Collections of live animals, usually including exotic species, existed throughout earlymodern Europe. They included fixed menageries maintained by monarchs, municipalities, or wealthy individuals and roving menageries whose proprietors showed animals for a fee. Some of the former eventually became today’s zoos. The most common species—bears, lions, leopards, monkeys, ostriches, and camels— came from Europe, the Near East, and north or central Africa. Expanding maritime commerce, particularly with the East and West Indies, increased the number of available species. Animals were acquired primarily through purchase from sailors or merchants or as gifts from dignitaries. The animals were usually kept in cages, sometimes around an arena or a courtyard, sometimes in separate structures dispersed through the grounds of an estate. Some menageries (e.g., the Tower of London and Versailles) were open to the public, who could also view strange animals at inns or fairs.
Menageries served many purposes, from symbols of domestic or international power, to entertainment, to scientific study. Exotic animals made dramatic diplomatic gifts. Entertainment frequently took the form of animal combats; Louis XIV (1638–1715), for example, treated the ambassador of Persia to a fight to the death between an elephant and a tiger in 1682.
Although not established for scientific goals, menageries were increasingly used by scholars to learn about animal behavior and anatomy. In late-seventeenthcentury Paris, Claude Perrault (1613–1688) and his colleagues of the Paris Academy of Sciences dissected and described many species from the king’s menagerie—including the tiger killed in the fight just described.
Menageries existed in almost all European countries; their fortunes generally paralleled the country’s success in world trade. Sixteenth-century Italy boasted impressive menageries in Venice, Florence, and Rome. Pope Leo X (1475–1521) filled the Vatican menagerie with rarities, including an elephant given by the king of Portugal. Early-seventeenth-century Holland swelled with animals arriving from the East and West Indies on merchant ships. Stadtholder Frederik Henry (1584–1647) collected animals at his palace Honselaarsdijk. He acquired the first live chimpanzee in Europe, which was described and illustrated by the physician Nicolaas Tulp (1593–674). Succeeding rulers continued to expand the animal collections. The public enjoyed viewing exotic animals and birds at a commercial menagerie begun at an inn in Amsterdam in the 1690s. In England, the Tower of London menagerie dated back to the thirteenth century. Elizabeth I (1533–1603) and James I (1566–1625) both staged animal fights there. In 1708 the residents included eleven lions, two leopards, three eagles, and two owls. Traveling menageries were also common sights at annual fairs. French royalty, too, had a long tradition of keeping wild animals. In the late sixteenth century, the Louvre housed the royal menagerie; the collection was decimated in 1583 by Henry III (1551–1589), however, after he dreamed that the animals had attacked him. In 1664 Louis XIV constructed the largest menagerie in Europe, at Versailles. The Sun King’s power had attracted to his menagerie, by 1700, fifty-five mammal and more than one hundred bird species.
