Danger and martyrdom were also part of most prominent monastic image of danger from the forest: wild animals. Wild animals were central to Sigibert’s 648 description of the Ardennes, retained their importance in Carolingian hagiography, and were still an active part of the monastic imagination in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Fear of these wild animals, both real and imagined, loomed large: in charters and hagiographical materials alike, readers encounter wolves, lions, bears, and unnamed wild beasts. There were many standard metaphors in Christianity that tied animals to moral, religious, and political ideas. These “animal exemplars” appeared in bestiaries, biblical commentaries, encyclopedias, and other writings. By discussing animals as part of Stavelot’s environmental imagination, I am not arguing that the monks were unique in equating wolves, lions, or sheep with people and moral ideas. It is important to recognize that they were building on, and at times elaborating on, a common well of imagery, and that these images recur frequently and vividly over five centuries of sources.42 My goal here is to explore the examples employed within this single set of sources, and, specifically, to show how these uses relate to the idea of wilderness and to fear of the forest environment.
The presence of wild animals, both dangerous and docile, was one of the hallmarks of medieval forests; bears, wolves, boar, beaver, deer, squirrels, and many other animals dwelled in the forests, using the trees as shelter and the rivers and glades for nourishment, part of what has been described as an early medieval world of “vigorous animality.”43 Archaeology reinforces textual impressions; in the Ardennes, excavations have yielded remains from deer, roe deer, boars, foxes, and possibly aurochs. A single deposit at Wellin, inhabited as early as A.D. 650, produced bones from boar, deer, roe deer, fox, and sparrow-hawk.44
No wolf bones have been excavated in the Ardennes, and there are no medieval records of wolf numbers for the region, but comparative evidence suggests that the medieval Ardennes would have sheltered many wolves.45 Charlemagne’s wolf-hunters were given instructions in the capitulary De Villis, and a bishop of Metz wrote to the emperor, boasting about killing more than a hundred wolves.46 Whatever their actual numbers, wolves dominated the imagination of the monks of Stavelot (even though in this period, the direct link between Remacle and the wolf that is celebrated today was not yet established). In part, this discrepancy is due to a broader human fear of wolves that is unconnected to the degree of threat they pose. Wolves rarely attack people. Instead, as Jon Coleman has argued, because they pose a threat to sheep, deer, and the human use of animal resources, they are perceived as dangerous and monstrous.47 Because wolves were imagined to be a threat, the monks told vivid stories of actual and metaphoric wolves attacking people and threatening the monastic lifestyle.
The vita Popponis (ca. 1060), for example, includes a detailed story of a wolf attack. Its author (or authors—see handlist) ascribes a malicious intent to the wild animal, invoking the fear that people, daily exposed to danger, might have had of the randomness of the wilderness. “Behold!” the author commanded, “a wolf, then thirsting for human blood made an attack from out of the dark forest haunts, and violently seized a shepherd who had been grazing his flock in the area and dragged him by his defenseless neck to a distant place that was fit for his foul desires.”48 Unfortunately, the search party sent out into the swamps arrived too late, and they were “unable find any traces of life in the man, nor did they see the wolf anywhere.”49
The sources from Stavelot abound with saints and abbots described as shepherds protecting the flocks of the faithful from spiritual danger, represented by wolves. Sometimes, these messages are cursory and abbreviated, such as Wibald’s request for papal support, “lest the errant sheep be torn apart in the jaws of the wolves.”50 But some of the sources elaborate on the theme, highlighting the ferocity of the wolves and the flexibility of biblical images. In the vita Remacli, Heriger invented dying words for the saint, who tells his monks, “I fear for you, lest, if the rapacious wolves were to come at you, there would be no one who could repel them from you.”51 Heriger also wrote that monks, “the most brave fighters for Christ, not wishing to be bound fast inside the peace of the cloister, spring forward, lain bare, into the field of battle; so that they might not be made deserters from the spiritual battle, nor be like mercenaries fleeing at the sight of a wolf.”52
Wibald acknowledged that the wolf was a metaphor for danger, fear, and even the wilderness. During a period in which he was struggling with maintaining three houses, and wrapped up in several political struggles, Wibald described the many problems and dangers faced by the church of Stavelot. Mixing his metaphors, he wrote: “We saw therefore not one single wolf approaching (unless perhaps we recognize one wolf as the entire phalanx of demons) but countless armies of many wolves, which were holding their gaping mouths open with wild rage for the purpose of devouring the church of Stavelot and the greater part of Lotharingia. But God sent the holy spirit from the heavens and closed the mouth of the lion.”53 Of course, these examples draw on common Christian associations of religious care and leadership with the guardianship of a shepherd over his flock. However, these passages, like sections of vitae that contain quotations of other Christian works, cannot be ignored or eliminated as derivative. Although some biblical citations were arguably archaisms or citations of older ideas perhaps no longer relevant, the Bible was a living and vibrant part of contemporary medieval culture and a source that could be used by medieval writers at will to express numerous and often conflicting ideas. Though a universal symbol, the wolf was clearly meaningful for the monks, as they chose to use it in many different contexts. There were many older religious and literary images that could be borrowed or employed by medieval writers, and it is worth paying attention to the monks’ selection and frequent use of this particular metaphor.
And the wolf was an exceptionally good metaphor. The wolf represented alien threats and dangers. Bestiaries, which became increasingly prominent in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries but were based on earlier works, reported that the wolf was “a ravenous beast, and thirsts for blood.” The wolf was, moreover, “the devil, who is always envious of mankind, and continually prowls round the sheepfolds of the Church’s believers, to kill their souls and corrupt them.”54 In a tense exchange between Wibald and Robert, the deacon of Stavelot at a moment of crisis, the wolf became the vehicle for airing fears and criticisms. Robert, urging Wibald not to abandon the monastery, chided him that “a wolf having been seen, a good pastor would never abandon his pastoral office.”55 Wibald responded to this direct challenge, taking up the metaphor and extending it: “As to that which you wrote, moreover, because ‘a wolf having been seen, a good pastor would never abandon his pastoral office,’ your experience ought to recall how many, how great, what savage wolves [I] have pulled down while being in charge of Stavelot these past twenty years, which I have borne up not without the risk of mortal danger, grave scandals, and reproach.” He then added that (in part because of the political complexity of his assumption of control of Corvey), he could not serve only Stavelot, “since wolves are not lacking in the church of Corvey, and a pastor who is both present and vigilant is also necessary there.”56 This is but one of many times that Wibald felt that he was spread too thin, as seen in his comment that “pulled in many directions, I hold the wolf by the ears.”57
The wolf also represented the perceived boundary between men and animals. When Poppo heard of the shepherd attacked by the wolf, he was mortified by the violence of the attack, and prayed to God for the life of “this man who was made in your image and likeness [and] is now the prey of a wolf.”58 In the Miracula Remacli, the existence of this divide is reinforced by its transgression. In a sign of divine displeasure and disorder, “wolves and bears had been violently breaking into the city of Vienne, devouring many people throughout the entire year.”59 Wild animals threatened human life and violated the established border between the wilderness and civilization. Bestiaries from the twelfth century help provide insight into the interpretive context of such comments, connecting Stavelot-Malmedy’s sources to wider monastic ideas. Wolves represented a boundary of sorts between the wild and the domestic, as some bestiaries include discussions of how the wolf “loses