Humans and Other Animals in the Middle Ages - by Philip Line (Hardcover)

About the Book

A wide-ranging introduction and sourcebook on medieval European human attitudes to animals, which will be useful to both researchers and newcomers to the field. Included are text extracts from theologians, philosophers, encyclopaedists, bestiarists, hagiographers, chroniclers, huntsmen, agriculturalists, cooks and others.

Book Synopsis

This sourcebook serves both as an introduction and a wide-ranging reference work for human attitudes to nonhuman animals in Latin Europe during the Middle Ages. Under twelve headings, it includes numerous translated passages from Latin and vernacular texts that reflect human conceptions and uses of other animals during the period 300-1520. Theologians, philosophers, encyclopaedists, bestiarists, hagiographers, chroniclers, huntsmen and writers of agricultural manuals, cookbooks and plague treatises all had something to say about the place of nonhuman animals in their world and their interaction with humans, or simply recorded incidentally what they did in their writings. All are represented here.

About the Author

Philip Line, Ph.D. (2003), University of Leeds. He now works as an independent researcher on human-animal relations. His most recent publication is "The elephants who appealed to the gods: Animal agency in the Roman arena" (Trace: Journal for Human-Animal Studies, 2022).