beloved, and perhaps, like Iseult and the Châtelaine de Vergi, doomed. That is why, when Michal reappears in other roles, the dog is no longer with her. The older, bitter Michal who returns to David after a long separation wears a matron’s veil and shows no sign of love or desire toward her husband, who returns her chilly regard with regal implacability (Fig. 7.5). The end of David and Michal’s romance is not irrelevant to an account of her little dog, either. On folio 39 verso, a particularly elaborate frame allows the artist to place Michal, now dressed in the fashionable garb of a married noblewoman of the mid-thirteenth century with a barbette and toque, in a high window, out of which she leans, pointing accusingly down at David, who dances before the Ark (Fig. 7.6). Although David is fully clothed (contrary to the Biblical text) in this picture, his hunched, capering posture and his furtive glance over his shoulder up at Michal are not dignified. His posture replicates that of the “Fool” frequently seen in the initial to Psalm 52, “Dixit insipiens” (“The fool said in his heart: there is no God”) in French Psalters of the midthirteenth century. The contrast between her placement and gesture and his underscore her derision. The picture makes clear the spouses’ complete and final alienation from one another, a separation enforced when, two openings later, a similar architectural superstructure appears framing David’s first glimpse of Bathsheba, the woman who will replace Michal as his principal wife (Fig. 7.7). Michal’s accusatory gesture becomes David’s indication of his erotic desire, while David’s humiliating exposure before the Ark becomes Bathsheba’s unselfconscious and literal nudity. Unlike David, however, Bathsheba appears unaware that she is watched. In the next scene, just below David’s coup de foudre, the naked couple make love under a blue coverlet on a bed framed by drawn curtains that, with the erect candle that stands behind them, might be read as an altar. This adulterous pairing will bear all manner of fruit, ill and good, but above all, it will produce Solomon, the only one of David’s sons worthy to inherit the crown of Israel. The insurance of lineage through the birth of sons is an all-consuming theme of the Old Testament, and one that is emphatically explored in the Morgan Picture Book. It is also crucial in the rhetoric of the epic, and was a matter of pressing concern for the aristocracy of France during the thirteenth century.26 Not only royal lineages, but also comital, ducal, and baronial lines 26

On the pivotal role of genealogy and lineage in the chansons de geste, see Bloch, Etymologies, 66–76. For a broader discussion of the concern with lineage in vernacular literature,

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Figure 7.5 Michal returned, Michal presented to David (II Kings 3.16). Old Testament Picture Book (M.638), fol. 37r. Photo: Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

Figure 7.6 David dances before the Ark while Michal derides him. Old Testament Picture Book (M.638), fol. 39v. Photo: Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

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Figure 7.7 David observes Bathsheba at her bath (above), David lies with Bathsheba, David commands Uriah. Old Testament Picture Book (M.638), fol. 41v. Photo: Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

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were constantly under threat of extinction by the non-production or death of male heirs and the death of incumbents. As Theodore Evergates notes in his study of the aristocracy of Champagne in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the total extinction of lineages was relatively rare, but in two out of three cases in which an aristocratic line expired, Crusades-related deaths were to blame.27 Another threat that was often explored in the verse and prose romances of the period was female infidelity. While some noble women did accompany their husbands on Crusade, many stayed home to administer the family’s land or serve as a figurehead lending authority to those actually doing the daily business. Without their husbands to fulfill their conjugal debt, these women, it was feared, would stray into adultery. James Brundage points to the general consensus among canonists in the thirteenth century, even after a papal decree to the contrary, that a man wishing to take the Cross was legally obligated to seek his wife’s agreement, lest she feel justified in adultery due to his inability to perform his sexual duties.28 A rumor that circulated persistently about Eleanor of Aquitaine, beginning with twelfth-century chroniclers, was that Louis VII of France took her on Crusade specifically because he feared she would drift into adultery if he did not keep her close.29 Adultery on the part of a woman not only stained her character and imputed weakness on that of her husband, but also cast doubt on the legitimacy of any children she might have borne ostensibly as legal heirs. As Thomas Aquinas put it, a woman who commits adultery offends against her husband “by making it uncertain that the children are his.”30 In the Morgan Picture Book, pictorial motifs articulate themes of lineal succession and fertility in a variety of interrelated ways. Children figure prom-

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30

see Gabrielle Spiegel, “Genealogy: Form and Function in Medieval Historical Narrative,” History and Theory 22 (1983): 43–53; and “History, Historicism, and the Social Logic of the Text in the Middle Ages,” Speculum 65 (1990): 59–86. Theodore Evergates, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, 1100–1300 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 123. James Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 359. Andrew Holt, “Feminine Sexuality and the Crusades” in Albrecht Classen, ed., Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: New Approaches to a Fundamental CulturalHistorical and Literary-Anthropological Theme (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 449–69, esp. 465. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II–II, 154, 8. The English translation is available online at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library: , consulted May 29, 2014. For the Latin, see the online version of the 1899 Leonine edition at Corpus Thomisticum: , consulted May 29, 2014.

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inently in many scenes, ranging from the young Cain and Abel, who gather wood while their mother spins and their father digs (folio 2 recto), to the unnamed and extratextual Israelite child in the Crossing of the Red Sea (folio 9 recto), to the infant Solomon, dandled on Bathsheba’s knees while his father begs God to spare the child’s life (folio 42 verso). Miraculous fertility is another recurrent theme. The first two of eleven scenes dedicated to the life of Samson depict the angel’s annunciation to Manoah and his barren wife that she will bear a son to bring Israel out from under Philistine dominion and their subsequent blood sacrifice (folio 14 recto). The Books of Kings also begin with an extended visual treatment of Hannah’s struggle with infertility. In the opening scene, spread across the whole lower register of folio 19 recto, she trails behind her husband, Elkannah, and his more fertile wife Peninah (shown with her sons), to make offerings at Shiloh. On folio 19 verso, the upper register depicts Elkannah sharing the sacrificial meat between his two wives, and the mocking of Hannah by her rival. To the right, Hannah makes a desperate prayer witnessed by Eli. Below, the family, now led by Hannah, return home, where, on the right, Hannah gives birth to Samuel on an altarlike bed similar to that upon which Solomon will later be conceived. Scenes of childbirth, such as this last, recur like parallel laisses throughout the book at folios 7v (the birth of Moses), 19r (the birth of Obed), and 42v (the birth of Solomon). The section of the manuscript most intensely concerned with fertility and lineage, however, is that dedicated to the Book of Ruth, a passage of scripture that was coming to figure prominently in Biblical exegesis and iconography in the thirteenth century as it was mined for its resonance with contemporary ideas about family as well as for its critical role in understanding the ancestry of David, and therefore Christ.31 Spread over five folios (folios 17 recto to 19 recto), the eleven scenes dedicated to this shortest of Old Testament books overflow with imagery of abundance, multiplication, fertility, and insemination, culminating with a triumphant birth scene spread across the entire upper register of folio 19 recto, just before we are plunged into the misery of Hannah’s childlessness. As I have argued elsewhere, the painter mobilizes the agrarian setting of the story to emphasize Ruth’s fecundity. Stacks of barley, grain spilling over and filling Ruth’s apron, a winnowing fan that spouts seeds just as Ruth creeps under Boaz’s cloak by night—all of this indicates the sexual fertility and renewal that Ruth’s arrival promises for the extended family of her 31

For further discussion of the exegetical emphasis on Ruth’s role in the lineage of Christ in thirteenth-century literature and in the pictorial realm, see my essay “A Small Door: Recognizing Ruth in the Psalter-Hours of ‘Yolande of Soissons,’” Gesta 46 (2007): 19–40, especially 28–33.

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in-laws. In one vignette, Ruth stands before her mother-in-law, Naomi, who is almost enthroned, holding a measure of barley given her by Boaz in the previous scene in a swag of her cloak (folio 18 verso). The gesture of cradling the barley in the cloak is unmistakably that of cradling an infant, and indeed, directly across the opening, on folio 19 recto, Naomi cuddles her newborn grandson, Obed, in an exaggerated version of the same gesture. Throughout the Morgan Picture Book, female characters repeat this gesture of cradling an infant or an object that alludes to an imminent or missing infant in the crook of their arm. The first appearance of the motif comes in the scene in the upper right of folio 4 verso, where Jacob’s two wives, Leah and Rachel, look on as he makes his covenant with their father, Laban. Leah, seated, tucks her young son into the crook of her arm while he stands, holding a ball in his hand, on her lap, much as Solomon will stand on Bathsheba’s lap in the scene of his father’s penitence. Meanwhile, another child capers between Leah and Rachel, while Rachel rocks her son (probably Joseph) in a cradle. Two more youthful male figures stand behind the women, along with a female servant and a girl, this crowd indicative of the fertility and wealth of Jacob’s household. In the Samson sequence, Manoah’s barren wife approaches the altar of sacrifice with a significant bundle of sticks tucked under one arm as she raises the front of her gown before her abdomen with the same hand, a gesture Cockerell described as a “token of her condition.”32 Then there is Ruth, who cradles first a sheaf of barley (folio 17 recto), and then that semiotically overripe apron full of grain. Both Naomi, holding Obed, and Hannah, with Samuel in her arms, lift their left elbows high in an exaggerated version of the gesture, as if rocking the infant. A thirteenth-century viewer would instantly recognize in all of these gestures their prototype, the Virgin Mary with her infant son, which was the image par excellence of medieval motherhood. Standing and seated sculptures depicting the Virgin and Child abounded; the famous example of the extremely tall (41 cm high) ivory standing Virgin from the Sainte-Chapelle now at the Louvre probably postdates the Morgan Picture Book by only about a decade, and her graceful, swaying posture and manner of supporting the infant Christ in the crook of her elbow is imitated in dozens of images of ladies with their little dogs found on later ivory and bone items such as the knife handle and grattoir (Figs. 7.3 and 7.4). The formal and iconographic parallels between Ruth with her sheaf of barley and Mary with her child stand firmly rooted in the soil of exegesis, in which Ruth’s motherhood could be understood as a figure for 32

Cockerell and James, Old Testament Miniatures 7, 8.

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Ecclesia as the mother of all Christians.33 Michal, with her little dog held protectively in the crook of her arm, looks much like another in a series of women holding symbolic and real infants. However, there is a hitch. In the betrothal scene particularly, Michal’s gesture is one both giving and receiving comfort from contact with a small, dependent, living being, exactly the mood evoked by contemporary images of the Virgin and Child. Yet if elsewhere in the Morgan Picture Book this motif alludes to conception, pregnancy, and childbirth, here it cannot, for Michal’s marriage to David will be devoid of offspring, and ultimately, of love. In romances, the dog is an ambiguous and ultimately empty sign that betrays the lovers (the dog in The Chastelaine de Vergi) or distracts them from the real crises of their situation (Petitcrieu).34 Likewise, Michal’s dog seems to foreshadow the fruitlessness of their union. Like the Châtelaine de Vergi and like Iseult, Michal will end up with nothing to hold on to, not even her own life. Though the biblical Michal’s narrative arc does not easily accommodate itself to that of the romance heroine, the inclusion of the dog implies that at least to some extent she is akin to the childless women who feature so prominently and sympathetically at the heart of the romance genre. She may also have provided a reflexive image for the women in the audience of the Morgan Picture Book: aristocratic ladies, perhaps princesses, married at the command of their male guardians and then quite often left husbandless for years, or forever, thanks to the violence of the Crusades. Michal’s dog is not a surrogate baby, but rather a tragic indication of her future alienation from her roles as bride and wife. 33 34

I discuss this exegetical trope in “Inseminating Ruth,” 537–38. Ramm, “Barking up the Wrong Tree?,” 51.

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Chapter 8

The Commedia of Joachim and Anna at the Scrovegni Chapel Jane C. Long Dogs were an uncommon sight in the religious narratives of medieval Italy. Although they were surely ubiquitous in the everyday world, the rising interest in ordinary human life characteristic of the later duecento did not lead to a corresponding rise in the representation of dogs in early trecento art; it would not be until the mid-fourteenth century that canines began to appear regularly as staffage, underlining an impression of lifelikeness in the religious paintings of central Italy. It must thus have been a singular experience for early fourteenthcentury visitors to the Scrovegni Chapel to behold dogs occupying prominent positions within its sacred stories. While Giotto did not represent dogs often, he twice gave one an arresting role in his Mariological cycle, which would have conditioned viewers’ impressions of the events portrayed. Scholars have long noted the polysemic character of the dog in medieval art: now a symbol of fidelity and devotion, now a sign of licentiousness and greed, the dog could only reveal its significance by its context.1 Valued as loyal companions and staunch servants of aristocrats, hunters, and herdsmen in secular imagery, dogs most often were read with a negative character when they appeared in religious milieus. But in the six scenes making up the backstory of the Virgin Mary at the Scrovegni Chapel—the scenes depicting events that led up to the Virgin’s birth—Giotto introduced a dog that appeared as a loving, humorous, alert companion to Mary’s father. Although dogs were rare in devotional visual art, they were more common in religious performances in late medieval Europe,2 and the conspicuous inclusion of the animal in the 1 James Marrow, “Circumderderunt me canes multi: Christ’s Tormentors in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance,” Art Bulletin 59 (1977): 167–81; Alberto Ferreiro, ed., Simon Magus in Patristic, Medieval and Early Modern Traditions (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 147–200; Colum Hourihane, “Judge or Judged: Notes on the Dog in the Medieval Passion,” in L’allégorie dans l’art du Moyen Âge. Formes et fonctions. Héritages, créations, mutations, ed. Christian Heck (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 191–204. 2 Louis B. Wright, “Animal Actors on the English Stage before 1642,” PMLA 42 (1927): 656–69; John C. Coldewey, “Secrets of God’s Creatures: Talking Animals in Medieval Drama,” European Medieval Drama 3 (2000): 73–96.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004328617_010

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Scrovegni frescoes suggests it served as a signal to a kind of code switching: the paintings were no mere illustrations of sacred narrative, but were to be seen as dramatic reenactments of important historical events. At once familiar and amusing, the dog conditioned viewers to experience Giotto’s frescoes in a particular light. The Scrovegni Chapel depicts the most common narrative found in Christian art: spiritually significant moments from the lives of the Virgin Mary and Jesus.3 But the familiar story opens with a less-commonly depicted account of events involving the Virgin’s parents.4 Known from the feast of Mary’s nativity (September 8) and retold in numerous apocryphal and medieval texts, the narrative describes how Mary’s parents came to conceive the girl who would bear the son of God.5 Joachim and Anna were charitable and devout members of the Jewish community who, after twenty years of marriage, had failed to conceive any children. When Joachim attempted to join a celebration at the temple in Jerusalem, his offering was rejected and the priest rebuffed him because his childlessness was seen as a sign of his rejection by God; see Expulsion of Joachim (Fig. 8.1). In his shame, Joachim shunned his family and 3 The literature is vast. Among recent studies, see: Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona, The Usurer’s Heart: Giotto, Enrico Scrovegni, and the Arena Chapel in Padua (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008); Chiara Frugoni, L’affare migliore di Enrico. Giotto e la cappella Scrovegni (Turin: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 2008); Laura Jacobus, Giotto and the Arena Chapel: Art, Architecture & Experience (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008); Andrew Ladis, Giotto’s O: Narrative, Figuration, and Pictorial Ingenuity in the Arena Chapel (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008); Michael Viktor Schwarz, Giottus Pictor: Band 2: Giottos Werke (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2008). 4 Derbes and Sandona, 126, note that the rare inclusion of these episodes “invites questions.” Byzantine cycles of the infancy of the Virgin commonly include the Joachim and Anna stories as a prelude to the birth and presentation of the Virgin. Otto Demus, The Mosaics of San Marco in Venice, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), vol. 1, 139–40. 5 The earliest text is the Greek Protevangelium of James (late second century), an essential source for the sixth- through eighth-century Latin text known as the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. These two sources were fundamental for a variety of later compilations, such as De Nativitate Mariae (eleventh century), Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum historiale (mid-thirteenth century) and Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend (c. 1260). There is considerable scholarly discussion of these texts. See recently: Rita Beyers, “The Transmission of Marian Apocrypha in the Latin Middle Ages,” Apocrypha 23 (2012): 117–40. The version of Joachim and Anna’s story relayed here comes primarily from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (Bart D. Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels [Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011], 79–85), although I have interpolated elements from Jacobus de Voragine when they are appropriate to Giotto’s representations. See The Golden Legend, trans. Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperger (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1941), 519–30.

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Figure 8.1 Giotto, Expulsion of Joachim, Padua: Scrovegni Chapel, c. 1305. (photo: Art Resource).

community and sought refuge in the wilderness with his shepherds without telling Anna where he was going; see Joachim in the Wilderness (Fig. 8.2). Frightened and grief-stricken at both her barrenness and his prolonged, unexplained absence, Anna lamented and prayed to God, who sent an angel to inform her that she would bear a child; see Annunciation to Anna (Fig. 8.3). In the wilderness, Joachim was approached by the angel Gabriel, who told him that Anna had conceived a child and he should return to her. The angel also instructed Joachim to make the sacrifice to God that had been rejected at the temple; see Sacrifice of Joachim (Fig. 8.4). Still uncertain about returning to Anna, Joachim fell asleep, and the angel appeared to him again, announcing that he and Anna would not only have a child but that she would be a wondrous girl; see Dream of Joachim (Fig. 8.5). Joachim and the shepherds hurried to Jerusalem, meeting Anna at the gate of the city, where the two embraced; see Meeting at the Golden Gate (Fig. 8.6). And Anna conceived and bore a child,

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Figure 8.2 Giotto, Joachim in the Wilderness, Padua: Scrovegni Chapel, c. 1305. (photo: Art Resource).

Figure 8.3 Giotto, Annunciation to Anna, Padua: Scrovegni Chapel, c. 1305. (photo: Art Resource).

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The Commedia of Joachim and Anna at the Scrovegni Chapel

Figure 8.4 Giotto, Sacrifice of Joachim, Padua: Scrovegni Chapel, c. 1305. (photo: Art Resource).

Figure 8.5 Giotto, Annunciation to Joachim, Padua: Scrovegni Chapel, c. 1305. (photo: Art Resource).

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Figure 8.6 Giotto, Meeting at the Golden Gate, Padua: Scrovegni Chapel, c. 1305. (photo: Art Resource).

Mary. That the Virgin’s parents were thus singled out by God affirmed the special nature of the child who would grow up to bear Christ. Which, if any, text describing the story of Joachim and Anna Giotto consulted is not entirely clear, but it is evident that he followed a visual model from Byzantium, for the narrative was more common there than in western Europe, and details of many of the Scrovegni scenes derive directly from that tradition. The fullest surviving medieval example of the narrative in Italy is found in an Italo-Byzantine altarpiece by the “Master of San Martino” in Pisa, dating perhaps from the third quarter of the thirteenth century (Fig. 8.7). Five of Giotto’s Joachim and Anna scenes are found on the panel, although the altarpiece is more extensive, including twelve rather than six episodes.6 6 Giotto’s narrative is closest to the Pseudo-Matthew version of the story, but is not a precise illustration of that text and also includes elements from the Golden Legend. The Pisa panel could not have been the model for Giotto’s frescoes, for the compositions are significantly different, although the altarpiece follows Pseudo-Matthew quite closely. However, Giotto’s compositions do have parallels with surviving monumental cycles in Byzantium; see, for ex-

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Figure 8.7 San Martino Master, Madonna and Child with scenes of Joachim and Anna, Pisa: Museo Nazionale di San Martino, third quarter of the 13th century. (photo: author).

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Joachim’s forceful ejection from the temple and his humiliation at being distinguished from his kinsmen and neighbors is underlined in the texts and emphasized in representations by both Giotto and Byzantine artists. (The scene is on the upper right of the Pisa altarpiece.)7 In each painting he clutches his rejected offering, a lamb, and casts an aggrieved glance over his shoulder at the priest who rebuffs him. Giotto intensifies the psychological impact of the scene vis-à-vis his Byzantine predecessors: Joachim’s rejection contrasts pointedly with a younger man’s acceptance within the temple, and the old man is thrust into a visual void rather than into a crowd of onlookers.8 Thus, Joachim’s alienation from his religion and his community becomes central to Giotto’s version of the event. The second scene at the Scrovegni Chapel, Joachim in the Wilderness, has no exact parallel in the San Martino altarpiece but can be found in other Byzantine representations. In the Pisan panel Joachim has joined his shepherds with their flocks in the mountains, and receives the first message from the angel (third scene on the left), but in Giotto’s painting, as in several surviving ample, the Church of the Holy Savior in the Chora, Istanbul, from about 1315, which had seven scenes: Joachim and Anna Long for a Child (? uncertain identification); Rejection of Joachim’s Offering; Anna and Joachim Return Home; Joachim in the Wilderness; Annunciation to Anna; Annunciation to Joachim (lost?); Meeting at the Golden Gate. This similarity suggests Giotto had some Byzantine prototype—perhaps a manuscript—as inspiration. There were also two cycles at San Marco in Venice that the artist could have seen: a mosaic series in the south transept (replaced in the seventeenth century) and a sculpture cycle on one of the columns of the ciborium. On the Pisa panel, see Mariagiulia Burresi and Antonino Caleca, eds., Cimabue a Pisa. La pittura pisana del duecento da Giunta a Giotto (Pisa: Pacini Editore, 2005), 157–61. On the Chora, see Robert Ousterhout, The Art of the Kariye Camii (London: Scala Publishers, 2002). On the San Marco mosaics, see Demus, vol. 1, 127–47. On the San Marco ciborium, see Thomas Weigel, Die Reliefsaulen des Hauptaltarciboriums von San Marco in Venedig: Studien zu einer spatantiken Werkgruppe (Münster: Rhema, 1997). For broad-ranging comparisons of Byzantine and western European versions of the narrative, see Jacqueline Lafontaine-Dosogne, Iconographie de l’enfance de la Vierge dans l’empire byzantin et en occident, 2 vols. (Brussels: Palais des Académies, 1965), and Diega Giunta, “Appunti sulla iconografia delle storie della Vergine nella cappella degli Scrovegni,” Rivista dell’istituto nazionale d’archeologia e storia dell’arte 21–22 (1974–75): 79–139. 7 Lafontaine-Dosogne, Iconographie de l’enfance de la Vierge, 63, notes that the earliest surviving representation of Joachim’s expulsion from the temple is found in the Pisa altarpiece (prior representations in both Byzantium and the West simply show his offering rejected), and suggests that Giotto copied this example. Given the vast differences between other scenes in the Scrovegni Chapel and the altarpiece, however, it seems unlikely that the panel was his source. I would argue for a lost, late Byzantine model for both the Pisan panel and Giotto’s iconography. 8 Cf. Ladis’s analysis of this scene, Giotto’s O, 55–57.

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Byzantine cycles, the humiliated older man is shown alone approaching his young shepherds.9 Giotto’s fresco is particularly powerful in conveying Joachim’s utter dejection through his face and posture and the pregnant glance exchanged by the shepherds. These elements are found in some Byzantine models (Fig. 8.8), but Giotto’s fresco is unique in the inclusion of a small sheepdog that occupies the space between the mortified old man and his thoughtful companions. A dog may seem a natural adjunct to a flock of sheep, yet Byzantine artists never include one in their representations of Joachim’s story, even though they have sheep aplenty (Fig. 8.7), and Giotto draws enough attention to the animal to suggest it is more than mere staffage. He places it almost at the center of the image and makes it the only dynamic form in the fresco, thereby alerting viewers that the dog plays an important role. The significant gap between Joachim and the shepherds signals his feeling of estrangement even from these companions, while the bridging of the space by the dog refers proleptically to his reconciliation with others. There is a similar space between the figures in the Byzantine mosaic of the same subject from the Chora in Istanbul (Fig. 8.8), but there Joachim is oblivious to the shepherds, who appear to have stumbled upon him as he broods in a foliage hut, and there is no canine signal that the old man’s isolation will be interrupted anytime soon. In Giotto’s fresco the figures are all conscious of each other. Even if Joachim’s self-absorption blinds him to the shepherds, there is no way for him to miss the dog, whose playful, welcoming jump is directly in his line of vision and alerts him to the presence of others. The dog plays a critical part in bringing Joachim into relation with the shepherds, which frames his dilemma as a social one, continuing the theme of segregation from the community that marks the first fresco in the cycle while hinting at its possible solution. The dog’s joyful greeting contrasts strongly with Joachim’s dolorousness. Giotto’s chief contribution to the Byzantine conventions for this scene is an acute concern for psychology. Rather than looking generically disgruntled, as he does in Byzantine images, Joachim is the picture of shame. His head droops, his shoulders hunch, he seems to shuffle his feet, and his hands are wrapped up in his cloak. His self-absorption is magnified by its juxtaposition with the dog, whose open posture and lifted head express delighted pleasure in Joachim’s arrival, precisely the opposite emotion.10 The juxtaposition could not have 9 10

Lafontaine-Dosogne, Iconographie de l’enfance de la Vierge, vol. 1, 77–78; vol. 2, 72–74. Demus, vol. 1, 128, suggests the San Marco mosaics included this scene. Cf. Bruce Cole, The Scrovegni Chapel, Padua (New York: Braziller, 1993), 44, who writes, “Even Joachim’s little dog sensing that something is very wrong, seems to hesitate in

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Figure 8.8 Joachim in the Wilderness, Istanbul: Church of the Holy Savior in Chora, c. 1315. (photo: author).

been satisfactorily achieved using human figures: joyful shepherds would have displayed behavior whose impropriety would have discomfited onlookers to this scene. But in the real world dogs can and do have their own emotional lives, separate from humans. So Giotto manages both to create a familiar realworld encounter and to heighten the emotional impact of his scene by adding a dog to the composition. Together, naturalism and an emphasis on opposing emotions draw viewers into the scene and help them to experience it—to live through the event, as it were—rather than merely observe it. The fresco cycle now turns to Anna, abandoned without word in her home (Fig. 8.3).11 This is the realm of women, private and secluded, rather than the outdoor, public world of men in the first two scenes. In the Byzantine tradition Anna is reproached by her maidservant for her excessive despondency and receives the Annunciation in the garden of her home after a long lament. Giotto’s version departs from this convention but fits well with the theme of isolation that underlies Joachim’s expulsion and retreat into the wilderness. Anna is alone in her bedroom with her maid outside; like Joachim, she is cut off

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mid-leap.” Ladis, Giotto’s O, 52–64, discusses the use of opposites as a foundation of Giotto’s approach to narrative. The San Martino altarpiece places Anna’s story before Joachim’s retreat to the wilderness (Fig. 8.7, second scene on the right), as do many Byzantine cycles.

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from her community, and her domestic environment is even more constricted than typical for Byzantine images, since it lacks a garden. Her room is unusually well furnished for Giotto: in addition to a bed with hangings, a bench, and a cassone, there are various domestic implements displayed on the wall. But Anna uses none of them, for her loneliness and grief have rendered her unable to perform her duties, in contrast to the maid busily spinning wool outside the door.12 Still, her faith rather than her despondency is emphasized, for she kneels with her hands clasped in prayer, signifying that she has sought a solution in turning her spirit toward God. As in the story of Martha and Mary (Luke 10.38–42), Anna is rewarded for choosing the spiritual over the practical: an angel appears in the window to announce her upcoming motherhood and the return of Joachim. The arrival of the angel through the window is quite unusual; in addition to its clearly miraculous nature, it signifies an opening in the barrier separating Anna from her community. By breaking into her sequestered space, the angel demonstrates that God is the source of community: Anna’s isolation ends with the angel’s prophecies. The narrative returns to Joachim in the wilderness for the next two scenes, which depict a rather complicated give-and-take between the old man and the angel. In the Sacrifice Joachim demonstrates his reverence for God by bowing down on his hands and knees before an altar on which a lamb burns, while a shepherd stands behind, sharing in the prayer. In the Gospel of PseudoMatthew Joachim is alone at the sacrifice; the shepherds only arrive later. The inclusion of one of the shepherds in the scene allows Giotto to make the depth of Joachim’s piety clear by contrasting his pose of self-abasement with the more standard prayer posture of his servant. That God receives his devotion favorably is confirmed by a hand emerging from the sky and the faint image of the angel in the smoke, “return[ing] to heaven along with the odor of the sacrifice.”13 The Pisan panel separates these scenes, representing Joachim standing rather than kneeling before the altar and placing the sacrifice after 12 13

Cf. Jacobus, 237, who reads the items hanging on the walls as signs of Anna’s “domestic responsibilities and accomplishments.” Giotto follows the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew quite closely in representing Joachim’s sacrifice; the text describes the angel in the smoke and explains that the old man fell “on his face from noon until evening” after the sacrifice was complete (Ehrman, 83). Derbes and Sandona, 127, describe this pose as “penitential prostration,” a reading that assumes Joachim is atoning for having sinned, but he is consistently identified as blameless in the textual tradition (e.g., in the Golden Legend, 522, the angel says to Joachim: “I have seen thy shame and heard the reproach of barrenness wrongfully cast upon thee.”). Frugoni, 121, suggests Joachim has fallen to his knees in surprise at seeing the angel; this would be the only startled reaction to a divine messenger in the whole chapel.

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the annunciation, so that it is obvious that the old man is obeying heavenly dictates.14 In Giotto’s representation the angel enters to the extreme right of the picture field; as a result, viewers notice the sacrifice first, which makes it appear more a spontaneous expression of Joachim’s exceptional piety than an act of obedience. By emphasizing the old man’s reverence Giotto signals that the suggestion of his unworthiness—the implied separation from God—that occurred in the Expulsion was a human error. Like Anna, then, Joachim is marked as a favored member of God’s community. Yet the old man does not entirely understand the angel’s message, for he hesitates to return to Anna and falls asleep in his mountain hut. In the next scene Giotto shows him sleeping while the angel appears in his dream to confirm that he and Anna will have a child and urges him to return home. In the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and on the San Martino panel this event requires exposition on Joachim’s part, so he explains the dream to his shepherds and then all of them journey toward Jerusalem.15 Giotto represents the shepherds looking on uncomprehendingly; they will need Joachim’s explanation to understand that something momentous has occurred, but the artist is less concerned with their comprehension than with Joachim’s connection to God. The shepherds are like the sheep that mill around aimlessly, while Joachim’s spiritual counterpart is found in the alert and focused sheepdog. Again the dog is Giotto’s addition to the scene, and again its importance is emphasized. Near the center of the fresco, bridging the gap between the shepherds and Joachim with its gaze, the dog performs a similar function in the fifth fresco of the narrative as it did in the second: it links Joachim, even in his unconscious state, to the larger group of which he is part. The modern viewer might initially read the animal as staffage, a common, insignificant component of the shepherds’ lives, but including a dog amid a flock of sheep was actually a relatively new artistic development in the early trecento, and its novelty would have drawn contemporary viewers’ attention. The most common representation of sheep in medieval Italian art is found in depictions of the annunciation to the shepherds. Throughout the Middle Ages shepherds are 14

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In the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew Joachim “adores” the angel who has announced Anna’s pregnancy and identified himself as God’s messenger, and the angel tells him not to honor him but to make a burnt offering to God (Ehrman, 83). In written versions of the story Joachim spends considerable time explaining the miracle to the shepherds. In the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew the shepherds still have to urge Joachim to return to Jerusalem: “Be careful not to spurn the angel of God any further” (Ehrman, 83). The Pisa painting requires three scenes to depict these events: the fourth scene on the left, in two parts (the dream and the explanation), and the fourth scene on the right (the journey to Jerusalem).

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identified by the woolly creatures clustered at their feet: in works in every medium, including Giotto’s own paintings, sheep congregate about humans without the benefit of any canine management. Only at the end of the thirteenth century does a dog begin to appear regularly with the sheep in Italian versions of the annunciation to the shepherds. In the fourteenth century these dogs show few signs of minding their charges; instead, they usually focus on the angelic messenger who announces the miraculous birth of Christ.16 One way to understand the dog’s presence and response is through the didactic literature of the late Middle Ages. Jacobus de Voragine expatiates on the miraculous nature of the nativity in the Golden Legend, noting that the event “was revealed to every class of creatures from the stones … to the angels.”17 Among the creatures that recognized the incarnation were animals, and although Jacobus focuses on the ox and ass in the stable, dogs would not be a surprising extension of these “creatures possessed of existence, life, and sensa-

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Medieval representations of dogless flocks are myriad all over Europe. For some examples in Italy, see: a sixth-century pilgrim’s flask with the Adoration of the Magi and Annunciation to the Shepherds in Monza Cathedral; the Annunciation to the Shepherds on the Farfa casket and the Salerno ivories from the second half of the eleventh century; the Nativity on Bonanno of Pisa’s bronze door at Pisa, c. 1175; a fresco of the Annunciation to the Shepherds in the oratory of San Pellegrino at the monastery of Santa Maria Assunto in Bominaco (Abruzzi), c. 1263; the mid-thirteenth-century Nativity mosaic from the baptistery in Florence; the Nativity fresco in the upper church at Assisi, c. 1290; Giotto’s Nativity in the Scrovegni Chapel, c. 1305.  The earliest medieval Italian depiction known to me of a herd of sheep that includes a dog is the Annunciation to the Shepherds and Adoration of the Magi above the main portal of the cathedral of Verona, c. 1139. In this relief the dog looks over its shoulder, away from the shepherds, sheep, and angel. A double capital in the cloister of Monreale cathedral representing the Nativity and Annunciation to the Shepherds, 1172–89, depicts a dog that turns its head away from the sheep to stare upwards at the angel. Dogs appear in Nicola Pisano’s pulpits from the 1260s, Guido da Siena’s altarpiece for the Badia Ardenga (c. 1270), and Cavallini’s Nativity from Santa Maria in Trastevere (c. 1296), but do not clearly focus their attention on anything in particular. (The head of the dog in the Pisa baptistery pulpit is missing.) In Giovanni Pisano’s pulpits, carved in the first decade of the fourteenth century, however, the dog definitely watches the angels. This is not a purely Italian phenomenon; throughout Europe dogs watching the angels become a common component of the annunciation to the shepherds during the fourteenth century. Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, Vol. 1 (London: Lund Humphries, 1971), 84, merely notes that an attentive dog “occasionally appears” in representations of the annunciation to the shepherds. Golden Legend, 48.

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tion,” in light of their description as the most intelligent of all animals in the bestiary tradition.18 Medieval literature suggests that animals were seen to represent human characteristics. Although the Bible generally tends to denigrate dogs as figures of vice—anger, lasciviousness, gluttony, sloth, envy—many other texts acknowledge that dogs are also faithful, loyal, and sensitive to the divine.19 Posed at the feet of ecclesiastics on medieval tombs in northern Europe, they stand for fides/fidelitas, while their representation in images of scholars’ studies in Italy has been suggested to imply intuitive wisdom. Their assimilation with saints such as Christopher and Guinefort indicates their responsiveness to God’s word.20 Most often, writers note that dogs are watchful guardians: for Gregory the Great, dogs stand as a metaphor for preachers who protect the faithful, “given up to daily and nightly watchings, utter[ing], so to say, loud barks of preaching;”21 and the Gesta Romanorum describes the “excellent qualities” of dogs as “a medicinal tongue, a distinguishing nose; an unshaken faith and unremitting watchfulness.”22 Watchfulness is the key trait that led to the humble shepherds receiving the first announcement of the incarnation. In medieval exegesis of scripture, 18

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Golden Legend, 49. A typical bestiary description of dogs: “Nothing is smarter than dogs, for they have more sense than other animals,” cited in Willene B. Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-Family Bestiary: Commentary, Art, Text and Translation (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2006), 145. Joyce E. Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2011), 115–17 suggests that a rise in keeping dogs as house pets in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries led to a closer identification of dogs with humans in the late Middle Ages. Beryl Rowland, Blind Beasts: Chaucer’s Animal World (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1971), 9–10; Patrik Reuterswärd, “The Dog in the Humanist’s Study,” Konsthistorisk tidskrift 50 (1981): 53–69; Debra Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), xv, 168, 175, 177; Ferreiro, Simon Magus in Patristic, Medieval and Early Modern Traditions; Simona Cohen, Animals as Disguised Symbols in Renaissance Art (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 79–80, 119–25, 136–37; Irven N. Resnik, “Good Dog/Bad Dog: Dogs in Medieval Religious Polemics,” Enarratio 18 (2013): 74–82; Hourihane, “Judge or Judged,” 191–204. See fourteenth-century examples of dogs in the tomb of Cardinal Simon Langham in Westminster Abbey and the portrait of Petrarch in his study from the Salla dei Giganti, Palazzo dei Carresi, Padua. Moralia in Job, XX 6: J.H. Parker & J. Rivington (trans. 1844), Morals in the Book of Job by St. Gregory the Great (online: ). Gesta Romanorum: Or Entertaining Moral Stories, trans. Charles Swan, ed. Wynnard Hooper (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1959), 26.

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“there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8), the shepherds represent those who are “worthy above the rest to see sublime things [because they] take a watchful care of their faithful flocks.”23 They are chosen by God to receive the word because “they who were so vigilant deserved to have an angel come to them.”24 Moreover, while they are humble, “those shepherds, and their flocks, signify all teachers and guides of faithful souls. The night in which they were keeping watch over their flocks, indicates the dangerous temptations from which they never cease to keep themselves, and those placed under their care.”25 Thus, as dogs pointedly turn their heads to notice angels in images of the annunciation to the shepherds, their vigilance announces the watchful nature that permits them to sense the presence of the numinous in the everyday world. Giotto’s dog in the Dream of Joachim appears inspired by the dogs in depictions of the annunciation to the shepherds.26 The dog’s job is to mind the sheep, but it ignores its frisky charges to fix its regard steadily on Joachim. It cannot watch the heavenly apparition, which appears only in Joachim’s dream, but its intent gaze, unsettled expression (with the ears pulled far back on the head), and attentive posture certainly suggest a recognition that something significant is occurring at this moment. The dog serves as a witness to the miracle and its awareness verifies the angel’s presence: Joachim’s vision is no mere human dream, but a true visitation from a heavenly messenger. The old man is thus affirmed once again as one of God’s blessed.

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Gregory, cited by Thomas Aquinas in Catena Aurea, Commentary on Luke. Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers (Oxford: J.H. Parker, 1843), vol. 3, 71. Jerome, Homily 89, “On the Nativity of the Lord,” in The Homilies of St. Jerome, trans. Marie Liguori Ewald (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1966), vol. 2, 223. Bede, cited by Thomas Aquinas in Catena Aurea, Commentary on Luke, 71. To be sure, Giotto represents no dog in his Scrovegni Chapel Nativity, but there is one in the Nativity painted by his workshop in the lower church of San Francesco in Assisi some ten years or so later, as well as in the Giottesque Epiphany panel in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, c. 1320. The dog in the former does not focus on anything in particular, but in the latter it presses close against one of the shepherds as it tilts its head up and back to study the angel overhead. In Taddeo Gaddi’s Annunciation to Joachim in the Baroncelli Chapel at Santa Croce (c. 1328), an animal separates from the flock of sheep to stare up at the angel; it is not entirely clear whether that animal is a dog or another sheep, although its curled tail is quite different from the clubbed tails of the sheep in the flock.

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The Meeting at the Golden Gate brings the threads of the storyline together. The separation of husband and wife, the division of male from female, and the ostracization of individuals from society give way to reunion and joyful return to community. Anna and Joachim embrace, almost merging into one another, their happiness and fellowship shared by the shepherd who followed Joachim home and the women who accompany his wife. In some ways Giotto’s image closely resembles Byzantine precedents: the embrace of the couple and their concentration on each other are evident in the San Martino altarpiece, while even details such as Anna’s hand wrapping around the back of Joachim’s neck and a meaningful, if uncomfortably close, gaze into each others’ eyes can be found in eastern examples (Fig. 8.9). But Byzantine cycles generally downplay this episode, depicting Mary’s parents embracing as an adjunct to the more important scene of her birth, whereas Giotto takes pains to showcase their reunion and to embed the couple within their social context.27 In this way the miraculous episode involving Joachim and Anna is framed as a psychologically and socially complex event, giving viewers access to the wondrous through familiar social exchanges. At the center of the composition is a dark-clad woman whose presence has elicited numerous explanations in art history scholarship.28 Her figure draws viewers’ attention because she is completely different from the other characters, not just in her costume, but also in her affect. In the midst of a scene of joy and community, she stands serious and isolated, her face partially concealed by a hood. Her dark attire and covered face are tied to mourning, the state that Joachim and Anna have just left behind and that Jesus’s family and followers will experience in the future. In this way the woman connects what has hap27

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Jacqueline Lafontaine-Dosogne, “Iconography of the Cycle of the Life of the Virgin,” in Paul A. Underwood, ed., The Kariye Djami: Studies in the Art of the Kariye Djami and Its Intellectual Background (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), 172–74; Ionna Christoforaki, “Cyprus between Byzantium and the Levant: Eclecticism and Interchange in the Cycle of the Life of the Virgin in the Church of the Holy Cross at Pelendri,” Review of the Cyprus Research Centre 22 (1996): 226. It is common in Byzantine art to see the couple alone, as in figure 8.9. While some Byzantine images include a female companion for Anna (the San Martino Altarpiece represents two), the companion hangs back and does not share the couple’s joy, as the women in the Scrovegni fresco do. There is no agreement about what this figure signifies. See Frugoni, 126; Jacobus, 182–85; Ladis, 60–62; Laurine Mack Bongiorno, “The Theme of the Old Law and the New Law in the Arena Chapel,” The Art Bulletin 50 (1968): 11–20; Virginia L. Bush, “The Sources of Giotto’s Meeting at the Golden Gate and the Meaning of the Dark-Veiled Woman,” Bollettino del museo civico di Padova 61 (1972): 7–29; Don Denny, “Some Symbols in the Arena Chapel Frescoes,” The Art Bulletin 55 (1973): 205–12.

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Figure 8.9 Meeting at the Golden Gate and Birth of the Virgin, Ohrid, Macedonia: Church of the Theotokos Peribleptos (St. Clement), early 14th century. (photo: author).

pened to what will happen: the frescoes the viewers have already observed are linked to those they will see in the rest of the chapel. Regardless of any iconographical or compositional ties to Byzantine conventions found in individual frescoes, Giotto’s arrangement of Joachim and Anna’s story has several distinctive characteristics. Structurally the six scenes appear as a defined, complete narrative. Unfolding in a straight line, on a single wall of the chapel, the narrative has an opening, an exposition, and a conclusion. A problem is introduced in the first episode: Joachim and, by association, Anna are isolated from their community and each other. In scene two Joachim expresses the effects of that isolation, while scene three illustrates not only Anna’s segregation, but also her plea for a solution and God’s response. Scene four depicts Joachim’s piety and God’s acceptance of it; scene five confirms God’s answer to the couple’s dilemma. In the final fresco the resolution of the problem becomes evident as Anna and Joachim reunite and are enfolded back into the larger community.29

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Derbes and Sandona, 110, also note the process of separation and coming together in these scenes, but they interpret it as necessary for the “foundation of a new order.”

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The narrative is conveyed through strong internal parallels.30 Emotionally, characters are pushed apart in the first scene and pulled together in the last. Compositionally, the first fresco has a strong left-to-right movement, drawing viewers along into the unfurling narrative, while the action stills in the last fresco, and the representation of the Golden Gate to the right closes the storyline like a strong punctuation mark.31 The second and fifth frescoes represent Joachim’s relation to others, and in both, a dog serves to link the old man to his fellows. They are scenes of emphasis, with the second accentuating the problem and the fifth confirming the solution.32 The two center frescoes are the heart of the narrative, revealing the communion of the Virgin’s parents with God: their piety, their humility, their blessedness. This pairing process among the six frescoes suggests Giotto thought about the Joachim and Anna narrative as a complete entity, not as an unfinished excerpt of a larger whole. Although the purpose of the narrative is primarily to establish the exceptional nature of the Virgin even before the moment of her conception, as it is in the Byzantine prototypes, Giotto’s scenes do not function solely as a frame to characterize the mother of God in the way that Byzantine images do.33 Occupying one-sixth of the total narratives in the cycle, the scenes do not read as subordinate to the rest of the fresco decoration. Indeed, launching the entire narrative from a chronological perspective and occupying the highest row of the decoration, they enjoy considerable attention from spectators. Moreover, 30

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The notion of parallelism between images in a cycle is a staple of Giotto studies. It was first elucidated for the Scrovegni Chapel frescoes by Michael Alpatoff, “The Parallelism of Giotto’s Paduan Frescoes,” The Art Bulletin 29 (1947): 149–54. See James H. Stubblebine, ed., Giotto: The Arena Chapel Frescoes: Illustrations, Introductory Essay, Backgrounds, Sources and Criticism (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1969), 75–78; Cole, The Scrovegni Chapel, 30–32; Ladis, Giotto’s O, 55–60. These two scenes also share a similar setting: the general outline of the landscape and the sheepfold on the lower right. A significant change to the landscape occurs in the emphatic opening at the center in Joachim’s Dream. Ladis, Giotto’s O, 169, perceptively relates this gap to the “opening of Anna’s womb” that is the promise God makes to Joachim. In Byzantium Mary’s conception signifies that God’s abundance has replaced human barrenness and that salvation from death has begun. A kontakion written to celebrate the feast of her birth starts with an interpretation of Joachim and Anna’s story: “Joachim and Anna were freed from the reproach of Childlessness, and Adam and Eve from the corruption of death, O immaculate one, by thy holy nativity.” Hieromonk Justin Sinaites, “Sinai MS GR 2: Exploring the Significance of a Sinai Manuscript,” in Sharon E.J. Gerstel and Robert S. Nelson, eds., Approaching the Holy Mountain: Art and Liturgy at St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 278–80. See also Nicholas E. Denysenko, “The Soteriological Significance of the Feast of Mary’s Birth,” Theological Studies 68 (2007): 739–60.

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the Virgin herself does not appear until the depiction of her birth in the first scene on the opposite wall of the chapel, so she does not overshadow her parents in these six frescoes. On the San Martino panel, not only are the Joachim and Anna stories obvious adjuncts to a large-scale representation of the enthroned Virgin, but they are immediately followed by her birth and presentation in the temple, which focuses the narrative on Mary.34 Giotto has thus shaped the story of Joachim and Anna as a kind of cycle within a cycle, a complete story within the context of the larger fresco cycle of the Scrovegni Chapel. Organizing the frescoes in this way may be somewhat unusual in the figurative arts, but it has a representational counterpart in theatrical production.35 That is, the Scrovegni frescoes are arranged like a medieval play cycle, one narrative following the other, autonomous yet thematically linked, to convey God’s plan of salvation.36 So, in the nave of the chapel, viewers find seven “presentations”: 1. Joachim and Anna; 2. the life of the Virgin; 3. the childhood of Christ; 4. Jesus’s ministry; 5. the Passion of Christ; 6. the Last Judgment; and 7. virtues and vices.37 This is not to suggest that Giotto illus34 35

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This is typical in Byzantine cycles; it is found also, for example, in the Infancy of the Virgin cycle in the south transept of San Marco (Demus, vol. 1, 139–40). The Scrovegni paintings have frequently been analyzed in relation to dramatic works. See, for example, Andrew Ladis, “The Legend of Giotto’s Wit and the Arena Chapel,” The Art Bulletin 68 (1986): 581–96; Jacobus, Giotto, 305–29; Riccardo Luisi, “Le ragioni di una perfetta illusione,” in Frugoni, 379–96. Defining the Joachim and Anna story as a complete cycle does not mean that it lacks ties to the rest of the frescoes; indeed, like a single composition in a play cycle, the scenes offer many thematic links to other narratives in the chapel. The differences in art-historical and literary uses of the word “cycle” become confusing here. In both disciplines “cycle” is a relatively modern scholar’s term. From a very general perspective, in art history a fresco cycle consists of multiple scenes or episodes that tell a single narrative, while in drama studies a play cycle is a series of independent plays— each with its own narrative and episodes—that are thematically interrelated and were intended to be performed together, sometimes over several days or even weeks. Technically, the Scrovegni paintings ought to be described as fresco “cycles,” but they have such a strong effect of continuity as viewers circle around the chapel, their design is so unified, and their themes are so closely interrelated that it is common to call them a singular cycle. For a specialist’s discussion of play cycles, see Peter Happé, Cyclic Form and the English Mystery Plays: A Comparative Study of the English Biblical Cycles and Their Continental and Iconographic Counterparts (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004), 15–21, 313–28. Giuseppe Basile, Giotto: The Frescoes of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (Milan: Skira, 2002), arranges his examination of the frescoes exactly according to these “presentations,” although he does not discuss the organizational system. Jules Lubbock, Storytelling in Christian Art from Giotto to Donatello (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 42–43, writes of six “chapters” in the narrative (excluding the Last Judgment). Play cycles are best

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trates plays or that any single fresco is meant to depict a familiar dramatic staging, or, alternatively, that the chapel’s murals were the source for any theatrical presentation, but merely that performance and visual art were part of a larger representational culture in fourteenth-century Italy and could readily share some features.38 Like frescoes, play cycles might be commissioned by a private individual or group or by a large public institution, but they were usually designed to address a public audience. Drawing on the same canonical and apocryphal sources, fourteenth- and fifteenth-century religious plays and murals tended to exhibit a similar effort to make the sacred comprehensible by couching it in the language of the real. Hence, characters lived within a network of familial and social relationships; they experienced a variety of psychological and emotional states; their environment was defined by nature; and their relationship to God was normally shaped by the ordinary rather than the miraculous. Audiences were encouraged to see themselves in sacred figures, to share their tears and laughter, work and piety. Almost certainly there were entertaining aspects to performances and visual displays, but there were serious messages and moral lessons as well. For many people, watching plays and looking at paintings were not significantly different experiences.39 Although Joachim and Anna’s story was not one of the most popular subjects for plays, any more than it was for paintings, there are surviving texts for

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known from the texts that survive from late-medieval England, but such performances also occurred in Italy. See, for example, Paola Ventrone, “On the Use of Figurative Art as a Source for the Study of Medieval Spectacles,” Comparative Drama 25 (1991): 9; Happé, 50–54, 196–205. I am not arguing for the kind of one-to-one correspondences suggested by Emile Mâle, L’Art religieux de la fin du Moyen Age en France (Paris: Colin, 1908), George R. Kernodle, From Art to Theatre (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), or Pierre Francastel, La réalité figurative (Paris: Denoël-Gonthier, 1965). Instead, I follow more recent scholarship in suggesting a communal visual culture that comprised drama and art. See Jacobus, Giotto, 308; Happé, 67–135; and Martin Stevens, “The Intertextuality of Late Medieval Art and Drama,” New Literary History 22 (1991): 317–37. Clifford Davidson cites an anonymous fifteenth-century English writer who compared plays to paintings:  Sithen it is leveful to han the myraclis of God peyntid, why is not as wel leveful to han the myraclis of God pleyed, sythen men mowen bettere reden the wille of God and his mervelous werkis in the pleying of hem than in the peyntynge, and betere thei ben holden in mennus mynde and oftere rehersid by the pleyinge of hem than by the peyntynge for this [painting] is a deed bok, the tother [i.e., playing] a quick. (Drama and Art: An Introduction to the Use of Evidence from the Visual Arts for the Study of Early Drama [Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 1977], 13.)

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cycles that include the narrative. In Italy, the earliest example is a laudario from Orvieto, which was compiled c. 1405, but is believed to contain thirteenthand fourteenth-century material (two plays about Mary’s conception); there is also a fourteenth-century English play, found in the “N-town cycle.”40 Like cycles in the visual arts, the plays differ in the exact episodes from the narrative they represent, but they are quite consistent in emphasizing the emotional import of the story. Joachim’s public humiliation, Anna’s private grief and worry, the couple’s devotion to God, and their joy at their conception of a child form the backbone of these pieces.41 Like the authors of the play cycles, Giotto has an interest in affective display, but his Joachim and Anna cycle is considerably less poignant than are the plays. Joachim’s anger and embarrassment are clearly emphasized in the first two frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel, but these negative emotions are mitigated to a degree by the cheerful greeting of the dog in Joachim in the Wilderness. Anna’s lamenting forms no part of her annunciation, whereas in the plays there is considerable exposition of her profound grief about her childlessness and her missing husband. Joachim’s Dream is an exceptionally peaceful scene: the frolicking sheep and placid dog at the center of the fresco leach all drama from the event. The Meeting at the Golden Gate is treated in more detail in the artwork than in the plays, which tend to rush Joachim and Anna homeward after their joyful reunion, rather than pausing to dwell on the moment.42 Hence, even if Giotto can be seen to share certain preoccupations with playwrights, his perspective on the stories he paints is not dependent on that art form. 40

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Vittorio De Bartholomaeis, Laude drammatiche e rappresentazioni sacre, 3 vols. (Florence: Felice le Monnier, 1943), vol. 1, 348–66; Gina Scentoni, ed., Laudario orvietano (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioeveo, 1994), ix–x, 203–23; Lynette R. Muir, The Biblical Drama of Medieval Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 89, 219, n. 22; Alan J. Fletcher, “The Design of the N-Town Play of Mary’s Conception,” Modern Philology 79 (1981): 166–73. The narrative was not geographically limited; it could also be found in several later plays, including a fifteenth-century German cycle (Arnold Immessen, Der Sündenfall) and two sixteenth-century French cycles from Valenciennes; see Muir, 89–90. A focus on emotions is also a central element of the late-medieval sources from which the dramas and frescoes were likely drawn. So, for example, Jacobus de Voragine’s description of the expulsion of Joachim is all about emotion, rather than action: “he was covered with confusion, and was ashamed to return to his home, lest he have to bear the contempt of his kindred, who had heard all.” Golden Legend, 522. The second Orvieto lauda on the Virgin’s conception has a long scene at the Golden Gate, but other plays abbreviate it significantly (De Bartholomaeis, vol. 1, 364–66; Scentoni, 211–23).

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The Scrovegni frescoes may not closely relate to any known play about Joachim and Anna, but dramatic literature still provides a useful model through which to consider the artist’s approach to the narrative. One of the striking characteristics of play cycles is that individual compositions within a cycle could elicit different responses from the audience.43 There were tragic works— Passion plays, for example—that must have left viewers sad and unsettled, and comedic pieces—many involving uncouth shepherds and dogs—that served to amuse and divert them. Combining different emotional arcs within a cycle was an effective dramatic device for engaging the audience over time. Giotto uses the same method. Not only does he provoke different viewer reactions from painting to painting, but he also varies the tone among the smaller cycles within the whole decoration. His Passion scenes and Last Judgment are as emotionally intense as their counterparts in drama. The Virtues and Vices cycle is symbolic and intellectual, like a catechism. The Life of the Virgin and the Childhood of Christ are warm and full of incident, not unlike the ricordanze of family records so typical of the later Middle Ages and Renaissance. And the Joachim and Anna story is something of a comedy. To define the narrative about Mary’s parents as comedic might at first appear puzzling. The figures are dignified and respectable, and the artist avoids any physical imbalance that might suggest foolishness. There is no hint of the broad humor, vulgarity, or rowdiness that typically characterizes medieval comic literature and performance. Nevertheless, the six scenes fit several definitions of comedy that were current in the fourteenth century. The Joachim and Anna narrative starts in sadness and ends in joy. This formula for comedy was articulated by Dante himself, in explaining his use of the title Commedia for his grand epic: [B]e it known that comedy is derived from comus, “a village,” and oda, which is, “song,” whence comedy is, as it were, “rustic song.” So comedy is a certain kind of poetic narration differing from all others. It differs, then, from tragedy in its content, in that tragedy begins admirably and tranquilly, whereas its end or exit is foul and terrible; … whereas comedy, introduces some harsh complication, but brings its matter to a prosperous end …44 43 44

Waldo F. McNeir, “The Corpus Christi Passion Plays as Dramatic Art,” Studies in Philology 48 (1951): 601–28. “Epistola X,” A Translation of the Latin Works of Dante Alighieri (1904; New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), 346–52. This description comes from a letter written to Cangrande della Scala. Although Renaissance writers believed Dante was its author, modern scholars

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Precisely the kind of reconciliation that occurs in the Meeting at the Golden Gate had been considered a staple of comedy from the time of Aristotle.45 Moreover, half the scenes in the narrative take place in the “wilderness,” where Joachim escapes the condemnation of his sophisticated kin and neighbors in the urban environment and finds solace—and God’s grace—among simple shepherds and animals. The generally modest characters and rustic setting of most of the scenes are typical of comic tales, as is the overall naturalism, for comedy dealt with the ordinary, while tragedy was the milieu of the powerful.46 Beyond that, two of the six scenes have an unusual emphasis on a dog. While the animal’s presence helps to signal the rusticity of these scenes, it also hints at a comic character, for animal “performers” were a not-infrequent part of late medieval comedic presentations.47 Giotto’s art can never be described as unruly, but that it demonstrates a definite sense of humor—in Andrew Ladis’s perceptive observation, a quality of wittiness—has long been acknowledged.48 Generally his humor resides in relatively subtle forms: visual puns, unexpected twists, or diverting observations of small details, although he can approach a more ribald humor when the image allows for it (as, for example, in the hell portion of the Last Judgment).49 Viewers are amused and charmed by Giotto’s droll reflections in many places in the Scrovegni Chapel, including within the Joachim and Anna cycle. Joachim’s offering of a lamb in the Expulsion is based on Byzantine convention. But the animal is no mere donation in Giotto’s fresco, for the old man cradles it protectively against his chest with such tender sweetness that spectators are moved to smile, despite the rancor suggested by his conflict with the priest.

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do not agree on whether he actually wrote it. Most accept that the letter reflects important aspects of Dante’s thought, however. Boccaccio expounded upon Dante’s definition in his Commento sopra il Commedia di Dante: see Howard H. Schless, “Dante: Comedy and Conversion” in Paul G. Ruggiers, ed., Versions of Medieval Comedy (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977), 135–49; Fabian Alfie, Comedy and Culture: Cecco Angiolieri’s Poetry and Late Medieval Society (Leeds: Northern University Press, 2001), 20–23. Paul G. Ruggiers, “Introduction: Some Theoretical Considerations of Comedy in the Middle Ages,” in idem, Versions of Medieval Comedy, 2–3. Ruggiers, 7–8. Louis B. Wright, “Animal Actors on the English Stage before 1642,” PMLA 42 (1927): 656–69; John C. Coldewey, “Secrets of God’s Creatures: Talking Animals in Medieval Drama,” European Medieval Drama 3 (2000): 73–96. Enid T. Falaschi, “Giotto: The Literary Legend,” Italian Studies 27 (1972): 1–27, explores Giotto’s reputation as a wit in Renaissance literature. See also Ladis, “Legend.” Ladis, Giotto’s O, 586–88; Brendan Cassidy, “Laughing with Giotto at Sinners in Hell,” Viator 35 (2004): 355–86.

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The dog that appears in the next scene and again in Joachim’s Dream is, as we have seen, Giotto’s own addition to the traditional iconography of these events. Its chief purpose is to link Joachim to the shepherds and to help explicate his state of mind, but it also exhibits familiar canine behavior that lightens the seriousness of the scenes by amusing the audience.50 In the Meeting at the Golden Gate the details of Joachim and Anna’s embrace also derive from Byzantine examples, but to the conventional arrangement of arms and bodies Giotto adds the humorous detail of the couple tilting their heads in opposite directions so their noses do not bump as they kiss, while the smiling faces of the couple’s companions invite viewers to share their enjoyment. The comedy in these scenes makes the characters appealing and, by engaging viewers, gives them access to serious narratives as it brings the sacred to familiar ground. Thus in ways large and small, through overall design and small particulars of human and animal action, Giotto framed the narrative of Joachim and Anna less as ritual decoration and more as witty play. Beginning the Scrovegni cycle with this humorous narrative was yet another similarity that Giotto’s frescoes shared with play cycles, for it was not at all uncommon to start performances with a comedic presentation. Scholars suggest that comic works in play cycles served as a device that easily engaged audiences in sacred narratives and kept them involved through the harder, but more spiritually worthwhile themes of later, more serious plays.51 Humor was the “hook” that brought spectators to the table to learn. Of course, in the late Middle Ages humor was not limited to plays; it had become a staple of sermons as well, precisely for its ability to draw an audience into the serious messages preachers had to convey,52 and there was certainly a strong current of comic vernacular literature in trecento Italy, 50 51

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Ladis, “Legend,” 593 sees the dog as humorous as well, although he reads its effect differently. V.A. Kolve, The Play Called Corpus Christi (London: Edward Arnold Ltd., 1966), 124–26; Christopher Crane, “Taking Laughter Seriously: The Rhetoric of Humor in Middle English Drama, Sermon Exempla and Spiritual Instruction,” in Sandra M. Hordis and Paul Hardwick, eds., Medieval English Comedy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 31–60; Virginia S. Carroll, The “Noble Gyn” of Comedy in the Middle English Cycle Plays (New York: Peter Land, 1989); Martha Bayless, Parody in the Middle Ages: The Latin Tradition (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 181. Paola Ventrone notes that sermons and fifteenth-century sacra rappresentazione performances were part of the same category of public communication of religious teachings and even shared forms and techniques. I am arguing that Giotto’s frescoes also belong in this category. See “La sacra rappresentazione fiorentina, ovvero la predicazione in forma di teatro,” in Ginetta Auzzas, Giovanni Baffetti, and Carlo Delcorno, eds., Letteratura in forma di sermone (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 2003), 255–80.

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but Giotto’s whole design for the Scrovegni Chapel decoration, combined with the character of the six scenes comprising the Joachim and Anna story, suggest that this narrative could be seen as a kind of commedia: a popular presentation that was not ephemeral, but instead was fixed in the permanent record of mural decoration. This analysis is not intended to suggest that Giotto imitated any specific play or play cycle. Instead, it aims to situate his frescoes within a larger context of a shared devotional culture. It is impossible to enumerate the number of performances that trecento Italians witnessed each year, but it is clear that many important feasts included some kind of public spectacle.53 Processions were the most common, but religious reenactments in the street—on wagon beds, on makeshift stages, in piazzas—could also be part of the events. In Padua, the Feast of the Annunciation involved a major civic-religious celebration every year that comprised processions, masses, and performances, with Enrico Scrovegni’s arena and chapel as one of its central sites.54 The prevalence of public reenactments in this period supplied the artist, his patron, and their community with a core of shared experiences whose recognizable form led to both accessibility and enjoyment. The familiar character that performances brought to sacred stories was exactly Giotto’s goal as well, and it is no surprise to find him using similar techniques to achieve it. The organizational system for the Scrovegni frescoes proposed here would have required no learned advisor. As part of longstanding popular experience, public performances were familiar and well-understood by even average citizens. This clarity made using comparable communication practices in painting especially useful. Although Enrico Scrovegni and his elite cohort might not have required such a direct and easily recognized transmission of ideas and stories, the broader public, at whom the fresco decoration was also aimed, could surely profit from clarity. Enrico, in turn, would have benefited from successful public engagement with the frescoes that were closely tied to his

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Richard C. Trexler, “Florentine Theatre, 1280–1500: A Checklist of Performances and Institutions,” Forum Italicum 14 (1980): 460–61; Paola Ventrone, “Le forme dello spettacolo toscano nel Trecento: tra rituale civico e cerimoniale festivo,” in Sergio Gensini, ed., La Toscana nel secolo XIV (Pisa: Pacini, 1988), 497–517. Jacobus, Giotto, 3–24; Schwarz, Giottus, 19–38; Michael Viktor Schwarz, “Padua, Its Arena and the Arena Chapel: A Liturgical Ensemble,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 73 (2010): 39–64. The Annunciation was an important feast not just in Padua (whose patron saint was the Virgin), but also in the city of Venice and the Veneto in general (Schwarz, “Padua,” 40–41).

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family.55 Thus Giotto’s choices in representing the Joachim and Anna narrative would have helped satisfy his patron’s goals in commissioning the paintings in the first place.Enrico Scrovegni had the chapel constructed and decorated not merely to serve his family’s spiritual needs, but also to advance his standing in Paduan (and probably Venetian) society.56 Because the arena setting, the chapel, and its decoration were an integral part of the annual Paduan celebration of the Annunciation, Enrico’s name was intimately tied to the city’s public identity and this particular feast day. Although originally dedicated to the Virgin of Charity, the chapel popularly came to be called Santa Maria Annunziata, and Enrico had the high altar dedicated to the Annunciation. The patron’s clear intention to use this quasi-public venue for self-promotion is expressed in the portrait statue he had installed at the chapel. The inscription below the representation of Enrico, who stands with hands raised and pressed together, identifies him as “miles de l’arena.” No evidence has been found to indicate that such a title existed formally. Venice had knighted Enrico in 1301, but “knight of the arena” may have been his own designation.57 Using it indicates his desire to link himself in the public eye to the site of important 55

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Scholars have suggested several different learned advisors and a variety of exceptionally complex programs for the Scrovegni frescoes: Derbes and Sandona, 278; H.M. Thomas, “Die Frage nach Giottos Berater in Padua,” Bollettino del museo civico di Padova 63 (1974): 61–107; Irene Hueck, “Zu Enrico Scrovegnis Veränderungen der Arenakapelle,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 17 (1973): 277–94. There is, however, no documentation that confirms either the advisor or the complex program. Laura Jacobus has presented a compelling argument that the chapel decoration was inspired largely by Scrovegni’s social and political ambitions and that, therefore, the frescoes had to communicate as directly as possible with the public, necessitating no learned advisor. Jacobus, Giotto, 191–202. See also Basile, 21; Cassidy, 362; Schwarz, “Padua,” 50–57. Enrico held citizenship in Venice, was knighted there, and made significant efforts to bolster his reputation in the Republic, even before he was exiled from Padua and moved to the larger city permanently in 1318: Frugoni, 29–30, 48–53. Frugoni, 29, 53–62; Laura Jacobus, “A Knight in the Arena: the ‘True Image’ of Enrico Scrovegni in the Sacristy of the Arena Chapel,” in Mary Rogers, ed., Fashioning Identities in Renaissance Art (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2000), 17–32. Jacobus suggests this was a “founder statue,” originally placed on the exterior of the building, making it a very public statement of an unprecedented, and therefore impressive, kind. She does not believe the inscription was original to the statue, however. Frugoni, 56, and Schwarz, “Padua,” 44, note a 1317 Paduan document that uses the title as well. This document comes from the Scuola di Santa Maria Annunziata dell’Arena, the group Enrico funded to oversee the chapel, so it was not independent of his control (document transcribed in Schwarz, Giottus, 189–92). Frugoni sees the addition of “dell’Arena” as a toponym designed to provide Enrico with a more aristocratic style of name.

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communal ceremonies. Moreover, Enrico affirmed his ties to the celebration by assuming half of the cathedral’s cost for mounting the Annunciation Day spectacle; such sponsorship was a not-uncommon method for demonstrating the prestige of elite citizens in Italian cities in the fourteenth century.58 Successful promotion requires an audience. Enrico’s conspicuous expenditure on the chapel had to be matched by a compelling fresco decoration that communicated his status effectively. His lavish contribution to communal life would be properly appreciated as long as spectators liked what they saw. Given that Annunciation Day public spectacles—including performances—formed the heart of the Scrovegni Chapel’s public presence, Giotto’s utilization of some of the same techniques that were used by playwrights made good sense. Thus, organizing the frescoes like a play cycle, beginning the cycle with a commedia, and emphasizing the human condition tied the chapel decoration to the yearly festival in addition to creating narratives that engaged and educated the public audience. The Joachim and Anna cycle communicated information about the patron beyond his willingness to support communal activities. Written versions of the narrative make it clear that the Virgin’s parents were wealthy. Not a shepherd, but an owner of flocks, Joachim lived in the city and divided his “substance” (in the words of Jacobus de Voragine) in thirds, with one part going to the temple, a second to the poor, and the third to support his household.59 Enrico Scrovegni, too, was a city-dweller whose wealth derived in large part from rural property, suggesting he might have seen himself as a modern counterpart of the Virgin’s father. This would not have been unusual, as texts and sermons frequently linked Joachim and Anna to the lives of the urban middle class.60 58

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The 1309 contract between Enrico and the cathedral chapter is in Schwarz, Giottus, 185– 86. On sponsoring festival spectacles, see Paola Ventrone, “Simbologia e funzione delle feste identitarie in alcune città italiane fra XIII e XV secolo,” Teatro e storia 34 (2013): 285– 310. Golden Legend, 521. Ton Brandenbarg, “Saint Anne: A Holy Grandmother and Her Children,” in Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, ed., Sanctity and Motherhood: Essays on Holy Mothers in the Middle Ages (New York: Garland, 1995), 38–39; Emma Lipton, Affections of the Mind: The Politics of Sacramental Marriage in Late Medieval English Literature (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2007), 93–100. Derbes and Sandona, 126–28, suggest a similar parallel between Enrico and Joachim, although they interpret the narrative’s central theme as penitence because Joachim is humiliated. A significant aspect of their evidence for this claim is that Joachim’s retreat to the wilderness is an “invention of the [Scrovegni] program’s designer,” (p. 127). However, the scene was not invented for the Scrovegni Chapel; it may be found in a number of Byzantine cycles, albeit with some differences in details

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Giotto reveals Joachim and Anna’s wealth via an abundant flock, rich costumes with gold-embroidered hems and cuffs, and a well-furnished home. Their generosity to the temple is indicated by the gift of a lamb. In Byzantine images Joachim can offer either a lamb or two doves; the lamb is the offering of a richer member of the community, and so symbolizes that one-third of the family income.61 As a productive member of society who liberally gives back to his community, Joachim acts as a model for Enrico’s own munificence; indeed, this chapel could be seen as Enrico’s “lamb,” offered to and accepted by God and securing the donor’s place in the community. That message is relayed literally when Enrico has Giotto represent his donation of the Scrovegni Chapel to the Virgin in the fresco of the Last Judgment above the chapel’s public exit. It is also figuratively implied in the Joachim and Anna scenes. Joachim and Anna’s dedication to God is the leitmotif of the narrative, and they conduct themselves, even in the deepest sorrow, with great dignity and composure. Laura Jacobus has suggested that the Scrovegni frescoes defined Enrico as a member of an elite class, not only due to his wealth but also because of his appropriate behavior. She argues that trecento viewers might “read into the frescoes, consciously or unconsciously, a blueprint for social harmony in which each had an assigned role,” and she uses the late medieval genre of conduct literature as a lens through which to study many of the paintings.62 Conduct books counsel high-status individuals to behave with restraint and self-control. Although rules for men and women differ, both sexes are urged to moderate their emotions and keep their expressions and gestures mild.63 In the words of Thomasin von Zirclaria, a northern Italian cleric who wrote a conduct book in German in the first half of the thirteenth century, “moderation is always the measure of the intellect … Whoever uses moderation as a measuring stick is doing everything just as he should.”64 For Thomasin, moderation is an expression of a virtuous character, and behaving with restraint demon-

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(see fig. 8.8). On Enrico’s wealth, see Frugoni, pp. 13–28; Benjamin Kohl, “Giotto and His Lay Patrons” in Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Giotto (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 177–82; J.K. Hyde, Padua in the Age of Dante (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1966), 187–90. Lafontaine-Desogne, “Iconography,” 167, n. 30; Christoforaki, 218–19. Jacobus, Giotto, 203–92; quotation, 203. Her analysis focuses mainly on scenes that demonstrate status and gender differences. Jacobus, 204–05; Dilwyn Knox, “Civility, Courtesy and Women,” in Letizia Panizza, ed., Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 2–17. Thomasin von Zirclaria, Der Welsche Gast, trans. and ed. Marion Gibbs and Winder McConnell (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2009), 171.

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strates one’s virtue to society. The only truly energetic figures in Giotto’s cycle are the priest in the Expulsion and the dog in Joachim in the Wilderness. Even Joachim’s profound shame after his rejection and the couple’s clear joy when they reunite are expressed with slow movements and controlled gestures. Thus their virtue is amply demonstrated to the viewers. We cannot know, of course, if members of the Scrovegni family restrained themselves to the same degree as Joachim and Anna. But the fact that Mary’s parents appear as wealthy, generous, and pious members of their community does suggest a parallel was intended with the patron and his wife, and one can imagine that the Scrovegni were careful to conduct themselves with considerable dignity at any public occasion. Giotto’s frescoes could represent strong emotions, but they were not uncontrolled; indeed, duecento paintings were often more dramatic than Giotto’s representations.65 So viewers might have powerful responses to the frescoes, but they would not become overexcited in any way that the nobles of Padua would see as inappropriate to their station. By identifying themselves with the frescoes, the Scrovegni demonstrated that they belonged in this elite class.66 A concern for restraint explains the gentleness of the humor in the Joachim and Anna scenes. Laughter was one of the actions that proper men and women needed to contain. Thomasin von Zirclaria included warnings about laughter in his conduct book, calling it “the practice of fools. When two people are laughing together, their conversation does not have much meaning.”67 Francesco da Barberino, a Florentine lawyer and contemporary of Giotto, wrote two didactic poems instructing readers about appropriate behavior for men and women of different social statures. He suggested that those in the upper classes should convey their amusement, but not excessively: “As you know, it is written that ‘laughter abounds in the mouths of fools’; what this means here is uncontrolled and constant laughter, not joyful facial expressions or moderate laughter in its own time and place.”68 Giotto’s wit in the Joachim 65 66 67 68

Jacobus, Giotto, 228, makes the point that Giotto’s figures are more restrained than figures in earlier Italian images. In fact, Enrico’s mother and second wife were born aristocrats. On his pursuit of elite standing, see Jacobus, Giotto, 3–35. Thomasin von Zirclaria, 62. Francesco da Barberino, “The Italian Reggimento e costumi di donna (Selections) and Documenti d’amore (Selections),” trans. Eleonora Stoppino, in Medieval Conduct Literature: An Anthology of Vernacular Guides to Behavior for Youths, with English Translations, ed. Mark D. Johnston (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 127–83 at 137. This quotation comes from the Reggimento, instructions for women, but Francesco has similar rules for men.

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and Anna scenes would evoke smiles, as seen in Anna’s companions at the Golden Gate, but would not cause any viewer to burst into laughter. In this way the cycle presents and models elite conduct rather than more common behavior typically found in comic plays. Comic elements humanize narratives and enable the audience to relate to distant and extraordinary events. But they also work to build a sense of community among spectators. Scientific researchers who study the effects of laughter have found that humor is always shaped by social cues and that it solidifies bonds between individuals and fosters sociability within and across groups.69 Giotto’s version of the Joachim and Anna story emphasizes the relationship between individuals and their community, and his wittiness helps expand that community to include the audience. This process serves a devotional purpose as it aids viewers in understanding sacred mysteries, but it also advances Enrico Scrovegni’s personal ambitions by stimulating goodwill toward him and associating pleasure with his name, thereby supporting his quest for social standing in Padua. The backstory of the Virgin’s conception was not invented for the Scrovegni Chapel, nor did Giotto originate the general iconography for any of the individual scenes. From a theological perspective, its purpose was to emphasize Mary’s humanity, the source of Jesus’s own humanity, and to suggest that devotion to God prepared her for her role in the divine plan for redemption.70 Giotto conveyed these messages effectively through his formal choices in the Joachim and Anna cycle, as well as through the innovative use of the dog, mundane in its behavior and humorous in its interactions with humans, while still serving as a harbinger of divine presence. He thus drew viewers into a fresh, personalized relationship with the holy figures. But this relationship was triangulated, in a sense, for the patron was also tied to the images and to the spectators in both content and form. Even without actually seeing Enrico in the cycle, an informed local audience would recognize his presence there. Analyzing the narrative of Joachim and Anna as a commedia does not exclude other interpretations of the Scrovegni Chapel decoration. It does, however, offer a method for understanding the interrelationship of the subject matter of the cycle and its visual presentation that does not require the trecento 69

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Scientific research into laughter is cited and summarized in Julia Wilkins and Amy Jane Eisenbraun, “Humor Theories and the Physiological Benefits of Laughter,” Holistic Nursing Practice 23 (2009): 349–54. The same effect has been noted by scholars in the humanities, e.g., Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, trans. Caryl Emerson (Minnea­polis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 123. Denysenko, passim.

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audience to be exceptionally erudite. Like Giotto’s frescoes themselves, it is based on everyday, lived experience. Running a gamut of emotions; exploring the ever-critical relationship of the individual to society; illustrating the power of piety; and modeling noble behavior, the commedia of Joachim and Anna spoke directly to a trecento audience that was primed by familiarity and amusement—by the dog, as it were—to internalize both the spiritual and the social messages it conveyed.

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Chapter 9

Die Jagd nach der Treue, or When Desire Met Devotion Jane Carroll Love is a game. Love is a combat. Love is a hunt. Love is a negotiation. Love requires two adversaries, tactics, and a common playing field. Such are the metaphors that late medieval art used to explore courtship, a frequent subject in secular art of the period. But once the wooing was complete, the number of images dwindles. Far fewer objects focus on the actions and skills needed for prolonged successful partnership. Yet marriage, as the French historian Georges Duby noted, is the centerpiece of the Western system of values in its ability to bridge the material and the spiritual.1 Evidence of late medieval society’s continual preoccupation with the male-female bond is found in the large numbers of surviving sermon manuscripts dealing with marriage.2 For example, the inveterate preacher St. Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444) wrote, “I would have [the woman] good and fair and wise and bred in all virtue. I answer, if you would have her thus, it is fitting that you should be the same; even as you seek a virtuous, fair and good spouse, so think likewise how she would fain have a husband prudent, discreet, good, and fulfilled of all virtue.”3 These and similar standards of ideal marital partnership form the rhetoric in late medieval sermons on matrimony; yet only a few artworks explicitly attempted to translate those concepts into a visual medium. One medieval object that does seem to tackle the complex issue of conjugal partnership is a tapestry from around 1480–90, housed today in Glasgow’s Burrell Collection (Reg. 46/28, Fig. 9.1), and traditionally called Die Jagd nach der Treue or The Hunt for Fidelity.4 Unique elements of production and style 1 George Duby, The Knight, the Lady and the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France, trans. Barbara Bray (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983), 19. 2 See David d’Avray, Medieval Marriage: Symbolism and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) and his Medieval Marriage Sermons: Mass Communication in a Culture without Print (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), for his discussion on the sermons and their content. 3 “St. Bernardino of Siena: Two Sermons on Wives and Widows,” in Life in the Middle Ages, C.G. Coulton, trans., vol. 1 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 229. 4 Richard Marks, Rosemary Scott, Barry Gasson, James K. Thomson, and Philip Vainker, The Burrell Collection (Glasgow: The Burrell Collection, 1992), 103. The tapestry is discussed briefly

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004328617_011

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Figure 9.1 Die Jagd nach der Treue, tapestry, c. 1480 - 90, Burrell Collection, Glasgow (Permission of CSG CIC Glasgow Museums and Libraries Collections).

indicate that the artwork was most likely made in Strasbourg, and it was certainly woven in Alsace.5 The work was conceived as either a small wall hanging in Christina Cantzler, Bildteppiche der spätgothik am Mittlerhein, 1400–1550 (Tübingen: E. Wasmuth, 1990), 143–44. 5 For example, it is stylistically related to two scenes from Der Busant (The Buzzard), tapestries made in Strasbourg around 1480 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City). The details of production can be found in Anna Buri Rapp and Monica Stucky-Schürer, Zahm und Wild. Basler und Straßburger Bildteppiche des 15. Jahrhunderts (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1990). The discussion of the Glasgow tapestry is on pp. 350–53. A second, almost identical tapestry was once in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection in Castagnola/Lugano, and is today in a private collection.

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or a pillow cover (79 cm. × 88 cm.), and Anna Buri Rapp and Monica StuckySchürer posit that it was created as a wedding gift, a concept reinforced by the subject matter.6 Employing the allegorical language of the hunt, the tapestry enumerates the virtues of the couple and examines the elements of successful marriage. In so doing, the Glasgow work transforms a noble recreation into an emblem of marital promise. All tapestries result from a collaborative process that involves the artist who conceived the composition, the patron who commissioned the work, and the weaver. What interests me about the Glasgow tapestry is not so much its production as its reception. How would the cultured elites who owned this tapestry have probed its complex sign system? And what meanings would it have conveyed to them? The weaving depicts a young man and woman riding a dapple-grey horse through a wood while chasing a deer.7 The goal of the hunt, the capture of the animal, seems within their grasp. Helping them to trap their quarry are three dogs who run along the bottom edge of the tapestry and harry the beast. Above the scene floats a banderole that provides the title for the work. It proclaims in a sprightly Alsatian rhyme, “Ich. iag. nach. truwen. find. ich. die. kein. lieber. zit. gelebt. ich. nie.” (Ich jag nach Treue, find ich sie, kein’ schön’re Zeit erleb ich nie). It can be loosely translated as, “I hunt for fidelity and if I find it, I will never know a more beautiful time.” Few other proclamations could be more appropriate for a newly engaged or wedded couple.8 “Treue,” or Fidelity, 6



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Rapp, Zahm und Wild, 352. The subject continued into the Renaissance, and a related tapestry from around 1550 can be found in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg (No. T-2943). There, the joy of the earlier scene has turned to sorrow, and the same elements that had celebrated a union now seem to mock the woman’s isolation. Its banderole reads, “e(w) ellend in fred dich wend,” asking sorrow to transform itself into joy (Fig. 9.8).  For the role of engagement and marriage gifts, see Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand, “Hochzeit, Vertragsehe und Ehevertrag in Mitteleuropa,” in Die Braut, Geliebt, Verkauft, Getauscht, Geraubt: Zur Rolle der Frau im Kulturvergleich, eds. Gisela Völger and Karin von Welck (Cologne: Rankenstrauch-Joest Museum für Völkerkunde, 1985), 264–73. The action takes place from right to left, a directional movement that is uncommon in most medieval and Early Modern artworks. That anomaly can probably be explained by the weaving process, in which the craftsman works backwards from a cartoon. When the right side is displayed, the composition is reversed. In subject matter, the tapestry is similar to the small boxes or Minnekästchen discussed by Jürgen Wurst, “Pictures and Poems of Courtly Love and Bourgeois Marriage: Some Notes on the So-Called Minnekästchen,” in Love, Marriage, and Family Ties in the Later Middle Ages, eds. Isabel Davis, Miriam Müller and Sarah Rees Jones (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 97–120. These boxes were often love tokens at the time of marriage or engagement. Wurst quotes Friar Berthold of Freiburg (last quarter of the fourteenth century) who wrote in his

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is declared as the goal of this hunt, just as it is in the ideal marriage. The tapestry offers a scene whose elements seem to prompt the viewer to ask how one can capture faithfulness. That question, like an allegory itself, is not neatly defined, but alludes to process and exchange—much like marriage. Dominating the scene through their scale and color are the young lovers on horseback. Both figures are sumptuously clad. The woman personifies elegance with a thick gold chain around her neck, a studded belt, and a slit red brocade dress. Her braided hair is topped by a leafy circlet whose fronds seem to wave in the breeze. She sits demurely on the lady’s bench behind her swain and seems to fix her eyes on the first half of the banderole. The gentleman is also fashionably clad in an embroidered linen shirt, short blue jerkin with slit sleeves, tan leggings, and vibrant red boots with the tops folded over and embellished with spurs. Like the woman, he has a circlet in his blond curls, though his version is a more subdued band that may be made from braided ribbons. The young man blows a horn, called a Hirschruf (deer call), which is secured to him by a red baldric studded with stars.9 Its loud noise helps the dogs drive the stag into a net strung between two trees, while announcing that the end game is in play. Fidelity will soon be in their control. The man and woman conform in composition and type to contemporary depictions of couples on horseback, suggesting that the motif was popular, especially in the Upper Rhenish circles surrounding the Housebook Master (active in the last quarter of the fifteenth century).10 At about the same time that the tapestry was woven, Monogrammist bxg (active 1466–1490, probably in Frankfurt am Main) created an engraving of A Couple on Horseback (c. 1480, Fig. 9.2),11 and in 1496 Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) drew and colored a similar scene (Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, Fig. 9.3). Neither of these artworks includes a hunt, so the viewer is able to focus solely on the grouping of man, woman, and horse. The engraved pair gallop across a sparse landscape with visible excitement and smiles on their faces that are matched by the horse’s expression. Dürer’s depiction is more tender, with the man’s head inclined solicitously

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Rechtssumme about mutual gifts at the time of engagement. Wurst, “Pictures and Poems,” 111. The Hirschruf is discussed in Die Kunst der Jagd. Auf der Pirsch in den Sammlungen des Niederösterrichisches Landesmuseums, ed. Carl Aigner (Weitra, Austria: Verlag Bibliothek der Provinz, 2008), 149. Herbert Bald, Liebesjagd. Eine Wandmalerei des 15. Jahrhunderts im Schloss zu Lohr am Main (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2011), 20. Discussions of the Monogramist BxG can be found in Lehrs, vol. viii, 165–219; G.K. Nagler, Monogrammisten, vol. 1, no. 2079; and “Master b × g,” in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, vol. 20, 792.

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Figure 9.2 Monogrammist bxg, Young Couple on Horseback, engraving, c. 1480, Albertina Museum, Vienna (Permission of Albertina, Vienna).

toward the woman. A lapdog, a Löwchen or Little Lion, accompanies them in the lower left and underscores their amorous relationship.12 In these two works, as in the tapestry, the representation of a man and woman riding together on a single horse signaled the pair’s romantic connection. Viewers were to understand the unambiguously encoded message that the Glasgow couple were already in a relationship. In the tapestry, however, the lovers are solemn and a bit stiff. They exhibit none of the charming intertwining of Dürer’s pair or the exuberance of the young lovers in the Monogrammist’s print. The similarity among the couples lies in their well-matched ages, beauty, and wealth.13 In each medium, the fig12

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The Löwchen was also known as le petit chien de lion and the Maltese. The breed appears fragile but is fearless and protective. By shaving its hindquarters, the dog could be given a leonine ruff that gave it the nickname of “little lion.” Less standard pairings are explored in Alison Stewart, Unequal Lovers: A Study of Unequal Couples in Northern Art (New York: Abaris Books, 1978).

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Figure 9.3 Albrecht Dürer, A Couple on Horseback, colored pen and ink, 1496, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (Permission of the Kupferstichkabinett. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin).

ures are presented to the viewer as an ideal union—compatible in action, emotion, color, and scale. By crowning the tapestry group with two wreaths, rings with no beginning or end, the woven figures can additionally be read as symbols of the eternal bond of betrothal or marriage, the traditional occasions when couples wore such headgear.14 On those occasions, the circlet was read as a sign of returned regard.15

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Ethel L. Urlin, A Short History of Marriage, Marriage Rites, Customs and Folklore in Many Countries and All Ages (Detroit: Singing Tree Press, 1969), 49, and Lyndal Roper, “Going to Church and Street: Weddings in Renaissance Augsburg,” Past and Present. A Journal of Historical Studies 106 (1985): 88. Bald, Liebesjagd, 65–66.

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In addition to their circlets, the woman’s red gown adds a layer of significance to her form and makes her into what E. Jane Burns calls a “sartorial body,” a generated social construction.16 With the understanding that clothes can articulate status, gender, culture, or even politics, the deep red of this dress may transform the female into the embodiment of romantic courtly love, “Frau Minne.” Frau Minne’s favorite color was red, a fact mentioned in chivalric poems such as Von den sechs Farben (1345–54), where red is cited as symbolizing the desire for love.17 Minne’s elegant red dress appears in such disparate artworks as a tapestry from early fifteenth-century Regensburg, The Judgment of Minne (Regensburg, Historisches Museum), and the wall painting of the same subject and date located in the former Guildhouse of the Carpenters in Zurich.18 A tapestry housed in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich, expands on the character’s nature. In that work, a unicorn seeks sanctuary from pursuing dogs by climbing into the lap of Frau Minne, who is dressed in a red gown of a brocaded pattern closely matching that of the Glasgow figure. In this weaving, Minne takes the role usually assigned to the Virgin. The unicorn, as a symbol of virginity, labels Minne as pure, while her crown signifies her status as ruler of hearts. The allusions to Frau Minne in the Glasgow tapestry may include her crownlike wreath; such signs indicate that the female exerts more authority than her passive position communicates. The woman’s attire in Die Jagd nach der Treue forges a complex sartorial identity of fashionable female, desired body, and powerful personification, creating in her form the motivating force of the scene—love. The female figure in the tapestry embodies the ideal courtly female in the flesh as well as the abstract. Her sexualized body has the lauded thin arms and narrow chest with small, firm breasts, while her small waist conforms to the preferred standard shape of an ant, an Ameisentaille.19 She also conforms to the normative female object of desire outlined in The Key to Love, a Norman 16 17

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E. Jane Burns, Courtly Love Undressed: Reading through Clothes in Medieval French Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), especially pp. 12–18. Bald, Liebesjagd, 45. The poem, written by the Würzburg scholastic Michael de Leone, was popular into the sixteenth century. The text strongly connects Minne and the color red. Perhaps it was that connection of color and emotion that caused Frankfurt brides to clothe themselves in red and Nuremberg grooms to don red hose. Bald, Liebesjagd, 44–45. William Jervis Jones, German Colour Terms: A Study in Their Historical Evolution from the Earliest Times to the Present (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2013), 150–53, discusses the over thirty poems referencing color that appeared in the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries in Germany. Red is consistently assigned to Minne or explained as symbolizing love. Bald, Liebesjagd, 43.

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poem from the end of the thirteenth century that retells Ovid’s Art of Love in a slightly cynical voice. The text warns, “She must be simple, sweet and fresh / Tender of years and fair of flesh, / Unspoiled of manner, mien and mood, / Of candid, courtly attitude.”20 In his longing to possess this womanly ideal, her male companion undertakes to subdue and control the symbol of Fidelity, the stag. Recognizing the connection of Love (Minne) to Fidelity (Treue), allows the audience to begin to decode the conjugal allegory. The public nature of the declaration of a private desire in Die Jagd nach der Treue can be explained by the medieval culture of love. In the courtly ideal, affection was not only a private emotion, but also a social performance in a public sphere. Nobles, and those who emulated them, viewed love as a means by which virtue could be highlighted. When love was performed, the suitor displayed his honor and other virtues publically to show himself worthy of his beloved.21 In the Glasgow tapestry, the struggle to control Fidelity becomes a part of that performance. Upon mastering Fidelity, the suitor will have completed a step toward his desired goal—partnership with the beloved. As in chivalric tales of love’s pursuit, late medieval rhetoric constructed the hunt as an ordered ritual that was equally ennobling and positive. Gaston Phébus (1331–1391) set the tone in his Le Livre de la chasse (1387–1389) when he proclaimed that hunting was the noblest pastime. A good huntsman, as defined by Phébus, was a man of virtue who avoided idleness and did not succumb to evil thoughts.22 By portraying the protagonist as a hunter, the tapestry’s designer allowed him to participate in an activity whose public performance underscored his admirable qualities and made him both worthy of his beloved and ready to love. This context would justify the hero as a role model for a fifteenth-century bridegroom. That hunting qualified as a good deed was reinforced by Andreas Capellanus in his masterwork On Love (De amore), composed around 1185, “To men who perform good deeds [women] must show themselves in such a light that the 20

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Norman R. Shapiro, trans., The Comedy of Eros: Medieval French Guides to the Art of Love, notes and commentary by James B. Wadsworth (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971), 14–15. An in-depth discussion of medieval love culture can be found in Stephen C. Jaeger, Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999). Discussed in Marina Belozerskaya, “Good Dog: Model Canines in Renaissance Manuscripts,” in Tributes in Honor of James H. Marrow, eds. Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Anne S. Korteweg (Turnhout: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2006), 66, and found in The Hunting Book of Gaston Phébus, intro. M. Thomas and Françoise Avril, trans. Sarah Kane (London: Harvey Miller, 1998), 19.

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worth of such men seems to grow in every way from virtue to virtue under their gaze.”23 Drouart La Vache, who wrote The Books of Love (Li livres d’amours) a century later (c. 1290), paraphrased Capellanus in the catchy couplet, “Worthy to love is the man who leads / An upright life of virtuous deeds.”24 To the medieval mind, affection had to be earned and virtues or good acts created in the actor a loveable creature. Having won the love of a good woman through his worth, the suitor is, in turn, ennobled by her regard.25 As Maurice Keen has pointed out, the European warrior class viewed the courtly code not as a feeling, but as set constructs that could positively influence behavior.26 In the tapestry, the reward of Fidelity will transform the young man, reinforcing his commendable qualities and highlighting his resolve. Fidelity will ensure that the young man merits the female’s regard while simultaneously presenting the contemporary newlywed with a lesson on securing the esteem of his beloved. Geoffrey de Charny’s Livre de Chevalerie (mid-fourteenth century) states that a knight’s desire for his lady will inspire him with the courage to cultivate the virtues necessary to win her favor.27 If worthy suitors are conspicuous by the public display of their virtues, then the perfectly comported and stylishly dressed Glasgow hero must flaunt his noble qualities. The prominently placed hunting dogs that accompany him may have been intended to visually encode those desired traits. Cousins of the canines appear in the complex religious allegory The Hortus Conclusus Annunciation (Fig. 9.4), and may shed some light on possible virtues to be read into the tapestry. The mystical Annunciation became popular around 1400 as an emblematic discourse on Mary’s perpetual virginity and Christ’s divine conception.28 The charming, if overcrowded compositions were a visual gloss to the new theology of the Defensorium inviolatae virginitatis beatae Mariae (Defense of the inviolate Virgin Mary), written by the Austrian Dominican Franz von Retz (1343–1427). Artists and theologians drew upon multiple biblical, classical, and natural sources for their idiosyncratic

23 24 25 26 27 28

Andreas Capellanus, On Love, ed. and trans., P.G. Walsch (London: Duckworth, 1982), 158. Translated in The Comedy of Eros, 85. Capellanus, On Love, esp. 39. Maurice Keen, Nobles, Knights and Men-at-Arms in the Middle Ages (London: Hambledon Press, 1996), 200. Jaeger, Ennobling Love, 198. Brian E. Daley, S.J., “The ‘Closed Garden’ and the ‘Sealed Fountain’: Song of Songs 4:12 in the Late Medieval Iconography of Mary,” in Medieval Gardens, ed. Elizabeth B. Macdougall (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1986), 253–76; and Jürgen W. Einhorn, Spiritalis Unicornis. Das Einhorn als Bedeutungsträger in Literatur und Kunst des Mittelalters (Munich: W. Fink, 1998), 287–305.

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Figure 9.4 Hortus Conclusus Annunciation, embroidery on linen, c. 1500, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich (Permission of the Bayerisches National­ museum, Munich).

compositions.29 Such imaginative visual rhetoric allowed the mystical hunt for the unicorn and the Annunciation to be paired with Gideon’s fleece, Aaron’s rod, the Ark of the Covenant, a covered fountain, the rising sun, the burning bush, or the Angel Gabriel accompanied by hunting dogs, all representations of Mary’s purity. The Archangel Gabriel’s dogs are of special interest for understanding the Glasgow tapestry because, unlike Die Jagd nach der Treue, the allegorical canines in the Annunciation are labeled with various virtues. Small banderoles float above the hounds or are clamped in their jaws, on which can be 29

For more detail on the development of the theme, see Gertrude Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, vol. 1 (London: Lund Humphries, 1971), 52–54.

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read “caritas,” “justicia,” “castitas,” “humilitas,” “fides,” “veritas,” “pax,” “spes,” or “misericordia.”30 This evidence suggests a visual parallel between the tapestry’s hunting dogs and the allegorical hounds of the Mystical Hunt of the Unicorn. The question is whether the language of signs in the religious allegory was implicit in the tapestry’s dogs as well. Chivalric hunting romances would suggest that intrinsic symbolism was well-known among a cultivated elite and thus was likely to be borrowed.31 In Hadamar von Laber’s (c. 1300–1360) allegorical poem entitled Die Jagd or Die Minnejagd, for example, the protagonist’s hunting pack includes dogs named “Faithfulness,” “Courage,” and “Willpower,” all qualities needed by the hunter. The canines in this poem personify the qualities of its noble hero.32 Within the medieval nexus of virtues and love, the hunter in Die Jagd nach der Treue would improve his chances for success by displaying those qualities that marked a noble person. Conflating the established literary connection of dogs and virtues with labels in the allegorical Annunciation, the Glasgow tapestry could subtly allude to the possibility of a hero whose meritorious virtues assured his success in the hunt for Fidelity in love. By omitting the labels found in the Hortus Conclusus Annunciation, the Glasgow tapestry allowed viewers to select their preferred qualities while implying all virtues. Following chivalric code, the woven scene indicates that the hero has won his desired woman through his worth as evidenced by his virtuous qualities. In the tapestry, the man’s blue jerkin underscores his role in this visual encoding of mating. Blue, as the color of the cloudless sky, was traditionally evoked as an emblem of Truth. When tied to love, the color alluded to 30

31 32

Examples of this composition are the Hortus Conclusus Annuciation embroidery and tapestry in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum Munich. The dogs’ banderoles tend to reflect, but are not restricted to, the four theological virtues (prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude) and the three cardinal virtues (faith, charity, and hope). John Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk: The Art of Medieval Hunting (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 154–55. David Scott-Macnab, “The Names of All Manner of Hounds: A Unique Inventory in a Fifteenth-century Manuscript,” Viator 44 no. 3 (2013): 339–68. Sonja Emmerling, Hadamar von Laber und seine Liebesdichtung “Die Jagd,” vol. 2, ed. Edith Feistner (Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 2005), 15–18. Other dogs are named to reflect aspects of courtship, such as “Delight,” “Joy,” or “Embrace.” Hadamar’s hero states (26), “Die Hunde ‘Freude,’ ‘Wille,’ und ‘Wonne,’ ‘Trost,’ ‘Beständigkeit,’ und ‘Treue’ kenne ich gut. Sie geben eine frische Fährte niemals auf, sei es im Underholz oder im Moor. Diese Hunde nahm ich mit mir, um sie auf die Verfolgung des Wildes anzusetzen.” Hadamar, however, writes about the eternal striving for love in a hunt without end. See also Jaeger, Ennobling Love, 54.

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faithfulness and constancy, virtues essential for prolonged amorous success.33 Blue identifies the tapestry’s rider as stalwart and true, just as his female companion’s red gown connotes love. The tapestry’s hero seems to fulfill Parzival’s description of the noble male as neither too thin nor too fat, enjoying sport, displaying courage, exemplifying fortitude, not a braggart, and without vice. Additionally, he should demonstrate a strong voice, a sharp eye, and excellent hearing.34 While these qualities are not visually manifest, this hero’s bearing implies that he is the aggregate of all noble elements. In medieval romances featuring hunting scenes, it is the male who is the principal character. While the female passively accompanies him, the Glasgow tapestry’s hero actively directs the hunt to capture the stag of Fidelity, in an attempt to secure his beloved beyond the fleeting moment of the chase. Because the inscription on the banderole speaks of the hunt in the first-person singular, the words seem more directed to the young man as the primary actor, though it should be acknowledged that both figures could read the words individually and find meaning in them. For fidelity in marriage to succeed, both parties must be in command of it.35 The artist combined the standard visual hunting rhetoric with the tapestry’s inscription to suggest that the hunter, either singly or with his beloved, was sincere in his goal—fidelity in love. Perhaps one reason that hunting and courtly love were so often paired is that both pursuits had a prescribed choreography. They were formalized, repeatable ceremonies based upon strategy and entertainment, and governed by rules. Love, as a public display performed within a cultural ideal, relied on rituals to articulate the various stages from desire to courtship to marriage, or from nascent to declared to consummated, or, alternatively, from eloquence to courtesy to virtue.36 In a similar fashion, the hunt had imposed rites that underscored societal divisions and power structures.37 From the huntsmanvarlet who went out in the morning to find the deer (the Quest, Fig. 9.5) to the 33 34 35

36 37

Bald, Liebesjagd, 49–50. In Von den sechs Farben, blue equated with constancy with the words “daz meinet stetikeit.” Parzival Book II, 63, 13ff., and 64, 4–8. Many scholars assume that a man and a woman hunting together are working in tandem, but the case is unclear in the Glasgow tapestry. For a discussion of the joint hunt, see Cantzler, Bildteppiche der spätgotik, 143, and Christian Müller, “Studien zur Darstellung und Funktion wilder Natur in deutschen Minnedarstellungen des 15. Jahrhunderts,” Ph.D. diss. (Tübingen, 1982). Jaeger, Ennobling Love, 102; Shapiro, The Comedy of Eros, 112. Susan Crane, “Ritual Aspects of the Hunt à Force,” in Engaging with Nature: Essays on the Natural World in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds. Barbara Hanawalt and Lise Kiser (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 63–84 discusses the hunt as sport,

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Figure 9.5 Gaston Phébus, Livre de chasse, “The Quest,” Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Ms. fr. 616, fol. 62v, 1388 (Permission of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris).

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gathering of all hunters to plan the chase (the Assembly) to the marking of the covert (the Finding) to the elite who pursued the beast on horseback with unleashed hounds (the Chase, Fig. 9.6) to the ritual apportioning of the animal’s meat (the Unmaking and the Curée), each class had its role and its reward.38 Both courtship and the hunt were designed to reinforce noble virtues, underscore distinctions of rank, and promote societal tropes of honor.39 Die Jagd nach der Treue, like other literary and visual works, conflates the two rituals to underscore the suitor’s noble characteristics. In choosing to depict the amatory chase after a stag, the tapestry’s designer focused on the most prized animal in the spectrum of the hunt. The hart was noble in appearance and reported to combine innocence and guile in its makeup, making it especially elusive during the hunt.40 Thus the capture and killing of a deer with a full ten tines on its rack was thought to be the apex of the sport. While the defenseless hind or doe came to symbolize the penitent soul or the female lover, the adult stag, a more robust creature, often personified fidelity.41 The source for the linking of hart and fidelity remains murky. It may derive from Christian connotations attached to adult deer. Hrabanus Maurus (c. 780– 856), Vincent of Beauvais (c. 1190–c. 1264) and Peter Lombard (c. 1096–1164), for example, drew upon the allusions found in Psalm 41 in which the stag is presented as a symbol of Christ, of baptism, and of faith.42 Over time constancy in faith came to represent the trait of constancy itself. By the late fifteenth century, when the tapestry was created, the stag was an accepted emblem of fidelity, as evidenced by the woven inscription. The tapestry depicts the stag as vigorous and agile. By capturing this beast, the couple will have

38

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pastime, game, and ritual. She concludes that par force hunting was an allegorical ritual signifying aristocratic domination. The stages of the hunt are discussed in Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk, 33–44. Cummins’s list derives from The Master of the Game (1406–13) by Edward of Norwich, Duke of York (1373?–1415). For a thorough discussion of medieval love within its culture, see Jaeger, Ennobling Love. Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk, 32. Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk, 71, 78–79; Bald, Liebesjagd, 32; Ulrike Wörner, Die Dame im Spiel (Münster: Wazmann Verlag, 2010), 276–77; Simona Cohen, Animals as Disguised Symbols in Renaissance Art (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 142. Psalm 41 provides the biblical basis for comparing the seeking Christian soul to the hind thirsting for water. Peter Gerlach, “Hirsch,” in Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, vol. 2, ed. Engelbert Kirschbaum (Freiburg in Breisgau: Herder, 1994), cols. 286–89. Hrabanus Maurus, De universo VII (PL 111:204), Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum morale (3, 19)—although this part of the Speculum Maius was added after Vincent’s death, it formed a part of his master encyclopedia since the fourteenth century—and Peter Lombard, Commentary on Psalm 41 (PL 191:415). Cohen, Animals, 142–46.

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Figure 9.6 Gaston Phébus, Livre de chasse, “The Chase,” Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Ms. fr. 616, fol. 87r, 1388 (Permission of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris).

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mastered a daunting task, and the newly wedded possessors of this weaving owned an enduring reminder that fidelity in marriage requires skill and dedication. As an emblem based upon the hunt, Die Jagd nach der Treue or The Hunt for Fidelity seems to follow the rules of the medieval sport as laid down in various treatises and romances. It depicts the noblest form of the pastime, chasse par force des chiens or courcing (chase on horseback with dogs),43 in which the dogs scent, then roust the prey and give chase until the hunter can catch and kill it. Similar scenes are recounted in numerous medieval texts, including those of the Minnesänger, that detail in part or in total the art of pursuit and the animals that are the focus of the sport. Hartmann von Aue (c. 1160–c. 1220), for example, wrote a lengthy hunting scene into his poem Erec of c. 1191, while 150 years later, Hadamar von Laber’s Die Minnejagd was conceived as a prolonged metaphor describing the pursuit of love as a chase.44 In the latter work, a man and a woman discover their eternal love within the framework of a hunt.45 Yet the most important treatise from that period does not cloak the hunt in romance. Gaston Phébus, the eleventh Count of Foix, finished his influential Le livre de la chasse in 1389 and dedicated it to Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Over four sections, Gaston discusses the different stages of the hunt, the types of animals that can be chased, and the behavior of the animals when pursued. His work became the standard text, and his opinions the accepted norm for hunting protocol.46 Reflecting the sport’s best practices, the tapestry includes a pair of lymers, dogs characterized by their short snouts and powerful ability to scent out prey. They were trained to remain silent while tracking. Their work was to rouse the stag to break cover and thus to begin the chase. At this point the group becomes 43

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Ryan R. Judkins, “The Game of the Courtly Hunt: Chasing and Breaking Deer in Late Medieval English Literature,” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 112, no. 1 (2013): 70. Judkins’s depiction of the hunt derives primarily from The Master of the Game, but also calls upon Phébus’s Le Livre de la chasse. Hartmann von Aue, Erec, trans. J.W. Thomas (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001). Ulrich Steckelberg, “Die Jagd” Hadamars von Laber. Überlieferung, Textstrukturen und allegorische Sinnbildungsverfahren (Tübingen: M. Niemeyer Verlag, 1998). The connection of love and hunting was well-developed in the Minnesänger works, such as Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Jüngern Titurel, c. 1260, in which the hero sends his love a dog on whose collar is written a love story. Emmerling, Hadamar von Laber, 12. Gaston Phébus’s text was copied and translated into English in Edward of Norwich, Duke of York’s The Master of the Game. To the French treatise, Edward added five chapters focused totally on the English style of hunting. A facsimile of the Phébus is La livre de la chasse: Das Buch von der Jagd (Graz: Akademische Druck und Verlagsanst., 1976).

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engaged in parforce hunting or courcing, in which dogs that work by sight take the lead. These running dogs, marked by their long, pointed noses, were swift and could pursue the deer until the exhausted beast dropped. In the Glasgow artwork, the dogs are presented in proper order.47 The lymers, having finished their task, follow along in case the trail is lost and the scent must be picked up once again. The fleeter hound, a dog Phébus labeled the noblest breed,48 is in the lead and prevents the stag from escaping the net. Such dogs were often a type of greyhound and were described as “well shaped when it is headed like a snake, necked like a drake, breasted like a lion, footed like a cat, and tailed like a rat.”49 The running hounds could lope along at forty-five miles an hour, keeping pace with the fleeing deer.50 In the formalized repeatable spectacle that is the hunt, the tapestry records proper strategy and ritual. Despite the hart’s speed, stamina, and guile, human domination is asserted through the successful coordination of disparate parts of the hunt. The tapestry’s hero has been successful, in part, because he has followed the rules and exploited each type of dog’s skills most appropriately, using scent dogs to pursue with persistence and running dogs to pursue with cunning. He has planned ahead with his net, used his hounds in the proper order, and ridden close to the stag to keep it on the correct path. Such lessons are fit for both hunter and lover. When planning and protocol are followed assiduously, Fidelity is within the pursuer’s grasp. The Glasgow tapestry eschews execution of the deer, the triumphant ritualized end of all legitimate hunts. In Die Jagd nach der Treue, there is no hint that the hart will meet its death. The riders carry no large knife to cut the tendons and have no accompanying horsemen to deliver the thrust with a spear to the heart or spinal cord. Nor do the dogs rush toward the beast with bared fangs and bloodlust. Instead, the hounds lope along in tandem with the stag as it runs toward the snare. Once caught, its noble rack will be hopelessly tangled in the ropes. “Faithfulness,” the tapestry seems to indicate, should not be killed, only subdued and captured. The wild beast can be brought under control, ensuring the perfect union of man and woman, although such an event is only alluded to in this scene. 47 48 49

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The sequence is outlined in William H. Forsyth, “The Medieval Stag Hunt,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s. 10, no. 7 (1952): 203–07. Belozerskaya, “Good Dog,” 66. Quoted in Forsyth, “Stag Hunt,” 206. The source is The Book of Saint Albans, a printed volume from 1486 that outlines the leisure interests of gentlemen. Also discussed in James I. McNeillis III, “A Greyhound Should have ‘Eres in be Manere of a Serpent,” in Animals and the Symbolic in Mediaeval Art and Literature, ed. L.A.J.R. Houwen (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1997), 77–92, especially 73–74. Belozerskaya, “Good Dog,” 66.

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Compositionally, the horse’s pose echoes that of the stag. Both animals have raised front legs, are leaping forward, and have extended hind legs above short tails. The primary difference lies in the hart’s momentary freedom, which contrasts with the leashed power of the dapple-grey mount. The horse’s neck is bowed and his gaze lowered as he is reined in and controlled by the hero. The red leather of the tack, especially the breastplate, stands out against the steed’s pale coat, much as the red baldric worn by the groom stands out against his linen shirt. Both the tack and the strap may indicate the wearers’ constraint and the need to keep impulses under control. The dichotomy of wild and domesticated signified by the stag and the horse is mirrored in the two lymers below, the lower of which is dappled like the horse, gazes at the ground, and wears a red collar, while his companion runs freely with head held high. These contrasts seem to suggest that enduring love, as an act done in tandem, requires submission and restraint. “Treue,” the Minnesänger explained, is essential to love. Hadamar von Laber, Gottfried von Strassburg (d. c. 1210) in his Tristan (v. 12269), or Wolfram von Eschenbach’s (c. 1170–c. 1220) Prologue of Parzival (532, 10) all extol the concept of Faithfulness as a key component in a code of courtly principles. The lover, to win the beloved, must be true (tiuwe) and constant (stoete).51 The hero of the Glasgow tapestry demonstrates both virtues as he works to master the emblematic beast. Empowered by Fidelity, a hero can withstand any test. His pledge to a beloved will be morally grounded in the language of socially sanctioned romance and marriage.52 Unlike the majority of German literary hunts, which continue without success until the death of the hero, the tapestry’s male protagonist seems about to attain his desired outcome. He has the requisite virtues, follows the rules, performs publically, and focuses on his goal. His Frau Minne sits firmly behind him and their successful union appears attainable. The landscape through which the couple rides is similarly constructed to encode amorous felicity, as well as privilege. Forests, like the one in which the couple hunts, were restricted geography controlled by powerful landowners.53 Admitting the couple in Die Jagd nach der Treue into such precincts was a sign of their acceptance in an elite class. The depicted world is lush and verdant. 51 52

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Emmerling, Hadamar von Laber, 12–13. Markus Miller, “Konturen eines unscharfen Phänomens,” in Jahreszeiten der Gefühle. Das Gothaer Liebespaar und die Minne im Spätmittelalter, ed. Allmuth Schuttwolf (Gotha: Schloss Gotha, 1998), 50–60 discusses the concept of courtly love as a mixture of the sexual and the spiritual. Forsyth, Stag Hunt, 209.

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Overflowing with plants and trees, most of which can be identified, it conveys a sense of summer idyll and fecundity, appropriate for the subject matter. The galloping couple and their dogs hunt by a stream, as love was thought to thrive around water. Both ardor and water were elements of life and renewal.54 Parzival, for example, connects the clarity of water with the beauty and purity of a maiden.55 Behind the woman is a pine grove. The unchanging green of pine needles lent itself to interpretations of that tree as a symbol of eternity and constancy. The group of oaks with prominent acorns toward which the stag rushes was also thought to denote eternity, as medieval writers believed the oak’s wood was incorruptible.56 To the medieval viewer, the cornflowers under the horse’s front legs would have conveyed a message of tenderness and fidelity, derived, in part, from the flower’s thin but bendable stem.57 In addition, the primroses that anchor the lower left corner and usher the viewer’s eye into the composition have traditional symbolic connections with love because of their relationship to the more standard rose.58 Each plant’s symbolism embellishes a complex constructed setting in which pledged love can flourish. While each element contributes to the message, it is the ensemble that imparts meaning to the viewer. This blossoming and leafy setting surrounds the young lovers with a flourishing example of fertility and promise, and indicates a triumphant conclusion for the amorous, as well as the physical, hunt. The barren mountain in the center background presents itself as a stark contrast to the verdant setting, and serves multiple purposes. It is the pivot around which all elements are arranged. The slopes of its sides connect the couple visually to the hart. The hill divides the coniferous from the deciduous trees. The base hovers over and thus emphasizes the three dogs below, and the banderole twines around the outcropping. But primarily, the bald crag rises up between man and stag in a broad-based triangle of permanence. Placing a symbol of constancy among the trees compositionally underscores the connection of steadiness to fidelity. 54 55

56 57 58

Water’s secular properties are closely tied to its religious symbolism in baptism. Parzival, Book X, 508, 17–19 describes such a spring just before Gawan first spies Orgeluse, the beauty who becomes his love. Bald, Liebesjagd, 53 discusses the connection in more detail. Gerd Heinz-Mohr, Lexikon der Symbole (Düsseldorf: Eugen Diederichs, 1974), 78. Marianne Beuchert, Symbolik der Pflanzen (Leipzig: Insel, 2004), 112; Buri, Zahm und Wild, 352. A more complete discussion of plant symbolism is found in Lottlisa Behling, Die Pflanze in der mittelalterlichen Tafelmalerei (Cologne: Böhlau, 1967).

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Nature’s promise and the excited participation of man and dogs would seem to be in juxtaposition to the changing status of the stag. In the next instant the hart will be ensnared and its freedom lost. Yet, as Heinrich von Veldeke related in his much-copied Eneasroman (1190), without sorrow, the sweetness of love could never be so strong.59 The stag of Fidelity seems to embody this principle. With a slight smile, he leaps into the net. Here, constancy is pursued with tactics and planning, but in the end, is freely given. The composition is comprised of dualities. Man and woman ride together; the two types of hunting dogs representing sight and smell work in tandem; the barren mountain in the center is contrasted to the blooming world in the foreground; the bird winging in the air is poised above the duck in the water; deciduous trees stand opposite the conifers; freedom is contrasted to controlled behavior. The tapestry presents the unity of binary opposites. Harmony out of contradictory elements arguably encodes a fitting summation of traditional marriage. The viewer’s understanding of the Glasgow tapestry’s elements initially seems to be echoed in a slightly later and more complex weaving called Suche nach der Treue. That weaving was either a wall hanging or pillow covering of similar size to Die Jagd nach der Treue, and was also created in Strasbourg (c. 1500, Zurich, Schweizerisches Landesmuseum, Fig. 9.7).60 The standing hunter utters the same words as the Glasgow hero, “ich (j)ag nach truwe find ich die kein liebe zit gelebt ich nie,” a repetition that has caused the two works to be compared.61 His beloved, clad in Frau Minne’s red, deviates from the earlier tapestry as she now faces him across a stream and warns, “wer do iaget [nach?] üppigkeit an sinem fad vint er [vil]leit” (Wer da jagt nach Üppigkeit, findet auf seinem Pfad viel Leid/If you hunt for luxury [opulence], you will meet much suffering along your path). Here, pines frame the fashionable male while a maple tree shades the female, whose wreath is interwoven with its leaves. These elements mark the principle figures as constant. A similar barren outcropping is found in the center of the composition and made more prominent as it also sources the stream that divides the couple. In addition, two stewards crouch in fear behind the hill and say, “wir woge hie unsr leben dz uns got [unser her?] het gebn.” (Wir wagen hier unser Leben, das uns Gott der Herr hat gegeben/We wager our lives that God has given us). These companions carry the same type of hunting spear as the hero. The lushly growing field contains many of the same symbolically evocative plants found 59 60 61

Bald, Liebesjagd, 34–37. Inventory no. LM 7375; Rapp, 383. Ibid.

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Figure 9.7 Suche nach der Treue, tapestry, c. 1500 - 10, Schweizerisches Landesmuseum, Zurich (Permission of the Swiss National Museum, Zurich, Inv. Nr. LM-7375).

in the Glasgow tapestry, yet a greater profusion of wildlife inhabits the scene, much of it arranged in oppositional pairings, just as the man and woman are in opposition. The repeated elements in the Zurich tapestry lead the viewer to expect that the message in Suche nach der Treue will parallel that found in the Glasgow artwork. Aspects of the social construction of love are certainly common to both. Yet the later weaving presents the beginning, not the end, of the hunting story—the prey is not present, the hunt is not begun, and only the lymers are included to sniff out the quarry. In addition, the woman is not a helper, as in the Glasgow tapestry. Instead, she is separated from the male protagonist and admonishes him with her advice. She is a multivalent metaphor, representing wisdom with her words, love through her gown, and purity in her unicorn companion. The discourse on amatory success is shared in the Glasgow and Zurich images and various elements are repeated, but the focus of the message shifts. Where Die Jagd nach der Treue encodes a couple’s shared pursuit of fidelity, the Zurich work, despite its visual similarities to the earlier tapestry, presents two

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Figure 9.8 Hunting Scene, tapestry, c. 1550, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg (Permission of The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; Photograph © The State Hermitage Museum. Photo by Vladimir Terebenin, Yuri Molodkovets ).

adversaries at the beginning of the hunt. When compared, the two tapestries, which seemed superficially to be related, are revealed as disparate in their discourse. Courtship is about two individuals; marriage is about developing a unified corporate identity. In Die Jagd nach der Treue, what appears at first glance to be a tapestry depicting a noble recreation is transformed by its inscription and details into a commentary on marital relationships and the worthy lover. As such, it was the perfect subject matter for a wedding gift. The owners would look upon a scene that captures the moment before things change. The stag still rushes toward the net; the dogs still lope along herding it; the two riders still charge forward; the male still blows his horn; and the two birds still float or fly alone. The process is still in place, but the transition is coming and the end is in sight. The tapestry is not a depiction of chaste love pursued in the perpetual hunts of medieval romances, but instead conjugal pledging as represented in a pairing grounded on the firm foundation of fidelity. The tapestry does not explore the

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search for love; love has been found. Rather, the scene expounds upon the elements necessary for love to be reciprocated and sustained. Late medieval culture constructed love as deriving from virtues, here symbolized by the dogs, and creating virtue, here symbolized by the hart. Through these elements the worth of the lover is made manifest for all to see.62 His love, as presented in Die Jagd nach der Treue, is not simply a private sentiment, desire, but also a performed public display based upon a social ideal, devotion. 62

Jaeger, Ennobling Love, 116.

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Part 4 Death and Dogs

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A Short Note on the Iconography of Footrests on Tomb Monuments 243

Chapter 10

From Biblical Beast to Faithful Friend: A Short Note on the Iconography of Footrests on Tomb Monuments Sophie Oosterwijk The Dutch Baroque tomb monument to William the Silent, Prince of Orange, contains a touching detail: a dog asleep at the feet of his recumbent white Carrara marble effigy (Figs. 10.1a–b).1 This grand memorial in the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft was erected decades after the assassination of the Dutch Revolt’s military leader in 1584 during the Eighty Years’ War with Spain. Designed by the Dutch sculptor and architect Hendrick de Keyser (1565–1621), it was begun in 1614 and completed only in 1623 by Hendrick’s son Pieter. The marble effigy shows the prince lying on a reed mat on which corpses were traditionally laid out, but dressed in his everyday clothes; he appears to be sleeping with his arms resting by his sides and slippers on his feet. The undone buttons of his doublet form a contrast with the formality of the ruff around his neck. The dog at his feet shares his master’s reed mat and was described as an anecdotal detail in a Dutch publication on the tomb and its recent restoration.2 Yet the animal looks very much alive, with his eyes open, alert as if startled by the trumpet blown by the bronze figure of Fame above, but also mournful. Legend has it that this represents the Prince’s own pet dog, Pompey, a kooikerhondje (a small spaniel-type breed) who had saved his master’s life once and died of grief after the assassination. Hendrick de Keyser may well have been aware of these personal resonances when he designed the monument decades later. However, as a footrest motif on tomb monuments the dog has a long history with a curious twist. * I am grateful to Sally Badham, Derrick Chivers, Peter Don and Kris Rodenburg (RCE), Laura Gelfand, Cameron Newham, Tim Sutton, and Martin Stuchfield for providing illustrations for this article, and to Sally Badham for her helpful comments. 1 Jakob Rosenberg, Seymour Slive, and E.H. ter Kuile, Dutch Art and Architecture 1600–1800, Pelican History of Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 420, fig. 331; Frits Scholten, Sumptuous Memories. Studies in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Tomb Sculpture (Zwolle: Waanders, 2003), esp. 72–86. 2 Nicole Ex and Frits Scholten, De Prins en De Keyser. Restauratie en geschiedenis van het grafmonument voor Willem van Oranje (Bussum: Uitgeverij Thoth, 2001), 32.

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Figure 10.1a Tomb monument of William ‘the Silent’, Prince of Orange (d. 1584), by Hendrick de Keyser, 1614–25, Nieuwe Kerk, Delft, Netherlands. (Photo: Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE)).

Figure 10.1b Detail of the dog at the feet of the marble effigy of William ‘the Silent’, Prince of Orange (d. 1584), on his monument by Hendrick de Keyser, 1614–25, Nieuwe Kerk, Delft, Netherlands. (Photo: Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE)).

A Short Note on the Iconography of Footrests on Tomb Monuments 245

There is no biblical context for the appearance of dogs on tombs. The Bible rarely refers to dogs as anything other than filthy creatures who devoured Jezebel’s corpse (1 Kings 21:23 and 2 Kings 9:10, 36), licked Lazarus’s sores (Luke 16:21), and proverbially return to their own vomit (Proverbs 26:11). Yet dogs are a traditional symbol of fidelity, as illustrated by the nameless example that followed Tobias on his journey to Media with Raphael in the apocryphal Book of Tobit. Their devotion to humans is also evident in the Golden Legend story of St. Roch, patron saint of dogs: he was cared for by the nobleman Gotard’s dog, which brought him bread and licked his pestilent wounds.3 In his encyclopedic Naturalis Historia of c.77–79 AD Pliny the Elder praised the animal’s faithful character with several examples of dogs defending their owners or losing the will to live after their masters’ death.4 He also remarked upon their good memory and their ability to recognize their own names. William’s dog, Pompey, would thus have been a prime example of positive canine behavior and his presence on his master’s tomb provides a lifelike, personal touch. As an emblem of fidelity, dogs were evidently considered an appropriate symbol for the medieval tomb monuments of married women. Their husbands often have a lion, which might seem a fitting male counterpart to the dog: after all, as the king of beasts the lion symbolizes strength and courage, as well as pride and watchfulness. According to the Bestiary the lion sleeps with his eyes open (a trait applied to humans in Song of Solomon 5:2 and Psalms 121:4 in the Vulgate), while lion cubs were supposed to have been born dead and revived by their fathers after three days, thereby symbolizing the Resurrection.5 Both animals abound on male and female tombs across medieval Europe. A lion is featured on the monumental brass of Sir Robert de Bures (d. 1331) in Acton (Suffolk), and also on clerical monuments, such as the brass to an unknown priest of c.1370 in Watton at Stone (Hertfordshire) and the lost brass of c.1330 to Adam de Bacon in Oulton (Suffolk), while a lion and a dog face each other on the joint brass of Sir John Harsick (d. 1384) and his wife Katharine Calthorpe at Southacre (Norfolk) (Fig. 10.2).6 If the Bestiary were the inspiration for these animals on tombs, the lion and the dog would seem quite appropriate choices. 3 4 5 6

The Golden Legend or Lives of the Saints as Englished by William Caxton (London: J.M. Dent, 1900), vol. 5, 6–7. Pliny’s Natural History. In Thirty-Seven Books, ed. The Wernerian Club (London: George Barclay, 1847–48), vol. 1, book VIII, chapter 40, “Of Dogs,” esp. 69–70. Richard Barber (trans.), Bestiary (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1993), 24–25. For these and other examples, see the section on lions in Peter Heseltine, A Bestiary of Brass (Wymeswold: Heart of Albion Press, 2006), 136–51, and also Jonathan Alexander and Paul Binski, eds., Age of Chivalry. Art in Plantagenet England 1200–1400, Royal Academy of

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Figure 10.2

Detail from brass of Sir John Harsick (d. 1384) and his wife Katharine Calthorpe at Southacre (Norfolk). (Rubbing: MBS Portfolio).

Of course, animals on tombs could also be heraldic, and the lion is a prime example of this, so this might also help explain the choice of footrest on some monuments. Two lions are found on the monument at Wingfield (Oxfordshire) to John de la Pole (d. 1491), second Duke of Suffolk, and his wife Elizabeth of York (d. c.1503), who was a sister of Edward IV and Richard III: the duke’s lion has two tails and was originally gold, while the duchess’s lion was white—the couple’s ancestral heraldic colors of Burghersh and Mortimer, respectively.7

7

Arts, exh. cat. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987), cat. 234–36 (entries by Claude Blair), and Donna L. Sadler’s and Janet Snyder’s essays in the current volume. Sally Badham, “Medieval Monuments to the de la Pole and Wingfield Families,” in Edward Martin and Peter Bloore, eds., Wingfield College and Its Patrons: Piety and Prestige in Medieval Suffolk, Proceedings of the Wingfield 650th Anniversary History Symposium, 2012

A Short Note on the Iconography of Footrests on Tomb Monuments 247

Another example is the badge of the bear and ragged staff used by the Earl of Warwick and referred to in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2, Act 5, Scene 1: a muzzled bear squats under the right foot of the gilt copper-alloy tomb effigy of Richard Beauchamp (d. 1439) in the collegiate church of St Mary at Warwick, along with a griffin under his left foot (badge of his second wife, Isabel Despenser).8 Different varieties of dog are found in the arms of many English and Scottish families, especially greyhounds, bloodhounds, mastiffs, talbots, and foxhounds.9 Because heraldry could also be a rebus on a family name, the Talbot family naturally had a talbot as their badge: consequently this hound features both as the crest on the helmet (the head now lost) and as a footrest on the tomb monument of John Talbot (d. 1453), first Earl of Shrewsbury, at St Alkmund’s church, Whitchurch (Shropshire).10 The gilt copper-alloy tomb effigy of Edward, the Black Prince (d. 1376), has a lion crest on his helmet and three royal lions passant on his coat armor; the animal at his feet is probably a leopard rather than a dog, to judge by the feline nose, albeit one with unusual ears. The liveliest and most attractive animals serving as footrests on medieval tombs are probably dogs. They may be seen peeping out from under ladies’ skirts, looking up at their master or mistress, or barking for attention. The small dog on the brass of Margaret Wyllughby (d. 1483) in St Andrew’s church, Raveningham (Norfolk), looks askance at the horned dragon—the attribute of Margaret’s name saint—emerging from under her skirt (Figs. 10.3a–b).11 A pair of dogs fight over a bone beneath the feet of Laurence de St Maur or Seymour (d. 1337) on his monumental brass in the church of St Mary the Virgin at Higham Ferrers (Northamptonshire), which otherwise shows the priest very formally in his Mass vestments with his hands raised in prayer (Fig. 10.4).12 The meaning of this motif is unclear here, but it is typical canine behavior and one might wonder whether these dogs represented the priest’s own pets. This idea is not as far-fetched as one might think, for personalized pet dogs do occur on

8 9 10 11 12

(Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2015), 135–76. Many thanks to the author for sharing this information with me prior to publication. Richard Marks and Paul Williamson, eds., Gothic: Art for England 1400–1547, exh. cat. (London: V&A Publications, 2003), cat. 87. Stephen Friar, Heraldry for the Local Historian and Genealogist (London: Grange Books, 1997), 226. See the engraving by Roscoe Gibbs in W.H. Hamilton Rogers, The Strife of the Roses and Days of the Tudors in the West (Exeter: James G. Commin, 1890), facing p. 47. Heseltine, A Bestiary, 72–73. Alexander and Binski, eds., Age of Chivalry, cat. 233 (entry by Claude Blair); Heseltine, A Bestiary, 60–61.

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Figure 10.3a Brass to Margaret Wyllughby (d. 1483) in St Andrew’s church, Raveningham (Norfolk) (Photo: H. Martin Stuchfield).

A Short Note on the Iconography of Footrests on Tomb Monuments 249

Figure 10.3b Detail of the brass to Margaret Wyllughby (d. 1483) in St Andrew’s church, Raveningham (Norfolk). (Photo: H. Martin Stuchfield).

Figure 10.4

Brass of priest Laurence de St Maur or Seymour (d. 1337), church of St Mary the Virgin, Higham Ferrers (Northamptonshire). (Photo: Tim Sutton).

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Figure 10.5a Tomb slab of Wolter van Baexen (d. 1559) and his wife Peterke van Echtelt (d. 1557), Sint-Maartenskerk in Zaltbommel, Netherlands. (Photo: Chris Booms, RCE).

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Figure 10.5b Detail of the sleeping dog beneath the skirt of Peterke van Echtelt. (Photo: Chris Booms, RCE).

medieval monuments, in particular beneath the feet of female effigies. Here the dogs are often much smaller, an example being the diminutive sleeping dog beneath the skirt of Peterke van Echtelt (d. 1557) on the high-relief effigial slab that she shares with her husband, Wolter van Baexen, in the SintMaartenskerk in Zaltbommel (Netherlands): Wolter’s effigy is accompanied by various military props, but he has no dog or other animal (Fig. 10.5a–b).13 Ladies’ dogs are also often more playful than larger hounds, as we see on the alabaster monument of the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century to Sir John de Oteswich and his wife, which was formerly in the church of St Martin Outwich and is now in St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, London: whereas John’s footrest is the traditional lion, his wife’s feet rest on a pair of dogs wearing collars decorated with bells. Similar collar bells are worn by the two dogs beneath the feet of the effigy of Margaret Torryngton (d. 1349) on the brass that she shares with her wool-merchant husband Richard (d. 1356, but made c. 1380) in Great Berkhamstead (Hertfordshire); Richard instead has a lion (Fig. 10.6).14 The difference between dogs for women and for men is also evident on the joint brass of John Catesby (d. 1404/5) and his wife Emma (d. 1433) in Ashby St Ledgers (Northamptonshire) (Fig. 10.7a–b).15 John’s, evidently a hunting dog, 13

14 15

See ID 3202 in the illustrated online database of the Dutch MeMO (Medieval Memoria Online) project at . It is possible to search for “dog” in the MeMO database to find other examples of both heraldic dogs and footrests. Heseltine, A Bestiary, 54–55. The brass was engraved around 1405. See Sally Badham and Nigel Saul, “The Catesbys’ Taste in Brasses,” in Jerome Bertram, ed., The Catesby Family and their Brasses at Ashby St.

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Detail of the brass to Margaret Torryngton (d. 1349) and her wool-merchant husband Richard (d. 1356, but made c. 1380), Great Berkhamstead (Hertfordshire). (Rubbing: MBS Portfolio).

A Short Note on the Iconography of Footrests on Tomb Monuments 253

Figure 10.7a Joint brass of John Catesby (d. 1404/5) and his wife Emma Cranford (d. 1433) in Ashby St Ledgers (Northamptonshire). (Rubbing: MBS Portfolio).

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Figure 10.7b Detail of the two dogs under the feet of the effigy of Emma Cranford, wife of John Catesby. (Photo: Tim Sutton).

looks calmly up at his master, whereas Emma’s two smaller dogs wear bells on their collars and snarl visibly. Henry Doggett (d. 1491) and his wife both have dogs on their incised slab in Pusey (Oxfordshire), but these are in complete contrast to the staid appearance of the effigies above: her dog appears to be yapping furiously at Henry’s collared dog, which is crouching quietly under his master’s feet (Fig. 10.8). So is this merely a recurring decorative motif, a topos, a word play on the name Doggett, or a real memory of the Doggett’s own dogs? The status of the dog as pet is even clearer when the name is given, as we find on the brass of Sir John Cassy (d. 1400) and his wife Alice in Deerhurst (Gloucestershire): whereas John, on the left, has the traditional lion, Alice has a dog who not only looks up at his mistress but also has his name engraved below—Terri (Fig. 10.9).16 Sir Brian de Stapleton (d. 1438) did much better with both a lion and a dog labeled “Jakke” on his lost brass in Ingham (Norfolk) (Fig. 10.10); his wife Cecily’s little dog remained nameless.17 It is not impossible that some sculpted dog footrests may once have had their names painted onto

16 17

Ledgers, Occasional Publication 3 (London: Monumental Brass Society, 2006): 36–75, at 37–43. Heseltine, A Bestiary, 44–45. Heseltine, A Bestiary, 46–47.

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Figure 10.8 Incised slab of Henry Doggett (d. 1491) and his wife in Pusey (Oxfordshire). (Photo: Cameron B. Newham).

their collars, but often only traces of polychromy remain on medieval tomb monuments. From a design point of view, animal footrests probably developed out of an original intention to represent the deceased alive and erect: the canopies surmounting many effigies underline this verticality.18 This meant, however, that they needed something to stand on: a grassy mound, as we often find on brasses, or a beast, as a visually more attractive prop. Yet why would the 18

For a recent discussion of the horizontal-vertical conundrum on English medieval tombs, see Nigel Saul, English Church Monuments in the Middle Ages: History and Representation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 143–45.

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Figure 10.9

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Detail showing dog named “Terri” beneath the feet of Alice, wife of Sir John Cassy (d. 1400), on their joint brass in Deerhurst (Gloucestershire). (Photo: Tim Sutton).

Figure 10.10 Detail showing dog labeled “Jakke” on the lost brass to Sir Brian de Stapleton (d. 1438) formerly in Ingham (Norfolk). (Rubbing BY THOMAS TALBOT (SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES COLLECTION), provided by Sally Badham).

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Figure 10.11

Purbeck marble tomb effigy of Archbishop Walter de Gray (d. 1255), York Minster (Yorkshire). (Photo: Public Domain).

deceased want to be seen trampling their own heraldic badges or pet dogs? The real explanation may lie in that these animal footrests originally had a specific allegorical meaning that became lost over time. For this, we should consider the motif of a dragon trampled or even speared on monuments such as that of Archbishop Walter de Gray (d. 1255) at York Minster: while the prelate calmly raises his right hand in blessing, with the crosier in his left hand he transfixes the dragon beneath his feet (Fig. 10.11). As Erwin Panofsky and others have pointed out, this appears to be a deliberate reference to Psalm 91 (90 in the Vulgate), which is interpreted as a promise of divine protection against the powers of evil. Verse 13 reads: “Thou shalt walk upon the asp and the basilisk: and thou shalt trample under foot the lion and the dragon” (Super aspidem et

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basiliscum calcabis conculcabis leonem et draconem).19 In St. Augustine’s exposition of this verse, “A lion rampages openly, while a snake lies hidden, awaiting its prey; and the devil has power and skill to do both. When the martyrs were being killed, he was a rampant lion; when heretics are sneaking in, he is a slithering snake.”20 The asp, the dragon, and the basilisk, and also the lion, were thus not originally “footrests,” but allegorical embodiments of evil and sin that the deceased were in the act of vanquishing. Norris cites the brass of Bishop Novak (d. 1456) in Wrocław (Poland), on which all these creatures are represented, thereby illustrating the connection between the verse and the motif. This connection is strengthened by the two preceding verses in the same Psalm (Vulgate: 90:11–12), as David Meara showed: “For he hath given his angels charge over thee; to keep thee in all thy ways. In their hands they shall bear thee up: lest thou dash thy foot against a stone” (Quoniam angelis suis mandavit de te, ut custodiant te in omnibus viis tuis. In manibus portabunt te, ne forte offendas ad lapidem pedem tuum).21 Angels are frequently shown on either side of medieval effigies, ready to guide the soul to Heaven. Obviously patrons and sculptors liked the allegorical motif of trampling evil underfoot. An interesting early variation is the tiny version of the classical spinario or thorn-puller that is being speared by the crosier held by the gilt copper-alloy effigy of Archbishop Friedrich von Wettin (d. 1152) on his tomb monument at Magdeburg Cathedral (Germany).22 The archbishop was involved in the Wendish Crusade of 1147 against the Polabian Slavs—a campaign supported by both Bernard of Clairvaux and Pope Eugenius III—which may explain why he was shown transfixing the tiny spinario, a favorite statuary motif from Antiquity that was regarded as a pagan idol and thus became a personification of pagan idolatry in medieval thought.23 In general the laity tended to prefer the lion as an emblem on their tomb monuments, whereas the clergy are more often shown trampling and transfixing dragons, asps, basilisks, and wyverns. The animals may even fight back: the lion beneath the feet of Sir 19

20 21 22 23

Erwin Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture: Its Changing Aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini (1964), ed. H.W. Janson (London: Phaedon Press, 1992), 55; and Malcolm Norris, Monumental Brasses: The Craft (London: Faber and Faber, 1978), 71–72; also David Meara, “The Lion and the Dragon,” Monumental Brass Society Bulletin 54 (June 1990): 442–44. St Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, vol. 4, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Maria Boulding (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002), 341; Meara, “The Lion and the Dragon,” 443. Meara, “The Lion and the Dragon,” 443. Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture, 52 and 54 and figs. 200, 209–10. H.W. Janson, “The Image of Man in Renaissance Art: from Donatello to Michelangelo,” in Bernard O’Kelly, ed., The Renaissance Image of Man and the World (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1966), 77–103, at 81.

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Figure 10.12 Detail of the brass of Sir Roger de Trumpington (d. 1289) in Trumpington (Cambridgeshire). (Photo: Cameron B. Newham).

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John Dabernoun (d. 1277) on his fourteenth-century brass in Stoke D’Abernon (Surrey) is shown gnawing the knight’s lance,24 while the hound on the brass of Sir Roger de Trumpington (d. 1289) in Trumpington (Cambridgeshire) attacks his sword (Fig. 10.12). Gradually new iconological variations were introduced with animals that actually crouch at the feet of recumbent figures. Amidst this huge variety of animal footrests, the original allegorical meaning was apparently forgotten, so much so that it had to be identified anew by modern scholars. Footrests were thus originally much more than just a playful anecdotal motif: they served to remind viewers of every Christian’s duty to vanquish evil as epitomized by the dragon and the lion. That the lion in particular was a wellknown heraldic emblem as well as an allegorical personification of fortitude must have played a major role in the transformation of the erstwhile meaning of the footrest, leading to a wide variety of animals at the feet of medieval tomb effigies. Ultimately, however, it was the dog as a beloved pet that best captured the imagination of later generations, as seen on the monument of William the Silent in Delft. Pompey was to have many more successors, such as Caesar, the beloved wire-haired fox terrier of King Edward VII (d. 1910) who is shown curled up at the feet of his master’s marble effigy in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, or the shaggy pet dog of the Reverend Philip Thomas Byard (“Tubby”) Clayton (d. 1972) on a cushion at the feet of his bronze recumbent effigy by Cecil Thomas in the church of All Hallows-by-the-Tower, London. The trampled embodiment of evil thus metamorphosed into an emblem of canine loyalty in death and beyond, and the biblical meaning of the original animal motif was almost completely forgotten. 24

Norris, Memorial Brasses. The Craft, 71, fig. 118.

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The Canine Domain: At the Feet of Royal Tomb Effigies in Saint-Denis Donna L. Sadler Every dog is a lion at home.1 Proverb

Among the stone animals poised beneath the feet of kings and queens on the Gothic tomb effigies in Saint-Denis are lively pairs of dogs who form the obedient foundation for a ruler. One’s first impulse is to wax anthropomorphic and assure the reader how little interest the dogs have in the politics of fourteenthcentury France. Rather, they seem intent on attracting the attention of their respective masters, if only to garner a coveted stroke or maybe even a medieval bone.2 Traditionally interpreted as symbols of fidelity, the embodiment of home and hearth for a woman and hunting for a man,3 the dogs create a visual dialogue with their stony masters superposed above (Fig. 11.1). Indeed, taking their compositional cue from the jamb figures that buttress the portals of Gothic cathedrals, one anticipates a dialogic relationship between the upper figure and the figure lodged beneath. Whether the latter completes the story begun by the former or plays an adversarial role depends on the identity of

* This study was made possible by the generous support of Agnes Scott College, for which I am very grateful. This article is dedicated in loving memory to Misty and her long line of predecessors. 1 Cited in Meradith T. McMunn, “Bestiary Influences in Two Thirteenth-Century Romances,” in Willene B. Clark and Meradith T. McMunn, eds., Beasts and Birds of the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 134–43, esp. 140. 2 In a fascinating study, Alice A. Kuzniar (Melancholia’s Dog Reflections on Our Animal Kinship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 1–30 discusses our tendency to compensate for dogs’ lack of language (or our language) by an unrelenting anthropomorphism. Cf. Sophia Menache, “Dogs: God’s Worst Enemies?” Society and Animals 5, no. 1 (1997): 23–44. 3 Emile Mâle, Religious Art in France, The Late Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Iconography and Its Sources, trans. Marthiel Mathews and ed. Harry Bober (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 387.

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both parties.4 It is difficult, however, to view these dogs as anything other than benign companions sculpturally summoned for the afterlife of the royalty represented at Saint-Denis. In other medieval sculptural incarnations of dogs, such as St. Roch’s faithful companion and the dog in the parable of Lazarus and Dives,5 the purpose of the canine presence is immediately apparent: licking the wounds of the plagued saint and the wronged Lazarus connotes their respective goodness in the eyes of God. Indeed, the curative tongue of the dog was compared in a thirteenth-century Bestiary to the sinner who is cleansed by the act of confession and cured by penitence. The same tongue was symbolic of the priest who purifies the heart of the sinner, who in turn responds with his good works and prayers.6 On the other hand, the dog’s predilection for consuming his vomit was analogous to the Christian who, having confessed his sin and been forgiven, repeats the offense.7 The tomb effigies under consideration alas, do not share this semiotic transparency.

Dogs as Bearers of Meaning

What, then, can we say about the canines that cavort below the royal tomb effigies? And cavort they do! For example, beneath the unsuspecting feet of Blanche de France (Fig. 11.1), who died in 1323, one of the dogs chews on the hem of her garment and the other proudly displays a bone. Beneath the effigy of Marguerite de Flandres, who died in 1382 (Fig. 11.2), two lapdogs face each other, each claiming the bone between them with his respective front paw. Both dogs bear human expressions: broad smiles define their otherwise canine 4 If one thinks of the jamb statues of Chartres, Reims, and Amiens Cathedrals, the base figures either complement the figures above—say, the sacrificial lamb beneath Abraham and Isaac— or represent an adversary, as seen in Christ’s victory over the lion and the dragon in the Beau Dieu figures at Chartres and Amiens cathedrals. See Willibald Sauerländer, Gothic Sculpture in France 1140–1270, trans. Janet Sondheimer (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1972), pls. 109, 82–83, 92–95, 110–11, 114–21, 160–62, 163, 166–71, and 219. 5 There are numerous representations of St. Roch with his dog throughout France and Italy during the later medieval and Renaissance periods; he was a favorite plague saint. See Louise Marshall, “Manipulating the Sacred: Image and Plague in Renaissance Italy,” Renaissance Quarterly 47, no. 3 (1994): 485–532. An image of the dog licking the wounds of Lazarus may be found on the left jamb of the south portal of Moissac. 6 Le Bestiaire, trans. Marie-France Dupuis and Sylvain Louis-Asmole, 1511 Bodleian Library of Oxford (Paris: Philippe Lebaud, Éditeur, 1988), 80. 7 Le Bestiaire, 80; Cf. Proverbs 26.11.

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Figure 11.1

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Tomb of Blanche de France, d.1323 (from Cordeliers Convent, Paris), SaintDenis (photo: author)

faces. Or the charming dogs found beneath Marguerite d’Artois, who died in 1311 (Fig. 11.3), where the dog on the left strokes the face of the dog on the right on a ground scattered with oak leaves and acorns. An unknown princess from the second half of the fourteenth-century (Fig. 11.4), perhaps Blanche de Bretagne, surmounts two dogs, one that sleeps peacefully in harmony with his mistress and the other who possesses a bone. Beneath their male counterparts, the sepulchral dogs were the ones most often associated with the hunt, such as greyhounds or mastiffs; the ones below royal women were small breeds, such as the Melitaean (Maltese), bichon frise, or other chiot, which betray their domestic nature.8 It is known that Robert of 8 See Jacques Bugnion, Les chasses médiévales Le Brachet, le Lévrier, l’Éspagneuil, leur nomenclature, leur métier, leur typologie (Gallion: Infolio éditions, 2005), 7–39 for a more extensive account of the dogs used in hunting. Cf. Kathleen Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2012), 5–6 for breeds of lapdogs.

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Figure 11.2

Tomb of Marguerite de Flandres, d. 1382, Saint-Denis (photo: author)

Figure 11.3

Tomb of Marguerite d’Artois, d. 1311 (from the Jacobins, Paris), Saint-Denis (photo: author)

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Figure 11.4

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Tomb of Unknown Princess, Blanche de Bretagne? d. 1327 (from the Jacobins, Paris), Saint-Denis (photo: author)

Artois, for example, kept seventy hunting dogs and one pet wolf and was an avid hunter; yet beneath his tomb effigy, in which he is dressed as a knight, one finds a lion, symbolizing his valor.9 In another instance, the head of a rabbit is graphically depicted between the jaws of a greyhound beneath the feet of Philippe d’Alençon. Louis, the son of Saint Louis, who died in 1260, surmounts a dog whose solitary presence and dimensions suggest a more “masculine” breed. The chiots that accompany most of the female effigies are there to do just that, just as in life when these faithful companions had been by the side of their mistresses. Dogs have an illustrious history in the realm of death. From Anubis to Cerberus to Hecate’s hounds, the dogs of Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome were well acquainted with the underworld. Indeed, according to Serge Santos, the dogs at the feet of the medieval gisants accompanied their owners into the other world and protect the living from a return of the dead.10 Yet the position of the dogs at the effigies’ feet betrays an underlying ambivalence toward man’s best friend. In Middle English, the plural “dogs” even meant feet 9 10

Sharon Farmer, “Aristocratic Power and the ‘Natural’ Landscape: The Garden Park at Hesdin, ca. 1291–1302,” Speculum 88, no. 3 (2013): 644–80, esp. 655. Serge Santos, Saint-Denis dernière demeure des rois de France (Pierre-que-vire: Éditions Zodiaque, 1999), 9.

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and “dogge” a wretched fellow.11 Linguistically, this vacillation persists in expressions such as “go to the dogs,” “put on the dog,” “a dog’s life,” “underdog,” and so on.12 Animals, including dogs, were once generally believed to have the ability to speak, particularly around Christmas.13 Verbal dogs were particularly suspect; according to Rabanus Maurus (776–856), loud dogs represented those who criticized Holy Wisdom.14 John F. Moffitt concluded that the barking dog in Tintoretto’s Last Supper in San Rocco in Venice symbolized the heretic or enemy of the Church.15 One exceptionally severe slander on the canine species was the artistic depiction of a dog in close proximity to Judas to signify the latter’s villainous character.16 Further, in the trial of a dog that had bitten a child in Leiden in 1595, the culprit confessed without torture and was executed publicly “in order to deter all other dogs and to set an example for each.”17 With the exception of the faithful dog in Tobias 11, the Bible is quite harsh on hounds, insisting on their bestial and impure nature. In Isaiah 56.11, the greed of dogs is highlighted, whereas in Proverbs 26.11 their folly is invoked. They lick the blood of Naboth in I Kings 21.19; they lap water from the stream with their tongues in Judges 7.5; and the watchmen are dumb as dogs in Isaiah 56.10: “they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber.” Further, man may be compared to a dog to signal his deepest humility as in II Samuel 9.8 or even his despicable nature as in II Kings 8.13. In Psalms 22.16–21 the dogs allude to the evil that surrounds the Redeemer. According to Sophia Menache, the Early Church Fathers reinforced this negative view of dogs by citing the supremacy 11 12 13

14

15 16 17

Constance Perin, “Dogs as Symbols in Human Development,” in Bruce Fogle, ed., Interrelations between People and Pets (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1981), 69–88, esp. 74. Perin, “Dogs as Symbols,” 74–76. Peter Dinzelbacher, “Animal Trials: A Multidisciplinary Approach,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 32, no. 3 (2002): 405–21, esp. 413. For a more contemporary consideration of canine comprehension and communication, see Marjorie Garber, Dog Love (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 81–117. Allegoriae in Universam Sacram Scripturam, in Jacques-Paul Migne, PL 112: 883 as cited by Simona Cohen, “Animal Imagery in Renaissance Art,” Renaissance Quarterly 67, no. 1 (2014): 164–80, esp. 170, n. 6. John F. Moffitt, “The Uninvited Dinner-Guest: Why a Barking Dog at Tintoretto’s Last Supper?” Arte cristiana 75.723 (1987): 403–40. Michel Pastoureau, Une histoire symbolique du Moyen Âge occidental (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2004), 222. Dinzelbacher, “Animal Trials,” 413. This verdict was enacted by the mayor and jury of the town of Leiden; a ruling aimed at moral correction and not revenge was common in animal trials.

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of man over beasts; it was the advent of hunting that led to a more favorable view of the canine species in the medieval period.18 Although the evolution of hunting and the role dogs played over the course of the Middle Ages lie beyond the scope of this study, it is worth noting that it was not until hunting was divorced from a means of subsistence that there was a significant shift in canine views.19 The new association of hounds with a sport for the noble classes led to dogs achieving their symbolic guise as a status symbol, one fit to ornament tombs. Indeed, hunting was forbidden to peasants and the latter, under penalty of heavy fines, were obliged to provide both food and shelter to aristocratic hunters and their dogs.20 Before long, the hunters assumed the qualities of knighthood, such as courage and bravery, and their dogs, by association, were elevated to a new class. Sophia Menache thus frames the presence of the dogs on tombs in terms of living heraldry and characterizes them as “an animated, almost totemic symbol of class and group identity.”21 It is interesting in light of this interpretation of dogs as an extension of the identifying operation of portraiture to reflect on Emile Mâle’s assessment of a typical pooch beneath a female tomb effigy as “the household pet who rarely leaves the house and who lives between the hearth and the table: an excellent image of woman’s fate in the Middle Ages.”22

The Apotheosis of the Lapdog

The advent of the dog as beloved domestic pet of both men and women occurred gradually over the medieval period, but was an established fact of 18

19 20 21

22

See Sophia Menache, “Hunting and Attachment to Dogs in the Pre-Modern Period,” in Anthony L. Podberscek, Elizabeth S. Paul, and James A. Serpell, eds., Companion Animals and Us. Exploring the Relationships between People and Pets (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 42–60, esp. 44–47. Menache, “Hunting and Attachment,” 44–47 and cf. Pastoureau, Une Histoire symbolique, 73–88 for a discussion of the symbolic distinction between a boar and a deer hunt. Menache, “Hunting and Attachment,” 51. Menache, “Hunting and Attachment,” 52–56. It is not surprising that so many European monarchs, including Alphonso XI, Maximilian I of Hapsburg, the Count of Flanders, and Charles IX, commissioned hunting treatises. The latter was so fond of his pet dog, Courte, that he shared his bed, bath, and meals with him. When Courte died on August 24, 1570, Charles had his hide made into a pair of gloves that he wore daily for several months, a fact mentioned in the dog’s epitaph. See Michel Pastoreau, Les animaux célèbres (Paris: Arléa, 2008), 192–94. Mâle, Religious Art in France, 387.

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noble life by the fourteenth century.23 Indeed, elegies for dead dogs allow us to reconstruct a history of cherished animal companions, from Louise of Savoy’s little dog Hapeguay to Isabelle d’Este’s Aura. The condolences inspired by the death of the latter overshadowed even significant contemporary events, such as the outbreak of the plague in Ferrara.24 Federico Gonzaga, the son of Isabelle d’Este, shared a similar attachment to his dogs: when Viola died while whelping, he commissioned Giulio Romano to design a tomb for her in 1525–26 for the Mantuan Palazzo del Te.25 Although it is not certain whether the surviving tomb belonged to Viola or another family dog, the epitaph, which is preserved in another document, recounts how this playful and loyal pup died while giving birth and now resides in heaven.26 Turning to the effigies found in the transept and choir of Saint-Denis, what canine observations may we offer regarding the representation of dogs on the royal tombs? As suggested above, the pairs of pooches that form the “vestigial” pedestal of the female effigies are in a sense a continuation of the portraits found above them. The lapdog is an identifying feature of the noblewoman, one that rivals the coat and surcoat or crown and scepter. A faithful companion during life, the pet dog assumes a familiar position by the feet of his mistress for the afterlife. But the dog is also associated with reflection and contemplation: it is not uncommon to find a conspicuous canine presence in the studies of Saints Augustine and Jerome.27 The dog earns his place therein by the connection between humanists and theologians and their concern for truth in both secular and spiritual matters: by the twelfth century, the dog had become associated with dialectic and possession of a “nose” for veritas.28 23 24 25 26

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28

Tamsin Pickeral, The Dog: 5,000 Years of the Dog in Art (London: Merrell, 2008), 16–20; cf. Kathleen Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets, 5–10. Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets, 32–38. Cohen, “Animal Imagery,” 170. Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets, 37, n. 77. Cf. Rodolfo Signorini, “Two Notes from Mantua: A Dog Named Rubino,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 41 (1978): 317–20, esp. 318, n. 14. A stucco tomb of a dog exists in the giardinetto of the Mantuan Villa; however, its epitaph is no longer extant. The breed of dog is a chabon bolognese. Both authors posit that the long-haired white dog in the Titian portrait of Federico Gonzaga in the Prado Museum may be Viola. Karl Josef Höltgen, “Clever Dogs and Nimble Spaniels: On the Iconography of Logic, Invention, and Imagination,” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 24 (1998): 1–36, esp. 11–14. Cf. Patrik Reuterswärd, “The Dog in the Humanist’s Study,” Konsthistorisktidskrift/ Journal of Art History 50, no. 2 (1981): 53–69, reprinted in The Visible and Invisible in Art: Essays in the History of Art (Vienna: IRSA, 1991), 206–311. In Herrad of Landsberg’s Hortus delicarum, fol. 32, Dialectica holds a dog’s head! See fig. 1 in Höltgen, “Clever Dogs.”

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As every seeker of wisdom knows, this pursuit is often accompanied by melancholy and the dog also gained an association with this brooding (“hangdog”) emotional state.29 In classical, medieval, and Renaissance writing, there are accounts of a disease dubbed either lycanthropia or melancholia canina, the symptoms of which are described in the following way in an account by Aëtius and attributed to Marcellus (fourth century CE): Those who are attacked by the disease called lupine or canine go out at night during the month of February everywhere imitating wolves and dogs and until daylight they spend much of their time opening tombs. You will recognize those who are so affected by these signs: they are pale, their vision is weak, they have dry eyes, and they don’t shed tears. You will see also that they have hollow eyes and a dry tongue and that they do not produce saliva at all. They are also thirsty and have incurable wounds on their shins as a result of repeated falls. They also have dog bites. Such in sum are the signs. But you should know that this is a species of melancholy.30 The dog is then endowed with prophetic and intuitive abilities, a sagacity (sagacitas canis) that renders it both a suitable and admirable confidante for his human masters; clever, faithful, perseverant, quick, sensitive, and even logical: able to flush out the hare from its hiding place, the dog surely carved out a role for himself in tomb sculpture.31 The dogs that enliven the tomb effigies, I suggest, are the symbolic embodiment of mourning for their departed mistresses: the latter, represented in the prime of life, constitute the absent presence above the bell-collared pups that play at their stony feet. Death has robbed each woman of her beloved pets, and the latter have lost their mistresses. But art has the power to restore what was

29

30

31

The classic work on this is Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art (London: Nelson, 1964). Dürer’s rendering of Melencolia I (1514), which portrays the loss of creative power, features an emaciated hound, a “fellow sufferer,” by the dejected genius’s feet. Cf. Kuzniar, Melancholia’s Dog, 14–24, 42–43, 136–50. Aëtius, Aetii Medici Graeci Contractae ex veteribus medicinae tetrabiblos, in Medicae Artis Principes (Geneva, 1567), 2 tetr. 2 sermo 2, cap. 11, as cited in Carol Falvo Heffernan, “That Dog Again: ‘Melancholia Canina’ and Chaucer’s ‘Book of the Duchess,’” Modern Philology 84, no. 2 (1986): 185–90, esp. 187, n. 12. Höltgen, “Clever Dogs,” 11, 29.

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lost to both in a poignant rehearsal of the bond between the mistress and her mammals.32

The Tombs

In attempting to create a taxonomy of the tombs, it is difficult to determine the rules that govern the positioning of the pups. Dog pairs may face each other like heraldic beasts, or be tail to tail, facing outwards. Neither the age of the deceased nor the breed of the dog seems to be reflected in this choice. Similarly, the dogs may try to win possession of the same bone, or happily gnaw on their individual bones. A few dogs slumber; however, most are alert and either grinning or snapping with open jaws. Only one dog mischievously chews his mistress’s hem, as if Central Casting had been called to supply a puppy for the gisant of Blanche de France (Fig. 11.1). Unique hounds are found in two tombs: the two chiots at the feet of Jeanne d’Evreux, which both face left, and the dogs beneath Marguerite d’Artois (Fig. 11.3), as noted above, which exchange a canine caress. There is only one example of a woman’s tomb in Saint-Denis where the dog can no longer abide his position beneath the feet of the effigy and manages to climb upon the leg of his mistress and rest there for eternity; this may be seen on the tomb of Valentine Visconti, Duchess of Orléans, who died in 1408. Was this disposition symptomatic of the growing naturalism of the Renaissance? In light of the tomb’s date and the dearth of comparisons, it is tempting to see the Visconti tomb as the swan song of the pairs of dogs occupying their subordinate position. Flanking this effigy, one finds the Dukes of Orléans: Philip has a ferret at his feet to signify his hunting prowess and Charles, founder of the Order of the Porc-épic on the anniversary of his baptismal day, has a porcupine.

Dogs: Face-Off

Six of the women’s tombs feature dogs that are paired nose to nose beneath their respective effigies. One charming example located in the north aisle of the transept is that of Marguerite de Flandres (d. 1382) (Fig. 11.2); her two heraldically posed dogs, which resemble beagle puppies except for their lion-like 32

See Garber, Dog Love, 126–28 for a feminist consideration of “man’s best friend.” Cf. Kuzniar, Melancholia’s Dog, 136–79 for instances of humans mourning the loss of their dogs.

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claws, rest on a bed of accordion folds created by Marguerite’s surcoat. Both exhibit toothy grins as each claims the bone that lies between them. Also on the north side is the effigy of Jeanne de France (d. 1371) (Fig. 11.5), whose feet hover over the heads of the facing chiots, each represented with one paw on the bone in the middle. The dogs found beneath the turbulent folds of the drapery of Marguerite d’Artois (d. 1311) (Fig. 11.3) sit obediently upon a bed of oak leaves and acorns and gaze out at the viewer. The one on the left has raised his left front paw to touch the muzzle of the dog on the right; could this be a canine gesture of consolation? The anthropomorphic impulse is difficult to repress in the face of such an endearing tête-à-tête. Still on the north side of the church, another nose–to nose pair of dogs is found beneath the effigy of Blanche, Duchess d’Orléans (d. 1393). Floppy ears overlap as the hounds lie at their mistress’ feet, heads facing the viewer and bodies extending to the sides to create a stereo image. The final two pairs of pups that face each other are found on tombs located on the south side of Saint-Denis and belong to the earliest and latest examples to be considered in this brief study. The beautiful tomb of Isabelle of Aragon (d. 1271) (Fig. 11.6), which features a white marble effigy on a black slab, depicts two sleeping dogs whose heads both face left. Unlike the tombs already discussed, the dogs rest directly on the same surface as the effigy so that the hem of Isabelle’s drapery gently courses over their bodies and between their heads. This direct contact between the dogs and their departed mistress, coupled with the pups’ slumbering state, enhances the poignancy of this tomb. The playful puppies that sit on the plush folds below the effigy of Isabeau of Bavaria (d. 1435) (Fig. 11.7) sport wide collars without bells, have snub noses, and look eager to chew a medieval boot or two. The juxtaposition of the gravitas of the regal effigy and the diminutive stature and spunky demeanor of the pups endows this work with a distinctive tenor. In a sense, the dogs provide a glimpse into the character of the wife of Charles VI: they betray the tender heart concealed by the imposing regalia she wears. Could any of these canine cameos represent specific pets? Is it possible that pet portraiture really began in the Middle Ages?

Tail to Tail

Six of the women’s tombs in Saint-Denis, which are roughly contemporary with one another, terminate in heraldically disposed dogs that face outward. Like their inward-oriented cohorts, they too indulge in puppy behavior, either

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Figure 11.5

Tomb of Jeanne de France, d. 1371, Saint-Denis (photo: author)

Figure 11.6

Tomb of Isabelle of Aragon, d. 1271, Saint-Denis (photo: author)

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Figure 11.7

273

Tomb of Isabeau de Bavaria, d. 1435, Saint-Denis (photo: author)

in boasting possession of a bone, sleeping peacefully, or tugging on the tantalizing hem above. Blanche de France (d. 1323) (Fig. 11.1) prays perpetually as the leftmost pup standing below the folds of her surcoat proudly bears a bone between his teeth and the one on the right avidly chews on the garment. Adjacent to this tomb in the north aisle of the transept is the tomb of Blanche de Navarre (d. 1398) (Fig. 11.8); with left hand on her heart and right hand bearing a scepter, Blanche surmounts two dogs that resemble beagles. Their sad eyes look out imploringly at the viewer and their tails, end to end, form parentheses that frame the jumbled terrain of folds upon which each dog lies. Just a little to the west of these tombs, one encounters the effigy of Clemence of Hungary, who died in 1328. The second wife of Louis X is represented in an attitude of prayer; her copious robe pools at her feet, covering the backs of her dogs that lie attentively beneath her. In this instance, the snub-nosed, smiling canines wear three-bell collars and the right dog protects a bone between his paws. Belled collars were worn exclusively by the pampered pups of the aristocracy and may be seen on several examples of dogs on tombs.33 The heraldic 33

Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets, 75; Belled collars are visible on the dogs of the effigies belonging to Clemence of Hungary, Jeanne d’Evreux, and Anne of Burgundy (Louvre),

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Figure 11.8

Tomb of Blanche de Navarre, d. 1398, Saint-Denis (photo: author)

Figure 11.9

Tomb of Marie d’España, d. 1379 (from the Jacobins, Paris), Saint-Denis (photo: author)

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dogs beneath Clemence truly function as guardian figures, as their perfectly symmetrical disposition and cocked heads associate them with an august lineage of quadrupeds from Mesopotamia to the New York Public Library.34 On the south side of the ambulatory are two tombs bearing outward-facing pairs of dogs. They both date from the second half of the fourteenth century and reflect the range of expressive possibilities in canine representation. The effigy of Marie d’España (d. 1379) (Fig. 11.9) is animated by two growling dogs that clearly assume an apotropaic, if not proprietary role in this sepulchral sculpture. Teeth bared, these distant cousins of the dachshund are the most vociferous of the dogs found at Saint-Denis. They wear collars with holes where real bells may once have been inserted and their attitude contrasts with that of their pious mistress. The tomb of the anonymous princess (Fig. 11.4) found to the east of this effigy may belong to Blanche de Bretagne. Her dogs imbue the tomb with a sorrowful air: the one on the right crouches down to slumber with his head upon his front paw, while his partner paws a bone, but shares his sad countenance. Their mistress’s shoes rest upon their backs and her drapery provides the uneven ground upon which they rest. This is one of the most poignant tombs in the royal necropolis. The puppies at the feet of Jeanne de Bourbon (d. 1377) (Fig. 11.10) are among the most endearing postmortem companions a queen could desire. Chiots that sit expectantly at the ruler’s feet, their tails forming an emphatic boundary between the dogs’ bottoms, they bear an unmistakable smile that even creates dimples in their jowls. Does this expression betray their unassailable belief in the afterlife? The same breed of dog may be found marching at the feet of Jeanne d’Evreux in the north transept. Here, the left dog takes the lead and the right one follows in his footsteps, seemingly biting the hindquarters of the first dog!35 One has the benefit in this instance of comparing the dogs found on this tomb with those found on the tomb containing the entrails of Jeanne d’Evreux, originally from the Cistercian Abbey of Maubuisson and now in the Louvre Museum. The dogs in the latter example do not wear belled collars and the one on the

34 35

and seem to be missing from the dogs’ collars in those of Marie d’España, Marguerite de Flandres, Jeanne de Bourbon, and the pair of dogs without effigies in the Cluny Museum. The dogs beneath the effigy of Clemence of Hungary are distinguished by their prone front paws, which underscore their prodromal position beneath their mistress. Because one cannot walk around this tomb, the only vantage point is from the elevated chevet. From the latter perspective, one may see what appear to be teeth inflicting a flesh wound.

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Figure 11.10

Tomb of Jeanne de Bourbon, d. 1377 (from the Celestins, Paris), Saint-Denis (photo: author)

left barks while the one on the right is silent. The breed of dogs on both tombs is identical and their personalities seem similarly divergent. This seems to veer perilously close to canine portraiture.

The Art Historical Stance of Dogs on Tombs

Our tale about dogs began beneath the scowling glare of the clergy. Despite St. Hubert’s vision and the bloodhounds bred thereafter at the abbey of Mouzon, the priests banned dogs from church, feeling that men gave more attention to their dogs than to God; indeed, they were sometimes forced to give their blessing to inveterate hunters outside because the latter remained there in the company of their hounds.36 It is not surprising that many bishops’ tombs featured the deceased treading on dogs as a sign of their victory over evil, a trope 36

Pickeral, The Dog, 17–18. Hubert (656–727), who was the first bishop of Liège, had a vision of the Crucifix between the antlers of a stag and became the patron saint of hunters; his life is often confused that of with St. Eustace (second century CE), who had a similar vision. St. Hubert’s dogs were bred in the Abbey of St. Hubert at Mouzon. Each year the monks sent the king of France six of these bloodhounds, which he subsequently gifted to the nobility. See Gerald Hausman and Loretta Hausman, The Mythology of Dogs: Canine Legend (New York: Macmillan, 1997), 45.

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borrowed from Christ’s victory over death in which he “made his enemies his footstool.”37 This verse alludes to Psalms 91.13: “Thou shalt walk upon the asp and the basilisk: and thou shalt trample underfoot the lion and the dragon.” The deceased has thus vanquished sin and temptation in order to be resurrected with Christ at the end of time.38 The rise of the dog as the household pet of aristocratic women, coupled with their skills in stalking prey, changed the fate of canines in life and art. By the time they curled up at the feet of Isabelle of Aragon in 1271 (Fig. 11.6), dogs were playing a vital role in tomb effigies. They not only mediate the space and time that separate the living from the dead, but they also embody the mourning and melancholy engendered by death. Naturally they represent fidelity and enact this virtue as companions to their owners during this liminal stage between life and death. But the marble dogs do more: they recreate in art the irrepressible affection and devotion they felt for their mistresses. Art has the power to restore to life the metaphorical leash that once tethered each woman to the pair of dogs that now rest by her stony feet. When the Valois dynasty placed a lion at the feet of Philip the Bold, its symbolic roar was heard for generations. A perfect symbol of valor and nobility, the lion found favor with medieval and Renaissance rulers, even though dogs continued to have their day. In a strange way, it was not the lion that supplanted the role of the dog, but rather the pleurants or carved mourners who processed around the tomb; it was they who accepted the mantle of melancholy from the dogs that once gamboled at the feet of their beloved masters. Both dogs and lions remained a presence in tomb sculpture even when mourners assembled beneath the effigies. For example, as early as 1260 a procession of weepers was added to the base of the tomb of Louis IX’s eldest son, Louis of France, in addition to the stone dog beneath the effigy’s feet. It was the Valois dukes who made the presence of mourners synonymous with grief; pleurants process beneath the delicate arcades that support the effigies of Philip the Bold, John the Fearless, and Margaret of Bavaria. Like the beads in a rosary, the carved mourners embody the pathos experienced by their live counterparts. But do these mourners prepare us for the spectacular tomb of Philippe Pot (1494), who once served in the Valois court? Six life-sized pleurants assume 37 38

Pamela Sheingorn, “The Moment of the Resurrection in the Corpus Christi Plays,” Medievalia et Humanistica 11 (1982): 111–29, esp. 118. Mâle, Religious Art in France, 365. In the tomb of Bishop Evrard de Fouilloy (d. 1222), the bishop tramples on two dragons, which is a clear allusion to this biblical reference. See Sauerländer, Gothic Sculpture, 467, ill. 88. See also the essay by Sophie Oosterwijk in this volume.

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the double role of pallbearers and mourners. The proud lion beneath the seneschal’s feet does not seem to frighten this solemn entourage.39 It is the mourners who in the later medieval period stepped in and performed the mnemonics of remembrance. Despite the ability of dogs to perpetuate the bond once shared between the living master and a faithful companion, it was the prayers of the living invoked by the presence of their sculptural doppelgängers that assured continuity between the world that decayed and the social memory of the living. Prayers for the dead were essential for the afterlife of the deceased, as well as for those left behind; the latter’s future spiritual well being depended upon an economy of faith, for time in purgatory could be shortened in exchange for such prayers.40 Did this mean that dogs had to relinquish their position at the feet of their deceased masters? What role did the carved canine play in this passage from life into death? Man’s best friend continued to accompany his protector into that good night, playful, vigilant, and faithful to the end—barking against the dying of the light. 39 40

This tomb, housed in the Louvre Museum, was originally from the Chapel of St. John the Baptist in Cîteaux. Elizabeth Hallam and Jenny Hockey, Death, Memory and Material Culture (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 52.

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Chapter 12

Eternal Devotion: The Stone Canine Companions of Gothic Castile y León Janet Snyder During the Medieval period in Castile y León, a sophisticated language of images and symbols appears in monuments, used by the makers to communicate complex ideas concerning rank and status. This essay will consider the extraordinary naturalistic depiction of dogs that were part of these ­monumental communications. The depicted canine companions include aggressive fighters and guardians of livestock, chasers, seekers, and attentive small pets. The way the eyes of many of these animals directly engage viewers calls attention to the reasons for their depiction. Each breed was known for specific character traits and behaviors. Each may have been selected to associate particular roles or functions of the commemorated person in the minds of the viewers. Making use of detailed photographs of these painted sculptures (1270–1534), descriptions of the historical context in which they were created, and pictures of the modern descendants of ancient Spanish dog breeds, this essay seeks to decipher the lexicon of the language of images employed in gothic Castile y León. From the 1260s until after 1500, mason-sculptors working in the region of Castile y León identified saints by attributes, such as the keys of St. Peter or the scallop shell of Santiago; they marked nobility by representing distinctive clothing and textiles, such as the sideless gowns of princes or opulently embroidered robes; and they communicated temperament by depicting select animals. Historian Beatrice Gilman Proske wrote of this period, “Many Flemish artists came to work in Spain, and their ideas and methods gradually dominated, except that in figure sculpture Spanish taste tempered both Flemish realism and garrulousness with a measured dignity and absence of over­ emphasis.”1 Conversely, a recognizable regional character in Castilian sculpture was embodied in naturalistic portraitlike images with animated sculpted heads and narrative scenes. Local carvers regularly depicted stone personages who seem to converse and interact (Fig. 12.1), or historiated capitals that articu* Periods of research and writing for this project were made possible in part by funds from the Myers Foundation’s Faculty Distinguished Research awards in 2013 and 2014. 1 Beatrice Gilman Proske, Castilian Sculpture, Gothic to Renaissance (New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1951), 7.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004328617_014

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Carrión de los Condes, west façade, Church of Santiago: capital of a man attacked by sight hounds. Photo: author. Comparison: Galgo Español. .

late specific local events.2 Such stone communication was brought to life when thirteenth-century architectural sculpture was placed close to eye level, making these figures legible and establishing an intimate connection between them and their viewers.3 In this region during the next three centuries, relief sculpture on memorial tomb-chests continued this immediacy and intimacy, using recognizable narratives and also flora and fauna in stone. A mid-twelfth-century fresco from the Hermitage of San Baudelio de Berlanga Soria shows that following the Reconquista a tradition had been established of depicting naturalistic representations of dog breeds that originated in Spain to convey meaning.4 This fresco pictures a recognizable breed of chasers to convey information concerning the human participants in the scene: the distinctive form of the Galgo Español, an ancient sight hound, appears in a scene of coursing hares. Developed in the Castilian plains, the Galgo Español is believed to have descended from north African sight hounds, the Sloughi, that were brought to Spain following the eighth-century Umayyad invasion of Hispania. The Galgo was considered to be a noble dog, kept mainly 2 José Luis Senra, “Rebellion, Reconciliation, and a Romanesque Church in León-Castile (c. 1109–1120),” Speculum 87, no. 2 (2012): 376–412. 3 See, for example, the capitals at Rebolledo de la Torre, portal sculpture programs at Moarves de Ojeda and Revilla de Santullan, and the capitals, corbels, and paintings in the church of Santa Maria La Real in Los Henestrosas de las Quintanillas. 4 Teógenes Ortego, “Fresco soriano con galgos de la ermita mozárabe de San Baudilio,” Revista de Soria, primera época 16 (1972): 3.

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by aristocrats, in both the Christian and Muslim Kingdoms.5 After having occupied northern mountainous areas for centuries, Christians colonized the Castilian plains in the ninth and tenth centuries following the Reconquista. Their new domain provided Christian nobles with unprecedented opportunities to hunt on vast, flat, open areas that were full of small animals such as hares. The Galgo tends to be smaller and lighter in build than an English Greyhound, with flatter muscling, a characteristic of endurance runners. Unlike the Sloughi, Galgos are higher in the hindquarters than in the front, something that is especially apparent in the San Baudilio fresco.6 A team of Galgos, leaping and snarling like devil-dogs,7 are depicted attacking a naked man on the twelfth-century capital of the south doorpost, just above the visitor’s eye level, on the twelfth-century façade of the church of Santiago at Carrión de los Condes (Fig. 12.1). The Galgo’s longer tail, its attenuated, streamlined head, and its chest marked with ribs, shallower than that of the greyhound, help to identify the breed portrayed. Its stature as a swift pursuit hunter extends the iconography of local proverbs to engage the visitor to this church along the pilgrimage road. Beneath the apostles and the Majestas Domini in the frieze at the top of the façade, in the chamfered archivolts the trades and guilds articulate the life of the community and Spanish proverbs admonish the viewer.8 The tradition of using quotidian figures in illustrations to convey important ideas continued in commemorative monuments.

5 See and Alonso Martínez de Espinar’s 1644 Arte de ballestería y montería (Valladolid: Maxtor, 2012). Although headless, the slim, longlegged dog depicted in the Sepulchral Monument of Ermengol VII, Count of Urgell (d. 1184)—a 1314 memorial from Lerida, Catalonia, undertaken by Ermengol X and now installed in the Cloisters of the Metropolitan Museum of Art—appears to represent the Galgo. See . The killing or theft of this noble dog was punishable under contemporary laws, including the Fuero de Salamanca (ninth century), Fuero de Cuenca, Fuero de Zorita de los Canes, Fuero de Molina de Aragón (twelfth century), and Fuero de Usagre (twelfth century). 6 A Hare Hunt, Hermitage of San Baudelio de Berlanga (Soria), mid-twelfth century. Fresco transferred to canvas. 71¾ × 11 ft. 9 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Cloisters Collection. See The Art of Medieval Spain, AD 500–1200 (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art/H.N. Abrams, 1993), catalogue no. 103g, 226. 7 Dip, a character in Catalan mythology, is a vampire-like emissary of the devil that looks like a hairy dog. For further discussion of vampires and devil-dogs, see El gran libro de los vampiros, ed. Ángel Gordon (Madrid: Morales i Torres, 2005), and chapter 15 in this ­volume. 8 See the photographic examples on A. García Omedes’s website La Guía Digital del Arte Románico: .

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Though medieval Christians hoped to be united for eternity after death with their God in Heaven, no one’s salvation was assured.9 A second chance to bask in perpetual light was perceived to be possible, for even after death, entry into Paradise might be granted in response to the prayers of remembrance by those still on earth and by good works carried out posthumously in the name of the deceased.10 By the thirteenth century, gisants, sculpted recumbent funerary effigies, had become a type of memorial that provided occasion for prayers of remembrance. The gisant could and did indicate the deceased person’s official status.11 A careful representation of costume was one means to express this stature and rank; the depiction of attributes was another. Beginning in the later thirteenth century, the inclusion of animals on monuments conveyed important ideas about depicted persons in much the same way that attributes were used to identify saints and clothing to communicate the rank and status of clerics or nobles. Images of recognizable Spanish dog breeds were included in commemorative monuments in Burgos, reflecting notions of the stature, behavior, and rank of the individuals associated with these particular dogs.12 The naturalistic carvings of dogs that emphasized specific physical or behavioral characteristics enabled contemporaries to recognize specific temperaments and encouraged more appropriate prayers because they provided significant and nuanced commentary. The precision of depictions in these medieval commemorative sculptures can be startling. The human faces on these monuments seem to be portraits, even though nearly every one was sculpted years, even decades, after the death of the person being commemorated. The gisants, with their vigorous muscle tone or open eyes, cannot have been actual portraits. What is represented instead is the spotless and upright character, the faithful devotion and 9

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“It was commonly believed in the Middle Ages that liturgical intercession and the aid of the saints it invoked could rescue souls from torment and lead them to Heaven.” Rose Walker, “The Wall Paintings in the Panteón de los Reyes at León: A Cycle of Intercession,” The Art Bulletin 82, no. 2 (June 2000): 200–25. Rocío Sánchez Ameijeiras, “Monumenta et memoriae: The Thirteenth-Century Episcopal Pantheon of León Cathedral,” in Memory and the Medieval Tomb, eds. Elizabeth Valdez del Alamo and Carol Stamatis Pendergast (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2000), 269. “It was sculpture rather than architecture that responded first to the new desire for personal commemoration.” Howard Montagu Colvin, Architecture and the After-Life. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), 152. J. Jordana, J. Piedrafita, and A. Sanchez, “Genetic Relationships in Spanish Dog Breeds: I. The Analysis of Morphological Characters,” Genetics Selection Evolution 24 (1992): 225– 44. (accessed May 28, 2014).

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obedience, or the absolute loyalty of the deceased. Sepulchral art especially has been defined as having been conceived of as propagandistic in nature, “with the intention of manipulating the collective memory.”13 The representation of particular dogs introduces a subtext into the memorials that manipulates the collective memory of the deceased in a propagandistic manner by conveying information about his or her status, ancestry, patronage, activities, and rank.

Monuments of the Cathedral of Burgos, Catedral de Santa María

In 1221 the first stone for a pier on the epistle side of the choir of the present Cathedral of Burgos was laid by Ferdinand III of Castile (1199–1252) and Bishop Maurizio of Burgos (r. 1213–1238);14 the building campaign of the east end of the cathedral, including the east wall of the south transept and sculpture for the south transept portal, concluded in 1230.15 Two years before the laying of the first stone, Bishop Maurizio was deputized by the young King Ferdinand III to journey through France to Germanic lands and return with Elizabeth, fourth daughter of the Duke of Swabia, to be the king’s bride. In Castile Elizabeth was known as Beatrice. The wedding took place at the end of November 1219 or 1220 in the Royal Monastery of San Zoilo in Carrión de los Condes, where Bishop Maurizio presided. Beatrice bore ten children before her death in 1235. Apparently along with the young bride, the Bishop brought home, or arranged to import, mason-sculptors from France. The cathedral patrons made a conscious decision to install large-scale figural sculpture on the south transept portal in arrangements that echo northern sculpture programs of the previous century. Although this marked a break with the well-established and strong regional conventions of Castilian figural sculpture and wall painting, the local styles of many of the indigenous stoneworkers survived and were integrated with French types. Innovative features in the plan and elevation of Burgos Cathedral seem to have come from Bourges Cathedral and buildings in Normandy.16 The compositions and the distinctive iconography in the south 13 14 15 16

Ameijeiras, “Monumenta et memoriae,” 269. The bishop’s parents, Rodrigo and Oro Sabia, had Spanish names. Maurizio died in 1238. King of Castile from 1217–52, Ferdinand III became king of León as well from 1230. Élie Lambert, L’art gothique en Espagne aux XII et XIII siècles (Paris: Henri Laurens, 1931), 203. Robert Branner determined that the structure of the elevation and the innovative features in the Burgos cathedral plan and elevation came from Bourges Cathedral. He conceded, “The Norman element is so dominant that one is tempted to assume that the Master of Burgos spent the years between 1214 and 1221 in Normandy …” Robert Branner,

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transept portal sculpture program at Burgos have more in common with French types than with those traditionally used in the region. Between 1270 and 1280, the builders added a two-story cloister with integral tomb-recesses on the south side of the cathedral’s chevet.17 Access to the cloister from the interior of the basilica is through a sculpted portal in the southeast corner of the south transept. Just inside this entrance, on the corner pier facing the portal, four crowned young men in courtly dress appear engaged in conversation, reflecting a local character in the sculpture chantier (workyard). Scholars variously identify these monumental statues as the founders or subsequent benefactors of the cathedral.18 On the north wall of the north cloister walk, set high on corbels and framed by the wall arcade, stands a life-sized depiction of a bridal couple who have been identified as the founding monarch and his queen.19 (Fig. 12.2) In discussions of this sculpture, which depicts Ferdinand III offering a ring to Beatrice, the russet spaniel-type dog resting at the feet of the king, if noted at all, has been written off as simply “the symbol of fidelity, as in the famous van Eyck painting of Jan Arnolfini and his wife.”20 (Fig. 12.3) This is the earliest extant sculpture of a small dog to be associated with the elite in Burgos. Its small size and quizzical, dished face identify it as a Phalène, the Épagneul nain continental, a breed whose origins are thought to lie in Spain, France, or Belgium.21

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The Cathedral of Bourges and Its Place in Gothic Architecture, ed. Shirley Branner (New York: The Architectural History Foundation, 1989), 180. Frederick B. Deknatel, “The Thirteenth-Century Gothic Sculpture of the Cathedrals of Burgos and Leon,” The Art Bulletin 17 no.3 (September 1935): 298–99. “The history of the architectural tomb begins with the arched recess known to the learned as the arcosolium, to the French as the enfeu and to the English as the tomb-recess.” Colvin, Architecture and the After-Life, 142. Similar retrospective sculpture had been produced during the first half of the fourteenth century at Naumburg and Meissen in the region of the ancestral homeland of Beatrice of Swabia. Regine Abegg, “Gothic Sculpture in Spain and Portugal,” in Rolf Toman, ed., The Art of Gothic: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting (Cologne: Könemann, 1998), 372. Williamson followed Bertaux in identifying this pair as the son of Ferdinand III, Alfonso X (the Wise), and his queen, Violante (1270). Paul Williamson, Gothic Sculpture, 1140–1300 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 229. Émile Bertaux identified the four princes of the west corner pier and the fifth on the wall as Alfonso and Violante’s five sons, who were between fifteen and twenty-five years old in 1275; the eldest, Ferdinand de la Cerda, died that year. See Deknatel, “Thirteenth-Century Gothic Sculpture,” 304. Deknatel, “Thirteenth-Century Gothic Sculpture,” 308. D. Cawley and J. Naylo, “History of the Phalène,” Phalène Fanciers of the World (). Images of this affectionate, obedient, and loyal lapdog appear in paintings by artists such as Johan Baptista van Uther (d. 1597), Pieter de Hooch

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Figure 12.2

Ferdinand III offering a ring to Beatrice, Burgos Cathedral, c. 1270. Two of the four crowned young men on inner pier. Photo: author.

Figure 12.3

Detail: spaniel-type dog resting at the feet of Ferdinand III, Burgos Cathedral, c. 1270. Photo: author. Comparison: Phalène, “Max” Photo by Roads End Phalènes and Papillions, used by permission.

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Standing between eight and eleven inches tall, the Phalène has drooping ears that are not set as low on its domed head as on other spaniels. Individual varieties of spaniels differ in temperament. Continental dogs of the spaniel type are placed in the pointing group by the modern Fédération Cynologique Internationale because they function more like setters, which “freeze” and point to game. The selection of a sculpted Phalène at the feet of the King, looking down on the cloister in Burgos Cathedral, may have as much to do with its “frozen” and attentive focus, its loyal behavior and its obedient nature, as does its status as a royal pet. A similar, if stouter, sculpted spaniel appears on the early fourteenth-century Catalan limestone sepulchral monument, Tomb Effigy of a Boy, Probably Ermengol IX, Count of Urgell.22 With its dished face and drooping ears, solid torso and small legs, this spaniel was sculpted and painted to make it appear to interact with the visitor. It is possible that the Phalène’s frozen gaze was intended to bridge the gap between the viewer and the depicted figures. In addition to saints and royal patrons, fifteenth-century ecclesiastics were commemorated in the cloister of Burgos Cathedral, in an arrangement that followed the Italian fashion for tomb-chests with recumbent effigies designed to stand against a wall in a recess beneath a pointed arch.23 Between the springing of the arches of the outer blind wall arcade that supports the west corridor of the cloister, full-height recesses enclose ecclesiastical tombs.24 The first tomb recess honors a late fifteenth-century canon, Gonzalo ins Agilar (Fig. 12.4). The stone up to the springing of the arches was originally brilliantly painted in a red-hued textile pattern. Heraldic shields and a painted inscription are framed within a gold-painted panel. The officers of the chapter honored the deceased with this commemoration:25

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(1629–1677), and Gerard TerBorch (1617–1681). This breed is considered a variant of the Papillon by the American Kennel Club (), which it describes as a dwarf spaniel of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Fanciers distinguish the Phalène from the Continental Toy Spaniel: . Tomb Effigy of a Boy, Probably Ermengol IX, Count of Urgell, limestone, traces of paint. The Cloisters of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1975.129 . Colvin, Architecture and the After-Life, 144. Upon entering the south transept door to the Burgos Cathedral upper cloister, turn right. Colvin, Architecture and the After-Life,144. Rodrigo Amador de los Ríos, “Burgos,” in España, sus Monumentios y artes (Barcelona: Establecimiento Tipográfico Editorial de Daniel Cortezo y Cia., 1888), 611.

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Figure 12.4

The first tomb-recess along the west aisle of the Burgos Cathedral upper cloister, late fifteenth-century ecclesiastic, 1482. Photo: author.

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Aqui reposa el cuerpo del circunspecto varon el bachiller gonzalo ins de agilar canonigo arcipreste de Burgos retor de la casa de san lucas ande desir los senores del cabildo ciertas memorias cada ano los capellanes del numero cada martes una misa cantada de requie para siempre fino lunes a UIII de abril de 1444. Here rests the circumspect male body of the Bachelor Gonzalo ins Agilar, Canon Archpriest of Burgos, rhetor of the house of St. Lucas. The officers of the chapter have certain memories of his years. Chaplains of the [community] require a requiem mass sung every Tuesday in perpetuity. Monday, April 8, 1444. A prominent feature of this funerary monument is its portraitlike images of two recognizable dog breeds that originated in Spain. Though “local Roma­ nesque tradition [in Castile and León] … provides the pattern for the free-standing sarcophagus supported by lions,”26 the sarcophagus of Canon Gonzalo rests upon the shoulders of crouching guardian dogs with severely cropped ears. These dogs can be identified as the Alano Español. (Fig. 12.5) The Alano has a squared head with a short muzzle, about a third of the length of the head, with a vertical stop. The jaw is slightly concave, and the nose is large and broad, with open nostrils. This ancient breed descended from “dogs the Alanos (Alans) brought with them when they invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 406 [BCE]. These dogs were the ancestors of many of the Molosser breeds,” known to be powerful and protective, but not aggressive.27 A well-balanced and stable dog, the self-confident Alano has a very high threshold of pain. A chapter of the Libro de la Montería of Alfonso XI describes hunting dogs called Alani as being beautifully colored.28 The heads and feet of the sculpted dogs are visible: the neck is strong, powerful and wide. The ears, set high, are cropped very short and rounded at the tip. The Alano has paws that are generally much larger than those of other dogs of the same size and weight. 26 27 28

Abegg, “Gothic Sculpture in Spain and Portugal,” 376. Molosser dogs (Great Dane, mastiff, etc.) have blocky heads, thick necks, and strong shoulders. “The Libro de la Montería (c. 1345–1350), produced at the behest of Alfonso XI, greatgrandson of Alfonso X. … deals exclusively with the pursuit of deer, wild boar, bear and enzebra (probably wild ass rather than zebra). A possible complement to Juan Manuel’s Libro de la caça, [it] describes procedures for hunting large game and the nature of hunting dogs in book 1 …” Dennis P. Seniff, “Hunting Literature,” in Medieval Iberia, eds. E. Michael Gerli and Samuel G. Armistead (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2003), 402.

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Figure 12.5

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Detail: guardian dog tomb support of a late fifteenth-century ecclesiastic, west aisle of the Burgos Cathedral upper cloister, 1482. Photo: author. For comparison with Alano Español, see “Potstillgold Loudon AKA Farrell the Alano Español at 9 months old” .

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The Alano Español was ubiquitous in Spain until the nineteenth century, when bullfighting with dogs was outlawed. An exceptional characteristic of the Alano is that it can be relied upon to release prey when told to do so, an ability as important as holding is for hunting and herding dogs. The Alano is a hard worker, fearless, loyal, devoted, and very obedient. The breed is reputed not to surrender until told to do so or until the orders it has been given have been completed, even if this means fighting to its death.29 The fifteenth-century sculptor’s decision to use a dog breed known for its ability as a guardian to replace the more commonly depicted lions may have been because the Alano Español was particularly obedient to its master. This tomb is aligned with direct sightlines to the standing figures of Ferdinand III and Beatrice. What appears to be the same breed of guardian dog was represented on another fourteenth-century memorial. In the Alcobaça Monastery in Portugal, the elaborately decorated tomb-chest of King Pedro I (r. 1357–1367) depicts narrative scenes enclosed within architectural frameworks and is supported by three lions. On the top of the tomb-chest, three angels kneel in support on each side of the king’s gisant, and his feet rest against a massive reclining but vigilant Alano.30 In its complexity, the tomb-chest seems similar to that of his granddaughter, Isabel of Portugal, discussed below. The memorial of Gonzalo ins Agilar includes a second recognizable dog breed with Spanish origins: the Perdiguero de Burgos or Burgos Pointer (Fig. 12.6). This breed is not a guardian, but a seeker. This stone scent hound does not slumber at the feet of the gisant, but is portrayed as alert, with its head turned toward both the effigy’s head and, across the corner of the cloister walks, the sculpted monarch. The dog thus mimes the deceased cleric’s vigilance and action as a devoted servant. The Perdiguero de Burgos, an ancient breed of scent hound with a short, smooth coat and muscular body, originated in the Castilian plateau and its history is known at least as far back as the fifteenth century.31 Bred to track deer, it has an obedient temperament and is eager to please its master. The breed is believed to have descended from a mix

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See the entry at the Dog Breed Information Center, . The Alano Español may still be found in the modern Encartaciones Valley in northern Spain, where they continue to be used for hunting wild boar and handling cattle. Many thanks to Nico von Binzer, whose post from the Alcobaça Monastery introduced me to the gisant of Pedro I. J. Jordana, J. Piedrafita, A. Sanchez, and P. Puig, “Comparative F Statistics Analysis of the Genetic Structure of Ten Spanish Dog Breeds,” The Journal of Heredity 83, no. 5 (1992): 368.

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Detail: Burgos Pointer at the feet of the gisant, a late fifteenth-century ecclesiastic, west aisle of the Burgos Cathedral upper cloister, 1482. Photo: author. For comparison with Perdiguero de Burgos, see http://www. elcotodecaza.com/ficha-perro/perdiguero-burgos

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of the Sabueso Español (Spanish Bloodhound) and the Pachón Navarro.32 What distinguishes the hound depicted on this sculpture as a Perdiguero de Burgos, and distinct from the medium-sized Sabueso Español, is that the Sabueso has very long ears resembling those of other hounds bred for tracking scent; when stretched out, the ears of this breed should reach past the tip of the nose. In contrast, the intelligent, quiet, and gentle Perdiguero de Burgos has shorter ears that are set higher on the sides of the skull. The muzzle of the Burgos is also shorter than that of the Spanish Bloodhound and its face is more concave. The choice of this particular ancient local breed on the commemorative monument may have been intended to cause viewers to consider the intelligent, quiet, and gentle character of the canon it memorialized. On the opposite corridor of the Burgos Cathedral cloister, a different ancient breed, the Mastín español, or Spanish Mastiff, is depicted resting beneath the shoes of a cleric dressed in a chasuble and stole (Fig. 12.7). An aloof, dignified, and calm dog, the Mastín español has a longer muzzle than many other mastiffs and its coat is shorter and less curly than the Pyrenean variety. Both the Mastín español and Mastín de los Pirineos “are included in the ‘ortognated moloses’ which may descend from the legendary Mastiff of Tibet.”33 Like the Burgos pointer on the tomb of Gonzalo ins Agilar, this dog turns its sculpted head to focus its attention upon its master. The Spanish Mastiff has small eyes and triangular drop ears and this sculpture includes specific characteristics of this livestock guardian breed: not only the hooded eyes and the distinctive long bridge of the muzzle, but also the loose folds of skin with a double dewlap 32



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The Sabueso Español/Spanish Bloodhound has been attributed to a “Celtic origin. Most of the European bloodhound breeds seem to descend from the Saint Hubert, a modern Belgian breed, the direct descendant of the Segusius of the Celts and the Gauls.” Jordana et al., 368. This breed has been used in the mountainous north to hunt all kinds of game: wild boar, hare, brown bear, wolf, roe deer, red deer, fox, and chamois. The first description of Iberian scent hounds appears in chapter 39 of Libro de la Montería de Alfonso XI.  The Pachón Navarro has widely spaced, triangular, folded ears, and a split or double nose (a disqualifying feature for the modern Perdiguero de Burgos), giving it heightened sensitivity to smells. See A.M. Delalix, Los Perros Españoles (Barcelona: De Vecchi, 1986); J.M. Sanz Timón,“El perro Perdiguero Burgalés,” in I Symposium Nacional de las razas caninas españolas, Córdoba, 19–21 marzo 1982 (Córdoba: Universidad de Córdoba, 1982), 359– 79. “These ‘Pachones’ from Navarra, also called ‘Perros de Punta Ibericos,’ are the ancestors of the current English Pointer.” Jordana et al., 368. Jordana et al., 368. The term “ortognated” describes dogs with an open facial angle, so that the line from the forehead to the chin is very close to straight. In human beings, orthognatism denotes having a lower jaw that is longer than the upper. On the Tibetan Mastiff, see Donald A. Messerschmidt, “The Tibetan Mastiff: Canine Sentinels of the Range,” Rangelands 5, no. 4 (1983): 172–74.

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Figure 12.7

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Detail: dog at the feet of the late fifteenth-century ecclesiastic, tomb-recess along the east aisle of the Burgos Cathedral upper cloister. Photo: author. Comparison: Mastín español. .

at its throat, compressed by the sculpted broad belt of a collar. In contrast to the typical male Spanish Mastiff’s jowly head and throat, the minimal dewlap reveals that the sculptor has represented the smaller, female Mastín español. A loyal defender, the Spanish Mastiff is wary of strangers. Temperamentally, the breed is characterized by its devotion to family. This large and powerful dog was bred to defend livestock from wolves and other predators: its ancestry reveals why the sculptor selected the breed as an attribute for the ecclesiastic entombed at Burgos. The statue may have been intended to indicate that the memorialized individual exhibited profound devotion to family, the church, and the realm. In contradistinction to the character of the tombs of ecclesiastics in the cloister of Burgos Cathedral, and unlike the Italian fashion for tomb-chests with recumbent effigies designed to stand against a wall in recesses beneath a pointed arch, the tomb in the axial chapel of Burgos Cathedral is the sculptural centerpiece for a lay commission. The Chapel of the Purification, also known as the Capilla de los Condastables, was a fifteenth-century addition to the thirteenth-century ambulatory. Built between 1482 and 1496 by Simón de Colonia, this is the funerary chapel of Constable of Castile Pedro Fernández de Velasco, second Count of Haro (c. 1425–1492) and his wife, Mencía de Mendoza y Figueroa (1421–1500). Doña Mencía, from Guadalajara, was a daughter of Íñigo López de Mendoza, Marqués de Santillana (1398–1458). In 1085, Guadalajara was the first town conquered by the Christian forces led, according to legend, by a nephew of El Cid. Guadalajara was given a Fuero

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Largo—a market charter—by Ferdinand III in 1219.34 His son Alfonso the Wise (1221–1284), concerned about a drop in wool exports to England, protected its markets and merchants; as a result, Guadalajara’s economy flourished. The marriage arranged in 1436 between Pedro and Mencía united two of the most powerful political and military families in Castile y León. In 1492, Don Pedro died in the conquest of Granada during the Reconquista. Because his military career dominated Don Pedro’s life and death, Doña Mencía took on primary responsibility for their patronage of architecture and art. She personally negotiated with the Burgos Cathedral chapter for the Capilla de los Condastables and she directed the construction of their palace, the Casa del Cordón.35 The funerary monument in the center of the Capilla de los Condastables was commissioned in the 1520s by Íñigo Fernández de Velasco, Don Pedro and Doña Mencía’s second son, who had inherited titles from his elder brother.36 The enormous gisants were made of Carrara marble by the Burgundian sculptor Felipe Bigarny (c.1475–1542), and were completed by 1534, more than three decades after the deaths of the couple commemorated.37 The red jasper platform beneath the gisants has no ornamentation and completely smooth sides, which emphasizes the whiteness of the marble and the elaborately sculpted details of the tomb figures.38 The gisants seem to be asleep: their eyes are closed but the figures are sculpted as if these personages were still living. As they slumber, Don Pedro’s hands loosely clasp the hilt of a sheathed marble sword and Doña Mencía fingers the beads of a large rosary. Their faces are carved with portraitlike precision and the details of their clothing are rendered in complex relief. The crowns, jewelry, ornaments, and Italianate decoration of their garments broadcast their social status as Condestables, and the little dog that rests curled upon the rumpled, luxurious lower skirt of the gown of Doña 34 35 36

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Fuero Largo, May 26, 1219. Pedro Vacas Moreno and Mercedes Vacas Gómez, Pastores y cabreros (Madrid: Musivisual, 2011), 96. José L.G. de Paz, “La descendencia del primer marqués de Santillana.” . Bergoña Alonso Ruiz, “Arquitectura y arte al servicio del poder. Una vision sobre la Casa de Velasco durante el siglo XVI,” in Bergoña Alonso Ruiz, Ma. Cruz de Carlos, and Felipe Pereda, eds., Patronos y coleccionistas: los condestables de Castilla y el arte (siglos XV–XVII) (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, Secretariado de Publicationes e Intercambio Editorial, 2005), 164. Carmen Manso Porto, “Escultura Yacente de Pedro Fernández de Velasco, Catedral de Burgos,” in Abraham Rubio Celada, ed., Isabel la Católica en la Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2004), 118. Modern scholars have linked the choice to use Italian marble rather than Spanish alabaster to a wish for greater social prestige. Ruiz, “Arquitectura y arte al servicio del poder,” 166.

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Mencía seems to be part of that message (Fig. 12.8). The dog has curly hair, large, open eyes, widely set, tipped-over ears, and a pronounced broad nose, making it appear to represent a Perro de Agua Cantábrico or Cantabrian water dog, a working breed associated with the northern Iberian peninsula.39 The Perro de Agua Cantábrico was bred to have a white coat because much of its traditional work—carrying ropes between ships and docks, retrieving fish that fell into the water, guarding boats moored in port, and acting as a lifeguard—was done at night.40 Lighter and shorter than the Spanish water dog, it is associated with villages along the coast of Cantabria and eastern Asturias. The sculptor may have selected this particular breed because parallels could be drawn between its traditional working activities and Doña Mencía’s guarding of the home front, engaging in water-based trade, and defending family interests. Having been given in marriage by her father to consolidate politicalmilitary alliances, Doña Mencía raised six children while managing the family’s commercial trade and business affairs. Castilian wool trade meant overseas shipping with England and Bruges.41 During her husband’s long absences, she was responsible for architectural projects including the Casa del Cordón, the Burgos Cathedral funerary chapel, and the Casa de la Vega.42 After Don Pedro’s death, Doña Mencía went to court in an unsuccessful effort to maintain her status as Condestable.43 Commissioned by her second son, the tomb sculpture with this working dog seems to reference Doña Mencía as a preeminent businesswoman. The sculpture itself constitutes a form of prayer of remembrance. 39

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S. Méndez, S. Dunner, J.A. García, S. de Argüello, and M. Crespo, “Caracterozación del perro de agua del Camtábrico / Characterization of the Cantabric Water Dog.” Archivos de zootecnia vol. 60, no. 231 (2011): 405. (accessed April 19, 2014). (accessed May 20, 2014). “With a population of about 20,000 people in 1500 … Burgos derived its character and reputation from its merchants, natives of Castile who were engaged in international trade.” Constance Jones Mathers, “Family Partnerships and International Trade in Early Modern Europe: Merchants from Burgos in England and France, 1470–1570.” The Business History Review 62, no. 3 (1988): 367. (accessed April 29, 2014). The Casa de la Vega was a farm in the town of Gamonal, north of the River Tagus, southwest of Madrid, in the northwestern Toledo province. Doña Mencía argued that it was through the favor of the Mendoza family that her husband had been awarded the office of Constable and therefore she should retain the rank she held during her husband’s lifetime. Her son, Bernardino Fernández de Velasco and Mendoza (c. 1454–1512), who had inherited rank as third Constable, successfully argued that the office had been awarded for service to the monarchy. José L.G. de Paz, “La descendencia del primer marqués de Santillana.”

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Figure 12.8



Detail: Philip Bigarny, gisant of Mencía de Mendoza y Figueroa, the Chapel of the Condastables, Burgos Cathedral, 1534. Carrara marble. Photo: author. For comparison with the Perro de Agua Cantábrico / Cantabrian water dog, see .

Cartuja de Santa María de Miraflores, Burgos

Three kilometers from the cathedral in modern Burgos is the Monasterio de la Cartuja de Miraflores, founded in 1441 by King John II of Castile y León (1405– 1454). In 1452, a fire destroyed the monastery. Reconstructed in the same location beginning in 1453, it was renamed Cartuja de Santa María de Miraflores. This monastery and the tombs of its founders can best be described as expressions of prayers of remembrance that function as good works carried out posthumously in their names. The gisants of the monarchs John II and Isabel of Portugal (1428–1496) were sculpted by Gil de Siloé (c. 1440–c. 1505) and members of his workshop from veined Spanish alabaster: begun in 1489, they were completed by 1493. Sculpted at the feet of the gisant representing Queen Isabel are a lion and a little dog that closely resembles the Ratonero Bodeguero Andaluz, a type of Andalusian wine-cellar rat-hunting terrier (Fig. 12.9).44 44

The Ratonero Bodeguero Andaluz (Perro Ratonero Andaluz, Andalusian Mouse-Hunting Dog, Perro Bodeguero Andaluz) was recognized as an indigenous Spanish breed in 2000

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Figure 12.9

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Detail: Gil de Siloé and workshop, gisant of Isabel of Portugal, Cartuja de Santa María de Miraflores, 1489–93. Spanish alabaster. Photo: author. Comparison: the Ratonero Bodeguero Andaluz. .

In 1447, at age forty-two, John II married nineteen-year-old Isabel of Portugal. Following the birth of the second of her two children, Alfonso of Castile (1453– 1468), Isabel became profoundly depressed. John II died in 1454, and was succeeded as king by the only surviving child of his first marriage, Henry IV of Castile, who confined the dowager queen and her children in the Castle of Arévalo until about 1461–1462, when the children were taken to court in Segovia. During the ten years her children lived with their mother, Isabel instilled strong principles and religious devotion in her little girl, who became known as Isabella the Catholic (1451–1504). Young Isabella maintained these principles for the five years she resided at Henry IV’s court, and finally fled in 1467. Civil war and political intrigues divided the kingdom. Isabella became reconciled with her half-brother the king, who recognized her as heir to the crowns of Castile and León on September 9, 1468. This reconciliation and recognition may have come about because Henry IV intended to carry out his promise of placing Isabella into a political marriage, but instead she married by the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture and by the Spanish Kennel Club, the Real Sociedad Canina de España.

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her second cousin, Ferdinand II of Aragon, on October 19, 1469. Henry died in 1474. The marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand brought stability to the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile. Though Isabella rarely visited her mother, whose mental condition deteriorated completely during the decades of her confinement at the Castle of Arévalo, in 1484, she commissioned Gil de Siloé to design and sculpt the funerary monuments of John II and Isabel, and also that of her brother Alfonso (d. 1468 during civil war), for the Cartuja de Santa María de Miraflores.45 In Juan Laurent’s nineteenth-century photograph of a fifteenthcentury drawing by Gil de Siloé, only a lion is depicted at Isabel’s feet (Fig. 12.10). Contemporary artists might like to speculate that this alteration of the original design was an innovation by a member of the workshop, but it seems likely that the addition of the Ratonero Bodeguero Andaluz was ordered by the patron, Isabella the Catholic. It may have been added because the Portuguese breed would call attention to the childhood home of Isabel, daughter of Pedro I, the first king in the Second Dynasty of Portugal.46 It also echoes the dog at the feet of the gisant on her father’s elaborate tomb-chest in the Alcobaça Monastery, described above. Even the lion at Isabel’s feet is more naturalistic than the stylized heraldic lions sculpted on the large funerary monument of John II and Isabel.47 The indigenous Spanish Ratonero Bodeguero Andaluz was originally bred in Portugal to control vermin in the earth-sheltered caves of wineries. The breed emerged from a combination of terriers from the British Isles and the raterillo, a local or native breed that differs from the sculpted dog of Miraflores in having upright ears.48 The pose of the sculpted dog indicates that it is agile; it has a lean and athletic build. It has the Ratonero’s standard triangular head with a semiflat skull, short white coat, and remarkable, almond-shaped eyes. Described as friendly and brave with strong hunting instincts, the Ratonero 45

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“[T]he artistic style of the flamboyant Gothic bears her name, the Isabelline.” Harold E. Wethey, “Review of Beatrice Gilman Proske, Castilian Sculpture, Gothic to Renaissance,” The Art Bulletin 35, no. 3 (September 1953): 251. Juan Laurent, “Burgos, Drawing of Tomb of Juan II of Castille and his wife, Isabella of Portugal, in the Miraflores Charterhouse.” Sculptor: Gil de Siloè. Photograph date: c. 1865– c. 1890; date of tomb 1489–1493. Albumen print. 9.252 × 13.6614 in. A.D. White Architectural Photographs, Cornell University Library. Accession Number 15/5/3090.01628. (accessed May 27, 2014). “[T]he dog fighting with a lion at the Queen’s feet is more realistic.” Proske, 73. The raterillo was a local/native breed related to the Miniature Podenco Andaluz, a breed similar to the Miniature Portuguese Podengo or Podengo Pequeno.

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Figure 12.10 Juan Laurent, “Burgos, Drawing of Tomb of Juan II of Castille and his wife, Isabella of Portugal, in the Miraflores Charterhouse.” Sculptor: Gil de Siloe. Photograph date: c. 1865–.90; date of tomb 1489–93. Albumen print. 9.252 × 13.6614 in. A.D. White Architectural Photographs, Cornell University Library. Accession Number 15/5/3090.01628. Photo used by permission from Cornell University Library.

has a long muzzle and high-set ears that bend over at the tip. That it was bred to work in the darkness of the caves of Portugal’s vinho do porto wineries makes it a particularly poignant canine attribute for a Portuguese princess who was kept out of the public eye for the last four decades of her life. An addition to the original conception in Gil de Siloé’s drawing, the dog is depicted as a defender of the dowager queen from the dozens of lions that otherwise dominate the funerary monument. Naturalistic representations of dog breeds that originated in Spain were one of the tools employed by mason-sculptors in a sophisticated language of images and symbols in gothic Castile y León. The designers assured that the stature and rank of persons commemorated in monuments were evident by including images of particular dogs that facilitated prayers of remembrance through their associations with characteristics of temperament. The temperaments of the represented breeds are the vehicle for meaningful commentary that would have been known and understood by contemporaries. The noble Galgo was a symbol of aristocracy and the nobility’s success on the open

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Castilian plains following the Reconquista. The attentive pets of the departed depicted in sculpture, the Phalène and the Ratonero Bodeguero Andaluz, allude to the special character of the noble individuals they accompany. The extraordinary vigor of Constable Doña Mencía de Mendoza y Figueroa and her business acumen are expressed through the presence of a working dog, the Perro de Agua Cantábrico. The gisants of two prominent ecclesiastics installed in tomb recesses of the Burgos Cathedral cloister include a vigilant Perdiguero de Burgos and a Mastín español, while the reliable Alano Español replaces the traditional lion in supporting a sarcophagus. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but meaning resides in the mind of the knowing beholder. This close study of the temperaments of these canines provides access for modern beholders to long-concealed references to the character of medieval persons whose memorials sought to reconcile fact and fiction, dreams and aspirations, and history and memory in order to assure their eternal rest in Paradise.

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Part 5 Good Dogs and Bad Dogs

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Chapter 13

Medieval Scavengers: Dogs in Japanese Handscrolls Karen M. Gerhart Our understanding of the early relationship between dogs and humans is, as yet, fragmentary and incomplete, both in the larger world and in Japan. We know that dogs became genetically distinct from wolves at some point and accompanied humans in Japan from around 8,000 BCE, attested to by the 2004 discovery of dog skulls found with those of the now-extinct Japanese wolf, Canis lupus hodophilax, and human remains.1 Recent scholarship has furthermore disabused us of two long-held beliefs about early interactions between humans and dogs. Rather than being deliberately “tamed” by humans for their own purposes, it is now thought more likely that more docile, nondominant wolves gathered near camps of semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers to eat scraps and thereby gradually isolated themselves from the larger wolf population, essentially domesticating themselves. The belief that wolves were first domesticated by humans for the purpose of hunting has also been questioned by archaeozoologist Susan Crockford and others who contend that humans were already proficient at hunting and that their first interest in these animals was sacred or ritual rather than functional.2 Dogs arrived in Japan with migrations of people from south Asia during the Jōmon period (14,000–300 BCE). Archaeological findings suggest they were used as a food source, were buried alongside humans, and were utilized in rituals. Their most important role, however, was to assist hunters.3 The earliest manmade images of dogs in Japan are a number of small dog-shaped clay figurines, dating to the Late Jōmon period (c. 1500–300 BCE), thought to have been 1 The dog bones were found at the Tochibara rocksite in Nagano Prefecture and are the earliest known to date. Yoneda, Minoru, et al., “Radiocarbon and Stable Isotope Analyses on the Earliest Jōmon Skeletons from the Tochibara Rockshelter, Nagano, Japan,” Radiocarbon 44, no. 2 (2004): 549–57. 2 Susan J. Crockford, “A Commentary on Dog Evolution: Regional Variation, Breed Development and Hybridisation with Wolves,” in Susan Janet Crockford, ed., Dogs through Time: An Archaeological Perspective: Proceedings of the 1st ICAZ Symposium on the History of the Domestic Dog [BAR International Series 889] (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2000), 295–312, esp. 302. 3 Taniguchi Kengo, Inu no Nihonshi: ningen to tomo ni ayunda ichimannen no monogatari (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2012), 18–19.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004328617_015

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used as votive images, perhaps to ensure good hunting.4 (Fig. 13.1) In the Yayoi (c. 300 BCE–300 CE) and Kofun (c. 300–600 CE) periods, dogs accompanied new waves of migrations from north Asia via the Korean peninsula. These people had a different relationship with their dogs, as exemplified by the archaeological evidence that indicates fewer dog burials in general and almost none alongside people. The Yayoi people also used dogs to hunt, but in a new and ritualistic form exemplified in this image, which depicts five dogs encircling a wild boar, while a hunter stands outside the circle and takes aim with a bow and arrow.5 (Fig. 13.2) The image was etched on a ritual bronze bell, suggesting that dogs played a spiritual role in this hunt, perhaps as spirit guides to the hunters.6 In the Kofun period, near-life-sized clay dogs were produced for ritual displays of hundreds of humans and animals on top of the large, mounded tombs of elite rulers. The figures were placed in concentric circles around the tomb mound to replicate the funeral procession and stood in perpetuity to both guard the tomb and pay homage to the deceased. This particular clay dog, with small ears and curled tail, wears a collar with an attached bell (Fig. 13.3). The collar suggests it was a hunting dog, perhaps modeled on one belonging to the deceased, but as bells were part of the shaman’s ritual paraphernalia, the dog may also represent a shamanic assistant or spirit guide who assisted during the funeral. While it is difficult to make a strong case for dogs being involved in divinations or specific shamanistic rituals, as Hoyt Long has done for deer in early Japan, it is reasonable to say that dogs and other animals were treated as creatures of spiritual significance.7 The primary role of dogs in ancient Japan seems to have been as hunters and spirit guides on hunts. Japan’s first mytho-histories, the Kojiki (Record of ancient matters, 712 CE) and Nihon shoki (also Nihongi; Chronicles of Japan, 720 CE), suggest that, by the early eighth century CE, the attitude toward dogs had accumulated new meanings. These texts, the earliest in Japan, were written a couple of centuries after the introduction of Buddhism from the continent. The impact of Buddhist 4 See, for example, a small set from Fujioka Shrine in Tochigi Prefecture of a larger dog-shaped figure with a small group of three young wild boars. 5 This style of hunting, later called inuyama or inuhiki, was used for many centuries throughout the Japanese archipelago. Taniguchi, 20. 6 In Yayoi-period Japan, elite groups controlled bronze production, a complicated and laborintensive process. Bronze bells, likely used as percussive instruments to accompany hunting or planting rituals, were excavated in caches in areas remote from village centers. 7 Hoyt Long, “Grateful Animal or Spiritual Being? Buddhist Gratitude Tales and Changing Conceptions of Deer in Early Japan,” in Gregory M. Pflugfelder and Bret L. Walker, eds., JAPANimals: History and Culture in Japan’s Animal Life (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2005), 21–58.

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Figure 13.1 Clay dog-shaped figurine, Excavated at Fujioka Shrine, Tochigi Prefecture.

Figure 13.2 Diagram of humans and dogs hunting deer drawn after bronze bell. Middle Yayoi (100 BCE–100 CE) Excavated at Sakuragaoka, Hyōgo Prefecture.

views against the killing and consumption of animals is evident in official prohibitions issued by the Japanese sovereigns as early as the seventh century,8 but such decrees had little effect on hunting customs of the royals or the conditions in which dogs lived. Most entries link dogs with scenes of pollution, death, and corpses. White dogs, however, their color marking them as rare and different from other dogs, were viewed as propitious and used exclusively as offerings to rulers and to guard the palace buildings.9 Archaeological evidence suggests that this shift in viewpoint may also be related to the integration of new migrations of people from the area of the Korean peninsula, who brought with them new cultural associations with dogs during the first five or six centuries of the new millennium.10 8

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The earliest edict to “free” living things was issued in 676, but many more were issued in the eighth century and included prohibitions against hunting, fishing, sacrificing of any animal or fish, etc. See W.G. Aston, trans., Nihongi, 2 vols. (1989 reprint, Rutland, VT: Tuttle, 1972), vol. 2, 328–29, 334; and M.W. de Visser, Ancient Buddhism in Japan: Sutras and Ceremonies in Use in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries A.D. and Their History in Later Times, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1935), vol. 1, 204–11. See, for example, The Kojiki: Records of Ancient Matters, trans. Basil Hall Chamberlain (Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1982), 215, and Aston, Nihongi, Part II, p, 116; for white dogs, see Kojiki, 389, and Nihongi, Part II, 32. The earlier gene flow of dogs to Japan had come from Southeast Asia through the Ryukyu Islands to the main islands of Japan (excluding Hokkaido) around 10,000 BCE. Tanabe Yuichi, “The Origin of Japanese Dogs and Their Association with Japanese People,” Zoological Science 8 (1991): 639–51; also Ishiguro Naotaka, Okumura Naohiko, Matsui Akira,

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Figure 13.3 Clay haniwa dog, Tenjin-yama Kofun, Kofun period (ca. 250–538 CE) After image in Gunma Kenritsu Rekishi Hakubutsukan and Gunma Kenritsu Rekishi Hakubutsukan Tomo no Kai, Zusetsu haniwa no hon (Takasaki: Kenritsu Rekishi Hakubutsukan Tomo no Kai, 1996), 70.



Medieval Attitudes toward Dogs

Medieval attitudes toward dogs in Japan coalesced around two different cosmologies: one was associated with Buddhism and the six lower states of existence, and the other with the satoyama (farm village) landscape and animism. The former encompassed royals and commoners alike, while the latter was limited to those living in rural areas outside the capital. In Buddhism, animals occupy one of the six states of existence (“six paths” [of transmigration] rokudō)—the hells, hungry spirits, animals, asuras, humans, and heavenly beings—into which all individuals are reborn upon death according to their karma (based on how they lived this life and previous lives) unless they are fortunate enough to escape these six paths and be reborn in the Western Paradise, where they can reach enlightenment.11 Of the six realms, the animal world was a step up from the hells or the realm of the hungry spirits, but less desirable than the other three possibilities. Those in the realm of animals were thought to be receiving karmic punishment for deeds they had committed in previous lives. Because animals are visible to us in the human realm, we are acutely aware of their suffering—we see that they are often cold, hungry, beaten, and eaten. Buddhist believers understood the lot of dogs in this light. Some embraced their feeding and care in hopes that they would benefit by garnering good karma for these actions and also, perhaps, because they were aware that they, too, had lived in animal bodies in previous lives and might do so again in future rebirths.

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and Shigehara Nobuo, “Molecular Genetic Analysis of Ancient Japanese Dogs,” in Crockford, ed., Dogs through Time, 287–92. Strict Buddhists eschew meat for this reason.

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The cosmology of the satoyama included both the sato (human settlement) and the yama (surrounding hills).12 The farm village (populated by domestic animals, such as dogs, cats, chickens, cows, and horses) was located between the rice fields (inhabited by snakes, frogs, and insects) and the forest at the foot of a hill (dwelling area of foxes, badgers, monkeys, rabbits, wild boar, and snakes). Domestic animals found in villages were used for food, but also performed important tasks for the villagers; cats ate rodents that stole food from humans, and dogs ate waste—food scraps, feces, vomit, and anything else they could find—and were used for hunting. Snakes, frogs, and insects could be eaten, but their small size, importance for the success of the rice crop, and distance from the village meant they were generally left alone. Animals at the foot of the mountain were sometimes glimpsed by villagers, but usually from a distance. Because villagers had little familiarity with them, they retained an element of the frightening and the mysterious. These animals, therefore, are those most commonly mentioned in the folk literature of Japan and often appear in stories as kami.13 The village/mountain cosmology is completed by the seldom-seen, strange forms that lived in the inner recesses of the surrounding mountains—the mountain people (yamabito), mountain ogres (yamanba), and demons (oni)—while the high mountain peaks, which served as gateways to the other world, were guarded by powerful, supernatural beings, such as wizards (sennin), goblins (tengu), heavenly maidens (tennyo), and divine white birds (shiratori). Kami worship was closely connected to rice production and village life. The villagers’ world was one populated by kami that resided in unusual natural formations, such as large, uniquely shaped rocks, ancient or unusually formed trees, singular mountain peaks such as Fuji, spectacular waterfalls, or those that took the forms of animals. The natural formations inhabited by the kami became sacred sites for local worship and the objects of offerings. Dogs and other animals were believed to have spiritual connections to the gods and, 12

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The concept of the satoyama is discussed in Miyake Hitoshi’s “Sōron: kyōdōtai no denshō to kosumolojii,” in Minzoku to girei: sonraku kyōdōtai no seikatsu to shinkō, ed. Miyake Hitoshi [Taikei Bukkyō to Nihonjin 9] (Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1986), 21; see also the discussion in Haruo Shirane, Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons: Nature, Literature, and the Arts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 113–16. The term kami is best left untranslated because its meanings are various; it may refer to “the divine, sacred, spiritual and numinous quality or energy of places and things, deities of imperial and local mythology, spirits of nature and place, divinized heroes, ancestors, rulers and statesmen.” Brian Bocking, A Popular Dictionary of Shinto (Surrey: Curzon Press, 1996), 84–85.

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when inhabited by these spirits, were viewed as guides or messengers of the kami. The animals and supernatural creatures that formed part of the village cosmology seldom appear in court literature or poetry because aristocrats living in the capital city of Kyoto had little interest in and only minimal contact with this landscape. Thus, poetry anthologies and stories written for the ruling class seldom included dogs, choosing rather to focus on more favored pets, notably cats, and animals with poetic associations in Japan, such as songbirds, chirping insects, and deer.14 While dogs formed part of the “background” of court life, they did not figure prominently in daily life, and what courtiers knew about them was, for the most part, unsavory and best ignored—that dogs lived under the verandas of palace buildings, left their droppings in inconvenient places, and kept people awake with their howling at night.15 For the average villager in medieval Japan, however, dogs were part of village life, and were just one of many animals included in written collections of Buddhist-inspired folktales (setsuwa). Embedded in these stories is useful information about certain practices that are seldom illustrated. For example, one such compilation, Konjaku monogatarishū (Anthology of tales from the past, 31 vols.), an anonymous collection of over a thousand stories written down in the early twelfth century, tells us about dogs being raised as food for hawks and other dogs being used for hunting wild boar and deer in various parts of Japan.16 Scholars also know that foot soldiers used the skins from cows and dogs to make their armor, presumably because these hides did not require intensive plucking.17 We can also confirm through both texts and images that dogs lived with hunters and soldiers and wore collars to mark their status, not as “pets” by our modern definition, but as owned and cared for. From the time of the Kamakura shogunate (1185–1333), dogs were killed regularly by members of the military class as shooting practice and for sport. Warriors participated in a practice called inu-ō-mono, where dogs were confined within an enclosure, 14

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Haruo Shirane, Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons, 16. In rare cases, dogs are mentioned as pets. In The Pillow Book (Makura no soshi, eleventh century), for example, dogs are listed under “susamajiki mono” (awful things). Kuroda Hideo, Zōhō: sugata to shigusa no chūsei shi: ezu to emaki no fūkei kara (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2002), 210–11. His information is based on sources such as Kinpi gosho (thirteenth century), a court record, Meigetsuki (Fujiwara no Teika, The Record of the Clear Moon, 1180–1235), and other court diaries and records. Kuroda, 213–14. Kuroda, 215.

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then pursued by warriors on horseback and killed with arrows. The dead dogs were then eaten by the warriors or fed to their prized hawks. Thus, by the beginning of warrior rule in the twelfth century, dogs were viewed as integral to village life and its cycles of poverty, illness, and death and as beings of a lower Buddhist realm. Secondarily, dogs appeared in handscrolls in association with magical or spiritual powers.

Images of Dogs in Illustrated Handscrolls (Twelfth through Fourteenth Centuries)

“Picture scrolls” or emakimono offer important visual evidence to help us “see” the roles dogs played in medieval Japan. Drawn across long horizontal rolls of paper, handscrolls were popular in the medieval period for illustrating stories, primarily accounts of military battles, folk tales, and legends of temples and their famous priests because the long format allowed for lengthy narrations to develop across the pages. Although they were almost always commissioned by wealthy aristocrats or prominent Buddhist temples, handscrolls are also useful for the wealth of information they provide about Japan’s lower classes, who were part of the background fabric of the scroll’s narrative, if not always its main subjects. Indeed, illustrated handscrolls provide much of what we know today about how commoners lived in the medieval period because the literate authors of most written records were court aristocrats and Buddhist priests, who were, for the most part, preoccupied with the events and individuals who peopled their own lives. My research on medieval handscrolls shows that dogs can be found consistently in villages and marketplaces and cemeteries. A smaller, but significant third category is as guides or messengers from the kami or various buddhas. Within the first two locations, dogs fulfilled a plethora of uses: they were eaten for food; their skins were used for armor; they hunted other animals, were hunted themselves, and took part in dog fights; and they were associated with the production and cleanup of various types of waste—food scraps, excrement, vomit, and rotting corpses. A small segment of images suggest that dogs also retained some association with the spiritual, as either messengers or guides of kami or buddhas.

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Villages and Marketplaces

While dogs were ubiquitous in medieval Japan, appearing somewhere in almost every handscroll, most images depict them in villages and marketplaces. Within this broad category, dogs belonging to individuals of higher status and wealth received better care. For example, in Boki ekotoba (Biography of priest Kakunyo, fourteenth century), we see an image of Kakunyo (1271–1351) as a young boy of thirteen studying Tendai Buddhism with an elite priest at the famous Kyoto temple Enryakuji (Fig. 13.4). The high status of the priest’s living quarters is evidenced by the beautiful wall- and sliding-door paintings, hanging scrolls, and flower arrangements, and in the priest’s high-collared black robe, crystal prayer beads, and folded fan. Below the veranda, two well-fed dogs, wearing collars with small bells around their necks, frolic with a small boy. The black-and-white dog has picked up a straw sandal in his mouth, perhaps one belonging to Kakunyo, who turns his head to watch the action. There is every indication that these two dogs belong to someone with the means to care for them, probably the temple priest.18 Another example, also from a priest’s biography, Kōbō daishi gyōjō e (Illustrated biography of monk Kōbō, fourteenth century), shows two dogs, one black and one white, playing in a large garden near an upper class residence where a woman is about to give birth to a child. The clothing worn by the man and woman, the beautiful painted sliding exterior door and the black lacquered shoes on the step indicate that this is a family of high status (Fig. 13.5). The two dogs wear red collars and are well-fed, indicating that they are not strays. A final image in Kasuga gongen genki-e (Illustrated miracles of the Kasuga deities, early fourteenth century) shows a dog waiting patiently on the veranda for the family to finish eating, clearly expecting to receive food (Fig. 13.6). This dog also wears a collar and sits on the veranda, an extension of the interior space, suggesting that the dog is considered part of the family. A tall, lacquered food stand and other lacquered dishes, along with two large hawks that can be seen in the back room, indicate that this was likely the household of a high-ranking military family. In contrast, collarless dogs are found in poorer sections of villages and towns around lower-status individuals. These strays could not depend on anyone for food so they begged and stole scraps whenever they had the opportunity. In Boki ekotoba a large black dog can be seen barking vigorously at warriors 18

I have not used the word “pets” because our current understanding of the term is very different from dogs that were kept by individuals or families in the medieval period.

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hiding behind a wooden shield; a smaller black-and-white female dog and her two pups follow his lead and bark as well (Fig. 13.7). These dogs are thinner and ill-kept, appear more aggressive, and are collarless, suggesting they were dependent on handouts from strangers and fearful of bad treatment by them. More commonly in handscrolls, however, dogs performed the role of “waste cleaners.” Kuroda Hideo comments that this “ecological role” is not unique to Japan, but is also found in other parts of Asia.19 These dogs are strays, do not wear collars, and, because they are not cared for, are forced to eat all manner of human waste. In a scene from Kasuga gongen reigenki-e we see a red-skinned demon of illness (ekiki) hanging over the roof’s edge watching a man racked with the plague and vomiting violently. An emaciated white dog who wears no collar laps up the vomit, while a black dog, also collarless, raises his head and howls (on left, Fig. 13.8). While the image is disturbing, the scene represents what must have been a common sight: anyone who owns a dog knows that they readily eat their own vomit or that of another animal or person. Another scene that exemplifies the role of dogs in cleaning up after illnesses appears in Kōbō daishi gyōjō e, which shows several sick individuals lying under lean-tos in an open field, suggesting they have been segregated from the village because of their illness (Fig. 13.9). One individual is vomiting violently; another is lying on the ground, too weak to move, while another prepares food for those recovering. In the upper left portion of the scene, we see a straw mat with a bloody corpse being gnawed on by a scrawny white dog and a raptor, suggesting that this plague victim has already died, and the dog and bird are facilitating the decomposition of the corpse. Plagues and illness were everyday occurrences in medieval Japan and such scenes vividly highlight the role of dogs (and birds) in picking clean the flesh from the corpse. Buddhism encouraged the interpretation that illnesses and diseases were karmic retribution for people who had been cruel or committed bad deeds,20 and dogs were intimately tied to this negative karma through their role in cleaning up after illnesses. Though gruesome to view, such scenes tell us that dogs played an important role in controlling plagues by cleaning up disease-ridden extrusions and corpses. 19 20

Kuroda, 219. A famous scene titled “Corpulent Woman” from the Scroll of Diseases and Deformities (twelfth century), for example, shows a large woman, supported on both sides, having difficulty walking because of her size. The inscription on the scroll says that this woman had become rich by loaning money at exorbitant rates and, with her ill-gotten affluence, became a glutton who ate too much rich food. Soon she was so heavy that walking became difficult and painful. Not all scenes in this scroll set have karmic messages, so it is difficult to say whether the overall purpose of the scrolls is related to beliefs about the Six Paths.

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Figure 13.4

Two dogs wearing collars, Boki ekotoba, 14th century. After image in Jishun, Boki ekotoba in Zoku Nihon no emaki, vol. 9, ed. Komatsu Shigemi (Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 1990), scroll 1, scene 24; 13.

Stray dogs in medieval Japan lived similarly to beggars and hinin (literally, “nonhumans”),21 and competed with them for food. These groups had no permanent jobs or places to live. The distinction between beggars and hinin is difficult to make because the term was broadly applied in medieval Japan to people suffering from leprosy who were rejected from their communities, as well as to those who had other visible diseases or physical disabilities. Such individuals were shunned by others for their differences and could not get normal employment. Having lost all social and economic privileges, they made 21

The term hinin is used differently in different time periods; see Amino Yoshihiko, Chūsei no hinin to yūjo (Tokyo: Akashi Shoten, 1994), 25–63. In English, see Nagahara Keiji, “The Medieval Origins of the Eta-Hinin,” Journal of Japanese Studies 5, no. 2 (1979): 385–403.

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Figure 13.5

Two dogs playing in garden, Kōbō Daishi gyōjō e, 14th century. After image in Tōji Hōmotsukan, Kōbō Daishi gyōjō emaki no sekai: eien e no hishō (Kyoto: Tōji Hōmotsukan, 2000), scroll 1, scene 1; 10.

Figure 13.6

Dog waiting for food, Kasuga gongen genki-e, 14th century. After image in Takashina Takakane, Kasuga gongen genki-e in Zoku Nihon no emaki, vol. 11, ed. Komatsu Shigemi (Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 1991), scroll 12, scene 7; 85.

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Figure 13.7

Black dog barking at warriors, Boki ekotoba, 14th century. After image in Jishun, Boki ekotoba in Zoku Nihon no emaki, vol. 9, ed. Komatsu Shigemi (Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 1990), scroll 2, scene 16; 21.

their living by performing “impure” jobs, such as tanning hides, transporting corpses, and digging graves—tasks that others refused to do because they were considered to be polluting. The beggars/hinin were then further shunned by normal society out of fear that their involvement with such tasks could pollute people who came in contact with them. Constantly in search of ways to survive and find food, they erected makeshift abodes in dry riverbeds and wherever else they were permitted. On market days they clustered around the outskirts of the markets in hopes of collecting food scraps and offerings; on non-market days, they lived in the empty stalls.22 Nine beggars’ huts can be seen in one scene in the Ippen Hijiri-e (Illustrations of monk holy man Ippen, late thir22

Early medieval markets were held in villages only a few times a year, but by the midfourteenth century, larger commercial towns held markets up to six times a month. Toyoda Takeshi and Sugiyama Hiroshi, with V. Dixon Morris, “The Growth of Commerce

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Figure 13.8

315

White dog lapping up vomit, Kasuga gongen genki-e, 14th century. After image in Takashina Takakane, Kasuga gongen genki-e in Zoku Nihon no emaki, vol. 11, ed. Komatsu Shigemi (Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 1991), scroll 8, scene 4; 50.

teenth century, Fig. 13.10). A black dog lies in front of the hut where someone is cooking, clearly hoping for a handout. An unusual feature of this image is the straw mats seen on the roofs of the lean-tos. People attending the market often left bits of rice and food on these mats as offerings. The giving of donations to the less-fortunate was an important part of Buddhist charity in medieval Japan. Individuals who donated the rice could easily do it on their way to the marketplace (see two figures in lower right). Placing the offering food on the rooftops prevented stray dogs and other four-legged animals from eating it, although the image shows that it was still a struggle to keep away the hungry crows. These images suggest that in medieval Japan, the destitute and polluted occupied the same physical space and vied for the same food as dogs. Indeed, a special group of individuals who worked for Kyoto’s Gion Shrine assisting with funerals were referred to as inu-jinin, or “dog temple people,” indicating their

and the Trades,” in John Whitney Hall and Toyoda Takeshi, eds. Japan in the Muromachi Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 129–44, esp. 134.

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Figure 13.9

Dogs cleaning up after illnesses, Kōbō Daishi gyōjō e, 14th century. After image in Tōji Hōmotsukan, Kōbō Daishi gyōjō emaki no sekai: eien e no hishō (Kyoto: Tōji Hōmotsukan, 2000), scroll 7, scene 5; 78.

low status and also the contempt in which they were held.23 The line between these disenfranchised individuals in the human world and dogs relegated to the animal realm was a fine one, indeed.

Cemeteries

Dogs often appear (along with crows) around decaying corpses in medieval handscroll images. The most famous examples are from Gaki zōshi (Scroll of the hungry ghosts, late twelfth century, Fig. 13.11) and Kūsōzu (Nine stages of 23

Nagahara Keiji, 392. Other groups of hinin had similar associations with specific temples and shrines.

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Figure 13.10 Black dog and beggers’ huts, Ippen hijiri-eden, late 13th century. After image in Shōkai, En’i, Ippen hijiri-eden in Nihon emaki taisei, vol. 27, ed. Komatsu Shigemi (Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 1978), scroll 6, scene 7; 163.

the decaying corpse, fourteenth century, Fig. 13.12). The contents of both of these scrolls reflect Buddhist ideas of death. Gaki zōshi depicts the realm of the hungry spirits, one of the six realms of existence, where those who were greedy in a past life are reborn to work out their avaricious karma. Those in this realm live in our human world but are invisible to us. These emaciated creatures with grossly extended bellies are always hungry, yet they are prohibited from eating anything but waste—corpses, afterbirth, excrement—and food and water offerings left by Buddhist devotees. In the upper left of the scene from Gaki zōshi, a black-and-white dog can be seen pawing at a corpse left lying in an open wooden coffin. Although the manner in which corpses were disposed of in medieval Japan depended on the specific time period and the deceased’s social status, decomposing bodies were a common sight for courtiers and villagers alike. Sovereigns and high ranking members of the royal family were carefully buried or cremated and their remains marked, but the corpses of other elite individuals were often taken to a burial site and left to decompose. (The remains may have been interred later, depending on the deceased’s social status.) Those of commoners, however, were left along roadsides, near rivers, or in fields to decay naturally. While the cemetery scene in Gaki zōshi is focused on the plight of the hungry spirits and their search for things to eat, we can see that dogs were commonly found around graveyards and were competitors for human flesh.

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A more graphic rendition of dogs devouring human flesh appears in Kūsōzu, a set of images that depict the nine stages of the decomposition of a corpse.24 Such images appear in Japan between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries in many forms—poetry, narrative literature, paintings, woodblock prints, and books—and reflect the Buddhist idea that the physical body is a hindrance to enlightenment.25 Serious practitioners of Buddhism often concentrated on such images to help them come to terms with the ephemerality of the human body and the impermanence of human life. Such pictures were used for teaching impermanence to the laity through “picture explaining” (etoki) and display on the day of the Festival of the Dead (obon, on the fifteenth day of the seventh month) to remind Buddhists of their own impermanence.26 The fourteenthcentury Kūsōzu handscroll presents a particularly repulsive scene of dogs and crows tearing at the flesh of a bloated corpse. These dogs are frightening to behold, with bloody, opened mouths, lolling tongues, and sharp teeth. While in other images dogs display little aggression, this wild, starving pack attacks the flesh in a disturbingly violent manner. The image’s purpose is to bring the harsh realities of death front and center, allowing the mind no escape. That stray dogs were so directly involved with corpses intensified the populace’s associations of them with pollution, undoubtedly leading to their further avoidance, while at the same time likely garnering them some goodwill for the job they did in ridding society of corpses and their accompanying pollution.

24

25

26

The Kūsōzu image here is the earliest handscroll of this subject known to date, but an earlier hanging scroll belonging to Shōjuraigōji (thirteenth century) has very similar scenes. As a young boy in India, Siddhartha Gautama (who later became the historical Buddha) saw a sick man, an old man, and a corpse, which led him to seek a path of enlightenment. Buddhists use this story to underline the impermanence of the human body and the consequences of rebirth in the human realm through practiced acceptance of its decay. For a compendium of these images in Japan, see Yamamoto Satomi and Nishiyama Mika, eds., Kūsōzu shiryō shūsei: shitai no jijutsu to bungaku (Tokyo: Iwata Shoin, 2009); in English, see Gail Chin, “The Gender of Buddhist Truth: The Female Corpse in a Group of Japanese Paintings,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 25, nos. 3–4 (1998): 277–317, and Fusae Kanda, “Behind the Sensationalism: Images of a Decaying Corpse in Japanese Buddhist Art,” The Art Bulletin 87, no. 1 (March 2005): 24–49. Chin, 282; Kuroda, 224.

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Figure 13.11

319

Black-and-white dog pawing corpse, Gaki zōshi, late 12th century.

Figure 13.12 Dogs and crows tearing at flesh of corpse, Kūsōzu emaki, 14th century. After image in Yamamoto Satomi and Nishiyama Mika, Kusōzu shiryō shūsei: shitai no bijutsu to bungaku (Tokyo: Iwata Shoin, 2009), 18.

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Temple/Shrine Environs

On occasion, dogs appear in handscrolls as guides or messengers from kami or buddhas. In Kōbō daishi gyōjō e, two dogs, one black and one white, accompany the great Buddhist monk Kūkai, known posthumously as Kōbō Daishi,27 on a pilgrimage to Mt. Kōya (Fig. 13.13). The accompanying text to this scene explains that when Kūkai was in the mountains, the kami Kariba Myōjin appeared before him in the form of an eight-foot-tall giant with a red face and wearing a blue robe. The kami was armed with bows and arrows and accompanied by two hunting dogs, one black and one white. The kami agreed to give Kūkai the mountain for his retreat and, in return, the monk had two shrines constructed for the local mountain kami, Kariba Myōjin and his mother, Niutsu hime no mikoto.28 In the handscroll scene, we can see the priest facing the two dogs with a swirl of white mist behind them that is intended to suggest the formless presence of the kami. Because kami are invisible to humans, dogs are necessary as messengers, negotiating the boundaries between man and gods. Although there are few other clearly identifiable paintings of dogs as the messengers of the gods, many such stories can be found in the literature of the period. Several, for example, appear in the abovementioned Konjaku mono­gatarishū. One is similar to the story of Kōbō Daishi above and involves another famous priest and near-contemporary, Jikaku Daishi,29 who, when forced to flee Kōkechi Castle, prayed to a Yakushi Buddha to help him return safely home. According to the story, a large dog suddenly appeared and led him to a familiar point, then disappeared. The story implies that the dog was sent as a guide by Yakushi Buddha to lead the priest to safety.30 Both this story and the one about Kōbō Daishi can be interpreted as highlighting the special religious powers of the two famous priests by suggesting that neither kami nor buddhas would 27

28

29

30

Kōbō Daishi (774–835), also known as Kūkai, was the founder of the Shingon or “True Word” school of Buddhism. He traveled on a government-sponsored mission to China in 804 and upon his return sponsored the construction of two major temples. It was not uncommon in medieval Japan for Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines to share the same space. Japanese Buddhism and native kami beliefs became intertwined early on through a system called honji suijaku, where the Japanese kami were considered as manifested traces (suijaku) of the original (honji) buddhas. Jikaku Daishi (793– or 794–864) or Ennin, was a famous Tendai priest. He was a nearcontemporary of Kōbō Daishi. He traveled to China on a later mission in 838 and remained there studying Buddhism for nine years before returning to Kyoto to establish the Tendai school of Buddhism. Kuroda, 236.

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Figure 13.13 Black and white dog accompanying Kariba Myōjin, Kōbō Daishi gyōjō e, 14th century. After image in Tōji Hōmotsukan, Kōbō Daishi gyōjō emaki no sekai: eien e no hishō (Kyoto: Tōji Hōmotsukan, 2000), scroll 7, scene 2; 73.

hesitate to come to their aid, or perhaps suggesting that the two priests were able to elicit such assistance through their own immense spiritual powers. In the medieval period, dogs, and in particular white dogs, continued to be thought of as possessing special spiritual powers and were associated with kami. The above text also includes a story about a large white dog that was known to live in the mountains with his human wife. When some villagers tried to kill the dog for this atrocity, it flew away like a bird and disappeared into the recesses of the mountains. A few days later, those who had plotted to kill the dog were found dead. The villagers took this as a sign that the dog must be a kami and made no further attempts to harm it.31

Conclusion

Is it possible to identify specific breeds of dogs depicted in the handscrolls? The short answer is that the artists did not really distinguish between different 31

Kuroda, 236.

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breeds. Indeed, most of the dogs seem to be drawn after a similar model, a common practice for human figures in emaki as well because such figures were intended as part of the narrative rather than specific individuals or creatures. It is likely, therefore, that the dogs in the scrolls were of a type familiar to the artist and not that all dogs looked like these animals. Including even the earliest Jōmon period (c. 1500–300 BCE) clay dogs, the haniwa dogs of the Kofun period (300–600 CE), and all of the dogs in the medieval handscrolls conform to a type: they are short in stature with small, pointed ears and short (usually curly) tails, like the Shiba-inu of today.32 (Fig. 13.14). The colors conform as well, since Shiba can be red, black, tan, or even cream, with white markings on their faces and bodies. The dogs in the handscrolls are white, black, black-andwhite, brown, and brown-and-white, but all fit the color profile of the Shiba. Shiba are an ancient breed in Japan and often said to be native. The American Kennel Club considers them to have descended from the “primitive dogs of the ancient people of Japan.”33 Attitudes toward dogs in medieval Japan seemed to differ by degree, probably dependent on the social status and the wealth of the individual, whether the location was a city or village, and also by a Buddhist belief that dogs inhabited a lower realm of existence and had associations with death pollution. Among all classes, individuals recognized that dogs (and other animals) retained a spiritual connection to the “other world” and could sometimes provide links to the buddhas or kami. These multifarious attitudes produced three distinct categories of dogs that may be identified in the medieval handscrolls I examined: 1) dogs that belong to households, identifiable by their collars; 2) strays that lived in the marginal spaces of society along with other marginal groups—the destitute and outcasts; and 3) dogs that populate stories and legends and act as guides or messengers of kami or buddhas. Although some dogs were cared for by higher status members of society (first category) and another small number were depicted as spirit guides (third category), the majority of the images show dogs in the second category, existing in circumscribed spaces on the margins of the human world with “nonhuman” hinin and the newly deceased—all occupying the same space outside the accepted social norms in medieval Japan. Within the medieval cosmologies outlined above, dogs belonging to households (category 1) seem to fall within the satoyama cosmology, where dogs interacted with humans as domesticated animals. Stray dogs 32

33

According to Taniguchi (p. 16), the archaeological evidence suggests that Jōmon dogs had straight tails and pointed ears, while the dogs that appeared during the Yayoi period had curly tails. .

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Figure 13.14 Modern-day Shiba inu. Author photograph.

(second category), found with beggars and hinin in marginal spaces such as marketplaces and cemeteries, were viewed as playing out their karma in the animal realm of medieval Buddhist cosmology. As such, they fulfilled the role of cleaning up waste and were considered polluted because of it. Finally, dogs that served the buddhas and kami by appearing as messengers or guides to humans in medieval illustrations and literature seem related to the ancient concept of dogs as spirit guides and links to the spiritual world. Kuroda Hideo’s study of dogs and crows has shown that both of these animals fit this profile, with one exception: unlike dogs, crows were never really fed and cared for or marked as owned. While crows can be seen in the illustrations of marketplaces and cemeteries, working in conjunction with dogs to clean away human and other waste, they receive much more attention in literature as messengers or forms of kami. In ancient Japan, crows were associated with rituals related to rice cultivation and New Year’s rituals and even the revival of the dead, while dogs were not involved in such ritual activities.34 Attitudes toward crows today continue to associate them with both “waste cleaning” and kami, but Japan’s current attitudes toward dogs have developed very differently. While crows can commonly be seen in any Japanese city seeking food in garbage bins and parks where people picnic, they concurrently remain important symbols of kami at certain Shinto shrines, such as Kumano Hongū Shrine, where offerings are made to the three-legged crow Yatagarasu, messenger of the shrine’s main kami, Ketsumimiko no Ōkami. Dogs, however, took a different route into modernity, developing their emotional ties with humans and becoming pampered pets, with gourmet food, groomers, and 34

Called karasu kanjō, the rituals involved inviting crows (as forms of the kami) to the first month’s plowing and first cultivation. Kuroda, 234.

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special living spaces within the family residence. It is rare to see a stray dog in Japan today, due in great part to the enactment of laws to eliminate them in the late nineteenth century.35 In medieval Japan, however, dogs and humans were engaged in a different dialogue. Dogs were viewed as involved with humans in their roles as domesticated animals and hunters, but more often as creatures living out their Buddhist karma in the animal realm or as special messengers of the divine. 35

Aaron Skabelund, “Imperialism, Civilization, and Canine Cultures in Nineteenth-Century Japan,” in Pflugfelder and Walker, eds., JAPANimals, 222–23.

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Chapter 14

Dogs in the Identity Formation and Moral Teaching Offered in Some Fifteenth-Century Flemish Manuscript Miniatures John Block Friedman To judge from noble expenditure records and household inventories from the twelfth century onward, the dog has played a vital role in well-regulated and contented medieval domestic material culture, first among the aristocracy and later among the emerging bourgeoisie. In folk tales, poetry, and the visual arts, dogs also played an important role, often serving as models for human behavior either to be avoided or emulated, especially in late medieval Flemish manuscript miniatures. Indeed, by the mid-fifteenth century, so many dogs are shown in council, embassy, feasting, workshop, and book presentation interior scenes in these manuscripts that one wonders why this should be and what the animals’ purpose might have been. The present chapter will examine a small but representative sample of dogs depicted in the interior scenes of Northern European manuscript painting, where artists used them to contribute to the identity formation and assertion of the middle and the upper class. The widespread appearance of dogs in such paintings points to them as objects of material culture that show status in medieval households at the middle and upper reaches of society. With the rise of Flemish realism in manuscript and panel painting, the dog goes along with fireplaces, silver and pewter plate, bedding, and wall hangings to affirm the values of comfort-seeking, emerging urban elites.1

Dog as Mirror and Model

Additionally, dogs often serve a moral purpose in many of these late-medieval manuscript miniatures, counterpointing or heightening certain human traits, 1 See Robert G. Calkins, “Secular Objects and Their Implications in Early Netherlandish Painting,” in Carol Garrett Fisher and Kathleen Scott, eds., Art into Life: Collected Papers from the Kresge Art Museum Medieval Symposia (East Lansing: Michigan University Press, 1995), 183–211.

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both desirable and undesirable, and serving as a gloss on the represented human behavior. Thus, by the mid-twelfth century—somewhat earlier than usually thought—dogs are signifiers with a complex code of differentiation that medieval audiences recognized more easily than we do. By the late Middle Ages, the animal’s primary symbolism of gluttony and lechery appears side by side with its equally powerful connotations of sagacity and feudal loyalty to highlight certain behaviors, in illuminated manuscripts ranging from relatively modest ones made for bourgeois audiences to some of the grand illuminated codices made for the Burgundian Dukes Philip the Good and Charles the Bold. Dogs, of course, are common in medieval manuscript painting of all types. They appear frequently in miniatures of hunting scenes such as those in the Très Riches Heures of Jean de Berry, or in illustrated hunting treatises such as those of Edward, Duke of York and Gaston Phébus, and Henri de Ferrières’ Le Roi Modus, to name only a few.2 These depictions have received much scholarly attention, ranging from an edition of the canine veterinary treatise of Albertus Magnus to the recent study of illustrated falconry and game-hunting books by Baudouin Van den Abeele.3 The present chapter, however, is concerned only with dogs in interior spaces, and focuses on household and court

2 The first of the latter three works is translated literally from the second, Gaston Phébus’ hunting treatise of 1387. See William A. Baillie-Grohman and Florence Baillie-Grohman, eds., The Master of Game by Edward, Second Duke of York (London: Ballantyne, Hanson and Co., 1904). For Phébus, see J. Thiébaud, Bibliographie des ouvrages français sur la chasse (Paris: E. Nourry, 1934), and more recently, Gunnar Tilander, ed., Gaston Phébus. Livre de Chasse [Cynegetica XVIII] (Stockholm: Almqvist och Wiksell, 1971). House and hunting dogs are shown at several points in the Très Riches Heures of Jean de Berry. See Jean Longnon and Raymond Cazelles, eds., The Très Riches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, Musée Condé, Chantilly (New York: Braziller, 1969), plates 6, 9, and 13. For hunting dogs in Gaston Phébus, see Marcel Thomas and François Avril, eds., The Hunting Book of Gaston Phébus (London: Harvey Miller, 1998), folio 13. See also Gunnar Tilander, ed., Les Livres du roy Modus et de la royne Ratio (Paris: SATF, 1932); and Sandrine Pagenot, “Recherches sur l’iconographie profane à la fin du Moyen Age: Les premiers traités de chasse enluminés (Livre du roy Modus et de la royne Ratio de H. De Ferrières-Livre de chasse de Fébus),” Diss. Paris IV, 2009. 3 For Albert’s treatise on canine veterinary medicine De practica canum, see J. Loncke, ed., La “Practica canum”—le “De Cane” d’Albert Le Grand, l’art de soigner les chiens de chasse au moyen âge [Bibliotheca Cynegetica 5] (Nogent le Roi: Librairie des arts et métiers-Editions, 2007). For further studies of canine veterinary treatises, see Baudouin Van den Abeele and J. Loncke, “Les Traités médiévaux sur le soin des chiens: une littérature technique meconnue,” in K. van Horst and L. Falkenstein, eds., Inquirens subtilia diversae—Dietrich Lohrmann zum 65. Geburtstag (Aachen: Shaker Verlag, 2002), 281–96. See also Baudouin Van den Abeele, Texte et image dans les manuscrits de chasse médiévaux (Paris: Bibliothéque nationale de France, 2013).

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dogs that dwell indoors with their owners rather than those found in pastoral or forest hunting scenes. Nobles, clerics,4 scholars,5 and scribes, as well as wealthy merchants, were also depicted frequently with dogs in domestic interiors. Some of the owners have a primarily indoor lifestyle, but others, like the Burgundian dukes, move easily over the liminal doorways of the domestic interiors to battlefields, public processions, forest hunts, tournaments, and the like. For this reason, the high proportion of smaller, but identifiable “outdoor” dogs in these miniatures, such as the small collared greyhound sleeping on a cushion in a courtyard in the Maria de Hoose triptych leaf, is not easily reconciled with Kathleen WalkerMeikle’s claim that “the medieval pet, like its [female, clerical] owners, did not belong to the ‘outdoors’ world, which was the province of secular married men.”6 For our purposes the word pet, following the culture historian Keith Thomas, refers to an animal that is kept indoors, was not eaten and was given a name.7

4 On the keeping of dogs in monasteries and convents, see Kathleen Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2012), 67–72. 5 The dog as an attribute of the scholarly, slightly melancholy life has been well studied by Patrik Reuterswärd, “The Dog in the Humanist’s Study,“ Konsthistorisk tidskrift 50 (1981): 53–69. This is the best general treatment of the iconography and symbolism of dogs in the scholar’s study. The association of dogs and the scholarly life seems to go back to a homily by Basil of Caesarea. See Stanislas Giet, ed. and trans., Homélies sur l’Hexaéméron (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2006), Homily IX.4, 501. 6 Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets, 3. The triptych leaf is that of the Bruges patrician Jan de Witte and his wife, Maria de Hoose, painted in 1473. The leaves are now in Brussels, Musée Royale des Beaux-Arts. See Anne H. van Buren, Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands (New York: The Morgan Library and Museum, 2011), 221, plate 59. 7 Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) makes these three points about pets on 112–15. See also Liliane Bodson, ed., L’Animal de compagnie: ses rôles et leurs motivations au regard de l’histoire (Liège: Université de Liège, 1996); Aubrey Manning and James Serpell, eds., Animals and Human Society: Changing Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 1994); Elizabeth A. Moore and Lynn M. Snyder, Dogs and People in Social, Working, Economic or Symbolic Interaction (Oxford: Oxbow, 2006); R. Thomas, “Perceptions versus Reality: Changing Attitudes towards Pets in Medieval and Post-Medieval England,” in Aleksander Pluskowski, ed., Just Skin and Bones? New Perspectives on Human-Animal Relations in the Historical Past (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2005), 95–104; and E. Fudge, Perceiving Animals: Humans and Beasts in Early Modern English Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000). Covering the period a little later than that treated in this chapter but still very useful is Katharine MacDonogh, Reigning Cats and Dogs: A History of Pets at Court since the Renaissance (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999).

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Walker-Meikle further argues that showing pets in interiors was implicitly a sign that the owner had ample room, food, and staff to care for animals and birds of all sorts. She notes that they “were often symbolic of the possession of luxurious worldly goods, and the manner in which they were kept might demonstrate their owners’ desire to emphasize their elevated social positions and show off their material assets.”8 Though ostentation clearly plays a role in the keeping of pets in the Middle Ages, I should like to suggest a more nuanced approach through identity formation and assertion, which is often shown through names, initials, heraldic arms, and personal mottos on gold ornamented and rich fabric collars. Identity-formation is particularly evident in the anonymous late fourteenthcentury conduct book Menagier de Paris—a work that Robert Calkins aptly calls a “textbook on home economics”9—equating the proper care and happiness of dogs with the ideal young wife’s attention to all aspects of her husband’s well-being as illustrated in the treatise. Dogs abound both outdoors and indoors in the Menagier. For example, just as when the husband comes home from the hunt, the voyage, or business, so it is with dogs coming back from the woods and the hunt, when “a white litter is prepared on the hearth in front of their lord—sometimes the lord himself prepares it—and there by the fire the dogs’ feet are greased with lard. They are given sops and well provided for, in recognition of their labor.”10 Just as the dog plays a role in the “good” household in the Menagier, so many of the dogs found in medieval manuscript miniature interiors have a specific moral or ethical role in the picture. Such dogs, medium-sized and small, sleep in the foregrounds of paintings, curl up on the trains of noble women and on saints’ gowns, stand, sit, roam, or even quarrel with cats and monkeys in presentations of the author to the patron or during courtly embassies. Often, artists highlight by the animals’ posture or behavior some ethical element of the scene that they wish to be foregrounded. The dog’s ethical role is even more clear-cut in feasting and dining miniatures, particularly in those of Valerius Maximus’ Memorable Deeds and Sayings of Philosophers showing good and bad table etiquette in antiquity as models for contemporary dining behavior. 8

9 10

Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets, 3. A more fully theorized discussion is that of Aleksander Pluskowski, Breaking and Shaping Beastly Bodies: Animals as Material Culture in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxbow, 2007). Calkins, “Secular Objects and Their Implications in Early Netherlandish Painting,” 200. Gina L. Greco and Christine M. Rose, trans., The Good Wife’s Guide (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), I, vii, 140–41. All quotations from the Menagier are from this edition.

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Here, these indoor dogs are admonitory, bringing with them a long-established significance from outside the picture, and miming conduct to avoid, such as greed, gluttony, and lechery, typically associated with dogs. Insofar as they are recognizable breeds, the dogs in the miniatures of interest here are of two main types, the greyhound, short-haired, sleek, and long-tailed, usually more on the whippet pattern, most often grayish-white. This greyhound is extolled by Albert the Great in one of the earliest descriptions of the breed and, because we will see several, it is worth using Albert’s words to help us to visualize them: The best of these [greyhounds] have long, flat heads that are not enormous, their ears are small and pointed backward into a point, and the upper lip does not hang down over the lower one unless it is very little. It has a long neck that swells a bit to a size a little larger than the head at the spot where it is joined to the head. It has a massive chest that is well pointed below, long and strong ribs, narrow flanks, a tail that is neither thick nor very long, and tall legs that are thin rather than fat.11 The second type is the lapdog of the Maltese breed, also white. Walker-Meikle identifies this dog as a specific breed from the Isle of Malta, a form of Bichon, a “small snub-nosed long-haired (usually white) Melitaean.”12 As we will see, the lapdog appears as a recognizable figure in the thirteenthcentury encyclopedia De natura rerum by Thomas of Cantimpré. Thomas classifies breeds by size and the smallest is associated with the wealthiest owners. He writes, “sunt et minutissimi caniculi, quod matrone nobiles in sinibus

11

12

Kenneth F. Kitchell, Jr. and Irven Michael Resnick, trans., Albertus Magnus on Animals. A Medieval Summa Zoologica (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), Vol. II, Book 22, Ch. 16, 1459. On the motif of the loyal greyhound who drinks the love potion along with his master in Tristan, see Albrecht Classen, “The Dog in German Courtly Literature: The Mystical, the Magical, and the Loyal Animal,” in Sieglinde Hartmann, ed., Fauna and Flora in the Middle Ages: Studies of the Medieval Environment and Its Impact on the Human Mind (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2007), 69–72, and Jean-Claude Schmitt, The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, Healer of Children since the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge and Paris: Cambridge University Press and Éditions de la maison des sciences de l’homme, 1983). See also Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets, 5–6. For the smaller Italian greyhound or whippet-sized animal, see M.L. Incontri, Il piccolo levriero italiano nell’arte e nella storia (Florence: Sansoni, 1956). Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets, 5.

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suis portant” (“these are the smallest dogs, that wealthy matrons bear at their bosoms”).13 As with many other features of the domestic world, images of dogs in domestic contexts enter into the art of the medieval manuscript by way of the Labors of the Months from the calendars in books of hours and independently in wall painting or church façade sculpture. The Labors, so well-studied by Bridget Ann Henisch,14 largely depict tasks performed outdoors by peasants throughout the year. January’s labor, however, is generally shown as an indoor feasting scene that is crucial in the identity formation of the miniature’s subjects. It usually presents a householder of the middle class or, in the case of the Très Riches Heures of Jean de Berry, a member of the highest nobility, enjoying his wealth and status and personal comfort in a celebration of his joie de vivre. The French poet Colin Muset (1210–1250) described this mood in a lyric often set to music: “Quand je vois l’hiver revenir” “When I see the winter returning, then I want to take my ease, and stay in front of a good fire …”15 Some early examples of the January feast from the Labors of the Months show dogs in domestic interiors, enjoying the same comforts as their master and even, in the Très Riches Heures and Grimani Breviary, having their own well-rewarded roles in feudal society and being fed by their own servants. In their treatment, and often by the liverylike character of their collars and torso garments, these dogs are virtually indistinguishable in status from human members of the household.16 13 14

15

16

See Helmut Boese, ed., De natura rerum von Thomas Cantimpratensis (Berlin: W. De Gruyter, 1973), Book 4, Ch. 13, 115. Older studies of this theme include Rosemund Tuve, Seasons and Months: Studies in a Tradition of Middle English Poetry (Paris: Librairie Universitaire, 1933); James C. Webster, The Labors of the Months (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1938); Derek Pearsall and Elizabeth Salter, Landscapes and Seasons of the Medieval World (London: Elek, 1973); and more recently, Bridget Ann Henisch, The Medieval Calendar Year (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999). The song is anonymous in its unique manuscript source, but style and theme, as well as provenance, have led scholars to attribute it to Muset. See Christopher Callahan and Samuel N. Rosenberg, eds., Les chansons de Colin Muset: Textes et Melodies (Paris: H. Champion, 2005), No. 19, incipit “Quant je lou tans refroidier,” 198-–202. The January feasting scene from the Très Riches Heures shows two of the Duke’s small dogs on the table eating from a dish, while on the floor at right a crouching white greyhound with a wide red-and-gold studded collar is being fed by its personal servant. See Jean Longnon and Raymond Cazelles, eds., The Très Riches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry (New York: George Braziller, 1969), plate 1. See also Paul Durrieu, “Les petits chiens du duc Jean de Berry,” Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Comptes rendus 53 (1909): 866– 75. The January calendar page for the Grimani Breviary is, in composition, closer to the

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A somewhat comic rendition of such care for dogs that aroused the ire of its domestic competitor, the horse, is presented in Jean Froissart’s “Debate between the Horse and the Greyhound.” Each animal claims the other has the better life, but the horse laments: Would to God I were a dog As you are naturally! Then I’d have bread and butter In the morning and rich soup! I know well enough what he feeds you on: If he had only one decent morsel You’d get your part into your muzzle.17 From all available evidence, then, these artistic and literary critiques of dogs as cosseted domestic companions that are dependent on humans reflect an ongoing medieval reality. Thomas of Cantimpré, for example, codified this interdependence, making the dog’s need for human engagement a necessary characteristic of its nature. In his encyclopedia, he observes: “dixerunt plurimi canem non posse vivere nisi inter homines eumque furiis agitari, si extra habi-

17

traditional January “labor,” as it shows the lord with his back to a blazing fire in a hearth. The care of dogs dominates the foreground of this scene. See Walter S. Gibson’s essay in this volume, Fig. 15.1. At left, a falconer with his bird on his wrist offers food to a spaniel, and at right, a servant cuts up bread for a large white greyhound with a gold-belled collar. That this dog is clearly a full-sized hunting dog suggests that Walker-Meikle is not correct in associating such belled collars only with indoor lapdogs. See Ross King et al., The Grimani Breviary Reproduced from the Illuminated Manuscript Belonging to the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice (Delray Beach, FL: Levenger, 2007), facsimile folio 1v. For this work, see Horst Wolf, Die Meister des Breviarium Grimani (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1982). For Le Debat dou cheval et dou levrier, see Kristen M. Figg and R. Barton Palmer, eds. and trans., Jean Froissart, An Anthology of Narrative and Lyric Poetry (New York: Routledge, 2001), 459. For her study of this poem in relation to medieval pets generally, see Kristen Figg, “Froissart’s ‘Debate of the Horse and the Greyhound’: Companion Animals and Signs of Social Status in the Fourteenth Century,” in Timothy S. Jones and David A. Sprunger, eds., Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imagination (Kalamazoo, MI: The Medieval Institute, 2002), 85–107. That the horse was not far off in his claims is shown by the entry for “soupe de levrier” made of coarse brown bread moistened with the “last and worst” fat of the beef pot: Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (London: printed by W.H. for Humphrey Robinson, 1650).

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tationem hominum sit” (“some say that the dog cannot live apart from men and is driven to madness if it be outside of human habitation”).18 Not only did medieval people wish to have their dogs with them in daily life, but also as part of their identity in the life to come. In an extreme case, Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmorland (1364–1425) seems actually to have had his greyhound buried with him in his tomb in the collegiate church of Saint Mary at Staindrop.19 More usually, dogs illustrate how the owners wish to be pictured in the afterlife, as for example when they are depicted together on funeral brasses and tomb effigies. Typically, tombs of well-to-do women include small Maltese lapdogs, while on the tombs and brasses of men, a hound is found as a symbol of loyalty.20 Dogs appear as standard features of noble identity on the painted limestone funeral effigies of the counts of Ermengoll from Lerida in Catalonia now in the Cloisters in New York City. For example, on one such effigy, of the very young Ermengoll IX, Count of Urgell, who died in 1243, the child’s feet rest on a small lapdog with a heavily belled collar.21 That such dogs may be intended to represent actual animals recognizable to those who knew and mourned their owners is clear because some of them had their names carved on their collars. In England, for instance, the simple name “Jakke” is inscribed on the collar of the dog shown in the effigy of Sir Brian de Stapleton at Inham, Norfolk (c. 1448), and on a French tomb we find the more fanciful names Parceval for the dog of 18 19 20 21

See Boese, ed., De natura rerum von Thomas Cantimpratensis, Book 4, Ch. 13, 115. See James Raine, ed., Testamenta Eboracensia [Surtees Society Volumes 4, 30, 45, 53, 79, 106] (Durham: Surtees Society, 1865), III, 255n. This subject is treated at length by Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets, 75. Additionally, see essays in this volume by Sophie Oosterwijk, Janet Snyder, and Donna L. Sadler. This tomb is in the Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art Accession number 1975.129. See , accessed September 25, 2015. A funerary brass of Robert and Clarice de Freville in Little Shelford, Cambridgeshire, of circa 1400, shows Robert in armor with a hound while Clarice’s little dog rests in the folds of her gown. See Herbert Walker Macklin, Macklin’s Monumental Brasses Including a Bibliography, Rewritten by John Page-Phillips (London: Allen and Unwin, 1972), no. 95. A similar brass of an unnamed Northampton couple shows the man with hound and wife with two small dogs, no. 71. An unusual example of an effigy of a girl with a greyhound at her feet appears on an enameled double tomb in a niche made for the children of King Louis IX, Blanche and Jean. In a wall painting to the rear of the tomb, Jean stands, his feet also resting on a greyhound; he bears a falcon on his wrist. Since 1791 the tomb has been in Saint-Denis. I owe this reference to the kindness of Jacqueline Leclercq-Marx. See for a reproduction, Kurt Bauch, Das Mittelalterliche Grabild. figürliche Grabmäler des 11.–15. Jahrhunderts in Europa (Berlin: W. De Gruyter, 1976), fig. 253.

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Jehan de Seure (d. 1391), and Dyamant on the collar of his wife’s dog at what is now the church of Aubepierre Ozouer-le-Repos (Seine-et-Marne).22 Moreover, that a specific dog could be important enough in the owner’s life to appear in several different artistic representations is clear from the various depictions of Mary of Burgundy (d. 1482) with her favorite dog, who seems to have worn a collar with golden bells on it. For example, her gilt effigy in the Church of Notre Dame, Bruges, shows her with two dogs at her feet, one of which is apparently the same animal she holds in a glass panel of around 1500 in the Bruges Chapel of the Holy Blood. This dog also appears in her portrait in the book of hours now known as the Hours of Mary of Burgundy, produced between 1467–80 by the Bening workshop.23 A particularly interesting and little-known instance of a named dog occurs in an English manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson D. 939) made for the use of a manorial official, a Hayward in the Worcester area, in 1389. The owner, whose name was Harry, had a belt book that included a calendar with astrological and prognostic lore. The cover featured his portrait and that of his dog Talbat, who is named and shown attached to him with a leash.24 The earliest example known to me of a dog and man shown together as a symbol of the ideal household and with a shared domestic identity occurs in an illuminated January scene from the Cistercian Bonmont Psalter (Upper Rhenish), from the Diocese of Bâle, painted about 1260. (Fig. 14.1) A man warms 22

23

24

For Jakke, see “On Certain Rare Monumental Effigies,” Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Association 25 (1902): 99. Parceval and Dyamant are mentioned in Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets, 77 and n. 9, 143. See also the funerary brass of Pierre de Bouillé reproduced by Bauch, Das Mittelalterliche Grabild, 121, fig. 187. I owe this reference to the kindness of Jacqueline Leclercq-Marx. On the Bruges tomb, see A.M. Roberts, “The Chronology and Political Significance of the Tomb of Mary of Burgundy,” The Art Bulletin 71, no. 3 (1989): 376–400. The Bening Hours are now in Vienna, Österrichische Nationalbibliothek MS 1857, folio 14v. The miniature is very widely published, but a convenient reproduction is found in Georges Dogaer, Flemish Manuscript Painting in the 15th and 16th Centuries (Amsterdam: B.M. Israel, 1987), pl. 14. The glass panel now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Inv. no. C.439-1918) is reproduced by Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets, plate IV. On the whole manuscript, see Jonathan J.G. Alexander, The Master of Mary of Burgundy: A Book of Hours for Engelbert of Nassau (New York: George Braziller, 1970), folio 14v; and the late Anne H. van Buren, “The Master of Mary of Burgundy and His Colleagues: The State of Research and Questions of Method,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 38 (1975): 286–309. For full discussion and reproduction of the “Talbat” cover, see John Block Friedman, “Harry the Haywarde and Talbat His Dog: An Illustrated Girdlebook from Worcestershire,” in Fisher and Scott, eds., Art into Life: Collected Papers from the Kresge Art Museum Medieval Symposia (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995), 115–53.

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Figure 14.1

Dog in domestic interior. January labor, Cistercian Psalter, called Bonmont, upper Rhenish, from the Diocese of Bâle. Besançon, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 54, folio 6v, ca. 1260. Courtesy Bibliothèque Municipale, Besançon.

his foot before a fire, while a dog is curled up next to him, apparently not as interested in the heat as is the cat.25 From the mid-thirteenth century onward, it appears that the dog was starting to be considered a necessary accessory for all classes and both genders, from the humble widow of Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale to the enormously wealthy Jean, Duke of Berry. That the dog had become a vital “accessory to living” by the later Middle Ages is evident by the fact that it had acquired “proverbial” status. Dogs begin to appear frequently in proverb and maxim collections, often with the unambiguous significance of “lie down with dogs and you get up with fleas.” One artist, however, includes in a proverb about the “bonne maison” an illustration of a dog whose connotation is clearly positive. This was created for a littleknown picture book, the Proverbes en Rimes, probably made for a bourgeois commissioner in the Duchy of Savoy in the 1490s (Fig. 14.2). Now in the Walters Art Gallery, and the earliest of the four extant manuscripts and fragments of

25

This manuscript is now in the Besançon Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 54, folio 6v. The miniature is published by and briefly discussed by Jacques Dalarun et al., Le Moyen Âge en lumière (Paris: Fayard, 2002), fig. 21, 79.

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Figure 14.2

Dog in domestic interior. Proverbes en Rimes, Proverb no. 144. Baltimore, MD, Walters Art Museum MS W. 313, folio 86v. 1490. Courtesy Walters Art Museum.

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the work, this book offers an interesting window on the role of dogs in bourgeois households.26 The Walters manuscript uses the interrelation of text, short verse proverbs, and simple pen-drawn miniatures to make various moral and ethical points. These pictures employ iconographic features similar to motifs found in playing cards and the woodcuts and engravings of the various Northern European printmakers active at the time. Thus, the fifteenth-century Proverbes en Rimes and similar works such as the earlier Le Proverbes au vilain were important for the transmission into popular culture of conventional iconographic topoi, not only for manuscripts and print media, but also for tapestry and stained-glass makers. Indeed, one manuscript of Henri Baude’s illustrated proverb collection acknowledges this function, saying the work has “bons dictz moraulx pour tapis ou verrieres de fenestres,” which, in fact, came to be the case.27 One of the Walters manuscript proverbs, number 144, concerns the “bonne maison” or idealized household like that imagined by the Menagier de Paris. The miniature shows an interior divided in two with a double arch leading into a living space with a working fireplace with andirons, and a side table with plates and a ewer. Bridging the space between these two areas is a collared spaniel who comes at the bidding of the homeowner in the right-hand entranceway. The homeowner bears a falcon on his wrist (falconry was an important feature of the Menagier de Paris); he is fashionably dressed in hose and a short pleated and dagged jerkin. Such decorative dress was often associ26

27

This collection is in Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery MS W. 313, proverb no. 144, folio 86v. See Grace Frank and Dorothy Miner, eds., The Proverbes en Rimes (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1937).The quotations come from pp. 4 and 8. For commentary and discussion of the manuscript’s origins, which has generally been agreed on as from Savoy, not Lyon as Frank and Miner suggested, see Jean-Michel Massing, “Proverbial Wisdom and Social Criticism: Two New Pages from the Walters Art Gallery’s Proverbes en Rimes,” The Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 46 (1983): 208–10; Calkins, “Secular Objects and their Implications,” 200; and Emmanuelle Rassart-Eekhout, “Proverbes en rimes et Proverbes illustrés. Invitation à une lecture mixte à la fin du XVe siècle,” in Jean-Louis Tilleuil, ed., Théories et lectures de la relation image-texte (Cortil-Wodon: E.M.E., 2005), 121–36. For the tradition generally and the Vilain collection specifically, see Marie-Thérèse Lorcin, Les recueils de proverbes français: 1160–1490. Sagesse des nations et langue de bois [Collection Essais Sur Le Moyen-Age, no. 50160] (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2010), and John C. Bednar, Le Proverbe au Vilain: A Critical Edition (New Orleans: University Press of the South, 2001). For Baude, see Jean-Loup Lemaître, Dictz moraulx pour faire tapisserie: dessins du Musée Condé et de la Bibliothèque nationale (Ussel: Musée du pays d’Ussel and Paris: Boccard, 1988), exhibition catalog.

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ated with the socially ambitious bourgeoisie in medieval laments on the abuses of the times.28 The title of the proverb is “Une homme de fasson,” and the text reads “Quant ung homme estrangier / Entre en une maison / Pour voir se ostellier / Est homme de fasson / Sans demander son nom / Congnoistra le mistre. / A la case puet on / Congnoistre le messere” (“When a stranger or guest enters a house in order to see if the host is a man of fashion, without asking his name, he will know the master. And by his domestic circumstances he will recognize the good sir bourgeois” [for what he is]). The miniature shows the man of fashion at home with spacious quarters suggested by the double archway, crackling fire, food and drink, and obedient dog and falcon. The imagined guest coming to visit will know at once the worth of the host by these surroundings. He will not need the name, which would indicate class at this period, to recognize the contents of the home as a sign of the host’s achievements. Thus, the proverb, playing off the words “mistre” and “messere,” expresses and asserts the owner’s status, identity, and power over objects of material culture such as the very prominent spaniel and falcon who he manages.

Sin and Satire

Dogs generally form an important part of the household decor in medieval manuscript miniatures as well as appearing in other forms of decorative and memorial arts for some of the reasons just suggested. In a goodly number of medieval manuscript miniatures, however, dogs have a rather more complex moral and ethical purpose. They serve to modify in some way the behavior of the persons shown in the picture, or to indicate that the persons represented fulfill a widely understood role. In the art of domestic interiors of interest here, the dogs’ moral and ethical role derives from two quite different traditions, known to the artists, directly or by cultural hearsay. They are of equal antiquity and have been much studied.29 28

29

For satirical treatments of dagged dress as a sign of class transgression, see John Block Friedman, “The Iconography of Dagged Clothing and its Reception by Moralist Writers,” in Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, eds., Medieval Clothing and Textiles, Vol. 9 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2013), 121–38. See S. Menache, “Dogs: God’s Worst Enemy?” Society and Animals 5, no. 1 (1997): 23–44 (who gathers Biblical and rabbinic citations hostile to dogs); the same author’s “Dogs and Human Beings: A Story of Friendship,” Society and Animals 6, no. 1 (1998): 67–86; and A. Smets, “L’Image ambigüe du chien à travers la littérature didactique latine et français

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One of these traditions, deriving largely from actual observation of canine behavior, excoriates the dog for its gluttony, envy, selfishness, and lechery. The other, rather anthropomorphic perspective extols canine loyalty to humans, the sagacity of its intellect, and its protectiveness of the home. This more positive and sentimentalized view appears in narratives of classical antiquity and widely throughout medieval natural history and literature. Both views are invoked in the domestic interior scenes I discuss below, where they are often combined in surprising ways. The dog’s bad reputation is widespread in both the Old and New Testaments. As Irven M. Reznick notes, the most widely commented on of these passages in the Vulgate are Isaiah 56.11, “greedy dogs who can never be satisfied”; Psalms 21.17, ”for dogs have compassed me,” interpreted as the Jews tormenting Jesus, and 21.21, “[deliver my soul] from the hand of the dog”; Proverbs 26.11, “a dog returns to his vomit and a fool returns to his folly”; Matthew 7.6, “give not that which is holy to dogs”; Philippians 3.2, “beware of dogs”; and Revelation 22.15, [outside the walls of the city] are “dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers.”30 Simple observations of canine behavior become ethical paradigms. From these and similar passages the dog gained Biblical authority as a symbol of torment, worldly folly, and especially gluttony associated with the table. This last negative perception of dogs occurs widely in medieval encyclopediae in the

30

(XII–XIV siècles),” Reinardus 14 (2001): 243–53. For the direct connection of the dog with the devil and with Jews, see Barbara Allen Woods, “The Devil in Dog Form,” Western Folklore 13, no. 4 (1954): 229–35, and the same author’s The Devil in Dog Form: A Partial TypeIndex of the Devil Legends (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959); Barbara Newman, ed. and trans., Thomas of Cantimpré, The Collected Saints’ Lives (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 104, where the devil takes the guise of a lapdog permanently on the bed of the wife of a usurer; and Kenneth Stow, Jewish Dogs: An Image and Its Interpreters (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006). Many of these Biblical passages were glossed in Middle English exempla collections, bringing such unfavorable dog lore into wide circulation. For instance, the dog returning to its vomit from Proverbs is used in a sermon collection, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Greaves 54, folio 118r and E.H. Weatherly, ed., Speculum Sacerdotale EETS: OS 182 (New York: Kraus, 1971), 60; and Sidney J.H. Herrtage, ed., Gesta Romanorum, EETS: ES 33 (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 443. For “dogs that have compassed me,” James Morton, ed., Ancrene Riwle (London: Camden Society, 1853), 324; and “deliver my soul from the hand of the dog [of Hell],” Ancrene Riwle, 290. For many other examples, see Nancy Fischer, “Handlist of Animal References in Middle English Religious Prose,” Leeds Studies in English 4 (1970): 49–110, for the dog, and the greyhound as symbolizing excessive love of hunting and greediness. See, most recently, on Biblical and Midrashic views of the dog, Irven M. Resnick, “Good Dog/Bad Dog,” Enarratio: Publications of the Medieval Association of the Midwest 18 (2013): 70–84.

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chapters pertaining to them, mixed with the more idealized aspects of their loyal and protective behavior. Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s very popular encyclopedia, De Proprietatibus Rerum (c. 1240), in an otherwise laudatory treatment in the chapter, points to the animal’s supposed envy and selfishness relating to food. The dog haþ enue and he is wel sory if eny straunge houndes and vnknowe come into þe place þere he woneth. And dredeþ lest he schulde fare þe wors for þe obere houndes presence and fighteþ wiþ him before.31 Similarly, in the Fasciculus Morum, a fourteenth-century preacher’s handbook, speaking of gluttony the compiler openly moralizes the dog, taking off from Isaiah 56.11, “they are greedy dogs who can never be satisfied,” and giving as a canine defining characteristic a “disease called bolismus, a dog-like appetite which hardly ever gets quenched.”32 This passage seems to rely on Bartho­ lomaeus Anglicus’ remark that “houndes haueþ oþere propretees þat beeþ nought ful goode: for houndes haueþ continual bolysme, þat is ‘immoderate appetit’ …” Such exemplary claims turn up in a great many sermons or moral works and were so widely known both to artists and their audiences that they hardly merited comment.33 Thus, we find in the early medieval period a topos of the dog’s powerful connection with appetite broadly understood that continues into Renaissance art and literature. Associated with it is an equally pejorative view of dogs held by medieval moralists as symbolizing vanity and worldliness, perhaps derived originally from the passage in Revelation just mentioned, but also from their connection with the hunting activities of the aristocracy and with dissolute clergy, as with Chaucer’s hunting Monk in the Canterbury Tales and his many “greyhoundes … as swift as fowel in flight,” and the small “houndes” of the Prioress fed on fine white bread.34 31

32

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M.C. Seymour, ed., On the Properties of Things: John of Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), Vol. II, Book XVIII, Ch. xxvii, 1170. Siegfried Wenzel, ed. and trans., Fasciculus Morum: A Fourteenth-Century Preacher’s Handbook (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989), Pars VI, De Gula, 637. Seymour, ed., On the Properties of Things, Vol. II, Book XVIII, De canibus, Ch. xxvii, 1169. The passages in question of the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales relating to the Prioress are ll. 146–47 and to the Monk ll, 190–91. See Larry Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1987). See also Oliver Farrar Emerson, “Chaucer and Medieval Hunting,” Romanic Review 13 (1922): 115–50, reprinted in A Selection from the

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Along with gluttony and vanity, again from simple observation, medieval encyclopedists and moralists also associated the dog with casual and indiscriminate sexuality in several exempla on lechery. For instance, the author of the Fasciculus Morum reported that a lecherous man copulated with his lover on the feast of All Saints; both were strangled by devils, and “on the following day they were found … joined together like a couple of dogs, horrible to see and to smell.”35 Bartholomaeus also gives a touch of anthropomorphic moralism to his comments on canine sexuality: Also he [the dog] is vnclene and lecherous. And so … Aristotile seiþ þat houndes boþe male and female vseþ leccherie as longe as þay ben on lyve. And ȝiueth hem to vnclennesse of lechery as longe as þay takeþ no dyuersite bytwene moder and suster and oþere bicches, touchinge þe dede of leccherie.36 This being said, another, more favorable treatment of dogs in medieval art— from humble misericord carving to the most exquisite miniatures in princely books—derives from the circumstances of medieval daily life and from constant human-canine interaction. It is especially evident in courtly manuscripts of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, where dogs often symbolize domestic and feudal loyalty. For the dog was thought to be far more feudal than the cat, understanding the complex medieval system of rights and obligations and adhering to them.

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Writings of Oliver Farrar Emerson, 1860–1927 (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1970), 320–77; and Rudolph Willard, “Chaucer’s ‘Text that Seith That Hunters Ben Nat Hooly Men,’” Studies in English 26 (1947): 209–51. On the Prioress’s dogs and their food, see Florence H. Ridley, The Prioress and the Critics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965); John M. Steadman, “The Prioress’ Dogs and Benedictine Discipline,” Modern Philology 54 (1956–1957): 1–6; Richard Rex, “The Sins of Madame Eglentyne” and Other Essays on Chaucer (Newark, DE: Associated University Presses, 1995), 95–169; and Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets, 41–42. Oddly, Walker-Meikle does not discuss the Monk’s greyhounds. Such satiric treatments clearly reflected the realities of medieval life that show large sums spent on the care and feeding of dogs from an early period. For example, the household account entries of Eleanor de Montfort, Countess of Leicester, 1258–1282, show her chamberlain buying milk for her dogs, which lived in her room. See T.H. Turner, Manners and Household Expenses of England in the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (London: W. Nicol, 1841), 8, 57. See also Margaret Wade Labarge, A Baronial Household of the Thirteenth Century (Totawa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1980), Ch. 10. Wenzel, ed. and trans., Fasciculus Morum, Pars VII, xv, 695. Seymour, ed., On the Properties of Things, Vol. II, Book XVIII, De canibus, Ch xxvii, 1170.

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Most of the medieval encyclopedia entries on dogs begin by citing their quality of loyalty to a master, basing this on antique legends. For example, Thomas of Cantimpré, in his De natura rerum, opens his entry on dogs by remarking that they love their lord better than themselves,37 as does Albert the Great in his De animalibus, writing, “[The dog] is an animal that is faithful to its master to the extent that when the master is dead, it is separated from him with difficulty and it sometimes undergoes death for its master.”38 When trying to understand the significance of these two equally powerful and long-lived but diametrically opposed views of dogs in courtly medieval manuscript illustration, it is vital to look at context. In a complex altarpiece for example, a dog can on one wing symbolize the Jews tormenting Christ, as in Psalms 21.17, 39 and on another can stand for loyalty.

Dogs as Bad Examples

I should like to consider first certain negative treatments of dogs in some medieval miniatures where their presence seems intended to comment on human behavior and to serve a moralizing purpose. Dogs were often associated with human vanity in moral or allegorical contexts such as the Vanity or Distractibility of Youth, and in scenes of good and bad or gluttonous table manners. Let us examine a few of these uses before turning to the way dogs serve to comment on human behavior in courtly feudal contexts. In the allegorical mid-fifteenth century Horloge of Sapience, attributed to Henry Suso,40 (Fig. 14.3) a miniature shows Youth in Dalliance, conceived as a fashionably dressed man in short jerkin, hose, and poulaines or long-pointed 37 38

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40

See Boese, ed., De natura rerum von Thomas Cantimpratensis, Book 4, Ch. 13, 114. Kitchell and Resnick, trans., Albertus Magnus on Animals, Book 22, Ch. 16, 1457. A typical version of the legend occurs in the Menagier de Paris, which tells the story of a dog fighting the murderer of his master, one Macaire, who, in 1371, killed Aubrey de Montdidier. When King Charles V ordered a trial by combat, the dog won and the murderer Macaire was hanged. See Greco and Rose, eds. and trans., The Good Wife’s Guide, 1.5.29, 102. This story, or its variants, is widely repeated in the Middle Ages. See Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets, 9–10, for further instances. See James Marrow, “‘Circumdederunt mei canes multi’: Christ’s Tormentors in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance,” The Art Bulletin 59, no. 2 (June 1977): 167–81. See Peter Rolfe Monks, ed. and trans., The Brussels Horloge de Sapience: Iconography and Text of Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, MS. IV III [Litterae textuales] (Leiden: Brill, 1990), folio 16v, IVa, called “Youth in Dalliance.” The rubric reads “Firstly … is depicted how the

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Figure 14.3 Young gallant with symbols of vanity including dogs. Henry Suso, Horloge of Sapience, Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, MS IV.111, folio 16v, 1455–1460. Courtesy Bibliothèque Royale.

shoes. Like the Man of Fashion in the Proverbes en rimes, he holds a hawk and is surrounded by typical symbols of vanity and worldliness such as harps and other musical instruments. At lower right are two dogs, a white greyhound with a collar and a black spaniel puppy. These dogs, the muscular and lean, usually white, outdoor sight hound who courses for hares and other game, and an indoor spaniel like the one in the Proverbes en rimes, appear in several of the scenes discussed here. While not primary among the Youth’s distractions, these dogs contribute to his failure to heed his moral and philosophic wellbeing. The hound, in particular, suggests the vanities of the outer world and the spaniel those associated with an indoor courtly life. A more comic depiction of the association of dogs with folly and worldly distraction (Fig. 14.4) appears in a miniature for Aelius Donatus’s Grammatica, youth in the prime of life was given to the vanities and sensuous pleasures of the world until receiving the revelation of Divine Sapientia.” 140.

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painted in 1496–99 by the Milanese artist Giovanni Pietro da Birago for Maximilian Sforza. It depicts a typical Renaissance schoolroom with a master teaching while being fanned by a dwarf in the particolored hose commonly worn by fools and entertainers. Though the young enthroned Maximilian Sforza concentrates on his schoolwork, his fellow students play with a pet bird and another student, in the foreground, has dropped his book to toy with a greyhound, indicating his distraction from his lessons.41 The fabled gluttony and lechery of dogs is a common moral theme in manuscript painting. In illustrated late medieval manuscripts of Valerius Maximus’s Memorable Deeds and Sayings of Philosophers, a collection of exemplary Roman historical anecdotes composed in nine books during the reign of the emperor Tiberius and used to teach rhetoric, a frequent pictorial motif is that of the author explaining to the Emperor the moral and cultural significance of a dining or bathing scene.42 This enormously popular work exists in sixty-three 41

42

This manuscript is now in Milan, Biblioteca Trivulziana MS 2167, folio 13v. The miniature is published by and briefly discussed by Ingo F. Walther and Norbert Wolf, Codices Illustres: The World’s Most Famous Illuminated Manuscripts 400 to 1600 (Cologne: Taschen, 2005), 404–05. The brief but excellent Introduction by D.R. Shackleton Bailey, ed. and trans., Valerius Maximus: Memorable Doings and Sayings, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000) should be consulted on this author. A relatively recent general study is W. Martin Bloomer, Valerius Maximus and the Rhetoric of the New Nobility (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992, Rpt. 2011). All quotations from Valerius are drawn from Shackleton Bailey’s edition. For a list of Valerius manuscripts, see Dorothy M. Schullian, “A Revised List of Manuscripts of Valerius Maximus,” in Miscellanea Augusto Campana, Medioevo e Umanesimo 44–45 (Padua: Antenore, 1981), 695–728. For specific studies of Valerius’s work and its illustration in the Middle Ages, see A. Vitale Brovarone, “Notes sur la traduction de Valère Maxime par Simon de Hesdin,” in Maria Colombo Timelli and Claudio Galderisi, eds., ‘Pour acquerir honneur et pris,’ Mélanges de Moyen Français offerts à Giuseppe Di Stefano (Montreal: Ceres, 2004), 183–91; G. Maslakov, “Valerius Maximus and Roman Historiography: A Study of the Exempla Tradition,” in Hildegarde Temporini and Wolfgang Haase, eds., Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt:Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1984), II, 32.1, 437–96; G. Di Stefano, “Tradizione esegetica e traduzioni di Valerio Massimo nel primo umanesimo francese,” Studi francesi 21 (1963): 403–17, and the same author’s “Ricerche su Nicolas de Gonesse traduttore di Valerio Massimo,” Studi francesi 26 (1965): 201–21; and for British Library and Metropolitan Museum of New York manuscripts, George F. Warner, Valerius Maximus: Miniatures of the School of Jean Fouquet, Illustrating the French Version by Simon de Hesdin and Nicholas de Gonesse Contained in a MS. Written about A.D. 1475 for Philippe de Comines (London: Quaritch, 1907); Thomas Kren and Scot McKendrick, Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe (Los Angeles: J.

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Figure 14.4

Dog as classroom distraction. Giovanni Pietro da Birago, Aelius Donatus, Grammatica, Milan, Biblioteca Trivulziana MS 2167, folio 13v, 1496–1499. Courtesy Biblioteca Trivulziana.

Paul Getty Museum of Art, 2003); B.D. Boehm, “Valerius Maximus in a Fourteenth-Century French Translation: An Illuminated Leaf,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 18 (1983): 53–63; and A. Dubois, “Tradition et transmission, un exemple de filiation dans les manuscrits enluminés de Valère Maxime,” Revue des archéologues et historiens d’art de Louvain 17 (1994): 51–60. See also “M. Valerius Maximus. Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri novem: Traduction de Simon de Hesdin et Nicolas de Gonesse (1375–1401),” in Frédéric Duval and Jeanne Viellard, Miroir des classiques 17 (Éditions en ligne de l’École des

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manuscripts, most illustrated, containing the French translation by Simon de Hesdin and Nicolas de Gonesse. Pictures with monitory dogs in dining scenes introduce Book II, on Ancient Institutions, extolling virtuous Romans of a vanished era: The simplicity of the men of old in the taking of their meals is another sure sign both of good nature and of self-restraint. The greatest among them were not ashamed to take luncheon and dinner in the open. To be sure, they had no feasts that they blushed to expose to public gaze.43 Associated miniatures typically show two tables of diners who are contrasted, one courtly and decorous (the ancients), the other drunken, gluttonous, and sexually licentious, sometimes of a clearly lower class (the contemporary). And dogs—even sometimes pigs—figure prominently in these scenes, though they are not present in the text. Illustrations of Valerius Maximus manuscripts treat this idea in different ways but the apparently standard iconographic topos must have been immediately recognizable to its audience. Two miniatures for Book II of Valerius were executed by the Master of the Dresden Prayer Book, so called from one of his most magnificent works. Active in Bruges between 1465–1515, this master was a witty painter whose miniatures often have an ironic character. One miniature illustrating a bathhouse scene for Book IX of Valerius, using dogs slightly differently, was painted by Phillipe de Mazerolles (1420–1479), a South Netherlandish illuminator who was the court painter for Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. In a now-detached miniature from a Valerius Maximus manuscript by the Master of the Dresden Prayer Book (Fig. 14.5), the social makeup of the dining scene contrasts temperate aristocrats with lecherous peasants of the Brueghel sort. Here, the dog also plays a complex role where all of its fabled connotations—gluttony, lechery, and sagacity and fidelity—come into play at the same time.44

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chartes). (accessed February 3, 2014). Shackleton Bailey, ed. and trans., Valerius Maximus: Memorable Doings and Sayings, Vol. I, Book II, Ch. 5, 163. This cutting is now Malibu, CA, J. Paul Getty Museum, accession lido.getty.edu-gmobj112310 1475–80. On this Master, see Alix Bovey, Jean de Carpentin’s Book of Hours: The Genius of the Master of the Dresden Prayer Book (London: Sam Fogg, 2011); H. Wijsman, Luxury Bound: Illustrated Manuscript Production and Noble and Princely Book Ownership in the Burgundian Netherlands (1400–1550) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010); and Bodo Brinkmann, Die flämische Buchmalerei am Ende des Burgunderreichs: der Meister des Dresdener

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In this miniature, the idea of spatial elevation is used to great dramatic effect. In front of a cloth of honor is a raised table with four “temperate” diners and a servant. Though, as Margaret Scott notes, they are dressed in the courtly costume of the 1470s, the woman does not wear a henin, their glances are modest and downcast, their motions tightly controlled or still. Their clothing, gestures, and accessories and the hanging behind them indicate their high social status. In the foreground at left, Valerius, in the fur-lined garb often used with authors, and the bearded Emperor, dressed in “antique” style, observe a chaotic dining scene at ground level where six coarse-faced figures in peasant attire carouse, sleep drunkenly, or have fallen to the floor. They are markedly plumper than the temperate diners above them. The serving woman with a bowl holds up her overdress to show her underdress, an additional sign of licentiousness. Cups are overturned and the tablecloth is halfway off the trestle top. Standing just beyond the serving woman and gazing at her, a collared dog watches the proceedings from the right side. While this dog traditionally symbolizes some of the negative behaviors shown by the peasants, here it does not participate in the dining; its cool objective stance, mirroring the calm and controlled diners at the rear, and its “civilizing” collar showing control over primal emotions help to bring the attitudes implicit in the aristocratic scene at rear into the foreground, judging the diners and calling their behavior into question, much as Valerius does at the other side of the interior. In another Master of the Dresden Prayer Book miniature from a Valerius manuscript, now in Leipzig, the author encourages the Emperor Tiberius to observe the drunken and sexually intemperate behavior of the diners at the lower table. Again, the good table is spatially higher than the evil one, which is populated by lecherous, drunken, and gluttonous diners. A dog in the background of the scene with the lower table chews a bone and another in the foreground eats a gobbet of meat. These dogs are much less ambiguous, conveying only pejorative connotations.45 Gluttony and casual sexuality are much more evident in another Valerius Maximus miniature where the symbolic meaning of the dogs’ behaviors is less

45

Gebetbuchs und die Miniaturisten seiner Zeit (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), vol. I, 102–07 and 382–84. The scene is published and briefly discussed by Margaret Scott, Fashion in the Middle Ages (Malibu, CA: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011), 49, fig. 30. For traditional attitudes to peasant gluttony and lechery, see John Block Friedman, Brueghel’s Heavy Dancers: Transgressive Clothing, Class, & Culture in the Late Middle Ages (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010). This codex is now Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek “Bibliotheca Albertina” MS Rep. 111B, folio 2. It is published by and briefly discussed by Maurits Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures from the 8th to the Mid-16th Century: The Medieval World on Parchment (Leuven: Brepols, 1999), fig. 11, 426.

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Dining Scene with dog. Cutting, Master of the Dresden Prayerbook, Valerius Maximus, Lives and Deeds of Philosophers. Malibu, CA, J. Paul Getty Museum, MS 43, Accession 12310, recto. 1475–1480. Courtesy J. Paul Getty Museum.

nuanced (Fig. 14.6). This miniature by Philippe de Mazerolles, illustrating Book IX.1, on Luxury and Lust, depicts the Baths of Sergius Orata, the Roman inventor of thermal baths who was renowned for his opulent lifestyle, here conflated by the artist with the banquet of Gemellus in the same section of Valerius, Book IX: Gemellus … prepared for Consul Metullus Scipio and the Tribunes of the Plebs … He set up a brothel in his house and in it as prostitutes Mucia and Fulvia … and a boy of noble birth, Saturninus. Bodies infamously patient, destined to be playthings for drunken lust.46

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Shackleton Bailey, ed. and trans., Valerius Maximus: Memorable Doings and Sayings, Vol. II, Book IX, Ch. 1, 301.

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This manuscript miniature for Book IX is similar in moral intent to the one just shown illustrating Book II, but closely links sexuality with gluttony, frivolity, and the incivility and ungoverned character of collarless dogs. At left, the artist shows lovers in an alcove of a brothel; at right, male and female bathers sitting in tubs are eating at a long table, while Valerius Maximus, as in the example just shown, explains the scene’s significance to the Emperor Tiberius at the rear. One diner, probably Orata or Metullus, is fondling a woman’s genitals. A dandy in poulaines, tights, and a short jerkin plays the lute; a dog dances at his feet.47

Dogs as Good Examples

Lest it appear that dogs have universally bad associations in the Middle Ages, it is certainly true that there are as many favorable treatments of them in medieval art and literature as the reverse. In fact, dogs in illuminated courtly scenes, especially in Burgundian books, often have a positive moral function by 47

This manuscript is now Berlin Stätsbibliothek Preussicher Kulturbesitz, Depot Breslau I–II, Vol. II, folio 244. The miniature is published and discussed at some length by Florence Colin-Goguet, L’Image de l’amour charnel au Moyen Age (Paris: Seuil, 2008), 155, who, however, gives the shelf mark wrongly as MS Redh. 2, identifies the emperor as Nero, and claims the codex was illuminated by Simon Hesdin (1375–1401) for King Charles V and finished by Nicolas de Gonesse for Jean, Duke de Berry. These two were actually the translators, not the artists. For another convenient reproduction, see Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures from the 8th to the Mid-16th Century, fig. 22, 368. On this illuminator, see Paul Durrieu, “Le peintre Philippe de Mazerolles à Paris en 1454,” Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres 62 (1918): 364–66; A. de Schryver, “L’Oeuvre authentique de Philippe de Mazerolles, enlumineur de Charles le Téméraire,” in Cinq centième anniversaire de la bataille de Nancy (1477), Actes du Colloque organisé par l’institut de recherche régionale en sciences sociales, humaines et éonomiques de l’Université de Nancy II (Nancy: L’Université, 1977), 135–44; and the same author’s “Philippe de Mazerolles: le livre d’heures noir et les manuscrits d’Ordonnances militaires de Charles le Téméraire,” Revue de l’Art 126 (1999): 50–67; and Mara Hoffmann and Ina Nettekoven, Philippe de Mazerolles. Ein unbekanntes Stundenbuch aus Brügge (Ramsen/Rotthalmünster: Antiquariat Bibermühle AG, Antiquariat Heribert Tenschert, 2004). A similar scene appears in a Valerius Maximus manuscript made in the workshop of William Vrelant, now in Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal MS 5196, folio 372. Valerius Maximus and the Emperor watch from a building adjacent to the bathhouse, which is rather simpler in layout but has a couple in a tester bed as well as carousing couples in tubs. A dog in the foreground regards events intently, while in the space between the buildings more dogs play.

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Dog in Baths of Sergius Orata, illustrating luxury and lust. Philippe de Mazerolles, Valerius Maximus, Lives and Deeds of the Philosophers. Berlin, Stätsbibliothek zu Berlin Preussicher Kulturbesitz, Depot Breslau I-II, Vol. II, folio 244, 1470. Courtesy Berlin Stätsbibliothek.

illustrating the implicit theme of fealty to an overlord. It is this feudal loyalty, broadly understood, that will occupy us for the remainder of this chapter. As we have seen with dogs shown in relatively modest social milieux, model feudal dogs can appear virtually anywhere. One especially charming example from a mid fifteenth-century French herbal, now in Brussels (Fig. 14.7) pits a dog against a wily cat in a scene showing the world upside-down and the failure of human labor. The scene of domestic labor shows a woman distracted

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from her duties by a man’s fondling, while a cat gets in the cream bowl. A dog agitatedly tries to get her attention, to no avail.48 Two scenes of fealty—or the lack of it—using dogs to underline this virtue occur in medieval manuscript painting, one in a bourgeois and slightly comic context and the other in an aristocratic and more tragic one. Both depend on certain medieval quasi-scientific conceptions about dog psychology. Dogs were widely believed to be able to identify evildoers—especially adulterers— through their senses or simple instinct. Sometimes this identification is ironically inadvertent, as when Alexander Neckam remarks in his encyclopedia De naturis rerum, 1190, that the dog by its excited barking warned the adulterous wife of her husband’s return home: “Praecurrens, nonnunquam domini praenunciat adventum, et dominam amplexibus adulteri gaudentem ignaurus praemunit” (“hastening on, sometimes announcing the coming of the master of the house, he alerts the unmindful mistress wrapped in her lover’s embraces”). And the Benedictine abbess Hildegarde of Bingen (1098–1179), in her medical treatise, De causa et curae, offers an account of the animal’s instinctive response to human vice from its common and natural affinity with human ways: It senses and understands the human being, loves him, willingly dwells with him, and is faithful … A dog, recognizing hatred, wrath, and perfidy in a person, often howls at him. If a person has treachery in him, the dog gnashes his teeth at him …49 Two miniatures from somewhat different books illustrate these examples (Fig. 14.8). One of these appears in a French manuscript of about 1480–90 of the Fifteen Joys of Marriage. This work, often attributed to Antoine de la Sale, 48

49

Matthaeus Platearius, Livre des simples médicines, Brussels Bibliothèque Royale MS IV.1024, folio 30v. This scene is published and discussed by John Block Friedman, “The Humour and Folly of the World in Odd Places: A Fifteenth-Century Manuscript Herbal,” in Dana Stewart, ed., Science and Literature at the Crossroads: Papers from the 34th CEMERS Interdisciplinary Conference, Mediaevalia, 29 no. 1 (2008): 207–35. For the dog alerting its adulterous mistress, see Alexander Neckam, De naturis rerum libri duo, ed. Thomas Wright (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). ch. 157, 253. For its natural sagacity, see Priscilla Throop, trans., Hildegard von Bingen Physica: The Complete English Translation of Her Classic Work on Health and Healing (Rochester, VT: Healing Arts, 1998), 217–18. The article by Karl Josef Höltgen, “Clever Dogs and Nimble Spaniels: On the Iconography of Logic, Invention, and Imagination,” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 24 (1988): 1–36 offers several patristic passages in support of the dog’s logical faculties and sagacity.

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Dog and cat showing the world up-side-down. Matthaeus Platearius, Livre des Simples Médicines. Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, MS IV.1024, folio 30v. 1450. Courtesy Bibliothèque Royale.

belongs broadly to the literature of misogyny, like the Contra Jovinianum, in that it takes a very skeptical view of women and their marital fidelity. Thus, the title should be taken ironically. One of the three extant manuscripts is handsomely illustrated, probably for a bourgeois commissioner. The scene illustrating the Twelfth Joy shows a dog that has just scented a lover leaving a bedroom through a window while the adulterous wife feigns sleep. The husband is awakened by the agitated dog crouching by the bed. Here the dog’s focused loyalty to his master by barking—as in Alexander Neckam’s example—is implicitly contrasted with the woman’s lack of this virtue.50 50

The manuscript is now St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia MS Fr. F. p. XV.4, folio 104r. The miniature has been published and discussed by Tamara Voronova and Andrei Sterligov, Western European Illuminated Manuscripts of the 8th to the 16th Centuries (Bournemouth: Parkstone Press, 1996), no. 207, folio 104v, 171. Besides this manuscript, two other copies of the work are known: Chantilly, Bibliothèque et Archives du Château 686, and Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipale MS Y. 20 (1052), folios 84v–150. For recent modern editions of the work, see Michèle Guéret-Laferté et al., eds., Les .xv. joies de mariage. Édition et traduction du manuscrit Y. 20 de la bibliothèque municipale de Rouen (Rouen: Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2009); and François Tulou, ed., Antoine de La Sale, Les quinze joyes de mariage (Paris: Garnier Frères, 2010). The work has been widely

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Figure 14.8 Dog detects adultery. Twelfth Joy. Fifteen Joys of Marriage. Saint Petersburg, National Library of Russia MS Fr. F. p. XV.4, folio 104r. Ca. 1480–1490. Courtesy National Library of Russia.

studied from lexicographical and philological points of view. For literary and cultural treatments, see F.J. Albermeier, “Les XV joies de mariage und der ‘réalisme bourgeois’ in der französischen Prosa des 15. Jahrhunderts,” Fifteenth Century Studies 8 (1983): 1–13; Joan Crow, “The Quinze joyes de mariage in France and England,” The Modern Language Review 59, no. 4 (1964): 571–77; and two articles by Luca Pierdominici, “Lire la joie ou l’efflorescence du texte dans les Quinze joies de marriage,” Quaderni di filologia e lingue romanze, third series, 16 (2001): 93–111, reprinted in Alex Vanneste, et al., eds., Mémoire en temps advenir. Hommage à Theo Venckeleer, Orbis, Supplementa 22 (Paris: Leuven, 2003), 135–51; and Prose francesi del XV secolo. Antoine de La Sale, Martial d’Auvergne, le ‘Quinze joies de mariage,’, le ‘Nouvelles de Sens,’ Università degli studi di Macerata. Facoltà di lettere e filosofia. Testi e studi 6 (Pisa: Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali 2002), 97–117. A particularly interesting analogue to this alerting scene is a lead badge in the Kunera database representing an episode from the medieval French romance, Châteleine de Vergi, where the cuckolded husband and a dog side by side in the same stance observe the copulating adulterous couple. This badge dates from between 1379 and 1424 and is number 00611 in the database. See generally, Ann Marie Rasmussen, “Moving beyond Sexuality in Medieval Sexual Badges,” in E. Jane Burns and Peggy McCracken, eds., From Beasts to Souls: Gender and Embodiment in Medieval Europe (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame

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In the second instance, the artist has also used a dog to comment on human fealty or lack of it (Fig. 14.9). In a miniature with a purpose similar to that of the Fifteen Joys of Marriage, from the Grandes Chroniques de France painted by Robinet Testard in Poitiers in 1471, Philip I, or the Amorous (1052–1108), repudiates his queen, Bertha of Holland, on the grounds that she is too fat. He then forcibly takes the beautiful Countess Bertrade de Montfort, fifth wife of Fulk IV of Anjou, as his mistress and, shortly after, as his wife. A white greyhound wearing a broad red collar crouches in the foreground; its snarling mouth, open to show fangs, may provide a moral comment on the main scene and illustrate Hildegarde’s view of the dog’s moral sagacity.51

The Meaning of Dog Collars

In courtly manuscripts of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, many dogs, through posture and position, serve to symbolize feudal loyalty. That they are wearing collars contributes to this symbolism. Thus, the relation of the courtly dog to its collar needs a bit of comment. Although medieval fabric collars have perished, much can be learned about them from their depictions in manuscript miniatures and tapestries made from about 1460 onward. Medieval dog collars were of two types, some chain-link and utilitarian, not usually ornamented,52 and others, the ones of interest here, much more elaborate, expressing the owner’s identity and fashion sense. Household dogs usually wore either a narrow leather or fabric collar carrying many small bells, of the sort already discussed above, or wider textile collars, often of black or crimson velvet, ornamented with embroidery displaying heraldic insignia and personal mottoes. These collars expressed the prevailing taste for highly patterned fabrics in garments, wall and furniture hangings, and other textiles mixing silk,

51

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Press, 2013), 221–47. For misogynistic literature generally, see Katharina M. Wilson and Elizabeth M. Makowski, Wykked Wyves and the Woes of Marriage: Misogamous Literature from Juvenal to Chaucer (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). This manuscript is now Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS fr. 2609, folio 150. For discussion of the work and artist, see Kathrin Giogoli and John Block Friedman, “Robinet Testard: Court Illuminator, His Manuscripts and His Debt to the Graphic Arts,” The Journal of the Early Book Society 8 (2005): 152–96; Anne D. Hedeman, The Royal Image: Illustrations of the Grandes Chroniques de France, 1274–1422 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); and Elizabeth Morrison and Anne D. Hedeman, Imagining the Past in France: History in Manuscript Painting, 1250–1500 (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010). See Four Centuries of Dog Collars at Leeds Castle (Maidstone: Leeds Castle Foundation, 1979).

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Philip the First repudiates his queen while a greyhound growls. Robinet Testard, Les Grandes Chroniques de France. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS fr. 2609, folio 150, 1471. Courtesy Bibliothèque nationale de France.

gold and silver thread, rich colors, and even extensive solid metal and jewel ornamentation, which formed part of the material culture of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries in Northern Europe. These typical fabric identity-expressing collars (Fig. 14.10) can be imagined from a miniature of ca. 1455 showing a motto or anagram of the initials of the very recently ennobled Simon de Varie, a treasury official of bourgeois origins

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under King Charles VII of France. It reveals his desire to claim and assert his new noble identity forcefully, even in the animal realm.53 There is ample evidence for the personal involvement by noble dog owners in the design and the high cost of such collars. For example, in 1420, Phillip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, had a collar of crimson velvet with two gold shields or escutcheons bearing the ducal arms made for one of his greyhounds. Embroidered on the velvet in letters composed of many seed pearls was his personal motto, moult me tarde (“much delays me”). In 1463, according to his argentier, Guillaume de Varye, King Louis XI of France (1423–1483) ordered from the goldsmith Jacques de Chefdeville a kermes-dyed crimson-velvet-lined gold collar for his greyhound Chier (“Dearie”). It is worth examining the specifications for this collar and some details relating to it: [L]e quel colier est de 10 pieces a charnieres de fil d’or de quypure, une boucle et le mordant, ung toret, 4 autres mordanz hachiez a feuilles renversees, 50 bossettes, 50 rivetz, 3 clouz … Et en icellui avoir assis et mis en cuivre 10 gros balays, 20 perles, ung ruby, une jassinte et ung cristal en table que le dit seigneur lui a fait bailer. Et aussi avoir livre la feulle pour ledit balays, ruby et jassinte, pour leur donner meilleure couleur. Pour tout 246 livres, 12 sous, 8 d. Pour ung quartier de veloux cramoisy, pour garnir et double par dessoubz ledit colier, le quel il a convenu donner par doux foiz, parce que a la premier fois, il n’estoit pas assez large et riche au plaisir dudit seigneur 55 sous, 1 d. A collar is of ten [gold] segments hinged with crimped gold wire, a buckle and its tongue, a tab, four other [protective] spikes set in downward-curving leaves, fifty bosses, fifty rivets, three studs … And in copper settings ten large spinels, twenty pearls, one ruby, one jacinthe, and one crystal panel the said king had provided. And also foil placed beneath the said spinels, ruby, and jacinthe to give them better color. The cost was 246 livres, 12 s., 8 d. In addition there was a quarter of a yard of crimson velvet for a lining, doubled under the collar; this was furnished twice because the first one was not large and rich enough to please the king, 55 sous, 1 d.54 53 54

James H. Marrow, The Hours of Simon de Varie (Malibu, CA, and The Hague: The J. Paul Getty Museum and Koninklijke Bibliotheek,1994). There are at least two versions of the inventory description of Phillip’s greyhound collar, in one case identifying him as Phillip le Hardy and giving a date of 1453 for the inventory. See Victor Gay, Glossaire archaéologique du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance, vol. I, A–Guy

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Figure 14.10 Greyhound with motto and anagram initials of Simon de Varie. Jean Fouquet and Associates, Horae. Malibu, CA, J. Paul Getty Museum MS 7, folio 2v, ca. 1455. Courtesy J. Paul Getty Museum.

The obsessive detail in these collars’ construction and ornamentation, and their enormous cost, show the degree to which the duke and the king had invested their personal energy and resources in their fashioning. Phillip’s collar seems to have had a ceremonial function and the greyhound probably did not wear it when it was out hunting. But in court as the animal roamed about, it carried his arms and motto, displaying his view of who he was. The case of Louis XI, whose accounts show many expenditures for dog collars ranging from simple straps of “lombardie” leather ordered by the dozens, to the example quoted above, seems more complex. That this gold-paneled collar could not have been very comfortable for the dog is suggested by the afterthought of (Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus, 1967), 411. The expenditure record for Louis XI’s collar is from the same page of the Glossaire. The translation above is mine. On such collars and identity formation in this period, see John Block Friedman, “Coats, Collars, and Capes: Royal Fashions for Animals in the Early Modern Period,” in Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, eds., Medieval Clothing and Textiles, Vol. 12 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer, 2016), in press.

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the velvet lining, serving something like a saddle blanket for a horse. The intricate work of the swivel boss, spikes, and jewel settings shows that the king must have personally described in great detail the effect he wanted to his goldsmith to produce. His rejection of the first version on the grounds that it was not luxurious enough, again shows that he was personally engaged in all aspects of the commission. Though no arms, mottoes or other personalization are specified for Chier’s collar, that the dog’s name is involved in the record of the expenditure with the goldsmith suggests that this name was also part of the collar and also showed the king’s investment of imagination in this piece of material culture. That such dog collars were assertions of noble identity into the natural world as much as or more than simple ostentation is evident from many sources. We have already mentioned the inclusion of a personal motto expressing Phillip’s identity on a dog collar for indoor or ceremonial use.55 Expense accounts from 1454 for Charles, Count of Angoulême, and his wife, Louise de Savoie, show payments for eight much less-costly copper escutcheons or medallions for collars bearing the couple’s arms and intended for actual hunting greyhounds. Louise apparently felt the need to extend her identity into the animal realm, ensuring that the Valois name touched every aspect of nature as her dogs pursued her deer through her woods at Cognac.56 This view of a noble name conveyed into the natural world and applied even on the game itself was flatteringly expressed for King Charles VI of France by the Angevin knight Hardouin de Fontaine-Guérin. In 1394 he wrote in his Le Livre de tresor de venerie of a hunt for a royal stag: “who had on his neck a gilded collar / Well fashioned and well inscribed / on it written / ‘Of Julius Caesar’s deer I am one.’” The stag was claimed to be seven hundred years old at the time of its capture by the king.57 Collars play an important role in identity formation and assertion in medieval tapestries. As is evident in the Unicorn Tapestries (The Cloisters, 55

56 57

For more on such mottoes, see Colette Beaune, “Costume et pouvoir en France à la fin du Moyen Age: Les devises royales vers 1400,” Revue des sciences humaines 183 (1981–83): 125– 46; Gaston Saffroy, Bibliographie généologique héraldique et nobilaire de la France (Paris: G. Saffroy, 1968); and F. Piponnier, Costumes et vie sociale: le cour d’Anjou aux XIVe and XVe siècle (Paris: Mouton, 1970), 231–61. See Alfred Franklin, La vie privée d’autrefois, arts et métiers, modes, moeurs, usages des Parisiens du XII au XVIII siècle, Vol. 24, Les Animaux (Paris: E. Plon Nourrit, 1899), 21. Hardouin de Fontaine Guérin, Tresor de venerie, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS fr. 855, folio 61. “On vit du temps passe ung cerf prendre / qui avait a son col ung collier dore / Bien lettre et bien laboure / Et avait dessousbz ecrit / ‘Des cerfs Jules Cesar suis.’” My translation.

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Metropolitan Museum, New York), produced in the Southern Netherlands from 1495–1500, dog collars aid in aristocratic identity formation, showing the owner’s power over instinctual nature. (Fig. 14.11) The unusually wide patterned fabric collars shown on the hunting dogs in the Cloisters tapestries are clearly not primarily to protect and control them. Rather, they are intended to display identity and participate in the contemporary fashion for insignia, color, and pattern in textiles. A selection of scent and sight hounds wearing ornate fabric collars that show off heraldic and royal arms appears in the third and sixth tapestries.58 Thus, it seems that such collars in art as well as life were intended to extend to their pets the owners’ identity, decorative taste, and sense of fashion. Additionally, the dog collar symbolically represents the hand of man over nature, showing rational control over the instinctual side of nature and the proper order of a hierarchical society.59 Let us then examine two depictions of collared dogs painted by the same artist, Loyset Liédet (1420–1479), active in Bruges. He worked for both Phillip the Good and his son, Charles the Bold. Liédet included in his miniatures dogs whose collars and postures have the clear function of reinforcing the restraint and overall feudal relationships implicit in the miniature. Moreover, this artist, like some of his contemporaries, showed dogs in postures or attitudes that echo those of the people depicted (Fig. 14.12). The miniature is from David Aubert’s (1435–1479) four-volume Histoire de Charles Martel, painted for Charles the Bold between 1467 and 1482. This whimsical scene shows Aubert in a domestic interior bursting with plate, mirrors, fashionable furniture, and the like. The interior seems to echo the artist’s own circumstances, as he painted only on royal commission and not as part of a workshop. Deeply absorbed, Aubert sits on a dais before a hearth with several fashionably dressed courtiers pointing at him. A small white dog lies asleep within Aubert’s space and shares his mood. Hidden behind a pillar, Charles the Bold observes Aubert in his study. Though Aubert is concentrating on his work, his second dog, a shaggy spaniel in the foreground, by his posture of extreme alertness and attention to his visitors, shows what is expected of his master and contrasts sharply with the sleeping lapdog.60 58 59

60

See Margaret B. Freeman, The Unicorn Tapestries (New York: The Metropolitan Museum, 1976). Dogs are discussed on p. 95 and the heraldic material on the collars on p. 172. This codex, painted in 1468 by Loyset Liédet, is now Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale MS 8, folio 7. This miniature is published and discussed in Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures, fig. 5, 358. Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale MS 9244, folio 3, the miniature is published and discussed in Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures, fig. 4, 293.

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Figure 14.11

Dogs with wide insignia-bearing collars. The Unicorn Tapestries. New York, The Cloisters. Metropolitan Museum. Third and Sixth Tapestries. 1495–1500. Photo after Margaret B. Freeman, The Unicorn Tapestries (New York: Dutton, 1974).

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Figure 14.12 Charles the Bold visits David Aubert. Loyset Liédet, Histoire de Charles Martel. Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale MS 8, folio 7. 1467–1482. Courtesy Bibliothèque Royale.

Similar in pose and intention is the dog in another scene of a surprise authorial visit by Phillip the Good painted by Liédet (Fig. 14.13). In a manuscript of Jacques de Guise’s Chroniques de Hainaut, three courtiers in the immediate retinue of the Duke stand about, one with a hawk, also a symbol of obedience and fealty. The seated author is shown writing on a portion of a roll. He wears a red chaperon, which he touches in fealty with one hand. Before him, the Duke is dressed in his traditional black. The two men form a group in the archway with a crouching brown dog, whose red collar echoes the author’s red chaperon and connects the animal to him. The dog begs for the Duke’s attention and salutes him, as does Jacques de Guise. The dog reinforces the loyalty and reverence of the author whose scroll is presumably a form of the work in which the miniature appears.

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Figure 14.13 Philip the Good visits Jacques de Guise. Loyset Liédet, Chroniques de Hainaut, Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale MS 9244, folio 3. 1468. Courtesy Bibliothèque Royale.

From the various examples just cited, it is, I hope, clear that the dog in medieval manuscripts can have complex significances ranging from unfavorable to that of adored member of the household, and that these meanings were fully developed at a somewhat earlier period and for different reasons than has been hitherto recognized. The dog’s role in the burgeoning material culture of the fourteenth century and after as expressed in conduct books and the visual arts lies, no doubt, behind its presence in the miniatures discussed in this chapter, where dogs mirror human characteristics resulting from their close proximity to people in the medieval household and the artists’ careful observation of character and behavior based on a canine presence in workshops, as was hinted at by the miniatures of Loyset Liédet. As well, the fact that dogs in royal hunting activities helped put much of the meat on the table is partially

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responsible for their presence and attendance by servants in indoor feasting scenes, such as those in the Très Riches Heures and the Grimani Breviary. Finally, the legendary feudal loyalty and presumed sagacity of dogs in understanding people and situations made them ideal exemplars of ethical behavior in bourgeois and courtly interior scenes.

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Chapter 15

Metaphorical Dogs in the Later Middle Ages: The Dogs of God and the Hounds of Hell Walter S. Gibson For people in the Middle Ages, there were basically two kinds of dogs: the flesh-and-blood variety that they saw so frequently in everyday life and the metaphorical breeds that they encountered, rather less frequently, in sermons and in pastoral and polemical literature. Real dogs included the house dogs that often appear in interior scenes of the period (Fig. 15.1). Ladies, especially, favored small dogs as companions, a custom that inspired an anonymous late medieval poem titled “Tghluc vanden hont” (The Luck of the Dog).1 Many a man, the author assures his readers, yearns for the life of a house dog, and with good reason. Not only does the house dog receive frequent tidbits of bread and meat from the ladies, it is also privileged to enter their private chambers without constraint. Indeed, it can wander anywhere at will day or night and without a scolding. These fortunate dogs are coddled and kissed by the ladies and are even allowed to sleep on the ladies’ beds, and if these delicate creatures suffer from the cold, they are carried about by their owners to warm them. Oh, the poet sighs, if he could only have the luck of the dog! More useful, if probably less pampered, were the hunting dogs, trained to pursue and bring down their prey, such as we often see in calendar scenes illustrating November, and the sheepdogs, including those that appear in manuscript illuminations of the annunciation of Christ’s birth. In some books of hours, the shepherds celebrate this auspicious occasion with a ring dance. A striking example occurs in the Spinola Hours, illuminated around 1515. Here, an Adoration of the Shepherds has been inserted into a larger scene of the angelic annunciation to the shepherds (Fig. 15.2); the rustic dance depicted in the bottom foreground includes a shepherd dancing with his dog.2 Faithful and hard-working dogs accompanied various saints in their travels, including the 1 Herman Brinkman and Janny Schenkel, eds., Het handschrift–Van Hulthem. Hs. Brussel, Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België (Hilversum: Verloren, 1999), vol. 2, 639–40, no. CXXXVII. 2 Other scenes of the Annunciation to the Shepherds with dancing shepherds are cited in Walter S. Gibson, “Festive Peasants before Bruegel: Three Case Studies and Their Implications,” Simiolus 31, no. 4 (2004–05): 206.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004328617_017

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Figure 15.1

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Master of the Grimani Breviary (fl. 1515) January: A Nobleman's Banquet, illumination from the Grimani Breviary, Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, Ced. Marc. It. XI, 67, fol. 1v. Photo Credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

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Figure 15.2

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Master of the Prayer Books of around 1500, The Annunciation to the Shepherds and the Adoration of the Shepherds, from the Spinola Hours, about 1510–20, Los Angeles, CA, J. Paul Getty Museum, Accession no. 83.ML.114 (Ludwig Ms. IX 18), fol. 125v.

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young Tobias, whose story is told in the Apocryphal Old Testament.3 In the fourteenth century, St. Roch was cared for by a dog while he was recovering from the plague, contracted while the saint had been tending other victims.4 From the Middle Ages, too, comes the tragic history of the Holy Greyhound, a loyal dog that rescued his master’s child from the jaws of a large snake, only to be slain by its master, who had mistakenly inferred from the dog’s bloody jaws that it had attacked and killed the child. Later venerated under the name of St. Guinefort, the Holy Greyhound was often appealed to by victims of the plague and other diseases.5 The various benefits that dogs render for their human masters were enumerated in medieval bestiaries. In Het boek der natuur (The Book of Nature), for example, written around 1260 by the Flemish poet Jacob van Maerlant, we are told that dogs are capable of learning many useful tasks. Although they like to sleep, they can be taught to guard the house against criminals. They love their master so much that they will often sacrifice their lives to protect his. Van Maerlant discusses both lapdogs and hunting dogs. But in the midst of his enthusiastic praise—although he does include the antidote for dog-bite, which, we are informed, is the root of the wild rose)6—Van Maerlant drastically changes his tone. Among the dogs, he writes, “the noblest are those who stand high on their paws [poten] and can run fast. They are good hunting dogs,” the author assures us, “but they cannot bark, and daily become more powerful.” At this point, the writer is describing not actual dogs, but metaphorical ones: that is, the ecclesiastics and laymen who control the wealth of the church. Elaborating on this point, the author complains, “All is in the hands of the 3 For Tobit, see Louis Réau, Iconographie de l’art Chrétien, 6 vols. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1956–59), III, 323, section 6. 4 Réau, 1155–61. 5 For the various legends connected with St. Guinefort, as well as the complicated history of his cult, see Jean-Claude Schmitt, The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, Healer of Children since the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009). The tale of a dog or other animal that is mistakenly killed by its master due to a similar misunderstanding has many analogues elsewhere in world literature; see Stith Thompson, Motif -Index of FolkLiterature, revised and enlarged by Stith Thompson, 5 vols., (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955), vol. 1, 426, B331.2 (Llewellyn and his dog); and B331.2.2 (Faithful dog killed by its overhasty master, whose death howl awakens the child). This tragic story still circulated in later centuries, including a ballad, “The Grave of the Greyhound,” by William Robert Spencer (1770–1834). A broadside sheet of this ballad is preserved in a commonplace book compiled in the nineteenth century by John Hews Bransby, now preserved in the Chapin Library, Williams College. 6 See Jacob van Maerlant, Het boek der natuur, trans. and ed. Peter Burger (Amsterdam: Em. Querido, 1989), 38–39, who specifies that this antidote is for the bite of mad dogs.

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nobility,” and goes on to say that the failure of these dogs to bark signifies the monks and clergy who no longer preach for the spiritual profit of the faithful. Instead, they would “rather see to their own quite material profit through the confiscation of church goods, and seducing women is for them the highest good: that is the prey they seek.”7 Van Maerlant was hardly original in employing the dog as a metaphor for human behavior. Similar dog metaphors can be found in the earliest Christian centuries. A brief survey of some of the most prominent ones will help us understand the development of dog imagery in the later Middle Ages. One perennial medieval favorite occurs in interpretations of the parable of Lazarus and Dives. As recounted in Luke 16.19–31, when destitute and plagued by sores, Lazarus begged for crumbs from the table of the rich man, Dives. He was, however, turned away empty-handed, and only the dogs succored him by licking his wounds. When the two men died, the beggar Lazarus reposed in the bosom of Abraham, while the uncharitable Dives languished in Hell. In the fourth century, St. Ambrose identified the dogs licking Lazarus’s sores as the gentiles converted by St. Paul, who protected them as a shepherd does his flock.8 Writing a century or so later, St. Gregory the Great offered a somewhat different reading: “The dog’s tongue,” he explains, “licks and heals the wound [of our sin] because when holy teachers instruct us during the confession of our sin it is as though with their tongue they touch our inner wound: and because through their speech [they] draw us back from sin, they lead us to salvation as though by touching our wounds.”9 A similar allusion was employed by the twelfth-century Benedictine monk Gottfried of Admont, who identified Lazarus’s dogs with the preachers who “lick the sores of sin with the tongues of exhortation.”10 7

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Van Maerlant, 38–39: “Ach, deze edele jachthonden die niet blaffen worden met de dag machtiger. Ach! De edelen beheerse de kerklijke goederen, waar Jezus bloed om vergoot en die leden van Christus toebehoren—alles is nu in de handen van de adel. Dat deze honden niet blaffen wil zeggen dat ze niet predekiken, want edelen verkondigen geen boodschap om het volk te bekeren. Met roven voorzien ze in hun onderhoud en vrouwen verleiden is voor het hoogste goed: dat is de prooi waar ze op eruit zijn.” Stephen L. Wailes, Medieval Allegories of Jesus’s Parables (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 257–58. Quoted from Wailes, op.cit., 256–57. For Gregory’s full text, see St. Gregory the Great, Parables of the Gospel (Chicago: Scepter, 1960), 143–62. See Wailes, op. cit., 259. Similarly, in another bestiary of the twelfth century, now in the Cambridge University Library, we read, “The tongue of a dog cures a wound by licking it. This is because the wounds of sinners are cleansed when they are laid bare in confession, by the penance imposed by the priest. Also the tongue of a puppy cures the insides of

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The biblical account of the dogs that succored Lazarus became a favorite text of the Dominicans, the order of preaching monks named after the Spanish monk St. Dominic, who established the order early in the thirteenth century. Inspired by their founder’s name, the Dominicans called themselves the domini canes, literally the “hounds of God.” The earliest account of Dominic and his new order was written around 1234 by Jordan of Saxony, who tells us that before the monk’s birth, his pregnant mother Joanna had a vision of a dog carrying a burning torch in its mouth, which Jordan saw as a prophesy of Dominic’s birth and his preaching mission.11 This account of Joanna’s dream was repeated by later Dominican writers who joined the combat of heresy to the Order’s other task of preaching and conversion. Both objectives were cited, for example, by the French Dominican Étienne de Salagnac. Étienne explained the Dominicans’ mission in terms of Psalm 58 (Psalm 59.5 and 59.7 in the Revised Standard Version). Here the Psalmist beseeches God, “Deliver me from my enemies … spare none of those who treacherously plot evil. … Each evening they come back, howling like dogs and prowling about the city. There they are, bellowing with their mouths, and snarling with their lips—for ‘Who,’ they think, ‘will hear us?’” According to Étienne, “through the dogs are designated the Preachers whose leader and father [i.e., Dominic] he is … and like dogs they will suffer from hunger for converting others,” and they will go about the city, defending the Church “against the attacks of heretics.”12 This expanded mission of the “hounds of God,” preaching and combating heresy, was accorded an honored place in the Triumph of the Church, a large wall fresco that Andrea Bonaiuti and his assistants painted around 1350 in the Spanish Chapel of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. (Fig. 15.3) At the bottom left is the enthroned Pope; around his feet stand the sheep symbolizing the Christian flock under his care. They are guarded by the domini canes, the large black-and-white “dogs of the Lord.” The right half of the fresco is given over to the world beyond the Church: here we see a wilderness where other black-andwhite dogs attack wolves—that is, the enemies of the Church—while their human counterparts, the domini canes, admonish heretics and convert the pagans.13

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men, because the inside secrets of the heart are often purified by the work and preaching of those learned men.” See T.H. White, The Bestiary: A Book of Beasts, Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1960), 67. Christine Caldwell Ames, Religious Persecution: Inquisition, Dominicans, and Christianity in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 119. Ames, op.cit., 119. For an illustration of the fresco with many details, see Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting (New York: College of Fine Arts, New York University,

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Figure 15.3

369

Andrea de Bonaiuto, The Church Militant and Triumphant, Florence, Spanish Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, c. 1380. Photo Credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

But these metaphorical dogs could also be turned loose against the preaching friars themselves. Critics accused the Dominicans and other mendicant orders of neglecting their stated mission for the accumulation of worldly goods, often characterizing these orders in the words of Isaiah 56:10–11, who speaks of these “Lord’s watchmen” as canes multi non valentes latrare, that is, “ignorant, dumb dogs not able to bark; dreaming, lying down, loving to slumber. The dogs have a mighty appetite; they never have enough.” This passage was often interpreted as a prophesy concerning decay among the Dominicans and other mendicant orders; an accusation, as we have seen, that is probably also reflected in Van Maerlant’s account. In the last book of the Bible, the Apocalypse (Revelation), we are told that while the just will be admitted into the city of God, those excluded will be the “dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters and servers of 1930–2003), vol. 6. Its subject matter is discussed in detail in Margarete Dieck, Die Spanische Kapelle in Florenz: das trecenteske Bildprogramm des Kapitalzaals der Dominiker von Maria Novella (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1997), 106–38.

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idols, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood” (Apocalypse 22:15). But the most sinister dogs in the Middle Ages were unquestionably the Hounds of Hell. Their origins are to be found in Psalm 21, in which the Psalmist complains to God that He has “brought me down into the dust of death. For many dogs have encompassed me: the council of the malignant hath besieged me. They have dug my hands and feet. They have numbered all my bones” (Psalm 21.17), and again: “Deliver, O God, my soul from the sword: my only one from the hand of the dog” (Psalm 21.20). These dogs, of course, are not the only animals attacking the Psalmist: just a few verses before he tells us that “many calves have surrounded me: fat bulls have besieged me. They have opened their mouths against me, as a lion against me, as a lion ravening and roaring” (Psalms 21:12– 13). This last passage is echoed in an illumination in the twelfth-century St. Albans Psalter, of Anglo-Saxon origin, in which the Psalmist is threatened by both lions and calves.14 But it was the dog that had the longest and certainly the most conspicuous association with death and the underworld. In ancient Egypt, Anubis, the deity who conducted the dead to the underworld, had been closely connected with the dog-star Sirius, a manifestation of the belief that Sirius presided over the “cannicular days,” or “dog-days,” when the gates of Hell supposedly gaped wide.15 In ancient Greece and Rome, moreover, the Greek Furies (Erinyes) appeared in the form of dead bitches who pursued the bodies and souls of criminals, while the entrance to Hades itself was guarded by Pluto’s monstrous dog Cerberus, a fearful creature possessing, we are told, some fifty heads. Medieval and Renaissance artists, however, were generally content to depict Cerberus with only three heads, and it is in this form that we encounter him in a remarkable illumination from a fifteenth-century French manuscript of the Le Livre des échecs amoureux (Fig. 15.4). Here, Cerberus reclines at the feet of Pluto and Proserpina before the mouth of Hell, confronting the spectator with fangs bared. The association of dogs, death, and the hereafter persisted into the Middle Ages. When the Black Death first struck Messina in Sicily, in the 14

15

See Koert Van der Horst, The Utrecht Psalter in Medieval Art: Picturing the Psalms of David (Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht, The Netherlands: HES, 1996), 68, commentary for Psalm 21.17–19. Medieval illustrations for this passage varied. In the St. Albans Psalter, the relevant illustration includes not only a leaping dog, but also a group of bulls and calves, apparently illustrating the preceding verses 13–14: “Many calves have surrounded me: fat bulls have besieged me. 14: They have opened their mouths against me.” The illustration accompany this passage appropriately shows a nude man leaping above a group of animals that includes dogs. See David Gordon White, Myths of the Dog-Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 38.

Metaphorical Dogs in the Later Middle Ages

Figure 15.4

Cerberus Reclining at the Feet of Pluto and Proserpina Before the Mouth of Hell, illumination from le Livre des échecs amoureux. French, 15th century. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 143, fol. 136v.

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autumn of 1347, we are told that the frightened inhabitants imagined the disease roaming about the city as “demons in the shape of dogs.”16 Perhaps best known to western Europeans were the Cynocephali, or “dogheads,” who were human in all outward aspects except for their remarkable canine heads. They were one of the monstrous races traditionally thought to inhabit Egypt and the fabled lands further east. Pliny the Elder had described them in his Historial naturalis,17 and they are also mentioned by later writers, including the anonymous author of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, dating from the fourteenth century. Marco Polo, traveling through the East in the same century, encountered no such creatures, but he does record seeing a race of men whose prominent lower teeth, he tells us, reminded him of what he had read concerning the Cynocephali.18 And when Hartmann Schedel’s Buch der Chroniken was published by Anton Koberger in 1493, he did not fail to include a dog-headed man among the exotic races of the world.19 But whatever their origins, the Hounds of Hell appeared early in Christian literature, where they embody the various mortal sins that always lay in wait to assail those who tried to lead the hermetic or cloistered life. In the Institutes of the Christian Life, written by the monk John Cassian between 420 and 429 for the members of his community, the author devotes his first chapter to the monks’ clothing and other accessories, paying particular attention to their spiritual significance for the monastic life. Concerning the staff used by the monks, for example, Cassian writes that The carrying of it is, in a spiritual sense, a warning that they must never go out in the midst of the numerous barking dogs of the vices and the invisible beasts of the evil spirits, from which blessed David begs to be freed when he says, ‘Lord, do not deliver over to the beasts of the soul of 16

17

18

19

G.G. Coulton, The Black Death (New York: Robert M. McBride & Company, 1930), 22–27; White, Dog-Man, 68. For the appearance of the Black Death in Messina, see Ole J. Benedictow, The Black Death 1346–1353: The Complete History (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2004), 70–71. Pliny the Elder, Historia naturalis, 7:23, speaks of a race of human beings who have dogs’ heads and wear animal skins. Based on descriptions by other ancient writers, it is thought that the legendary Cynocephali were inspired by travelers’ descriptions of baboons. This point is made in John Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 82, who also notes that while Marco Polo mentions none of the monstrous races in his travel account, later illustrators of his work did not hesitate to include them. See The Nuremberg Chronicle: A Facsimile of Hartmann Schedel’s Buch der Chroniken (1493; New York: Landmark Press, 1979), Blat XII.

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one who trusts in you.’ Rather, when they [i.e., the beasts] rush upon them they must beat them back by the sign of the cross and drive them far away, and when they rage against them (that is, against the monks) they must destroy them by constantly recalling the Lord’s suffering and by imitating his dying. Cassian refers here to Psalm 74.19: “Deliver not up to the beasts the souls that confess to thee: and forget not to the end the souls of thy poor.”20 Peter Cassian’s treatise was evidently familiar to readers of later centuries, for it seems to have inspired a rather melodramatic scene in the anonymous Ancrene Wisse, a treatise composed in the early thirteenth century. A guide for anchoresses, the Ancrene Wisse gives its readers a particularly detailed account of the fleshly lusts they would encounter and how they should resist them. The “dog of hell,” as he is called here, has slipped into the anchorite’s presence. She bows down to him and cries out: “I give in! I give in!” as if in a pleasurable swoon. Then the former cur becomes bold then, instead of standing at a distance, he leaps forward, and gives God’s dear spouse a mortal bite. A mortal bite indeed; because his teeth are poisoned like a mad dog’s. David in the Psalter calls him “dog,”21 And so, my dear sister, as soon as you ever notice this dog of hell come slinking around with his bloody fleas of stinking thoughts, do not lie there quietly, or sit either, to see what he will do, or how far he will go; do not say drowsily, “Oh dear dog, do get out of here, what do you want in here now?” This encourages him to come in. Instead, take the staff of the cross at once [an echo, perhaps, of John Cassian’s instructions] by invoking it with your mouth, by making the sign with your hand, by thinking of it in your heart [that is, by summoning up a mental image of it]; and tell him angrily to get out, the filthy mongrel, and beat him cruelly with the staff of the holy cross.22 The author then advises the anchorite to kneel and pray. The fourteenth-century German mendicant preacher Johannes Tauler described the plight of the tempted soul in terms rather similar to those of the 20 21 22

John Cassian, The Institutes, trans. B. Ramsey (New York: The Newman Press, 2000), 25, where the editor notes the source of this passage in Psalms. Cf. Psalm 21: “Deliver, O God, my soul from the sword: my only one from the hand of the dog.” See Millet p. 232, note 4.286, referring to p. 110, section 95. See B. Millett, trans., Ancrene Wisse: A Guide for Anchoresses. A Translation (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2009), 109–13 (Ancrene Wisse, Part 4, sections 94–97).

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Ancrene Wisse. In a sermon for the Monday before Palm Sunday, Tauler compared the soul to a hart (male deer) pursued by hunting dogs: Just as the hart is hunted by hounds, so men who are beginners in the spiritual life are pursued by temptations as soon as they turn away from the rest of the world … Now it may happen occasionally that one of the hounds will overtake the hart and seize it by the belly with its teeth. When the hart tries to shake itself free of the hound, he will drag it to a tree, dash it to the trunk and crush its head to be freed. This is just the way we should act. If we find that we cannot overcome the hounds, our temptations, we should run with great haste to the Tree of the Cross and Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and thus crush the head of the hound, which is our temptation. In this way we should overcome the whole lot of them, and be freed of them at once.23 In the three examples that we have just examined, it is evident that the dogs represent the fleshly urges and other temptations that assail humanity. Even more significantly, the term “dog” is applied to Satan himself, who launches these temptations against the faithful; the same term often characterizes Satan’s minions. In the Ancren Riwle, a guide to the spiritual life similar to the Ancrene Wisse, written around 1225, the author warns against the two greyhounds of the Devil called Despair and Presumption.24 “Hound” was the name that the devils employed with pride to describe themselves in the Juditum, the concluding play of the Townley Mystery cycle, which originated in the latter part of the fourteenth century. Here, the devil Tulivulus characterizes his companions as the “hounds of helle.”25 And in a Netherlandish play of approximately the same period, Sint Trudo,26 two devils named Baalberith and Leviathan 23

24

25 26

“Sermon 11 for the Monday before Palm Sunday,” in Johannes Tauler, Sermons (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 55–61; for the passage cited, see p. 56. Tauler offers similar advice in another sermon: see Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear. The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture 13th–18th Centuries (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 292 and n. 87: “Second Sermon for the Holy Sacrament.” For this treatise, see Morton W. Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins: An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1987), 148– 50; the dogs are discussed on 149. See William Roy Mackensie, The English Moralities from the Point of View of Allegory (1914, reprint New York: Goddian Press, 1966), 33–34: St. Trudo, also known as St. Trond, Trudon, or Truyden, was born in Hesbaye, in modern Belgium, and in 655 established near Liège an abbey that bears his name; see Réau, vol. 3, part 3, 1286.

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boast to their audience that they are hellish hounds leading their victims into sin and thereafter into everlasting agony in Hell.27 But hellhounds could function not only as seducers into sin, but also as agents of divine punishment. In his Inferno, for example, Dante encounters two “black bitches as swift as greyhounds,” dismembering a damned soul in the Valley of the Suicides.28 A number of punitive devil-dogs occur in The Dialogue on Miracles by the thirteenth-century Cistercian monk Caesarius of Heisterbach. In one tale, an archbishop’s footman deserts his post to join a band of robbers; in another, a wanton housemaid passes up an opportunity to repent and reform: in both instances, the sinners are appropriately punished by being torn apart by dogs.29 Indeed, the hounds of Hell occur frequently in the literature of the later Middle Ages, as Eric de Bruyn has abundantly shown in the case of the Netherlands.30 Nevertheless, they are only infrequently encountered in the visual arts. They seldom, if ever, appear among the devils that pursue and torture the Damned in the Flemish Last Judgment altarpieces produced in the fifteenth century. They are absent, for example, in the great Last Judgment triptych that Rogier van der Weyden and his workshop produced toward midcentury for the Hôtel Dieu in Beaune; nor do they occur in the even more complex altarpiece that Rogier’s work inspired, the Last Judgment triptych that Hans Memling and his assistants made several decades later for an Italian patron.31 Instead, the Devil’s dogs are more apt to appear in works of smaller format, many of which were intended for private devotion. An early example appears in a two-volume English Bible produced at Winchester in the second half of the twelfth century. An initial in the first volume shows a naked Job

27

28 29 30

31

Elsewhere in the play, Lucifer says that he wishes he could find a helsche hont (hellish hound) to drag down a certain woman into committing mortal sin (i.e. killing her child), while St. Trudo herself prays to God always to lend the woman the power to resist the helsghe honden. See W.M.H. Hummelen, Repertorium van het rederijkersdrama 1500– ca. 1620 (Assen: Van Gorcum and Co., 1968), 148, no. 2 O3 for further references. Dante Aligieri, Inferno, Canto 13:124–29. Caesarius of Heisterbach, The Dialogue on Miracles (1220–1235), trans. H. Von Scott and C.C. Swinton (London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1929), vol. 2, 280. See Eric De Bruyn, De vergeten beeldentaal van Jheronimus Bosch. De symboliek van de Hooiwagen-Triptiek en de Marskramer-Tondo verklaard vanuit Middelnederlandse Teksten (Hertogenbosch: Adr. Heinen Uitgevers, 2001), 271, and especially 457–56, sections 15a–e. Good illustrations of the two triptychs, including the Hell scenes, can be found in Lorne Campbell, Van der Weyden (London: Chaucer Press, 2004), 78 and 86; and Dirk De Vos, Hans Memling: The Complete Works (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 82 and 87.

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entangled in a leafy decoration; he is bitten in the thigh by a sinuous creature that resembles a greyhound, its long, lean body caught in the coils of an initial composed of writhing plant and animal forms.32 This subject may have been suggested by the dogs that threaten the Psalmist as described above. A more obvious example of hellhounds occurs in the Taymouth Hours, an English manuscript executed around 1331 (London, British Library, Yates Thompson MS. 13). At the bottom of three successive folios in the Litany of the Saints (146v–147v), three naked figures are pursued by fierce hounds urged on by devils; in the third scene (Fig. 15.5), still another hound brings down and mauls two more souls. We might be tempted to interpret this sequence as illustrating the attacks by demon dogs on the living, as is described so eloquently in the Ancrene Wisse and in Tauler’s sermons. However, as the editor of the Taymouth manuscript reminds us, “the Litany of the Saints invokes of mercy of the Trinity, the Virgin and the saints,”33 and thus it is more likely that these three images of souls pursued by devils in Hell served to remind readers of this book to pray to the saints to intercede with God for the dead. In any case, a striking contrast to the fierce beasts in the Taymouth Hours can be seen in the Très Riches Heures, a sumptuously illuminated book of hours begun in the earlier fifteenth century for Jean, Duke of Berry by the three Limbourg brothers and completed by Jean Colombe around 1485. The illuminations added by Colombe include a Purgatory (Fig. 15.6) illustrating the Office of the Dead, in which the souls are purged in a fiery river and an icy lake. At lower left, two doglike creatures attend a nude woman lying on the ground; she gazes apprehensively toward the animal on her left, and perhaps with good reason: its long snout and sharply pointed teeth recall those of a crocodile. However, its companion, the creature in the foreground sniffing at the recumbent woman from the right, could simply be a curious lapdog, not unlike those cosseted by so many medieval ladies.34 32 33

34

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Auct. E. inf. 1, fol. 304; see Walter Cahn, Romanesque Bible Illumination (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), 243, fig. 297. See Kathryn A. Smith, The Taymouth Hours: Stories and Construction of the Self in Late Medieval England (London: The British Library, and Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012). 239. The Purgatory scene, occurring on fol. 113v; may well have inspired the editors of the 1969 edition of the manuscript illumination to note that it was “one of the few attempts prior to the sixteenth century at illustrating The Divine Comedy of Dante” (Jean Longnon, Raymond Cazelles, and Millard Meiss, The Très Riches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry [New York: George Braziller, 1969, commentary to pl. 100]). However, this conclusion is doubtful because Purgatory was as significant in the eschatology of Northern Europe as it was in Dante’s Italy. See Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory (Chicago: University of Chicago

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Figure 15.5

Devil and Hell Hound Attacking a Soul, Taymouth Hours, London, British Library, Yates Thompson MS 13, fol. 147v.

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Figure 15.6

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Jean Colombe, Purgatory, Très Riches Heures. Chantilly, Musée Condé, fol. 113v., Photo Credit: RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.

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Certainly more violent are the three greyhounds that attack their victims in the Hell scene from a panel generally known as the Prado Tabletop (Fig. 15.7) and traditionally attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, a claim that has been rejected by many Bosch scholars only recently. Despite its traditional title, the panel probably never served as a tabletop, but more likely functioned as a devotional image, perhaps to be displayed on the wall.35 Its subject matter was inspired by the Vier Utersten, the Dutch version of The Four Last Things, a widely read medieval devotional work describing the events that accompany the dying of every human being.36 We are told that among the reasons why death is to be feared is that the Devil, namely “the Hound,” and his followers, “those very sly [slimme] and malicious enemies of mankind, appear at the deathbed in fearful shapes, but they are visible only to the dying person.”37 The center of Bosch’s painting presents the earthly course of human life in terms of the Seven Deadly Sins, while the corner roundels display the so-called Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell.38 In the Hell scene, depicted in the fiery landscape at lower left (Fig. 15.8), the Damned are eternally punished, each according to his or her major sin, with each sin neatly labeled for the benefit of the viewer. At the base of the mountain in the center background, those souls guilty of Invidia, or Envy, are violently attacked by three

35

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Press, 1984), for the development of Purgatory in the Middle Ages. Finally, Dante’s account of the two large black female dogs attacking the soul guilty of suicide occurs not in his Purgatorio, but in his Inferno. The removal of this panel from Bosch has been noted in the press, but no extensive discussion has yet appeared. For the Tabletop, see Walter S. Gibson, “Hieronymus Bosch and the Mirror of Man: The Authorship and Iconography of the Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins,” Oud Holland 87 (1973): 205–26. For other literature, see Walter S. Gibson, Hieronymus Bosch: An Annotated Bibliography (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1983), nos. E259–270 (pp. 117– 20). The Dutch text is summarized in Christoffel Martinus Vos, De leer der Vier Uittersten. Ein bijdrage tot de kennis van het godsdienstig geloof onzer vaderen in de vijftiende eeuwe (Amsterdam: Y. Rogge, 1866), 53–99 Vos, 53. For the depictions of the Seven Deadly Sins in Bosch’s Prado panel, see the two detailed studies by Laura D. Gelfand: “Social Status and Sin: Reading Bosch’s Prado Seven Deadly Sins and Four Last Things Painting,” in Richard Newhauser, ed., The Seven Deadly Sins. From Communities to Individuals,” (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 229–56; and “Class, Gender, and the Influence of Penitential Literature in Bosch’s Depictions of Sin,” in Jheronimus Bosch: His Sources: 2nd International Jheronimus Bosch Conference, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Jheronimus Bosch Art Center, May 22–25, 2007 (‘s-Hertogenbosch: Jheronimus Bosch Art Center, 2010), 159–73.

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Figure 15.7

Formerly Attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, The Seven Deadly Sins and Four Last Things. Madrid: Museo del Prado. Photo Credit: Gianni Dagli Orti/ The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.

ferocious black dogs. Bosch may well have encountered such hellhounds in the various editions of the Vier Utersten. Dogs appear in other pictures by Bosch, including two circular images, one of them on an outer wing of the Haywain Triptych (Madrid, Prado), the other on one of a pair of panels that once formed the outer wings of a triptych, but have since been detached and are now preserved in the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam.39 In both paintings, a shabbily-dressed man—perhaps a peddler, to judge from the wicker basket strapped to his back—makes his way through a menacing landscape. In each case, the man looks behind him at a small dog that growls and shows its teeth. These are probably not hellhounds but ordinary dogs, the one in the Rotterdam panel perhaps belonging to the brothel depicted in the left middle distance. But infinitely diabolic monsters with canine characteristics can be discerned in several other pictures by Bosch, above all in the Hell panel of his Garden of Earthly Delights, which contains one of the artist’s most inventive displays of infernal monsters. Among them is a 39

See Stefan Fischer, Hieronymus Bosch (Cologne: Taschen, 2013), 255, cat. no. 17.1, with a good illustration on p. 205.

Metaphorical Dogs in the Later Middle Ages

Figure 15.8

Formerly Attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, Detail of Figure 7: Hell, detail showing one of the Damned attacked by hell hounds. Photo Credit: The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.

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pair of dog-like creatures (Fig. 15.9), one of them bearing a curious sort of body armor, which viciously attack their recumbent male victim. A pair of similarly armored dogs appear in the central panel of Bosch’s St. Anthony triptych in Lisbon (Fig. 15.10). As it happens, dogs are mentioned in the earliest surviving account of St. Anthony’s life: the so-called Vaderboek, a collection of the lives of the desert fathers, at least one version of which circulated in Bosch’s time.40 The Vaderboek includes an account of the various attempts of the Devil to frighten Anthony into submission. After the failure of his first attack, the Devil and his followers appeared to Anthony in the form of “great black dogs and other beasts that bit and tore each other apart.”41 In Bosch’s St. Anthony triptych, however, there are no black hounds, only two small house dogs marching peaceably at the head of a group of other devils. Their lack of menace is reinforced by a third dog seated on his haunches in front of them; he jauntily sports a jester’s hood and a circlet of bells around his torso. Although their context would seem to place them among the agents of the devil, these three frivolous little creatures, especially the canine jester, have more in common, it seems, with the ladies’ lapdogs so envied by the anonymous Dutch poet cited above. Perhaps they are distant descendants of the Devil Dog that seeks to seduce the anchoress described in the Ancrene Wisse, but we can only speculate. Although this triptych, as with so many of Bosch’s works, still awaits a satisfactory explication of all its details,42 these three dogs and their diabolical companions are ignored by St. Anthony, who kneels toward the right, gazing calmly in our direction with his right hand raised in blessing. The curious body armor worn by some of the dogs in the Hell panel of the Garden of Earthly Delights, and the frivolous cap and bells sported by the little dog in the Temptation of St. Anthony, suggest, perhaps, that by the time Bosch had painted these two triptychs—most likely in the decade or so after 1500— the fearsome Hounds of Hell had entered a more frivolous phase of their 40

41 42

Dit boeck is ghenamet dat vader boeck dat in den latijne is gheten Vitas patrum, published by Pieter van Ox in 1490. See Dirk Bax, Ontcijfering van Jeroen Bosch (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1949), 8, note 9. On p. 6, Bax also reprints the original text of the section that he relates to the St. Anthony triptych. “grote zwarte honden ende beten ende verschoorden malcander voer hem,” quoted in Bax, 6. For the account given in the Vaterboek, see Bax, Ontcijfering van Jeroen Bosch, 5–6. The description of these encounters of St. Anthony with the Devil in the Golden Legend is much simpler; see Jacobus De Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), vol. I, 93–96.

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Figure 15.9 Hieronymus Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights. Madrid, Museo del Prado. Right Inner Wing, Hell, detail. Photo Credit: The Art Archive at Art Resource, Ny.

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Figure 15.10 Formerly Attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, Triptych of the Temptation of St. Anthony, central panel, detail of the left background. Photo: Bulloz. Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga. Photo Credit: RMN-Grand Palais/ Art Resource, NY.

career. But this was hardly the case. Martin Luther seems to have been much concerned with the Devil, as he demonstrates in his Table Talk, written between 1531 and 1536.43 Luther notes the demonic hound that roamed through Saxony 43

The episodes of Luther’s encounters with the Devil are omitted in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century English editions of Table Talk (Tafelreden) that I have been able to consult, but brief discussions of these diabolical episodes can be found in Jeffrey Burton Russell, Lucifer: The Prince of Darkness. Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History (Ithaca,

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in search of victims for Hell, and describes his own personal encounters with the Devil, including the time that he found him in the form of a dog sleeping on his own bed.44 In the Netherlands, devil-dogs are cited in at least two poems from the first half of the sixteenth century. One is the Dal sonder wederkeeren Oft Tpas der Doot, the title of which can be translated as “The Valley of No Return, or The Pass of Death,”45 written by Colijn de Coter, a Flemish poet and rederijker (i.e., a rhetorician, a composer of poems and plays for public presentation).46 Printed in 1528 by the Antwerp publisher Jan van Doesborch, de Coter’s long poem consists of an extended meditation on the vanity of this world, the certainty of death, and a postmortem judgment with its alternative destinies of bliss in Heaven or—as de Coter puts it—“eternal disgrace among the hellish hounds.”47 These infernal canines nose their way into another poem on the necessity of leading a good Christian life, this one attributed to the Antwerp schoolteacher-poet Anna Bijns (d. 1575); this includes the admonitory refrain, “otherwise, the hell hounds will devour your soul.” Belief in the Devil hardly declined in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a time that Robert Muchembled has described as deluged by a veritable “tidal wave of diabolism.”48 Indeed, the devil-dog flourished in the nineteenth century, although chiefly as the subject of superstitions and stories that still circulated among country people. In many of these tales, a black dog appears as a harbinger of impending death. In a relatively few instances, this dog is identified specifically as the Devil himself, or perhaps as one of his agents, who hauls his victim off to the underworld to be punished for his or her sins. A good discussion of these later devil-dogs and their occurrence in European folklore of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries appears in Barbara Allen Woods’s The Devil in Dog Form, published in 1959; particularly

44 45 46

47 48

NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 172–73; and Robert Muchembled, A History of the Devil from the Middle Ages to the Present, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2003), 111–12. Muchembled, loc. cit. The word “pas” is here employed in the sense of a mountain pass or narrow gorge. For a valuable account of the Netherlandish rederijkers, see Herman Pleij, Het gevleugelde: Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur, 1400–1560 (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, 2007), 295–498. Readers unfamiliar with Dutch may consult Walter S. Gibson, “Artists and Rederijkers in the Age of Bruegel,” Art Bulletin 63, no. 3 (September 1981): 426–46, an outmoded but perhaps still useful introduction to this subject. Paul De Keyser, Colijn Caillieu’s Dal Sonder Wederkeeren of Pas der Doot (Antwerp: De Sikkel, 1936), 133, line 700: “Deewige oneere onder die helsche honden.” Muchembled, 108.

386

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relevant is the chapter labeled “The Sovereign of Hell.”49 Such traditional folk tales may well have inspired the devilish canine that Sherlock Holmes tracks down in A. Conan Doyle’s novel The Hound of the Baskervilles, first published in 1902. People who encounter the beast describe it as possessing glowing eyes and breathing fire and brimstone.50 Similarly, in Book Two of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy (1925), while the protagonist Clyde Griffiths mulls over the various ways he might eliminate his unwanted mistress, he falls asleep and dreams that a “savage black dog was trying to bite him.”51 As the term hellhound gradually lost its traditional infernal meaning, it survived with another—“a fiend, a fiendish person,” that it had possessed in English by the fifteenth century.52 Thus, in “The Shooting of Dan McGrew,” a 1907 poem by the Canadian writer Robert W. Service, a stranger in a Yukon frontier bar confronts the apparently notorious title character, accuses him of being a “hound of hell,” and then shoots him dead.53 A final stripping of the beast’s infernal significance occurs in Dorothy Sayer’s 1937 Busman’s Honeymoon, where the Dowager Duchess of Denver notes in her diary that the “hell-hounds”—a term that she applies to newspaper reporters—have been trying to sniff out the wedding plans of her son, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Harriet Vane, his bride-to-be.54 Being thus demoted from the servants of Satan—and often Satan himself—to purveyors of social gossip, the Hounds of Hell had indeed run their course. 49

50 51 52 53 54

See Barbara Allen Woods, The Devil in Dog Form: A Partial Type-Index of Devil Legends, University of California Folklore Studies 11 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959), especially chapter IV “The Sovereign of Hell,” esp. 100–06. Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles (London: George Newnes, 1902). Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy (1925; New York: Signet Classics, 1964), 442. I have consulted The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971, 1286), under “Hellhound.” Robert Service, “The Shooting of Dan McGrew,” in The Spell of the Yukon (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1907), 59; for the full poem, see 55–60. I cite an edition published in New York: Harper Torchbooks, 2006, 25–26.

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418

Index

Index

Index Page numbers in italics indicate illustration pages

Augustine, St. 258, 268 Aue, Hartmann von, 233

Aberdeen Bestiary 123, 125 ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Qināʾī 86 Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī 83 Adoration of the Shepherds 350, 365 Advice to Grand Jurors in Cases of Blood 65 Aelian 29 Aëtius 269 Aesop’s fables 119 See also fables Aḥmad ibn Taymīya 81‑82 ʿAlā al-Dawla al-Simnānī 93 Albans Psalter 370 Albert the Great 329, 341 Alberti, Leaon Battista 11, 35–39 Alcibiades 37, 38 ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī, al- 82 Al-Qushayri, Abu ʾl-Qasim 83 Ambrose, St. 367 Ancren Riwle 374 Ancren Wisse 373–374, 375, 382 angels 78, 85, 87, 199, 199n16, 201, 258, 290 Anglicus, Bartholomaeus 339 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 117 animal kingdom 78, 101, 118, 126 See also individual animals animalibus, De 341 Animal Turn 11, 13, 97–101, 107–108n30, 108–9n30, 109, 115, 118, 122, 126 animals 98n2 See also individual animals Annunciation 196, 198, 212, 213, 226–228, 363 Annunciation to Anna 189, 190 Annunciation to Joachim 191 Annunciation to the Shepherds 365 Anthony, St. 382 Anthony, St. 382, 384 Aquinas, Thomas 183 Aristotle 20, 22, 33, 36, 209 Art of Love 225 Artemis 26, 30, 31, 35, 39 ass 199 Aubert, David 358

Babington, Zachary 65 Bacon, Adam de 245 Bacon, Francis 58 Baexen, Wolter van 250, 251 Barberino Francesco da 215 Barocci, Federico 13, 127, 127–128n1, 128–133, 133n11, 134, 135, 135n20, 136–146, 146n46, 147, 147–148n44, 148–161 autograph animal studies 131n9 Bartolomeo, Fra 135 Basil, St. 20–22 Basillakes, Nikephoros 19, 36, 38, 39 Battle of Constantine 141 Battle of Hastings 107, 108n32 Baude, Henri 336 Bayeux Embroidery 13, 9, 98, 101–102, 102‑3n23, 103–109, 114, 115, 118–120, 123, 124, 136 beagles 273 bear 84, 108, 115, 247 bear-baiting 97, 113, 114 Beaune Town Council 68–77 Beatice of Castile 283, 290 Beauvais, Vincent de 231 Bellarmino, Roberto 151 Bellori, Giovanni P., 144, 155 Berger, John 98–99 Barnard of Calirvaus 258 Bernardino of Siena, St. 218 Bertha of Holland 253 Bertrade de Montfort, Countess 353 bestiary 123, 124, 200, 245, 262 Aberdeen 125 Worksop 125 Bible/biblical 165–217, 245, 253, 254, 262, 266, 277, 338, 341, 368, 369, 370, 373, 375 bichon frise 263 Bigarny, Felipe 294 Bijns, Anna 385 Birago, Giovanni Pietro da 343 birds 97, 101, 102, 106, 197, 111, 115, 119, 120, 123, 127, 239, 308, 311, 328

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004328617_019

Index Black Death 53, 370 Blanche de Bretagne 263, 275 Blanche de France 262, 263, 270, 273 Blanche de Navarre 273, 274 Blanche, Duchesse d’Orléans 271 Bloch, Howard 174 bloodhounds 247, 276 blue 86, 149, 149, 167, 180, 221, 228, 229 boek de natuur, Het 366 Bohn, Babette 130 Bonaiuti, Andrea de 268 Bonmont Psalter 333 Books of Love, The 226 Bosch, Hieronymus 15, 379, 380, 381 brasses 255, 3232, 332n21 Bruyn, Erec de 375 Brundage, James 183 Buch de Chroniken 372 Buddhists 318, 322 bulldogs 44 “Burgos, Drawing of Tomb of Juan II of Castille and his wife, Isabella of Portugal, in the Miraflores Charterhouse” 297 Burns, E. Jane 224 Byard, Rev. Philip Thomas 260 Byzantine era 19, 29, 192, 194–197, 202–204, 209, 210, 214 Caesarius of Heisterbach 375 Caius, John 41, 42 Calkins, Robert 328 Calthorpe, Katharine 245, 246 canibus Anglicis, De (Of English Dogges) 41 Canterbury Tales 339 Capellanus, Andreas 225, 226 Cassian, John 372–373 Cassy, Alice 254 Castile y León 279–300 Catesby, John 252-253 Cathedral of Burgos 283–296 Catholic Reformation 13, 127, 141 cats 28, 74, 101, 127, 129, 307, 308, 328 causa et curae, De 350 Caviness, Madeline 115 Cerberus 370 Cerberus Reclining at the Feet of Pluto and Proserpina Before the Mouth of Hell 371

419 Chanson de Roland 172 chansons de gestes 166 Charles, Count of Angoulême 357 Charles the Bold 326, 345, 358, 360 Charles VI 271, 357 Charles VII 355 Charney, Geoffrey de 226 Chastelaine de Vergi 176, 177, 186 Chaucer, Geoffrey 165, 334, 339 Chefdeville, Jacques de 355 Chroniques de Hainaut 360, 361 Church Militant and Triumphant 369 circlet 167, 221, 223, 224, 382 Civil Wars 62 Clemence of Hungary 273 Clement VIII, Pope 153 Cockayne, Emily 13, 68, 72 Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome 101 Colombe, Jean 376 comedy 208–210 Commedia 208 commedia 211, 213, 216, 231 conjointure 170n6 Contra Jovinianum 351 corpses 49, 317, 318, 2443, 305, 309, 311, 314, 316. See also death Correggio, Antonio da 129, 134 Council of Trent 129, 150, 153 Couple on Horseback, A 223 courtship 42, 167, 173, 218, 229, 231, 239 Cowper, John 63 Cox-Rearick, Janet 135 Craig, John 54 Crane, Susan 99–100 Cranford, Emma 251, 254 Crockford, Susan 30 Crusades 166, 166n3, 173, 183, 186 cycles 205n36 Dabernoun, John 260 Damīrī al- 82, 82–83n20 Dante 208, 375 death 23–25, 34, 66, 123, 124, 134, 136, 140, 146, 183, 235, 265, 268, 279, 277, 278, 282, 283, 290, 294, 295, 305, 208, 309, 317, 318, 322, 341, 370, 379, 385 “Debate between the Horse and the Greyhound” 331 Declaration of Such Grievous accidents … 49

420 de Coter, Colijn 385 Defensorium inviolatae virginitatus … 226 Descriptions of England 41 Despenser, Isabel 247 devil 258, 340, 374–376, 379, 382, 384, 385 Devil in Dog Form, The 385 devil-dogs 281, 275, 385 DeWeese, Devin 92 Diocletian, Emperor 133, 135 Dialogue on Miracles, The 375 Diogenes the Cynic 33 diptych 4, 6, 8, 54 See also under individual titles Diptych of Abbot Christiaan de Hondt 6, 7 Doesborch, Jan van 385 Doggett, Henry 254, 255 dogs absence of 74–77 as accessory 334 as bad examples 341–348 and Beaune Town Council 69 in the Bible 338n30 in classical and humanist texts 75 collared 109–116, 113, 273–275, 353–362, 359 as Christ tormentors 137–138n24 as companions 165 facing 270–271 as good examples 348–353 in historical records 68–77 in Japan 303–324 loyalty of 126, 245, 260 metaphorical 363 as mirror and model 325–330 nuisance 41–67 nursing 145n43 relationship with 1 and the scholarly life 327n5 sexuality of 340 sins of 338 as symbols 2, 145, 151, 326 tasks of 44 tombs of 270 verbal 265 white 321 See also hunting; individual breeds Domini canes 76, 368 Dominic, St, 368

Index Donatus, Aelius 342 donkeys 27, 129 doves 58, 214 dragon 14, 247, 257–260, 277 Dream of Joachim 189, 191, 201 Duby, Georges 218 Duke of Savoy (Philibert II) 8, 10 Dürer, Albrecht 221, 222 Dutch Revolt 243 Early Modern Period 2, 54, 66, 68, 75, 76 Echtet, Peterke van 251 Edith, Queen 107, 115 Edward, the Black Prince 243 Edward the Confessor, King 106, 111, 115, 123, 126 Edward, Duke of York 326 Edward IV, King 246 Edward VII, King 260 Eighty Years’ War 243 Ekphrasis 26, 27, 39 Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen 183 Elizabeth of York, Duchess 246 encomia 12, 13, 19, 20, 20n2, 21 Eneasroman 237 Epistle on Sufism 83 Epistles of the Brethren of Purity 89 Erec 233 Ermengoll IX, 332 Eschenbach, Wolfram von 235 ethopoeia 28, 29 Étienne de Salagnac 368 Eugenius III, Pope 258 Everyday Life and Fatal Hazard … 66 Expulsion of Joachim 188, 189, 198, 209, 215 Evergates, Theodore 183 Eyck, Jan van 284 fables 75, 109–111, 115, 118–120, 122, 126 See also Aesop’s fables; “Stag and Spring” fable falcon 131, 336 Fasciculus Morum 339, 340 Fawāʾiḥ al-jamāl wa-fawātiḥ al-jalāl 92 fealty 349, 350, 353, 360 Fédération Cynologique Internationale 286 female figure 224 Ferdinand II 298

Index Ferdinand III 283, 284, 285, 290, 294 Ferrières, Henri de 326 fidelity 221, 345, 351 Fifteen Joys of Marriage 350, 352, 353 Fleming, Abraham 41 Flemish manuscript miniatures 325–362 Fontaine-Guérin, Hardouin de 359 footrests 243–260 Fortune, Infortune, Fort Une 10 Four Last Things, The 379, 380 foxhounds 247 Frau Minne 224, 245, 237 fresco/frescoes 14, 129, 141, 145, 188, 195, 196, 198, 203–211, 213–215, 217, 280, 281 Friedman, John Block 76 Froissart, Jean 331 Fulk IV, Count 353 Galgo Español 280–281, 280 Garden of Earthly Delights 380, 382, 383 Gaza, Theodorus 19, 31–39 Genga, Gerolomo 134, 137 Gesta Romanorum 200 Ghazālī al- 86 Giannotti, Archbishop Antonio 146 Gillgren, Peter 144, 145 Gipkyn, John 54 Giotto 14, 187, 188, 192–193n6, 194–197, 197n13, 198–199, 202–205, 207–217 gisants 265, 282, 294, 296, 300 Godwinson, Earl Harold 101, 103, 116 Golden Legend 76, 133, 199, 245 Gonzaga, Federico 268 Gonzalo ins Agilar 286, 288, 290, 292 Gospel of Pseudo Matthew 187, 197n3, 198 Gottfried of Admont 367 Grammataica 342, 344 Grandes Chroniques de France 353, 354 Gray, Archbishop Walter de 257, 257 Gregory the Great, St. 200, 369 greyhounds 42, 44, 554, 76, 111, 247, 261, 263, 329, 355, 347, 374, 375, 379 griffins 108, 247 Grimani Breviary 330, 362 guardian dogs 288, 289, 290 Guise, Jacques de 360, 361 Gunn, Steven 66

421 handscrolls 309–311 and cemeteries 318–319 and dogs 209 Harrison, William 41 hawks 48, 76, 108, 110, 115–228, 277, 308–310, 342, 360 Haywain Triptych 380 Hearne, Vicki 98 Henry IV 297–298 Hesiod 25 Hell 379–383, 381, 385 Henisch, Bridget Ann 330 Henry IV, Part 2 247 Heraldry 4, 247, 267 Hesdin, Simon de 345 Hey, Jean 3 Hildegarde of Bingen 350, 353 Hindman, Sandra 174 hinin 312, 314, 322, 323 Histoire de Charles Martel 358, 360 Historial naturalis 37 Holinshed, Ralph 66 Holme, Randle 42 Holy Greyhound 366 Homer 30 Hondt, Christiaan de 6, 7 Horloge of Sapience 341, 342 Hortus Conclusus Annunciation 226, 227, 228 hounds of hell/hellhounds 15, 370, 372–376, 380, 386 Hours of Mary of Burgundy 333 Housebook Master 221 Hubert, St. 276 hunting 1, 26, 30–32, 34, 35, 39, 49, 75, 76, 80–82, 89, 100, 110, 114–117, 119–122, 165, 225, 226, 229, 229n33, 233, 233, 233n45, 237, 238, 239, 261, 270, 290, 303–305, 307, 308, 326, 327, 229, 356, 359, 361, 363 Hywel Dda, King 111 Ibn Nūḥ al-Qūṣī 85 Iconologia, The 138 Imagines 21 Inferno 375 Institutes of the Christian Life 372 Institutes of the Eucharist 127, 153–155, 156, 157, 158–159, 160 Isabeau of Bavaria 271

422 Isabel of Portugal 290, 296, 297 Isabella the Catholic 297, 298 Isabelle of Aragon 271, 272, 277 Isabelle d’Este 268 Islam and dogs 78–93 Iseult 165, 177, 179, 180, 186 Jacobus, Laura 214 Jagd, Die 228 Jagd nach der Treue, Die 13, 218–40 Japan 303–324 medieval attitudes toward dogs 306–9 Jean de Berry 326, 330, 334 Jeanne de Bourbon 275, 276 Jeanne d’Evreux 270, 275 Jeanne de France 271, 272 Jehan de Seure 233 Jenner, Mark 53, 58 Jerome, St. 268 John II 296–298 John the Fearless 277 Jordan, James 100–101 Joachim and Ana cycle 207–209, 213, 216 Joachim in the Wilderness 189, 190, 194, 196, 207, 215 Jordan of Saxony 368 Judgment of Minne, The 224 Juditum 374 Justinian, Emperor 138 kami 307–309, 320–323 Keefer, Sarah Larratt 102, 107 Kalīla wa-Dimna 88 Keen, Maurice 226 Key to Love, The 224, 225 Koechlin, Raymond 177 Keyser, Kendrick 243 Keyser, Pieter de 243 Kojiki 304 Koberger, Anton 322 Kūrānī, al- Yūsuf 90, 93 Kuroda Hideo 311, 323 Laber, Hadamar von 228, 233, 235 Labors of the Months 330 Ladis, Andrew 209 lamb 194, 197, 209. 214

Index lapdog 42, 165–186, 262, 329, 332, 358, 366, 376, 382 apotheosis 267–270 La Sale, Antoine de 350 Last Judgment (Giotto) 209, 214 Last Judgment (Memling) 375 Last Judgment (van der Weyden) 375 Last Supper (Barocci) 127, 146, 147, 148–153, 158 Last Supper (Tintoretto) 266 Laurent, Juan 298 La Vache, Drouart 226 Laws 43 leopards 247 Lettter Books of London 51 Lewis, Suzanne 122 Lex Romana Burgundiana 111 Libanius 25 Liédet, Loyset 358, 360, 361 Lingo, Stuart 127, 133, 138, 144, 145, 144n70 lions 13, 21, 24, 31, 34, 108, 165, 234, 245–247, 251, 254, 257, 258, 260, 2665, 277, 278, 280, 288, 290, 298–200, 330 Livre de Chevalerie 226 Livre de la chasse, Le 225, 233 Livre de tresor de venerie, Le 357 Livre des échecs amoureux, Le 370 lizard 27, 140, 141, 144–146 Lotto, Lorenzo 129, 139 Louis of France 277 Louis VII, King 183 Louis IX 277 Louis X 273 Louis XI 355–356 Louise of Savoy 266 Loyola, Ignatius 129 Lucian 20–22, 26, 70 Lucius Veruo 21 Luther, Martin 384 Luttrell Psalter 113, 114 Lycantrhopia (melancholia) canina 269 Madonna of St. Sebastian 134, 136 Maerlant, Jacob van 366, 367, 369 Mâle, Emile 267 Marco Polo 372 Malicote, Sandra Obergfell 174 Man and the Natural World 42

423

Index Mann, C. Griffith 172 Marcellus 267 Margaret of Austria 4, 5. 6 Margaret of Bavaria 277 Marguerite d’Artois 263, 264, 270, 271 Marguerite de Flandres 262, 264, 270 Marie d’España 274, 275 Marie de France 110 marriage 14, 166, 175, 186, 188, 218, 220, 221, 223, 229, 233, 237, 239, 295, 295, 297, 298 Martial 165 Martyrdom of St. Lawrence 141 Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, The 127, 128, 133–135, 245 Martyrdom of St. Vitalis 123, 138, 139, 143, 146n47 Mary of Burgundy 333 Master of 1499 4, 6 Master of the Dresden Prayer Book 345, 346 Master of San Martino 192, 194, 196n11, 198, 202, 205 mastiffs 42, 51–53, 56, 57, 59, 72, 247, 263, 292 See also Mastín español Mastín español 292, 293, 300 Mastín de los Pirineos 292 Maurizio of Burgos, Bishop 288 Maurus, Hrabanus 231 Maurus, Rabanus 266 Maximus, Valerius 228, 343 Mazerolles, Phillipe de 345, 347 Memling, Hans 375 Memorable Deeds and Sayings of Philosophers 328, 343 Menagier de Paris 328, 336 McCracken, Peggy 99 Meara, David 258 Meeting at the Golden Gates 188, 192, 202, 203, 205, 210 Mehmed II, Sultan 31 Menache, Sophia 70, 266, 267 Menander Rhetor 22 Mendoza y Figueros, Mencía 293–295, 300 Meredith, Hugh 61 Michelangelo 133, 138 Middle Ages 70, 75, 76, 110, 114, 165, 177, 198, 199, 208, 210, 267, 271, 326, 328, 334, 340, 348, 464

Minnesänger 235, 237 Minnejagd, Die 226, 233 Minūfī, al- 86, 87 Moffitt, John F. 266 monkeys 4, 307, 328 Monogrammist BxG 221, 222 Morgan Old Testament Picture Book 11, 165–167, 167n5, 168, 169, 170–172, 172n8 173–177, 180, 183, 185, 186 “Mother Dog and Puppies” fable 104, 120–121 Muchembled, Robert 385 Muset, Colin 330 Mystical Hunt of the Unicorn 228 Najm al-Dīn Kubrā 92 Nativity with Cardinal Jean Rolin 2, 3, 4 Natura rerum, De 329, 341 Naturalis Historia 245 naturis rerum, De 350 naturalism 196, 209, 270 Neckam, Alexander 350, 351 Neville, Ralph, Earl of Westmoreland 332 Nicolas de Genesse 345 Nhon shoki 304 Norman conquest 97, 101, 102, 117, 119, 126 Norris, Malcolm 258 Novak, Bishop 258 N-town cycle 207 Nun’s Priest’s Tale 334 Nūr al-Dīn al-Isfarāyinī 93 Odo of Cheriton 110 Odysseus 31 On the Cleverness of Animals 21 On Love 225 Osborne, Dorothy 42 Oteswich, Sir John de 251 Our Bodies, Ourselves 10 Ovid 225 Owen-Crocker, Gale 102, 106, 107, 111 ox 199 Pachón Navarro 292, 292n32 Panofsky, Erwin 257 Parmigianino 141, 145 Parzival 229, 235, 236 Passion plays 208 Peasants’ Revolt 50

424 Pedro I, King 290, 298 Pepys, Samuel 47 Perdiguero de Burgos 290–291, 291, 292, 300 Peterson del Mar, David 94 Phalène 284, 285, 286, 300 Phébus, Gaston, Count of Foix 225, 233, 326 Philip I 353 Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy 233, 277 Philip the Good 326, 355, 358, 361 Philippe d’Alençon 265 pigs 57, 67, 69, 72, 345 Pindar 20, 21 Plato 30, 32, 33, 35 Pliny the Elder 245, 372 Plutarch 20–21 Poets Dream, The 44 Pole, John de la, Duke of Suffolk 246 porcupine 270 Pot, Philippe 277–278 Prado Tabletop 375, 380 Proprietatibus Rerum, De 339 Proske, Beatrice Gilman 279 Protestantism 129 Proverbes en Rimes 334, 335, 336, 342 Proverbes au villain, La 336 Ps. Hermogenes 24, 27, 38 Ps. Nicolaus 24 Punishment of Haman, The 133 Purgatory 376, 376–377n36, 378 Quintilian 22 rabbits 27, 265, 307 Ramscot, Ralph 60 Rapp, Anne Buri 220 Ratonero Bodeguero Andaluz 296, 297. 298, 300 Rawcliffe, Carole 50, 53, 72 Reconquista 280 Renaissance 36, 39, 40, 137, 138, 151, 208, 209, 270, 277, 339, 340, 343, 353, 370 Republic 30, 33 Retz, Franz von 226 Reznick, Irven M. 338 Rhetoric 20 rhetoric 13, 19–28, 36, 39, 40, 79, 88, 93, 155n3, 174, 175, 180, 218, 225, 227, 229, 343, 385

Index Richard III 246 Ripa, Cesare 138 Robert of Artois 263, 265 Roch, St. 245, 263, 262n5 Roi Modus, Le 326 Rolin, Cardinal Jean 2, 3, 4 Rolin, Nicolas 2 Romano, Giulio 268 Ryan, Marie-Laure 122 Sabueso Español 292, 292n32 Sacrifice of Joachim 189, 191 Saint-Denis Basilica 14, 261–278 Sale, Antoine de la 350 Santos, Serge 265 scent hound 290 Schedel, Hartmann 372 Scott, Margaret 346 Scrovegni Chapel 187–217 Scrovegni, Enrico 211–314, 216 Sebastian, St. 137, 133–135, 137, 238, 140n30 Serpell, James 101 servants 148, 150, 151, 155, 160, 187, 330, 362, 386 Service, Robert W. 386 Sforza, Maximilian 343 Shakespeare 247 sheep 28, 32, 121, 169, 194, 198, 199, 99n16, 201, 201n26, 207, 368 sheepdogs 195, 198, 363 Shiba 322, 323 sight hound 26, 280, 281, 342, 358 Siloé, Gil de 296, 298, 299 Simon de Hesdin 345 Sint Trudo 334, 374n26, 375n27 Smith, Barbara Herrnstein 98, 101, 107, 123, 126 snakes 101, 24, 258, 307, 366 sonder wederkeeren Oft Tpas der Doot, Dal 385 Spackman, Thomas 49 spaniels 42, 44, 53, 54, 66, 243, 284, 285, 286, 336, 337, 342, 358 Spiegel, Gabrielle 174 Spinola Hours 363 “Stag and Spring” fable 105, 121–122 Stahl, Harvey 172 St. Albans Psalter 370, 370n14

425

Index St. Anthony 382 Stapleton, Sir Brian de 254, 256, 332 Stapleton, Cecily 254 Steel, Karl 99 Stigmatization of St. Francis 131 St Maur, Laurence de 240, 249 Stone, Alison 174 Stoning of St. Stephen 141 Strassburg, Gottfried von 177, 235 St. Sebastian 141 Stucky-Schürer, Monica 220 Study for dog legs 161 Studies for the Institution of the Eucharist 160 St. Vitalis 145, 146n47 Suche nach der Treue 237, 238, 238 Sufis 78–93 Sumner, William 48 Suso, Henry 341 Table Talk 384–385 Talbot, John 247 talbots 247 Tauler, Johannes 373–374 Taymouth Hours 376, 377 Temple, Sir William 42 Temptation of St. Anthony 382, 384 Testard, Robinet 353 “Tghluc vanden hont” 363 Thomas, Keith 42, 123, 327 Thomas of Cantimpré 329–330 Thousand and One Nights 85 Tiberius, Emperor 343, 346, 348 Tintoretto, Jacopo 129, 151, 266, 268 Titian 130, 141, 151 tomb-chest 280, 286, 290, 293, 298 tomb monuments 243–260 Torryngton, Margaret 251, 252 Torryngton, Richard 251, 252 Townley Mystery cycle 374 Travels of Sir John Mandeville, The 372 Travis, Peter 119, 122 Très Riches Heures 326, 330n16, 330–331n17, 362, 376, 378 Tridentine era 134, 141 post 146, 160 Tristan 154, 177, 235 Triumph of the Church 368 Truth 228, 268 Trumpington, Sir Roger 259, 260

Umayyad invasion 280 Unicorn 224, 227, 238 Unicorn Tapestries 357–358, 359 Vaderboek 382 Vaghezza 127, 155n70 Valentine Visconti, Duchesse of Orléans 270 Varie, Simon de 354, 355 Varie, Guillaume 355 Velasco, Inigo Fernández de 294 Velasco, Pedro Fernández de 293, 294 Veldeke, Heinrich von 237 Vier Utersten 379, 380 virginity 224, 226 Von den sechs Farben 224 Vita Ædwardi 111, 126 Voragine, Jacobus de 76, 199, 207n41 213 Waḥīd fī sulūk ahl al-tawḥīd, al- 85 Walker-Meikle, Kathleen 70 Walmesley, James 48 Walters ms. 334, 335, 336 Ward, Ned 42, 44 Weiss, Daniel 175 Wettin, Archbishop Friedrich von 258 West 1, 194n7, 218 Weyden, Robier van de 375 Wharmeby, Thomas 46–47 Wheatley, Edward 119 White, Stephen 120 William the Conqueror 117 See also William, Duke of Normandy William of Normandy, Duke 101–102, 105, 106, 115, 121, 122 William the Silent, Duke of Orange 243, 260 wolves 12, 21, 68–77, 110, 265, 292n32, 303 Wolfe, Carey 120 Woods, Barbara Allen 385 Worksop Bestiay 124–126, 125 Wyllughby, Margaret 247, 248, 249 Yapp, Brundson 102 Young Couple on Horseback, A 221, 222 Zeuxis 38 Zirclaria, Thomasin von 214–215