Most philosophers today know the thirteenth century as the age of Thomas Aquinas and debates about human nature and the rational soul; fewer are aware of the thirteenth century as an important turning point in western European attitudes toward non-human animals. The two themes are intimately connected, however—the same Aristotelian texts that, newly translated into Latin, were generating controversy about the ifs and hows of the immortality of rational animals were also packed with speculation about the nature of other animals. It was clear that some animals (such as pigs, horses, and monkeys) were extremely clever, for instance, and that any number of others had powers that exceeded those of human beings (such as dogs’ ability to track and falcons’ ability to perceive and retrieve prey). Tales of ravens who spoke even challenged the linguistic line thought to separate human beings from their fellow creatures. As two recent books—Nigel Harris’s The Thirteenth-Century Animal Turn and Ian Wei’s Thinking about Animals in Thirteenth-Century Paris: Theologians on the Boundary between Humans and Animals—make clear, this new interest in animals as subjects of inquiry in their own right (and for what those inquiries might tell us about human nature) manifests itself in a variety of forms, secular and religious, and challenges the notion of a sharp, clear division between human beings and ‘brutes’ (as non-rational animals were often called).Taken separately, Harris’s and Wei’s books present relatively narrow windows into their chosen topics. Both authors address only sources from within the Rome-centered Christian tradition, for instance, with Wei focusing on texts written by five theologians at the University of Paris and Harris drawing insights primarily from texts written outside the Scholastic tradition (such as sermons, chivalric tales and poetry, and legal proceedings). Taken together, however, the two books provide complementary glimpses into a rich world of understudied primary sources and model different methods for approaching those sources. The general picture that emerges of shifting Western Christian attitudes toward animals—expanded from viewing animals primarily as sources of food and/or labor to valuable sources of information about the world and/or the relation of God to creation—should prove valuable to anyone interested in those attitudes either on their own or in relation to attitudes toward animals in other religions and time periods.It is a testament to the breadth of thirteenth-century interest in animals that two books on such similar topics contain almost no overlap in material. In fact, the only medieval figure whose work is addressed in any detail in both volumes is Albert Magnus, indisputably “the” major author on animals in this period. There is also almost no overlap in how Harris and Wei approach their subject matter. Concerned not to go beyond what an author explicitly states about a topic to speculate about “what [the scholar] must actually have thought” (3), Wei provides close readings—indeed, often virtual paraphrases—of texts from the secular cleric William of Auvergne, who establishes the first Franciscan and Dominican chairs at the University of Paris, two Franciscans (Alexander of Hales and Bonaventure), and two Dominicans (Albert Magnus and Thomas Aquinas). Rather than focusing on any one philosophical or theological issue (e.g., arguments against animal immortality or parallels between human and animal cognition), Wei also attempts to capture what his subjects had to say about animals “wherever it cropped up in their more wide-ranging works” (4). By contrast, Harris is explicitly concerned to evoke what he calls the animal ‘moment’ or ‘turn’—“a cultural change in which scholars become increasingly aware of and interested in animals” and during which those scholars “develop new ways of looking at [animals] and writing about them which have implications also for sectors of society situated outside the academic world” (109). To capture this moment, The Thirteenth-Century Animal Turn employs illustrative stories and overviews of social-cultural moves, with quotes from specific texts presented as crystallizations of general points.This stark difference in approach is one reason the books complement each other so well. (I might even go so far as to suggest they are better read together than independently.) While the close commentary in Thinking about Animals in Thirteenth-Century Paris provides a valuable extended window into how animals are discussed in particular texts, Wei is so careful to avoid speculating about authorial intentions that he largely avoids summarizing the results of his careful readings, much less comparing texts from different authors to each other. As a result, the reader is often left to puzzle out both how the views in these texts differ from each other and the potential significance of those differences. (In what seems like an extreme effort not to put words into the mouths of his subjects, for instance, Wei never directly addresses the question of why the work of theologians in thirteenth-century Paris is generally an interesting or important place to search for insight into these questions, or why the work of these theologians in particular is more worthy of attention than that of any number of others. One assumes the explanation is that the University of Paris was the epicenter of the controversy over Aristotle’s freshly translated works and accompanying Islamic commentaries in this period, and thus works from the faculty of theology in this period represent the cutting edge on changing attitudes toward animals and their relation to human beings, with the chosen authors being both influential and representative of a range of views on the topic, but Wei never comes out and says this.)Thinking about Animals in Thirteenth-Century Paris opens with a short but extremely helpful overview—in some ways, the most satisfying part of the book. As Wei notes, “There has been a tendency amongst both literary specialists and historians to suppose … that medieval theologians and philosophers, writing in Latin, all shared a very straightforward view of animals as simply lacking reason, with all other differences from the human arising from this deficiency” (2). Wei rightly responds to this supposition by noting that, given the wide range of sophisticated positions medieval theologians and philosophers take on virtually every other topic, it would be absurd to suppose that there would be wholehearted agreement on the nature and role of animals. The remaining three chapters then provide close readings of particular texts: chapter 1 looks at the De legibus and De universe of William of Auvergne, a secular master instrumental in establishing the theology department at Paris; chapter 2 examines two Franciscan sources—the Summa Halensis (so called because it was attributed to Alexander of Hales) and selections from Bonaventure; chapter 3 turns to selections from two Dominican sources—Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. Each chapter involves painstaking exposition and provides corresponding Latin in extensive footnotes, which is a boon to scholars interested in the works being discussed. The upshot of this exposition is, as mentioned above, left primarily to the reader to figure out. Yet what becomes clear is that, although all the authors in question agree that what separates human beings from other animals is that human beings possess rational capacities which non-human animals lack, this agreement leaves room for a variety of understandings of the nature and use of animal corollaries to those rational capacities—including whether some animals with sufficiently developed estimative abilities could be held morally responsible for their actions.In contrast to Wei’s cautious approach, Harris makes bold claims throughout The Thirteenth-Century Animal Turn about changes in attitudes about animals, supporting those claims with extensive citations from secular as well as religious sources (primarily in Latin and German). Harris’s central thesis is that this period marks a shift in western Europe from characterizing animals as sources of food and labor to considering animals as possessing inner lives and experiences—lives and experiences that indicate that the line dividing animal and human might be both porous and permeable; at the same time, Harris maintains that animals in this period were seen of interest primarily for what they could teach us about human nature. What’s particularly significant about Harris’s claim is that he argues it holds true in secular as well as religious contexts. In chapter 1, Harris focuses on the influence of Aristotle’s newly translated into Latin texts for thirteenth-century animal studies (particularly Albert Magnus’s De animalibus and Emperor Frederick II’s De arte venandi cum avibus); in chapter 2, he examines how Innocent III’s injunction to parish priests to focus more on their preaching led to the widespread use of animals as examples in sermons (mother pelicans become models of self-sacrificing behavior, spiders become models of industrious wisdom, etc.), bringing increased attention to actual animal behavior and experience. Chapter 3 turns to the role animals play in chivalric identity, particularly the vital relation between the knight and his horse (a companion as well as battle-mate); chapter 4 identifies a tension between violence and affection toward animals “common to both thirteenth and twentieth-first centuries” (87)—most significantly, the regular killing of animals and consumption of their flesh while at the same time household pets are common and well treated. The book concludes with a short discussion of what Harris believes these discussions can teach us today, focused on the hope that attention to the inner lives and experiences of animals will bring home to us our interdependence.Harris and Wei both address the “how” of the thirteenth-century ‘animal turn’ much more extensively than the “why,” centering the influence of Aristotle’s newly translated texts on shifting attitudes toward animals. While this is understandable given their focus, Aristotle’s texts did not appear in Latin ex nihilo. The history of their transmission involved a complicated network and exchange of ideas (the full range of which we’re still rediscovering) that included Jewish and Islamic as well as Christian communities, and that also reached into Africa and Asia. Although substantive discussion of the impact of this history on western European Christian attitudes toward animals falls outside the scope of the two books being reviewed here, it would have been helpful for the authors to at least acknowledge the rich multiculturalism of the later Middle Ages and perhaps provide some places to interested readers to go (e.g., Housni Alkhateeb Shedada’s Mamluks and Animals: Veterinary Medicine in Medieval Islam, which begins its coverage in the mid-thirteenth century; Mark Podwal’s eminently accessible A Jewish Bestiary: Fabulous Creatures from Hebraic Legend and Lore, recently reprinted in color; or David Shyovitz’s work on the equation of Jews with animals in medieval Christian literature). What Harris and Wei’s books do, however, and do well is establish the complexity of thirteenth-century attitudes toward animals in northwestern Christian Europe; I expect their work will inspire others to explore these topics in even greater depth and breadth.

中文翻译：

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十三世纪的动物转向：中世纪和二十一世纪的视角在十三世纪的巴黎思考动物：神学家论人与动物的界限

今天的大多数哲学家都知道 13 世纪是托马斯·阿奎那 (Thomas Aquinas) 的时代，也是关于人性和理性灵魂的辩论时代；很少有人意识到 13 世纪是西欧对待非人类动物态度的一个重要转折点。然而，这两个主题密切相关——同样的亚里士多德文本最近被翻译成拉丁文，引发了关于理性动物永生的假设和如何的争论，同时也充满了对其他动物本性的猜测。很明显，有些动物（如猪、马和猴子）非常聪明，例如，其他任何数量的动物都拥有超过人类的能力（如狗的追踪能力和猎鹰的能力）感知和取回猎物）。会说话的乌鸦的故事甚至挑战了人们认为将人类与其他生物区分开来的语言学界线。正如最近的两本书——奈杰尔·哈里斯 (Nigel Harris) 的《十三世纪动物转向》和伊恩·魏 (Ian Wei) 在巴黎十三世纪对动物的思考：人与动物之间边界的神学家——清楚地表明，这种对动物本身作为探究主题的新兴趣（以及这些调查可能会告诉我们关于人性的什么）以各种形式表现出来，世俗的和宗教的，并挑战了人类和“野兽”（因为非理性动物通常是called）。单独来看，Harris 和 Wei 的书对他们选择的主题提供了相对狭窄的窗口。两位作者都只讨论以罗马为中心的基督教传统的来源，例如，Wei 专注于巴黎大学的五位神学家所写的文本，而 Harris 则主要从经院传统以外的文本（如布道、骑士故事和诗歌以及法律程序）中汲取见解。然而，将这两本书放在一起，可以让我们一瞥丰富的未被充分研究的主要资源，并为接近这些资源的不同方法建模。西方基督教对动物态度转变的总体图景——从将动物主要视为食物和/或劳动力的来源扩展到关于世界和/或上帝与创造的关系的宝贵信息来源——应该证明对任何感兴趣的人都是有价值的这些态度本身或与其他宗教和时代对动物的态度有关。两本关于此类相似主题的书在材料上几乎没有重叠，这证明了 13 世纪人们对动物的兴趣之广。事实上，唯一一位在两卷书中都详细介绍了其作品的中世纪人物是阿尔伯特·马格努斯，他无疑是这一时期研究动物的“主要”作家。哈里斯和魏处理主题的方式也几乎没有重叠。为了不超出作者对某个主题明确陈述的内容以推测“[学者] 实际思考的内容”(3)，Wei 提供了来自世俗神职人员威廉的文本的细读——实际上，通常是虚拟释义奥弗涅，他在巴黎大学设立了第一个方济各会和多米尼加教席，两个方济各会（黑尔斯和文德的亚历山大），以及两个多米尼加人（阿尔伯特·马格努斯和托马斯·阿奎那）。魏并没有专注于任何一个哲学或神学问题（例如，反对动物永生或人类与动物认知之间的相似之处），而是试图捕捉他的研究对象不得不说的关于动物的事情“无论它出现在他们更广泛的领域作品”（4）。相比之下，哈里斯明确关注唤起他所谓的动物“时刻”或“转向”——“一种文化变革，在这种变革中，学者们对动物的认识和兴趣越来越大”，在此期间，这些学者“发展出新的观察方式[动物] 并撰写有关它们的文章，这对学术界以外的社会部门也有影响”（109）。为了捕捉这一刻，十三世纪的动物转变采用了说明性的故事和社会文化运动的概述，引用特定文本作为一般观点的结晶。这种方法上的明显差异是这些书相互补充得很好的原因之一。（我什至可能会建议将它们一起阅读比单独阅读更好。）虽然《Thinking about Animals in Thirteenth-Century Paris》中的密切评论提供了一个有价值的扩展窗口，可以了解特定文本中如何讨论动物，Wei 非常谨慎为了避免猜测作者的意图，他在很大程度上避免总结他仔细阅读的结果，更不用说将不同作者的文本相互比较了。因此，读者常常会困惑于这些文本中的观点有何不同以及这些差异的潜在意义。但 Wei 从未出来说这个。）《Thinking about Animals in Thirteenth-Century Paris》以一个简短但非常有用的概述开篇——在某些方面，这是本书中最令人满意的部分。正如魏指出的那样，“文学专家和历史学家都倾向于假设……中世纪的神学家和哲学家，用拉丁文写作，都非常直截了当地认为动物只是缺乏理性，所有其他差异都来自人类从这个缺陷”（2）。魏对这一假设做出了正确的回应，他指出，鉴于中世纪神学家和哲学家几乎在所有其他主题上都采取了广泛而复杂的立场，假设对动物的性质和作用达成全心全意的一致是荒谬的。其余三章随后提供了对特定文本的细读：第 1 章着眼于奥弗涅的威廉的 De legibus 和 De 宇宙，他是一位在巴黎建立神学系的世俗大师；第 2 章考察了方济各会的两个来源——Summa Halensis（之所以这样称呼是因为它归功于黑尔斯的亚历山大）和 Bonaventure 的选集；第 3 章转向来自两个多米尼加来源的选择——阿尔伯特大帝和托马斯阿奎那。每一章都经过精心的阐述，并在大量脚注中提供了相应的拉丁文，这对于对所讨论的作品感兴趣的学者来说是一个福音。如上所述，这个说明的结果主要留给读者去弄清楚。然而，越来越清楚的是，哈里斯的中心论点是，这一时期标志着西欧的转变，从将动物描述为食物和劳动力的来源，转变为将动物视为拥有内在生命和体验——这些生活和体验表明，动物和人类的分界线可能既有渗透性又有渗透性; 与此同时，哈里斯坚持认为，这一时期的动物之所以受到关注，主要是因为它们可以教会我们有关人性的知识。哈里斯的主张特别重要的是，他认为它在世俗和宗教背景下都适用。在第 1 章中，哈里斯重点介绍了亚里士多德新译成拉丁文的 13 世纪动物研究著作（尤其是阿尔伯特·马格努斯的《论动物》和腓特烈二世皇帝的《论艺术与动物》）的影响；在第 2 章中，他研究了英诺森三世对教区牧师更多关注他们的布道的禁令如何导致在布道中广泛使用动物作为例子（鹈鹕妈妈成为自我牺牲行为的典范，蜘蛛成为勤劳智慧的典范，等等），带来更多注意实际的动物行为和经验。第 3 章转向动物在骑士身份中扮演的角色，特别是骑士和他的马（同伴和战友）之间的重要关系；第 4 章确定了对动物的暴力和喜爱之间的紧张关系“在 13 世纪和 20 世纪都很常见”(87)——最重要的是，经常杀死动物并食用它们的肉，而与此同时，家养宠物也很常见并且很好对待。这本书的结尾简短地讨论了哈里斯认为这些讨论今天可以教给我们什么，重点是希望关注动物的内心生活和经历将使我们认识到我们的相互依存关系。哈里斯和魏都谈到了“如何”十三世纪的“动物转向”比“为什么”更广泛，集中了亚里士多德新翻译的文本对动物态度转变的影响。虽然鉴于他们的关注点这是可以理解的，但亚里士多德的文本并没有以拉丁文 ex nihilo 出现。他们的传播历史涉及一个复杂的网络和思想交流（我们仍在重新发现其全部范围），其中包括犹太人和伊斯兰教以及基督教社区，并且还延伸到非洲和亚洲。尽管关于这段历史对西欧基督徒对待动物态度的影响的实质性讨论不在本文所评论的两本书的范围之内，但作者至少承认中世纪后期丰富的多元文化主义，也许会有所帮助为感兴趣的读者提供一些去处（例如，Housni Alkhateeb Shedada 的《马穆鲁克人和动物：中世纪伊斯兰教的兽医》，该书从 13 世纪中叶开始报道；Mark Podwal 的《犹太寓言：来自希伯来传说和传说的神奇生物》 ，最近以彩色重印；或 David Shyovitz 关于中世纪基督教文学中犹太人与动物等式的著作）。然而，Harris 和 Wei 的书所做的是，做得好的是建立十三世纪西北部基督教欧洲对动物的复杂态度；我希望他们的工作能激励其他人更深入、更广度地探索这些主题。