Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages (review)

What do accounts of miraculous interactions between holy people and animals mean? This question has engaged generations of scholars, and Dominic Alexander enters this discussion with a work that retells many stories of wonders involving saints, animals, and the society that surrounds them.

The originality of this book lies in its use of primarily Irish works to develop a thesis (not clearly stated at the beginning) that argues that Irish society produced a "hybrid tradition" that added folk stories involving animals to standard Christian motifs. Most previous scholars have argued that saint/animal tales portray one of two themes: either they demonstrate Christian dominance over nature or they show empathy with animals. Alexander claims that identifying folktales that were incorporated into saints' lives allows a more nuanced interpretation that replaces the two previous ones.

It is not clear that the thesis is fully proven, but the journey through the analysis is fascinating. To be convinced, a reader would have to accept the identification of some themes as emerging from an ancient oral folk culture, a claim that is hard to prove. Two examples of such folk motifs are resurrecting dead geese and the importance of sacred space. Maybe these do derive from ancient folktales, but even if they do not, the discussion of their use in saints' lives offers interesting insights.

In the first two chapters the author describes the earliest accounts of the interaction between saints and animals from the patristic age and the desert traditions. Chapter 3 tells how the stories of saint-animal interaction were expressed in northern Europe, in wildernesses that became dominated by monastic institutions. These chapters skillfully re-create the state of knowledge on the subject.

With chapter 4, "The Irish Variant," the author begins the original contribution to the field that continues through the rest of the book. This chapter establishes the Irish tradition that Alexander argues shows the strongest penetration of folk motifs into the dominant tradition. Alexander follows up with another excellent chapter on the tradition of resurrected geese in the sources. This chapter is less an analysis of animals and saints than a model of how to do a close reading of texts. Chapter 6, "The Hermit and the Hunter," continues the description of folk themes begun in the previous chapter showing how stories of animals saved from hunters also reveal the social concerns of peasant folk. Chapter 7, "The Holy Wilderness," is a skillful essay on the sacred space of Farne Island, and it serves as a fine introduction to chapter 8, which ties together the themes explored in the previous four chapters, making the case for the blend of folklore and patristic tradition. The book concludes with the thirteenth-century accounts of St. Francis and his animals. The last chapter is the weakest since it introduces material and arguments not developed fully earlier in the work.

The book's strengths lie in the author's grasp of the texts and his detailed analysis. It would have been stronger with a tighter—and bolder—statement of thesis. Indeed, many of the best insights are left in the footnotes (for example, 4n12 and 37n80). However, Alexander has presented a work that should stimulate further thinking on the ever-fascinating study of the relationship between humans and animals.