The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages

by Joyce E. Salisbury

The Beast Within illustrates how, as property, food and sexual objects, animals in the middles ages had a distinct, and at times, odd relationship with the people and world around them. For example, animals viewed as property during the period shared in labor and increased their owners' status. However, these animals were regularly punished for the act owners were held responsible for the animals' behavior as well. When animals served as sexual objects for humans, much reflection, debate and even legislation was the result. Mythological and metaphoric animals also played important roles in the fables and religion of the day changing the views of humans about the beasts and themselves.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Medieval, Animals

256 pages, Paperback

First published April 28, 1994

About the author

Professor Emerita of Humanistic Studies (History)University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

Reviews

[Skrivena stranica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parts will be useful to me. Book composition is very logical and clear.

[Karl Steel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Caveat: I didn't finish this because I felt I'd read it already, years ago. See below.

A disappointment. Clearly the Second Edition of Salisbury's oft-cited book witnesses to the still rising interest in animals in critical theory and social history. It's a fine thing for this book to be available in paperback for those instructors who might want to build a syllabus around it. It's not a fine thing, however, to claim a full revision (x) when it seems no such thing has been done. Some scholarship written in the 16 years since the appearance of the first edition crops up in the bibliography: several pieces by Erica Fudge, Claudine Fabre-Vassas, David Salter, Hanawalt and Kiser's anthology, and a little bit of Susan Crane. Not that this matters, because most of this new work makes no appearance in Salisbury's 'revised' book. I miss references to Jeffrey Cohen's 'Inventing With Animals,' Crane's 'For the Birds,' and especially to yours truly: we just don't exist for her. Mistakes in the first edition have not been corrected: Caroline Walker Bynum is sometimes spelled "Carolyn" (136, 138, 140) (an error corrected, in pencil, in Bynum's own hand in the copy in Columbia's library: have a look!) and Ratramnus of Corbie remains a "thirteenth-century" writer; worse, her thesis--though challenged by David Salter inter alia--of changing perceptions of animals from the early to later Middle Ages remains. The persistence of Salisbury's thesis would be fine if she hadn't just ignored her critics.

New material includes expanded considerations on animal trials (which cites neither Jody Enders nor Michel Pastoureau nor the classical prehistory), on pets, monsters, anthropophagy, and werewolves in particular. This version has the same advantages as the first: a wealth of references to primary sources and a willingness to treat animals as animals rather than as only symbols; however it has the same problems, which is a continued humanism (mollified by references to the "beast within") uninformed by the questions of critical theory or the subtlety of literary criticism. This should be on hand in any library as a reference, but it's at best a starting place, and one to be used cautiously.

[Paul Cowdell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmm. An interesting survey of changing representational attitudes of animals in the Christian middle ages that often does not feel as substantial as it would like to be. Part of the problem is that Salisbury frequently reads like a very fine summariser of too limited a range of previous publications, which are themselves unproblematised. You can see that she knows the stuff, but not enough of it is reflected here at times.

The book isn't helped by Routledge's apparent belief that academic publishing does not require proofreading, copy-editing or even checking of the text. Names of people and places suffer badly, even well-known ones like Gervaise of Tilbury, whose name is spelled in different ways in the same paragraph. (Gervaise is also one of the sources about whose reliability rather more should have been said). Salisbury seems particularly cavalier with references, with translators especially being rather hard done by, which makes it not quite the resource it should be. In one extract I was interested in, she has given a translation of the source text that is not the one from the edition cited in the notes. (And also, it turns out, not as effective a translation).

I'm glad I read it, but it's a long way from being essential.

[Mathilda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for my Dissertation research.
A very helpful text with lots of information on how animals were viewed from the early to late Middle Ages. I would’ve liked to have had more literary references, as I feel there could be more to explore there, but of course that is my own bias and this is intended as a book of history!

[Nancy Gilchrist · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much new informatioN

This text brought up new insights and angles I'd never considered before. Revealed many ways to consider relations between people and animals. Oddly reached this last book from Nokia to Western b estuaries to this. All instructive.

[Rianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK history book who really desperately wanted to prove that fables made people regard animals as more human since the 1200s.

[dragonhelmuk · Rating 2 out of 5]

Library read. This book examines in very broad strokes, the categorisation of animals and humans, and their dividing lines in Christian europe from the fourth to the fourteenth centuries. Joyce Sailsbury argues that the period started with a christian view that animals were completely different to humans (therefore could not possibly transform into humans, or breed with humans) and therefore bestiality was not seen as such a bad sin. In around the twelfth century, either as a symptom or cause, this all changed. Beast literature (fable and epic) re-rose, in a similar, if subtly different state to its pre-christian state. The boundaries between human and animal became seen as closer than previously imagined, and interbreeding, and transformation became seen as possible. Suddenly bestiality threatened the sanctity of the human race. In these broad strokes Salisbury's work is hard to argue with and ground-breaking.


The trouble is for me that her approach is so very broad-stroke. This is a problem she identifies herself in the introduction, but consoles herself that her approach is comparable with studies of environmental issues in america in the 1990s. The trouble is that america in the 1990s was a very homogenous place, and only 10 years passed. The scope of her study is much larger, and 1000 years, a very different proposition! Therefore many of her finer points might as well have been hand-picked, with such evidence available its all too easy to just take the stuff you want. I have to admit though, that her grand points do seem justified, and she does attempt some statistical analysis, even if this is basically worthless (she has no figures to compare her twelfth century charts to). Her approach to the literature is also coloured by all my least favourite conventions (literature for the sake of literature, feminism, persecution woes) but i think that’s mostly due to the period she chooses. I now have a little more evidence for my gut feeling that the pinnacle of literature was written in the late eleventh century, and it all goes down-hill after that! Still, as an overarching study, i have to re-iterate, her work is incredibly ground-breaking.

[sue rr · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this study a lot. Very well organized, Salisbury starts from the "real" function of animals in the Middle Ages until she gets to the metaphorical function, which means a change in the paradigm of that time.

I've got some reservations, though. I've been reading a lot about medieval bestiaries and she refers to bestiaries as "scientific" works of that time. Ok, some authors really do consider them to be scientific, but even in medieval world view terms it is still very improbable. At least I don't consider them to be scientific we can look to Aristotle's naturalistic works and we see the huge difference. Also, she claims that in the middle ages the apes were considered foolish copies of human beings but I've read that the bear was the animal considered very alike humans. Anyways, I'm not saying that she is wrong. Just saying that she believes some aspects which I prefer not to trust. For now.