In class on Friday, I tried to put forward the idea that in the Middle Ages, human interactions with animals may have varied along the lines of status. In the end, I wasn’t particularly articulate or successful, so, finding myself lacking more world-shattering subject matter for this post, even at the end of several days of refection, I decided to give the idea another try. I am sure you all (this does not apply to you, unknown readers) will forgive the repetitiveness.
I’ll start with the shortest thing we read, which was, incidentally, also the first one I finished. I ended up sending Steve Farrar’s article1 to my mom, whose 4-year old cat just recently died from FIV. I sent it to her because I thought she’d enjoy reading about the similar attachment of owners to pets in the seemingly so different a world as Medieval Europe. We later talked about the article, and she commented that animals (especially cats and dogs) are just so endearing…it’s hard not to get attached. Indeed, that falls along the lines of why I thought this article was so thought-provoking. After all, humans back then could not have been so un-sentimental as to never get attached to the loyal friend that a dog is, or the warm purring thing that is a cat. And for proof of such attachment, we don’t just have my questionable deductive skills, we have literary evidence! The example of abbot Thierry’s of St. Trond verses, written on the death of his dog is quite perfect. Indeed, all the examples in the article point at the same idea: the commonplace of owners becoming attached to and loving their pets is not actually a modern commonplace.
