Lap dogs of medieval ladies: pampered pets or status symbols

Part 1

What counted as a lap dog in the Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, most dogs had jobs, from hunting to guarding to turning roasting spits in the kitchen. Hunting dogs such as greyhounds and bloodhounds sat at the top of that world, prized for their speed and their sense of smell. The English physician John Caius later ranked these delicate, pretty dogs below hunting dogs but above ordinary mongrels, because of their link to the noble classes who kept them. He also wrote that the smaller a puppy was, the more pleasure it gave its owner.

Owning a dog carried different meanings depending on who held the leash. Men were more likely to keep active dogs meant to protect life and property, while women preferred small dogs they could cradle and pamper. If you have ever chosen a small dog mainly for its company, you are following a very old pattern.

Part 2

Why medieval noblewomen kept lap dogs

Dogs were welcomed inside noble homes, especially by women, once hunting turned into an aristocratic pastime rather than something everyone needed to do to eat. Keeping a lap dog well fitted into a wider aristocratic culture of living nobly, where visible luxury marked out a household's status. A miniature from the period even shows a lady in conversation with the knight Sir Lancelot while she holds a small dog.

• Owners fitted their dogs with leashes made from fine materials.
• They dressed their dogs in small coats.
• They gave their dogs cushions to rest on.

In art from the period, a dog shown with a lady often stood for fidelity, echoing the loyalty expected between a husband and wife. Clergy also kept lap dogs indoors, even though the church formally disapproved of pets.

Part 3

Lap dogs in medieval art and literature

Manuscript illustrations from the period show a nun holding her lapdog. Tomb effigies carried the same message into stone and brass. On Archbishop William Courtenay's tomb in Canterbury Cathedral, a long-eared dog wearing a belled collar lies at his feet, a convention often used for lap dogs in this kind of art. Some effigies even name the dog: Lady Cassy's little dog Terri appears on her brass at Deerhurst wearing a collar of bells. A dog named Jakke lies at the foot of Sir Brian de Stapleton's effigy at Ingham. Because Lady Cassy's brass was commissioned after her husband's death, naming her own dog looks like her personal choice rather than a standard convention. One manuscript shows two small white dogs allowed onto the table at a feast. If you look closely at old church monuments, you may still spot a small dog like these resting at a lady's feet.

Part 4

Church and social criticism of lap dogs

The church formally disapproved of pets, though clerics themselves often kept lap dogs indoors just as women did. Nuns kept lap dogs too, even though critics said this fit less easily with convent life than with the households of noblewomen outside it. Rules existed against nuns keeping pets, yet many nuns kept them anyway. Chaucer's Prioress was criticised in this spirit for feeding her small dogs roast meat and good bread. A fourteenth-century preacher named John Bromyard complained that the wealthy fed their dogs more readily, more abundantly, and more delicately than they fed the poor. A later critic condemned lap dogs outright as instruments of folly kept to satisfy wanton women's wills, made to lie in laps and ride in coaches while carried around like playthings. You can hear the same disapproving tone used against fashionable dogs that was also used against fashionable clothes, both dismissed as trifles that wasted time better spent elsewhere.

Part 5

From medieval lap dogs to today's toy dogs

Medieval writers described these toy dogs as having faces like a pug but with a longer nose. Their coats could be long or short, and their tails were worn long. Indoor lap dogs like these were signifiers of elite social rank in noble households. You give your own dog that same kind of attention now, even if you never think of it as continuing a habit from the Middle Ages.