The Middle Ages, The Dark Ages, the Medieval Age, all mean the same thing, basically. We usually think of it as the centuries between the fall of the Roman Empire in western Europe until roughly the beginning of the Renaissance (the so-called “Re-birth” of knowledge). During those centuries, wars (including the Crusades), famines, pestilence (Black Death, etc.), monasticism and the power of the Catholic Church, Feudalism, and so so so much more happened. Surprisingly, what is little discussed by most historians is the thing that many Medieval people feared the most: A creature of the forest.
It’s hard to describe the terror this “thing” in the woods brought to people for hundreds of years. There are illustrated stories copied by monks of the period showing the beast with huge teeth, the blood of its victims dripping from them. In these drawings, the creature towers over the hapless folk as it grabs them around the throat and begins to viciously rip them to shreds.
In a world filled with legends and folklore, such a terrible beast caused nightmares and made strong men quake with fear. Woods were thick and dark. Getting lost in them often meant death at the hands (or claws) of wolves and other fabled “monsters” of the time. Tales and stories passed down through the generations only added to the fear that the common people kept in their hearts.
Now, please be aware that people of that period weren’t without their abilities to fight this menace; in fact, many people in the countrysides actively hunted the beastie. They killed it often, to be sure, but the ones they managed to subdue were much, much smaller than the ones depicted in the monks’ texts.
Perhaps, some historians suggest, the hunting of these smaller versions of the beasts was man’s way of trying to gain control over a fear that had been laid deep in man’s heart. But, even if that is true, these smaller versions that people killed (and ate as well) were not the ones feared. No, the ones that filled people’s imagination were, as one writer said, “sadistic, cruel, and violent animals” that no man could easily subdue.
And these things could use swords as well.
Your imagination might be thinking of some type of Grimms’ Fairy Tales-type monster as the one that terrorized generations of Middle Ages Europeans. You’d be wrong.
What was this terror of the Medieval Age?
The common rabbit.
The Rest of the Story 