Research Seminar: Falconry and Birds of Prey in Pre-Modern Exchanges

This talk will explore falconry and the appeal of hunting birds as a particularly meaningful phenomenon for understanding the medieval princely elites. It begins with the fact that the human practice of taming wild birds of prey with the aim of assisting individuals and communities in the chase for food dates back several millennia. Over time, falconry became a staple of various small-scale economic systems. Significantly, the ability to tame and use wild birds went hand in hand with given cultural and social appreciations. The implications were deep, and by the Middle Ages falconry had grown to become widely known and practiced throughout most of Europe; while also becoming subject to ever stricter social and even legal norms. Hardly used for subsistence anymore, it had come to be a perquisite of the elites, a symbol of power, wealth, and prestige – a privilege available to only a few. In accordance, birds of prey themselves became material symbols of such exceptionality, as treasured possessions that were owned for various purposes besides their primary role as hunters. They would be delicately kept as exhibits during court ceremonial or gifted away as diplomatic prizes. Some were especially valued for their traits, such as beauty, force, skill and indeed their rarity, which meant that many became the subject of human-induced travel – often, over a significant distance. As I hope to show, this can reveal a great deal about medieval notions of power, self-attribution, diplomacy and connectivity between elite cultures.

Tiago Viúla de Faria is a research fellow at NOVA University of Lisbon’s School of Social Sciences and Humanities in the Instituto de Estudos Medievais. He did his D.Phil at the University of Oxford. He ran the research group Territories and Powers, a 'Glocal' Perspective, and also the multidisciplinary project FALCO – Hypothesising Human-Animal Relations in Medieval Portugal, funded by Portugal’s Science Agency. He is the chairperson of the Network for the Environment in Medieval Usages & Societies (NEMUS).