All Things Medieval

Many kings and noblemen (and even some Popes) kept menageries of exotic animals, following the example of Roman emperors. The Roman emperors used some of the animals for public displays at the Circus. Medieval monarchs rarely, if ever, had fighting exhibitions in the Roman style. Some had public parades of their animals to show their magnificence. A favorite theme was to have exotic animals paraded with foreigners from Arabia or Ethiopia in order to suggest that the king was dominant over these far-off regions.

The earliest medieval zoos were in Muslim Spain. The caliphs in Cordoba kept a large zoo of exotic animals, many imported from Africa and Asia. It was surrounded by a moat to keep the animals secure. In the ninth century, Charlemagne kept a menagerie at Aachen, in a climate colder than most of the animals were adapted for. The caliph of Baghdad sent an elephant for his collection, which had to make a long journey on foot over the Alps and only lived a few years. Charlemagne also kept camels, lions and monkeys, and a few bears.

Beginning with William I, the English kings kept a menagerie that by the middle of the 13th century was housed at the Tower of London. The records are not clear as to which animals lived there at which times, nor how they were fed or cared for. One chronicler stated that Henry I had a victory parade in Normandy that included a leopard riding a horse and a panther pulling a chariot. Another reported that King Henry II of England kept a menagerie of exotic animals at his palace at Woodstock. Reportedly, he had lions, leopards, camels, and a porcupine.

Henry III kept a pair of leopards or lions at the Tower of London, a gift of Emperor Frederick II of Germany. His son, Prince Edward, became known as the “Leopard Prince” in association with both the heraldic and the menagerie cats. Henry III added a polar bear, a gift from the king of Norway. The keepers allowed the white bear to swim in the Thames on a leash, catching its own fish, but kept it muzzled the rest of the time. In 1254, Henry’s brother-in-law, King Louis IX of France, sent him an elephant. It lived in a special house in London and was eagerly viewed by the public, but it did not live more than a few years.

The Tower of London continued to have a royal menagerie, probably housed mainly in the gatehouse of the Lion Gate. As animals died, they replaced the lions, leopards, and bears, with at least one more polar bear making its appearance in the reign of Edward I. Tower records show that each lion ate one quarter of a sheep every day, making them very expensive pets. By the 15th century, the collection was not large, but it was still in existence. The Lion Tower began to admit some paying visitors to see the animals. King Henry VI decreed that in lieu of a cash fee, visitors could offer an animal, such as a dog, cat, or sheep, to feed the lions. In 1436, the lions died, presumably of an illness, and the collection had to be started again.

The largest royal menagerie on the European continent may have been the one owned by Frederick II of Germany in the 13th century. He kept it at his palace in Palermo, Sicily. Frederick was a highly educated, intelligent man with a keen interest in science. He kept lions, leopards, camels, elephants, and a giraffe and sometimes displayed them in parades. The kings of France also had menageries at some of their castles: elephants, bears, lions, and porcupines are among those recorded, as well as exotic birds. King Charles V kept a porpoise in a pool, and even the duc de Berry kept bears. The 14th-century Popes who lived in splendor at Avignon kept exotic animals, including peacocks, ostriches, and camels, as well as the common lions and bears.

Italian city menageries kept many lions. Medieval Rome, like ancient Rome, kept lions as a symbol of its dominance. Florence kept a pit of 24 lions and sometimes used them in fighting displays against other animals. Venice’s lions were observed as the lioness gave birth to three cubs, and to everyone’s amazement, the cubs were born alive. Bestiaries had explained confidently that lion cubs are born dead, and are licked back to life after three days, as a picture of Jesus’s death and resurrection. Once Europeans had even a limited opportunity to observe lions and other animals firsthand, they stopped trusting the ancient myths passed down by the bestiaries.

Byzantine troops depended heavily on mounted archers, who also carried spears and a sword. They could use lassos, as could other Eastern cavalrymen, and they occasionally used them as weapons. Byzantine cavalrymen fought in a unit and were trained to stay together in ranks. They were a fighting unit, not individual knights.

The western Germanic tribes—the Franks and Anglo-Saxons—had no tradition of fighting on horseback. The eastern Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, and Lombards did, but they did not combine cavalry with bows. Avars, Turks, Mongols, and Magyars, invaders from Asia, all rode small horses and were able to shoot arrows on horseback.

The first Muslim armies were cavalry and rode both camels and horses. Some did not use saddles, and they did not adopt stirrups at first. By the ninth century, after taking over Byzantine and Persian territories, they were using both wooden and iron stirrups. They fought with bows, but also with long spears. Arab horses were famous for their small size and great speed. The Arabs called them Faras and kept their breeding separate from the Barb horses of North Africa. The Muslim conquest of Spain was mostly carried out by North African Berbers commanded by Arab generals. They brought their Barb horses and also used the existing strains of horses in Spain, now called the Andalusian breed. They were larger than true Arab horses. Muslim emirs and caliphs in Spain used selective breeding to blend Spanish and North African horses.

After Charles Martel’s heavy infantry defeated Arab cavalry at the Battle of Poitiers, the Franks began to use mounted warriors. The Avars, invading from the East, were defeated in 976, and the Franks adopted their use of stirrups. They did not develop methods of horseback archery and instead trained to charge with lances and fight with swords on horseback. Their horses may have been mostly purchased from Spain, since later Charlemagne sent “Spanish” horses to the caliph of Baghdad as a gift.

The Franks also learned to hunt on horseback. Charlemagne spent many hours on horses every day, both hunting and training for war. He required horses as part of the taxation of his nobles; his royal farms carried out breeding programs. Each stallion had a small herd of mares, but they were rotated out to other herds to prevent inbreeding. Inferior horses spread into civil society as riding horses and packhorses. Unlike later Christian Europeans, the Franks had no taboo against eating old horses.

More horse-based invaders came into Europe. Magyars from Hungary and Mongols from central Asia both used mounted warriors exclusively. They traveled in horse-drawn wagons and lived in tents. Their ponies foraged on grass and did not need extra provisions, so both the Magyars and the Mongols could travel faster than Frankish armies. Their ponies knew how to dig for grass under the snow, while European horses did not. However, their style of horse warfare was better suited to the flat grasslands of central Asia. Western Europe was forested and did not have as much foraging pasturage. Even without military defeat, their onrush was slowed because their horses could not graze as they were used to once they left Asia.

Henry of Saxony became king of Germany in 919, during the invasions of the Magyars. He built walled towns and trained a cavalry force that was able to stop the invasion. The Magyars settled down as horse-breeders in Hungary. The new Christian kingdom of Hungary continued to use light cavalry with mounted archers, although they also adopted Western Europe’s technology of heavy mounted knights. Hungary’s horse ways were no longer distinctively Asian.

During the 10th and 11th centuries, some Norman knights traveled to Spain and fought against the Muslim armies as part of the Christian effort to reconquer the peninsula. Some brought back Spanish stallions and used them to improve Norman horses. By the 11th century, Normans were expert cavalry warriors. When the Normans invaded Anglo-Saxon England in 1066, they transported about 2,000 horses in open boats across the English Channel. The Anglo-Saxons had horses, but they only used them for travel. They fought on foot, using a shield wall. At first, they were able to withstand the Norman cavalry charge, but their shield wall broke after several charges and retreats, and the Norman mounted soldiers ran them down. From that time, mounted warfare was dominant in Europe until the era of gunpowder.

The chief use for heavy warhorses was the chevauchée, a mass charge by many knights in a line. Saddles for this tactic had rigid walls and essentially locked the knight onto the horse’s back. The knight held a lance tucked under his arm, reaching well in front of the horse. He could also fight with his sword on horseback, but his lance was his primary weapon. The horse was trained to charge into danger and to stop and turn quickly.

During the 12th century, selective breeding by kings and other wealthy lords sought to create the best kind of warhorse. While size was an object, overall strength mattered more. Once knights had been trained and armed for horseback fighting, they were dependent on their mounts. If the horses tired or could not carry them, they were more likely to be killed out from under them, and a knight without a horse was not an effective fighter. A knight whose leg was trapped by a fallen horse had to surrender.

In spite of selective breeding for size, knights’ horses were not large until the 14th century. Most warhorses whose skeletons have been examined were not taller than 14 or 15 hands. Modern racehorses are usually taller than 15 hands, and modern draft horses are about 18 hands tall. A typical 14th-century knight stood shoulder to shoulder with his horse.

However, by the late Middle Ages, there was a distinctive type of horse—the destrier, or “great horse”—for jousting. These horses were not large by modern standards, but they were heavy and tall by medieval measure. They were 15 or 16 hands, and they were heavily muscled so that they could carry a great deal of weight for their size. Horses were expected to carry not only their rider and his armor, but also their own armor. First it was thick leather padding for the horse’s chest and head, and then steel plates. The armor and the padded drapery, decorated with heraldic designs, were called a caparison. The increase in padded horse armor then drove spurs to greater size, since a horse protected from lances was also protected from his own rider’s spurs.

Knights rode on palfreys or coursers to travel and had their destriers led to spare their strength. Coursers were faster than warhorses, and they could be mares or gelded horses. Destriers were always stallions, and they were fiery in temper and fantastically expensive compared to lesser horses. A warhorse could cost more than a year’s income, but the horse for a servant, or for an archer to ride on to move about from battle to battle, might cost less than a tenth of a warhorse.

The Crusaders were heavily dependent on horses, both for travel and for fighting. They shipped the horses in special transport ships that could carry between 30 and 100 horses. The ship voyage across the Mediterranean, which lasted more than two months, had to be broken into stages so the horses could get fresh air and exercise on islands. Once in Palestine, the horses had to be brought back to full strength after so much inactivity. When they were injured or died in battle, it was difficult for the knights to replace them, and some knights had to ride mules.

Crusading orders of knights like the Templars kept large stables of horses, with all the supplies needed: farriers, harness makers, grooms, and large supplies of hay and water. In addition to their destriers, Templars needed palfreys to ride while traveling and rounceys for the servants or squires who led the warhorses. All war undertakings required workhorses to carry equipment and supplies. Crusaders were in constant need of buying replacement horses in order to remain effective in hostile territory. They began to use Arabian horses and mules more than the heavy Norman horses they had brought with them. Food and water shortages killed many horses during campaigns and sieges. It was a prolonged struggle to maintain a Northern European war style in the Holy Land.

Horses became more important on farms when towns grew and farmers needed to carry food to market in carts. Horses had been used as pack animals before, but carts and wagons could carry much more. A packhorse could not carry more than 400 pounds, but with a cart, the same horse could transport a ton of hay. Horse breeding and care became more important, and horse markets grew. Horses were bred for size, and, over the last centuries of the Middle Ages, the average horse size grew by one or two hands.

Large international horse markets were held in cities like Antwerp, Cologne, and Genoa. Breeders sent agents into North Africa to buy Arabian horses and combed Europe for the best stock. Horses from the various regions across Europe were considered different breeds. The most prized horses in Northern Europe came from Spain and were often called Castilian horses. They were part North African Barb and perhaps part Arabian. They were among the tallest horses. Arabian horses in the Middle East and parts of Spain were small but very swift, had thin, elegant heads and legs, and were valued for breeding. Hungarian and Danish horses were smaller but were considered very strong, and Hungarian horses often had slit nostrils to help them breathe better while running. Horses bred in Normandy were heavily muscled. Horses from southern Italy were light boned and made good palfreys for riding but not destriers; northern Italian horses were larger.

In the 12th century, London’s Smithfield Fair became known for weekly horse sales that continued into the 19th century. Medieval horses were generally divided into the uses they were trained for. A visitor to the Smithfield Fair described seeing tall palfreys, warhorses, rounceys for general riding, plow horses (also called affers), and pack horses (also called sumpter horses). Some pack horses were mules, since donkeys were even more plentiful than horses during the Middle Ages.

Palfreys were somewhat smaller than destriers but were nearly as expensive and carefully bred. They were supposed to have quiet temperaments, unlike the destriers. Palfreys were used for hunting, ceremonial parades, and general travel among the aristocracy. Rounceys were grouped by the gait they were trained to use. The gallopers were called coursers and were ridden by men at arms and messengers. Some rounceys were trained to trot and were used by gentlemen as their main riding horse. Amblers were trained to walk with a simple rocking gait by moving their same-side legs at the same time. Both left legs, then both right legs, moving in tandem. This gait is not natural to horses. Amblers were the lady’s choice of a riding horse; Chaucer’s Wife of Bath rode an ambler. Amblers were slow moving, and they were bred and chosen for their easy-going natures. People who were inexperienced riders always hired amblers for journeys. Jennets were smaller horses for aristocratic ladies. They were probably more Arabian in breeding, since they came out of Spain. In Spain, jennets were used as warhorses.

In towns, few people owned horses. Towns were small, and most people could do their business on foot. Horses were for long journeys and had to be rented. On these journeys, horses ate a special type of bread baked for them, made of beans and peas, along with the ordinary hay. Businessmen who rented horses for a living were called, in medieval English, hackneymen. The daily hire for a horse might equal the day wages of a skilled laborer, so hackneymen were certainly able to make a good living. On routes with high traffic, such as London to Dover, hackney horses were often branded to discourage theft. Chaucer’s Tabard Inn, where his company of pilgrims met to start for Canterbury, was one place to rent horses. These horses made the journey to and from Canterbury repeatedly.

Medieval people raced horses, although, in most times and places, the game was restricted to those who could afford horses: the aristocracy. In Italy, however, the cities organized horse races to celebrate the holidays of their patron saints. By the 14th century, the races, called palios after the traditional prize of a costly palio robe, were well organized and traditional. Boys, sometimes dressed in the livery of the guild that employed them, were the jockeys, and the races were often run in the city square, rather than in a field outside the city.

The game of polo was developed in Central Asia during the Middle Ages. Polo was their war training game, as jousting at tournaments was battle training for Northern European knights. Polo required the horses and riders to be trained to work together and to make quick turns and sudden stops.

Europe already had herds of ponies and small horses when it was part of the Roman Empire. Cold regions had smaller ponies with thicker hair. Cool, wet regions tended to raise horses with larger bones and heavy muscle. Hot, dry regions favored horses with thin, dense bones, light bodies, and short hair.

The average horse in medieval Europe would be considered small today. Horses are measured to the top of a shoulder, called the withers. One hand equals four inches. A typical modern horse is about 15 hands high, while a modern pony is typically between 12 and 13 hands. But most medieval horses were more nearly pony sized. Their “great horse” for war was the size of an average modern horse.

Providing horses for war and civil use was a constant endeavor. A mare can produce no more than one foal per year, and often less. There was growing demand for horses as both warfare and agriculture in Europe came to depend on them. The old methods of keeping a herd of horses to breed undirected were not good enough, and, by the close of the Middle Ages, Europe had many aggressive breeding programs and an international market.

Falcons and hawks are natural predators of birds and small mammals, but, although fierce, they can be tamed. Both are raptors—birds that kill live prey—and diurnal hunters, not nocturnal like owls. Hawks follow their prey at a low altitude, while falcons swoop down from above. Falcons have a wider wingspan than hawks. Falcons were more often used in medieval hunting, so the sport is generally known as falconry. Falconry was especially popular with ladies, since they were strong enough to ride a horse and hold a small bird. It was the most popular kind of hunting in medieval Spain and Italy, perhaps because game was smaller in these warmer, more settled regions where deer had become scarce.

Female falcons and hawks were always larger and stronger, and better hunters, than males. The largest of the raptors were the Greenland gyrfalcons, which were strong enough to catch water birds like cranes and herons, as well as small animals such as hares. They were heavy and hard to train, and they were relatively scarce. Peregrine falcons were more common; they were native to Africa and Europe and were the most common Spanish falcon. The merlin was a small peregrine hawk used to catch birds up to the size of quail. Some minor falcons are not well-known today. The hobby was a very small falcon, too small to use for useful prey but a good starting bird for beginning falconers. The saker was an Arabian falcon used in Spain, while the lanner was a bird whose range used to be all over Europe but is now restricted to the Mediterranean. Two raptors were true hawks, the goshawk and the sparrow hawk. The goshawk was larger and could catch hares as well as quail and even herons. The female sparrow hawk was a convenient size for many ladies to carry, and it could take down small birds like larks or even partridges.

Most birds were captured in the wild. Young adults were favored, since birds in the nest were easy to tame but did not know how to hunt. Falcons were gentler and easier to train than hawks, and some lords kept a favorite falcon in their chambers. All training followed basic principles that began with blinding the bird, either by covering its eyes with a leather hood or stitching its eyelids closed. The bird became dependent on human contact for food and grew tame. When its sight was restored, it was trained to fly away and return to its home and to sit on a keeper’s leather-gloved fist. It wore jesses—leather collars around its ankles—each with a ring to which a leash could be clipped. In many regions, birds wore tiny bells to help the falconer find them after they had seized prey. They were also trained to seize a lure that was shaped somewhat like a bird, with meat attached, and whirled through the air on a rope. This allowed the falconer to recapture a bird. The birds also had to be trained to go after prey they did not naturally favor. Large prey, such as herons and cranes, required special training to give the falcon or hawk confidence. Most cruelly, some royal trainers used crippled live cranes. In some training, raptors were permitted at first to eat the prey, but they were otherwise strictly trained to think that bits of meat always came from the hand of a human.

Falcons and hawks lived in mews, if they did not live in the trainer’s or lord’s chamber. The mews were kept clean, with sand sprinkled on the floor, so the keepers could tell if the birds were coughing up or excreting materials that indicated illness. The birds sat on perches both in the mews and in the cages (at that time spelled cadges) that transported them. The cages hung over a man’s shoulders on straps and were filled with padded perches. Because falcons were such expensive creatures, their veterinary care was the greatest of all medieval animals, even more than dogs and horses. All falcons and hawks molted once a year, losing all their feathers and growing them back. During this time, their keepers watched their health anxiously, and keepers employed favorite methods for helping the feathers regrow as quickly as possible.

In the hunt, both dogs and human assistants were needed. Spaniels and setters helped locate the birds or hares and could chase them into the air or into the open. Some falconers paid small children to beat the bushes so ground birds or hares would dart out. When the birds killed game across or in water, either the dogs or the beaters were expected to swim out and retrieve it. A well-trained falcon brought its catch back to its master’s feet. The bird was rewarded with meat tidbits, and the hunters cut up the game in an informal curée ritual so the raptor could be rewarded with pieces of its quarry.

Falconry was the main source of game birds such as partridge and quail. In some places, by the 15th century, commoners were catching and training falcons and hawks. Falconers also went to war with kings to provide entertainment and to catch game for dinner between battles. Expert falconers were in demand all over Europe and often found employment in foreign courts.