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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

19. Page, 19
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

20. Page, 20
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.

21. Page, 21
“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

22. Page, 22
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,

23. Page, 23
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.

24. Page, 24
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