The ‘Lamb of God’ in the early Middle Ages

Medieval ecclesiastical estates have long been linked to vast flocks of wool-producing sheep that underpinned the wealth of the nation well into the sixteenth century. Recent surveys of English medieval animal remains have found evidence for an exceptionally high quantity of sheep at some of the earliest monastic communities established in England from the seventh century AD. The association between religious ideology and sheep is integral to teachings from the Bible, but sheep were also of economic value, and these ideas are considered alongside the changing meaning and value of flocks, and the increase in wool production in medieval England.KEYWORDS: ZooarchaeologysheepmonasteriesSaxonearly medievalwool Notes1 M. Ryder, Sheep and Man (London: Duckworth, 1983), 455.2 A. Grant, ‘Animal Resources’, in The Countryside of Medieval England, eds. G. Astill and A. Grant (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 151; John Hare, ‘The Bishop and the Prior: Demesne Agriculture in Medieval Hampshire’, Agricultural History Review 54 (2006): 187–212.3 Alexander R. Rumble, ‘Using Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts’, in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: Basic Readings, ed. Mary P. Richards (London: Routledge, 2001), 11.4 Debby Banham and Rosamond Faith, Anglo-Saxon Farms and Farming (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 93.5 Dorothy Whitelock, ed., English Historical Documents, vol. 1: c.500–1042 (London: Routledge, 1996), 406.6 Matilda Holmes, Animals in Saxon and Scandinavian England: Backbones of Economy and Society (Leiden: Sidestone, 2014), 106.7 H.P.R. Finberg, Roman and Saxon Withington: A Study in Continuity. University of Leicester, Department of English Local History, Occasional papers 8 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1955), 20.8 Mark McKerracher and others, Digital Archive for Feeding Anglo-Saxon England (Feedsax): The Bioarchaeology of an Agricultural Revolution 2017–2022 [Data-Set] (York: Archaeology Data Service, 2023); U. Albarella and T. Pirnie, A Review of Animal Bone Evidence from Central England Evidence [Data-Set] (York: Archaeology Data Service, 2008).9 Lenny Salvagno, The Neglected Goat: A New Method to Assess the Role of the Goat in the English Middle Ages (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2020).10 Holmes, Animals in Saxon and Scandinavian England, 40; Terry O’Connor, ‘Livestock and Animal Husbandry in Early Medieval England’, Quaternary International 346 (2014): 113.11 Matilda Holmes and others, ‘Milk, Wool and Grain: The Animal Economy of Medieval England (AD 400 to 1400)’, (forthcoming).12 Dale Serjeantson and others, ‘How Pious? How Wealthy? The Status of Eynsham and St Albans Abbeys between the 8th to the 12th Centuries Re-Examined in the Light of Their Food Consumption’, in The Middle Ages Revisited: Studies in the Archaeology and History of Medieval Southern England, ed. Ben Jervis (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2018), 130; Barbara Noddle, Sue Stallibrass and T.P. O’Connor, ‘The Animal Bone and Marine Shells from Jarrow’, in Wearmouth and Jarrow Monastic Sites, ed. Rosemary Cramp, vol. 2. (Swindon: English Heritage, 2005–6), 2: 546–85 (560).13 Holmes, Animals in Saxon and Scandinavian England, 40.14 Alison Hudson, ‘Religion in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms’, https://www.bl.uk/anglo-saxons/articles/religion-in-anglo-saxon-kingdoms (Accessed 31 July 2023); Serjeantson and others, ‘How Pious? How Wealthy?’, 118.15 Cited in Dianne M Bazell, ‘Strife among the Table-Fellows: Conflicting Attitudes of Early and Medieval Christians toward the Eating of Meat’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 65 (1997): 75.16 Bazell, ‘Strife among the Table-Fellows’, 77; St Jerome, Against Jovinianus, trans. W.H. Fremantle (Summerville, SC: Aeterna Press, 2016), Book II: 13.17 Bazell, ‘Strife among the Table-Fellows’, 81; Benedictine Rule, 39:11, Timothy Fry and others, eds., RB 1980: The Rule of St Benedict, in Latin and English with Notes (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1981), 238–9.18 Bazell, ‘Strife among the Table-Fellows’, 84.19 M. Swanton, Anglo-Saxon Prose (London: J.M. Dent, 1993), 115.20 Nancy Beavan and Simon Mays, ‘The Human Skeletons’, in Anglo-Saxon Graves and Grave Goods of the 6th and 7th Centuries AD: A Chronological Framework, ed. Alex Bayliss (London: Routledge, 2017), 116–31; Jessica Bownes, Leon Clarke and Jo Buckberry, ‘The Importance of Animal Baselines: Using Isotope Analysis to Compare Diet in a British Medieval Hospital and Lay Population’, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 17 (2018), 103–10; Emma Hannah and others, ‘Anglo-Saxon Diet in the Conversion Period: A Comparative Isotopic Study Using Carbon and Nitrogen’, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 19 (2018): 24–34; Gundula Müldner, ‘Investigating Medieval Diet and Society by Stable Isotope Analysis of Human Bone’, in Reflections: 50 Years of Medieval Archaeology, eds. R. Gilchrist and A. Reynolds. Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 30 (Leeds: Maney Publishing for the Society for Medieval Archaeology, 2009), 327–46; Tamsin C. O’Connell and Bradley D. Hull, ‘Diet: Recent Evidence from Analytical Chemical Techniques’, in The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, eds. H. Hamerow, D.A. Hinton and S. Crawford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 667–87.21 J.H. Barrett, A. Locker and C. Roberts, ‘“Dark Age Economics” Revisited: The English Fish Bone Evidence AD 600–1600’, Antiquity 78 (2004): 618–36.22 O’Connell and Hull, ‘Diet: Recent Evidence from Analytical Chemical Techniques’, 683; Rebecca Reynolds, ‘Food for the Soul: The Dynamics of Fishing and Fish Consumption in Anglo-Saxon England, c.A.D. 410–1100’ (Ph.D. diss. University of Nottingham, 2013), 290; Beavan and Mays, ‘Human Skeletons’.23 J.E. Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1994), 105.24 Salisbury, Beast Within, 114.25 Whitelock, ed., English Historical Documents, vol. 1: c.500–1042, 838.26 Anna Dorofeeva, ‘Miscellanies, Christian Reform and Early Medieval Encyclopaedism: A Reconsideration of the Pre-Bestiary Latin Physiologus Manuscripts’, Historical Research 90 (2017): 10.27 Stephen A. Barney and others, eds. and trans., The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 247.28 Barney and others, eds. and trans., Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, 222.29 Christopher Masters, Bestiary: Animals in Art from the Ice Age to Our Age (London: Thames and Hudson, 2018), 148; Louisa Karapidakis, ‘CANEPAL: Culture and Nature: The European Heritage of Sheep Farming and Pastoral Life. Research Theme 9: Pastoral Life in Art: Synthesis Research Report’ (Unpublished research report, CANEPAL project, 2012).30 Karapidakis, ‘Pastoral Life in Art’, 9, 10.31 Karapidakis, ‘Pastoral Life in Art’, 9, 11; Lisa J. Kiser, ‘Silencing the Lambs: Economics, Ethics, and Animal Life in Medieval Franciscan Hagiography’, Modern Philology 108 (2011): 323–42.32 H. Hamerow, ‘Agrarian Production and the Emporia of Mid Saxon England, ca. A.D. 650–850’, in Post-Roman Towns, Trade and Settlement in Europe and Byzantium, ed. J. Henning (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 219–32; Pam J. Crabtree, Early Medieval Britain: The Rebirth of Towns in the Post-Roman West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).33 Holmes and others, ‘Milk, Wool and Grain’; Crabtree, Early Medieval Britain: The Rebirth of Towns in the Post-Roman West; P. Crabtree, ‘Agricultural Innovation and Socio-Economic Change in Early Medieval Europe: Evidence from Britain and France’, World Archaeology 42 (2010): 122–36.34 Hamerow, ‘Agrarian Production and the Emporia of Mid Saxon England’, 228.35 R. Trow-Smith, A History of British Livestock Husbandry to 1700 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), 62.36 Grant, ‘Animal Resources’, 151; Kevin Leahy, ‘Anglo-Saxon Crafts’, in Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, eds. Hamerow, Hinton and Crawford, 440–59.37 J. Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 257.38 Trow-Smith, History of British Livestock Husbandry, 60; Whitelock, ed., English Historical Documents, vol. 1: c.500–1042, 470.39 Trow-Smith, History of British Livestock Husbandry, 60.40 John Blair, Building Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018), 43, 305.41 Blair, Building Anglo-Saxon England, 103; idem, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, 136.42 Cecily Spall, ‘Have We Got a Parchmenterie? Identifying Parchment Making at a Dry-Preserved Site: The Evidence from Portmahomack, Tarbatness, Ross-Shire’, in Leather Tanneries: The Archaeological Evidence, eds. Roy Thomson and Quita Mould (London: Archetype Books, 2011), 93–102.43 Kiser, ‘Silencing the Lambs’, 324.44 Salisbury, Beast Within, 132.45 Crabtree, ‘Agricultural Innovation’; Pam J. Crabtree and Douglas V. Campana, ‘Wool Production, Wealth and Trade in Middle Saxon England’, in Animals and Inequality in the Ancient World, eds. Sue Ann McCarty and Benjamin S. Arbuckle (Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 2015), 335–52.46 Holmes, Animals in Saxon and Scandinavian England, 124.47 Holmes and others, ‘Milk, Wool and Grain’.Additional informationNotes on contributorsMatilda HolmesMatilda Holmes is a consultant archaeozoologist who has been working with commercial units and universities on excavated animal remains since 1997. She has taught modules on archaeozoology to undergraduates and postgraduates at UCL and the universities of Leicester, Nottingham and Birmingham. Her latest academic contribution was to the successful FeedSax project in conjunction with colleagues at Oxford and Leicester. She is an honorary visiting fellow at the School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester

Ancient history · Ideology · Middle Ages · Political science · Politics · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Classics · History · Law · Medieval Architecture and Archaeology · Medieval Literature and History

• Archaeozoological Insights into the Husbandry of Domestic Ruminants at Monastic and Noble Sites in Medieval Croatia

  Open Access•Kim Korpes, T Trbojević Vukičević et al.•Quaternary•2025

  Add to list