"ANIMALS IN THE MIDDLE AGES: CARE, HEALING AND BELIEF" with Kathleen Walker-Meikle

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Now I love anything having to do with history. How about you? You know, one of my favorite times, it's the Middle Ages.

“You know, Knights, King Arthur, Camelot, and how about this?”

The Knights courses. You know where I'm going? And today's episode, Kathleen Walker-Meckel joins me. She's a world-renowned medieval historian. Now her expertise extends to how animals are embedded in everyday life during the Middle Ages.

And let me tell you, this one is right of my alley. And I am now for Biggest Fan. And guess what? I think you're going to be her Biggest Fan, too. She's just this wealth of really, really cool knowledge.

She's even given me a new term.

Now as you know, I always talk about trivia, but her new term for me.

It's PubFacts. Now I just love it, and I'm going to use it all the time. So here's some weight for it. PubFacts. Did you know it's very common for animals to live in your house back then? Now I'm not just talking about dogs and cats. I'm talking all sorts of animals.

Now I'm sure you've heard of the Zodiac Man. But have you heard of? Get it? The Zodiac Course. Yes, the Zodiac Course.

“Now back in those times, it was usually a farer as a treated animals.”

So these medieval veterinarians believe that certain signs are favorable for certain treatments. So get ready to go way, way back in time, medieval times, and find out all about the animals, how they were treated, and so much more. This episode is definitely special. And it will bring it closer to the time of Camelot.

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And it will be a good day for the family. And it will be a good day for the family. And come back next week. So this might have been by the way a crafty excuse to get rid of me. Perhaps he just wanted to know he wanted to hear enough of the meeting.

So all I went to the British Library. And I've all of a sudden I began to stop look. And it's true that in a lot of printed secondary literature, there were no references to pets. But then I began to look at primary materials.

This is like the words of medieval authors themselves. And they would seem to be tons of them. And I began to sort of either quit look then at some medieval manuscripts. And I couldn't stop looking at like they were little dogs everywhere. They were cats everywhere.

There were people holding squirrels. There were pallets and cages. And so I went back the next week and said, I'm changing the PhD. So the plenty of the elder, sorry.

He's going to get, he's getting dumped. And I'm now going to do a PhD on medieval pets. So I did that. There's a book based on that research called medieval pets, printed by Boydell and Burr, available in paperback with some very nice pictures,

including some pet badges that are wearing little silver collars.

So there, from pets, I've also expanded always on the animal theme.

So I've looked at animal venums and snake bite in the middle ages. I've looked at pharmacology. So using actually the body parts of animals to cure humans or to use it for magical recipes. And at the moment, I'm very interested in animal disease. So we're not animals being sick.

And also what today we call zoonotic diseases, which is diseases that can infect both animals and humans. And are often transmitted either via the animals to humans or humans to animals, which by the way is not unsupply. Since we are often these might cut, they often come from mammals.

And since we are mammals, we should not really be shocked that this happens. And so in that way, I began studying that. And initially just looking at what medieval sources had to say about animal disease. And then I rather wonderfully got contacted by a team in Switzerland. Well actually they went Austria at the time.

And they sort of asked me and had an online meeting.

And their first question to me was,

"Can you understand why a school in the Middle Ages might get leprosy?" And that's quite a mad question if you think about it.

“And the fact is that they were researching both human medieval humans,”

like bones and analyzing the DNA of both human bones and squirrel bones. And we're noticing that the squirrels and the humans were having, like you're sharing this similar strain of leprosy. And I cheerfully said to them, "Yes!" I said, "That's not a stupid question." And they said, "Why?" And I said, "Pickles!"

They're mad on squirrels in that period. They're keeping them as pits. They're holding them everywhere. And apart from that, they're all skinning as many squirrels as they can find, because they're covering all their clothes. We can blame perhaps the little Ice Age for this. But all the interiors of all their clothes are being lined with thousands of squirrel skins.

And so from that they managed to then get a nice big grant,

And so I'm employed 50% at the University of Basel. And I also work at the Science Museum in London, but on a lovely job working on research grants.

And so that's basically almost my passage to here

to then mark sort of inviting me onto his lovely podcast. So I got a question for, "How did you end up from Chile to England first?" I've got, you know me, I've got a good zillion questions for you already, but how did you end up in England from Chile? Were you speaking English at that time as well?

Yes, I was, sort of, because fortunately I really could speak English because I spoke English at home, because my parents immigrated to Chile, but my father's a New Zealander. And my mother, even though she left the age of nine, she was born in England.

So I had, before time, very grateful British passport. And which meant that when I decided I wanted to pursue postgraduate studies, I went to, I decided to move to the UK. So, you're making some change. Since then, I've stayed a lot sort of things around in Europe,

like I've spent some time in Italy, a year in Ireland, and some time in Scotland, and other parts of England. But yes, sort of, I know at the moment I'm in the Northern Hemisphere,

even though I still can never really get used to it.

They're wild. Well, it does rain a lot, where I come from in Northern Chile in the fourth region. We have, we have almost no rain. And if it rains, it's practically a public holiday, because everybody is just looking at the rain.

You even have special foods or P.S. that you eat when it rains. So it's all, to that it's very exciting, despite where I am at the moment in London.

“It has rained, I think, every day, but since New Year.”

You know, I find, again, I've got several things. So I find that, because I, for people that are curious, I think almost any person I know that's really curious, left history, because it's just so much there, right? And I, if I read, if it's a fiction thing,

I'm going to read a historical fiction, it's based on fact, but it has a story to it. I love stories. So, I find that, but I also think it's kind of interesting for you.

You're in England, so you're basically a Sherlock Holmes

when you're digging into all that stuff, too, which is kind of ties into all that, too. And then lastly, the other thought I had is, I was thinking about, when I, it's so interesting. I recently, I haven't episodeed, I guess it's out this week.

There was on Dingo's. And one of the things that they're doing, which she's a specializes in, is looking at the DNA. And I think the more I talk to people that are experts like yourself and looking into animals,

the new DNA technology is really pushing everybody really forward. You're using the DNA for the leprosy and all that kind of stuff and looking to similar areas. And must be so, so fun for people, they're one scientist or two of the researchers,

to find out all this new information that you're getting with DNA. It's got to be just jumping everything real fast forward. It is fascinating. It means you really have to stay on top of the research.

“But also, you have to familiarize yourself with how other people work.”

Like, either scientific disciplines like how it's a running joke in my bars or team, whenever we have a meeting, they'll all be talking about lab works because they've all got fears about contamination. So they do it all and incredibly sort of say,

"Special suits and it'll be how do we extract the dental pulp from this?" And then they'll, or ultimately for shotgun sequencing, which is how they sequence the DNA. They need huge amounts of storage space on the servers

because they're analyzing millions of fragments. And then they'll say, "And, like, you know, how much storage space are you using?" And then they see, "Oh, Kathleen's got 500 word documents." And it's like, you know, "That's what you mean."

And I'd usually pipe in by something saying, "And there's some pictures there too." But I do think it's actually a very exciting time, but it needs to be where you're all working together,

“I think, is what the best scholarship can be”

because just as we're working with scientists, they're not familiar with putting it in a historical context. But there are lots of really interesting questions the DNA people can provide,

I mean, in the last sort of almost quarter of the 20th century,

“there was a big academic fight about what really was the disease”

that caused the black death in the 14th century.

So, like, oh, and because basically in the late 19th century,

plague, like, you know, with the bacteria, as senior pesters was identified during an entire outbreak in Hong Kong in the late 19th century. And so there, and the connection between rats being a vector and the rat fleece to humans was established as this is a possibility,

by the way, rats aren't the only people that can aren't the only animals that can give you plague, as since you live in the U.S. I know periodogs and all kinds of other animals, all kinds of other fun animals, rodents are often and in central Asia, it's marmets.

But there, there was a lot of controversy in the end of the 20th century about what was this disease? Was it actually, you know, in lots of scholars, looking at the historical record said, oh, I don't sort of think,

I don't really think it was sort of like, you know, plague,

“but you bonnet plague, maybe it was something else.”

And so lots of fights, and then in 2011, very excitingly, they did work on a met on a plague cemetery from bodies excavated in Smithfield in London. And there, the DNA people, by then DNA had met DNA research, had managed to get advanced enough to identify pathogens,

and they could identify from the dental pulp of the skeletons that, yes, the people that there was that had been buried there at the exact time, all had a senior pestis had plague. And so now, for example, that question, historically, as pretty much being put to bed,

like, you know, people do not now argue over the disease. However, you do, however, still have scholarly arguments about, like, you know, other questions, and there's some things that, that, you know, that, yes, that, you know, I said, that the different disciplines can answer

and other ones that we can just do it. So, for example, as a historian, I can only, my sources, lots of what's actually on very small amounts, and they only exist, you know, they don't, like, because so much is destroyed over time.

So, I'm looking at what is the point of view of a person from that time, and so I have to get myself into the mindset, and it's why, when I sort of, when I, when I examine animals, I'm very interested in to how did they think about animals. I, you know, what did they, what was the status of animals,

how were they valued, how did you buy them, but thinking of it on from their point of view? Well, that's true.

“I mean, it's kind of like perceptions reality, right?”

At some point, and it's also cultural too. One culture can think something different too. So, that's got to be real difficult. I kind of leads me into that, I, here we go again. We've had, for you guys listening, we had a long conversation,

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covered by most pet insurance. So, let's talk a little bit about animals back in the medieval times, and the way how they were perceived. I know that there's some misconceptions. I know you've debunked a lot of that from a standpoint of,

I know that the rich had, you know, the honey dogs and all that, but let's talk a little bit about how animals were back in those times. And on what way, actually, before we go there, I want to ask you a question, I'm guessing,

you probably not speak, but know Latin pretty well. Yes, and that's just a case of, with medieval research, you're looking at the original language, you're looking at material and the original languages, and most of what I look at is in Latin.

Sometimes it's in other languages like old French, sort of Castilian, early, middle English. So, you are looking a lot in material at the time, in many ways, actually, I find Latin because it's almost it's spelling and understand quite consistent.

I actually find it an easier language than all of a sudden, getting a vernacular language,

“because sometimes I will just have something that gets thrown at me,”

and whether it's sort of middle-high German or oxytun, and we just have to sort of struggle on. So, yes, but yes, a lot of the material, and often the material is preserved in manuscripts, which are themselves animal skins.

So, and I always find, I was wondering,

while the charming that I study animals by looking at material, that is made up from animals. Better, it's kind of charming. So, I'm going to give you a literature of me. I took one year of Latin, I can't remember what great it was,

but I got it. So, here are new stages ABCD, right? I had a D, and I was so bad at it. Well, also, I was just lazy, but anyways, I know a little bit of Latin, but very little.

So, let's talk about perceptions of what animals are like, and we could go so many different places, and I know this is your journey, but I just have questions. So, and for people listening,

because it's different the way they looked at animals, and we do today a little bit.

But it's different in the same.

So, I'm just going to set up now, let you do the talking. Well, and this is just a caveat to all. I'm specifically talking about sort of animals in medieval Europe. So, just in case you ask, you know, she didn't talk about animals in China and India.

So, please, medieval Europe,

“is that I think, to almost the starting point,”

is the concept of to think about how they envisaged the world, and animals placed in it. And that was, and that's very much based on biblical texts. So, the two pointers there is that the idea that animals are placed on earth

for mankind to exploit them and use them. And so, officially, that means, is that humans are on top animals are below. And the other distinction that they get from the Bible, which if you read a lot of chapters in Genesis,

you will spot this very quickly,

is that they divide animals into the environment, which they live in. So, there's animals of the land, there's animals of the air, animals of the sea,

and what they call calling animals, and call is reptilia from where we get the word reptile. But they're not talking about reptiles there. For calling animals, they include everything from snakes to possibly,

“sort of sometimes even mice and rats are calling animals,”

or animals such as mosquitoes and flies. And so, that's almost this wider fourth mysterious category. And so, the animals of the earth are often, sometimes sort of, and things like quadrupedes, that's animals with four legs,

and most of our material is on that. But this means that, for example, animals of the sea, they might, in the water, they'll put crocodiles there along with fish, and tortoises, and turtles,

because they all go to get, it's almost where they live. So, that's almost one of their definitions. The other one is that you'll be defining animals, that there's wild animals,

sort of domesticated animals, and this is very important, because most of the material, my most material that you see, is about domesticated animals,

and this is not surprising, because if you are sort of, for example, think of your countbooks. People are going to be listing sort of the animals they are buying, the animals they are selling.

They are not going to be listing my goodness. I saw a fabulous flock of sparrows last week. So, there's a lot more differences to domestic animals than wild animals. Often with wild animals,

if they mention them, it might be, because they're doing something, which they shouldn't be doing, like, eating your sheep, or else it's an idea of the exotic.

So, I'll be talking, they might talk about animals that live perhaps very far away, and sometimes, the information that they will have naturally from animals that are not local might,

sort of might be inaccurate, but sort of things, it's a bit like, when you see all the descriptions of elephants, and they might grow elephants with hooves,

and there's lots of legends about animals that come from far away, that they might just not see or very rarely, because you might occasionally have an elephant, like, they were an elephant turned up,

in the mid-13th century in London. It was a present from the King of France, and everyone thought that was why they're wonderful,

for the first time, and they also, at the same time,

they saw a polar bear in London for the first time,

because Norwegian King sent one as a gift, used to swim in the Thames in the river. Really? Yes, it's keeper used to take it out swimming, and the both of them lived in the town of London,

and you could see them. So it's mostly, so a lot of material is domestic animals, and of the domestic animals, again, there are divisions of,

so we live stock, so these are all animals, like everything from sheep and chickens and cows, and then you have quite a lot of surviving material

“on animals that are important to certain segments of society,”

and because just the way of how material survives, we have a lot more for people who are very wealthy,

than we have for people who are not.

So the two animals that are really associated with aristocratic culture, which is horses and dogs, really dominate the material. Both of these are considered to be very noble.

So very noble animals to be able to be highly a sort of approved of. So there's a lot, so it's a case of, like most of the two animals that you can talk about a lot are sort of, sort of, are horses and dogs, and then after that,

they start because just for economic considerations, they'll talk a lot about pigs and/or sheep. It's why I began to get interested in looking at sort of almost the ones, by passing, so looking for pets. It meant that sometimes, in regular sources,

they were very difficult to find. So it was, for example,

it was very uncommon to find people buying pets.

“I wouldn't, I'd look up in economic material”

to see where you survey how much, how much is this cat costing you. Or, but there was a lot, for example, I found on people giving pets as gifts. And it's also, it's part of gift-giving culture.

It's very big at the time, sort of things. As people who read Lord of the Rings, the entire idea of giving, sort of giving presents, like rings, to your followers, is was very big and in the same way,

you might give a parrot to somebody, and that would be considered actually part, it's part of elite culture. But similarly, for example, in economic records, I would find, and this is, for aristocratic records,

that they were buying accessories for the pets, so they would be buying little collars for the dogs, or perhaps a cage for the parrot, and that's where I would find the references. It wouldn't be mean while,

I wouldn't, you wouldn't find them elsewhere, unlike, for example, references, I owe to, sort of, to pigs running a mac and cities. Even though there's lots of references

to people complaining about dogs going while running wild in cities, in fact. It's a general theme that people get, and an idea that very common to today

“is that people do not like other people's animals running around”

on their roads, so lots of complaints of people were letting their animals run wild. That's actually where I started to find lots of references to cats, and it's why I very much try to defend,

sort of, middle ages against sort of gross calamity of being anti-cats, and also sort of, sort of, sort of quite a lot of nonsense that's bought in, like just assumed about, for example,

from the early modern persecution of witches, in which actually cats are not, by the way, sort of officially sort of, were officially persecuted, due to a situation with witches,

even in the early modern period. There are sometimes, there are sometimes in the English tradition, which is not the continental tradition, there's the idea of the familiar,

where the witch has some de, is given some demons by the devil, and that these can take animal form. But at the time, even when you see early modern witch trials,

really as can be anything from a mouse to a pit, Spaniel dog, called Jeremy, that's one in the Matthew Hopkins type trials. So yes, I very much, so defend there,

they are not anti-cats, because I found lots of references to pit cats, and people keeping cats inside the house, and yes, they're keeping them partly, because they're quite useful for taking,

like getting rid of mice, but they are also, people talk about keeping cats for companionship, writing poems about their cats, and so on, so yes.

was associated with,

“is there a story behind the cat being associated with witches?”

Is it just, you came in handy? I don't want to say, sort of, officially,

I blame the 19th century,

but yes, I, a lot of sort of 19th century historical works, but I have this idea that everything in middle ages is very primitive,

and I think that's the starting idea that, sort of, and idea that yes, there's references to cats associated with witches, but sometimes that just might be that.

It became a story in this group. And there's also, there's all kinds of animals associated with witches, just as they might be discussions about, which is transforming into cats,

you also see witches transforming themselves into flies, or into wolves. So it's not, it's not, they're not completely,

they're not very anti-cat. And also, even if, for example, you might have,

theologians discussing that cats, they might say, a cat is a symbol for heresy, that doesn't mean that people are changing their behavior of how they're treating the animal.

It's no more difference that they might say,

I don't know,

“if the hedgehog is a symbol for X or the whale,”

is a theological symbol for Y, that doesn't mean that you're actually changing on your day-to-day life, how you're treating an animal. The one thing, however,

that I'm invious of people who work a lot on medieval horses, which, I run a bit of work, but not as much as other, some people I know,

is that firstly, they have a lot more material than I do. And so, secondly, they have a lot about horse health, which, at the moment,

for example, in bars, I'm working a lot on disease and rodents, so looking at everything from squirrels to rats and mice, and there's a lot less material than if I was looking at sick horses.

I mean, well, 99% of the references are, if sick horses and if it's not sick horses, it's sick pigs or sick cows.

But, you're almost, and similarly, for dogs,

you get it in sort of hunting manuals,

because, I mean, because of a secretic men are hunting with dogs. There, you get ideas about treatment for dogs,

who are sick or what happens if your dog has a canke of an as poor, and so on, but I would get, I get almost nothing, for example,

“even though I have lots of references to people keeping cage birds.”

They are, I have no references to what happens if the bird is sick or you're healing it. I mean, while they are, there is material about taking care of your,

sort of, of your, of your falcons, if you're doing falconry, so if you're hunting them.

Well, you know, I think it's curious, one is that animals, there was a status symbol.

If you had certain animals, you had more status. Obviously, the horse was a, a big status symbol for a variety reason.

Obviously, if you're a night, that was your most expensive to pass that, but also people owning horses for, for livelihood too.

So, but they also, a lot of them slept inside the house, which I thought is kind of fascinating, reminds me of the Messiah,

you know, all their animals sleep inside their house. So, well, also,

it would depend, house, but, but it would depend, but yes,

and often very small cottages, it might be just divided, and you'd have, you wouldn't be, I said,

they wouldn't be sleeping next to you on the bed, or sort of things, but it's a case that you might, if you just had a one-bedroom dwelling, you might,

you might be bringing your animals in, and there'd be a division, and that, you can still see that, for example,

in Switzerland to this day. Really. In farmhouses, you can see, you're where the animals,

sometimes are just, the barn is sometimes just actually underneath, right. Like, where you would have a,

you would have the basement, in the US, the barn, you might be the barn, and that's where the animals are still kept.

So, I think it's also, they were, however, concerned,

for example, about animal waste. This is again my, my other bug bear, which is,

they were filthy, the ladies' filthy, so they actually are very concerned about, like, ideas of smell,

which people do not like, like, the idea that you're cleaning up, animal waste, you're getting rid of it as quickly as possible,

there's lots of complaints, for example, of what happens when you're neighbour, dumps their animal waste on your property, and people sort of take into court,

or sort of urban sort of city authorities, are sort of issuing proclamations of, you shouldn't do this, or we will give fines to people who do this. So,

it's an idea that people do not like, like, you do not want sort of animal waste, what human waste for that matter, sort of a,

a sort of really around them, and they would go and try to make sure, that it was sort of cleaned up,

Well, you know when I was human, I was reading it remind me, because like I mentioned, I've spent a lot of time in Africa,

“and of course I've been in some of my side villages,”

and if you go inside one of their houses, which is kind of a dumb house anyways, but they have a separate room, that they sleep at night with, but they go to have a their own little area,

a lot of the goats, they're all sleeping inside the house, and that's really to protect them more than anything else, 'cause it's an asset, and you know, they're lively at dinner today.

Oh yes, no, well because,

you always want to take care of your animals,

it's why I was quite sort of, they are, they aren't economic assets, so you do not want to just like, make sure,

it's true that sometimes, some of the remedies they might do to them, you might think that's a bit nasty, or a bit cool, for example, I've seen sections of which,

of the sheep-suffering from skin disorders, they might go and put, for example, some sulfur, or on them, on the skin,

“and you think that must have been pretty,”

quite unpleasant for the sheep and the question, but it's the idea of, they are trying to treat the animal, it's not something I'd recommend doing today, but still,

it's entire idea of what, what you do, what are you trying to do, and similarly, one of my favourite things,

is that there's a very long tradition, this comes from ancient Rome, where if somebody is suffering from rabies, they should go swimming and see water,

I've seen this from about the first century AD,

and by the way, this is not any good, because if you do have rabies, by the time you get the symptoms, it's 100% death rate.

But anyway, and so there's a tradition, a lot that some medieval authors talk about, and where you take your dogs out sea bathing, as a prophylactic against rabies,

and I have a Norman sort of surgeon

“who's working in Paris in the early 14th century,”

and he's cheerfully saying that, where I come from a Normandy, it's just common, you just see in the beach, everybody's taking their dogs out for a walk,

and putting them into the sea, because that means that they'll stay nice and healthy, and they won't get rabies. So, again,

it's just because that technically doesn't work,

and as an accurate, they would do it, and similarly, for example, when animals were sick, and this is for,

particularly for horses and dogs, which as we mentioned, are often quite animals of the elite. You might sort of apart from trying to get, heal them with more conventional remedies,

they sometimes, for example, would appear to saints, and so you might even take your dog, or your horse on a pilgrimage to cure, what, like, cure was wrong with them. So, I know there's a,

in, in, in, in, in, in, in, south-west England, in the cathedral, they have found these little wax, models of horses hooves and horses heads, and these were made, made by people who were coming in pilgrimage to the cathedral,

and they would go and leave, at the saints shrine, they would leave a little model of the horses body part, that they wanted the saint to cure. So, if it had a problem, for example, with its leg,

they would go and leave a little hoof, and hope that that would cure them, and similarly, for example, there's a saints and Hubert, who's shrine is in the Ardenes, which is modern day Belgian,

who's very good for, you know, who's very good for calling against rabies, and so just before the Battle of Agenkor in 1415, against sort of, sort of, he knew the fifth of England,

and, and the French, which, the English win hugely, thanks to long bows, and other sort of, and the sort of, and mud, is that there,

one of the, sort of, one of the French princes, Charles Duke de Olions, he sins just before the Battle, all his dogs, on an entire pilgrimage, and just think of the logistics.

This is a time of where you're having to put your dogs on carts, this might take several weeks, or the way from his estate's in France, since them up to, sort of, what is now modern day Belgian up to the Ardenes,

because one of them he thinks is sick with rabies, wouldn't have rabies as well, they would all be dead, but still. He, he does this, and he, he, he, he, he sends, he sends his entire pack of hunting dogs,

so about 20 dogs are sent off, all like in a little pilgrimage by themselves, with some keepers to get the,

- I don't know by the way what happened afterwards to these dogs,

“because Charles de Olions was captured by the English and spent,”

but the next 40 years as a prisoner, so I have no idea what happened to the dogs, mate, a sort of thing. - Maybe it came Belgium monks who made beer, that's what they did.

- That could, that could always be ideal,

because he is because monks actually, monks and nuns are both fond of pets, and that actually, when I told you about how I started it, it was the first source written source that I noticed,

that was going on about pets, was basically somebody complaining about nuns, keeping pets. And then, you know, a bishop of Lincoln,

and the moment I saw that, it was like, why is he complaining? And on the general view, when people make a lot of complaints, it's a bit like when somebody is complaining,

you know, if, for example, a city authorities having to issue a lot of regulations and fines, it usually means a lot of people are doing that, and similarly,

if somebody is always making complaints, I'd say that's pretty standard practice, and so I'd be, then I began to collect, and I saw,

it was actually completely normal,

“that there's lots of like nuns and monks working,”

keeping pets, and you even see this in choices, the Canterbury tales, where the prior is, one of his characters,

she is specifically described, as she comes with two little dogs, and it's a reflection of an honour character, because she's, she's rather wealthy,

and quite spoiled, is that the two little dogs, Geoffrey Chaucer says, is that she only feeds them, meat and white bread,

which is incredibly extravagant food, if you think about it, like this is luxury food, and to her, and this is not, and just as people today go on about,

oh, people keeping, sort of like pets in their design, a handbags, and spending a fortune on them, this is a woman,

and this is a woman who's, who in Chaucer's poem, and the late 14th century, is feeding her dogs, incredibly elite expense of food,

which is white bread, and meat, quite cheerfully. And we'll be right back. As a pet lover,

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that they, they would prosecute and ex-communicate animals back in the day to, if they were for whatever reason, is that true?

Um, yes. As it's, it's quite rare, but it's,

it's basically it's two types of processes,

one is sort of a civil process, which is against an individual animal. So supposedly, so that's, that's supposedly,

let's say that a pig is gets loose in the city, and goes around running, like you're destroying things, and tramples,

destroys lots, lots of people, people's property, and perhaps does something, really sort of,

a tragedy happens like, runs into a child, inches or kills the child. You then have to work out, you know,

who, who is at fault? Is it the pig's owner? Or is it the pig? And you might actually put the pig on itself,

on trial. And there's, apart from individual processes, you also have, as you mentioned,

excommunication, and these are processes against an entire, almost genre of animals. So,

and this is where you'd have a priest would go in a, would go, and give out an, aathema,

to, for example, and this is usually done to vermin. So, for example, supposedly, suppose if you had tons of caterpillars,

that were destroying all of your fields around the village, then you would try to organize for the priest, and he would say in an aathema, which usually went along the lines of, like, you know,

be gone caterpillars, like, you know, in the name of, like, you know, sort of name of the Virgin Mary name of Jesus,

et cetera, et cetera. I want all you caterpillars, like, you know, you better leave ASAP. So, yes,

so that, that's regularly done, and it's because, but like, how I mentioned the heal,

the shrine of a saint,

“you're doing multiple things at the same time,”

so,

you might be trying to sort of destroy the caterpillars

by other methods, but then you'd also sort of hid your bits so to say, and get a nice religious anathema onto,

and this is actually quite understandable, particularly with vermin, if you have, example, huge amounts of field mice,

invading your, your, your like, your crops, you want to do something about it.

How do you do it? It's, this is, this would be seen as one of the ways. So yes,

there was, there was a famous court case in early 16th century, or ton in France, in,

in the Bordeaux region, in which,

a lot of rats get taken to court,

and, and they have, and they have completely there, that like, a young lawyer,

sort of defends them,

“and has all kinds of incredibly good arguments,”

my favorite being, which is when, the, uh, prosecutuses at the rats on content of court,

because they haven't turned up to the preceding, and he, he argued that, no, the rats are not,

haven't turned up because they're scared of your cat, man, which I find delightful. But, I always say,

because particularly, because I've got a, keen interest in medieval science, is that these people are very clever,

they're very sophisticated,

they're very learned, uh, and it all makes logic, uh, it does make,

you know, if you think about it, it makes perfect sense, just because it's not something we do, it doesn't mean that it's foolish,

it's just that,

“in the way that they were conceiving of how the world worked,”

that made sense, it's the same way that, like, you know, completely,

you know, it makes perfect sense, um, for to think that the world, that the,

that the earth is at the scent of the universe, and that all the other planets in the sun, rotate against the earth, if you do, um,

you can do completely sort of mathematical calculations, of the movements of the other planets, and you can, you can fit everything in perfectly, like you can do that very advance,

just because, that's not to, uh, doesn't mean that the, doesn't mean that the theory behind it isn't perfectly solid,

uh, and, and quite sort of completely, so intellectually strong. That's,

that comes back to your perception is rally, right? Exactly. This is what it is. We're going to do this.

You know, I'm, and this is a good segue, by the way, I was thinking,

you know, where I was talking about, you're the self-serve in the meal. I think we're doing a buffet, because there's so many,

we could go, we could stay on everything. But I was thinking about, remember when you sent me the astrological chart with the horse,

can you talk about that, and how that reflects to how they were treating, people of animals and people for medicine, because it's, it's,

it's all tied into that. So it's, it's, it's fascinating to me. Well,

it's the, um, it's the idea that, that, how are they conceiving of animal bodies and human bodies,

is that they actually think of them, that they're working, really the same. So for example, a human body,

they think, is that inside your body, there's a mixture of four different liquids, which they call, like,

you know, there's blood, there's flam, there's black bile and yellow bile, and they think that these,

or, and this comes from, by the way, sort of sort of, Greek and Roman medicine,

and they think that, all of these four liquids, these four liquids inside your body are all interacting in different ways. And that if you have more than one, you might be sort of you might have a certain condition. If you have a, you know, or for so for example, if you have a, if you are, if you are, they had thunk is very depressed and ill. You might have a lot of black bio, which is, and which is where we get the sort of like, you know, the word, which is black, which is milk, where we get the word melancholic. That is to have black bio.

So, and similarly, they might decide that if you, if you had too much of the yellow bio, you will color it. And so all, and often diseases, they, even though actually they do, they actually do have an idea ideas of infection, particularly by the way with animals, because they worked out that animals could, could, in fact, other animals. And you see that a lot of actually in horse medicine, because where you might have to remove a sick horse from other horses, because you are afraid of giving the other ones diseases.

But there was also an idea that some, that diseases would just spontaneously generate in your body because of the imbalance of humans. And so just as humans have these four sort of, like the four substances inside them, so to animals. And so for example, a white horse, a horse as white, is because he's got more flim in him is dominating a horse, for example, a black horse has more black bio.

And to have blood as your dominant one was seen as the best. So just as, so just as, as it worked, the, the, the idea that the animal body was seen as working the same as humans bodies.

“And so the famous, what we think of as the zodiac man, which is a sort of, a human, like, figure of a human with all the different sort of zodiac sort of, you're zodiacs on each different body part.”

So for example, you might have, like, you know, so you have our armies at the head, you've got Pisces at the feet, you've got Scorpio, so, like, you're, so I, you're Scorpio at the genitals, you have all different sort of zodiac houses wool over different parts of the body. And this would mean that certain medical operations such as surgery, or perhaps even taking some medicines, you wouldn't do when that zodiac, like, that constellation was sort of the, was in what the, you know, was in that particular phase.

So, so, for example, depending on, depending on whether you wanted to do surgery, you'd have to, you have to check, like, you know, what, what constellation, you know, what is currently the constellation, like, your zodiac constellation dominating at the moment, because you can't do anything if it's, like, if it's that one. Just like this, they had, they worked out the same for animals, so just as you wouldn't operate on person's feet, if the moon was in Pisces, you wouldn't operate on our horses hooves, if the moon is in Pisces, because it's just completely, it's transposed and paralleled.

“And similarly, for example, when they talk a lot about disease, they talk about, they would talk about, for example, leprosy and horses.”

And by this, they're not specifically meaning what we think of as leprosy, which is, like, which today is Hansen's disease.

For them, they are thinking about, it's a debilitating skin condition, is all they're thinking of, and a serious one. And so, therefore, if it's a serious debilitating skin condition in humans, it's, therefore, is one same in horses. So, a lot of it is they are transposing. They are some, there are some diseases, which seems that they thought that only horses could get, but on the whole, it's, their bodies, bodies work the same. And similarly, for example, with rabies that I mentioned before that, like, oh, there, it was understood that you could get rabies from dogs, and only from dogs, which is not to, you can actually get rabies, actually rabies or mammals, can get it.

But they thought it was only from dogs, because they thought that dogs themselves were very, they think that dogs are very melancholic. That is, dogs have a lot of black bile getting back to animals and humans, having the same bodily work, and that dogs would get almost sad. And more sad, and then start attacking you. And I have a 14th century Italian writer who specifically says, you shouldn't shout at your dog, and you shouldn't kick him, because this would make him sadder. You're sadder, your dog gets, the more melancholic he gets, and he might become rabid. The author also said, you shouldn't, you shouldn't, you shouldn't let them sleep by the fire, and then kick them outside into the cold, because this will affect all of their internal sort of properties and make them sick.

This is, again, getting back to the point of like, this isn't true, but logically, actually, if you're working under Humor theory, it's actually, he's perfectly sensible.

“Yes, if that's how you theorize how the body works, it makes perfect sense that you do not want to make sort of somebody, like somebody to have an excess of black bile, and then sort of become in this case, rabid.”

And it worked, similarly, so that, for example, when humans get rabid, they got all of the symptoms, medieval symptoms are very much dog-like, that you start sort of apart from the famous one of sort of like, sort of hydrophobia of being feared of water, but the idea that they talk about sort of humans barking from where we get the term to be barking mad is from that idea that you become all very dog-like, I mean, while the dogs stop being very dog-like, and they get nasty to their masters, which is what dogs shouldn't do.

"It makes our beloved companion turn into a cobra, and I'll very much like it, because it was very much on this myth, following a medieval tradition of the animal becoming treacherous,

and it is betrayed what it should be, which is good and nice to us, and then all of a sudden being nasty." You know what's funny is you're barking mad, there's one of my pub facts for you, he's right there, we're right online and you're with the pub facts, barking mad. Let's talk about one of the things I'm curious about, when you start seeing this stuff, you see all these way back when they were really doing veterinary, taking care of the animals,

“there's some really early ones, but it seems to me the more I read it kind of the Roman times, is that when really you start seeing veterinary, kind of being there, was that prior to that?”

It's a case also on what we have surviving in like sources, it's true that most like we've got a few references in ancient Greek texts, but by Roman times we actually have specific texts dedicated to horse care, we've got quite a lot that survived from sort of the Byzantine Empire, and these are texts just about how to take care of horses, and there would be written by professionals who want to go, who take care of horses, and actually one of the reasons why they get written, horse care treatises is that they're not just written as almost an aid memoir for you and other fellow sort of horse practitioners.

They're also written as a way of social status, that if you are horse care practitioner, you want to say that you're not just a mere sort of labour, it's not like somebody taking care of the stable.

You actually want to say that you almost have equivalent, you have a highly valued status, and because horses are so valuable, their care was seen as something as very important. Where we still get the word "farriers" who would take care, who would not just sue horses, but they're also taking care of horses. So that's a perfect thing, because there's a fairer than afterwards they're called, I've got to look at my notes now, because I wanted to ask you about this, of the marshals.

“What's the difference between a fairer, because the fairer's little ones are taking care of the animals, but then there's like a different level that's called a marshall, what is that?”

A marshall is somebody who takes care of the horse, but actually it was a very impressive title. So, for example, at a court, a royal court, the marshall is one of the highest sort of courtiers. It's because horses are so important, the person who's taking care of the king's horses is, would be a very high status, a sort of noble. And they would not only take care of the horses, they'd make sure that they were at the kinghead enough horses, that they would stay healthy, give some horses.

“Of course, at this level, let's just say the marshall is not mucking up the stables, but they are taking care of the horses.”

And you can still see this elite level in sort of the title of the premier sort of aristocrat in England is the Duke of Norfolk. And his other title is that he has the title of Earl Marshall, which means he's sort of sort of premier Earl, but he's also the marsh, he is an as marshall. He actually today doesn't sort of doesn't take care of horses, but he does, by the way, do everything such as he's head of the College of Arms, and he also runs any coronations and funals. So he has, he has still to this day, still called, sort of, still being called a marshall.

It's kind of like a parade, the grand marshall and all that I've never really thought about that, so it's probably just carried through all those years.

Yes, because yes, a marshall is sort of high status person, but yes, it's somebody who organising sort of, is organising part of the household. So yes, so marshall, the asparagus would do, but sort of, but a fairer was something a bit more than a blacksmith.

They would also be taking care of the horses if they were sick or ill and so on.

The slightly terrifying thing is, is that in armies that still sometimes have cavalry, you'll often see the farriers who come out with what looks like even still today, it's symbolic, but they'll come out with an act, with an instrument, a weapon that looks like an ax on one side, and a sort of almost a giant sharp spear on the other.

“And that's to do with after a battle, the farriers are then sent on to the battlefield, and with the sharp, spikey end, they go around sort of things, they go around getting the coup de gra, killing all the horses that cannot be treated.”

So they, they will go around killing the horses, and the ax is actually sort of, I shouldn't say slightly amusing, because people, I'm talking about dead horses, but the ax was,

was instituted actually, it's this is actually not, I don't know if this is medieval, this might actually be a sort of slightly more modern.

It's instituted because it's so that they can, they chop off the horses hooves and collect them to find out how many horses have died on the battlefield. And the problem, and that's because so many people were claiming that their horse had died on the battlefield, which they hadn't, then asking for another horse, and selling the horse that they already had, because it was perfectly healthy. So you were fishing, it's all for a countency, getting back to my point of an start of, you find a lot of this, thanks to people being very diligent countens.

Yes, for a countency reason, is that's why you have to, they have the ax, because they have to go around counting the horses hooves to make sure that nobody is trying to cheat the army of claim that they have lost their horse when they clearly haven't. And then they went to the pettings too. That's a side joke for everybody, it's listening, but anyways, you know, we're going to have to do this again, because I know your busy morale are already up in an hour. And there's so many other questions, I actually want to get into, you know, the study you're doing now with the squirrels and the leprosy and all that, but there's just not in a time.

“I think we need, I told you, you're my new best friend to hand my favorite historian, we're going to have to do this again, but I know you're up on a schedule.”

And I don't want to take too much time, but is there anything else that you'd like to talk about as we kind of are kind of coming towards the end of this thing that we didn't get to, that you think would be cool. Um, I think I think just I'd like listeners to understand that, you know, there's a sort of, there was so much out there on, you know, sort of, on, on animals, middle ages and partly some of it is familiar, some of it is very, and sort of like, you're unfamiliar. I, I think what attracted me initially is the familiar. I would start finding long poems in which people are writing very sad poems about the death of their parents or their pet puppies.

And I thought, at the time, the emotions were like, you know, they were very familiar. They were so, you know, oh, this is so, like, this is so dreadful. I can't believe this has happened. I'm never going to recover.

“And I think that, as much as, yes, like, you know, apart, like, you know, sort of like the past as a different country, they do things differently.”

Uh, it's, and there are things that are incredibly alien and strange, but then there's also I was sort of, I always found quite charming that with animals.

Uh, there could be a, there was often a link. And I discover things almost every, like, you know, every day that I'm intrigued. I mean, I, and I know with a, just final fact on the red squirrels is I talked to somebody in red squirrel conservation. And by the way, just for the difference, this is because the European red squirrel is slightly small on fluffier than the American graceful, even though actually even on England actually they now have, they're mostly American grace walls, but that's another story.

And I talked to them and I was saying that, oh, they're very popular pits and the ladies, and he said to me, well, that's ridiculous. Like, you know, he said they're completely unpleasant, nasty, bitey, little animals. I can't see how anyone could have one. And I said, oh, you sure. And he said, no, no, he said, like, I work with squirrel conservation. No, I said, like, you know, biting or attacking me. That deal, like, you know, how could you possibly, and I was saying, but no, I've got references to them being on people's shoulders and keeping, keeping, keeping them around and taking them for little walks on leashes because they used to take their squirrels for walks on leashes.

And he, and then I found a source, which said that they used to take the squirrels when they were babies from their mothers from the wild.

And it's quite delightful, like, oh, I even found references to squirrel, the squirrel hatches or, you know, a bit like a sort of hamster wheels that have little wheels for your squirrels to play on.

“Yeah, kind of like the guinea pigs, or a hamster.”

Or hamster. I know what guinea pigs are fun, just, if you want a final note on guinea pigs, is that because, like, they're domesticated several thousand years ago in the Andes. And there they're kept as, like, as a food source.

But when they are, when they're imported, when they're taken across the Atlantic into Europe, they are never, ever, farmed, ever as food in Europe.

And, instead, they incredibly quickly become pets. And so from the, so less than a hundred years after Columbus, that we have, you know, people are keeping very wildly in Europe, they're keeping pet guinea pigs. So, once from South America to, to Europe, and then over to the US, because now everybody's got guinea pigs and kids to it. I know that, they're, they're, they're, they're lovely animals. Yeah, my kids had him. I'm, in fact, I'll send you a picture of two guinea pigs on either ear or mine, that I, I did something on your, but I'll send it to you.

I, I had my kids there, my, my daughters, that was the funniest things you ever saw. Pretty funny.

Well, yes, I, they always remind me a bit of the, the tribals in Star Trek.

Yeah. They, they make the same noises. But yes, they are delightful, but I would be delighted to come back and talk again, Mark. And just throw me, throw me any subjects you want, like perhaps we could even next time talk about exotic animals like lions or crocodiles. Sure.

That would be great. So we're going to finish now. Well, before we finish, for people, I'm, and by the way, everybody listening, I say this all the time, the stuff we're going to say now is going to be in the description.

“If people, I know you have your book medieval pets, but what other things were people can find years or social media?”

If people are trying to find more information, they're where should they go and what should they do? Can you can afford the audience? Um, I do have some other popular books that might be helpful. Um, that I've got one book, um, I've got two books, which I should say I highly recommend, but I highly recommend. Uh, one's called Cats in medieval manuscripts, and the other one's called Dogs in medieval manuscripts. And even though that's their title, they don't just have images of cats and dogs in manuscripts, which they do.

Um, I published these books with a British library as that, on each page, this information about there might be a story about sort of like medieval cats or perhaps cat cats associated with a saint. And similarly with the dogs, there's a reference to like, oh, sort of dogs in all different types of cultural and social contexts. So those are quite sweet little books, and I highly recommend those. And I also have another series of books from Bloomsbury, which is, there's cats of historical distinction, dogs of historical distinction, and horses of historical distinction.

So those are extra like little books, um, in which I do, I do keep saying to myself that I do need to start, start a nice jolly website and start blogging, some things, I keep saying to myself. So yeah, well, it's not to your not busy at all, not at all. I know sort of things, but there is just, there is so much stuff, and particularly, for example, with manuscripts now that more materials getting digitized, you're getting a lot more. One of most delightful things about pits and the digitization of manuscripts is you're starting because they're digitizing Thai manuscripts, so page by page.

And then we're starting to find how many pages have animal paw prints on them. Oh, that's cool. And it's something that in the past would be almost impossible to find out because nobody in the catalog is going to say, on folio 26 verseo, there was a cat paw print, like, why would you? But instead now that it's digitized, you can see, and there's some wonderful ones where you can see almost like the animals being square blank, it's been fighting, it's been pushed off, it's jumped on with muddy paws. That's lovely, I love war.

So yes, so the case of there, sort of there everywhere, but yes, there please do invite me on, I'd be delighted to come. Yeah, well, do that and everybody listen again, I'll have to link stall those things there.

So we're at the last thing now where I tell the silly animal joke, and I set everybody up with this and said, I'm always looking for other people to come on kids.

“Grand parents, if you want to be in the show, your grandkids, nieces, and nephews, your kids or whatever, if you email me at mcalfreeopocast.com.”

I'd love to have you on, it's really fun to have other people on and tell these silly jokes because we know my jokes are so bad, but I'm sure you're so be better.

So my joke to you is in my forewarn you, they're really bad.

“What do you call a night favorite horse?”

Tell me. Sir Gallup, a lot. That was very sweet. I told you as bad.

“Anyway, Kathleen, thanks so much for being on.”

I can't wait to have you on again.

This has been a pleasure for me, and I just, really, I really do appreciate you being on. No, this has been great fun. Thank you so much.

And I will come back, because as I say, you can't just stop the facts.

I mean, I can talk for about an hour just on names that they gave their animals.

“So if, on the so gallop a lot, we could have an entire thing about what are they calling their horses or their dogs or their parents?”

Well, you may be a regular guest, and you may have just opened Pandora's box here, but again, I really do appreciate him. We are, you are going to be on. We'll talk about them when we get off. But for everybody else who's out there listening, really, thanks so much for listening. I'll pass the word on because with you guys, it's helped me get more people on the show.

If you've got ideas for the show, again, email me and we'll do that. But really, really, really, really, really, thanks so much for listening everybody from the bottom of my heart for real. That will close this episode for real with your host, Mark Kyle. For previous and future episodes for real, listen via all major podcast stream sites. [Music]