Animals in Medieval Sports, Entertainment, and Menageries

Kiser, Lisa J.

doi:10.5040/9781350049512-ch-004

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…4 In this connection, they were often used as moral role models. Many of their behaviours were taken to be instructive and 1 On animals in daily life see, for instance, Dinzelbacher (2000), 181-211; Kiser (2007); Pascua (2007); Smets & Van den Abeele (2007); Obermaier (2009), 3-8; Salisbury (2011), 10-60. For a concise introduction to animals in medieval culture see Resl (2007a).…”

Section: The Role Of Animals In the Middle Agesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Animal Rationality

Oelze¹

2018

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Fees are subject to change.This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. To all animals∵ Contents 10 Elevated Intentions and Common Forms (Pseudo-Peter of Spain) 78 11 Vague Particulars as Universals (Roger Bacon) 82 12 Universal Desire and Experience (John Buridan) 88 13 General Mental Representations (Peter of John Olivi) 95 Part 3xiii Preface from the very first moment was brilliant and this work has profited a lot from their advice and comments. Dominik Perler's colloquium at the Humboldt University was a stimulating place of intellectual exchange and the colloquium's participants who commented on various drafts of this book helped me to improve it a great deal. Many important suggestions I also owe to audiences at Berlin,

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Section: The Role Of Animals In the Middle Agesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Animal Rationality

Oelze¹

2018

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“…In between both events, two well documented venues for translocated animals in medieval Iberia were the menageries (i.e., primeval zoological gardens) of sovereigns and noblemen and the "animal Embassies" which were diplomatic exchanges of beasts taking place amongst dignitaries (Zalba, 1946;Adroer i Tasis, 1989;Blasco Martínez, 1996;Domenech, 1996;Borja, 2002;Bover i Pujol & Roselló Vaquer, 2004;Kiser, 2007;Gschwend, 2009;Buquet, 2013a, b). Originated in pharaonic Egypt, animal gifts became common practice in the Near East since Sassanid times and later in Greece and Rome (Williams, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gift of the Mamelukes: Animal ambassades as vectors of exotic fauna introductions in the Spanish Middle Ages

Morales-Muñiz,

Morales-Muñiz

2024

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The number of exotic animal species that were introduced in Iberia during the Middle Ages constitute a defectively documented area of research, mostly addressed through historiographic methods. In this paper we evidence that even in the case of large, exotic animals exchanged as gifts among dignitaries the documentary data can be painfully incomplete. This is the case of the animal embassy that the Mamluk sultan Baybars al Bunduqdari sent in 1261 to the Castilian king Alfonso X. Although the written sources do not specify the complete list of species nor the reasons for mentioning some but not others, documentary and iconographic data suggest that, in addition to an elephant, a giraffe and a zebra, this lot included, in a decreasing order of probability, a lion, a dromedary, an ostrich, and a Nile crocodile. If such conspicuous beasts could pass unnoticed in a royal chronicle, one may contend that even in the most thoroughly documented cases, written sources may refer but a minimal fraction of the animals translocated into Iberia during the Medieval period. Such information vacuum stresses the difficulties of granting “indigenous” status to species traditionally assumed to constitute elements of the Iberian fauna when their historical contingencies are defectively known, a matter of concern for the current rewilding debate in Spain.

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“…They were also signs in the sense that their physique and behaviour were interpreted as having allegorical meaning.4 In this connection, they were often used as moral role models. Many of their behaviours were taken to be instructive and 1 On animals in daily life see, for instance, Dinzelbacher (2000), 181-211;Kiser (2007); Pascua (2007); Smets & Van den Abeele (2007); Obermaier (2009), 3-8; Salisbury (2011), 10-60. For a concise introduction to animals in medieval culture see Resl (2007a).…”

Section: The Role Of Animals In the Middle Agesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preliminary Material

Animal Rationality

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What are and Why Study Later Medieval Theories of Animal Rationality?Contemporary theories of animal rationality concern a relatively wide range of issues. They range from inferential and linguistic capacities to social and meta-cognition.1 What is common to most of them is that they are interested in process rather than behavioural rationality.2 Generally speaking, these are different ways of telling whether or not a being is rational. When we focus solely on its behaviour and say that it is rational, since, for instance, it chooses the right means to achieve a certain end (and so 'maximises utility' , as some people put it) we ascribe behavioural rationality to that being. According to this concept of rationality, almost any kind of being could count as rational in one way or another. Not only people can be rational but also institutions, machines, or genes as long as they behave in a way that qualifies as rational.3 What matters is simply whether or not a certain behaviour can be described as rational. If this is the case, then the being exhibiting this behaviour can be called rational.However, this type of rationality is much more interesting and relevant for economists, for example, than it is for psychologists. The latter are interested rather in the question whether the behaviour we observe is based on rational processes. To put it slightly differently, they wonder how a certain kind of behaviour is brought about. For instance, they examine whether a certain kind of behaviour that can be described as rational from the outside is actually based on a rational cognitive process such as reasoning. To be clear, this does not mean that psychologists or anyone else interested in process rationality work with a better or more appropriate concept of rationality than economists and people interested in behavioural rationality. They simply look at rationality from a different angle, and when they identify rationality they do this at a different level.In the Middle Ages, one can also find this distinction between behavioural and process rationality -not literally, of course, but systematically. A passage that neatly illustrates this is found in Thomas Aquinas' Summa theologiae.

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Animals in Medieval Sports, Entertainment, and Menageries

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Animal Rationality

Animal Rationality

Gift of the Mamelukes: Animal ambassades as vectors of exotic fauna introductions in the Spanish Middle Ages

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