Holy and Noble Beasts: Encounters with Animals in Medieval Literature (review)

Reviews 227 Parergon 20.2 (2003) a defensive and offensive force, capable of operating independently or as a contingent of the royal host. This detailed portrayal of daily life in twelfth century Cuenca yields valuable information not only on the evolution of Castilian towns, but also on the urban development of the Latin West as a whole. Powers succeeds in making this important source accessible to a wide audience through a lucid translation, succinct introduction and explanatory notes, and a bibliography to a literature unfamiliar to many. The Code of Cuenca: Municipal Law on the Twelfth-Century Castilian Frontier should, therefore, receive an enthusiastic welcome from the specialist and the general reader alike. Stephen Lay School of Historical Studies Monash University Salter, David, Holy and Noble Beasts: Encounters with Animals in Medieval Literature, Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2001; cloth; pp. viii, 168; 2 b/w illustrations; RRP US$60.00, £35.00; ISBN 0859916243. This book displays an impressive survey of sources, ranging from the lives of the early saints to late medieval English romances, which are used to present medieval authors’ reflections upon their humanity in relation to the animal world. Although interesting and informative, this study seldom challenges previous criticism of the key texts chosen for analysis. Salter starts his investigation with the story of St Jerome and the lion, and its interpretation by the fifteenth century Italian painter Niccolo Colantonio. In the painting the story acquires a social context through the incorporation of the tamed lion into the scholar’s life – in the painting, the cell (p. 21). The integration is, according to Salter, symptomatic of a ‘major shift in religious and cultural sensibility away from the wilderness and towards the city’ (p. 23). In his writing on the lives of two early saints, Paul and Malchus, Jerome advocates the opposite of this process, isolation, which brings man closer to nature through animals, away from politics in the city, and thus closer to God. In his discussion of St Francis, Salter points out that, contrary to modern assumptions, the saint did not entertain a democratic view of the animal world, but rather saw it in a servile position to man, a view also reflected in the saint’s opinion about domination over one’s body, which he calls ‘Brother Ass’. Similarly, St Francis’s capacity 228 Reviews Parergon 20.2 (2003) to address birds – mirrored in St Anthony of Padua’s ability to talk to fish – is indicative of the use of biblical authority to teach the animal world about its place in the hierarchy of Creation; an approach which ‘saw biblical texts as expressly and intensely applicable to the contemporary world’ (p. 41). In the second part of the book Salter looks at sanctity and nobility in several romances. In Sir Isumbras, a romance which mirrors the legend of St Eustace and his conversion, Christian connotations are traced back to Franciscan associations between ‘the aristocratic qualities of nobility and courtesy (characteristics typical of a romance hero), and the religious attributes of humility and submission’ (p. 60). The animals function both as abductors and helpers, as the lion, leopard and unicorn bring Isumbras’s three grown-up sons back to help their father vanquish heathen enemies. The romance thus combines the ‘secular with the spiritual, the chivalric and the hagiographic’, while animals function as connections between the hero’s dual identity, ‘aristocratic and saintly’ (p. 68). The anonymous fourteenth century Breton lay Sir Gowther is explored in terms of the Christian transformation of the eponymous hero from a demonic character, who attacks the Church and devastates the lands of his father, into a champion of the faith, who receives absolution for his past sins through divine signs. The greyhounds which bring food to Gowther in his self-imposed exile point, through association, to the nobility of the hero. Salter mentions the works of Ramon Lull and Geoffrey of Charni without indicating the influence of these texts on the genre of romance, while an interesting parallel with a similar romance, King Robert of Sicily, in which the hero eats with the dogs, is merely relegated to a footnote. The fourteenth century Octavian is analyzed in terms of the...