Dissertation Part 1

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Arianna Page Dr. Baskin March 14th, 2013

“And you poore beastes, in patience bide your hell,

Or know your strengths, and then you shall do well.”

-Sir Phillip Sidney, “Song of A Young Shepard”

Throughout history, civilizations follow patterns of ascension and falling,

enlightenment and darkness, awakening and silence. Common markers of times of the

rising of civilizations are increased interest and production of arts, such as literature,

poetry, plays, painting, sculptures, and music. Leaders are deemed to be fair and just,

there are fewer laws, more freedoms, and protections for minorities, the poor, and the

elderly. There is an overall wealth and prosperity for the community. Communication,

infrastructure, invention, scientific discoveries, philosophical ideas, and humanism based

morals are prevalent. This is not to say that these positive attributes cannot exist during

“dark times” (like the fall of Rome or the Dark Ages), but because much of it is repressed

and punished, only a few sparks of light can shine, instead of a glory likened unto the

sun. Knowing that the symbol for the sun and gold are the same in astrology and

alchemy, it comes as no surprise that the Renaissance period is also called the Golden

Age by modern scholars. According to many cultural myths, the Golden Age is time in

the future when there will be everlasting peace, there shall be no war or violence. The

earth will produce enough food to sustain all living on it, and neither man nor beast will

kill each other for food. The Renaissance was a time where people strived for such a

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utopia, and their attitudes toward many things were gradually evolving. This was also a

time when the people of the Renaissance were changing their views about animals and

demanding animal rights from the law. These changes about eating, using, and abusing

animals were reflected in the rise of vegetarianism, the emergence of stricter laws

concerning the treatment of animals, and the use and representation of animals in

literature.

A defining characteristic of the Renaissance period was the return to Classical

ideas, a critically important influence on the Renaissance individual. While not many,

there were still a few Greek and Roman philosophers who had unconventional views of

animals, eating meat, and animal rights. It is in the third and sixth-century BCE Greece

where we first see a budding concern for the treatment of animals in Europe (Ryder, 17).

Literary references are found in Homer’s Odyssey which mentions indigenous people on

the North African coast who are said to eat only the fruits of the lotus plant (Haussleiter).

Diodorus Siculus wrote of a similar tribe of vegetarians in Ethiopia (Haussleiter). These

writings, however, are mythical stories, so it is not known whether or not this was a

reality for any peoples of this time period. The earliest reliable evidence of vegetarian

theory and practice came from the Pythagoreanism, a religions movement spreading

through Greece, named after Pythagoras (580 c-500 BCE ), a philosopher and religions

leader in the area of southern Italy colonized by Greek settlers (Spencer). Pythagoras was

one of the first philosophers recorded to make a stance against eating meat. Pythagoras

referred to vegetarianism as “abstinence from beings with a soul.” The belief that animals

and humans had the same soul, and that these souls were reincarnated between the

human-animals and nonhuman-animals was the driving force behind Pythagoreans’

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vegetarianism (Taylor, 37). Empedocles (490–430 BCE) called himself a radical

advocate of abstaining from meat, specifically for animals, and also held the Pythagorean

belief of the transmigration of the souls, much like their Asian counterparts belief in

reincarnation and ahimsa (Ryder). Renaissance greats such as Leonardo da Vinci

probably held philosophers like Pythagoras in great esteem, as da Vinci was known to

buy caged birds from markets just to set them free like his Greek counterpart Pythagoras

did (Taylor, 34). Before this, however, there was a long period where this vegetarian

movement died out, due mostly to the thinking of one of the most famous philosophers of

all time, Aristotle, and his future Christian supporters.

Aristotle (384-322 BCE) did not believe in the transmigration of souls and cared

little for non-human animal welfarism (Encyclopaedia Brittanica), and this was backed

by his proposal of the Great Chain of Being (Fellenz, 90). The Blackwell Dictionary of

Western Philosophy states, “This idea of the Great Chain of Being can be traced back to

Plato’s division of the world into Forms…Aristotle’s teleology recognized a perfect

being, and he also arranged all animals by a single natural scale according to the degree

of perfection of their soul. The idea of one Great Chain of Being was fully developed in

the Middle Ages” (Bunnin, 289). The Great Chain of Being ranks all things, animate and

inanimate into a scale, or hierarchy. When Aristotle first began it, it was more of a

secular concept. This biological classification ranked animals over plants, based on

animals’ ability to move about and possession of the senses. He then further divided the

animals based on their reproductive mode and possession of blood. Aristotle classified all

invertebrates as “bloodless” (Singer). Aristotle further believed that animals lacked

reason, thought, and belief (Fellenz, 90). Aristotle’s student, Theophrastus (371-287

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BCE) disagreed with Aristotle. He believed that animals did have reason, senses, and

beliefs, and was opposed to eating meat, because it would “rob the animals of life”

(Taylor, 35). The Platonic Academy scholarch Xenocrates and probably Polemon pleaded

for vegetarianism and were supported by Theophrastus (35). However, as Christianity

began to spread, the Christian doctrine chose to adhere to Aristotle’s beliefs, and that line

of thinking (about animals) lasted for nearly 2,000 years (Sorabji, 7).

Medieval period is typically characterized by a saturation of religious dogma in

everything they did. (There are exceptions to this generalization—Chaucer’s works are a

good example.) Their art, philosophies, mathematics, and sciences were all tied to (and

oftentimes limited by) religion. The Great Chain of Being would become a very

important part of Medieval Christian doctrine. They built on Aristotle’s original secular

concept, and extended it into a more religious order. The Great Chain of Being was seen

as a God-given ordering, and not just an invention of man, much like the inspired

writings of the Bible. In this version of the Great Chain, God was at the top, followed by

angels, then humans, animals, plants, and finally dirt at the very bottom. The people of

this time sought to include each and every bug, plant, fish, fowl, wild and domesticated

animal within this Chain, each with its proper place and hierarchy. Fish were below birds,

as birds were closer to God (literally) than the fish, who were closer to dirt. Wild animals

were placed above domesticated animals, and pests were placed below useful or pretty

insects (Debus). The closer to the top one was, the closer to God, and therefore,

perfection, one could claim to be (Lovejoy). This rather mutual feeling of humans being

“better than” animals comes from the Medieval religious leaders’ interpretation of

Genesis 1:28, “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply,

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and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and

over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” This

idea of having dominion over nature was interpreted to mean that humankind had control

and power over nature, and that they could do whatever they wanted to and with nature,

because they “owned” it. They believed nature was for them, and not created with them.

This idea ofdominance over nature would not change into an idea ofstewardship over

nature until the rise of the Puritans in the 1650’s (Kete, 19). Ironically, in the very next

verse, Genesis1:29, the Bible says,

“…Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of

all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it

shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and

to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, where in there is life, I have given

every green herb for meat: and it was so.”

Considering the average Medieval Christian’s goal was to become as close to

God, i.e. perfection, as possible, and that perfection in the Bible was first found Garden

of Eden where animals (human and non-human) did not eat other animals, one would

think that Christians of this time would want to abstain from eating non-human animals

in an attempt to become closer to God. In other passages of the Bible, (Job, Isaiah,

Ezekiel, and Hosea), there are writings of the end times, after which follows the “Golden

Age,” and, once again, animals shall not be killed or eaten by human-animals or non-

human animals.

While ancient vegetarians (like the Pythagoreans) held that consuming animals

hampered their ascetic and philosophical endeavors, as well as went against their ethical

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reasoning (Haussleiter, Sorabji), monks in the Middle Ages abstained from meat for

different reasons. Monks abstained from eating meat in the context of their asceticism,

but did eat fish, because Jesus was believed to eat fish. The strictly religious were

vegetarian (or pescatarian) out of self-mortification, frugality, and voluntary deprivation

of worldly temptations. There was no evidence for wholly ethically motivated

vegetarianism in ancient and medieval Catholicism or in Eastern Churches. Early

Christian saints like Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Clement of Alexandria, Saint Basil

were vegetarians of the medieval period, but seemed to do so more out of aesthetics than

concern for animals, though that was a part of their motives. Saint Francis of Assisi, who

was not a strict vegetarian, is the patron saint of animals and the environment, and known

for his compassion toward animals (Wayner). While there were instances of compassion

toward animals, there were no objections to killing them. This reflects teachings of the

Bible, where there are very specific rules for how one is to be kind when owning, using,

and killing animals. The thirteenth-century religious leader Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-

1274 CE) taught that humans should be kind to animals, but for the sake of humans, and

not for the sake of animals. St. Thomas Aquinas believed that if humans were cruel to

non-humans, it would carry over to their treatment of each other, and would be

detrimental to the soul (Honderich, 35-36). He said that “animals were irrational,

unthinking beings and therefore did not deserve the same degree of moral consideration

as humans” (Liddick, 24).Saint Augustine similarly argued that Jesus allowed the pigs to

drown because man has no duty to care for animals (Passmore). Other New Testament

writings of Paul were often used as justification of this sense of dominion over animals—

while they are here for us, they are not with us, and we owe them nothing in the terms of

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care or kindness. An animal only had “rights” insofar as the owner had rights to him. For

example, if one person injured another person’s horse, the criminal would be punished on

the basis of causing financial burden or inconvenience to the owner of the horse, not for

the injury to the horse himself. The idea of having a “right” as a claim, an entitlement, an

immunity, or a liberty began to arise in the late Medieval to Modern Period, and was

inspired by the Roman concept of ius (Finnis). During Medieval and Modern times, the

perspective was on the human as the holder of the right, or the “beneficiary,” not the

animal who was actually the victim. This concept of someone being able to hold a right

was an important concept for later stages of animal rights where the non-human animal

would be the beneficiary, and be protected for his or her own sake, instead of his or her

owner’s.

The Renaissance period was also known for their focus on humanity and the

individual. Renaissance thinkers and doers were heavily involved in the achievements of

humans—their bodies and minds. This would lead into the concept of anthropocentrism,

the position that human beings are the most significant entity of the universe or the act of

regarding the world in terms of human values and experiences. Not only were artists and

scientists fascinated with the outer body, they were curious about what was happening

inside the body as well. There was a rise in the practice of vivisection (the cutting or

operation on a living animal usually for physiological or pathological investigation)

during this period. Animals (usually dogs) were nailed to tables by their ears, paws, and

tails, and cut open, live, without any anesthesia.

“There are barbarians who seize this dog, who so greatly surpasses man in

fidelity and friendship, and nail him down to a table and dissect him alive, to

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show you the mesaraic veins! You discover in him all the same organs of feeling

as in yourself. Answer me, mechanist, has Nature arranged all the springs of

feeling in this animal to the end that he might not feel?” (Voltaire).

One of the most famous supporters of vivisection was René Descartes (1596-

1650), a French writer, mathemetician, and philosopher. Descartes played a significant

part in seventeenth-century Rationalism, proposing the mechanistic theory of the universe

(Cottingham). Mechanistics, as hinted by Voltaire’s quote, believed that animals did not

have intelligence or reason, were not conscious, had no language, and therefore were not

able to suffer (Dawkins). Descartes, although the most influential mechanist of the time,

is reported to agree that animals were able to feel and perceive things—but he still

believed even those could be explained mechanistically. He still did not believe they were

conscious or could feel pain in the way that humans did (Allen). Thoughts like this—

humans being above animals—stirred the Renaissance feelings of anthropocentrism. No

longer were humans just above animals as in the Great Chain of Being; they were moving

even further up the ladder of perfection. Humans were ceasing to be mere objects and

servants of God. Humans were now the subject (Ingraffia, 126).

On the other end of the spectrum, the foundation for the modern animal rights

movement was laid. Vegetarianism was, for the first time, seen as a philosophical concept

wholly based on ethical motivation. (Ancient vegetarians abstained from eating animals

for mainly spiritual reasons, but most abstained from meat for ethical reasons, too)

(Haussleiter). Famous Renaissance intellectuals such as Leonardo da Vinci, Pierre

Gassendi, and Thomas Tryon were ethical vegetarians (Spencer). Although not an

outspoken proponent of vegetarianism, Sir Thomas More begins his work Utopia in 1515,

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and has many things to say about the treatment of animals and eating them, as well. In the

first section of Book II, “The Geography of Utopia,” More explains the treatment and

housing of chickens, horses, and oxen. He says, after explaining the roles of horses and

oxen in the fields, that “when oxen are too old for work, they can be used for meat”

(More, 600). More himself does not seem to be a vegetarian, but he does not support the

unnecessary cruelty and killing of animals, just to eat their flesh. He states in “Social

Relations” that fish, meat, and poultry are sold to the people of Utopia, but are in

designated places outside of the city for mostly sanitary reasons. The Utopians do not

slaughter the animals, but instead have slaves do it for them. “The Utopians feel that

slaughtering our fellow creatures gradually destroys the sense of compassion, which is

the finest sentiment of which our human nature is capable” (607). This aversion of

desensitization echoes the worries of St. Aquinas and St. Augustine from the early

Medieval period (Parsmore). More continues this thought in “Their Philosophy” where he

approaches the subjects of hawking and hunting. He calls them (hawking and hunting)

“false and foolish pleasures” (More, 617).

“Is there any more pleasure felt when a dog chases a hare than when a dog chases

a dog? If what you like is fast running, there’s plenty of that in both cases; they’re just

about the same. But if what you really want is slaughter, if you want to see a living

creature torn apart under your eyes—you ought to feel nothing but pity when you see the

little hare fleeing from the hound,…the harmless hare killed by the cruel dog. In [the

Utopians’] eyes, hunting is the lowest thing even butchers can do. In the slaughterhouse,

their work is more useful and honest, since there they kill animals only from necessity;

but the hunter seeks merely his own pleasure from the killing and mutilating of some

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poor little creature…[T]aking such relish in the sight of death reveals…a cruel

disposistion, or else that one has become so through the constant practice of such brutal

pleasures” (618).

More references Plutarch’s writings in “Their Delight in Learning,” so he would

have undoubtedly known about Plutarch’s feelings toward animals and vegetarianism,

and was heavily influenced by those ancient Classical writings when he wrote Utopia.

More still carries the view, however, that man is superior to animals, and while animals

outdo humans in strength and ferocity, humans outdo animals in “all shrewdness and

rationality (630). More was a devoted Catholic, and this sentiment that animals were still

lower than humans—but that humans were still to be kind to them at the expense of their

dispositions—was strong indicator of his Catholic roots, especially teachings of St.

Aquinas. More wrote Utopia in 1515, at the very start of the Renaissance. Medieval

attitudes were still around, and it would take a while for them to completely dissipate

over the next couple of centuries.

One of the most prominent signs of the slow evolution of Medieval values

morphing into Renaissance thinking is the change of stories' translations over time. The

stories and fables at first had a heavy religious (Catholic) moral and value centered

themes, but with the rise of Calvinism, they began to teach lessons about the new roles of

God and man, The story of Valentine and Orson is a good example of how people's

values changed—how animals and their state in the world of humans effected that. The

tale ofValentine and Orson originated as a poem in the fourteenth century, and was

rewritten several times afterward as prose in French, eventually arriving in English

translation by 1505. It then underwent three editions in English (Fudge, 58). Erica Fudge

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compares and contrasts two of the versions of this story, the one from 1565 and the one

from 1637, to show how the message of the story changed from Medieval to Renaissance

themes. Valentine and Orson are twin sons of Alexander, emperor of Greece, and

Bellysant, sister of the king of France. Bellysant is accused of adultery and has to run

away from Greece. On her way to seek refuge with her brother, she goes into labor in the

middle of a forest in France. One of her children, Orson, is stolen by a bear and raised in

the woods as a wildman, and her other son, Valentine, is discovered abandoned in the

woods and raised by the king of France as a knight. In the older version of the text,

Valentine is raised specifically with the learning of how to be a devoted Catholic. These

moments are removed from the later version of the text. When Valentine is older, he must

confront his twin brother. In the Medieval version, Valentine convinces Orson to leave

the forest by telling him that he must learn about the Catholic faith and save his immortal

soul. In the Renaissance version, Valentine simply tells Orson that he knows nothing of

being a human and civilized society, and, most importantly, has no self-awareness. For

the Calvinist, Salvation could not be earned. Grace was granted to all those who were

human--i.e. beings with a conscious. The ever present idea that animals were not

conscious was still the basis for what separated them from humans, but for the

Renaissance man, this was not quite enough to separate the species. There had to be

something more defining. That “something more” is what Orson needs to complete his

journey.

Descartes tells us what that something is:

“[I]t is particularly noteworthy that there are no men so dull-witted and stupid, not

even imbeciles, who are incapable of arranging together different words, and of

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composing discourse by which to make their thoughts understood; and that, on the

contrary, there is no other animal, how ever perfect and whatever excellent

disposition it has at birth, which can do the same” (Fudge, 57).

This is expounded upon in a religious sense by William Perkins. Perkins, a puritan

theologian, believes, like many before him, that the difference between humans and

animals is possession of a conscious. He states, "Hereby conscience is excluded...from

bruit beasts: for though they haue life & sense, and in many things some shadowes of

reason, yet because they want true reason, they want conscience also" (Fudge, 34). This

line of thinking comes under question with Reformed ideas and predestination theology.

There must be more defining characteristics to separate humans from animals, for if the

human is allotted consciousness, what of the atheist? Perkins says, “Let Atheists barke

against this as long as they will: they haue that in them that will conuince them of the

truth of the Godhead, will they nill they, either in life or death” (49). The specific use of

the word “bark” for the denial of a deity is significant: it shows the animal in the human,

the lack of consciousness. So, if atheists lack a conscious, then they are one of two

things: either they are making a conscious choice to deny God, an impossibility for

Calvinist, since salvation or punishment is already predetermined by God, or atheists,

created by God, are animals. Once the atheist has lost his ability to think (his

consciousness) he ceases to speak and instead barks like a dog, and the lines between

humans and animals blur even further. In Valentine and Orson, Orson meets a woman in

the court and falls in love with her. He is a mute, as he never learned to speak living in

the forest his whole life. Because of this, he signs to the woman that he cannot be with

her until he learns to speak. Valentine cuts the cord under Orson's tongue (a common

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practice at birth during those times) which allows Orson to speak. Orson is now a human.

Speech is the defining characteristic of humans (Fudge). This change from the

importance of consciousness to the importance of speech happens slowly throughout

other stories and fables over time.

The Renaissance people needed a more defining characteristic for “human-ness”

for a variety of reasons. One is the lingering belief in stories, such as Valentine and

Orsonand others of wild men, fables where animals were anthropomorphized, and of the

werewolf. The fear of people from this time was to fall even further than they already had

down the Great Chain. Something worse than falling to the state of an animal, however,

is fall to the mysterious cross between animal and human. Concerning the werewolf, the

thought of a human losing himself and becoming a vicious animal was a horrifying

reality for people of this time and earlier. There had always been stories of crosses

between animals and humans (the Minotaur, harpies, gorgons, etc.)—but what was it

about the werewolf that evoked such fear into medieval and early modern European's

hearts? Why not a different wild animal? One could argue that it is because lions and

tigers weren’t roaming around in the forests of England or France, but it seems more

likely that it is because the wolf much resembles man's best friend, the dog. The wolf

reminds them how easily domestication can slip into wildness, and that their control over

nature is limited and not divinely ordained as they felt it to be. “Discussions of early

modern wolves put them in a literal but also a figurative relationship to wildness…in

figurative terms wolves consistently represent those who had fallen so far from God that

it was safe to assume that they were damned” (Wiseman, 51-51) To the Renaissance

people, wildness was sinful, far away from God. Civility was holy and Christian.

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The famous story of “Stubbe Peeter” is one of the first of the werewolf stories

translated in English. Peeter is given a magical girdle from the devil to “pursue the

‘devilish practice’ of werewolf transformation” for twenty-five years (53). The evil deeds

that Peeter performs are evil because they are animalistic and against human morality—

and Peeter does them while still holding onto his humanity. “Such paradoxical

transformations as that of Lycaon, maintaining ambiguously human and so responsible

for his actions, were not tolerated in early modern thought, where God was understood to

have created animal-human distinctions and hierarchy” (52). Peeter walks around upright

like a human, and engages in “deceit, incest, rape, and violent and potentially sexual

assault on children.” He also eats other humans in his wolf form. The issue is that he

willfully puts on the girdle, and in this light, it is clear that human Peeter desires to do

these evil things. What is normal for an animal is sin for the human, and by putting on the

girdle, Peeter can “put on” the likeness of the wolf, while still not forsaking his humanity,

regardless of how much actual control or consciousness he has while in werewolf form.

This would create much dissention among religious thinkers of the time—was the man

was conscious or unconscious and what defined a human if the consciousness could not?

If the consciousness, the “human-ness” could be lost, what really separated human from

animal? The werewolf stories were used for more than theology. Peeter and other

werewolves were usually tortured and put to violent deaths, but by the end of the

sixteenth century, this practice was changing (Fudge, 54). Those suffering from

lycanthropy were seen as “mad and not bad,” and “physicians proposed that the terrifying

creatures were, in reality, melancholics...” (54). This was an important change in opinion

that is reflected in John Webster’s character Prince Ferdinand in The Duchess of Malfi,

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and tries to relieve the stress of trying to define a human within the realms of his

consciousness.

Because lycanthropy was a legitimate illness in the Renaissance period, when

readers encountered Ferdinand’s claims of lycanthropia, they did not see it in as a

fantastical light as modern readers today. It was perfectly reasonable for Ferdinand to

come down with such an illness, and more likely so, being in a position of authority,

which had become associated with wolves and lycanthropia. Malfi explores the

“diseased, hallucinatory dimensions of lycanthropy” and “binds that question of

hallucinatory consciousness to the civic and even political implications of

metamorphosis” (Wiseman, 59). Ferdinand uses references to wolves constantly

throughout the text. He says of his sister’s speech, “the howling of a wolf is music to

thee, screech owl” (Webster, 1604), and calls her children cubs and young wolves. At the

command of Ferdinand, Bosola kills the duchess, after which Ferdinand tries to blame

her death solely upon Bosola, and says he will make sure Bosola is “caught” in his

murder. When Bosola asks how Ferdinand will accomplish this, Ferdinand says, “The

wolf shall find her grave, and scrape it up,/Not to devour the corpse, but to discover the

horrid murder” (1628). It is significant that Ferdinand refers to himself as the wolf who

will dig up the grave, and he does appear to have done so, for later, Ferdinand’s doctor

says Ferdinand has come down with lycanthropia. He explains the signs of lycanthropia

and Ferdinand’s actions that have revealed the presence of this disease.

“…those who are possessed with ‘t there o’erflows Such melancholy humor, they imagine Themselves to be transformed into wolves;

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Steal forth to churchyards in the dead of night, And dig dead bodies up: as two nights since One met the duke ‘bout midnight in a lane Behind Saint Mark’s Church, with the leg of a man Upon his shoulder; and he howled fearfully; Said he was a wolf, only the difference Was, a wolf’s skin was hairy on the outside His on the inside…” (1632). Right after the doctor says that Ferdinand is “well recovered” (1632), Ferdinand begins to

try and catch his shadow, throwing himself to the ground, much like a dog would chase a

shadow or his tail. He then asks, “What’s he?” of the doctor, and says that he wants the

doctor to cut his beard and trim his eyebrows, as if the doctor is too wolfish for

Ferdinand’s liking. Here again is another example of Ferdinand not only feeling the

“hairiness” inside himself, but seeing it outwardly on other people, too. It is here that the

doctor asks if Ferdinand is “out of his princely wits” (1633)—not just out of his wits, but

his princely wits (Wiseman, 61). It is even worse for a person of authority to lose himself,

because he is the representation and controller of civilization.

“The play uses Ferdinand as lycanthrope to suggest both the ambiguous power of

wolfishness and its crucial association with rule—with tyranny, and specifically

with the threat to social relations. The play’s language and Ferdinand’s actions

suggest that the understanding of Ferdinand’s lycanthropy as melancholy or

disease is accompanied by a sense of its social and civic implications. He is

tormented by internal hairiness, he murders his sister and her children, and he is

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also the violent—not so much animalistic as specifically wolfish, untamable,

degenerate, possibly cannibal—heart of the civil system” (61).

This role of Ferdinand as a melancholy werewolf, bordering on tyranny, was a

reflection of the current concerns of the people of England in the 1600’s. After the death

of Queen Elizabeth I, the people were wary of the new king, James I, especially because

he was foreign and Catholic. Many of them did not like that James believed in divine

rule, and that he believed that he was closest to God as king, reminiscent of the Medieval

Great Chain of Being. One of his critics wrote in 1611 that “while Elizabeth ‘did talk of

her subjects’ love and good affection,’ James ‘talketh of his subjects’ fear and

subjection’” (Norton Anthology, 1342). S. J. Wiseman says that the werewolf stories

“offer insights into the cultural circulation of questions about the designation of the

border between the human and animal…[and] clearly, early modern werewolf narratives

articulate and resolve a crisis in where the border of the human is to be placed”

(Wiseman, 66). The stories were used by religious leaders to understand why humans

were humans, the role that consciousness played in humans and animals, and the value

and “godliness” of civility, versus the sinfulness of the wild. Others would use these

stories to show how easily humans can be corrupted in positions of authority, and use

animals and stereotyped characteristics of animals to make points and teach lessons.

Fables, such as the famous Aesop’s Fables, were a strange and controversial

method of instructing children in the Renaissance period. “Aesop’s fables illustrate the

two sides of the humanist endeavor: the operations of grammar and the importance of

moral actions” (Fudge, 72.) What was so important to many was the elevation of human

status over that of animals, and with fables of talking animals being used in the education

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of children, the emphasis of human eloquence (speech) was given to animals. Learning

and education was seen as a human endeavor, and to use talking animals to achieve this

end seemed a contradictory action. “Animals, it would appear, do humanism before the

humans…The thing which should be the antithesis of being human—the animal—

becomes the means to achieve human status” (73). Sir Francis Bacon greatly disapproved

of the use of fables. In The Great Instauration he says, “[f]ables and superstitions and

follies, which nurses instill into children do serious injury to their minds” (98). Bacon and

others saw fables and stories of talking animals as dangerous because they threatened

their perceived separation between themselves and non-human animals, and the power

these talking animals gave to satirists. However, some writers, like Sir Phillip Sidney,

would successfully use the talking animal stories to separate human from animal.

In Sidney’s poem The Old Arcadia contains an animal fable within the narrative.

In this side story, the animals ask God for a ruler, effectively bringing about mankind.

For payment, the animals must give up some of themselves, which happen to be the

stereotyped characteristics of animals—a fox’s craftiness, the dog’s flattery, the ass’s

patience, etc.) Finally, each of the animals gives up their right to speak. “They willingly

give up the thing which humanism will later claim to be one of the defining features of

the true human; animals are shown, once again, to possess the quality of human-ness

before humans” (79). Of course, man betrays the animal, and becomes a cruel master. But

he keeps all the characteristics of the animals, as well as the more powerful ability of

speech. Pico della Mirandola writes in On The Dignity of Man, “man is conventionally

identified with this or that animal because certain animals are identified with particular

human characteristics” (80). Fudge writes that all these identities of Sidney’s man makes

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him a “super-beast”—more animal than the animals himself, but she acknowledges that

her surface interpretation of this fable is not the true purpose of Sidney. She knows this is

a “bad reading” of the tale, and knows this is the true purpose of the story—to separate

the good readers (humans) from the bad readers (animals), because humans can learn and

gain knowledge, and animals cannot. Sidney says of Aesop’s fables in A Defense of

Poesy, “so think I none so simple would say that Aesop lied in the tales of his beasts; for

who thinks that Aesop wrote it for actually true were well worthy to have his name

chronicled among the beasts he writeth of” (80). Fudge explains, “To read badly is to be a

beast…Good…readers will never have to face their animality because they have left it

behind” (80).

Despite the occasional talking animal story that didn’t challenge human

superiority, Bacon still dismisses the fable and plays that did depict humans as animals

(or anyone other than themselves). In his Novum Organum, “Idols of the Theater” he

says that “fictitious representation lacks power and it is the job of the scientist to

understand and control nature as it exists in reality not in fables” (98). Bacon sees fables

as a threat to humans and a threat to scientific endeavors. His goal was to “‘stretch the

deplorably narrow limits of man's dominion over the universe to their promised bounds.’

Science is not a discovery, but a recovery of what has been lost” (101). Bacon was

threatened by the stories because of the animals’ ability to speak. Ben Jonson says that

speech is “the only benefit man hath” (Perry, 33), and in a world where animals possess

the same “power” as humans, humans lose their excellence. To acquire knowledge is the

purpose of man, according to Bacon. Bacon’s Eden was not a world where man and beast

would live in harmony, neither eating the other, but a world where humans regained the

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dominance they lost after the Fall. This postlapsarian world is made evident by man’s

continued struggles to tame and control animals. Bacon says, “…whensoever he shall be

able to call the creatures by their true names he shall again command them” (Fudge, 102).

“Naming is central” (102) to Bacon’s belief of human power, and this power was a

reflection of God’s power over mankind. After the Fall, God was distanced from man,

and man was distanced from animal—although man had named animals and knew them

and had absolute control over them (according to Bacon), the animals would not be

subjected to man anymore afterwards (102). Thomas Adams writes of this relationship,

“Thus God gaue the nature to his creatures, Adam must giue the name: to shew

they were made for him, they shall be what hee will vnto him. If Adam had onely

called them by the names which God imposed, this had been the praise of his

memory: but now to denominate them himselfe, was the approval of his

Iudgement. At the first sight hee perceiued their dispositions, and so named them

as God had made them. Hee at first saw all their insides, we his posterity ever

since, with all our experience, can see but their skinness” (104).

Man was divinely inspired by God to name the animals after their natures that had

been created by God, and by doing so, maintained authority over the animals, like God

had over Adam when he named him. If Adam had merely called the animals by their

“natural” (God-given) names, he would not have been human—he would not have been a

mini-creator (such as was valued by the Renaissance man) and would have been merely

going off of the memory of God’s words, and not growing in knowledge, as good humans

should. Naming is a form of speech, and only for humans. Bacon wanted to name

animals, that is, wanted to know them, and to “know their insides” in a very literal sense.

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“In Baconian terms, looking beneath the skin of the animal can only mean one thing:

experimentation. It is in animal experimentation that naming is achieved: calling

creatures by their true names entails entrails” (104).

Just as controversial as the fables and talking animal stories, vivisection and the

authority it supposedly gave to humans had its fallacies. The Renaissance scientist

justified vivisection by claiming it was a way to learn about the insides and mechanical

workings of humans. This presents two problems for the anthropocentric human: first is

that the human cannot be understood without the animal. Secondly, that animals and

humans are physically similar to one another. Bacon’s dismissal of the fable because it

uses animals to teach humans how to be humans is defeated by his use of vivisection.

Bacon uses the physical animal to teach humanity, and fables use the metaphorical

animal to teach the same thing. If the human can be found in the animal (physically), then

either the human is made in the image of a dog, or a dog is made in the image of a

human, and therefore in the image of God. “[I]n sweeping aside these myths the

practitioners of [vivisection] spoke figuratively and destroyed the most important myth of

all: that of the difference between human and beast” (107). When the Renaissance man

learns lessons from animals—physical and metaphorical—their own insides and outsides

are reflections of the lessons animals teach them—they become the animal that they so

desperately try to escape.

When humanists, Calvins, mechanists, and scientists tried to exert their humanity

by bringing animals down, they inadvertently lowered themselves, or at least gave

animals a rise on that Great Chain of Being. They sought to progress and move away

from Medieval thought, but kept old traditions alive in different ways. Even though many

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of these men were highly respected and famous, in a direct rebellion against this attitude,

the statuses of animals were beginning to change. The first known animal protection

legislation in the English speaking world was passed in Ireland in 1635. It outlawed

pulling wool off of sheep and attaching ploughs to horses’ tails (Ryder, 49). In 1641 the

Massachusetts Bay Colony passed the first legal code to protect domestic animals. This

was the same year that Descartes published his book Meditations, which talked about

mechanist theories and claimed that animals were unfeeling, senseless automata

(Francione, 7). The Puritans passed many animal protection laws under the rule of Oliver

Cromwell. Cromwell dislike “blood-sports” such as bull-baiting, cock and dog fighting,

and the like. Puritans, saw these activities at mostly carnal sites (carnivals, festivals,

parties, etc.), associated them with sin and evil entertainments. It is the Puritans who

interpret the use of the word “dominion” in Genesis to mean “stewardship” over nature.

The Renaissance period ends here, with the Restoration of the King, and the abolishment

of the animal protective laws in England for over another 100 years (Kete, 19).

Like all social and cultural movements, the animal rights movement is a slow

process, and while it is slower than most, it has always existed, and always falling in and

out of popular thought. The Renaissance man idealized the Classical thinkers, the majesty

of the human body, posey, and learning and the sciences. While some used these to put

themselves above animals, others used the very same means to protect them. From

Aristotle and Plutarch, to da Vinci and Descartes, great thinkers pave the way for the

treatment of all animals, human and non-human. It says a lot when men stand up for

animals in the law and refuse to kill and eat them during a time when they had no support

and even direct opposition. It speaks volumes when men pass laws protecting animals,

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when other men say those animals cannot feel pain and do not matter. These things say

that the Golden Age is not just a dream, but a goal. Time and again, there are periods

where man goes “back to nature” and during these times, animals gain more and more

respect and rights. Humans earn their title of human not by means of speech, knowledge,

and consciousness—but by showing compassion and spiritual growth, by putting others

before themselves, even if they don’t know all their insides yet.

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