Helene Benkert | University of Iceland
Camille M. L. Vo Van Qui | University of Exeter
In 1250, the Italian knight Jordanus Rufus wrote what would become the most influential veterinary treatise in the late Middle Ages: De medicina equorum. Rufus, who originated from a Calabrian family, was in charge of the stables of Frederick II, king of Sicily. The sources he used to create this text are unknown but may have included Arabic texts, the ancient Greek author Xenophon, as well as his own experience. This text was extremely popular, with over 170 extant manuscripts. It circulated all over Europe and was translated into several vernacular languages, including Italian, German, French, and even Hebrew. It contains the only known original Western European horse-training method for the medieval period, and its veterinary chapters are representative of the scientific apogee of thirteenth-century Europe through both their content and methods. Rufus inspired many other veterinary authors in the Late Middle Ages.
De medicina equorum is essentially a handbook on how to train and keep a horse, featuring advice on breeding, management as well as illnesses and their remedies. Two chapters are dedicated to the description of the ideal (war)horse and what different physical characteristics say about the horse; for example, a horse with large eyes and nostrils was thought to be brave. Those descriptions are, in part, inspired by conceptions of the horse from Antiquity, popular among other medieval authors, but they also reflect the more personal views and experiences of an expert horseman such as Rufus.
One of the points on which Rufus insists is that the body should be proportionately large (magnus) and long (longus), with corresponding limbs. Though the adjective magnus can refer to size, here it does not necessarily refer to height, but rather to how big the body is. Contemporaneous illustrations show medieval horses as squatter than modern ones, with shorter legs, supporting at least the longus in Rufus' description. The importance of a proportionate animal is stressed on several occasions, but Rufus also favours a fine and elegant head, and asserts that the neck should also be fine and flexible so as to better control the horse. He also mentions that the back should be short; a short back is more stable and also better at translating the power of the hindquarters (the engine of the horse, if you will).
Many of the features praised by Rufus do not relate directly to the horse's skeleton and are, therefore, difficult to reconstruct from the bones, the basis for zooarchaeological analysis. As Christianity swept across Europe, horse burials - a widespread custom on the continent until then - fell out of use, causing the loss of an invaluable source of information. Without these horse skeletons, assessing such things as back or neck length and overall conformation becomes rather challenging. But by combining zooarchaeology and scientific archaeological methods (genetics, geometric morphometrics) with other lines of evidence we are able to paint an increasingly detailed portrait of the horse in medieval Europe.
Withers height, i.e. height measured at the top of the shoulder (the withers) can be reconstructed via the length of the limb bones. The result is an estimate, of course, rather than an accurate assessment of the animal's in-life size. However, such biometric studies have shown that the average withers height for medieval horses was around 13-14 hands high (hh) across Europe. Very few animals have reached 15hh or more, which begs the question: what did Rufus mean when speaking of a horse qualifying as "great" (magnus), and what is our understanding of a large horse?
No medieval written source in Europe made any sort of mention of specific heights until at least the sixteenth century, yet they were very detailed about other aspects of the horses, such as colour and markings, sex, age and origin. Stature was, apparently, not that important then. To us, on the other hand, size is frequently associated with quality or value. The modern trend to breed for ever larger horses speaks for itself. We distinguish between ponies (up to 14.2hh) and horses, with the former often seen as lesser, even amongst the equestrian community, and we thus expect a valuable medieval destrier to have been of a sizeable height. But the truth is that the medieval horses were perfectly capable of performing in war, as well as in everyday life, despite being "only" pony-sized.
There was much symbolism around equine coat colours in the Middle Ages, with white (grey) being especially prized at least in the earlier part of the period, while spotted horses did not find favour. Rufus, however, does not develop the question much. He states that people all have different opinions regarding colour and that there is no point discussing it at length before stating his own preference: a bay horse (bajus), partly white (semialbus), and dark (obscurus). This is very specific and difficult to interpret, but he is possibly describing a dark bay horse with white markings, perhaps in reference to a favourite horse of his.
In the iconography of the period, horse colour preferences vary quite considerably in time and space, but they all have one thing in common: they are solid colours, i.e. bay, black, grey/white, chestnut. Even the horses from the Bayeux tapestry, with their more unlikely hues of green and blue, are exclusively single-coloured. Genetic studies further corroborate this, finding a decrease in spotted horses in the latter half of the Middle Ages. As Rufus said, colour is a matter of personal preference, and such changing trends can be traced throughout the horse's history. And while some colours were (periodically) associated with certain traits, there is no evidence for any one colour to be better. After all, a good horse has no colour.
Rufus does comment on hoof colour specifically, declaring that white hooves are weaker than black ones. This is not exactly true but could result from the empirical observation that bruises show more easily on white hooves as pink marks. Additionally, he mentions the importance of the hooves being hard and round, stressing that horses should not be shod too young so their feet can develop and strengthen. He also describes orthopaedic horseshoes to correct some leg and hoof defects, demonstrating his knowledge of equine conformation. Hooves are an important part of the horse, and their size, shape, and orientation have consequences for the animal's locomotion and usability. Horn, the material hooves are made of, is rarely preserved in the archaeological record, but horseshoes may have been used in its stead to examine hoof size in the past. Meant to protect the hoof, horseshoes became more common during the later Middle Ages, just when horses started being increasingly used outside of warfare (for example, in front of the plough). They also seem to have become larger, possibly reflecting the emergence of early light draft horses.
Draft horses make an appearance in Rufus's text through descriptions of a horse with a large ribcage, small eyes, hairy legs, and holding his tail between his legs. Described as slow and hardworking, this horse is used as a counterpart for the warhorse that was expected to be brave, spirited, and fast. Warhorses came in many different types in the Middle Ages, used for various tasks within the cavalry, but the most famous and valuable was the destrier or "Great horse". Unfortunately, we don't have detailed descriptions of their appearance, nor can we identify archaeological horse remains as those of a warhorse with any certainty; a dead horse was knackered and disposed of no matter its use or value in life. While Rufus does give many physical indications to look out for in a horse, it seems that, ultimately, character and training were what made a good warhorse.
Training of warhorses, in particular, was complex and demanding, especially for the horses who had to learn to overcome their natural instincts. For example, they had to be desensitised to the loud noises of battle and get used to specific equipment such as curb bits and armour. A study of shaffrons, the part of the armour that protects the horse's head, found that these warhorses were not much taller than the average medieval horse, if at all, and depictions of medieval knights on horseback support this. So, the terms magnus and "Great horse" could have had different connotations, and our modern expectations of large (to our understanding) horses in the Middle Ages must be put to rest.
Instead, we need to broaden our view and explore other aspects of these horses, such as shape and character. What made a destrier so valuable if not size, and how could one tell a courser from a palfrey? The literature of the time can, to some extent, provide answers but ought to be supported by archaeological evidence. The (medieval) horse has garnered increasing interest among academics these last few years. With new methodologies and techniques, such as genetic analysis and geometric morphometrics, on the rise, cross-disciplinary investigations will help us fill in more and more gaps in our portrayal of the horse, which was such a fundamental pillar of society in medieval Europe.
Further Reading:
Helene Benkert, 'The Great Horse? — Equine Stature and Morphology in the European Middle Ages', ed. by Alan K. Outram and Oliver H. Creighton (unpublished PhD, University of Exeter, 2023).
John Clark, The Medieval Horse and Its Equipment, c.1150-c.1450, Medieval Finds from Excavations in London (Boydell Press, 2011).
Charles Gladitz, Horse Breeding in the Medieval World (Dublin; Portland, OR: Four Courts Press, 1997).
Ann Hyland, The Horse in the Middle Ages (Stroud: Sutton, 1999).
Medieval Warhorse: Equestrian Landscapes, Material Culture and Zooarchaeology in Britain, AD800-1550, ed. by Oliver H. Creighton and others (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press).
Vo Van Qui, Camille Mai Lan, 'The Education of a Noble Beast: The Breaking-in and Training of Horses in Medieval France (1250-1550)', ed. by Oliver Creighton, Gregory Lippiatt, and Helen Birkett (unpublished PhD, University of Exeter, 2024).
Helene Benkert is a zooarchaeologist who wrote her PhD (University of Exeter) about medieval horses in Europe, in collaboration with the AHRC-funded project 'Warhorse - A medieval revolution?'. She is currently working in Iceland, studying animal remains from medieval monastic houses.
Camille M. L. Vo Van Qui is a medievalist who wrote her PhD (University of Exeter) about the training of horses in medieval France. She analysed several manuscripts containing the French version of Rufus's De medicina equorum and used an experimental approach to determine the efficiency of medieval practices.