ARHIVELE OLTENIEI - Universitatea din Craiova

28Marin TomaAcross time, history showed that the nobles and the kings loved to hunt.Greeks and Romans appreciated hunting boars. The same feeling was shared byGermans and Celts. At the beginning of the Middle Ages, till 1000 A.D. huntingthe boar was considered a ritual by nobles and kings.Fighting the boar face to face was a heroic act. But around the 14 thcentury, the boar was an animal that was no longer appreciated and his huntbecame discredited. The Romans loved this animal for his willing to fight andhis force, naming him with words like acer (tempestuous), ferus (ferocious),fulmineus (flying), rubicundus (wroth), saevus (furious), torvus (forbidding),violentus (violent); Christianity transformed him in an impure animal, part ofdarkness 20 .If Romans considered the hunt of the deer to be without passion andglory because the animal keeps on running, starting with the 14 th century thedeer changes places with the boar. And this is not a particularly thing knownonly in France and England but in entire Europe.Romanian prince Dimitrie Cantemir 21 (1710-1711) writes to us thathunting it is a habit considered by rulers to be very pleasant. He says that for thecountry of Moldavia the hunt made possible his medieval appearance. Thenoble Dragos came in the territory of Moldavia by chasing a bison. That is thelegend of how Moldavia was established.Cantemir tells us that the princes used when hunting peasants from thevillages surrounding the forest in order to scare the animals and direct themwhere the hunters with hounds were. The king paid for every animal caught. Themost valuable were the deers and the bears. The animals considered impure suchas foxes, bears and wild cats were given to the peasants 22 .Writers from Middle Ages thought about the boar that he was ugly andblack, that he was a traitor and full of pride having two terrible weapons worthyof hades. The boar was described as an animal that don’t looks up, only with hissnout in the earth, and when he was satisfied he wanted rest. He was the enemyof Christ. He was the devil 23 .This change of opinions has not only religious fundaments but politicalas well. From 13 th century only the kings possessed large forests were hunting adeer riding was possible. Nobles and captains remained as servants with the huntof the boar, which is done even by foot. The Christian Church made the boar ananimal despised by everyone by putting him in her book of beasts.The only sin from the mythological seven that it’s not associated with theboar was that of being avaricious. The deer becomes with the Christian church ablessed animal. His ten antlers are considered to be a symbol that comes from theBible as being the Ten Commandments that Jesus gave to the people to protect20 Michel Pastoureau, O istorie simbolică a evului mediu occidental, trad. de Em.Galaicu-Păun, Bucureşti, Editura Cartier, 2004, p. 72.21 Dimitrie Cantemir, op. cit., p. 140-142.22 Ibidem.23 Michel Pastoureau, op. cit., p. 76.