Quotation from: Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance PeriodWritten by: Paul Lacroix |
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The question of precedence and of superiority had, at every period, been pretty evenly balanced between venery and falconry, each having its own staunch supporters. Thus, in the "Livre du Roy Modus," two ladies contend in verse (for the subject was considered too exalted to be treated of in simple prose), the one for the superiority of the birds, the other for the superiority of dogs. Their controversy is at length terminated by a celebrated huntsman and falconer, who decides in favour of venery, for the somewhat remarkable reason that those who pursue it enjoy oral and ocular pleasure at the same time. In an ancient Treatise by Gace de la Vigne, in which the same question occupies no fewer than ten thousand verses, the King (unnamed) ends the dispute by ordering that in future they shall be termed pleasures of dogs and pleasures of birds, so that there may be no superiority on one side or the other (Fig. 160). The court-poet, William Cretin, who was in great renown during the reigns of Louis XII. and Francis I., having asked two ladies to discuss the same subject in verse, does not hesitate, on the contrary, to place falconry above venery.
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