We like to do the same kind of stuff people do, or, pigs eating pigs in Paris

by KARL STEEL

Touke Psalter, Walters Art Museum, November

Right now, I’m reading/reviewing the proceedings of a Parisian medieval animals conference I attended (my paper isn’t in it, since it was bound for this instead).

With a book in front of me, and therefore without needing to strain to understand the French, I've been able to slow down and be properly shocked by the following entries from the National Archives of France, transcribed by Benoît Descamps in his excellent article “ ‘Chairs loyales et déloyales’: les animaux de boucherie dans les règlements de métiers urbain à la fin du Moyen Âge” [Authorized and Unauthorized Meats: Animals for Slaughter in the Regulations of Urban Trades at the End of the Middle Ages”]

For your delectation:

“les pourceaux de Colin Hoyau estoient montez ou solier et en l’ostel Jehan Moitou, [où ils] despecerent le pot ou la char bouloit au feu, et mengerent la char” (Z² 3264 fol. 45 (July 1408))

"The pigs of Colin Hoyau climbed onto an upper floor of the shop of Jehan Moitou, where they shattered the pot where meat was boiling on the fire, and they ate the meat"

“a emprisonné 3 pourceaulx appurtenant à Jaquet Jarnoy, pour ce que ilz ont mengé et degasté certaine quantité de suif et ont fait en son hostel grant interest, pour la deffaute de la garde dud. Jaquet”

“there were imprisoned 3 pigs belonging to Jaquet Jarnoy, because they ate and destroyed a certain quantity of suet and they have done great damage to his shop, because Jaquet had neglected to watch over them” (Z² 3264 fol. 70 (November 1408))

(title from this fondly remembered and frankly kind of terrifying PSA)