Jordanus Rufus's De medicina equorum - Chapter 1: On the procreation and birth of the foal

 Yvain ou le chevalier au lion by Chrétien de Troyes.
Manuscrit BN MS fr.1433, fol. 80v (c. 1325)
(c) Bibliothèque nationale de France

In 1250, the Italian knight Jordanus Rufus wrote the most significant veterinary treatise of his time, the De medicina equorum, which discussed and gave remedies for a large variety of diseases, from farcy (a contagious and often fatal bacterial disease), to colic, to hoof injuries. This treatise also contains the only original method for training horses in medieval Western Europe. This method was initially destined to warhorses but it ended up being applied on other types of horses. 

In a series of three articles, I will present an English translation of the first three chapters of the treatise which contain the training method. This translation is based on the Latin edition made in 1818 by Jérôme Molin: because the original manuscript written by Rufus is lost, the edition, which recreates what the original text could have been, based on several manuscripts including one of the oldest, is universally considered by historians as an essential source for studies on Rufus. 

I first translated Molin's text (from Latin to French) in the course of my Master's degree. I made the following translation into English a few years ago to share with members of the University of Exeter Warhorse project. Because it is a working text, it is very close to the Latin original and as such can seem clunky and weirdly phrased. I am publishing it on the blog now to give anyone interested in the topic of medieval horse training in Western Europe an insight into its most significant source. 

Chapter 1: On the procreation and birth of the foal

First, on the procreation and birth of the foal. I say that the horse must first be conceived by a stallion, who must always be carefully and studiously kept, little or not at all ridden, and with as little labour and agitation, and with as much care as possible; on the contrary, the stallion must engender the horse according to his pleasure and to his greatest advantage; because when the horse covers the mare with very little labour et to his greatest advantage, he issues seed that is more important and denser, and then the horse will be conceived taller and bigger in his mother’s womb. 

And you must know that the horse must be conceived in the right season so that he is born in the season when there is much grass, because, since his mother will be grazing sufficiently, she will give her foal sufficient and suitable milk, and that is the truth. Indeed, if the horse, from the time of his birth, is diligently fed with an abundance of milk and grass, his muscles become firmer and his body and limbs become bigger. 

When the mare is pregnant, like I have said, she must be neither too fat nor too thin, but in-between, because if the mare was too plump, the fat inside would press on her womb so much that the foal’s body and limbs would not fully stretch within her belly. Thus, the horse would be made very small and frail. If, on the other hand, she was too thin, she would not produce enough food for her foal and because of that, he would be born thin and weak. 

Then, when the time for his birth has come, the horse must be born in a rocky and stony mountainous place, because if the horse is born in a rocky and mountainous place, his feet become harder and stronger due to the continuous exercise, from his birth and youth, on the mountains and rocks. Thanks to the mountainous place, I say that his legs become better, due to the exercise of going up and down the mountain. Indeed, nature works efficiently towards this. Thanks to the exercise, the bones of the legs can also become bigger. 

And when the mare is pregnant with the horse, she must not in any way be kept enclosed, during the day or at night, because due to the hunger and thirst she endures in an enclosed place during the day or at night, she could sometimes abort her foal. 

Moreover, the horse must continuously follow his mother in good, grassy pastures until he has reached the age of two years and no more. In truth, I say no more, because when the horse is older than two years, he will naturally want to copulate. And then, if he follows his mother, he would worsen slightly due to his desire for natural copulation with his mother or with some other mare, and he could easily be wounded in some part of his body. However, I believe that if the horse has freedom, in sufficient pastures, until the age of three years old, without the company of mares, it will be better and healthier for him. Because when he roams without interruption in the plains, the air and freedom are naturally means of preserving the health of the body and limbs of the horse. The limbs, especially, are cleansed from all defects and better in every way.