July 9, 2025 • 49 mins
Elephants were known throughout most of the medieval world, even if most people had never encountered one, themselves. In bestiaries, elephants are praised for their long memories, intelligence, and monogamy. And, of course, their ivory. This week, Danièle speaks with John Beusterien about elephants and ivory in medieval China and Spain, including how elephants were put into service, and how ivory was used and traded across the world.
Listen to this podcast ad-free on Patreon - go to https://www.patreon.com/medievalists
Listen to this podcast ad-free on Patreon - go to https://www.patreon.com/medievalists
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hi, everyone, and welcome to episode two hundred and ninety
eight of the Medieval Podcast. I'm Danielle Sabalski, also known
as the five Minute Medievalist. I don't know about you,
but one of my favorite animals is the elephant. Elephants
were known throughout most of the medieval world, even if
most people had never encountered one themselves, and if you've
(00:36):
never seen a drawing of an elephant done by a
poor monk who's never seen one, they are definitely worth googling.
In Bessiri's elephants are praised for their long memories, intelligence,
and monogamy, and of course they're ivory. This week I
spoke with doctor John Gustaion about elephants and ivory in
the Middle Ages. John is Professor of Spanish at Texas
(00:59):
Tech University and the author and editor of several books
on environmental history, animals, and Spain, including Transoceanic Animals as
Spectacle in Early Modern Spain. His new book is Elephants
and Ivory in China and Spain, which he's co written
with doctor Stephen West, Professor Emeritis at the School of
International Letters and Cultures at Arizona State University. Stephen is
(01:24):
a prolific author on Chinese works, including Monks, Bandits, Lovers
and Immortals, eleven early Chinese plays, which he wrote in
collaboration with doctor Wilt Edema. But today it's John who's
joining me on behalf of this dynamic duo to talk
about all things elephants and ivory China and Spain, from
how elephants themselves were put into service to how ivory
(01:48):
was traded across the world. It's all coming up right
after this. Well, welcome John to talk to us about
elephants and ivory in the Middle Ages. Is welcome to
the podcast.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
So before we start our chat, you are speaking on
behalf of yourself and your co author in terms of
this work, right, that is correct.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
I co authored this work with Stephen West, who's emeritus
professor from the University of California at Berkeley, right, and
who also has worked at Arizona State University.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Right, So when we're talking we are also including Stephen
in this. I want to make sure that he gets
the credit that he deserves for this work as well. Okay,
so why did you want to talk about elephants and
ivory in the context of the global Middle Ages. What
made you feel like this was an important subject to
write about?
Speaker 3 (02:42):
For about twenty years, I've been interested in the study
of animals. I am not a scientist, but a humanities professor.
I am trained in the study of literature. I've also
been very interested in culture and cultural studies, and I've
specifically been interested in animals. I was first interested in
(03:03):
dogs and more recently just in animal spectacles in general,
and had written on that. I'm not a specialist in
the Middle Ages, even I'm focused more on the early
modern early just after the Middle Age period, and a
number of years ago I was invited to go to
Hong Kong. I met Stephen West there, who was also
(03:25):
invited to speak at a conference, and Stephen approached me
because I had talked about the elephant and rhinoceros spectacles,
and he showed me about three books worth of notes
that he had been taking over many years. And this
was about six years ago, and we both decided we
should do a project together and combining. Even though I
(03:49):
studied Spanish and he studies Chinese, we thought elephants deserved
to be talked about in our periods and to be
honest to answer your question, and again, I care about animals.
I think that compassion for animals in a lot of
ways helps us understand our own compassion for other people.
(04:11):
And in fact, sensitivity to animals helps sensitivity toward the
earth and people and many things. And so that's probably
the real ultimate reason why I took on this project.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Well, I mean, thank you for that. And you answered
one of my other questions, which was why are you
comparing China and Spain these places, which, as you say
in the book, are complete opposite sides of the globe.
So we're going to get into both of those things
as we talk more about it. But it looks like
it's your expertise that sort of lent you the direction
in which you wanted to write this book, right in
terms of geography at least.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Yeah, And it was the connection that I found when
I took on the project from a global perspective led
to so many surprises, and in fact, there were connections
that I would have never imagined that happened between both
of these places.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
This is what I love about people who are coming
to the Middle Ages, people who are coming to it
from different fields, and people who are coming to it
like you are from different eras. There is so much
that can be discovered, I think, or or created or
looked at by bringing people together across disciplines, and so
(05:21):
I think that that comes across in the book that
you've written. So the last thing I want to ask
about the way that you wrote this book is that
you've taken attack that is really unconventional when it comes
to history, and that you've done a lot of not
exactly humanizing andropomorphizing these animals, but you've really brought them
into our consciousness when you're reading it, And that you've
(05:43):
named these animals at least two of them, and you've
actually spoken directly to them using you. So why did
you decide to do that in a book about history.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
I have taken the approach in previous work that I've
published in naming someone who never was thought to have
deserved a name before. In this case, while elephants many
have names, I chose the elephants that are sort of
on display as ivory artifacts, and I thought that the
(06:18):
elephants that provided these artifacts deserved a name for many reasons.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
So you've given them names, and you've addressed them directly.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Most historians and even Stephen were very skeptical of this approach.
In fact, Stephen is a very direct person, and he said,
I don't buy this. I teach a class on medieval
and Renaissance studies, and about three or four years ago,
first of all, he came to love it where I live,
(06:49):
and he said we were going to write this together.
And we never ended up writing. We were asked to
write this to the people who organize their comments.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
We didn't write it.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
A few years later we got back together and he
came to my class and said, I still want to
write this, but I don't really buy this argument. And
we argued about it in my class with my students,
and what didn't he just did? He agree with, Well,
if you are a historian, you will study for example,
you could study the history of elephants. You could study
(07:20):
the history of elephants like Jumbo, who was an elephant
that was a sort of orphan in the ivory trade.
That was a real name given to Jumbo, but given
a name to an elephant that never had a name.
Is kind of like people who do history, or medieval
history especially say no, no, no, no no. That is
creative writing, my opinion, and so I should say that
(07:44):
I came up with this approach where these animals need
a name, and for one reason is because of the
sympathy factor that I just talked about, but it also
opens up a way to bring in all of the
history that we want to talk about. So it's a
very rigorous historical work that I wrote, and I would
(08:05):
say the only non supported argument that I make is
creating a name. And so another reason why I think
it's important is because all of us, whether we're humanity
scholars or hardcore scientists, there's a level of creativity in
what we do. And I explain that creativity, and I
explain why it's so necessary. And obviously I know people
(08:27):
who like, oh, I'm not going to read this because
I don't believe in this person's approach. I don't really mind.
I've been in this profession for a long time and
I've always only followed sort of what has been calling
to me, and in this case, this particular topic, elephants
called to me, and in fact, ultimately, if you read
the book, two specific elements called to us, and ultimately
(08:53):
Stephen did say okay, and he ended up naming his elephant,
which is an elephant that lived in Asia. We both
admit we don't know exactly. We know where the ivory
artifacts are, but most have no providence. But we also
firmly believe that it's important to study these ivory It's
(09:13):
important to appreciate them, but it's also important to try
as best you can to trace and recognize the individual
elephant who in most cases, no, I won't say in
most cases because that's more of a modern poaching idea,
but was killed and whose tooth was used as a carving?
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Well, I do want to ask what did your students say.
Did they come down on the side of naming the elephants?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
I don't know that.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
I would say they wrote and said we agree.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
With this, but none of them disagreed. I would say.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
I'd say in general too, when I do teach and
we're out and about and we look at something that's
especially if I'm teaching in Spain, which I often do
and which I'm doing right now, we look sometimes at
an artifact and say, well, where is that from? And
even if it's well, in this case, one of the
(10:07):
artifacts has ivory and ebony in it, we ask what
is going on artistically formally, but also what is the
provenance of.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
What is ebony?
Speaker 3 (10:19):
You know? Is it a stone and it's actually wood
you know? And where does that would come from? So
I think students are definitely interested, whether they agree with
the actually naming it or not, they do feel that
finding out where's the material for these art objects that
we're studying, Where does it come from, and what is
(10:40):
the importance of that material and why?
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Right Well, I mean this is where you start your
book from in that you're situating these elephants in their
natural habitats so that we can contrast to what their
life might have been like afterwards. So tell us a
little bit about elephants. Knowing that you're not a scientist,
tell us a little bit about elephants in their natural
environment so that we can get a sense of what
it was like to be under human control in places
(11:08):
like China where they are trained.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Well.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
One of the most fascinating things that came out while
I was writing this because I tried to follow the
work of scientists who work with elephants. As I was
writing this was when the book was already in production stage.
I said, wait, I need to add this new study
that came out last summer, which would be the summer
(11:34):
of twenty twenty four. In the late summer, scientists had
just confirmed that elephants call each other in the wild
through particular calls. And by particular I mean there's an
idiosyncratic way in which one will speak to another, which
has led scientists to think, well, whether we want to
(11:55):
call this a.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Name or not.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
There's a very specific sound, and it's not just sort
of a general warning like a prairie dog would give
to the rest of the prairie dogs. And there's a
complex grammar that prairie dogs have. It's something like sixty
different words. And if there's a hawk above, they'll say, hey,
there's a hawk versus another kind of animal. This is
even more specific. And so again this study came out
(12:21):
and I added this extra sentence, which I did think
was really important for my project, because even though I
was giving a creative human name to two of the elephants,
one from a Spanish artifact and one for a Chinese artifact,
I thought, wow. And on top of that, there were
many other amazing things that I discovered about elephants when
(12:42):
I was working on this. One is mourning that when
one dies, what are the morning rituals you know, coming
back to the place, touching the bones and the morning
is complex because in places where well only one of
(13:03):
these two elephants has lived with humans, but elephants do
form bonds. I mean, we understand our bond with animals.
And I should say it's a big parenthesis. When I
wrote this piece, my dog passed away, and so it
was a sort of mourning for me about my own dog.
But in Asian elephants, not African elephants, have bonded with humans.
(13:25):
When they're human has died, they mourn. In fact, some
of them have mourned so much that they've died. It
was a very powerful other discovery, this idea of the
feeling that these animals have when someone passes away. And
again that also throws a shadow on the whole project,
because while some people write biographies about elephants, none have
(13:49):
considered really naming a specific elephant for an ivory artifact.
But there's a long history of mourning from these animals
that they've had, which hasn't been given its due right.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Well, I mean, it's important to recognize these relationships that
elephants have with each other and with the people that
they might be involved with. If they're Asian elephants being trained,
for example, in that when we see them interacting with humans,
whether they are killed by hunters or whether they are
taken from somewhere, or whether they've been with a trainer
(14:25):
and the trainer dies. These are all lived experiences, as
you're saying, of these elephants, especially of the Middle Ages,
which we're talking about. So let's move to specific regions. Now.
We'll start with China because it's where you start in
the book, with the caveat that this is Steven's work
mostly on China that you're going to be interpreting for
us and adding to. So tell us about elephants, what
(14:48):
were they wanted for in China in the Middle Ages.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Before I talk about China and then Spain, I'd like
to also say that we deliberately shows to talk about
two elephants that lived in roughly the same time period,
which is the thirteenth century, which was wonderful because it
also meant trying to understand the entire globe from the
Middle Ages. And one of the interesting connections that we
(15:16):
found is that ivory was sourced from the same place
for both of these places. But with respect to the
animal we also tried to understand elephants themselves. In both
places and in China in this period there was a
very active use of elephants in processions.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
And this is something that I learned.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
I've heard of sacrifices, the sacrifice for the son. I
asked Steve Well, well, who is sacrificed? Were these animals?
Was this like in the Mayan? Was this Aztec sacrifice?
Human sacrifice? No, but there were animal sacrifice that go well,
elephant sacrifice.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
No, no, no, no no.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Elephants were the main sort of protagonist, the visual protagonists
in these royal processions to the main site of the sacrifice,
and there's elaborate description of how they were dressed, details
of what they wore, what they did on their way
(16:21):
through the procession these royal processions. To kind of add
to that, there's often idea that, well, elephants were used
also in war. Elephants were used by people, maybe for
circus entertainment, but in the case of China, this was
largely not the case. In other words, they were not
(16:42):
used for war because they discovered very quickly, well, these animals,
you can easily go behind them, and they're not successful
war animals, but they were continually used for hundreds of
years in processions.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
And the interesting.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Thing though, is that the people who trained them were
not Chinese. They were people who came from well, mainly
from south of what would be called today China would
be today Vietnam and other places sort of eastern well
today India. But the last thing I wanted to say
is that the elephants that were used in these processions
(17:18):
were always accompanied by a human, which are called mahoots
or trainers, and that trainer was never Chinese. It was
always one of the people that had grown up with
this animal and who had captured the animal. And these
people and these are also another anonymous group of living
people who have no history, but they spend they're basically.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Entire lives with the elephant.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
I do think it'd be fascinating one day if someone
were to write and explore the mahoots wherever they were
be because this is not just it's not just the
elephants that.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Were in China.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
The only trained elephants that went anywhere, including in Europe,
also had moots, and those mahoots also had grown up
with these elephants.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yeah, and when we're talking about the lifetime of an elephant,
we're talking sixty seventy years. And I think you mentioned
in the book as well, they're not useful to people
in that they're not easily trained or one of the
things that you mentioned is there's a difference between being
tamed and being domesticated. But they're not useful for people,
I think you said, until they're about fourteen. So this
(18:24):
is a big time investment for the people who are
training the elephants. So where are they getting these elephants
from for use in China in these ceremonial processions.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Well, in the early period along the rivers in China
there were still elephants, but by the Middle Ages, essentially
agricultural needs had meant the decimation of elephants, rhinos, other
large mammals, and most of these are coming from the
forests of Vietnam.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Right, And so when we're talking about the elephants and procession,
we're talking about as elephants that they might be getting
from Vietnam. But when we're talking about ivory in terms
of China, they're looking to Africa, right.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Yes, and no, there were many many uses of ivory
in China, as there were in different times in different
historical periods in different places, and so over the period,
as over the period, as more and more people gathered.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
In cities, and these are the biggest.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
When you're talking about the Middle Ages, you're talking about
a city of a million people. Nowhere in Europe a
couple ten thousand people versus these massive cities, and that
meant lots of agriculture, and it meant the decimation of
forests for agriculture. And we're talking in the Middle Ages.
But all of these in general were the Asian elephant variety,
(19:48):
and that ivory was used. Those Asian elephants were used
for all those people in the processions carried these little
sticks that were staves. They sometimes would have notes on
the back of them, but they were ivory, kind of
flat one and a half foot little sticks, almost like
little wands that they would carry.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
As part of the procession.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
So we're talking about thousands of people carrying these and
most of those were probably Asian elephant.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Now, if you had money.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
And you wanted to create something beautiful, and a lot
of times that you wanted it big and beautiful, you
sourced your ivory from Africa. At the same time period
and in fact, the historical documents show that demand for
African elephant ivory was so great that it outsourced the
(20:40):
demand which was going on in Europe and even in
the Middle East, because in Islamic empires and Christian empires
around the Mediterranean, both Christian and Islamic, there's a demand
for it. And again this meant you know, where are
we going to source this from? But just to answer
your question in a very short way, the best I
(21:00):
came from Africa in the Middle Ages to China.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Well, I mean one of the things that you're getting
at here is in China ivory is used so often
that it's being used for really everyday objects. These staves
are ceremonial, but even things like chopsticks and hair combs
and that kind of thing. They're using ivy for this.
And I think, if I have this right, you mentioned
in the book that it's so ordinary early on that
(21:25):
it's only later that it becomes something that is maybe
because it's sourced from further away and the African ivory
that people think is better quality, but the more elaborate,
the more valuable carving, it doesn't happen until later because
before this ivy just kind of something that everybody has around.
Is that about right?
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Yes, I've been asked to speak at the museum on
my campus. I work at Texas Tech University, and it
was bequeathed some ivory pieces and they're beautiful ivory pieces.
They're Chinese or the providence is unclear, but the one
requirement is that they always be shown.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
And this is very complex and.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
I'm working with the people in the museum now we're
going to be doing something in September of this year
and to talk about it. But these pieces are generally
what people think of when they think of esthetics and ivory,
very elaborate, and in the period that we're talking about,
while there were pieces like that. If you look in
our book, we start off with these three beautiful Buddha images,
(22:32):
although these particular Buddha are mammoth pieces mammoth ivory, not
elephant ivory. But in general there were esthetic objects going on.
But you're right at the time. One of the reasons
why we chose this period is it was an everyday object,
while in that contrast, which was what was going on
in Europe, it was not an everyday object. It hadn't
been since the Roman times and I think i'd add
(22:56):
to that by saying that, yes, in Roman times is
an everyday object, but in the eighteenth century it became
an everyday object.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Again.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
If you think of piano keys, think of Paul McCartney's
Ebane and Ivory lived together in perfect harmony. Pianos were
used Ebane and ivory was used for them for all
the piano keys starting and this is the eighteenthent, so
this is later. It's even later than the period that
I study.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yes, well, And one of the things that I think
is interesting while we're talking about piano keys is the
statue that you were talking about as we started this
podcast that involves ivory and ebony. These things are coming
together centuries before they've come together on a piano, and
so I found that interesting in reading your book. So
let's move to Spain, which is more of your particular
(23:44):
footing and scholarship. What is the ivory trade, like, what
are people using it for in Spain around the same time.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
The first thing I'd say is a caveat here. I
study Spain, but I don't know Arabic, and Spain was
an Arabic speaking country for the most part from about
the eighth century seven to eleven, technically through fourteen ninety two.
So really a medieval scholar of Spain should, aside from
(24:16):
knowing medieval Spanish, should know Arabic. And I mean I
sort of my friends I consult with when I have
Arabic questions. And again I'm not a medievalist. But that
being said, during the Islamic period in Spain there was
a very very rich production of ivory for many different objects,
(24:37):
many everyday objects, but there were generally also luxury objects.
In the north of Spain, in the mountains. In the
north there was a Christian community that started to build
and rebuild and during the course of the Middle Ages
sort of moved southwards. It's very interesting though, the earliest
Christian ivory objects, and I have pictures of many of
them in the book, came from this northern regi and
(25:00):
they're fascinating because one of them if you turn it around,
If you turn the ivory object around, you can see
sort of what went on in the carving of it,
because they're basically teeth, and the middle section of the
teeth has been carved out and you can see it.
And that one comes from the northern part of Spain.
From about again, this is the thirteenth century. We were
talking about one hundred years before before the Christians came
(25:21):
and conquered southern Spain, they were carving very specific religious
icons in Ivory and these were saints. Now as part
of the Christian reconquest of the peninsula, Mary, the Virgin
Mary was a huge person who was called upon in
(25:44):
battles and the kings who were conquering in the mainly
someone named Fernando who conquered Seville in the thirteenth century.
He didn't have elephants, but he had a little Mary
and put it on the front of his horse when
he charged into and I talk about that little Ivory
icon that he had. His son was Alfonso, and his
(26:06):
son inherited that and probably used the same Virgin Mary
elephant Ivory icon as he His father conquered Seville, which
is where I'm talking from right now. But then his
son Alfonso then went and conquered south of here and
even conquered cities in North Africa. So this kind of continually.
It's called a reconquest or conquering of the peninsula from Alan,
(26:29):
Dalous and.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Lucia or the Moors.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Islam continued into Africa and ivory wasn't the thing, but
it was a part of how they talked about this
reconquest and many Islamic images. As they would take over.
They didn't just turn the churches or the mosques into churches.
They also would take ivory artifacts that were Islamic and
(26:56):
turn them into Christian ones. They would also, by the way,
they found Roman ones and they turned those two into
Christian ones too, which is kind of fascinating. The icon
that I talk about in the book and that I
give a name to is actually owned by the wife
of Alfonso, and she had a little ivory icon about
(27:16):
a foot and a half high, which I spend the
most time talking about.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Right, And the big contrast between how elephants and ivory
are used in China versus Spain. Probably the biggest thing
is that live elephants are being used in China as
well as ivory, but in Spain, well in Europe in general,
I think you found only three examples of live elephants
in this period at all.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Oh my gosh, that was so fascinating because over the
past maybe fifteen years. Because my last book I talk
about rhinos and elephants and the medieval period and then
the early modern period, and I tried to do a
history and my impression was, oh, there were lots of elephants.
And then I started to work on this book, and
I'm like, artists love to draw pictures of elephants, especially
(28:04):
like imitating ancient Rome, but even more so ancient Greece
with Alexander the Great and elephant armies and people. They
would always put a tower on the elephant, like and
if you're playing chess, you know the rook, you know
that is the imitation that is an elephant with a
tower on top. And there are so many medieval images.
I thought, oh, there's gotta be lots of and I
(28:27):
kept digging and digging and digging, and then I found
three live elephants that survived, one from really early Charlemagne
who had one, and then two other later ones from
the Crusade period more or.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Less, but that was it.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
And so I was just like, oh, there's so much
talk about elephants, but there's no elephants. The contrast, again
was in China there were thousands, thousands of elephants, Indian elephants,
and again these three elephants, I'll distress were not African
they were Indian elephants because you could not control or
move an African elephant because there was no human bonding.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
So these three elephants that.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Were in Europe did have a mahout who had trained
with them.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
It's really fascinating.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
I mean, I should say a big parenthesis in the
Roman period for people interested who watch the Gladiator movies,
the games were not just one gladiated against the other one.
The Roman games were essentially the first fight clubs with animals.
There's a Latin word but essentially means a hunting show.
(29:32):
So any weird exotic animals, not just local wild animals
like wild bulls, but giraffes.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Were actually brought from Africa.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Sometimes a rhino was but the main animal brought for
the shows. And then when I say show, I mean
across the Mediterranean from Spain wherever there was an amphitheater.
They're almost every Roman city from Turkey all the way Greece,
Italy into Spain. The Romans arrived somewhere they built a big, big,
(30:06):
it's like a football stadium, like American football. And people
loved the most these shows, and they were animal shows,
and they were basically punks and elephants were one of
the main protagonists in this.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
So a question I had.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
Was, oh, how did these elephants get there?
Speaker 2 (30:24):
And who were they?
Speaker 3 (30:25):
This is an elephant, it's a North African elephant variety
that looks like it was trained. It was trained, in fact,
and there were mahoots, but they were brought over on
boats across the Mediterranean, one or two in the boat.
But that entire species has been decimated because of these games,
(30:45):
and also because both the Roman and the Carthaginians used
these animals. The Carthaginians used them and in fact conquered
Spain before the Romans on elephants, and so they had
successfully trained them too, like in India. But that entire
species when extinct, that particular variety of African elephants.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Right, So when we're talking about Europe in the Middle Ages,
we don't have live elephants wandering around. They're super rare,
but we do have ivory. And the ivory that's coming
into Europe isn't super rare, right. It's a luxury good,
but it's not so rare that only kings are able
to access it.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Right.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
People in religious orders, archbishops, people in churches, especially have
the funds to purchase this luxury item, and it is
a luxury item. And there are workshops devoted to creating
the icons out of the ivory. Those who work with marble,
(31:46):
stone or wood, they're specialists that work.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
In ivory right. And one of the things that I
thought was interesting in reading your book is what you've
noticed is that when people will carve an icon in
marble or wood, they'll paint it. But when it comes
to ivory carvings of icons, you're seeing something different in
the paint. Tell us about this.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
I'll just talk about Alfonso because this is the part
I've researched and it's a very delicate subject and something
i'd like to talk about. I mean, the first book
I wrote was about race and people only about fifteen
years after I wrote that book about race, are people
even giving me credit?
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Because when I first.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
Wrote about race, they said, no, that's not something that
happened till much later, So we don't want to read
your book. And now people are saying, wait a second.
And this argument that I'm about to talk about is
connected to that, and so I want to be very
careful about how I talk about it. In Spain when Alfonso.
He conquered Seville. He made it his capital. He took
(32:48):
over it's called the al Caasar, which is basically an
Islamic palace, which he made his own. In one of
the large rooms, he was creating all kinds of icons,
especially to the Virgin Mary, because he in fact loved
the Virgin Mary the most. The biggest medieval book, the
most expensive one, is the one that he put together,
(33:09):
which is a collected book of songs to the Virgin Mary,
written in a sort of dialect which wasn't even spoken
in southern Spain the Spanish people is spoken in the northwest.
He just felt really close to that. It was like
if you feel close to like a southern dialect. He
created this entire book. Some of the songs might have
been originally in Latin, or might have been in a
different dialect of Spanish, but he put up the whole
(33:31):
book in this Northwest Galician Portuguese dialect, and he composed
that book. But he also as he was converting and
making churches on the former mosque of the city, they
were also creating icons. And if they were to do,
for example, an icon of the Virgin Mary and a
(33:51):
special one, say in marble, they would paint, for example,
her veil, there were certain colors. It was icons, so
you would just paint a certain blue or eyes blue
and other colors. But for the marble statue, for example,
they left the face not colored, which was significant given
that the color of the people was probably not Scandinavian
(34:18):
fair complexion. And so one of the things I talk
about in this book is that the icon that his
wife the queen had, and also his icon, while features
were painted like the veil, the clothing, that skin color
was not. So I don't say that they were left white,
because that's a little bit like no. Our idea of
(34:40):
whiteness is very complex and has changed over time. But
I do say marble white as a skin tone was created,
and more significantly, ivory white skin color was created. And
this is something very much still alive. It was adopted
by England, this idea of ivory white skin it was
trans supported to its colonies, and so I think that
(35:02):
that beginning of so, just to go back to your question,
leaving that part of the ivory not painted was very
significant in history, and I still think it needs to
be talked about more. I don't talk a lot about
that in the book. It's something that I'm glad I
have a chance to talk to you about, because I
do think that while I'm not the first person to
(35:24):
talk about ivory, white skin and significant, there's so many
art historians, medieval art historians who are working in this area.
It needs more thought for those people who think about
the history of race, those who think about the history
of what was white and definitely at this time period historians,
medieval historians talked about these black Africans and there was
(35:47):
a very clear association between if you were from Africa,
you were black. And I do mention sort of at
the end of the piece a little bit about the
importance of studying and I chose to study litre, not
just the history of Africa in the medieval period, and
so I try to connect a study of Africa very
briefly at the end of the book.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Yes, well, like you're saying, you don't get into the
history of Africa or even the history of race very
much in this book, because that's not the intent of
this book. But I did want to bring up that
argument that you're making about these ivory carvings, because this
is something that we see in medieval literature quite a
lot comparing a woman's skin to ivory, especially the virgin mary,
(36:29):
but elsewhere as well. And so when we're talking about ivory,
it seems like this is something that we need to address.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
I mean, I think I'd like to kind of maybe
step back a little bit an early version of this book.
I mean, just so that people know how this goes.
When you write one of these sorts of books, it's
not like a novel where you have a press behind
you who wants to invest in it and give you
funding and have a copy editor who cleans it up.
(37:00):
It gets vetted. And I did take the lead on this,
I mean so much point where I was on web
pages in Chinese and I can't even read Chinese, but
to get the proper sources it was a very difficult
process at some points because I was mostly in out
it myself. So the point of this saying is that
this how did this book come about? Well, you write
(37:20):
one of these books and it's sent to world specialists
around the world, and the first round of the specialists
it came back. The argument basically from the people was
this is a very important book, but only the Chinese part,
and the Chinese part should be sent to a specialized
journal in Chinese for Chinese, because this is new material
(37:45):
and it's in its wonderful material and it should be published.
All that other stuff though, makes no sense. We don't
think it's very valuable. And you know, I took that
very seriously, you know, and I had to go back
to the drawing board and said, how can I make
this more convincing? In part because of what I do
in the Spanish section. It's not a simple literary so
(38:07):
I couldn't send it to a literary scholar. It's not
a simple history because I use I really struggle with.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
History of art.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
I had to study for about a year and a
half and found out there are thousands of Gothic this
is what this is called ivory pieces in Europe at
this point, there are churches filled with these kinds of tusks.
And it was just a very long process point being,
I worked again on it, and fortunately there was also
(38:40):
a specialist who studies this period and studies China and Spain,
and I believe that that was one of the reader
who looked at it and thought that this was a
very important contribution. So I feel good, and I know
maybe that's maybe too much information for your listener. But
I think this kind of scholarship is easy. You work
(39:01):
very hard and then you find out, oh, this is
not according to some people, this is not worth anything,
and so you either give up, which happens probably a
lot of the time, you give up as an author,
as an academic author, or you bear down whatever the
expression is, and you just say, oh, I'm going to
do this anyways. And I kind of did the second
(39:21):
I believed in the projects. I think I was able
to make it clear what I wanted to say the
second time around, or well the third or on I
don't know, at least the post review period. And I
do think that a lot of what you're asking has
to do with this, because if you give this, I'll
just say one of the weaknesses. If you give this
to an African medieval African scholar, they're going to say, wait,
(39:44):
there is a trade route from And I do think
this is still one of the parts of the book
that still needs to be clarified. There was clear trade routes.
If you go to southern Spain and there's Africa right there,
there were trade routes that went straight up. So why
did the ivory come not just jump across. Why did
it have to go all the way to Egypt or
to these islands and then go to southern Spain. There's
(40:06):
a lot of conjecture when you do history, and I
realized that there were possible problems, but I tried to
state that this is a high probability that this happened,
and there's more work that has to be done. There's
been very little work done on medieval Africa, and I
think there needs to be a lot more. And I
went back to the drawing board on some of that.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Yes, well, I think it's important what you're bringing up
where history is always influx, and that we are in
conversation with each other about what this could mean, what
it does mean, what can we prove, what can't we prove,
And sometimes you have to actually publish the book and
then get the feedback, and then the next book that
you write, someone else writes builds on that. And so
(40:47):
this is a conversation. And the contribution that you and
Stephen have made here was essential, and that people were
not talking about elephants in these regions, especially not contrasted
with each other. So I mean, you need to get
out there and actually make your contribution. And it sounds like,
from what you're telling me about the process, that you
wanted to do this in as responsible a way as
(41:08):
you could. And I mean, that's the best that anybody
can do.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
So, as we come to the end of our time,
what do you want to leave us with that you
were thinking about as you were writing this, thinking about
elephants in China and Spain in the Middle Ages. What
do you really want to tell people about this that
you can leave them with.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
The first word that comes to mind is endling.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
Endling is a word. Have you heard this word before?
Speaker 4 (41:33):
No?
Speaker 3 (41:34):
Okay, whatever the animal is, whether it's an elephant or
even an insect, when there has only been one left,
For example, there was a pigeon in the Cincinnati Zoo.
It was the last one, last carrier pigeon, after like
millions of these things were flying through the sky in
the nineteenth century. There was one left in the Cincinnai
(41:54):
Zoo in the early nineteen hundreds, and it was given
a name I believe was named Martha. Endlings have a name,
And I think that what I'd want to leave people
with is this idea of the end lingu which is
there are many many species that are not around and
who people don't really care about. Oh, they're just animals anyways,
(42:15):
they're not people. So I think probably what I want
to leave people with is to read something like this
book or see the complex ways in which humans have
lived alongside other animals. And in the case of this
book and in the case of elephants, I mean the
amazing fact that where we started off as a species,
(42:38):
we lived in a sort of in Spanish Yese Combe Vincia,
living together with in agro pastoral society, African society, alongside elephants.
And these humans that lived in Africa didn't have to
kill off the species, they lived alongside of them. What
were their beliefs, what were they doing? Why did they
(42:58):
not completely decimate them elephant or why did they not
have to train them like they did in India. I mean,
the main reason why the Indian elephant is still successful
alive is because they formed a bond with humans. This
elephant was able to maintain its own habitat and live.
It wasn't like humans weren't there. They were there, they
were living alongside them. So what is the secret? That's
(43:19):
kind of what i'd want to leave people with is
what is the secret for having a shared habitat, especially
with someone who consumes so much more than we do.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
I mean, that's a big act.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
Of selflessness from humans to let the animal live it
that close to it and not decimated. Do I think
that they would have been capable? Yes, I do, sound
exact by site. You know a source in the book
on that.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
So what you're saying is your next period of study
is going to be prestoric, so you can learn more
about the interactions between animals and humans.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
No, I wouldn't say that, but I would say that
that will be my next questions. I asked my cloud.
That is what I have been working on for many
years too. I live in a place that is the
longest inhabited place in the Americas.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
It's Lubbock, Texas.
Speaker 3 (44:11):
You know, and humans have been living there consistently for
more than twelve thousand years. They haven't moved away, They've
been living in this area. But it's essentially like it's
the wild West of the US where I live. And
I've been fascinated for a long time. Yes, with the prehistory,
the archaeology. I am interested in that, so I don't
know that I'm doing any research in that, but I
(44:32):
love that period.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
Well, I mean it's the historian's dilemma, right, The more
you know, the more you want to know, and so
you just keep learning. Well, thank you John for coming
on and telling us all about Elephants and Ivory in
the Middle Ages.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
Thank you, it's been great to meet you.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
To find out more about John's work, you can visit
his faculty page at Texas Tech University. And you can
find out more about Steven's work at his faculty page
at Arizona State University. Their new book is Elephants and
Ivory in China and Spain.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
Hi, Danielle, I'm coming to you from the International Medieval
Congress in Leeds, England. I'm one of twenty four hundred
people here that are attending live, plus several hundred more
that are coming in through online. It's for a medievalist.
This is like summer camp, so it's a lot of fun,
you know, learn quite a bit. So this year's theme
(45:28):
is World of Learning. On the first day I heard
many papers that I'll just kind of talk about. The
two that were part of the opening plenary session, and
first we had Sabrina Corborini talking about the growing interest
in reading in the late Middle Ages, and she talks
about evidence she sees of that as is people writing
and talking about lending their books to others, people going
(45:50):
around and visiting libraries, and then also creating works like
mss Laney' where you're putting together different texts into one folio.
So that was really fascinating. Afterwards, Conrad Heirschler talked about
a little known cultural practice that boomed in and around
Egypt and Syria around the turn of the fourteenth century.
(46:11):
It's called public readings. But the interesting part was that
they noted in the manuscript that these things were happening.
They would actually add little addendums to these manuscripts. They
called it audition certificates, and he figures that are about
one hundred thousand of these is still surviving, and he's
collecting them and trying to learn a lot of information
(46:32):
about them from the places, like where they took place,
who was listening to him, Like they literally named off
everybody that would listen, and in one case there's a
manuscript that has like seventy seven people there to listen
to it. So you find out a really great amount
of information about each of these public readings. So it's
really fascinating stuff. I thought. I'm really looking forward to
(46:56):
the rest of the Congress. Before I go, I want
to mention that our think Ific online courses we're doing
our Summer sale, so we're offering twenty percent off all
the courses, live or self paced. All you need to
do is include the coupon code Summer when you're ordering it,
and I'll give you twenty percent off. And please go
(47:17):
to Medieval Studies dot thinkife dot com and you can
check out all the courses. We have a couple starting
this month, others in August and September, including yours. Daniel. Again,
thanks for listening to me, and thanks podcast World by Byte.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
This week. It's not just Peter who has fun and
exciting news to report, because in just a few weeks
I'll be stealing Dan Jones's microphone again. Over at This
is History to tell you the story of Friendsis Charles
the sixth, the king who had the world at his
feet until his mental collapse brought the kingdom to its knees.
You may have heard of Charles already as the king
(47:58):
who believed he was made of glass.
Speaker 4 (48:00):
Us.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
This is one of the most complicated, tumultuous reigns in
all of medieval history, and that's saying something. So if
you love my miniseries The Iron King, I hope you'll
join me over on This is History starting July twenty ninth,
as I bring you a brand new series, The Glass King.
Thank you so much to all of you for the
(48:21):
many ways you've supported this podcast for almost three hundred episodes.
In celebration of the upcoming three hundredth episode, everyone on
Patreon is welcome to get on the episode three hundred
thread and ask me anything about history, about podcasting, or
about my deep and abiding love for Sir Gawain. All
you need to do is be a member of the
(48:41):
Patreon community at patreon dot com slash Medievalists, So go
ahead ask me anything, and while you're at it, if
you'd like to level up your membership to help me
keep the lights on and the ac running here at
the Medieval Podcast, I'll be eternally grateful for everything from
elephants to eleance. Follow medievalist dot Net on Instagram at
(49:02):
medievalist net or blue Sky at Medievalists, you can find
me Danielle Sabalski across social media at five I n
Medievalist or five minute Medievalist, and you can find my
books at all your favorite bookstores. Our music is Beyond
the Warriors by gee Frog. Thanks for listening, and have
yourself an amazing day
Hi, everyone, and welcome to episode two hundred and ninety
eight of the Medieval Podcast. I'm Danielle Sabalski, also known
as the five Minute Medievalist. I don't know about you,
but one of my favorite animals is the elephant. Elephants
were known throughout most of the medieval world, even if
most people had never encountered one themselves, and if you've
(00:36):
never seen a drawing of an elephant done by a
poor monk who's never seen one, they are definitely worth googling.
In Bessiri's elephants are praised for their long memories, intelligence,
and monogamy, and of course they're ivory. This week I
spoke with doctor John Gustaion about elephants and ivory in
the Middle Ages. John is Professor of Spanish at Texas
(00:59):
Tech University and the author and editor of several books
on environmental history, animals, and Spain, including Transoceanic Animals as
Spectacle in Early Modern Spain. His new book is Elephants
and Ivory in China and Spain, which he's co written
with doctor Stephen West, Professor Emeritis at the School of
International Letters and Cultures at Arizona State University. Stephen is
(01:24):
a prolific author on Chinese works, including Monks, Bandits, Lovers
and Immortals, eleven early Chinese plays, which he wrote in
collaboration with doctor Wilt Edema. But today it's John who's
joining me on behalf of this dynamic duo to talk
about all things elephants and ivory China and Spain, from
how elephants themselves were put into service to how ivory
(01:48):
was traded across the world. It's all coming up right
after this. Well, welcome John to talk to us about
elephants and ivory in the Middle Ages. Is welcome to
the podcast.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
So before we start our chat, you are speaking on
behalf of yourself and your co author in terms of
this work, right, that is correct.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
I co authored this work with Stephen West, who's emeritus
professor from the University of California at Berkeley, right, and
who also has worked at Arizona State University.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Right, So when we're talking we are also including Stephen
in this. I want to make sure that he gets
the credit that he deserves for this work as well. Okay,
so why did you want to talk about elephants and
ivory in the context of the global Middle Ages. What
made you feel like this was an important subject to
write about?
Speaker 3 (02:42):
For about twenty years, I've been interested in the study
of animals. I am not a scientist, but a humanities professor.
I am trained in the study of literature. I've also
been very interested in culture and cultural studies, and I've
specifically been interested in animals. I was first interested in
(03:03):
dogs and more recently just in animal spectacles in general,
and had written on that. I'm not a specialist in
the Middle Ages, even I'm focused more on the early
modern early just after the Middle Age period, and a
number of years ago I was invited to go to
Hong Kong. I met Stephen West there, who was also
(03:25):
invited to speak at a conference, and Stephen approached me
because I had talked about the elephant and rhinoceros spectacles,
and he showed me about three books worth of notes
that he had been taking over many years. And this
was about six years ago, and we both decided we
should do a project together and combining. Even though I
(03:49):
studied Spanish and he studies Chinese, we thought elephants deserved
to be talked about in our periods and to be
honest to answer your question, and again, I care about animals.
I think that compassion for animals in a lot of
ways helps us understand our own compassion for other people.
(04:11):
And in fact, sensitivity to animals helps sensitivity toward the
earth and people and many things. And so that's probably
the real ultimate reason why I took on this project.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Well, I mean, thank you for that. And you answered
one of my other questions, which was why are you
comparing China and Spain these places, which, as you say
in the book, are complete opposite sides of the globe.
So we're going to get into both of those things
as we talk more about it. But it looks like
it's your expertise that sort of lent you the direction
in which you wanted to write this book, right in
terms of geography at least.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Yeah, And it was the connection that I found when
I took on the project from a global perspective led
to so many surprises, and in fact, there were connections
that I would have never imagined that happened between both
of these places.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
This is what I love about people who are coming
to the Middle Ages, people who are coming to it
from different fields, and people who are coming to it
like you are from different eras. There is so much
that can be discovered, I think, or or created or
looked at by bringing people together across disciplines, and so
(05:21):
I think that that comes across in the book that
you've written. So the last thing I want to ask
about the way that you wrote this book is that
you've taken attack that is really unconventional when it comes
to history, and that you've done a lot of not
exactly humanizing andropomorphizing these animals, but you've really brought them
into our consciousness when you're reading it, And that you've
(05:43):
named these animals at least two of them, and you've
actually spoken directly to them using you. So why did
you decide to do that in a book about history.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
I have taken the approach in previous work that I've
published in naming someone who never was thought to have
deserved a name before. In this case, while elephants many
have names, I chose the elephants that are sort of
on display as ivory artifacts, and I thought that the
(06:18):
elephants that provided these artifacts deserved a name for many reasons.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
So you've given them names, and you've addressed them directly.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Most historians and even Stephen were very skeptical of this approach.
In fact, Stephen is a very direct person, and he said,
I don't buy this. I teach a class on medieval
and Renaissance studies, and about three or four years ago,
first of all, he came to love it where I live,
(06:49):
and he said we were going to write this together.
And we never ended up writing. We were asked to
write this to the people who organize their comments.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
We didn't write it.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
A few years later we got back together and he
came to my class and said, I still want to
write this, but I don't really buy this argument. And
we argued about it in my class with my students,
and what didn't he just did? He agree with, Well,
if you are a historian, you will study for example,
you could study the history of elephants. You could study
(07:20):
the history of elephants like Jumbo, who was an elephant
that was a sort of orphan in the ivory trade.
That was a real name given to Jumbo, but given
a name to an elephant that never had a name.
Is kind of like people who do history, or medieval
history especially say no, no, no, no no. That is
creative writing, my opinion, and so I should say that
(07:44):
I came up with this approach where these animals need
a name, and for one reason is because of the
sympathy factor that I just talked about, but it also
opens up a way to bring in all of the
history that we want to talk about. So it's a
very rigorous historical work that I wrote, and I would
(08:05):
say the only non supported argument that I make is
creating a name. And so another reason why I think
it's important is because all of us, whether we're humanity
scholars or hardcore scientists, there's a level of creativity in
what we do. And I explain that creativity, and I
explain why it's so necessary. And obviously I know people
(08:27):
who like, oh, I'm not going to read this because
I don't believe in this person's approach. I don't really mind.
I've been in this profession for a long time and
I've always only followed sort of what has been calling
to me, and in this case, this particular topic, elephants
called to me, and in fact, ultimately, if you read
the book, two specific elements called to us, and ultimately
(08:53):
Stephen did say okay, and he ended up naming his elephant,
which is an elephant that lived in Asia. We both
admit we don't know exactly. We know where the ivory
artifacts are, but most have no providence. But we also
firmly believe that it's important to study these ivory It's
(09:13):
important to appreciate them, but it's also important to try
as best you can to trace and recognize the individual
elephant who in most cases, no, I won't say in
most cases because that's more of a modern poaching idea,
but was killed and whose tooth was used as a carving?
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Well, I do want to ask what did your students say.
Did they come down on the side of naming the elephants?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
I don't know that.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
I would say they wrote and said we agree.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
With this, but none of them disagreed. I would say.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
I'd say in general too, when I do teach and
we're out and about and we look at something that's
especially if I'm teaching in Spain, which I often do
and which I'm doing right now, we look sometimes at
an artifact and say, well, where is that from? And
even if it's well, in this case, one of the
(10:07):
artifacts has ivory and ebony in it, we ask what
is going on artistically formally, but also what is the
provenance of.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
What is ebony?
Speaker 3 (10:19):
You know? Is it a stone and it's actually wood
you know? And where does that would come from? So
I think students are definitely interested, whether they agree with
the actually naming it or not, they do feel that
finding out where's the material for these art objects that
we're studying, Where does it come from, and what is
(10:40):
the importance of that material and why?
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Right Well, I mean this is where you start your
book from in that you're situating these elephants in their
natural habitats so that we can contrast to what their
life might have been like afterwards. So tell us a
little bit about elephants. Knowing that you're not a scientist,
tell us a little bit about elephants in their natural
environment so that we can get a sense of what
it was like to be under human control in places
(11:08):
like China where they are trained.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Well.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
One of the most fascinating things that came out while
I was writing this because I tried to follow the
work of scientists who work with elephants. As I was
writing this was when the book was already in production stage.
I said, wait, I need to add this new study
that came out last summer, which would be the summer
(11:34):
of twenty twenty four. In the late summer, scientists had
just confirmed that elephants call each other in the wild
through particular calls. And by particular I mean there's an
idiosyncratic way in which one will speak to another, which
has led scientists to think, well, whether we want to
(11:55):
call this a.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Name or not.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
There's a very specific sound, and it's not just sort
of a general warning like a prairie dog would give
to the rest of the prairie dogs. And there's a
complex grammar that prairie dogs have. It's something like sixty
different words. And if there's a hawk above, they'll say, hey,
there's a hawk versus another kind of animal. This is
even more specific. And so again this study came out
(12:21):
and I added this extra sentence, which I did think
was really important for my project, because even though I
was giving a creative human name to two of the elephants,
one from a Spanish artifact and one for a Chinese artifact,
I thought, wow. And on top of that, there were
many other amazing things that I discovered about elephants when
(12:42):
I was working on this. One is mourning that when
one dies, what are the morning rituals you know, coming
back to the place, touching the bones and the morning
is complex because in places where well only one of
(13:03):
these two elephants has lived with humans, but elephants do
form bonds. I mean, we understand our bond with animals.
And I should say it's a big parenthesis. When I
wrote this piece, my dog passed away, and so it
was a sort of mourning for me about my own dog.
But in Asian elephants, not African elephants, have bonded with humans.
(13:25):
When they're human has died, they mourn. In fact, some
of them have mourned so much that they've died. It
was a very powerful other discovery, this idea of the
feeling that these animals have when someone passes away. And
again that also throws a shadow on the whole project,
because while some people write biographies about elephants, none have
(13:49):
considered really naming a specific elephant for an ivory artifact.
But there's a long history of mourning from these animals
that they've had, which hasn't been given its due right.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Well, I mean, it's important to recognize these relationships that
elephants have with each other and with the people that
they might be involved with. If they're Asian elephants being trained,
for example, in that when we see them interacting with humans,
whether they are killed by hunters or whether they are
taken from somewhere, or whether they've been with a trainer
(14:25):
and the trainer dies. These are all lived experiences, as
you're saying, of these elephants, especially of the Middle Ages,
which we're talking about. So let's move to specific regions. Now.
We'll start with China because it's where you start in
the book, with the caveat that this is Steven's work
mostly on China that you're going to be interpreting for
us and adding to. So tell us about elephants, what
(14:48):
were they wanted for in China in the Middle Ages.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Before I talk about China and then Spain, I'd like
to also say that we deliberately shows to talk about
two elephants that lived in roughly the same time period,
which is the thirteenth century, which was wonderful because it
also meant trying to understand the entire globe from the
Middle Ages. And one of the interesting connections that we
(15:16):
found is that ivory was sourced from the same place
for both of these places. But with respect to the
animal we also tried to understand elephants themselves. In both
places and in China in this period there was a
very active use of elephants in processions.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
And this is something that I learned.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
I've heard of sacrifices, the sacrifice for the son. I
asked Steve Well, well, who is sacrificed? Were these animals?
Was this like in the Mayan? Was this Aztec sacrifice?
Human sacrifice? No, but there were animal sacrifice that go well,
elephant sacrifice.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
No, no, no, no no.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Elephants were the main sort of protagonist, the visual protagonists
in these royal processions to the main site of the sacrifice,
and there's elaborate description of how they were dressed, details
of what they wore, what they did on their way
(16:21):
through the procession these royal processions. To kind of add
to that, there's often idea that, well, elephants were used
also in war. Elephants were used by people, maybe for
circus entertainment, but in the case of China, this was
largely not the case. In other words, they were not
(16:42):
used for war because they discovered very quickly, well, these animals,
you can easily go behind them, and they're not successful
war animals, but they were continually used for hundreds of
years in processions.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
And the interesting.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Thing though, is that the people who trained them were
not Chinese. They were people who came from well, mainly
from south of what would be called today China would
be today Vietnam and other places sort of eastern well
today India. But the last thing I wanted to say
is that the elephants that were used in these processions
(17:18):
were always accompanied by a human, which are called mahoots
or trainers, and that trainer was never Chinese. It was
always one of the people that had grown up with
this animal and who had captured the animal. And these
people and these are also another anonymous group of living
people who have no history, but they spend they're basically.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Entire lives with the elephant.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
I do think it'd be fascinating one day if someone
were to write and explore the mahoots wherever they were
be because this is not just it's not just the
elephants that.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Were in China.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
The only trained elephants that went anywhere, including in Europe,
also had moots, and those mahoots also had grown up
with these elephants.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yeah, and when we're talking about the lifetime of an elephant,
we're talking sixty seventy years. And I think you mentioned
in the book as well, they're not useful to people
in that they're not easily trained or one of the
things that you mentioned is there's a difference between being
tamed and being domesticated. But they're not useful for people,
I think you said, until they're about fourteen. So this
(18:24):
is a big time investment for the people who are
training the elephants. So where are they getting these elephants
from for use in China in these ceremonial processions.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Well, in the early period along the rivers in China
there were still elephants, but by the Middle Ages, essentially
agricultural needs had meant the decimation of elephants, rhinos, other
large mammals, and most of these are coming from the
forests of Vietnam.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Right, And so when we're talking about the elephants and procession,
we're talking about as elephants that they might be getting
from Vietnam. But when we're talking about ivory in terms
of China, they're looking to Africa, right.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Yes, and no, there were many many uses of ivory
in China, as there were in different times in different
historical periods in different places, and so over the period,
as over the period, as more and more people gathered.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
In cities, and these are the biggest.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
When you're talking about the Middle Ages, you're talking about
a city of a million people. Nowhere in Europe a
couple ten thousand people versus these massive cities, and that
meant lots of agriculture, and it meant the decimation of
forests for agriculture. And we're talking in the Middle Ages.
But all of these in general were the Asian elephant variety,
(19:48):
and that ivory was used. Those Asian elephants were used
for all those people in the processions carried these little
sticks that were staves. They sometimes would have notes on
the back of them, but they were ivory, kind of
flat one and a half foot little sticks, almost like
little wands that they would carry.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
As part of the procession.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
So we're talking about thousands of people carrying these and
most of those were probably Asian elephant.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Now, if you had money.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
And you wanted to create something beautiful, and a lot
of times that you wanted it big and beautiful, you
sourced your ivory from Africa. At the same time period
and in fact, the historical documents show that demand for
African elephant ivory was so great that it outsourced the
(20:40):
demand which was going on in Europe and even in
the Middle East, because in Islamic empires and Christian empires
around the Mediterranean, both Christian and Islamic, there's a demand
for it. And again this meant you know, where are
we going to source this from? But just to answer
your question in a very short way, the best I
(21:00):
came from Africa in the Middle Ages to China.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Well, I mean one of the things that you're getting
at here is in China ivory is used so often
that it's being used for really everyday objects. These staves
are ceremonial, but even things like chopsticks and hair combs
and that kind of thing. They're using ivy for this.
And I think, if I have this right, you mentioned
in the book that it's so ordinary early on that
(21:25):
it's only later that it becomes something that is maybe
because it's sourced from further away and the African ivory
that people think is better quality, but the more elaborate,
the more valuable carving, it doesn't happen until later because
before this ivy just kind of something that everybody has around.
Is that about right?
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Yes, I've been asked to speak at the museum on
my campus. I work at Texas Tech University, and it
was bequeathed some ivory pieces and they're beautiful ivory pieces.
They're Chinese or the providence is unclear, but the one
requirement is that they always be shown.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
And this is very complex and.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
I'm working with the people in the museum now we're
going to be doing something in September of this year
and to talk about it. But these pieces are generally
what people think of when they think of esthetics and ivory,
very elaborate, and in the period that we're talking about,
while there were pieces like that. If you look in
our book, we start off with these three beautiful Buddha images,
(22:32):
although these particular Buddha are mammoth pieces mammoth ivory, not
elephant ivory. But in general there were esthetic objects going on.
But you're right at the time. One of the reasons
why we chose this period is it was an everyday object,
while in that contrast, which was what was going on
in Europe, it was not an everyday object. It hadn't
been since the Roman times and I think i'd add
(22:56):
to that by saying that, yes, in Roman times is
an everyday object, but in the eighteenth century it became
an everyday object.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Again.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
If you think of piano keys, think of Paul McCartney's
Ebane and Ivory lived together in perfect harmony. Pianos were
used Ebane and ivory was used for them for all
the piano keys starting and this is the eighteenthent, so
this is later. It's even later than the period that
I study.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yes, well, And one of the things that I think
is interesting while we're talking about piano keys is the
statue that you were talking about as we started this
podcast that involves ivory and ebony. These things are coming
together centuries before they've come together on a piano, and
so I found that interesting in reading your book. So
let's move to Spain, which is more of your particular
(23:44):
footing and scholarship. What is the ivory trade, like, what
are people using it for in Spain around the same time.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
The first thing I'd say is a caveat here. I
study Spain, but I don't know Arabic, and Spain was
an Arabic speaking country for the most part from about
the eighth century seven to eleven, technically through fourteen ninety two.
So really a medieval scholar of Spain should, aside from
(24:16):
knowing medieval Spanish, should know Arabic. And I mean I
sort of my friends I consult with when I have
Arabic questions. And again I'm not a medievalist. But that
being said, during the Islamic period in Spain there was
a very very rich production of ivory for many different objects,
(24:37):
many everyday objects, but there were generally also luxury objects.
In the north of Spain, in the mountains. In the
north there was a Christian community that started to build
and rebuild and during the course of the Middle Ages
sort of moved southwards. It's very interesting though, the earliest
Christian ivory objects, and I have pictures of many of
them in the book, came from this northern regi and
(25:00):
they're fascinating because one of them if you turn it around,
If you turn the ivory object around, you can see
sort of what went on in the carving of it,
because they're basically teeth, and the middle section of the
teeth has been carved out and you can see it.
And that one comes from the northern part of Spain.
From about again, this is the thirteenth century. We were
talking about one hundred years before before the Christians came
(25:21):
and conquered southern Spain, they were carving very specific religious
icons in Ivory and these were saints. Now as part
of the Christian reconquest of the peninsula, Mary, the Virgin
Mary was a huge person who was called upon in
(25:44):
battles and the kings who were conquering in the mainly
someone named Fernando who conquered Seville in the thirteenth century.
He didn't have elephants, but he had a little Mary
and put it on the front of his horse when
he charged into and I talk about that little Ivory
icon that he had. His son was Alfonso, and his
(26:06):
son inherited that and probably used the same Virgin Mary
elephant Ivory icon as he His father conquered Seville, which
is where I'm talking from right now. But then his
son Alfonso then went and conquered south of here and
even conquered cities in North Africa. So this kind of continually.
It's called a reconquest or conquering of the peninsula from Alan,
(26:29):
Dalous and.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Lucia or the Moors.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Islam continued into Africa and ivory wasn't the thing, but
it was a part of how they talked about this
reconquest and many Islamic images. As they would take over.
They didn't just turn the churches or the mosques into churches.
They also would take ivory artifacts that were Islamic and
(26:56):
turn them into Christian ones. They would also, by the way,
they found Roman ones and they turned those two into
Christian ones too, which is kind of fascinating. The icon
that I talk about in the book and that I
give a name to is actually owned by the wife
of Alfonso, and she had a little ivory icon about
(27:16):
a foot and a half high, which I spend the
most time talking about.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Right, And the big contrast between how elephants and ivory
are used in China versus Spain. Probably the biggest thing
is that live elephants are being used in China as
well as ivory, but in Spain, well in Europe in general,
I think you found only three examples of live elephants
in this period at all.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Oh my gosh, that was so fascinating because over the
past maybe fifteen years. Because my last book I talk
about rhinos and elephants and the medieval period and then
the early modern period, and I tried to do a
history and my impression was, oh, there were lots of elephants.
And then I started to work on this book, and
I'm like, artists love to draw pictures of elephants, especially
(28:04):
like imitating ancient Rome, but even more so ancient Greece
with Alexander the Great and elephant armies and people. They
would always put a tower on the elephant, like and
if you're playing chess, you know the rook, you know
that is the imitation that is an elephant with a
tower on top. And there are so many medieval images.
I thought, oh, there's gotta be lots of and I
(28:27):
kept digging and digging and digging, and then I found
three live elephants that survived, one from really early Charlemagne
who had one, and then two other later ones from
the Crusade period more or.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Less, but that was it.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
And so I was just like, oh, there's so much
talk about elephants, but there's no elephants. The contrast, again
was in China there were thousands, thousands of elephants, Indian elephants,
and again these three elephants, I'll distress were not African
they were Indian elephants because you could not control or
move an African elephant because there was no human bonding.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
So these three elephants that.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Were in Europe did have a mahout who had trained
with them.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
It's really fascinating.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
I mean, I should say a big parenthesis in the
Roman period for people interested who watch the Gladiator movies,
the games were not just one gladiated against the other one.
The Roman games were essentially the first fight clubs with animals.
There's a Latin word but essentially means a hunting show.
(29:32):
So any weird exotic animals, not just local wild animals
like wild bulls, but giraffes.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Were actually brought from Africa.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Sometimes a rhino was but the main animal brought for
the shows. And then when I say show, I mean
across the Mediterranean from Spain wherever there was an amphitheater.
They're almost every Roman city from Turkey all the way Greece,
Italy into Spain. The Romans arrived somewhere they built a big, big,
(30:06):
it's like a football stadium, like American football. And people
loved the most these shows, and they were animal shows,
and they were basically punks and elephants were one of
the main protagonists in this.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
So a question I had.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
Was, oh, how did these elephants get there?
Speaker 2 (30:24):
And who were they?
Speaker 3 (30:25):
This is an elephant, it's a North African elephant variety
that looks like it was trained. It was trained, in fact,
and there were mahoots, but they were brought over on
boats across the Mediterranean, one or two in the boat.
But that entire species has been decimated because of these games,
(30:45):
and also because both the Roman and the Carthaginians used
these animals. The Carthaginians used them and in fact conquered
Spain before the Romans on elephants, and so they had
successfully trained them too, like in India. But that entire
species when extinct, that particular variety of African elephants.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Right, So when we're talking about Europe in the Middle Ages,
we don't have live elephants wandering around. They're super rare,
but we do have ivory. And the ivory that's coming
into Europe isn't super rare, right. It's a luxury good,
but it's not so rare that only kings are able
to access it.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Right.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
People in religious orders, archbishops, people in churches, especially have
the funds to purchase this luxury item, and it is
a luxury item. And there are workshops devoted to creating
the icons out of the ivory. Those who work with marble,
(31:46):
stone or wood, they're specialists that work.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
In ivory right. And one of the things that I
thought was interesting in reading your book is what you've
noticed is that when people will carve an icon in
marble or wood, they'll paint it. But when it comes
to ivory carvings of icons, you're seeing something different in
the paint. Tell us about this.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
I'll just talk about Alfonso because this is the part
I've researched and it's a very delicate subject and something
i'd like to talk about. I mean, the first book
I wrote was about race and people only about fifteen
years after I wrote that book about race, are people
even giving me credit?
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Because when I first.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
Wrote about race, they said, no, that's not something that
happened till much later, So we don't want to read
your book. And now people are saying, wait a second.
And this argument that I'm about to talk about is
connected to that, and so I want to be very
careful about how I talk about it. In Spain when Alfonso.
He conquered Seville. He made it his capital. He took
(32:48):
over it's called the al Caasar, which is basically an
Islamic palace, which he made his own. In one of
the large rooms, he was creating all kinds of icons,
especially to the Virgin Mary, because he in fact loved
the Virgin Mary the most. The biggest medieval book, the
most expensive one, is the one that he put together,
(33:09):
which is a collected book of songs to the Virgin Mary,
written in a sort of dialect which wasn't even spoken
in southern Spain the Spanish people is spoken in the northwest.
He just felt really close to that. It was like
if you feel close to like a southern dialect. He
created this entire book. Some of the songs might have
been originally in Latin, or might have been in a
different dialect of Spanish, but he put up the whole
(33:31):
book in this Northwest Galician Portuguese dialect, and he composed
that book. But he also as he was converting and
making churches on the former mosque of the city, they
were also creating icons. And if they were to do,
for example, an icon of the Virgin Mary and a
(33:51):
special one, say in marble, they would paint, for example,
her veil, there were certain colors. It was icons, so
you would just paint a certain blue or eyes blue
and other colors. But for the marble statue, for example,
they left the face not colored, which was significant given
that the color of the people was probably not Scandinavian
(34:18):
fair complexion. And so one of the things I talk
about in this book is that the icon that his
wife the queen had, and also his icon, while features
were painted like the veil, the clothing, that skin color
was not. So I don't say that they were left white,
because that's a little bit like no. Our idea of
(34:40):
whiteness is very complex and has changed over time. But
I do say marble white as a skin tone was created,
and more significantly, ivory white skin color was created. And
this is something very much still alive. It was adopted
by England, this idea of ivory white skin it was
trans supported to its colonies, and so I think that
(35:02):
that beginning of so, just to go back to your question,
leaving that part of the ivory not painted was very
significant in history, and I still think it needs to
be talked about more. I don't talk a lot about
that in the book. It's something that I'm glad I
have a chance to talk to you about, because I
do think that while I'm not the first person to
(35:24):
talk about ivory, white skin and significant, there's so many
art historians, medieval art historians who are working in this area.
It needs more thought for those people who think about
the history of race, those who think about the history
of what was white and definitely at this time period historians,
medieval historians talked about these black Africans and there was
(35:47):
a very clear association between if you were from Africa,
you were black. And I do mention sort of at
the end of the piece a little bit about the
importance of studying and I chose to study litre, not
just the history of Africa in the medieval period, and
so I try to connect a study of Africa very
briefly at the end of the book.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Yes, well, like you're saying, you don't get into the
history of Africa or even the history of race very
much in this book, because that's not the intent of
this book. But I did want to bring up that
argument that you're making about these ivory carvings, because this
is something that we see in medieval literature quite a
lot comparing a woman's skin to ivory, especially the virgin mary,
(36:29):
but elsewhere as well. And so when we're talking about ivory,
it seems like this is something that we need to address.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
I mean, I think I'd like to kind of maybe
step back a little bit an early version of this book.
I mean, just so that people know how this goes.
When you write one of these sorts of books, it's
not like a novel where you have a press behind
you who wants to invest in it and give you
funding and have a copy editor who cleans it up.
(37:00):
It gets vetted. And I did take the lead on this,
I mean so much point where I was on web
pages in Chinese and I can't even read Chinese, but
to get the proper sources it was a very difficult
process at some points because I was mostly in out
it myself. So the point of this saying is that
this how did this book come about? Well, you write
(37:20):
one of these books and it's sent to world specialists
around the world, and the first round of the specialists
it came back. The argument basically from the people was
this is a very important book, but only the Chinese part,
and the Chinese part should be sent to a specialized
journal in Chinese for Chinese, because this is new material
(37:45):
and it's in its wonderful material and it should be published.
All that other stuff though, makes no sense. We don't
think it's very valuable. And you know, I took that
very seriously, you know, and I had to go back
to the drawing board and said, how can I make
this more convincing? In part because of what I do
in the Spanish section. It's not a simple literary so
(38:07):
I couldn't send it to a literary scholar. It's not
a simple history because I use I really struggle with.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
History of art.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
I had to study for about a year and a
half and found out there are thousands of Gothic this
is what this is called ivory pieces in Europe at
this point, there are churches filled with these kinds of tusks.
And it was just a very long process point being,
I worked again on it, and fortunately there was also
(38:40):
a specialist who studies this period and studies China and Spain,
and I believe that that was one of the reader
who looked at it and thought that this was a
very important contribution. So I feel good, and I know
maybe that's maybe too much information for your listener. But
I think this kind of scholarship is easy. You work
(39:01):
very hard and then you find out, oh, this is
not according to some people, this is not worth anything,
and so you either give up, which happens probably a
lot of the time, you give up as an author,
as an academic author, or you bear down whatever the
expression is, and you just say, oh, I'm going to
do this anyways. And I kind of did the second
(39:21):
I believed in the projects. I think I was able
to make it clear what I wanted to say the
second time around, or well the third or on I
don't know, at least the post review period. And I
do think that a lot of what you're asking has
to do with this, because if you give this, I'll
just say one of the weaknesses. If you give this
to an African medieval African scholar, they're going to say, wait,
(39:44):
there is a trade route from And I do think
this is still one of the parts of the book
that still needs to be clarified. There was clear trade routes.
If you go to southern Spain and there's Africa right there,
there were trade routes that went straight up. So why
did the ivory come not just jump across. Why did
it have to go all the way to Egypt or
to these islands and then go to southern Spain. There's
(40:06):
a lot of conjecture when you do history, and I
realized that there were possible problems, but I tried to
state that this is a high probability that this happened,
and there's more work that has to be done. There's
been very little work done on medieval Africa, and I
think there needs to be a lot more. And I
went back to the drawing board on some of that.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Yes, well, I think it's important what you're bringing up
where history is always influx, and that we are in
conversation with each other about what this could mean, what
it does mean, what can we prove, what can't we prove,
And sometimes you have to actually publish the book and
then get the feedback, and then the next book that
you write, someone else writes builds on that. And so
(40:47):
this is a conversation. And the contribution that you and
Stephen have made here was essential, and that people were
not talking about elephants in these regions, especially not contrasted
with each other. So I mean, you need to get
out there and actually make your contribution. And it sounds like,
from what you're telling me about the process, that you
wanted to do this in as responsible a way as
(41:08):
you could. And I mean, that's the best that anybody
can do.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
So, as we come to the end of our time,
what do you want to leave us with that you
were thinking about as you were writing this, thinking about
elephants in China and Spain in the Middle Ages. What
do you really want to tell people about this that
you can leave them with.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
The first word that comes to mind is endling.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
Endling is a word. Have you heard this word before?
Speaker 4 (41:33):
No?
Speaker 3 (41:34):
Okay, whatever the animal is, whether it's an elephant or
even an insect, when there has only been one left,
For example, there was a pigeon in the Cincinnati Zoo.
It was the last one, last carrier pigeon, after like
millions of these things were flying through the sky in
the nineteenth century. There was one left in the Cincinnai
(41:54):
Zoo in the early nineteen hundreds, and it was given
a name I believe was named Martha. Endlings have a name,
And I think that what I'd want to leave people
with is this idea of the end lingu which is
there are many many species that are not around and
who people don't really care about. Oh, they're just animals anyways,
(42:15):
they're not people. So I think probably what I want
to leave people with is to read something like this
book or see the complex ways in which humans have
lived alongside other animals. And in the case of this
book and in the case of elephants, I mean the
amazing fact that where we started off as a species,
(42:38):
we lived in a sort of in Spanish Yese Combe Vincia,
living together with in agro pastoral society, African society, alongside elephants.
And these humans that lived in Africa didn't have to
kill off the species, they lived alongside of them. What
were their beliefs, what were they doing? Why did they
(42:58):
not completely decimate them elephant or why did they not
have to train them like they did in India. I mean,
the main reason why the Indian elephant is still successful
alive is because they formed a bond with humans. This
elephant was able to maintain its own habitat and live.
It wasn't like humans weren't there. They were there, they
were living alongside them. So what is the secret? That's
(43:19):
kind of what i'd want to leave people with is
what is the secret for having a shared habitat, especially
with someone who consumes so much more than we do.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
I mean, that's a big act.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
Of selflessness from humans to let the animal live it
that close to it and not decimated. Do I think
that they would have been capable? Yes, I do, sound
exact by site. You know a source in the book
on that.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
So what you're saying is your next period of study
is going to be prestoric, so you can learn more
about the interactions between animals and humans.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
No, I wouldn't say that, but I would say that
that will be my next questions. I asked my cloud.
That is what I have been working on for many
years too. I live in a place that is the
longest inhabited place in the Americas.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
It's Lubbock, Texas.
Speaker 3 (44:11):
You know, and humans have been living there consistently for
more than twelve thousand years. They haven't moved away, They've
been living in this area. But it's essentially like it's
the wild West of the US where I live. And
I've been fascinated for a long time. Yes, with the prehistory,
the archaeology. I am interested in that, so I don't
know that I'm doing any research in that, but I
(44:32):
love that period.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
Well, I mean it's the historian's dilemma, right, The more
you know, the more you want to know, and so
you just keep learning. Well, thank you John for coming
on and telling us all about Elephants and Ivory in
the Middle Ages.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
Thank you, it's been great to meet you.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
To find out more about John's work, you can visit
his faculty page at Texas Tech University. And you can
find out more about Steven's work at his faculty page
at Arizona State University. Their new book is Elephants and
Ivory in China and Spain.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
Hi, Danielle, I'm coming to you from the International Medieval
Congress in Leeds, England. I'm one of twenty four hundred
people here that are attending live, plus several hundred more
that are coming in through online. It's for a medievalist.
This is like summer camp, so it's a lot of fun,
you know, learn quite a bit. So this year's theme
(45:28):
is World of Learning. On the first day I heard
many papers that I'll just kind of talk about. The
two that were part of the opening plenary session, and
first we had Sabrina Corborini talking about the growing interest
in reading in the late Middle Ages, and she talks
about evidence she sees of that as is people writing
and talking about lending their books to others, people going
(45:50):
around and visiting libraries, and then also creating works like
mss Laney' where you're putting together different texts into one folio.
So that was really fascinating. Afterwards, Conrad Heirschler talked about
a little known cultural practice that boomed in and around
Egypt and Syria around the turn of the fourteenth century.
(46:11):
It's called public readings. But the interesting part was that
they noted in the manuscript that these things were happening.
They would actually add little addendums to these manuscripts. They
called it audition certificates, and he figures that are about
one hundred thousand of these is still surviving, and he's
collecting them and trying to learn a lot of information
(46:32):
about them from the places, like where they took place,
who was listening to him, Like they literally named off
everybody that would listen, and in one case there's a
manuscript that has like seventy seven people there to listen
to it. So you find out a really great amount
of information about each of these public readings. So it's
really fascinating stuff. I thought. I'm really looking forward to
(46:56):
the rest of the Congress. Before I go, I want
to mention that our think Ific online courses we're doing
our Summer sale, so we're offering twenty percent off all
the courses, live or self paced. All you need to
do is include the coupon code Summer when you're ordering it,
and I'll give you twenty percent off. And please go
(47:17):
to Medieval Studies dot thinkife dot com and you can
check out all the courses. We have a couple starting
this month, others in August and September, including yours. Daniel. Again,
thanks for listening to me, and thanks podcast World by Byte.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
This week. It's not just Peter who has fun and
exciting news to report, because in just a few weeks
I'll be stealing Dan Jones's microphone again. Over at This
is History to tell you the story of Friendsis Charles
the sixth, the king who had the world at his
feet until his mental collapse brought the kingdom to its knees.
You may have heard of Charles already as the king
(47:58):
who believed he was made of glass.
Speaker 4 (48:00):
Us.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
This is one of the most complicated, tumultuous reigns in
all of medieval history, and that's saying something. So if
you love my miniseries The Iron King, I hope you'll
join me over on This is History starting July twenty ninth,
as I bring you a brand new series, The Glass King.
Thank you so much to all of you for the
(48:21):
many ways you've supported this podcast for almost three hundred episodes.
In celebration of the upcoming three hundredth episode, everyone on
Patreon is welcome to get on the episode three hundred
thread and ask me anything about history, about podcasting, or
about my deep and abiding love for Sir Gawain. All
you need to do is be a member of the
(48:41):
Patreon community at patreon dot com slash Medievalists, So go
ahead ask me anything, and while you're at it, if
you'd like to level up your membership to help me
keep the lights on and the ac running here at
the Medieval Podcast, I'll be eternally grateful for everything from
elephants to eleance. Follow medievalist dot Net on Instagram at
(49:02):
medievalist net or blue Sky at Medievalists, you can find
me Danielle Sabalski across social media at five I n
Medievalist or five minute Medievalist, and you can find my
books at all your favorite bookstores. Our music is Beyond
the Warriors by gee Frog. Thanks for listening, and have
yourself an amazing day
Popular Podcasts
Fudd Around And Find Out
UConn basketball star Azzi Fudd brings her championship swag to iHeart Women’s Sports with Fudd Around and Find Out, a weekly podcast that takes fans along for the ride as Azzi spends her final year of college trying to reclaim the National Championship and prepare to be a first round WNBA draft pick. Ever wonder what it’s like to be a world-class athlete in the public spotlight while still managing schoolwork, friendships and family time? It’s time to Fudd Around and Find Out!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!