Searching for the Soul of the Beaver

In medieval Europe beavers were hunted extensively, which led, by the 12th and 13th centuries, to their extinction in England and Wales, and in Denmark by the tenth century. The animals were killed not only for their fur, but also for their scent glands. Despite being present in both genders, the glands were mistaken for the male beaver’s genitalia. They contained castoreum, which was used as an almost universal medicine for most conditions. Bestiaries – medieval books containing descriptions of real-life and imaginary animals, accompanied by moralising tales – stated that a beaver could offer his genitalia to hunters in exchange for his life. If the same beaver encountered hunters again, he would lie on his back, demonstrating that his testicles had already been taken.

Another factor which also contributed to the extinction of beavers in much of Europe was the strange properties of their meat – and of their souls. Many manuscript illuminations depict the beaver with a fish tail. This reflects a belief that has its origins with Pliny the Elder, who wrote that the beaver has ‘the tail of a fish and the rest of the body resembles an otter’. The 15th-century Swedish scholar Bero Magni, or Björn Magnusson, writing about the half-beast half-fish nature of the animal argued that the fish tail is grafted to the beaver’s body in the same way a pear can be grafted to an apple tree. Bero also wondered if sensations could be transmitted between the beaver’s ‘terrestrial’ and ‘fish’ parts. Would a beaver know if someone stepped on its tail?

Throughout the medieval and early modern period the beaver was therefore understood to be a hybrid beast, with each body part living according to its nature. For example, a vignette accompanying A Description of the Northern Peoples written in the late 16th century by the Swedish scholar Olaus Magnus depicts a hunter who tries to catch a group of beavers with a net. While the beavers sit on the bank, their tails are dipped into the water – the natural environment for fish. The beaver is not the only creature which was considered hybrid in the Middle Ages. Barnacle geese were believed to develop from goose barnacles – crustaceans which are found attached to rocks and driftwood. Because of the latter, barnacle geese were sometimes described as growing on trees.

The nature of beasts was important: for medieval thinkers, the biological was inseparable from the spiritual. Each body had to be animated by some sort of a soul. The beaver’s composite body made medieval and early modern scholars wonder whether the creature’s soul was partly the soul of the beast and partly the soul of a fish. As philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas explained in the 13th century, terrestrial animals had ‘living souls’, while fish were bodies animated only with ‘something of a soul’. In other words, terrestrial animals’ souls were understood to be more advanced than those of fish. When it came to beavers’ supposedly hybrid bodies, the question was whether their souls consisted of a ‘superior’ terrestrial and an ‘inferior’ fish part.

This had practical implications as well as theological, as the Christian Church forbade eating flesh during fasting periods – about 30 per cent of the year – but allowed the eating of fish. All living creatures were placed in a hierarchy, which culminated with humans as the most perfect beings. These hierarchies are visible, for example, in the arrangements of bestiaries and scientific works. Living non-humans were usually grouped in the following way: entries on mammals were followed by birds, then came fish followed by serpents, and the last section was dedicated to plants. Placed below terrestrial animals and above plants, fish were seen as semi-vegetative beings, and consequently acceptable to eat during fasts.

The semi-aquatic semi-plant nature of the barnacle goose meant that it could be consumed during periods of fasting. Imaginary hybrid creatures, which resembled humans, could also be edible. The 14th-century French chivalric romance Perceforest described fantastic anthropomorphic fish, which looked like miniature knights. These presented a moral dilemma for the human protagonist, who, starving, was tempted by the fish knights’ white flesh.

So, could one eat beaver? Bero argued that the whole beaver could be classified as a fish rather than a beast. However, he advised against eating the beaver’s ‘terrestrial’ body part during fasts and suggested that one should limit one’s appetites to the beaver’s tail. As Bero explained, the rest of the beaver’s body tasted too much like flesh: eating a fish which tastes like flesh during fast would be cheating. On the contrary, Olaus Magnus thought that not only the tail, but the beaver’s hind legs could be consumed. Olaus’ reasoning was probably based on the fact that while the beaver’s front paws resemble human hands, its hind legs are webbed, appearing rather amphibian. However, Olaus also warned that catching a beaver could be a potentially dangerous task: the beast’s very strong teeth could crack bones.

The medieval debate surrounding beavers was really about humans. Would God be frustrated if one ate beaver during fasting? The debate was not easily resolved. As gradual secularisation occurred in the following centuries, fewer people continued to fast and the flesh versus fish issue was no longer so important. Yet, after the Middle Ages, beavers continued to be hunted in those parts of Europe where they still could be found, such as Scotland and Sweden. Following beavers’ complete elimination, several European states have re-introduced them: Sweden, from Norway, between 1922 and 1939 and, in the UK, as late as 2002.

Polina Ignatova is a postdoctoral researcher at Linköping University.