Medieval Hunting (25 page)

No doubt then, as now, some royal or noble sportsmen appreciated a female partner who could shoot skilfully or ride to hounds with courage. Mary of Burgundy, the first wife of the future Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, was the personification of this type of woman. She was acknowledged as a fine horsewoman who excelled at most sports. This formed an important link of affection and respect between the royal pair, and in 1477 her husband wrote with much obvious pleasure ‘My wife is thoroughly at home with falcons or hounds; she has a greyhound of great pace'.
⁵⁸
Anne de Beaujeu, sister of Louis XI and Regent of France, was also a celebrated huntress and lady of great courage. Her prowess is clear in the poem by Jacques de Brézé who says ‘She was always among the first' and ‘she got through where never a lady got through before'. She even presided in person over the
curée
,
⁵⁹
a rare event for a woman, never alluded to in the hunting manuals or treatises. It could be argued that Mary and Anne were perhaps unusual in their skills and reckless bravery in the hunting field, and in addition had royal status, so were deemed worthy of recording for posterity. This is probably true, but it seems inevitable that other ladies of rank hunted as part of their social obligations, and for pleasure too, and that female icons such as Mary and Anne were regarded with adulation and as outstanding role models by other women.

The only active sporting role in which women are commonly portrayed in illustrations of the period is as falconers. Possibly hawking was seen as a more proper activity for ladies of rank, lacking the fast pace and bloodier aspects of hunting but involving the aristocratic skills of horsemanship and the pursuit of game. Learning the skills of hawking was certainly part of an aristocratic young woman's education. Two long French poems from the thirteenth century by Robert de Blois and Jacques d'Amiens specify that hawking, together with chess, telling stories, being witty and playing musical instruments, was part of ‘the notion of polished manners required of society ladies'.
⁶⁰
Robert de Blois lists some of the qualities of a heroine thus:

She could carry and fly falcon, tercel and hawk, /She knew well how to play chess and tables, /how to read romances, tell tales and sing songs. All the things a well-bred /lady ought to know she knew and lacked none.
⁶¹

‘Flying at the brook', a method in which falcons were flown at herons or wild duck, flushed and put up by pointers or spaniels, was popular with lady falconers. A miniature from a French or Italian manuscript at the Musée Condé shows three men and a woman indulging in this riverside sport.
⁶²
Two early fourteenth-century prayer books contain scenes of women hawking.
Queen Mary's Psalter
has three such illustrations, all line drawings, showing ladies on horseback and on foot, flying their falcons at wild duck and herons which have been flushed from cover by small hounds.
⁶³
The Taymouth Hours
contains a sequence of scenes illustrating falconry practice, as follows: a lady of rank putting up duck from a fountain by beating a gong; flying a peregrine at duck; her bird striking the prey; using a lure of feathers to bring in her falcon after an unsuccessful flight; rewarding the bird with a gobbet of meat;
⁶⁴
perching the falcon; and finally, proudly showing off the quarry, a duck, to another lady.
⁶⁵
A late fourteenth-century illustration from the
Tacuinum Sanitatis in Medicina
, probably a product of Verona, northern Italy, depicts a sensibly apparelled lady riding astride, about to fly her bird at partridge, the quarry having been flushed by what appear to be a pair of pointers.
⁶⁶
The late fifteenth-century
Hours of Engelbert of Nassau
contains a charming variation on the active part played by women in the two previous examples. The sequence portrays a male falconer flying his pair of falcons at winged quarry and then presenting the prey to his lady. Two other ladies, apparently of lower rank, pluck the bird and the knight's lady uses the feathers to manufacture a crest for her lover's jousting helmet.
⁶⁷

Aristocratic women were certainly involved in falconry, but their public participation, recorded in many sources, is an important indicator of gender relations within aristocratic society. Men must have approved of this active role, otherwise artists would not have considered producing the many examples of manuscript and tapestry illustrations featuring female falconers. Men were in fact conceding that hawking was not an exclusively masculine preserve, unlike hunting where women were perhaps regarded at best as ‘guests' and at worst as ‘intruders'. However, it is reasonable to assume that this male attitude probably did not reflect whether women hunted or not, merely current notions on masculine and feminine roles. Importantly, women did not kill their prey in hawking; this was performed for them by the hawk or falcon. Women facilitated the kill, as the virgin does in trapping the unicorn. Lady falconers were, in this way, subservient to their falcons, the birds, as hunters and killers, acting as gender replacements for their men folk. There is a certain gender irony in this as it was the bigger and fiercer falcon or female bird of raptor species, not the tiercel or male, which was almost invariably used to fly at prey. There is a further paradoxical aspect to this point in that kings and nobles commonly identified with the falcon, admiring her ‘warrior' qualities. Male acceptance of women falconers in their own right, though within the parameters of marriage, is no better indicated than by the collection of seals belonging to nobles' wives, housed in the Archives Nationale, Paris, in which the predominant motif is that of a mounted lady bearing a falcon on her wrist.
⁶⁸
Here we have the feudal authority of the noble on horseback, derived from marriage to a knight, together with the symbol of an exclusive pastime denoting female empowerment.

Illustrative evidence for women hunting game other than wild birds is more restricted, sequences or cycles of venery being particularly unusual. However, there are two sources which contain this type of information in the form of marginal drawings accompanying religious texts. Both sources are persuasive in their content, with regard to known contemporary aristocratic hunting methods, and in their reality, given that the participants are all female.

The first source has already been extensively quoted from in previous chapters:
Queen Mary's Psalter
is a book of psalms dating from the beginning of the fourteenth century but deriving its title from its presentation to Queen Mary in the middle of the sixteenth century. The prayer book is English in origin, of the common Sarum type with some variations, and includes a Calendar and litany of saints.
⁶⁹
In his introduction to the book of the manuscript, the editor, Sir George Warner, remarks ‘ Many of the female figures . . . have a tender grace and sweetness which says much for the artist's ideal of womanhood',
⁷⁰
suggesting that the artist was probably idealising reality (which of course, artists do and always have done, when it suited them). However, this comment may be misleading, given the date of editing, 1912, and the subjectivity of Sir George's observation.

The Psalter contains numerous marginal tinted drawings, many of which refer to hunting, including the following four: two ladies riding astride, one of whom winds her hunting horn; a lady on foot shooting a stag in the back of the head; two women using a ferret and framed net to take conies from a warren; and two women putting up hares from their forms or lies.
⁷¹
In all four drawings the women are dressed in simple nobles' gowns. This is particularly interesting with regard to the women netting rabbits, a distinctly commonalty pastime, usually carried out by servants for their lord or the owner with rights of warren. It has already been established that the hunting of conies was regarded with distaste by the nobility and confined to common fur hunters. Why, then, has the artist idealised these female figures by giving them standard ladies' gowns? It may be that in the masculine world of venery, the taking of rabbits could be considered as ‘women's work'. The rabbit was of low status and husbanded in artificial or natural warrens, not hunted in aristocratic fashion. This is not to say that the creature was not highly regarded as an economic asset, bred for its fur and meat. The possession of a warren conferred financial status and often considerable income on its owner.
⁷²
That is a different question altogether and does not involve notions of gender roles and status.

The second important source is MS Yates Thompson 13, a personal prayer book known as
The Taymouth Hours
, dating from between 1325 and 1335. The book is so called as it was in the library of Lord Breadalbane of Taymouth Castle in the eighteenth century.
⁷³
In addition to the Calendar with its occupational pictures and signs of the zodiac, the first half of the
Hours of the Virgin
contains scenes of country life from the first third of the fourteenth century. It was probably produced in London for a female member of the Neville family.
⁷⁴
She may be seen in folio 7, kneeling under a canopy with her hands joined in prayer, while a priest elevates the host. If the subjects of the manuscript were, as is likely, specified by the patron, then they clearly indicate the first owner's love of sport and her fondness for romantic stories.
⁷⁵

The
Hours of the Virgin
includes over thirty marginal coloured illustrations of women, dressed in the conventional robes of high rank, actively participating in hawking and hunting. These could be interpreted as being illustrative of female skills and include women flying a peregrine at wild duck; boar hunting on foot; and stag hunting, both on horseback and dismounted, with hounds. In addition, the traditional and gory
après chasse
rituals are shown being carried out by the lady hunters, including feeding rabbit guts to a hound (perhaps a low status parody of the
curée
); displaying the boar's head on a spear; and breaking-up the hart in time-honoured fashion, including hoisting the head on a spear.
⁷⁶

It has been observed that these pictures are unrealistic since only women are portrayed, yet this Book of Hours was intended for a young woman who probably loved sports. Why should the presence of males be acknowledged, particularly if they are only the professional hunters or servants necessary in an aristocratic stag or boar hunt? Also, there is no practical reason why properly trained and skilled women could not hunt alone or in small groups, despite male prejudice or masculine concerns for safety. Of course hunting potentially dangerous beasts over rough country was much more likely to be a male, rather than a female, pastime, and there were always going to be exceptions to the general axioms of gender roles, Mary of Burgundy providing the outstanding example in the late medieval period.

South of the Alps, hunting was a privileged activity in which the ladies of the Renaissance courts, as well as the men of the patrician and signorial classes, frequently indulged. A set of lost hunting frescoes situated in a loggia at Belfiore, dated to shortly after 1391, and described a century later, makes this active participation clear:

One sees represented the illustrious memory of the much loved prince Alberto d'Este, with many gentlemen and ladies on horseback, hunting with leopards and hounds after hares, bucks, stags and bears, where one sees the fierce kill of the animals hunted and the arrows leaving the Syrian bows drawn by the hands of the ladies with worthy and strong gestures.
⁷⁷

The frescos show mounted women taking part in the pursuit of not only the hare and fallow buck, but also the far more dangerous red deer stag and bear. The description of ladies using bows suggests that at the climax of the hunt, they were standing at stations or trysts, shooting at game which was driven within range. The Syrian bow mentioned was probably the English or Turkish bow, as described by Gaston Fébus in
Livre de chasse
.
⁷⁸
There are thus two familiar types of aristocratic hunting described here,
par force de chiens
and bow and stably. The Italian practice of using leopards as animals of pursuit, together with hounds, is very odd, and to northern European hunters must have appeared an outlandish custom. Although leopards were sometimes kept as pets by monarchs, it is more likely that the hunting felines referred to were in fact cheetahs, as in their natural habitat of the open plains, or savannah, they stalk prey then run it down. Cheetahs would undoubtedly have provided superior sport as animals for coursing swift quarry.
⁷⁹
It is possibly significant that the Latin term for greyhound is
leporarius
, a reference to the main function of these hounds which was coursing the hare or
lepus
.
⁸⁰
Perhaps north European medieval commentators confused
leporarius
with leopard and so established the notion of a fabulous and exotic hunting beast used in the East.

There is a wealth of post-medieval evidence testifying to the active participation of royal and aristocratic women in the chase. The future Queen Elizabeth I spent much of her time hunting when she was residing at Hatfield as a young princess and she continued to enjoy bow and stably hunting as a mature woman. Many of the ladies of the dazzling seventeenth-century court of Louis XIV regularly rode to hounds with the king. Princess Elizabeth-Charlotte, Liselotte or ‘Madam' as she was known and the second wife of the Duc d'Orléans, the king's brother, often hunted with the Dauphin, frequently spending eight hours, or even more, in the saddle.
⁸¹
Hunting to hounds continued to be an expected part of court activity, including the participation of women if they so desired. In the 1860s, Elizabeth of Austria, the beautiful wife of Emperor Franz Joseph, rode to hounds in England and Ireland with a reckless bravery, gaining herself the nickname of ‘The Queen of the Chase'.
⁸²
During much of the nineteenth century, Dame Marie Cécile Charlotte de Lauretan, Baroness de Dracek, hunted stag, wild boar and fox on what is now the modern Franco-Belgian border. However, her preferred quarry was the wolf, and in her time this formidable huntress alone accounted for 670.
⁸³