MINORITY REPORT –PART ONE: ANIMALS AND THE SAINTS

“The saints are exceedingly loving and gentle to mankind, and even to brute beasts ... Surely we ought to show them [animals] great kindness and gentleness for many reasons, but, above all, because they are of the same origin as ourselves.” 

                                                                         ~ St. John Chrysostom 

            The Christian tradition, on the whole, has not been kind to animals.  As we have seen, the dominant voice in the history of the tradition has held that animals were created for the benefit of humans.  Therefore, as Augustine explained in The City of God, animals are “subjected to us to kill or keep alive for our uses,” or as Aquinas expressed it in his Summa Theologica, “charity does not extend to irrational creatures.”[1]  This viewpoint has had devastating consequences for animals and, I would argue, for humans.  It is a viewpoint that is alive and well today as our culture uses and abuses billions of animals every year for human convenience and entertainment. 

            But there has always been another voice in the Christian tradition, a voice pleading for compassion for our fellow creatures, a voice that recognizes our obligations to animals.  In this post, I want to take a brief look at the earliest part of that tradition, considering how stories of the lives of the saints recognize the connection between compassion for animals and holiness.  In coming posts, I’ll look at some of the writings of John Wesley, Humphrey Primatt, and social reformers like William Wilberforce, whose faith compelled them to plead for – and act with - mercy and compassion toward our fellow creatures.  

Saint Blaise.with animals

           
Very early in the Christian tradition, stories of the saints began to be told and retold.  It is remarkable how many of these stories involve the saints’ relationships with animals, either the saints’ kindness toward animals, the animals’ trust of and kindness toward the saints, or both.  We see in these stories an acknowledgement of the connection between compassionate relationships with our fellow creatures and a life lived as God would have us live.  In many cases, we see a glimpse of the original paradise of creation and the new creation, a world where humans and animals live in harmony and mutual respect.  
             Richard Bauckham, in his book Living With Other Creatures, discusses some of these stories.[2] Bauckham explains that these stories “run from the desert fathers of the fourth century to the Franciscan saints of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,” the same period as the mainline tradition that has contributed to animals being held in such little esteem.[3]  In addition, they were popular “from Egypt to Belgium, from Georgia to Ireland.”[4]  As Bauckham acknowledges, many of these stories are hard for modern readers to believe, but their historical veracity is not necessarily the point.  Instead, these stories convey the idea of mutually, respect, and relationship with animals that reflects a biblical understanding of the order of creation and is part of a life lived in search of holiness. 

I would add that we should not be too hasty to dismiss some of these stories as fanciful.  Animal behaviorist (ethologist) Dr. Marc Bekoff, in his book The Emotional Lives of Animals, recounts numerous stories of wild animals helping humans, such as dolphins protecting humans from sharks and even wild lions in Ethiopia rescuing a young girl from a gang who had kidnapped her, guarding her until the police arrived, then disappearing again into the forest.[5]   

Saint Kevin and the blackbird, miniature of an Irish codex, ca. 9th or 10th cent.

Bauckham discusses a number of the stories of the saints, including the Irish saint, Kevin, who died in 618, and who, when told by an angel that a great city would rise up around a monastery he was to construct in the wilderness, protested to the angel that he did not want to disturb the animals who lived in that wild place, saying “all the wild creatures on these mountains are my house mates, gentle and familiar with me, and what you have said would make them sad.”[6]  Other stories include stags coming to help monks plow their fields when the monks had no oxen, wolves protecting a saint’s garden from a wild boar, saints protecting animals from hunters, and saints providing food and water for animals.[7]  He sums up his discussion with these words: 

. . . the tradition of hermits and animals understands the human dominion over the rest of creation as a hierarchical relationship of mutual service and care: the animals willingly serve those who serve God, but the servants of God care for and protect the animals.  Moreover, the sense of hierarchy is strongly qualified by a sense of common creatureliness.[8]

Laura Hobgood-Oster, in her books Holy Dogs & Asses[9] and The Friends We Keep[10], has also examined the presence of animals in the early Christian tradition, including in the stories of the lives of the saints.  In The Friends We Keep, she tells of St. Jerome, known for his kindness to an injured lion, and Abba Macarius, who did not eat an antelope provided by God when the Abba was hungry, but nursed from her instead, and of Simeon Stylites who defended a pregnant deer from hunters.[11]  Hobgood-Oster writes, “I could go on and on.  The tradition is so rich with these stories. . . . Each of these holy people was closely connected to animals and sought after their well-being; they extended hospitality to the entire creation.”[12]  Moreover, Hobgood-Oster continues, “humans are not the only ones who offer hospitality.  Other animals do so as well, providing safety, food, and companionship to humans.”[13]  Paul the Hermit, for example, was fed by a raven, while St. Mary of Egypt was buried by a lion.

Saint Jerome Extracting a Thorn from a Lion's Paw

In Holy Dogs & Asses, Hobgood-Oster examines a number of other stories of animals in companionship with – and as – saints.  She considers stories of animals as models of piety, as sources of revelation, as saintly martyrs, and as close companions.[14]  As Hobgood-Oster summarizes in The Friends We Keep:

Yes, in the lives of the saints, the stories of encounters between animals and humans are striking and abundant.  Humans and animals offer each other the gift of hospitality, usually without expecting anything in return.  It is a model that exemplifies the radical notion that developed early in the tradition and carried through the Middle Ages. . . . As humans became and continue to become more urban and less connected to animals and the natural world around them, animals are increasingly removed from the sacred circle of hospitality.[15]

            To insist on a faith that takes seriously our obligations to care compassionately for the animals, even when it may not be convenient for us, is not therefore, to import a modern, secular sensibility into the Christian tradition.  It is to reclaim our deepest traditions of holiness and to recognize the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.

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[1] St. Augustine, The City of God, tr. Marcus Dods (Edinburgh: T.T. Clark, 1877) Book 1, 30-2, quoted in Linzey, Andrew and Paul Barry Clarke, eds. Animal Rights: A Historical Anthology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 59-60; and Thomas Aquinas, ‘Summa Theologica’ in Fathers of the English Dominican Providence (trs) The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas (New York: Benzinger Bros., 1918) quoted in Linzey & Clarke, Animal Rights, 104.

[2] Bauckham, Richard. Living With Other Creatures: Green Exegesis and Theology. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2011.  Baukham cites to additional resources for more informationon the topic of saints and animals:  Helen Waddell, Beasts and Saints (London: Constable, 1934), and David N. Bell, Wholly Animals: A Book of Beastly Tales (Cistercian Studies 128; Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1992). See Baukham, p. 29, note 55. Once again this is a topic that I can address only in the most cursory way in a blog post.  Those interested in this topic should investigate these additional resources. 

[3] Bauckham, p. 30.

[4] Bauckham, p. 30.

[5] Bekoff, Marc. The Emotional Lives of Animals. Novato: New World Library, 2007, pp. 16-17.

[6] Bauckham, pp. 31-32.

[7] Bauckahm, pp. 32-24.

[8] Bauckham, p. 35.

[9] Hobgood-Oster, Laura. Holy Dogs & Asses: Animals in the Christian Tradition. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008

[10] Hobgood-Oster, Laura. The Friends We Keep: Unleashing Christianity's Compassion for Animals. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2010

[11] Hobgood-Oster, The Friends We Keep, pp. 122-23.

[12] Hobgood-Oster, The Friends We Keep, pp. 123-24, 126.

[13] Hobgood-Oster, The Friends We Keep, p. 126.

[14] Hobgood-Oster,  Holy Dogs & Asses, pp. 63-80.

[15] Hobgood-Oster, The Friends We Keep, p. 129.