In many parts of Europe, the image of a hedgehog with an apple on his back is an iconic one—but in fact, the pleasant picture belies a long history of negative associations with the little animal.
In ancient times, hedgehogs were revered. In the seventh century BC, Archilochus of Paros appreciatively claimed that “the fox knows many things, whereas the hedgehog knows one big thing.” In stark contrast with the fox’s cunning and shifting attack strategies, the hedgehog remains true to its defensive tactics. It is an efficient and consistent creature that avoids unnecessary conflict. Three hundred years later, Aristotle praised hedgehogs for their ability to predict the weather. He believed they entered their burrows from different directions depending on anticipated changes in wind direction. The animal’s ability to defend itself against much larger predators aroused widespread sympathy, and the creature was featured on Greek vases and in Egyptian funeral paintings. Ancient Egyptians knew the dietary needs of these animals: in a tomb in Sakkara, there is an image of a hedgehog chewing on a cricket. Unfortunately, Pliny the Elder did not have the same knowledge. The Roman encyclopedist who lived in the first century incorrectly attributed specific behaviors to these animals and thus built a black legend that survived centuries.
The image of a hedgehog with an apple on its back has become a common one in many parts of the world where hedgehogs are found in the wild. So common that without the apple, the animal seems somehow incomplete. This is precisely an element of the long shadow of Pliny’s error. “Hedgehogs also lay up food for the winter; rolling themselves on apples as they lie on the ground, they pierce one with their quills, and then take up another in the mouth, and so carry them into the hollows of trees,” noted the historian, making the peaceful animal into a fearless thief.
Pliny was fantasizing about apples, but he was also sharing information he had found in other sources. He did not come up with the image of the apple-carrying hedgehog on his own. It is probable he was influenced by the Greeks, who depicted these animals with figs on their backs. However, it was Pliny’s vision described in Natural History that strongly affected mainstream beliefs about hedgehogs. At the turn of the second century, Pliny’s narrative was eagerly picked up by Plutarch, who, as an admirer of hedgehog techniques of defense, their weather-predicting abilities and their nautical properties (sea urchins!), wrote thus: “But the provision that the hedgehog makes for its young is even more ingenious. When autumn comes, it creeps under the vines and with its paws shakes down to the ground grapes from the bunches and, having rolled about in them, gets up with them attached to its quills. Once when I was a child I saw one, like a creeping or walking bunch of grapes! Then it goes down into its hole and delivers the load to its young for them to enjoy and draw rations from.” The writer and rhetorician was thus sharing his own ideas about the habits of these animals. Although the behavior described must have been a cause for concern among Roman grape growers, the author praised the hedgehogs’ parental earnestness and their logistical cleverness.
Figs and Grapes
It was a done deal after Plutarch. At the turn of the second century Aelian echoed the philosopher’s admiration, emphasizing the shrewdness of hedgehogs. He described them as creatures that break into places where figs are dried and, having rolled around in them, carry them off on their spikes for their young ones to eat. Thus, the hedgehog became known as a pest that steals food grown by humans. Perhaps the animal would have gotten away with these foul transgressions were it not for the fact that Aelian’s work, Characteristics of Animals gained unheard-of popularity in the early Middle Ages and became a frequent source of inspiration for bestiary authors. In short, it was this Greek-speaking Roman rhetorician who established many modern European ideas about the animal kingdom.
Church authors used ancient sources more or less freely. Since the Genesis creation narrative does not recount the making of any particular species, exegetes could draw the attention of listeners or readers to the animals they found most interesting. For instance, Saint Ambrose became fascinated with the hedgehog. In the Hexameron, a collection of six sermons about the six days of creation, the Bishop of Milan praises the animal’s “spiky armor,” but instead of focusing on the holes leading in and out of the burrow, he writes about the two holes of the hedgehog. According to the saint, the animal uses them to breathe in accordance with the direction of the wind. Apart from this slight modification he does not say an ill word about the hedgehog and does not mention stealing fruit.
The fate of the hedgehog, however, was already sealed. At first it seemed unlikely that the Physiologus would influence the perception of various animals for centuries to come, and yet that is exactly what happened. This collection of texts which circulated in several versions, none of them extensive—and described only forty-one creatures, a few minerals, a river, caviar, a fig tree and the prophet Amos—established strong beliefs about the habits and characteristics of certain species for at least one–and–a–half millennia. The anonymous author collected information on unicorns, mermaids, hydrops and centaurs, among others, as well as ants, swallows and the famed hedgehog. The work compiled all available knowledge, comments by early exegetes and classical texts, and thus became the first bestiary of the Christian world. Although it is not certain whether the Physiologus dates back to the second or fourth century, it was written early enough to reach the farthest corners of the globe at the time. Around the year 400, it was translated from the original Greek into Latin, one hundred years later, into Ethiopian and Armenian, and finally, into Syrian and Arabic. In the ninth century, the Physiologus could be read in Old English, then came Old Church Slavonic renditions, and a century later it was also circulated in Old German.
In all of these languages (and more were added over time), one could read that during the grape harvest, hedgehogs often will sneak into the vineyard, climb onto the vines and shake off the ripe grapes. The animals then roll around in the fruit in order to collect the grapes using their spines and carry them to their offspring. So here we have Plutarch’s thought, the potential horror of which is intensified with the image of hedgehogs ascending the bush to shake off entire clusters of grapes. What’s more, the phrase “the hedgehog enters the vineyard” must have alarmed those sensitive to biblical allegories. For the author of the Physiologus commented:
“So you, O Christians, stand by the spiritual and true vine [John 15:1], which is Christ the true God. Consider how you have let the evil spirit come into your heart, and how you have destroyed your beautiful order, how you have scattered and so strayed into the prickles of death that you have expanded the order of the opposing powers. You give yourselves up to the desolate way of the cluster, having no branches in you at all.” (Trans. Patricia Cox).
And so the die was cast. The hedgehog became an allegory of the evil spirit. Until then, the vineyard had been ravaged by the little foxes from the Song of Songs. But while the fox will never be free of the vicious thief stereotype, the allegory associated with the hedgehog is even stronger. In another version of the Physiologus, the author dots the “i” when he describes the ancient motif of the hedgehog’s battle with the serpent. “Evil conquers evil,” he says. There is no turning back.
The Devil Incarnate
The hedgehog’s mainstream image was strengthened by its presence in numerous encyclopedias. Some dealt with a chosen stage of creation (like in the Physiologus), while others aimed to compile all available knowledge about the world. These volumes determined how the subject of their study would be perceived over the centuries.
Some time later, at the turn of the seventh century, the erudite Doctor of the Church Isidore of Seville decided to categorize whatever knowledge he could possess. The Etymologies are an elaborate encyclopedia in which the hedgehog is primarily depicted as a creature of self-defense. When threatened, it curls into a ball and its spines stiffen. In the last sentence, as if in passing, the author praises the cleverness of the animal: “For when it has plucked a grape from the vine, it rolls itself backwards over it and in this way takes it to its offspring.” Isidore, who read Aristotle long before the Arabs, probably knew the work of Plutarch. But he may have also been reading the Physiologus. In any case, the Bishop of Seville—one of the greatest authorities of the Middle Ages and founder of scholasticism avant la lettre—put his own mark (perhaps unintentionally) on the hedgehog: the animal steals grapes. One has to give the philosopher credit for refraining from allegorical explanations, and he even seems to admire the creature’s concern for its family. However, he establishes another indisputable fact: the hedgehog is a harmful presence in the vineyard
Throughout the Middle Ages more and more bestiaries drew from the Physiologus, thus popularizing the black hedgehog legend. The mentioned triad of motifs (balling up as a defense strategy, the two airholes in the burrow used in accordance with the direction of the wind, as well as picking grapes and rolling back on them to feed the young) became common, everyday knowledge about these animals. It’s fair to assume that by the beginning of the thirteenth century it had already reached most people living at that time.
The year 1200 is usually considered to be the beginning of the so-called “Late Middle Ages,” which, unbeknownst to its contemporaries, was slowly but steadily moving toward an uneasy end, to put it mildly. Increasingly turbulent times called for new pastoral methods and devotional practices. But before the era of devotio moderna—the new piety developed in the fourteenth century in the Netherlands and the Rhineland—came the time of great preachers whose activity and influence lasted for centuries to come. The thirteenth century, marked by the new phenomenon of mendicant orders, relied on Mendicant sermons. However, Dominicans and Franciscans (the former usually well-educated, the latter not so much) still referred to early medieval symbols while preaching. Allegorical readings positioned the hedgehog in the role of the enemy in such a convenient manner that it was impossible to abandon it.
St. Anthony of Padua (he actually came from Lisbon), who was a member of the Order of Friars Minor as well as a famous preacher and lecturer known as the Hammer of the Heretics, referenced nearly all parts of the hedgehog in an allegorical lecture, following the popular kitchen principle “nose-to-tail.” He wrote: “The hedgehog is all prickly, and if anyone tries to catch it, it rolls itself up into a ball in the hand of the one holding it. It has its head and mouth underneath, and five teeth in its mouth. The hedgehog is the obstinate sinner, clad all around with the spines of sin. If you try to rebuke him for the sins he has committed, immediately he gets prickly and hides his guilt with excuses. […] While excusing the wicked things he has done, the sinner is just turning his mind and speech to earthly things below. The five teeth in his mouth are the five kinds of excuse which a stubborn man uses. When he is rebuked, he blames ignorance, bad luck, the devil’s tempting, the weakness of the flesh or the provocation of other people.” For the Franciscan, the hedgehog literally embodies the sinner—it is much more than just an allegory. Moreover, the head and the snout of the animal are symbols of evil itself, while the five teeth illustrate the five excuses invoked by the hardened sinner for all sins committed.
A Norman bestiary from 1210 warned: “Good Christian, beware of the hedgehog, a pernicious and cruel traitor, beware of the devil, who continually tries to deceive you so that you fall, just like the grapes that are picked by the hedgehog.” And another bestiary of that time added: “You, Christian, beware of the hedgehog, the devil who is covered in prickles and who is always ready to ambush you.” For the Anglo-Norman preacher Odon of Cheriton this animal was already synonymous with coarseness, lack of manners, and rudeness. Soon greed, gluttony, and a short temper were added to this set of traits. The nocturnal lifestyle of hedgehogs seemed suspicious and their chthonic aura made it easier to perceive them as symbols or harbingers of disease.
Pins and Needles
According to some scholars, such as David Talshir, the bad reputation of hedgehogs was cemented by an awkward translation of the Bible. In the Book of Isaiah, cursed Babylon was recast as “a hedgehog’s abode and a swamp,” while fallen Edom was described as the home of the hedgehog and the pelican. Zephanias, on the other hand, wrote that in the ruins of Nineveh lay “all the beasts of the nations: both the pelican and the porcupine shall lodge in the capitals thereof”. It is quite obvious that these prickly animals did not portend anything good. However, was it really the hedgehog that was at the heart of the problem? It is worth noting that in the quoted passages the hedgehog is featured in an unnatural environment, since it is not a swamp animal and it certainly does not enjoy roaming rubble. Translators who struggled with the Hebrew portions of the Bible, however, fell into hedgehog traps of a different kind, in the form of the words kippod and shafan.
Kippod is a term that has various meanings; one of them, admittedly, is the hedgehog, but the author of the cited quotes was probably thinking about something else—a certain species of owl (or other bird) that also curls up into a ball seems more likely. Kippod is semantically linked to “being angry,” so it could mean someone with a short temper. It becomes quite obvious that the hedgehog was notorious because of both Christian and Hebrew exegetes.
The word shafan, on the other hand, denotes a number of animals. The term can mean porcupine, hedgehog, hare or even hare-rabbit. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Bible, renders shafan as “cherogril.” This word was translated either as “hare” or as “hedgehog” in the Latin Vulgate. St. Jerome, the author of the translation, was probably aware of these challenges, since he refers to the features of a hedgehog (small, covered with thorns) and a hare (skittish) in his description of the cherogril included in his commentaries to the biblical text. Thus, the good-natured Syrian rock hyrax, depicted as a hedgehog or as a cherogril, marched on in medieval commentaries and miniatures (also as an animal resembling a squirrel and a dog), picking up a host of unpleasant traits which inevitably marred the reputation of the kindly hedgehog as well.
St. Anthony’s peer, the Dominican priest Thomas of Cantimpré, author of an encyclopedic work entitled The Book on the Nature of Things, does not have any disagreeable things to say about the hedgehog. The cherogril, however, is a different matter. In Thomas’s writing it is a wild, ferocious, and dangerous animal, albeit a small one. Given that the Dominican finished categorizing the known animal world around 1244, miniaturists, exegetes, and writers have had nine hundred years since St. Jerome to equate the hedgehog with the fearsome cherogril. Some of these accusations must have stuck to the hedgehog’s spines.
The only thing that proved more durable than the hedgehog’s notoriety were popular fantasies about hedgehog needles and strong hair. Recipes for an effective remedy against baldness (burnt hedgehog prickles mixed with any kind of moisturizing substance) were included in the so-called Ebers papyrus created in Egypt in the seventeenth (or sixteenth) century BC and in a seventeenth-century medical text originating in the French province of Quercy. About halfway through this interval of more than three thousand years appears Pliny, who reiterates the Egyptian remedy, noting in passing that the demand for hedgehogs is so great that it resulted in the development of troublesome illegal monopolies. “Even here fraud has discovered a great source of profit by monopoly, nothing having been the subject of more frequent legislation by the senate,” he argues in his Natural History. “And every emperor, without exception, faced complaints from the provinces on this matter.”
The hedgehog’s bad rep has a long history, starting from Pliny’s calumnies spread in the first century and ending with the 1960s, when French ethnologists pointed out that anti-hedgehog slurs still popped up here and there, mainly aimed at children. Among them were the contemptuous terms “hedgehog child” or “dirty hedgehog.” Pliny’s tales about this creature obviously cast a long shadow. And history likes to pitch in as well.
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