Abstract

The division between humans and nonhuman animals was central to medieval European Christianity’s professional thought. Many of these medieval claims have persisted long into the present, chiefly, that among forms of mortal life, only humans possess language, free will, and moral responsibility. A study of medieval thinking and practices of dividing humans from animals thus offers a chance to rethink contemporary methods of dividing humans from nonhumans, in part because the very uncanniness of medieval articulations of these divisions – belonging at once to the Middle Ages and a present that believes itself to have surpassed the medieval – may render modern humanisms equally unfamiliar.