FALCONRY WAS THE TITLE XI OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
From The Medievalists.net 3/30/16
Medieval sports were,
for the most part, chances for men to practice their martial skills in less
dangerous ways and largely relegated women to the role of cheerleaders. There was one sport, however, that welcomed both men and
women to the field: falconry. Rooted in the ancient
world, falconry was used for necessary hunting in the Middle Ages – such as
finding food and killing vermin – but it was also an extremely popular sport
for the nobility. Falcons and hawks were usually trained to hunt small prey,
like rabbits and other birds, as they do in the natural world, but their
training was sometimes expanded to include attacking larger prey, like deer, in
order to weaken and distract the animals so that hunters and their dogs could
finish them off. Unlike boar and stag hunting, falconry did
not involve a face-to-face encounter with a dangerous animal, so it
was a safer sport for respectable medieval ladies: less
physically demanding, less rushed, and less bloody.
There was a wide range
of birds to train and use to hunt, including the gyrfalcon,
goshawk, and sparrowhawk. A common bird for ladies was
the peregrine falcon. Peregrines were often chosen by ladies because they are relatively small, lighter to hold on the fist, and especially graceful in the
air. Peregrines attack their prey by closing their talons into fists and
diving, breaking the bones of other birds and knocking them out of the sky. In order to accomplish this
backbreaking feat, peregrines execute spectacular dives in excess of 300 kmph –
they are the fastest creatures on the planet.
Because falconry
allowed for women and men to spend the day riding out into nature and
having picnic lunches in full view of chaperons, it was the perfect
opportunity for them to flirt and get to know each other. Soon
enough, falconry became inextricably linked to romance. Medieval writers could not resist bringing love and falconry together. In one
version of Tristan and Isolde, Isolde is compared to a falcon on the hunt with
darting eyes (Clason, p.48); in Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowles, the raptors are
arguing over mates (Clason, p.47); and in the Middle English Sir Orfeo
(ll.303-308), it is an otherworldly party of women hunting with falcons that
leads Orfeo to his lost lady-love. Marie de France takes the hawking and love
theme one step further in Yonec, a lai in which a knight actually shapeshifts
into the body of a hawk to visit his lady for romantic liaisons, imprisoned, as
she is, in a tower. The beautiful illustrations in the fourteenth-century Codex
Manesse feature lots of falconry and romance, and I especially
love the famous page 69r, which features two snuggling lovers and a woman with
a grey bird (perhaps a peregrine) on her fist. Outside of the realm of books,
archaeologists have also found ladies hunting with falcons on both mirrors –
often a lover’s gift – and on the carved hilt of a knife (Gilchrist, p.110,
127).
If you’d like to read
an authentic medieval manual on falconry (minus the romance), you can check out
a thirteenth-century book, De Arte Venandi
cum Avibus
, written by the Holy
Roman Emperor himself, Frederick II. For a much more modern and personal
account, I’d recommend the award-winning H is for Hawk by
Helen Macdonald. For a deliciously cheesy ‘80’s movie about love, birds, and
lovebirds, check out Ladyhawke.
