820 The Domestication of Animals in the Middle Age*. 



warmed themselves at his fire. It would be easy to multiply 

 examples like these from the early lives of the saints, which 

 abound with them. The writers, forgetting the natural sym- 

 pathy which seems to exist between mankind and the inferior 

 animals, usually ascribed this familiarity between the hermits 

 and the animals among which they lived to the miraculous in- 

 fluence of their sanctity ; but there were other ecclesiastics, 

 still more ascetic in their feelings, who thought otherwise, 

 and, judging this sort of intimacy only another form of carnal 

 sentiment, and calculated to draw away the mind from 

 spiritual reflection, condemned it altogether. Among the in- 

 junctions in that curious Ancren Riwla, or regulations for the 

 monastic life of nuns, they are forbidden to keep any, " except 

 only a cat." St. Boniface, early in the eighth century, felt 

 scandalized at the conduct of a German bishop whom he found 

 playing with dogs and birds. And it is recorded of Robert 

 de Betun, Bishop of Hereford from 1131 to 1148, on his own 

 statement, that, besides a pet dog, he kept in his house a 

 tame stag, a ram with four horns, cranes, and peacocks, and 

 that in his last hours he repented of this as a crime, for in so 

 doing he had not only let the " delights of worldly vanity " 

 take possession of his mind, but he had wasted upon dumb 

 animals the bread which might have contributed to the sup- 

 port of the poor. 



A somewhat different cause led to a great fashion of 

 keeping domesticated animals during the feudal period. Life 

 in the feudal castle, closed up from the world around, which 

 consisted chiefly of a population of servile or inferior rank, was 

 extremely monotonous and dull ; and, among the few classes of 

 amusements which were available to enliven it, was that 

 afforded by the possession of domesticated animals. Various 

 allusions in early writers show us that there was hardly any 

 castle, unless it were no more than a robber's stronghold, 

 which was not supplied with a variety of domesticated animals ; 

 and many of them possessed also their little menageries of wild 

 beasts remarkable for their rarity. We all know how many 

 of our old ruins of castles contain some mysterious chamber 

 which tradition points out as " the lion's den/' and this tradi- 

 tion is not entirely without foundation. Kings and princes 

 were no less curious in procuring such strange animals than the 

 lesser nobles and gentry, and, of course, their castles con- 

 tained larger collections. It will be remembered how much 

 excitement was produced in England in the thirteenth century, 

 when, in 1255, the French king, St. Louis, sent as a present to 

 our King Henry III. a tame elephant. The latest remnant of 

 ihisonce prevalent custom was preserved in the old Menagerie 

 in the Tower of London. 



