This Country Life: Animals as Help and Hindrance to the Medieval Farmer

It is very hard to discover the way that medieval people actually used and experienced animals, as became clear in our class discussion. Obviously archaeological evidence and tax rolls can give us evidence of the animals that were present, help us approximate their value, and suggest the manner in which they were used. But it cannot give us solid answers, even about those questions, and certainly cannot reveal much at all about human interactions with animals or the ways humans processed those interactions. For this we need supplementary information.

There are two main types of sources which we have not approached but which provide more evidence for the ways in which people used animals during daily farm life in the Middle Ages. These are literature and art. Although these were largely created for a rich audience, many pieces of literature and also artwork such as illuminated psalters, contain descriptions and images of medieval peasants going about their daily lives. Through these we can get some sense of what actual farming looked like.

Through examining the Luttrell Psalter, the Très Riches Heures, and the “Nun’s Priest’s Tale” from the Cantebury Tales, I would like to make several observations about both medieval farming practice and the broader relationship between humans and animals in the Middle Ages. This will include a further look at using oxen and horses on the farm, as well as a glimpse of something not captured in tax rolls, the natural predator. Through this discussion I would like to advance a very modest claim: Medieval people, although well-versed in using animals in their farm work, had a complicated relationship with the natural world because of the unpredictability of nature and the dangers posed by many animals.