The Medieval Pig

Perhaps it should come as no surprise, but among other things, what we learn from Dolly Jørgensen's new book, The Medieval Pig, is that the lives of medieval pigs were nasty, brutish, and short. The focus of this brief but richly researched book is primarily the rural and urban spaces where pigs lived, how they were slaughtered and turned into food, and how medieval people conceptualized these omnipresent animals. Jørgensen uses a wide variety of sources to construct this picture, including visual representations from manuscripts, ivory plaques, stained glass windows, wall paintings, and sculptures. Primary textual sources include archeological evidence, town records, saints’ lives, bestiaries, plays, and other literary works. Jørgensen's book is organized in a way that makes this material easily accessible for scholars, and it will be extremely helpful for those hoping to find out more about pigs in medieval Europe.After detailing the ubiquity of pig ownership across a wide range of medieval social classes, Jørgensen describes how pigs were moved across rural lands by swineherds so that they could be fattened on late autumn acorns, beech, and grasses. Much of Jørgensen's evidence comes from the rules and regulations developed to govern the movement of pigs across private and public lands. Their omnivorous diets and innate compulsion to root meant that it was important to control them as they moved through various spaces. Jørgensen then considers pigs in the city where, if left unsupervised, they could be destructive and even dangerous. They seem to have a proclivity for eating things they shouldn't, including babies, both their own and those of humans. When housed in sties, pigs were problematic because of the filth and smell they produced. Here, Jørgensen provides fascinating details about how urban governments struggled to manage the pigs living inside their walls. In her fourth chapter, Jørgensen discusses the process of killing pigs—which was traditionally done in December—and converting their blood, flesh, and entrails into meat and other foodstuffs that could sustain humans during the long winter. The final chapter considers the diverse ways medieval people conceptualized pigs, a process that resulted in pigs becoming thought of as paradoxical beings that were both good and bad, consumed and shunned, loved and hated. In the medieval worldview, pigs could function both as a saint's attribute and as a symbol associated with prostitutes and Jews. Few animals embody such complex cultural status—wolves are another example—and I was left wondering if, perhaps like canids, the natural intelligence and curiosity of pigs is what made it possible to load them up with such a broad array of conceptual baggage.Jørgensen notes throughout her book that pigs are good to think with, a reference to Claude Lévi-Strauss's famous description of animals, and Jørgensen does an admirable job of leading readers through several ways to think with and about medieval pigs. That said, while reading the book, I was reminded of another well-known quote by John Berger about the existential dualism experienced by humans who share their lives with animals that they eat. Berger's example of such dualism is when a “peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork. What is significant . . . is that the two statements are connected by an and and not a but.”1 Jørgensen gives us plenty of information about the salting away of pork but no indication of the peasant's fondness for his pig. Were there stories of medieval people who formed emotional attachments with their porcine charges, or monks who found companionship with the pigs they encountered in their peregrinations? The multidisciplinary field of animal studies is burgeoning, and this is especially true of the study of human-animal interaction, so more consideration of person-pig engagement, beyond the pig's utility as a food source, would have been a welcome addition to the book.This small book's many strengths include the breadth and depth of its research and its comprehensive bibliography. It includes plentiful black-and-white illustrations that will be new to most readers and will help guide those seeking medieval visual source material on pigs and other animals. Jørgensen's writing is clear and concise, and the book is nicely structured and organized. For those seeking a trustworthy reference to the place of pigs in medieval life, this book will serve as an invaluable reference source.