Tears of the horse

Miniature by Jean Bourdichon from Le Voyage de Gênes (ca.1500), by Jean Marot
Public domain image

“It is a proven thing that many horses cry and shed tears because of the death of their master, and there is no other beast that does so.”[1]

This is what Brunetti Latini (ca 1230-1294) writes in his encyclopaedia, the Livre du Trésor. This statement anthropomorphises the horse, by granting him a human way, tears, of manifesting his feelings of grief, and is part of the general medieval conception of the horse as an exceptional animal with a special relationship to humans. And indeed, according to the author, no other animal can shed tears for the death of their master. 

This characteristic of the horse was also mentioned by Albertus Magnus in the De Animalibus (1250): 

“And [the horses] love their master and grooms so much than when they have lost them, they stop eating and are sad, to the point where they die. It also happens that they cry when they are sad.”[2]

Again, the author insists on the horse’s feelings of sadness, and on its affection not only for is master but also for the people who take care of him. Here, the horse’s grief takes other forms since he is described as capable of starving himself. 

Though it can happens that a horse goes off his food out of anxiety or, indeed, grief, tears are not a manifestation of equine sadness. A horse can shed tears if he has a foreign body in his eye, an infection, or because of dust. But not out of emotion – at least it has not been scientifically proven and there is no indication that it can be the case. Interestingly, in Albertus Magnus’s text, the real manifestation of equine grief takes the precedent over the imagined one (the tears), that seems to be only mentioned in passing. 

Attributing tears of sadness to a horse is a means of anthropomorphising him: it grants them a human way of manifesting their sadness. It is also a way of proving that they can have feelings of grief, since there is a physical demonstration of those, allowing humans to understand, sympathise and maybe identify with the animal. In that sense, claiming that horses can cry is another argument for Brunetti Latini to reinforce his statement that they are unique among the animal kingdom, because of their relationship to Man, and because of their innate qualities. The proximity induced by the use of horses by humans is here taken on another level since they have the same way of expressing their sadness. Maybe the tears could be understood as a metaphor of this proximity, of the bond between horse and rider. 

There is a long history of crying horses, back to Homer’s Iliad, where Achilles’s horses are said to cry at the death of their master. The works of the Antiquity greatly influenced medieval authors from Western Europe, directly or indirectly, so it is not surprising that they should have perpetuated the tradition of crying horses. In the rest of his article on the horse, Brunetti Latini quotes a number of horses from Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece – though not Achilles’s horses– whose behaviour and loyalty towards their riders should serve as an example for the horses of his time. So maybe, the statement that horses cry is, more than anything else, part of the Antique portrayal of the horse, reused by medieval authors. 

It could have been reinforced by empirical observations, maybe a horse shedding tears (because of one of the physical reasons quoted above) at a moment that coincided with the death of his master. Yet the way Latini insists on the fact that horses are the only animals that can do it (no, not even dogs, though they too can cry if they have something in their eye) could suggest he knew crying out of emotion is a specifically human thing. And maybe he knew horses couldn’t either. But that does not matter: his point is that horses are special, so every rumour or story that proves this are included in his article. 

Interestingly, medieval veterinary treaties do not mention tears of emotion, though several treatments for eye infections can be found. Medieval people spent a lot of time with horses and knew them well. However, it can be noted that, unlike the veterinary treaties, encyclopaedias such as Latini’s or Albertus Magnus are not specifically addressed to equine specialists. They give a very general overview of what is known of the horse as a companion of man, and also of what is expected of him. Hence the anthropomorphism at play in those texts, which is not so blatant in more “scientific” ones. 

Granting the horse the capacity to shed tears out of sadness is a way of making him closer to human. It transforms the horse into a mirror, or even an animal double of man. It is a way of insisting on the fact that he has human-like feelings. And it is a way of proving that the horse has the capacity to love his master. This, the idea that the destrier should love the knight riding him, was very important in medieval Europe. Signs were sought to prove that it was the case, that horses were the most appropriate animals to become the trusted companions of men. And the belief that they could cry highlights the medieval desire for reciprocity of feelings between horses and men. 

[1] Brunet Latin, Livre du Trésor, BnF Fr 568 

[2] Albertus Magnus, De Animalibus libri XXVI nach Cölner Urshrift, éd. Herman Stadler, Munster, 1920