Medieval Hunting (23 page)

Of course, there is a temptation to accept illustrative evidence too readily as being a true record of reality and actual practice. No doubt many, if not most, illustrations are idealised by intent. However, there is also a danger of interpreting all such evidence, particularly women hunting, as symbolic and without practical significance. It seems more reasonable to take a middle view, conceding that some illustrative evidence may, and in a lesser number of cases probably does, reflect real practices. This notion is not revolutionary but in the face of the ‘world upside-down' school is certainly radical, and it is supported by three significant points. Firstly, there are many short, often indirect, textual references to women hunting. Secondly, it is accepted that women were active participators in the sport of hawking; why not hunting? Thirdly, evidence from other periods is completely positive as regards women of rank hunting
¹³
and to suggest that hunting was an exclusively male preserve at any level of medieval society is ludicrous and exhibits a complete lack of understanding of female human nature.

The enduring historical lack of reference to women and hunting seems likely to be the continuation of a long-established tradition based upon male expertise, education and authorship. The apparent lack of physical involvement by women in hunting wild quarry – apart from hawking for which there is a mass of evidence – has been perpetuated by male writers on the subject for centuries. Of course, there were relatively few women writers generally, so the lack of female narrative in hunting is hardly surprising.

Four of the most influential medieval manuals on the techniques and practical methods of hunting, already used extensively in this study, provide examples of this overt gender exclusiveness. In chronological order these canonical manuscripts are:

The Art of Hunting
, written by William Twiti,
c
. 1330;

Les Livres du roy Modus et de la royne Ratio,
written by Henri de Ferrières,
c
.1376/7;

Livre de chasse,
by Gaston Fébus, begun in 1387;

The Master of Game,
produced by Edward, Duke of York,
c
. 1406/13.

All four texts are, seemingly, completely male-oriented books of instruction, written by men for men. Women, as a separate gender, are not mentioned or acknowledged. Or are they? The concluding passage of the Shirley Manuscript of
The Master of Game
¹⁴
provides an exception to this apparent rule. Edward of Norwich concludes with the hope that all his readers ‘that hathe herde or rude this lytell tretys', have approved of it and corrected it as necessary according to their own knowledge. He then continues:

And in my simple manner as best I could and as might be learned of old and many diverse gentle hunters, I did my business in this rude manner to put the craft and the terms and the exercise of this said game more in remembrance and openly to the knowledge of all lords,
ladies
, gentlemen and
women
, according to the customs and manners used in the high noble court of this Realm of England [my italics].
¹⁵

Although Edward specifies only courtly women, ‘ladyes' and ‘wymmen', he does acknowledge that they had heard or read his book of instruction. Not only were women hunting but, more significantly, they too had specialised knowledge and were ‘lerned' in the art of hunting, in the same manner as their men folk. This does make sense; people cannot participate in any sport or pastime without acquiring skills and knowledge. In reality, then, we can conclude that one of the major gender divisions, the ‘learnedness' much prized and vaunted by men, did not exist.

Mention must be made also of the
Boke of Saint Albans
, a treatise covering the male preserves of hawking, hunting and heraldry, whose authorship is traditionally credited to a female writer, Dame Juliana Berners. Nicholas Orme comments that this female authorship is an unusual indication that women might possess, or be thought to possess, a detailed knowledge of hunting techniques and be able to pass them on.
¹⁶
There is, however, a long-standing controversy regarding the authenticity of the author's gender. Whoever the author was, the
Boke of Saint Albans
was probably compiled in the early 1480s from other earlier sources, certain indicative fragments being recognisable. The complete manual was printed by the London printer Wynken de Worde in 1486.
¹⁷

The fact that Dame Juliana is also credited with a
Treatise on Fishing
¹⁸
makes her authorship of the
Boke of Saint Albans
questionable, as at this time fishing was a very popular pastime with a consequently low status compared to the ‘gentil' sports of hunting and hawking. A significant part of the reason for this attitude was that real gentlemen regarded fishing as a ‘tame pursuit' lacking the dangers of hunting.
¹⁹
Fishing was also cheap, requiring little specialised equipment, unlike hawking, so was not restricted by cost to the wealthy, an important element in aristocratic pastimes. Until the preparation for war aspect lost its importance, ‘fishing with an angle' remained a poor second to pursuing quarry upon horseback or on foot. It thus seems questionable, though not impossible, that the same author would have written sporting manuals of instruction for both aristocratic and commonalty readers. The
Boke of Saint Albans
does make a clear distinction between netting and trapping fish, an occupation of ‘crafty men', and ‘of fishing with an angle . . . one of the disports that gentlemen use'. Maurice Keen points out that it is fly-fishing that is referred to here as the
Boke
contains several patterns for tying artificial flies. He continues to explain that a ‘disport' is ‘a stylish, “gentle art”, fit for the pursuit of gentlemen in their free time'.
²⁰
However, the hunting and hawking manuals stress practical methodology and procedures within socially acceptable sporting boundaries, tacitly ignoring the provision of meat aspect, whereas fishing books are essentially practical texts lacking ritual, concerned with filling the bag in the most effective manner. In spite of favourable inclusion in the
Boke
, fishing at that time was thus analogous with pragmatic commonalty methods of hunting for subsistence and therefore, perhaps, with overtones of poaching. It must be realised that in the Middle Ages the status of a sport partly rested upon its necessity function. For the aristocracy, hunting was a leisure pursuit that emphasised both social superiority and masculine notions of military service. Thus if hunting was generally conceived of as a ‘masculine' pastime, then perhaps medieval authors could not accept the active participation of women, so they took the least controversial route and did not acknowledge them in their books.

Literary sources frequently mention women hunting in classical antiquity, such as Theseus's Queen Hippolyta and her younger sister Emily in Chaucer's
Knight's Tale
²¹
and in Arthurian legend there is the lady who hunts accompanied only by women. This great huntress ‘overshotte the hynde, and so by myssefortune the arow smote sir Launcelot in the thyke of the buttok over the barbys'.
²²
A significant accident regarding gender roles and where the arrow hit; also an extremely painful incident bearing in mind the wide splayed barbs of the type of hunting arrow used typically for large game. There are also many medieval German sources in which ladies accompany or actually participate in the hunt, but again, most of these are motivated by an established plot or love allegory. References to contemporary medieval women taking an active part in hunting remain conspicuously absent and only one fifteenth-century German professional manual refers to female participation.
²³

The occasional references in textual sources to women and hunting can be tantalisingly brief. Thus, one of the earliest references to English fox hunting dates from 1221, when Henry III gave the Abbess of Barking permission to chase the fox in Havering Park, Essex.
²⁴
This reference is interesting for a variety of reasons: the ‘verminous' nature of the quarry being hunted, and the gender and pious occupation of the person to whom the permit was granted. As earlier stated, the Church officially disapproved of its members hunting and hawking, although one or both activities were practised by many members of all levels of the First Estate. It is tempting to assume that the abbess hunted the foxes in Havering Park herself on horseback with hounds, and to link the low status of the fox, a ‘non-noble' beast, to that of women, but there is no evidence to elucidate either of these intriguing points. It is more likely that the male servants of the abbey carried out the necessary control of the park foxes, which had probably been worrying sheep, by some effective but non-sporting commonalty hunting methods such as netting or trapping. If that were the case, then it can hardly be cited, as it has been on several occasions, as the first recorded example of English women being actively engaged in fox hunting.

Ladies of the nobility had several roles to play, which were presumably approved by their men folk, within the aristocratic field of hunting. As audience they were allowed to watch the fine spectacle of the hunt streaming across the fields and lawns of an enclosed park, but from a safe viewing point, such as a hill top, castle tower or roof.
²⁵
In 1452, the Emperor Frederick III visited King Alfonso of Aragon. To commemorate the visit, Frederick was taken hunting on the plain of Palma and the grand finale to the day was a staged hunt in the royal park of Astroni. Here, the ladies were spectators and were accommodated on a dais, protected from the sun by an awning and surrounded by a wooden palisade.
²⁶
One of the colourful illustrations in the early sixteenth-century
Thuerdank
of Emperor Maximilian I shows the ladies of his court sitting at ease by the Plansee in the Tyrol, enjoying the spectacle of Maximilian hunting red deer in the forests and chamois in the mountains, and fishing in the lake.
²⁷
The illustrations in this book are composite pictures, the artist employing the oft-used painting technique of representing two or more separate activities as happening simultaneously, rather than painting a sequence of events with an identical, or similar, background. This method was ideal for showing progressive sporting activities such as hunting and hawking.

Much of the illustrative evidence shows ladies in this passive role of admiring onlookers, and there appears to be little doubt that female approval, applause and even adoration, were important to the aristocratic medieval hunter and sportsman, just as they were to the tourneying knight. The four hunting tapestries in the Victoria and Albert Museum, known as
The Devonshire Hunts
, illustrate this point clearly. Probably made to celebrate the occasion of the marriage of John, Lord Talbot, to Margaret Beauchamp in 1424, the tapestries contain many vignette scenes of aristocratic ladies watching and admiring the various hunting activities of their husbands and lovers.
²⁸
As John Cummins comments ‘It is difficult to assess which of these are hunters and which spectators, but clearly the ladies . . . have not been charging through river and thicket in pursuit of boar, bear or deer.'
²⁹

Admiring ladies are also conspicuous in the April and September tapestries of
Les Chasses de Maximilien
cycle in the Louvre, although these ladies are mounted.
³⁰
Again, it is unclear whether they have just ridden up from a safe view-point to coo and flirt with their men during a lull, or if they are active participants in the chase. In the tapestry for April, one girl is sitting coyly behind her man whereas another lady looks more workmanlike, apparently riding side-saddle. The vexing question of whether and when women rode astride or side-saddle is difficult to answer from medieval and early Renaissance illustrative sources. When women travelled, they sat either ‘pillion' behind a man, or, according to the Anglo-Norman historian Odericus Vitalis ‘in female fashion on women's saddles'. When they hunted, they usually rode astride their mounts. Probably the earliest illustration of a lady riding astride in clothing designed for that specific purpose is an etching by Antonio Tempesta, (1565–1630).
³¹
A
bas de page
illustration from
The Trinity
of
The Hours of Marguerite D'Orléans
, made shortly after her marriage in 1426 to Richard, Count of Etampes,
³²
does show the involvement of some aristocratic women. The
par force
hunt is in full cry, pursuing a fine hart along a streamside beside a forest, and two elaborately dressed ladies are near the front of the field sitting up behind their men folk. No ambiguity or symbolism here, everybody is clearly enjoying a good day out together.

If ladies were fortunate enough to be present at the ceremony of the unmaking of the hart or buck, they were liable to be presented with a foot, or occasionally the head, of the beast.
³³
This symbolic bestowal of a special titbit to the fair sex, the meaning of which may be erotic but is not clear from the sources, continued in English fox hunting well into recent times by the presentation of a fox's pad to lady hunters attending the kill. It may well be that the hart's foot was regarded by aristocratic medieval hunters, both male and female, as a ‘secret' and erotic symbol. Deer are ungulates and have cloven feet, each of which is referred to as a
slot
. Prints of deer in soft ground are still called slot-marks. The appearance of a deer's foot, when viewed from beneath, bears a distinct resemblance to the vulva, ‘slit' or ‘slot'. On the other hand, the foot is the least useful part of the carcass, its only function being as a decorative trophy. On another level, perhaps this also symbolised the male notion of a noblewoman's place, not only in the medieval hunt but also in upper-class society.