Legions of Pigs in the Early Medieval West

Abstract

Over a millennium ago, images began to appear in Christian church settings—as decorations of holy book covers, within the pages of books, and on church walls—of Jesus exorcizing a multitude of demons, named Legion, from a man into a herd of pigs who then rush into the sea and drown. In using this biblical story to frame the narrative of Legions of Pigs in the Early Medieval West, Jamie Kreiner makes clear the ambiguities of the pig as “both unholy and redemptive, both historically situated and universally relevant” (195). The pigs as Legion and a legion of pigs on farm and field are intertwined.Rather than approaching the history of the pig as only an issue of agricultural production, Kreiner examines it as “a history of the counterintuitive connections that developed between the micro-universes of pig husbandry and early medieval institutions and ideas on a wider scale” (4). She uses the pig as an entry point for thinking through how early medieval people thought about their environment. Her approach is to place the pig within wider social, cultural, and economic contexts of the Late Antique and Early Medieval periods, roughly AD 400 to 1000. While the evidence is focused on Western Europe, particularly the kingdoms of the Carolingians and Ottonians, which occupied large parts of what are today France, Germany, the Low Countries, and northern Italy, and kingdoms on the British Isles, Kreiner deftly weaves in sources from across Europe, stretching to the Islamic lands that were in continuous contact with their Christian counterparts.In her introduction, Kreiner stresses that the flexibility of pigs resulted in dynamic ecological systems in early medieval Europe. Human communities adapted their systems to accommodate pigs, who while potentially highly productive could also be highly unruly. This plays out in chapter 1, which underscores the distinctions medieval people drew between wild boar and domestic pig, the variability of landscapes that swine could be raised on, and attempts to control unwanted pig behaviors.The micro-universe of pig husbandry is then set within the much larger context of medieval philosophy in chapter 2. In this chapter, pigs scarcely appear—and yet the chapter puts the pig and its Christianization (which is discussed later) into the intellectual context of the age through a highly accessible explanation of medieval notions of environmental connectivity and complexity.Chapter 3 gets back to the pigs and their landscapes. Kreiner approaches swine husbandry as extracting value out of the landscape or, as she calls it, “salvaging.” Through their ability to turn found foods in the environment into food on human tables, pigs made the landscape productive for people. How they did this—by forest foraging, pasture grazing, or stall feeding—varied according to ecological and economic conditions. Kreiner brings together an impressive collection of sources to explain that variability.In chapter 4, the focus is on the assemblage of humans and pigs and the social groups that were created and modified by those relations. The section on swineherds in particular gives a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the economic and social status of those closest to pigs. She also shows how pork consumption was a Roman tradition, which had both ideological and practical implications, for example in the provisioning of soldiers with pork through taxes. Chapter 5 starts with the pig as Roman animal and then discusses how the pig became associated with Christians, both in symbolic and dietary forms. Kreiner stresses the counterintuitive connections here, as the pig takes on both diabolical natures and Christian conviction. The legions of pigs and Legion in pigs are co-constituted.Kreiner's book is written with non-medievalists in mind—she elucidates time-specific social and legal terms so that they are understandable without a background in the period. She finds just the right balance of using source materials to support her arguments without getting bogged down in details. Her writing style is a delight to read. This book demonstrates how medieval environmental and agricultural history can be written as a history of ideas and culture with wide appeal.