Caring for Animals at the Italian Renaissance Court

Join Dr Sarah Cockram at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh to explore the lives of animals and humans at the Italian Renaissance court.

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The courts of Renaissance Italy were multispecies environments, home to an array of animals. This paper will consider both practical and affective care for these courtly creatures. It investigates the logistics of tending to high status menagerie beasts (whose needs may be difficult to know or to accommodate), of ensuring that hunt animals were on their finest form, and of looking after monkeys, birds, dogs or cats living as favoured companions of the ruling family. Who cared for, and about, the animals at court? What did they do for these animals, and why? And what did this mean for human and animal lives?

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Sarah Cockram is a historian of the late medieval and early modern periods, particularly of Renaissance Italy, specialising in gender history and historical animal studies. Sarah is a Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Glasgow and an Honorary Fellow in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh.

Sarah’s next book will examine Courtly Creatures and her work on Renaissance animals has included attention to interspecies communication and the expertise of handlers of menagerie animals - such as mahouts, lion tamers, and trainers of hunting cheetahs. In the volume Interspecies Interactions: Animals and Humans between the Middle Ages and Modernity, Sarah’s work focussed on beloved companion animals including lapdogs and sleeve cats. Sarah has an interest in questions of health and wellbeing, in the senses, and in the history of human and animal emotion, and her recent publications include a chapter on the ‘History of Emotions’ in the DeGruyter Handbook of Historical Animal Studies.

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Students and under 18s with ID cards and medical practitioners who are Fellows or Members of the College will be admitted free of charge.

Please email library@rcpe.ac.uk if you are a student, under 18 or a Fellow or Member of the College and would like to be added to the attendee list.