Marginalia Mondays II: Puppy-love for King John
The second post in a new series diving into doodles and scribbles left within the margins of medieval manuscripts
Welcome to the second post of a new series. Every Monday, for the next few months, I’ll be sharing snippets of marginalia, illuminations, and funny excerpts from different medieval manuscripts for our mutual entertainment. We’ll be discovering what these small scribblings and doodles tell us about medieval imagination as well as what our reaction to them reveals about our perceptions and misperceptions of the Middle Ages. This time we’re exploring medieval memory and approaches to pets through the life of King John.
I should start this post with a slight confession. The subject of today’s ‘Marginalia Mondays’ isn’t technically marginalia. Rather than being confined to the margins of a script, this image of King John and his dogs has total prominence appearing in the centre of the leaf. It comes from the British Library’s Royal Ms. 20 A II. It’s an eclectic document dating to the early 14th century containing Arthurian romances, and a letter purporting to be from Joanna, Queen of Sicily amongst other thrown-together texts. But it’s the first few folios which interest us now.
Leafing through the manuscript we’re greeted with a series of portraits of English kings in chronological order. We have the tall, elegant, and pensive Edward the Confessor looking regal and well-read with a sceptre and book to hand (in case we didn’t get the message). Next, we see Henry III disgruntled with architectural dilemmas and gazing complainingly at ringing church bells. After, there’s Richard the Lionheart. He’s less dashing hero and more menacing warlord if you excuse the buffonish expression on his face. But any sense that Richard’s a bit slow is quickly dispelled by the bloody saracen heads at his feet clearly recently cut by a longsword resting on his shoulder.
On the verso (back) side of the same sheet we see our John. As the British Library manuscripts blog puts it, ‘King John is shown in the manuscript smiling tenderly at his dogs, while stroking one of them playfully. He has a simple, open face, and does not seem to be weighed down by the cares of state’.
My immediate thought upon seeing it is to question how memories of the past morph and changes over time. Today, we think of King John as a tyrant. We see him as the cowardly lion from Disney’s adaptation of the Robin Hood legend (it remains the best). We read of the discord and disharmony of the First Barons’ War and his ultimate humbling and subsequent erosion of kingly authority with the signing of the Magna Carta. But the hand inking and illuminating this manuscript, closer to a near contemporary than us, seems to look more kindly on him, remembering him as a gentle animal lover rather than a failed monarch.
We hear so much today from voices in the peculiar depths of the X/Twittersphere gushing in praise for Richard the Lionheart so its interesting that in this manuscript he gets less kowtowing treatment. Richard is meant to be the hero and his brother John is the supposed villain, but to our modern eyes the manuscript creator has almost reversed the roles.
Obviously, a lot of this comes down to the problem of our modern lens. The message of the artist perhaps isn’t as negative as our eyes, used to crude and cartoonish satire, are quick to pick up on. But nevertheless, it’s curious that the manuscript creator has chosen to represent these kings this way.
Maybe the online accounts with statue profile pictures might relate to this hack and slash depiction of Richard but I can more readily, and happily, see myself in this version of doggo-loving John. The image of him looking tenderly on his hounds could easily have been me this weekend at the village fête after I befriended a neighbour’s needy border collie (she wouldn’t let me take a single break from stroking her behind the ears).
So, the scribe’s interest in John’s canophilia made me wonder how dogs were generally treated and regarded in the Middle Ages. There’s a modern tendency today to assume our ancestors were less informed and less well-intentioned than us when it comes to animal welfare. It’s certainly true that there wasn’t much of a notion of animal rights and they were there primarily to be used and exploited. But John’s fondness for his dogs that we see in the image goes beyond what we’d expect for a creature intended as a mere hunting tool. It’s as if the dog is a dear and treasured pet.
In her brilliant book, Medieval Pets, Kathleen Walker-Meikle points out that the notion and word ‘pet’ is relatively new, stemming from the 16th century. We use the word today to describe those little furry friends we let live in our homes, sleep on our beds, and give us companionship in this cold, cruel, and lonely world. They’re now critical parts of the family (if going a little too far with us calling ourselves ‘dog mummy’ and ‘cat dad’).
But what would medieval people make of all this? We’ve hinted earlier that animals were primarily kept for their utilitarian function. Many texts were devoted to instructing how to properly care and keep hunting dogs, like the very popular French work Le Livre de la Chasse. But there’s evidence that great attention was also paid to dogs’ sociable nature. To one 14th century writer, the typical good boy was, ‘wel folowing his maistre and doyng whatever he hym commandeth, he shuld be good and kyndly and clene, glad and joyful and playeng, wel willyng and goodly to all maner folkes save to the wild beestis’.
But dogs come in all shapes and sizes and for all people. It wasn’t just noble knights with their loyal hounds but all of us with our cuddly lap dogs. The moaning about laying too much affection on pets is nothing new too. In the 16th century, critics mocked the ‘wanton women’s willes’ only satisfied by little furry creatures they laid their attention on to the detriment of their children.
In that light, maybe the hand behind the picture of John isn’t as kind as we thought. Perhaps rather than a virtue, John’s playfulness with his dogs is indicative of him spending more time on idle leisures like hunting rather than effectively managing his kingdom as he should’ve been. I think this shows the difficulty in deciphering the meaning behind such an image. We find it very hard not to impose own modern ideas into the past when we imagine the experiences and feelings of our ancestors.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. After all, we’re all human and we all (mostly) get that bubble of endorphins when a good doggo nuzzles against us, begging us for our love.
I do wonder if contemporary audiences would have interpreted the images differently.
King John playing with his dog might have made him look lazy and frivolous, sort of like a modern president depicted playing with toys.
I wonder if in a few centuries the memes of Biden eating ice cream, and Trump in power armor will be similarly misinterpreted.