The Wild Huntsman in Bernat Metge’s Lo somni

The exchange between folk culture and elite culture has been a constant throughout history. Medieval literature often draws on Greco-Roman and biblical sources alongside oral tradition, bringing them together in original and compelling ways. From folk tradition came post-pagan, syncretic, and Christianized elements that contributed to a rich range of genres, each with its own conventions and familiar themes. The richness, vitality, and originality of medieval literature stand in sharp contrast to the rigid, gloomy image often associated with the period. Literature in Catalan was no exception to this diversity of genres and narrative forms. Lo somni offers a clear example.

We can see this in the scene that opens the work. The ghost of King John appears in the cell where Metge presents himself as a prisoner, accompanied by a retinue that evokes the Wild Huntsman. The scene draws together a range of sources, as much medieval literature does. During the Middle Ages and the early modern period, the motifs of the Huntsman [E501.1] and the Wild Hunt [E501] entered both folk and courtly literature as familiar themes adapted to different purposes. In popular literature and song, the motif appeared in chapbooks, street theatre, ballads, and romances, among other forms. In courtly literature, to which Lo somni belongs, it could serve political, satirical, or comic purposes. It could also appear as a religious exemplum intended to instruct, often in a preacher’s sermon, as a recurring scene in epic literature, usually in a considerably subdued form, or as a decorative element drawn from a rural culture that courtiers regarded as exotic.

In this article, I will examine the folk elements in this scene from Lo somni and introduce other legends of the period for comparison with Metge’s work.

The Cursed Huntsman in Bernat Metge’s Lo somni

Lo somni is regarded as one of the masterpieces of medieval Catalan literature. It was completed around 1399 by Bernat Metge (c. 1340–1413), a Barcelona-born writer and courtier who served as a royal secretary and notary. Metge follows the example of the “Three Crowns” of the Italian Renaissance —Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio— as well as classical works such as Cicero’s Dream of Scipio and Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. A highly learned writer, he uses the classical form of dialogue. Here the speakers are a character bearing his own name, imprisoned in an echo of Metge’s personal experience, and the late monarch John I the Hunter. The king had died only a few years earlier, in 1396, while hunting in the woods near Foixà, in the Empordà region (Metge 1959).

Posthumous portrait of John I the Hunter, 1634, based on Filippo Ariosto’s series of portraits from the late sixteenth century.
Artist unknown. CC BY-SA 4.0 licence, via Wikimedia Commons.

The opening scene of Lo somni reads as follows (Metge 1959).

“There appeared before me a man of medium height and venerable countenance, dressed in crimson velvet, with his brow adorned with double crowns of gold and a red hat on his head [King John]. He was accompanied by two tall men. One was a very handsome young man holding a rota [a stringed instrument]. The other was very old and blind, with a long beard and a large staff in his hand. Around them were many falcons, goshawks, and dogs of various kinds, all making a dreadful din of cries and howls.”

Here we find submotifs such as E501.1.1, a king as the Wild Huntsman, and E501.4.1, dogs in the Wild Hunt. The two “tall men” accompanying King John are the poet Orpheus, who descended into the underworld, and the blind seer Tiresias.

Medievalists Martí de Riquer, Lluís Cabré, and Joan Mahiques, among others, have noted striking similarities between King John I’s ghostly retinue and the Cursed Huntsman. What is especially interesting is that, despite its classical and learned references, the scene also seems close to oral and folk tradition. Cabré, for example, describes its “terrifying retinue of two infernal figures amid the cries of birds and dogs” as “more like that of Count Arnau or the Cursed Huntsman —and other legendary spirits— than anything in classical tradition” (Cabré 2002, 55). Mahiques adds that “the agitated presence of birds and dogs suggests the purgation of a wandering soul subjected to sinister pursuits, as in the lore of the Wild Hunt or the ‘Mesnie Hellequin’, further evidence that John I’s appearance represents a private purgatory” (Mahiques 2005, 15). The resemblance to the Wild Hunt lies chiefly in the ghostly retinue, the dogs, and the din. Metge uses these folk elements to depict a restless soul alongside figures and references from learned tradition. The parallel does not, however, mean that he drew directly on any particular oral version of the legend. Rather, he combines folk and learned motifs, with the legend as one source of inspiration. As I will discuss in the second part of this article, Metge may have encountered it indirectly, chiefly through Italian authors, and probably through oral tradition as well.

On one level, Lo somni can be read as Metge’s attempt to defend his innocence before the new king, Martin the Humane. Several members of John I’s circle were imprisoned amid the court intrigues that followed his death. Metge himself was jailed on charges of corruption. The work is also a learned philosophical discussion of the immortality of the soul, drawing extensively on classical sources, and a commentary on political events of the day, including the Western Schism. It addresses many other subjects too, among them a sharp critique of society. Tiresias, for example, attacks women’s behaviour, and Metge responds by defending women while criticizing men in turn. No one emerges without blame.

In portraying the condemned King John, Metge draws on traits that the work’s first readers, members of Martin the Humane’s court, would have known well. He focuses particularly on the late king’s fondness for festivities, banquets, minstrels, and other forms of courtly entertainment —and also for alchemy, astrology, and magic, though I will leave those for another article—. This leads to a notable feature of the work. The originality of Lo somni does not lie in imagining a supernatural royal retinue for the first time. Medieval literature already knew legendary figures such as King Herla and King Arthur, both associated with spectral rides. Later traditions would also connect this imagery with historical rulers who had become figures of legend, such as Barbarossa and Charlemagne.

As Dante had done with figures from his own time, Metge applies this imagery to John I, a historical ruler who had died only recently and whom the author had known personally. Metge turns one of the king’s well-known pleasures —hunting— into a purgatorial punishment. He does not depict John as a huntsman leading an endless pursuit, but as a dead man tormented by the animals that had once given him pleasure. A folk motif becomes a literary response to a recent death and the political tensions that followed it. In this respect, Metge was a strikingly modern writer for his time, fully engaged with Renaissance culture.

Rudolf Friedrich August Henneberg, Der wilde Jäger (The Wild Huntsman), 1856.
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Alte Nationalgalerie / Andres Kilger. Public domain.

The endless hunt as punishment for sin

Metge presents John I as a man of medium height, richly dressed in crimson velvet and golden crowns. He also makes clear that the king’s former pleasures, music and hunting, have become instruments of torment. Both are brought together in a single retinue dominated by the unbearable noise of animals that John once hunted or used in the hunt. These details recall motifs such as E501.4.1.10, dogs howling and barking in the Wild Hunt; E501.13.1, noise announcing the Wild Hunt; and E501.13.4, the baying of hounds announcing the Hunt’s appearance. Penance in purgatory for sins committed in life is one of the central themes of Lo somni. The portrayal of the king’s sins can also be read in light of Metge’s position at the new court. John I’s punishment is temporary. He suffers for his sins in purgatory, but is not damned forever. As Mahiques observes, the king cannot enter heavenly glory until the Western Schism ends, an event that Lo somni links to the responsibilities of monarchs. His purgatory therefore has a political dimension as well (Mahiques 2005, 23).

This idea was characteristic of the period. Religious exempla and sermons from both before and after Lo somni suggest that hunting could lead to sin. One exemplum circulated across Europe and survives in Catalan in an early fifteenth-century manuscript. Marià Aguiló published it in 1881 in the Recull de eximplis e miracles (Aguiló 1881, I, 81–82).

“A knight from Bona [probably Beaune, in Burgundy] was deeply devout and welcomed the poor and pilgrims. After his death, all his other sins had been purged, yet he remained in purgatory solely because he had hunted with sparrowhawks and other birds. He held a goshawk that continually pecked and gnawed at his hand, causing him great pain.”

Hunting was not considered sinful in itself. The point of such stories is that an excessive passion for it could lead people to neglect their religious duties to God. Other exempla make the same point through pastimes or addictions such as gambling —including card games—, dancing —which I discuss in detail in Rondalles del Diable— and drinking, as well as sins such as gluttony, associated with banquets, or lust and prostitution. In these religious exempla, sin arises when attention to the physical world eclipses spiritual concerns and attachment to material things becomes excessive and unbalanced.

Later in the work, Metge writes (Metge 1959).

“Because I took such pleasure in hunting,” he [King John] said, “Our Lord God has ordained that these falcons, goshawks, and dogs you see around me should cry out and howl bitterly before me, hour after hour. And because I delighted in singers and minstrels [musicians], this man holding the rota [Orpheus] plays sounds for me that are discordant and unpleasant, with no proper rhythm, measure, or melody.”

The passage returns to phrases that underline the point just made, “because I took such pleasure in hunting” and “because I delighted in singers and minstrels.” Earthly pleasures may bring punishment in purgatory, but there is more to the scene than that. Noise is common in folk accounts of the Cursed Huntsman and the Wild Hunt. Here Metge puts it to political use, reshaping the folk motif as satire. The din stands in opposition to the music King John loved. It points to failings that courtly readers would probably have recognized, though Metge leaves them unstated in these passages. Broadly speaking, the portrayal accords with the new court’s propaganda, presenting John as an idle, dissolute, sinful king who neglected his realm.

Another combination of learned and folk motifs recalls the endless repetition of torment as punishment [Q501], so familiar from classical mythology. John’s punishment, however, has been recast in Christian terms. It is purgatorial rather than eternal, unlike the punishments of Tantalus and Sisyphus. A further motif appears when Metge’s dream begins on a Friday around midnight. That hour also occurs in accounts of apparitions and recalls motif E587.5, a ghost wanders at midnight. In other traditions, ghosts wander until the cock crows [E587.3], or its crowing brings them to rest [E452]. Thompson also records related motifs associated with the Wild Hunt [E501.11.1.1 and E501.11.1.2]. In Lo somni, however, the cock’s crow does not end the apparition.

Related legends

All these parallels belong to a rich background of medieval accounts of apparitions and the punishments of purgatory, in which the Huntsman could suffer for different sins depending on the version (Mahiques 2005). The version closest to the tradition familiar to us is, of course, that of the Cursed Huntsman who leaves Mass to go hunting at the elevation of the Host. Among the many accounts relatively close to Metge’s time that link the Huntsman with sin is one transmitted by the polymath and Benedictine abbot Johannes Heidenberg (1462–1516), known as Trithemius after his home town of Trittenheim. Today he is best remembered for his writings on the occult, some of which were banned by the Inquisition, including the Steganographia. Trithemius recounts a legend strongly reminiscent of Count Arnau’s (McDonald 2018, Lecouteux 2011 77-78).

“On 21 December 1354, Walram, Count of Spanheim, died and was buried. The following night, Gottfried, chaplain of his castle, ‘heard a voice in the forest like that of a hunter urging his dogs after prey.’ A man enveloped in flames and mounted on a black horse was surrounded by a great pack of terrifying black dogs. The man spoke to him. ‘Lord Gottfried, do not be afraid! I am the soul of Count Walram, and I suffer this punishment for the pleasure I took in hunting and for laying waste to my serfs’ fields and vineyards. Tell my sons to have thirty Masses said over thirty days for my deliverance, and to feed thirty poor people during that same time.’”

A second account is not a religious exemplum. It probably records a legend transmitted orally in its region and was written down by the Franciscan Boissen, an adviser to the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, in the Schleswig Chronicle. The chronicle covers events up to 1530, survived in manuscript, and was not published until 1730. A notable feature is its use of firsthand and secondhand accounts gathered by the Franciscan in North Frisia. Boissen tells the following story (Boissen 1730 597).

“Abel, the second son of King Valdemar of Denmark, had his brother killed in 1250 and died in 1252 fighting the Frisians. He was buried in St Peter’s Church in Schleswig, but at night the church echoed with such loud noises that the canons could not sing their psalms and prayers. His body was therefore removed and submerged in a marsh in the Pöle Forest, near Gottorp, with a stake driven through the coffin. The noises ceased in the church, but were heard thereafter near his new burial place. Travellers passing by at night heard, among other sounds, a hunting horn. Abel was also said to have appeared to many people, his face and body black, riding a small horse and accompanied by three hunting dogs that often seemed to be on fire.” (Boissen 1730, 597)

This account brings together several folk beliefs and practices documented in Central and Eastern Europe. One is the belief that people who abused others in life could become condemned souls that fed on the living, one of the folkloric precursors of the modern vampire. This explains the stake driven through the coffin and the body’s disposal in a bog or swamp, an ancient practice documented by archaeology in several European countries. At the same time, the vampire-like figure merges with that of the Cursed Huntsman.

In the second part of this chapter, I will discuss several accounts of infernal hunts that bear comparison with Lo somni, including those of Dante and Boccaccio.