Birds of Prey and the Sport of Falconry in Italian Literature through ...

Depressed and defeated, its companion leaves the area. Elsewhere, it finds a wooden
bridge with a falcon-sized hole in it that would make an excellent defense against the
eagle. It plans revenge, practicing swooping into the hole until it is able to achieve great
accuracy. It returns to harass the eagle that killed its companion. Unable to defeat the
eagle and finding it necessary to flee, the falcon retreats cleverly into its wooden refuge
where the eagle cannot reach, but does not take further revenge.
Neckam praises the ties of friendship that bound the two falcons, comparing them
to Patroclus and Achilles, and other legendary friends. He also relates that this
occurrence was witnessed by a people that he calls the Rotomagi, who learned from it
ideas on how to avoid the attacks of the ~ranks.~'
Neckam's stories show that the interweaving of the lives of humans and those of
hunting birds in both a literal and a figurative sense is very strong in the cultural fabric of
his time. Indeed, the surge in popularity of the use of animals as human exemplars as
well as the beginning of the writing of fables in vernacular languages can be traced to the
twelfth ~entury.~' The mixing of genres found in this encyclopedist and those after him
can be found also in later bestiaries: some fourteenth-century vernacular Italian bestiaries
have appended to them series of animal fables.32
In her book, The Beast Within, Joyce Salisbury also traces to the twelfth century
the assignation to the animal kingdom of a social structure that mirrors that of human
feudal society.33 This association is quite clear in Neckam's text, and is evidence of the
30 The Rotomagi lived in Rotomagus, the ancient Roman name for the modem city of Rouen. (Storia del
mondo antico, (Cambridge University Press1 Garzanti, 1974) v. 9, 635.
31 For the history of the use of animals as human exemplars, see Joyce Salisbury, The Beast Within,
particularly Chapter 4.
32 Salisbury, 116; McKenzie, 387 ff.
33 Marie de France is cited as a particular innovator; see Salisbury 117 ff.